December 12th, 2020
single track
Linn Koch-Emmery – Hologram Love
Rock isn’t the first genre that springs to mind when thinking of Swedish music. Sweden (and Norway, for that matter) are mostly referred to as ‘pop walhalla’. While Linn Koch-Emmery’s music sure has pop melodies, most people would call it indie-rock.
She’s a Stockholm-based musician, who also has German and British roots. Her short and sharp songs reference ‘90s rock music, but sound very contemporary to me. Her most recent tunes, especially, feel catchy and slick, in part thanks to added synths. They add a freshness to her music, that goes down well with her killer choruses.
Emmery explains: “I wanted to figure out how indie should sound in 2020. It’s about writing your own history, rather than rewriting someone else’s and applying it to yourself.”
Her new single Hologram Love is another simple, direct song that’s easy to love. A feel-good track that precedes her debut album, due out next year.
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
I’m a music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Have been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, I developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart. CEO of Werner Bros. tekst | uitleg.
single track, wildcardWildcard (week 50):
Wildcard (week 50):
Holy Holy (feat. Queen P) – Port Rd
If you like high-energy tracks, you can’t miss this one. Port Rd is Aussie duo Holy Holy’s first new music since their 2019 album My Own Pool of Light. This new single is a collaboration with South Sudan-born Melbourne-based rapper Queen P (real name: Piath Mathiang). It combines woozy, smouldering verses and big anthemic choruses.
On top of that, the track features a choir of sorts, made up of vocals submitted by fans. And it doesn’t stop there, for the accompanying video contains over 300 snippets sent in by devotees, responding to the track’s themes of collective shift.
Inspired by a quote from author Arundhati Roy about the coronavirus pandemic, Port Rd focuses on the terrifying-yet-exciting nature of change and what awaits on the other side.
This week’s Carte Blanche Music Wildcard is for Holy Holy (feat. Queen P)!
Recommended as well:
Holy Holy – Faces
In the Wildcards 2020 playlist you’ll find all of this year’s Carte Blanche Music Wildcards so far.
I’m a music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Have been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, I developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart. CEO of Werner Bros. tekst | uitleg.
werner's weekly
Werner’s Weekly (week 50)
This is Werner’s Weekly, your compass to the music that matters, containing the two most recent Carte Blanche Music Wildcards, and the best of the other new releases in alphabetical order:
- The Lottery Winners – An Open Letter To Creatives (Wildcard this week)
- Monowhales – BL/FF (Fake Friends) (Wildcard last week)
- Bugs – Old Youth Feeling
- Indochine x Christine & The Queens – 3Sex
- King Princess – Pain
- Raave Tapes – Habitual
- Super-Hi x Neeka – Following The Sun
Click the links for more info and listen to each of the tracks via the Werner’s Weekly player below.
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist. Also added last week: Blossoms, Deacon Blue, Yungblud (feat. Machine Gun Kelly), and more.
I’m a music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Have been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, I developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart. CEO of Werner Bros. tekst | uitleg.
cover, single track
San Mei – Dakota
Emily Hamilton came to Australia at an early age, when her Chinese-Malaysian and New Zealand born parents immigrated there. Years later, she started a musical career under the stage name of San Mei. She featured here a few times before already.
On 13 February (you know, in the old world), she shared a video on her socials of her performing Stereophonics’ Dakota at her home for Valentine’s Day. I presume positive feedback started flooding in, and rightly so.
Now, ten months later, a studio version of her cover hits the streaming services. It’s more produced, obviously, but remains the delicate tribute it originally was. Beautiful!
Recommended as well:
San Mei – Midnight
San Mei – Hard To Face
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
I’m a music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Have been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, I developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart. CEO of Werner Bros. tekst | uitleg.
single track
The Hold Steady – Family Farm
The Hold Steady’s most classic tracks are driving rock songs with piano breaks. Just like the best work of artists such as Bruce Springsteen and Bob Seger. The band’s new single Family Farm has all of the characteristics of such a classic. It’s a stomping rocker of the rousing kind, with horns as an added bonus. Up-tempo, dynamic, and with a chorus full of shout-along potential. No doubt, this will be fun to play (and hear) live.
Family Farm is the first single off The Hold Steady’s next album Open Door Policy, out on 19 February 2021. It was written and almost entirely recorded before the pandemic started. Yet the songs explore power, wealth, mental health, technology, capitalism, consumerism, and survival; issues which have compounded in 2020.
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
I’m a music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Have been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, I developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart. CEO of Werner Bros. tekst | uitleg.
single track
Texas & Wu-Tang Clan – Hi
No need to introduce Scottish pop act Texas and no need to introduce American hip hop crew Wu-Tang Clan. No need even, I presume, to mention their earlier collaboration. Or perhaps I should, for those who were born in this century…
In January 1997, Say What You Want was the first single to be released off Texas’ fourth album White On Blonde. It’s the band’s biggest hit to date. A year later, the song was re-recorded featuring Method Man and RZA from Wu-Tang Clan. Re-named Say What You Want (All Day Every Day), this version was re-released as a double A-side with Insane in 1998. Partly thanks to a joint performance of the song at the Brit Awards in London, it became almost as successful as the original.
Over 22 years later, Texas teams up with Wu-Tang Clan again. With the group’s RZA and Ghostface Killah to be exact. Less than 3 minutes long, Hi is a fun upbeat track that gives plenty of room to the rappers in the verses. Basically, Texas singer Sharleen Spiteri only sings the choruses.
Hi is the first single to be released ahead of Texas’ upcoming tenth album of the same name. The long-player will come out in the new year.
Recommended as well:
Texas – Let’s Work It Out
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
I’m a music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Have been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, I developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart. CEO of Werner Bros. tekst | uitleg.
single track
slowride – I Feel Like You
Don’t mistake brand-new band slowride for good old shoegaze outfit Slowdive. They’re both from Great-Brittain, but all comparisons stop there.
slowride is the latest project from long-time collaborators and lifelong friends Ali Epstone (vocals) and Phil Jones (guitars/synths). Both love ‘90s indie and punk rock, which explains why slowride produce indie-rock anthems with layers of synth.
The band only formed early in 2020, and I Feel Like You is their first single. A great debut, although I can’t help hearing Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers’ Egyptian Reggae in it. For this track, the duo has teamed up with drummer Tomas Oliver Moore, and producers Rob Slater (Ellie Goulding, Alex Clare) and Isaac Carpenter (Awolnation, Irontom).
slowride say about I Feel Like You: “It’s about feeling powerless to being controlled. In the context of a relationship, an addiction or the censorship of free speech… It’s about awareness of one’s situation and learning to take the power back.” But they add the title can also be projected onto the current situation. “No matter what we’re all individually going through, there’s certainly a collective connection between humanity right now.”
All in all, it combines social commentary with fresh hooks and beats, that they almost can’t contain near the end.
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
I’m a music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Have been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, I developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart. CEO of Werner Bros. tekst | uitleg.
single track
Cry Club – One Step
Usually, I don’t like to pigeon-hole, but it can be so clarifying sometimes. Especially when describing music. This time, I’ll leave it to the band to explain what they’re up to. Depending on the publication, I’ve seen Cry Club call themselves a ‘queer bubblegum punk duo’ or an ‘angry gay guitar pop duo’. Get the picture? For further reference, I’d like to add they sound a bit like MisterWives, a band I like a lot!
Cry Club are Heather Riley and Jono Tooke. They’re from the Australian town of Wollongong, but currently live in Melbourne. After meeting as students – acting for Riley, music for Tooke – they eventually formed Cry Club. Originally as a Siouxsie & The Banshees/The Cure cover band, they soon started releasing original songs. Their debut album God I’m Such A Mess collects six of the eight singles the duo released so far, alongside six new tracks. All of them produced by Gab Strum (a.k.a. Japanese Wallpaper), who worked with everyone from Charli XCX to Death Cab For Cutie, as well as many fellow-Aussie acts.
One Step is Cry Club’s new single. If you like another description, let me give you ‘no-holds-barred high throttle noise pop’. Riley recalls this being the first song the two wrote from scratch together (not building off an instrumental Jono had already written). Tooke explains: “It’s about what it’s like to see a friend go through some hard shit and wanting them to get help, but them resisting making that first step to getting better.”
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
I’m a music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Have been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, I developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart. CEO of Werner Bros. tekst | uitleg.
single trackPäter – Earth In Revolt
Päter – Earth In Revolt
2020 saw the impressive rise of young Canadian artist Päter. She introduced herself successfully with the single Dam, Damn, which she followed up with her debut EP SOLE. She just released a video for the EP’s first single Sleep, which is already succeeded by a brand-new track. Earth In Revolt is Päter’s new single. The singer-songwriter describes the song as ‘experimental alternative rock sounds packed into a rousing climate change anthem’.
In an interview with the Off The Record blog, she shares how the track came about. “I started writing it while I was in the car with my mom accompanying her to an errand, having not left the house in over a month. I was looking around at the empty highway at 5pm on a Tuesday and feeling that, even though it doesn’t seem directly related, this pandemic is a result of the way we’ve treated the Earth, the way we consume and rip through resources. I’ve had that feeling right from the start. Kind of consumerist guilt, the inevitability of ‘karma coming around’. I could go on about it for ages. Then the marching chant of ‘you’re gonna see the Earth in Revolt, you’re gonna see the Earth in Revolt’ came up. I recorded a voice memo of it in the car and my mom was very excited by the whole thing.”
As an adult, I think it’s encouraging that young people have visions like this and feel the urge to take action. Hopefully they will be given (or take) the opportunity to solve the problems older generations caused. Before it’s too late…
Recommended as well:
Päter – Sleep
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
I’m a music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Have been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, I developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart. CEO of Werner Bros. tekst | uitleg.
single trackOcean Grove – Dream
Ocean Grove – Dream
It may be almost Christmas time, but I’d like to talk to you about Easter eggs. Musical ones, that is. Hidden tracks on albums. Artists do it all the time, but The Beatles (who else?) invented the concept in 1969. And like so many of their revolutionary contributions to music, it was an accident, as this nice article points out.
Curiously, hidden tracks are often very good songs, so why hiding them? Personally, I think Whoops Now by Janet Jackson is a perfect example. Originally stashed away at the end of her album Janet, it eventually became a hit when put out as a single.
The same now applies for Dream by Australian rock band Ocean Grove. When they released their sophomore album Flip Phone Fantasy in the early days of the pandemic, physical copies ended with the secret track Dream. A great rock song, full of hooks and melody, far too good to conceal. Luckily, the band have become aware of that as well, and released it as a single.
Ocean Grove’s frontman Dale Tanner describes Dream as ‘a positive mental attitude anthem’. Bassist Twiggy Hunter adds: “Dream was written to empower the listener and instil a sense of don’t-give-a-fuck-ery with a bold, glistening undertone of optimism and hope. We hope listeners can use this song as a form of lifeblood to not give up hope through the times ahead and go on to prosper and thrive in their own individualism.”
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
I’m a music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Have been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, I developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart. CEO of Werner Bros. tekst | uitleg.
