Track Of The Day: The Klittens – ‘Canned Air’

The first single to be taken from Amsterdam’s The Klittens’ debut EP, ‘Canned Air‘ captures the band’s self-described air of “happy songs and sad sentiments” perfectly.It eases you in with light strings playing simple lines, before they layer gradually over each other and, as the song goes on, build into a rich platform for the heart and emotion in this song. The strings intertwine around each other and the vocals come in soft.

The comparatively low-energy vocal lines keep you grounded as the music beneath swells, until eventually you get to the cathartic, explosive solo. The raw energy of it screams out of every instrument, before finally winding down into a calmer, more relaxed conclusion. The lyrics are simple, but convincing – there’s power in them, coaxing you into that state of giving in, and the gentle delivery makes the invitation incredibly tempting.

That softness of the vocals, juxtaposed against the surging music underneath, captures the sensation of overwhelming emotions so beautifully. The music takes on the role of the feelings themselves, creeping in gradually until they are so loud and overwhelming that they drown out the rest of the world, taking over almost without you noticing. The lyrics, meanwhile, remain muted, as if they remain just out of reach. This combination makes for a song that encapsulates the all-consuming feeling of emotions that roar and churn beneath a quiet, introverted surface.

‘Canned Air’ is accompanied by a weird and fantastic music video. The Klittens wander around beaches and forests wearing colourful knitted balaclavas before they find a chest in the woods which contains a beating heart. It doesn’t offer an explanation as to why this is happening, but you can’t help but be drawn into their mysterious world.

With this release, The Klittens have made a statement about the kind of music they’re going to put out going forward and it promises to be unusual and enticing in a very exciting way.

Kirstie Summers
@ActuallyKurt

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Track Of The Day: Peaness – ‘What’s The Use?’

Originally planned for release in summer 2020, ‘What’s The Use?‘ is the latest single from Chester trio Peaness, taken from their debut album due out in 2022.

It drops in bright and makes its statement immediately: What’s the use? Throughout, the track is upbeat and fun, with bouncy strings, a fast beat and cheery-sounding vocals. It’s an addictive and absorbing sound that is impossible not to bop along with.

The lyrics, on the other hand, do not share the same sense of limitless joy. Instead, they go into quite a bit of detail about how it feels to be thoroughly depressed. The song acutely describes the feeling of a sigh that carries the weight of the world in it. The refrain “Can I just stay in bed?” repeats and repeats until you can’t escape the utter lack of motivation to get up and engage with the world. Finally, the eponymous “what’s the use?” carries the overwhelming feeling of all the inescapable pressure that won’t leave you be, even when you do manage to drag yourself out of bed.

I absolutely adore the juxtaposition of the two massively contrasting styles between the music and the lyrics, it’s so delightfully nihilistic. It encapsulates a relatable sense of freedom that comes with accepting that, actually yeah, things are pointless sometimes.

The song has been released alongside a video compiled of phone footage of various shenanigans shot on the band’s previous tours. It matches the music in terms of its fast pacing and general sense of joy, and adds another layer of complexity to the content. You see the band on their adventures, in nice restaurants, at landmarks, at funfairs, playing gigs, practicing, stroking their pets. It feels like an immensely powerful comment about what depression can look like, about how you can seem like you’re living your best life while all your lowest feelings are still very much present.

You can feel how the past eighteen months have shaped the song. Even without the context of the pandemic, the full piece feels incredibly meaningful. When you add in the global trauma we all share right now, it becomes all the more powerful, as the clips and music become happy memories experienced from that all-consuming bed in the lyrics.

‘What’s The Use?’ is a brilliantly constructed song and so, so catchy. The 2022 album can’t come soon enough.

‘What’s The Use?’ is out now via the band’s own label, Totally Snick Records. Catch them live at their biggest ever London headline show at Oslo on 18th November. Tickets here.

Kirstie Summers
@ActuallyKurt

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ALBUM: ME REX – ‘Megabear’

Megabear by ME REX is easily one of the coolest and most ambitious albums to come out this generation.

It is comprised of fifty two short tracks, most of which last a little over thirty seconds, with a total album length of around half an hour. Each track has a corresponding tarot card designed by artist Jono Ganz. This is so you can shuffle your tarot deck, play the tracks in whichever order the cards decide for you and experience the album in an entirely new way.

You’ll have a perfectly enjoyable time listening to the songs in the order they appear automatically on bandcamp, but you’ll miss out on the layers that make this experiment so special. These tracks are designed to be played in near infinite possible combinations. They are designed to be able to flow from one to the next, regardless of which songs might get paired. To me, this sounds like it should be impossible. But ME REX have made it work. Particularly if you listen to it on their purpose-built website – free of the risk of Spotify ads to break your immersion. It’s easy to let the site automatically shuffle the tracks for you and listen to the looping, flowing music for hours on end. If you want to look for the seams between songs, obviously you can find them. But it takes no effort at all to sit back and let them wash over you in their shifting uncanny beauty.

The music itself suits being attached to a tarot deck so well. It is clearly influenced by the movement of nature, with lyrics referencing rivers and refrains that evoke that feeling of being carried along gentle eddies through a glittering natural wonderland. There is a gorgeous dance between the keys, strings and drums. ME REX have crafted something genuinely special, forging a unique sound for themselves that is distinct, original and stunning.

The thought and effort that has gone into creating a piece that makes you think about not just the music you’re listening to, but how you consume music in the digital age is astounding. It is a thoroughly well executed experiment that deserves to be remembered for sheer ambition alone.

Megabear is out now. Buy the album, plus your very own special deck of tarot cards, on bandcamp.

Kirstie Summers
@ActuallyKurt

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EP: Goth Lipstick – ‘formless, shapeless’

An EP that the band describe as “a slice-of-life isekai about the adventures of two wraiths”, formless, shapeless from San Francisco’s DIY emo duo Goth Lipstick draws you effortlessly into their candy-coated, glitch-splattered dream world. Following their full length album crystalline corset from earlier this year, formless, shapeless continues to explore themes of identity and queer liberation.

The EP consists of fairly short tracks, with most lasting less than two minutes thirty seconds. The single exception is ‘faceless, nameless’, which reaches a whole four minutes. Every track is incredibly tightly constructed. None of them feel too short; each one feels exactly long enough to tell its story and then wraps without wasting any time, leaving you with the precise impression it wanted to convey.

The collection begins with the titular ‘formless, shapeless’ – a slow, soft rumble that leads into quick, clicking percussion under high chirpy keys and husky vocals. While the tempo, energy and general style of the tracks vary, this opening song establishes some key elements early on that are consistent through the EP.

As a whole, the EP creates a distinctly unique and endlessly interesting soundscape, blending distorted and electronic sounds with gentle, clear piano notes. The relationship between the different types of sound is key to the Goth Lipstick style, with acoustic and electric notes dancing playfully around each other, with those echoing vocals floating over the top.

The use of glitches too gives these songs so much character. The jerks and digital stumbles always hit at exactly the right moment, whether that’s ripping into a vocal that’s well into its stride or distorting sounds that are just starting to build, creating a more chaotic journey from the first couple of beats.

Whilst there are massive differences in feeling from track to track, they fit so well together that they flow beautifully.

The second track, ‘wraiths awake’, brings a bigger energy into the EP. It is broadly more upbeat, but winds down into vocals that have a sense of vulnerability about them, before bouncing back into the hyped electronica.

‘identity thief’, all heavy growling, glitching bass, is followed by the light and chirpy ‘chocolate’, then the rich swollen beats of ‘fangs’, which wouldn’t be out of place heard on a nightclub dance-floor at midnight.

Somehow these seemingly conflicting songs sit very comfortably side by side on this EP. It feels much more like this is down to a matter of attitude than any one particular technical component. The songs sit so well because they feel made to be played together, and you can feel how much fun the artists had constructing every beat of the finished product.

It’s so easy to get drawn into Goth Lipstick’s story, to bathe in the cool, flowing emotions heavy in this EP. It’s not surprising to see that the first edition cassette run is already sold out.

formless, shapeless, the latest EP from Goth Lipstick, is out now. It is available to download via bandcamp.

Kirstie Summers
@ActuallyKurt

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