Deep Sea Diver ft Sharon Van Etten
Impossible Weight
Adding Sharon Van Etten to a song is hardly going to make it worse, but sticking her on one this good almost feels like overkill, like putting a pie inside a sandwich, or filling a Jacuzzi with Aperol. Jessica Dobson and Van Etten’s voices intermingle like duelling rattlesnakes, colliding across three discrete choruses that could each be considered superb. Much like, one would imagine, pie sandwiches or an Aperoluzzi, it’s pretty great.
Actress ft Sampha
Walking Flames
Actress’s single is a perfectly titled meander through a meadow of airy piano and suggestive flutes, Sampha dipping his toes in via chip-chopped vocals and “DANGER, WILL ROBINSON” robot harmonies. Imagine being lost at 4am on holiday, drunk and busting for a wee, then stumbling across a beachside bar blasting out Backstreet’s Back. This is that gently joyous feeling of relief, in music form.
Shygirl
Freak
Trudging through bogs of syrupy sub-bass before morphing into a thrilling Where’s Your Head At panic-attack K-hole, Freak makes sex sound like a terrifying act of mutual degradation in a dank basement. “Won’t ever meet your mum,” Shygirl spits. It’s OK, she’s cool. Just wash your hands beforehand, yeah?
Monica ft Lil Baby
Trenches
Monica and Brandy can say they’ve buried the hatchet all they want, but Monica dropping this from her first album in five years straight after Brandy releases her first LP in eight smacks of “spiking all your frenemy’s wedding-day canapes with Senokot”. Should Brandy be worried? Nah – this is over-Auto-Tuned guff and further proof that producers the Neptunes won’t let having literally no new ideas stand in the way of them making music.
John Frusciante
Amethblowl
So much is happening these days that it’s easy to let a piece of news fly past without giving it the “Hang on, WHAT DO YOU MEAN?!” it deserves. To wit: here’s a brutal electro-clatter nosebleed by the Chili Peppers guitarist that’s – yes, actually yes – dedicated to his no-longer-with-us cat Maya. Ah, 2020. You truly are the weeping buboe that keeps on gushing.
