Issy Sampson 

Sinead Harnett’s No Other Way, this week’s best new track

‘“Tell me what’s on your mind,” she purrs. We can’t tell you, Sinead, we really can’t. Can you pass us that cushion, though?’
  
  


Sinead Harnett Feat Snakehips
No Other Way (Virgin EMI)

The sexiest songs aren’t the ones that mention sex explicitly, as anyone who’s heard Ludacris’s back catalogue knows. That’s why No Other Way is so hot. When Sinead Hartnett suggests you “Lay down next to me/ Find yourself some peace”, you know she’s not offering a night in binge-watching House Of Cards. And, oh God, her voice. “Tell me what’s on your mind,” she purrs. We can’t tell you, Sinead, we really can’t. Can you pass us that cushion, though?

ALSO OUT THIS WEEK

Phox
Kingfisher (Partisan)

Phox are a six-piece alternative folk band who play flute and banjo, and recorded their most recent album in Bon Iver’s studio in the woods. So they’re a bunch of annoying beardy hipsters, right? Nope, Kingfisher is actually adorable. Singer Monica Martin’s voice is just the right side of deep – though any breathier and it’d be more twee than Zooey Deschanel baking kitten cupcakes in a prom dress – and she manages to fit complicated words like “actuality”, “reverie” and “entirety” into the lyrics. Impressive.

The Script
Superheroes (Sony)

The Script - you know, the Irish ones? One was on The Voice for a bit? - are back, with Superheroes, the lyrics to which are a collection of clichés (fire in her belly, lions in her heart, etc), drawn together by the kind of beige, safe indie your mum might absentmindedly put in the trolley in ASDA. It’s so similar to their previous releases that The Script could be releasing the same song every week as some kind of experiment to see if anyone notices. In the video, Danny O’Donoghue and a group of men who are probably ‘the rest of the Script’ travel to an African town and play to a group of people who’ve just finished a shift on a landfill site, leaving the uncomfortable impression that the superheroes here are supposed to be… The Script.

El May
I Played A Role (Lojinx)

We’re in that two-week grace period following the Notting Hill carnival that permits white middle-class people to enjoy steel drums, so El May’s I Played A Role has picked the right week to come out in the UK. It’s all summery keyboards, breathy vocals and, yes, drums of steel. The video sees El May (real name Lara Meyerratken) running around New York, insisting that hot strangers listen to her song and dance to it. That wouldn’t work here: imagine a pop star trying to get British people to dance, spontaneously, on camera, in public? We’d all disintegrate through embarrassment.

The Wytches
Burn Out The Bruise (Heavenly Recordings)

Burn Out The Bruise sounds like every single time you’ve trekked to that rough pub – no unbroken loo seats in the entire building – to listen to your mate’s band who are, like, totally going to make it. The bar staff start putting the chairs on the tables during the final song, and every local looks as if they could murder you with one punch, then turn back to their pint without a second thought. That’s how this track feels: hard and unwelcome.

Pharrell Williams
Come Get It Bae (Columbia)

In 2014, the word “baby” is too long for busy people, who now just say “bae”. In this song, you’re Pharrell’s “bae” and he wants you to come get “it”. He’s telling you to “come ride my motorcycle” and “take it easy on the clutch”. “You’ve got a licence,” he adds. Slow down, Pharrell! We’re trying to note down this complicated rental agreement. The video doesn’t seem to have heard the song: it’s gone for the female empowerment message of “beauty has no expiration date”, only no one in it seems to be older than 35 and it features a load of women dancing sexily for Pharrell and, confusingly, his wife. No thanks, bae.

 

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