Each week the Music Feeds team pick a favourite new song from the week that was, wrap it in a bunch of words and present it to you. It’s Music Feeds Faves.
Milk Teeth – Vitamins
In case you hadn’t noticed, the early-mid ’90s are very much back in vogue in the punk-rock scene, with bands the ilk of Title Fight, Citizen, PUP, Balance and Composure, Joyce Manor, Violent Soho and Lunatics on Pogosticks incorporating heavy grunge, alt-rock and shoe-gaze overtones into their recorded output with varying results.
UK grunge/punk prodigies Milk Teeth are the perfect band for this moment and with Vitamins these young Bristol upstarts announce themselves in fittingly dishevelled fashion. Exploding to life with an infectious swirling riff and a thunderous rhythm, Milk Teeth dresses front-woman/bassist’s Becky’s angst-ridden vocals in a fuzz-drenched wall-of-sound, resulting in three minutes of pure punk-rock bliss.
At once calling to mind the likes of Veruca Salt, Bikini Kill, The Breeders and The Pixies, Vitamins burns with the caustic intensity of a young-woman scorned, blending unfiltered emotion and frantic instrumentation with cleverly disguised pop-nous to create an addictive mix that will bring a smile to a 90’s kid’s heart. Accompanied by a fittingly lo-fi and creative video (complete with a great appropriated MTV logo), Vitamins is just the fix you’ve been looking for. / Brenton Harris, Contributor
Saul Williams – Burundi
Being cooped up inside for a week while your city drowns sure can stir up some emotions. And this week I found that there’s no-one better at conveying that sense of strained containment and eventual emotional explosion, than slam poet/performer and musician Saul Williams. Even though he might be dealing with slightly more nuanced issues that the #sydneystorm.
Williams’ latest release is Burundi, inspired by the black market networks in the Central African country of the same name. It’s a dramatic and intense track that starts off with sinister orchestral strings and builds to an almighty climax of energy with those militant drums. The combination of William’s hard-hitting verses and the vocal contributions from Warpaint’s Emily Kokal really help seal that “call to arms” feel, inspiring you to get off your ass and mobilise. After it stops raining that is.
Burundi is a cut from Williams’ forthcoming album MartyrLoserKing due to drop in July. He sights Beyoncé, Fredo Santana, and Haitian field recordings as the album’s musical inspirations, so it’s definitely going to be an eclectic one. Can’t wait. / Nastassia Baroni, Staff Writer
Samuel Dobson – Coda
Aussie hip hop and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra; not a combination you think would work, but Sydney based rapper Samuel Dobson, has pulled it off. String quartets are cool again.
Dobson (formerly known as Shazza-T) has always had his raps and music in the darker realms of story telling and the thing about Coda is that it encapsulates a psychotic and horrific image, while his flowing rhymes keep it sleek and suggestive. So you better listen to it with the lights on while you wear your silk PJs. If you’re a fan of OFWGKTA and the 3rd movement of Debussy’s String Quartet Op.3, you’ll love this. / Harrison Fuller, Presenter
Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Can’t Keep Checking My Phone
Unknown Mortal Orchestra return with their third studio albumMulti-Love this May, and have now shared another track from the record.
Here’s what the group’s mastermind, Ruban Nielson, has said about the new tune, in an email to fans:
‘Cant Keep Checking My Phone’ is about missing somebody and that point where you refuse to accept online “connectivity” as a substitute for being with someone IRL. When someone you love turns into text and ideas delivered through a device, at some point they’re competing with real things like the aurora borealis, which is another thing that only really makes sense in the flesh. / Tom Williams, Staff Writer
Terace – Let Me Know
Rid yourself of the garbage week that was by slipping into this sexy little house number from Aussie duo Terace, which, wow, you look really good in, by the way. Really brings out your figure, girl!
Featuring the alluring vocals of local industry legend KLP, Let Me Know winks at you from the corner of the dancefloor, its slinking piano lines and trill percussion moving towards you confidently and sensually taking you by the waist and pulling you towards it. Mate. You’re in. / Mitch Feltscheer, Creative Content Director
David Hasselhoff – True Survivor
The world is quite frankly a better place because of David Hasselhoff’s new song, True Survivor.
The title of the tune sounds like a vintage Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, and with Van Damme good reason. True Survivor is, to its very core, a heartfelt tribute to the eighties, and all of the outrageous cultural hallmarks that made the decade so spectacular. The Hoff conjures smoky polyester nostalgia with lashings of synth, an electrifying keytar solo, Eastern trills and fist-pumping lyrics about overcoming the odds, in a motivational anthem worthy of a martial arts training montage. Eat your heart out, Joe Esposito.
And indeed, the intrinsic relationship between cheesy eighties action flicks and epic power hymns is articulated via the tune’s even more sensational music video. Engineered for the soundtrack of upcoming Swedish blockbuster Kung Fury, a film about a police detective and martial artist who time-travels from the 1980s to assassinate Adolf Hitler, the clip for True Survivor features nods to all of the greatest eighties action flicks from Tron to Mad Max to The Warriors.
Kicking off with an appropriately cheesy one-liner (“Permit… Denied”), the video sees a mullet-sporting, crotch-thrusting Hoff surf on airborne vehicles, strut away from explosions AND RIDE A MOTHER FUCKING TYRANNOSAURUS REX
Sorry fellow Music Feeders. This week, your arguments are invalid. / Emmy Mack, Staff Writer
