{"id":10340,"date":"2024-08-02T09:28:45","date_gmt":"2024-08-02T13:28:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=10340"},"modified":"2024-08-02T09:28:46","modified_gmt":"2024-08-02T13:28:46","slug":"music-update-july-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2024\/08\/02\/music-update-july-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Music update, July 2024."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>July finished with a bit of a bang, from a music perspective, at least, as this playlist doubled in size over the final week of the month. It also had two of my favorite new albums of the year so far, from Griff and Childish Gambino, as well as new singles from three contemporary artists I really like \u2013 from three entirely different genres, too. As always, if you can\u2019t see the playlist below, you can <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/playlist\/3QzbvmHDRC8sewuyKS32xz?si=2468f75aeecf4d92\">access it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify wp-embed-aspect-21-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: Klaw&amp;apos;s July 2024 music update\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"352\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/playlist\/3QzbvmHDRC8sewuyKS32xz?si=13ee5283b20e4d86&#038;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Griff \u2013 Tears For Fun.<\/strong> Griff\u2019s full-length debut, <em>Vertigo<\/em>, came out this month and was a huge success in her native UK, coming in at #3 on their album charts in its first week. It\u2019s an incredible record of lush pop tracks, replete with sophisticated melodies, the sort of record that should appeal to fans of Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, etc. if American fans even hear any of her music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Lotte Gallagher \u2013 This Room.<\/strong> I assume I won\u2019t be the last person to wonder if she\u2019s related to the Oasis boys, but she\u2019s not; she\u2019s a singer\/songwriter from Melbourne, Australia, which seems to be producing as much great indie pop\/rock music per capita as any country in the world right now. I wish I\u2019d come up with the comparison to Sam Fender, but I saw it in a fluffy profile of Ms. Gallagher and I can\u2019t find a better one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Michael Kiwanuka \u2013 Floating Parade.<\/strong> The first new track from the 2020 Mercury Prize winner since the 2021 single \u201cBeautiful Life\u201d is a gorgeous, bass-forward track with meditative lyrics about the struggles of daily life and how we seek out ways to escape it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Sampha &amp; Little Simz \u2013 Satellite Business 2.0. <\/strong>Theoriginal \u201cSatellite Business\u201dwas an 84-second filler track with no percussion on Sampha\u2019s 2023 album \u201cLahai,\u201d but this version is blown out to 4:53 with a drum machine and a bangin\u2019 guest verse from Little Simz. It completely reimagines the track with a big, frenetic energy that makes it one of Sampha\u2019s best songs to date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jorja Smith \u2013 High.<\/strong> Smith appeared on <em>Bando Stone<\/em> and now returns with her first new solo track of 2024, not counting the \u2018reimagined\u2019 version of <em>falling or flying<\/em> she released in May. \u201cHigh\u201d really showcases her voice over a smooth house beat, with production that puts her vocals front and center, where they belong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Childish Gambino feat. Foush\u00e9e \u2013 Running Around.<\/strong> If <em>Bando Stone &amp; the New World is<\/em> indeed the last Childish Gambino album, it\u2019s a real tour de force and a hell of a swan song. Donald Glover bounces across all manner of genres, even going full emo on this track, in a broad, unpredictable, ambitious record by a mad musical genius. I also recommend \u201cLithonia,\u201d a ballad with a great twist at the chorus; and the instrumental \u201cHappy Survival,\u201d featuring Khruangbin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Crows \u2013 Bored.<\/strong> Crows\u2019 third album, <em>Reason Enough<\/em>, comes out on September 27<sup>th<\/sup>; this lead single seems to lean harder into their punk roots, which I suppose isn\u2019t that surprising for a band on IDLES\u2019s record label.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Japandroids \u2013 Chicago. <\/strong>Japandroids released this new single off their upcoming album <em>Fate &amp; Alcohol <\/em>with anote that this record will be their last. It\u2019s their first new music since 2017\u2019s <em>Near to the Wild Heart of Life<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pastel \u2013 Deeper than Holy.<\/strong> Pastel\u2019s handful of singles so far have shown a deep reverence for the heyday of Britpop, often bridging the gap between that era\u2019s biggest rivals, Blur and Oasis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Primal Scream \u2013 Love Insurrection.<\/strong> Primal Scream\u2019s first new music since 2016 sounds like they paired up with Khruangbin to reimagine late-1970s funk\/disco. Their twelfth album, <em>Come Ahead<\/em>, comes out in November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Los Bitchos \u2013 Kiki, You Complete Me.<\/strong> Los Bitchos play cumbia-influenced rock, mostly instrumental, with this particular song recalling 1960s surf rock and spy-movie soundtracks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>O. \u2013 Sugarfish.<\/strong> That\u2019s about as SEO-unfriendly a band name as you can conceive. O. is a duo from London that works with saxophone and drums, but they run the sax through all kinds of effects pedals to make it sound like other instruments, including a distorted guitar. Their debut album, the appropriately titled <em>WeirdOs<\/em>, dropped in June.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Sunflower Bean \u2013 Shake.<\/strong> This title track of an upcoming EP from the Brooklyn trio is probably the heaviest thing they\u2019ve ever done, driven by a single guitar riff, with Julia Cumming ceding most of the lead vocal work to Nick Kivlen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Hinds \u2013 Superstar.<\/strong> This is the fourth single from the duo\u2019s upcoming album, <em>Viva Hinds<\/em>, which drops in September, and continues a trend of cleaner production and tighter songwriting that preserves the chaotic nature of their overlapping vocals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Katie Gavin \u2013 Aftertaste.<\/strong> Gavin is the lead vocalist for MUNA and will release her first solo album, <em>What a Relief<\/em>, on October 25<sup>th<\/sup> on Phoebe Bridgers\u2019 label. This is unabashed folk-pop and utterly infectious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>GIFT \u2013 Light Runner.<\/strong> The fourth single from GIFT\u2019s second album, <em>Illuminator<\/em>, which is due out August 23<sup>rd<\/sup>, is my least favorite so far but does continue in a similar vein of shimmering, layered psychedelic rock, just without as strong of a hook as \u201cWish Me Away\u201d or \u201cGoing in Circles\u201d offered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Blossoms \u2013 Perfect Me.<\/strong> Blossoms\u2019 latest album, <em>Gary<\/em>, comes out in September, and they\u2019ve released two singles so far, with this upbeat indie-pop number miles ahead of the drab, pretentious title track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Beaches \u2013 Takes One to Know One.<\/strong> The Beaches had a minor hit last year with their album <em>Blame My Ex<\/em> and the track \u201cBlame Brett\u201d \u2013 I mean, with that big brain on him, who else would you blame? \u2013 and now they\u2019re back with what appears to be a one-off single that has a similar sound to the last record, with a sunny pop-rock vibe belied by the cynical lyrics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alison Goldfrapp \u2013 I Wanna Be Loved (Just a Little Better).<\/strong> I can\u2019t believe Goldfrapp is 58, but, then again, I can\u2019t believe I\u2019m 51. This is her first single on her own record label, coming on the heels of her first solo album, last year\u2019s <em>The Love Invention<\/em>. The backing music, a new wave\/disco blend, sounds like it could have been an outtake from a Yaz record, although the vocal style is obviously quite different from the other Alison\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Envy \u2013 Beyond the Raindrops.<\/strong> I was completely unfamiliar with Envy before I heard this track, even though they\u2019ve been recording since 1998. They\u2019re a Japanese post-hardcore\/post-rock band who started out in the ridiculously-named \u201cscreamo\u201d scene, a term that seems to mean nothing at all at this point other than that I generally don\u2019t dig bands lumped under that umbrella. This track, from Envy\u2019s upcoming album <em>Eunoia<\/em>, is somewhere between post-hardcore and shoegaze, with a darkly atmospheric vibe and spare vocals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Glass Animals \u2013 A Tear in Space (Airlock).<\/strong> Glass Animals\u2019 latest album, <em>I Love You So Fucking Much<\/em>, is their first since the global success of \u201cHeat Waves,\u201d which now holds the records for the longest stay on the <em>Billboard<\/em> Hot 100 and the longest time on the chart before hitting #1. There\u2019s nothing on this album to rival that track or \u201cLife Itself;\u201d it\u2019s consistently good, without any huge standouts. If you like Glass Animals in general, you\u2019ll like the album.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Flotsam &amp; Jetsam \u2013 Burning My Bridges. <\/strong>The second track from their fifteenth album, <em>I Am the Weapon<\/em>, due out on September 13<sup>th<\/sup>, finds these 1980s thrash icons just a little bit mellowed, but still thrashing away, with just two members remaining from their debut album. I prefer the previous single, \u201cPrimal,\u201d but this is still a solid throwback to the Bay Area thrash sound that marked their first couple of LPs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>July finished with a bit of a bang, from a music perspective, at least, as this playlist doubled in size over the final week of the month. It also had two of my favorite new albums of the year so far, from Griff and Childish Gambino, as well as new singles from three contemporary artists [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1374,359,167,852,1114],"class_list":["post-10340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2024-in-music","tag-alternative","tag-indie","tag-music","tag-thrash","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10340"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10341,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10340\/revisions\/10341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}