TALA
Serbia (Aesop)
TALA is a London-based singer-producer with Iranian parents, a Sanskrit name and a penchant for naming her songs after former Yugoslav republics. Serbia isn’t quite as exotic as that makes it sound, but it’s still a heady brew of imperial drums, fizzing synths and yearning rave diva vocals. Audaciously, the moody intro has nothing to do with the rest of the track, which eventually finds TALA riding a beat so booming and regal she should be cradling a sceptre and sending traitors to the guillotine. A dazzler in anyone’s book.
ALSO OUT THIS WEEK
Son Lux Feat Lorde
Easy (Switch Screens) (Joyful Noise)
You’ve got to admire Lorde for refusing to do what’s expected of a breakthrough pop star these days. Rather than dressing head-to-toe in Gucci sport luxe and hanging courtside with Drake and James Franco, she’s to be found gurgling like a female Tom Waits all over this prowling, crepuscular number from obscure New York producer Son Lux. Trumpets parp. Ghostly choirs wail. Canes click-clack menacingly down the stair rail. Lorde slurs something about pulling her heart out. David Lynch has already bought the rights.
Arcade Fire
We Exist (Sonovox)
Now the customary hype notices have faded, is there anybody out there still claiming that Arcade Fire’s new “dance” direction has been a success? While they excel at dread and fervour, Arcade Fire simply can’t do loose-limbed communal joy (witness their pass-agg command for audiences to dress up at their Reflektor shows). We Exist sounds like a knackered Metronomy: drab, tuneless and dragging on needlessly towards the six-minute mark because someone’s told them that’s what dance records do. Bring back the accordions, quick!
Chicane Feat Senadee
No More I Sleep (Modena)
Having basically invented the Big Emotional Trance Breakdown now liberally employed by everyone from Ke$ha to Coldplay, it seems only right that Nick Bracegirdle from Chalfont St Giles is back to reap the acclaim for this invaluable contribution to the pop landscape. Except that No More I Sleep – its title presumably cribbed from the slogan of a Japanese energy drink – is a damp squib, neither big nor emotional nor even very trancey. I want to feel like a Gap-clad teenager punching the air at my first full-moon party; instead, I feel like a middle-aged divorcee who’s just been shortchanged in Aldi.
Real Estate
Crime (Domino)
Some people think pop music should be about extreme emotions: love and pain, magic and loss. But Real Estate respectfully disagree, having carved out a career making winsome jangly guitar ditties concerning nostalgia, ennui and the kind of mild anxiety brought on by realising you’ve failed to log out of your Gmail account on a shared computer. “I don’t wanna die lonely and uptight,” pleads singer Martin Courtney here; a chorus you’ll never hear blared out on The X Factor, and all the better for it.
