You Need Me Now?
By girl in red feat. Sabrina Carpenter
Fellow Taylor Swift opening acts Norwegian star girl in red and American songstress Sabrina Carpenter are evidently very excited to be collaborating, which is a fun contrast given girl in red’s huskier voice compared with Carpenter’s silky smoothness. And you can tell they are having the time of their lives, and aren’t afraid of a dose of whimsy, when she introduces Carpenter mid track as if it were live, gushing about how cool it would be should she sing on the song before she does just that. You Need Me Now? is a girly, pop-rock diss song that’s as speedy as it is eloquent – Alana Rae
Good Blood Mexico City
By Elbow
Britrock’s favourite arty uncles return with 10th album Audio Vertigo, which a quick listen to and a great lead single, Love’s Leap, both suggest is something of a comeback, having gone off the boil on offerings seven through nine. Good Blood Mexico City is the big blast near the album’s end, starting off sounding sweetly Smiths-like before an impressively dirty guitar riff interrupts. The decibels don’t seem to perturb singer Guy Garvey as he entreats “Marigold” run off with him to the Mexican capital to watch the sunset. What a Guy. – Russell Baillie
Mahal
By Glass Beams
A tasty slice of groovy electronic-psychedelic Indo-fusion Bollywood blues on a second EP of the stuff by masked Melbourne trio signed to UK label Ninja Tune. Khruangbin fans, this way. – Russell Baillie
Cosmic Dancer
By Matt Maltese feat. Dora Jar
Matt Maltese and Dora Jar bring a soft, ethereal performance to T. Rex’s much-covered ballad Cosmic Dancer, a track from Maltese’s newly released Songs That Aren’t Mine, which is just that, “a collection of some of my favourite songs by other people, recorded at home with friends last summer”. It’s not too dissimilar to the original, though without the rockier finale. This brings more attention to the simplistic but hauntingly hypnotic lyrics on the human condition. Light performance, heavy concept. – Alana Rae
Touki
By Andrea Farri, Seydou Sarr, Moustapha Fall, Badarà Seck
Now screening in NZ, Io Capitano, the Oscar-nominated Italian film by Matteo Garrone about two Senegalese teenagers on a perilous path to Sicily from Dakar, has a terrific soundtrack, with tracks by Samba Touré, Tinariwen, and Geoffrey Oryema interspersed between the desert atmospheres of the film’s composer, Farri. Touki is one of the new songs combining the voices of the film’s young stars, Sarr and Fall, with Farri’s backing to great effect – it’s effectively a realisation of the boys’ dreams of getting to Italy and becoming stars. The movie itself has other ideas. – Russell Baillie
Gravitational
By Emily Alice
The Ōtepoti Dunedin band have moulded a soft samba rhythm into their new release, Gravitational, which pairs nicely with lead singer Emily Kerr-Bell’s warm, soulful vocals. The group appear very assured in this performance, which relies on such talent, adding to the anticipation of their debut EP, on which the track will feature, coming out April 26. For good measure, there’s a fabulous electric guitar outro as well from Toby Roseman. – Alana Rae
Doom
By Japes
Wellington DJ/producer Mia Kelly (aka Japes) with a song scratched across with distortion, unexpected effects and a hypnotic pastiche of gloomy vocals, prominent bass, and off-kilter beats. Art music for uneasy home listening. A new EP is promised; should be interesting. – Graham Reid
One You, One Me
By Pokey LaFarge
His last single in advance of the new album Rhumba Days was the soulful Sister Andre, but here he heads to cocktails on the terrace with a summer shuffle on a song that might not go anywhere but gets there with a smile on its face. – Graham Reid
Monaco
By Ride
Once the bright hope of shoegaze in the Britpop era, Oxford’s Ride lost momentum after two fine albums, broke up, reformed a few years ago and came back as a rather good but more straight-ahead rock band with some shoegaze tendencies. Here, though, they surge into heroic synth-rock to announce their new album Interplay, which reflects another kind of Ride. – Graham Reid
Grandi: O quam tu pulchra es. i Disinvolti,
By Massimo Lombardi
Alessandro Grandi is one of those now semi-obscure figures of the early Baroque, who had great influence in their own lifetimes. From 1620, he was assistant maestro di cappella at St Mark’s, Venice, under Claudio Monteverdi, making Grandi 2iC for the era’s most prestigious music job. Grandi was a superb word-setter and assured melodist in his own right, though, and in 1627, perhaps in an attempt to slip out of Monteverdi’s considerable shadow, he relocated to Bergamo, becoming music director at Santa Maria Maggiore. Alas, the move was ill-fated; Grandi and his family died in 1630 during an outbreak of the plague. Be sure to get your flu jab. – Richard Betts
