Forever
by Reb Fountain
Playing shows in Wellington and Auckland this week on the back of previous single Come Down, Reb Fountain releases another one, along with news of a new album entitled How Love Bends due in March and national tour the following month. Forever employs Fountain’s now familiar speak-sing delivery over a moody minor-key mix of quietly ticking rhythms and mellotron-like strings before things go neatly widescreen towards the end. Hypnotic. – Russell Baillie
Disease
by Lady Gaga
The first Lady of pop returns after the Joker: Folie à Deux cinema diversion and the tie-in swing jazz album Harlequin with this stomping single in which she offers herself as the antidote to what ails you if you’ve got poison on the inside or are heartbroken. It’s a stadium-shaped thumper which hits all the right spots for those in need of her cure. And even those who don’t. – Graham Reid
X-Ray Eyes
by LCD Soundsystem
James Murphy’s electronic art-pop veterans release the first new track since a 2022 soundtrack offering and their 2017 reunion album American Dream. It’s a slow-blip number of staircase synthesizers and Murphy patiently explaining how he can see right through us. Amusing while it lasts. – Russell Baillie
Might As Well Be Watching
by Serebii
The first single from local producer Serebii’s upcoming album Dime looks inward, taking pleasure in blending into the scenery. Smooth vocals sit behind a big swirling, soundscape – with the help of a lovely string section. After two LPs with Arjuna Oakes, and one solo album, Serebii is well at home on LA’s Innovative Leisure label, which has the similarly psychedelic outfits BadBadNotGood and Allah-Las on its roster. – Sam Clark
This is How We Walk on the Moon
by Speakers Corner Quartet feat. Tirzah
A cover of Arthur Russell at his best and most pure – cello, vocals, and bongos. UK musical collective Speakers Corner add a more structured groove to the song, which is bubbling beneath the surface of the original. Tirzah’s vocals and South London accent are terrific here – as are the mixture of synths, flutes and their own cello. – Sam Clark
How Will I Know
by Corella
More of the “classic Pacific-reggae sound with elements of retro-soul and gospel” for summer from the Blue Eyed Māori hitmakers, here teamed up with singer Ngawaiwera Campbell. Very catchy, of course, and advance notice of the new album Skeletons due in a few weeks. – Graham Reid
Ordinary Love
by Alisa Xayalith
Another breezy pop solo offering from the Californian-based Naked & Famous frontwoman on a song that sounds like its production that is very boygenius-adjacent. Still, very easy to be swept along by. – Russell Baillie
Tastes Like Forever
by Daily J
Another song timed for summer but this – by a band which includes three brothers – has a slight alt-rock edge and a speak-sing passage with the laidback cadences of Paul Simon. So, a little rock, a flavouring of sophistication and going out with a rock punch. Should go down well at the festivals they are playing. – Graham Reid
Charles Ives, The Unanswered Question
by the New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein conductor.
Oops. Last week I missed what would have been Charles Ives’ 150th birthday. He was America’s first great composer, which was some achievement given that music was only ever a part-time side hustle. In his lifetime he found relative fame and solid fortune as a director of Ives & Myrick, the insurance company he ran until retirement, by which point he’d long since quit composing. The upside of Ives’ sotto voce music career, however, is that his independent wealth enabled him to write whatever he wanted, with no imperative or expectation it would be performed. At his best he produced beautiful, strange music entirely out of step with what else was going on in America at the time. The Unanswered Question (1908, rev. 1930-35) is perhaps the best-known example. Written for trumpet, woodwind quartet and strings (Ives asks the wind players to arrange themselves around the hall while the strings should be offstage altogether), it’s reminiscent of the so-called holy minimalism that was to come from composers like Tavener and Arvo Pärt some 20 years after Ives’ death in 1954. Happy belated birthday, Charles. – Richard Betts
