There’s just too much damn music out there to keep on top of all the goodness, now matter how devoted a sound junkie you may be. To help pull the true gems from the sea of zirconium we’re inundated with every day, Crave has put out a Voltron call to our music contributors from around the world to bring you a killer weekly mixtape playlist.
Here’s how it works – each week we’ll deliver a handful of must-listen tracks, most of them new, some of them classics, all of them awesome. You can kick off your weekend with the best sounds and a sense of enlightenment, knowing you’re not missing the boat on the best tracks out there each week.
Big Grams – Fell in the Sun
Big Boi and Phantogram’s first cut from their debut EP under their collaborative moniker Big Grams may well have missed out on the summer it so desperately needed to soundtrack, but you can’t put an expiration date on a good hook, and the uplifting “Fell in the Sun” indicates that the partnership between the electro rock duo and the more “down to Earth” Outkast member will be a fruitful one.
With Big Boi spitting about how he “put Atlanta on the map” in the foreground, backed by a beat that explodes with suitable ostentatiousness once vocalist Sarah Barthel leaps into the frame for the chorus, this first single points towards the unlikely collab having stumbled upon a treasure trove of potential, and I hope this is further evidenced when they drop their EP.
Paul Tamburro – Crave UK Editor
Father John Misty – The Night Josh Tillman Came To Our Apartment
With his new album I Love You, Honeybear, Joshua Tillman – better known as Father John Misty – has transformed from a beacon of coy narcissism to a gracefully mordant romantic. “The Night Josh Tillman Came To Our Apartment” is both gorgeous and hilarious, a dedicated backhand to the personified face of a culture drowning in vapid self-satisfaction as we speak. In the newly released accompanying video, Tillman meets a depressed version of himself, and through a series of bonding moments – snorting cocaine, going swimming, hooking up together – become the best of buds.
But it’s the lyricism that remains amazingly captivating. “She says literally music is the air she breathe / and the malaprops make me wanna fucking scream” – laugh break, and twice-rewind – “I wonder if she even knows what that word means / well, it’s literally not that…” He then goes on to dismantle the vapid, self-satisfied halfwit before promising to really tune in for her particularly punishing kink once the day is done and the clothes are scattered on the floor. “I’ll oblige later on when you beg me to choke you…” This record is easily in the top five of 2015. Read our review for more evidence.
Johnny Firecloud – Music Editor, Crave (North America)
Jack Colwell – Don’t Cry Those Tears
Veritable hurricane of a musician and performer Jack Colwell is back with some more thunderous pop music with a new EP and single “Don’t Cry Those Tears”. One of Australia’s most truly unique artists, Jack’s melding of soaring orchestral work with densely dark rock-pop stylings makes for some powerful, eccentric tracks unlike anything else on the scene at the moment.
The video for “Don’t Cry Those Tears” announces the EP and lets Jack unleash the impressively manic theatrics his live shows have come to be known for, amidst a seedy, neon hued bath house.
Plus: BUTTS! How good are butts?
Mitch Feltscheer – Aus Music Editor
ZHU x AlunaGeorge – Automatic
Summer hasn’t technically arrived on our side of the earth yet, but with the launch of ZHU’s latest track it might as well have, because this thing is brimming with sweet rays of audible sunshine. Teaming up with the sublime AlunaGeorge, the track is likely part of the producer’s ‘Genesis Series’ project, which will feature a bunch of collabs with the likes of Skrillex, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Gallant and even Daniel Johns, and may or may not act as ZHU’s debut album, which can’t arrive soon enough.
Here the elusive producer works his magic with Aluna Francis and George Rei’s slinky vocals, cultivating what is sure to be your go-to-summer-bliss-out-jam. There’s even a sweet, totally left-field sax solo ffs. If you need me, I’ll be poolside.
Nastassia Baroni – Aus Editor
Sexwitch – Ha Howa Ha Howa
Remember Bat for Lashes? That Natasha Khan girl who wrote a song about the dude from Karate Kid and made us pine for cheesy romantic 80’s songs? Well, she’s back with a new project called Sexwitch, and a new song from the forthcoming record has arrived in all its native-chanting glory. The album consists of covers of international psych and folk songs from the 1970s, and “Ha Howa Ha Howa” is based on a Moroccan track sung by Cheikha Hanna Ouakki.
Speaking about the song, Khan told a captivating story: “Ha Howa Ha Howa”, the “he addicted me” song—the girl that originally sang that [Cheikha Hanna Ouakki] was really young, 15, 16. She traveled around these mountain villages and became this vagabond singer. She’s the one that sounded so street, so contemporary. I loved her spirit, I felt her freedom in the way she was singing it. So it’s really nice to shine a light on that time in those countries where there was liberation. They feel the same things we do, it’s just blanketed in our impression of oppressive regimes. I think deep down, we’re all from the same place.”
Johnny Firecloud – Music Editor, Crave (North America)
Porsches – Karate
It’s hard to believe that Sydney production duo Porches have only released one single so far, such is the ubiquity of their track Horses in Australia over the past couple of months. I mean, that lowkey banger is everywhere.
Second single “Karate” has dropped this week and takes their sex-laden electronica to a darker place. We’re in the same back-alley nightclub at 2am as last time, but this room is dimmer, the shadowy shapes of limbs and bodies sliding against each other barely able to be made out amongst the smoke and beats. “I just want to know if you’re leaving with me tonight,” Porsches confidently croon. I know I am.
Mitch Feltscheer – Aus Music Editor
Big Scary – Organism
Aussie duo Big Scary’s latest single “Organism” is pop music at its most interesting and inventive, an eccentric yet somehow minimalistic tune that entangles you within its rhythmic textures with each listen. Thing is, it’s so intricate that it’d be easy to get so intellectually wrapped up in breaking down the song, that you miss the underlying groove.
That’s why I’m so happy the duo gave it this gloriously weird video treatment, featuring one half of the duo, Tom Iansek, busting out the most adorably dorky dad dance moves this side of the equator. Focus closely, I’m pretty sure you can see him cracking up half-way through.
Nastassia Baroni – Aus Editor
Kacy Hill – Foreign Fields
There was a clear point between 808s and Heartbreak and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy where Kanye West dropped the mic (in a figurative sense this time) and said: “FUCK THIS, I’MA BE JAMES BLAKE BUT BETTER.” One of the rapper/producer’s newest additions to his G.O.O.D. Music label, Kacy Hill, strongly represents West’s dramatic shift in music taste, which is none more apparent than in her latest single “Foreign Fields.”
From her haunting vocals through to the sparse melody accompanying them, which sinks into the kind of pulsating buzz we’ve come to expect from Blake et al, “Foreign Fields” may not be wholly original but her adaptation of the minimalist production so prevalent in modern electronic music is compelling in its own right, and at the very least the music video sees her being haunted by what appears to be the spirit of WWE wrestler Goldust.
Paul Tamburro – Crave UK Editor
