ListenUp
Courtney Barnett’s surprise live set, a thank you from How To Dress Well and more in this week’s musical round-up
Courtney Barnett: Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go to the Party
Summing up the weekend vibe (or maybe even adult life) is Courtney Barnett’s “Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go to the Party,” and the Melbourne singer-songwriter shared the message with Londoners this week in a surprise live set outside Camden Town tube station. With lyrics like “I wanna go out / but I wanna stay home,” the lefty guitarist says out loud what a lot of us are quietly fighting inside. Catch her world tour this fall, including opening for Blur at the Hollywood Bowl and Madison Square Garden in October.
Beirut: Gibraltar
Set in a dreamscape-like, trash-filled version of Gibraltar, with its famed Rock nothing more than a purple landfill, Beirut’s brand new video (for the appropriately titled track “Gibraltar“) manages to be both charming and inventive. The track itself, off of the forthcoming album No No No, finds lead singer Zach Condon’s warm vocals resting atop keyboards and congo drums. It’s the second preview the band has offered regarding the highly-anticipated album, their first since 2011—and it delights with thought and beauty.
Doug Hream Blunt: Ride the Tiger
Amateur SF-based musician Doug Hream Blunt only made one EP and one LP, which he pressed himself, dropping them off in the “local artists” bins at record stores—but the lucky crate-diggers who gave the pretty obscure records a chance became hooked. The seemingly repetitive riffs and chord progressions, led by someone who never had formal education aside from a group class called “How to Form a Band,” catch the listener off-guard with their inexact yet honest approach. Get a taste of the uncanny ’90s funk before Luaka Bop officially releases a 10-song compilation of Blunt’s work on 16 October 2015 (titled My Name Is Doug Hream Blunt: Featuring The Hit “Gentle Persuasion”) by checking out this performance of “Ride the Tiger” taken from public access television.
Shigeto: Pulse
Having stayed quiet for the past two years while touring and working on other projects (like forming the jazz quartet High Risk), Detroit-based Shigeto has resurfaced with the beautifully composed instrumental electronic track “Pulse.” With vocal samples and high-pitched hits adding to the intricate percussion, Shigeto’s polyrhythms make it difficult to locate a strong foundation to cling to, and instead push the listener continually forward. His six-track EP Intermission, which the artist calls “a halftime show of sorts,” will release on Ghostly International on 30 October 2015.
How To Dress Well: Precious Love
How To Dress Well’s gorgeous, lush album What Is This Heart? has passed its one-year anniversary, but he’s released a video for one of the record’s standouts, “Precious Love” (the one which cleverly samples hold music from Cisco). The casual video sees HTDW (aka Tom Krell) lounging on a couch as he and his pals perform the track, and was made to say thank you for all the support he’s been given over the past year. In classic HTDW style, it’s dreamy, sweet and a little bit ethereal.
ListenUp is a Cool Hunting series published every Sunday that rounds up the music we tweeted throughout the week, also found in Listen. Hear the year so far via Cool Hunting Spotify.
