Listener’s Songs of the week: New tracks from Charli XCX, Lorde, Georgia Gets By and Katchafire

Charli XCX, Lorde, Georgia Gets By and Katchafire. Photos / Supplied

The Girl, So confusing Version, with Lorde

By Charli XCX and Lorde

It was a big day for the 2014 Tumblr girls last Friday during what the Guardian dubbed as “the year’s most powerful pop moment.” Charli XCX released a remix of her song girl, so confusing about her complicated relationship with Lorde - which featured Lorde. The pair get candid about how their looks and edgy personas were often compared in media, and the awkwardness that came with their eventual meeting and navigation of their frenemy status. Lorde, in particular, delivers a Lily Allen-esque truth bomb about having had an eating disorder for the past two years but ultimately wraps up her verse with a declaration of love for Charli. It is evidently very confusing sometimes to be a girl. - Alana Rae

Madeline

By Georgia Gets By

Once half of BROODS, now solo artist Georgia Gets By (Georgia Nott) has released Madeline a soft, moody ballad calling on a Suki Waterhouse-like etherealness. Amidst its dreamy yearning, a grungy guitar arrives by bridge time to pick it up into the soprano stratosphere Nott’s vocals allow for so effortlessly. The fade out is a nice touch too, giving it true old-timey flare. - Alana Rae

Magic (What She Do)

By Katchafire

It’s become common now for local artists to cover some of our classic songwriters and here, in an acoustic version, reggae band Katchafire take on Dave Dobbyn’s lovely song and slow it down to milk the lyrics. Campfire music. – Graham Reid

Phat Butt

By Ice Spice

Aside from the collision of constant profanity and bragging, you’d have to concede this new voice from the Bronx is pretty powerful and grabs attention with this free-flowing rap over nagging, rolling beats. Already tipped for superstardom, Ice Spice sets the platform for her debut album Y2K! (odd title?) due in July. Not a “Spice Girl”. – Graham Reid

Gary Kulesha, Lyric Sonata. I. Allegro.

By Charles Hamann oboe, Frédéric Lacroix piano.

We don’t get a lot of Canadian music in New Zealand. In 2020, Claude Vivier’s incredible/weird opera Kopernikus made it to the Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts. But the only other piece I can remember being played here (and feel free to correct me) is Gary Kulesha’s Oboe Concerto, written for Auckland Philharmonia principal Bede Hanley. You can see that performance on YouTube. Similar but different is Kulesha’s Lyric Sonata. This one was written for Chip Hamann, and like the concerto contains several of Kulesha’s compositional tricks and tics, notably the use of microtones – the notes between the notes. It’s a lovely piece of music. Happy Canada Day for July 1!