Tracks Of The Week, 28.04.17 - GigslutzGigslutz

Taken from their upcoming debut, Ugly Youth, The Magnettes have shared their latest single ‘Young & Wild’.

With the album mixed by Christan Cummings (who’s worked with everyone from Icona Pop to Cage The Elephant) and mastered by Pete Lyman (Panic! at the Disco, Weezer), ‘Young & Wild’ perfectly embodies The Magnettes’ sound – teetering between moments of unapologetic pop, and ones of brooding indie darkness. Either way, whichever moment you’re in, ‘Young & Wild’ is addictively fun – worlds beyond anything you could imagine for a debut album.

‘Young & Wild’ is out now.

Exploring the stigma of mental illness (particularly for men) Alexander Wolfe’s latest track ‘I Can’t Get To Sleep’ breaks taboos in the most beautifully heart-wrenching way.

Despite hailing from south London, ‘I Can’t Get To Sleep’ places Wolfe’s roots firmly in Americana, the warmth of his voice softening the taboos and stigmas of the track’s subject; making them, as perhaps he intended, a far less scary topic.

Musically, ‘I Can’t Get To Sleep’ is something special too: both goose-bump raising and foot-tap inducing. It’s a mean feat to make something so dark, so taboo this listenable. Yet Wolfe achieves it. This is truly wonderful.

‘I Can’t Get To Sleep’ is out now.

Here to make “romantic, existential, humanist” work, and fusing influences to make a Gesamtkunstwerk (a total work of art), parade are a band with a clear agenda – and their debut release ‘Candide’ mirrors such ideals. Despite their goals of romance, and a track which sees guitars, violins and organs fighting for attention, there’s an honesty – and simplistic bluntness – to ‘Candide’.

Indeed, parade hope to express their music as essays, rather than songs, and it’s seemingly this that influences their outlook, not only on life, but on the content that goes into their music.

‘Candide’ isn’t afraid to present the bleakness of life alongside its beauty, and is a nod to the consideration that goes into parade’s song (or essay) writing. It’s completely pure and honest.

parade play their first headline show at Manchester’s Soup Kitchen on 30^th September.

While we continue to trudge through the bleakness of this so-called Spring in the UK, Wrexham’s Kidsmoke are looking forward with a brand new summer anthem – ‘And Mine Alone’.

Shimmeringly optimistic, ‘And Mine Alone’ perfectly merges the band’s influences (from The Smiths to 60s West Coast vibes) with youthful harmonies to create the soundtrack to summer nonchalance. From driven choruses made for festival crowds, to verses perfect for cloud-watching in a field somewhere, ‘And Mine Alone,’ in all its optimism, is also a little nostalgic. Until summer, when we can enjoy this in its rightful environment, we’ll just have to pretend.

‘And Mine Alone’ is out now.