Best New Tracks

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  How to Dress Well

  How to Dress Well: "Repeat Pleasure"

  Weird World

  By Jamieson Cox; April 3, 2014

  Every song Tom Krell writes and performs as How to Dress Well is a conversation: with romantic partners, with himself, with his complex web of musical ancestors. Based on what we’ve heard about new album “What Is This Heart?”, Krell’s penchant for communication is starting to leak out of his music, seeping into the names and titles that help give his compositions shape: an album title is a question imbued with mystery, a phrase like “Words I Don’t Remember” is a plea for memory and clarity. New single “Repeat Pleasure” continues in a similar vein, but finds Krell swapping out confusion and fogginess for pure, radiant joy.
  
  Singing over a bed of sprightly, sunlit acoustic guitar—the melody sounds a little like Broken Social Scene’s languid “Pacific Theme”—and a bubbling rhythmic tapestry, he uses his disarming, angelic voice to profess his undying love. He has undergone a profound change, one that will linger for the rest of his life regardless of its outcome; hitting a crystalline note that’ll pierce even the hardest listeners, he declares, “Even broken, my heart will go on.” The sentiment is so simple, infectious and undeniable that the song’s title begins to seem like yet another piece of communication, this one taking the form of a recommendation to the masses: if you’re looking for pleasure, just hit repeat.

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  Parquet Courts

  Parquet Courts: "Sunbathing Animal"

  What's Your Rupture? / Mom & Pop

  By Stuart Berman; April 2, 2014

  In both its tales of impoverishment intoxication and its fondness for Velvets/Feelies-vintage locomotive grooves, Parquet Courts’ 2013 debut Light Up Gold was very much a document of New York City as seen through the eyes of newcomers. However, on the title track to their forthcoming sophomore release, the boys serve us a bracing reminder that they’re from the South.

  “Sunbathing Animal” is a glorious mess of contradictions: it’s the least representative, most rigidly structured song from an otherwise free-ranging, stylistically sprawling album, somehow striking the middle ground between the militiaristic discipline of Pink Flag-era Wire and the brain-scrambling, desert-storming cow-punk of early Meat Puppets. It’s a jackhammered ’82 hardcore throwback that’s so breathlessly paced, even a motormouthed wordsmith like Andy Savage has trouble keeping up—yet at four minutes long, “Sunbathing Animal” is about four times as long as a hardcore song is supposed to be, accommodating at least two duelling-guitar jams. But then, that’s how Parquet Courts roll: They may be in a hurry, but they’re going to take their sweet time doing so.

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  Lone

  Lone: "2 Is 8"

  R&S;

  By Jamieson Cox; April 2, 2014

  Working as Lone, Matt Cutler’s spent the last half-decade putting together an astonishing run of highly distinctive, wildly enjoyable releases. His  amalgams of house, rave, techno and hip-hop are rich with detail, and he slams them home with melodies that glow in the dark, as if he’s soundtracking films shot with color palettes our eyes can’t process yet. “2 Is 8” is the first single from his upcoming fifth full-length, Reality Testing (due June 17 via R&S), and while its title feels like a homage to one of Cutler’s sonic ancestors—if music is math, this might be a useful equation—its cocksure strut is more headstrong than Boards of Canada’s insular soundscapes. On "2 Is 8", Cutler is bridging the gap between dance music and hip-hop yet again with aplomb and panache.

  Lone: "2 Is 8" (via SoundCloud)

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  Haim

  Haim: "If I Could Change Your Mind (Cerrone Funk Mix)"

  Polydor / Columbia

  By Jamieson Cox; March 31, 2014

  Haim are a tough band to remix successfully for reasons that aren’t immediately obvious. They have a gift for writing sticky secondary hooks and melodies, the kind of elements that typically serve as perfect fodder for enterprising producers attempting to imprint themselves on a song. But thanks to the deft touch of Ariel Rechtshaid, the tracks making up last fall’s sterling debut Days Are Gone mostly felt like completed jigsaw puzzles, so rearranging their parts only stands to muddle the picture.
  
  We should thank French disco legend Cerrone, then, for grabbing the puzzle and tossing it from the deck of his yacht into the calm, azure waters of Saint-Tropez. His remix of “If I Could Change Your Mind” draws out the funk lying dormant in the band’s original, pairing it with the shiniest guitar rhythm this side of “Get Lucky” and blooming horns. Most importantly, he frees the Haim sisters from the shackles of time, recasting them as a trio of divas that could stand alongside the greats without breaking a sweat. Haim have always operated with a spirit and lack of self-consciousness that feels of a piece with the decadence and fun of the late 1970s, and this remix is proof positive that they would’ve survived and thrived beside disco’s finest.

  Haim: "If I Could Change Your Mind" [Cerrone Funk Mix] (via SoundCloud)

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  Swans

  Swans: "A Little God in My Hands"

  Young God / Mute

  By Nick Neyland; March 26, 2014

  Swans didn’t need to gain any more swagger in their step following the supremely confident 2012 album The Seer, but "A Little God In My Hands" indicates there are no limits to where Michael Gira could take this project. His firm hand steers the band through a surprising dip into funk as the song begins—but a version of funk that’s just as sickly and disease-addled as Swans are when they’re closer to the rock firmament. Gira’s vocal sounds like it’s being delivered with a noose slowly tightening around his neck, suggesting all the vital components that run throughout Swans’ music in its many guises: pain, suffering, a wringing of hands to the sky.
  
  As the first track to be previewed from the forthcoming To Be Kind, this works as an exit door from The Seer, a way for Gira to demonstrate how his new record won’t simply trail in the wake of that creation, instead taking him and his band into a whole other sphere of hurt. Like the best Swans work, it can be gentle, with subtle builds gradually coiling in the tension until bursts of discordant horn bring the ceiling crashing down in the most beautiful and violent way imaginable. It’s in those moments that Gira sounds unstoppable, and he is, with no sign of weakness in his battle-scarred troops, nor any indication that Swans are anything other than a prodigious force of nature, hurtling through time with a barely contained momentum.

  Swans: "A Little God in My Hands"