Brain Eno, David Bowie, Dua Lipa, Sean Ono Lennon and James McCartney. Photos / Supplied
Brain Eno, David Bowie, Dua Lipa, Sean Ono Lennon and James McCartney. Photos / Supplied
Illusion
By Dua Lipa
Enormously clever, crafted, and likeable pop from award-winning Lipa (and four other collaborators) that neatly ups the energy and dynamics as it shifts from something intimate and quiet to a thumping dance beat and back again before taking off in the rocking second half. Smart stuff.New album Radical Optimism due May 3. – Graham Reid
Get Real – Sounds Right Mix (feat Nature)
By David Bowie, Brian Eno
Released in time for Earth Day tomorrow, this has long-time Bowie associate and producer Brian Eno taking a 1995 B-side, which was left off that year’s 1.Outside and mixing the sounds of nature into it. Hopefully, those backing-vocal crows and other fauna won’t be requiring royalties, given that earnings from the track are going to Eno’s eco-charity, EarthPercent. – Russell Baillie
Payback
By Aaron Frazer
Frazer has been the drummer and singer with American retro-soul outfit Durand Jones and the Indications, but now he and his falsetto are edging to the front of the stage with a forthcoming second solo album. Payback is the fuzz-guitared R&B/soul-strutting first offering using a familiar blueprint to infectious effect. If needing a bit of a lie down after the song or the exhausting video afterwards, there’s always his other new track, Into the Blue, as a groovy lullaby. – Russell Baillie
The lovely new autumnal offering from Auckland band Phoebe Rings is a cosy tale of domestic life, or at least a hope for one amid a housing crisis. Embellished with some wholesome, dreamy keyboard parts and an electric guitar outro, the single reinforces the way the group – initially the solo work of Crystal Choi – blends easily as a band. – Alana Rae
C’est Comme Ça
By Ha the Unclear
The witty Dunedin-born guitar pop quartet Ha the Unclear has not only signed to French label Think Zik!, but also headed there to support the release of new album A Kingdom in a Cul-De-Sac. As a cross-cultural icebreaker, the first single is a cover of a track by 1980s Parisian New Wavers Les Rita Mitsouko. It’s definitely up there with previous great Francais-in-NZ accent songs such as the Rumour’s L’Amour Est L’Enfant De La Liberte and Foux du Fafa by Flight of the Conchords. – Russell Baillie
The famous songwriting credit gets another airing with this collaboration between Paul McCartney’s son James and John Lennon’s son Sean, a dreamy paean to the famous London park and the memory of a romantic relationship. It might not go anywhere special, but as a gentle slice of folkadelic pop, it is undeniably pleasant and has a slowly swaying chorus. – Graham Reid
Cherry on Top
By Ben Platt
Broadway star Ben Platt seems to have claimed a Jack Antonoff-like energy in his pop rocky, Springsteen-eqsue single that descends into more of a country bop towards the end. It’s an uninhibited love song where lyrically it’s clear he’s besotted. Despite the cheese, his signature theatrical vocals convince you that he really means it. – Alana Rae
Song for Amy
By Nick Cave, Warren Ellis
The Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black releases in NZ this week with an instrumental soundtrack by regular movie-scorers Cave and Ellis, this lush lament presumably offering the last rites over the final credits. But the songs from the movie album, with its mix of Winehouse songs that might have been on her jukebox, suggests the film might be the one she deserves. – Russell Baillie
Biber, ‘Die liederliche Gesellschaft von allerley Humor’ from Battalia à 10, Le Concert des Nations
By Jordi Savall, director
We tend to think of atonality – or, in this case, polytonality, where the musicians play in different keys at the same time – as a 20th-century avant-garde development. Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber’s Battalia à 10, from which this 45-second snippet is taken, was written in 1673. Titled Die liederliche Gesellschaft von allerley Humor (The Profligate Society of Common Humour), it depicts groups of drunken soldiers around their various campfires, singing different songs. Still in their futures: the final section of Battalia – The Lament of the Wounded Musketeer. Lest We Forget. – Richard Betts
