It’s Friday, which means that, yes, it’s time for us to round up the 10 most noteworthy tracks of the week that’s gone by for your listening — and, ideally, downloading — pleasure. It’s been a pretty fantastic week for new music, and thus there’s plenty of goodness to be had after the jump: the return of Suede and that Bowie chap, Jens Lekman writing a song for two big-hearted fans, Thom Yorke doing Thom Yorke things, new solo stuff from Electrelane’s Verity Susman, a kinda interesting Majical Cloudz remix, new songs from Low and La Big Vic… and more! Everything awaits you at the click of a mouse. Get into it, gentle readers!
Suede — “Barriers” Did we mention how excited we are about this? Good. Listen (and download!) right here.
Jens Lekman — “Olivia and Maddy” Regular readers may also know that we love Jens Lekman dearly. Well, we love him even more now — he wrote this song as a way of saying thank you to two fans who drove his pianist from NYC to Boston in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. BLESS. You can download it via Lekman’s website.
Atoms For Peace —”Judge, Jury and Executioner” In which Thom Yorke plows basically the same furrow he’s been in ever since Kid A, with ever-diminishing returns. The song’s produced flawlessly, played expertly… and still leaves us cold. Still, it comes with a kinda cool iTunes visualizer style video, which you can see here.
Verity Susman — “To Make You Afraid” and “The Philip Glass Ceiling” Yay for not one but two new solo tracks from Electrelane vocalist Verity Susman. These are the first track’s Susman’s released under her own name, and they’re not bad at all. The former is a big, swelling number that’s like a slightly more radio-friendly version of Electrelane, but the real interest is to be found in the latter, a neo-kosmische epic that features, among other things, some rather troubling vocal samples. They’re both worth hearing — listen on Susman’s Tumblr.
La Big Vic — “All That Heaven Allows” Here’s a new track from Brooklyn trio La Big Vic, who we tipped for glory last year and who may yet prove us right — this is from their upcoming album Cold War, and it’s a lot more accessible than their previous work. Listen to the track, and download it if you’re so inclined, via Self-Titled.
Low — “Just Make It Stop” In this week of big pop music announcements, it’s somehow reassuring that Low haven’t changed one iota. This quietly mournful track about grief and sadness is the first single from their new album The Invisible Way, which is out in March, and you can hear it here.
Widowspeak — “Thick As Thieves” Another taster of the new Widowspeak album, and a lot darker and more downbeat than what we’ve heard so far — more like what we expected, in other words. This track is streaming via the band’s Soundcloud.
Majical Cloudz — “Turns Turns Turns” (Blue Hawaii Flüchtig remix) We’ve been thoroughly enjoying Majical Cloudz’ Turns Turns Turns EP at Flavorpill Central of late, and this remix reinvents the title track as a rather solid piece of techno, redeploying Devon Welsh’s mournful lyrics as atmospheric vocal textures to surprisingly good effect. You can download it for free via XLR8R.
A Hawk and a Hacksaw — “You Have Already Gone to the Other World” Remember the short-lived fad for Eastern European-influenced indie? Now that’s over and done with, A Hawk and a Hacksaw’s muse seems to have continued southeast across the Bosphorus into the Middle East, if the Arabic-influenced sounds of this new single are anything to go by. It sounds like something you’d find on an obscure cassette tape soundtrack in an exotic marketplace, and indeed, it turns out that the band’s new record is a soundtrack of sorts — it’s a double album of music inspired by Sergei Parajanov’s 1964 film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. You can hear the song here.
David Bowie — “Where Are We Now?” Sorry? Oh, yes, David Bowie does have a new song, now that you mention it. If you’ve just emerged from under a rock, you can see the video here.