(via Shutterstock)
Want some fast songs, then a shwostopper slow one that sparkle with beauty and emotion and possibility and then a couple of mid-fi electronic numbers that keep the energy up while subtlely also dialling it down?
You’ve got it!
It’s a surprising mix of curated sounds but it works, taking you on a journey to somewhere you need to be at the end of what is, more likely than not, a very busy and frenetic week crying out for some dancing, a ruminative pause and some chilled movement.
Enjoy …
“Superstar Shit” by Breakfast Road
(courtesy official Breakfast Road Facebook page)
Hailing from the western suburbs of Sydney, NSW, Australia, Breakfast Road have a knack for producing catchy track after mind-glowingly listenable song.
Ama, Brian and PJ have capped a year of amazingly good music with “SUPERSTAR SHIT” which thoroughly and absolutely deserves its all-cap styling.
It’s a driving, infectiously bop-heavy track that doesn’t take the pedal off the metal for even a fraction of a second which Acid Stag describes with gloriously pin-point accuracy:
As the title suggests, ‘SUPERSTAR SHIT’ commands your attention with its in your face approach through the power exerted in both the foundations and vocals that oozes copious amounts of confidence throughout the mix. It’s simply impossible to not get swept away in the euphoria created from Breakfast Road in this release, with the emphatic nature of the bass or those incredibly catchy vocals that you are instantly singing to from the first listen.
“Dance Alone” by Maria Sur
(courtesy YouTube)
Does another really want to dance alone?
Likely not, but Ukrainian powerhouse vocalist, Maria Sur, who has brought herself well and truly into the Swedish public gaze with her appearances at Melodifestivalen – an annual song competition, which selects Sweden’s entry for the Eurovision Song Contest – makes a persuasively emotional case for it.
One listen to “Dance Alone”, which strikes a vulnerably independent note as Sur declares she’d rather dance by herself than face the grief of lost love again (“Got no more tears to cry”), and you’ll know that the artist, who fled the war with Ukraine with her mother to settle in Sweden, has what it takes to really make her presence felt should she ever be selected for Eurovision by the voting public.
“Dance Alone”, a collaboration with producer Jimmy ‘Joker’ Thörnfeldt, marries sizzlingly intense dance floor melodies with real heartache & pain but also fierce determination, a mix of light and dark that has always Swedish music as something special.
“Pure Imagination” by Griff
(courtesy official Griff Facebook page)
You know that moment when you hear a song and it is so beautiful, so singular in its impact, that you just stop what you’re doing, listen hard to it and just lose yourself in it in the very best of ways?
English singer-songwriter has pulled off one of those musical life stopper moments with her gorgeously affecting cover of “Pure Imagination”, a song from 1971’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory which the artist imbues with a whole new level of wondrous, transportive beauty and fragility.
While the song may sound soft and fey, it possesses a muscularity of wonder and awe, a whispered but fervent appreciation for the sheer boundary-less, world-changing expansiveness of human imagination, which works perfectly as part of Target’s 2024 Happier Holidays From Target campaign.
It’s a dizzyingly perfect and whimsically lovely end cap to a year which has seen Griff open for Taylor Swift at her Wembley Stadium show in London and support Sabrina Carpenter on a series of arena dates, the release of an album, Vertigo, which has absolutely stemmed the artist as a Next Big Thing.
“Take Me Out” by Late June
(courtesy official Late June facebook page)
Since we’ve shifted a few gears down from the first two tracks with Griff’s cover of a classic, it seems fitting to keep going with the marvellous pulsating energy of “Take Me Out” by Late June.
A mid-fi slice of pop perfection which percolates along with a merrily jaunty but chilled vibe, “Take Me Out” is the creation of New Zealander Sonny Bevin whose creative talents have seen the producer come with up with some very tasty electronic and chill tracks.
His Instagram bio likens his music to Nora En Pure, Two Lanes and Leaving Laurel, and tracks like “Take Me Out” summon up a relentless go-forward energy married with a sense of easing back and seeing what happens when the world goes by.
It’s a delicious mix and it works an absolute treat on all the beautifully all-enveloping track.
“In Good Thyme” by Vlossom
(courtesy official Vlossom Facebook page)
“In Good Thyme” by Vlossom is fun from the moment you notice it’s playful pun-heavy title.
But it gathers even more of a sense of light but highly listenable presence when you press play and hear the mesmerising vocals and irresistibly lush melodies of the song which is the product of a fecund musical collaboration between Aussie musicians Nick Littlemore (PNAU, Empire of the Sun) and Alister Wright (Cloud Control, Godess911).
Described by etc etc music as symphonising “elements of pop, psych-rock, and electronic, culminated into something strangely multi-sensory”, Vlossom, now solely an artistic project led by Wright, delivers “In Good Thyme” that is beautifully, emotionally intimate and yet epically expansive all at once.
It’s a dream with energy and passion and it’s quite possible one of the most lovely things you’ll here all year.