Introducing Tracks of the Month, Another Man’s new monthly guide to the best new music
- TextTom Connick
Welcome to Tracks of the Month, Another Man’s new monthly guide to the best new music. Given the current political climate, it’s unsurprising that much of this month’s selection centres around apocalyptic themes. As we hurtle towards an evermore uncertain and frankly terrifying future, dig into this playlist featuring the likes of Gengahr, Marilyn Manson and Björk. See you next month. Hopefully.
Gengahr – Carrion
A dagger-sharp cut of spacey post-punk, Gengahr’s latest is the grizzly flip-side to debut A Dream Outside’s dreamy pop – where before they chirruped, the warped guitars of guitarist John Victor now weep and wail. Felix Bushe’s falsetto comes through gritted teeth this time: “Carrion outside,” he half-whispers, “waiting for you.” Plucking their heads from the clouds has allowed Gengahr to take aim at modern life, in all its grim and gritty glory.
The Horrors – Something To Remember Me By
The Horrors’ latest album is a masterclass in mutating expression. Something To Remember Me By, the record’s oscillating closer, is a soaring cut of krautrock-y dance, more akin to Caribou than the caustic, urgent punk of the group’s beginnings. The perfect encapsulation of that ‘last track of the night’ feeling – the hollow space that creeps into your stomach when you realise the party’s over and reality is beckoning.
Marilyn Manson – WE KNOW WHERE YOU FUCKING LIVE
The self-appointed ‘God Of Fuck’ returned this month in typically headline-baiting style. It’s We Know Where You Fucking Live which deserves the limelight, though. As dark and deadly as Manson’s sounded in years, “What’s a nice place like this doing ‘round people like us?” he smirks, before taking a wrecking ball to everything around, howling that threat of a title like a banshee. Welcome back, Brian – your shock and gore has been sorely missed.
Björk – The Gate
A captivating return from one of modern music’s most inspiring auteurs, on The Gate, Björk seems to be teasing her multi-tonal mind more than ever before. A refracted ebb-and-flow of beautiful electronics and declarations that “I will care for you”, production duties from Arca only help to up the feeling that The Gate is plucked from an alternate universe – one where fluidity and creativity roam free.
Trudy and The Romance – Is There a Place I Can Go
A love song for the apocalypse, Trudy and The Romance’s wilting vignettes manage to sound both classic and contemporary. Is There A Place I Can Go, their latest single, is the best evidence yet of their weirdo-pop mindset. Beach-pop harmonies nuzzle up to choppy, buzzing guitars – like waltzing with your childhood sweetheart under the watchful eye of an incoming warhead, on Is There A Place I Can Go, Trudy and The Romance find home comfort amongst chaos.
Moses Sumney – Lonely World
That title’s not quite as somber as you might first think – as Moses Sumney attested to in a recent Another Man interview, the idiosyncratic songwriter is a fan of solitude. Lonely World is a perfect example of just how beautiful that outsider ethos can be – an incomparable piece of emotion-heavy perfection.
King Krule – Dum Surfer
Like a marching band soundtracking an encroaching thunderstorm, Another Man cover star King Krule’s latest hint at new album The Ooz is a stroppy cut of post-punk-meets-jazz, fused in a way that only Archy Marshall could manage so effortlessly. His hopeless, bawled lyrics still paint a picture of teenage inner conflict, but there’s a complexity here that suggest the agonising wait for Krule’s second album will be more than worth it.
Wild Beasts – Punk Drunk & Trembling
Wild Beasts’ split leaves a gaping hole in British indie. Final single Punk Drunk & Trembling fuses their latter-day obsessions with colder atmospherics to the warm personality that made them so essential, penning an oh-so-Wild-Beasts tale of inebriated infatuation in the process. As Hayden Thorpe’s unmistakable baritone rings out with one final promise that “a miracle is about to happen”, it’s a bittersweet farewell.
Blood Orange – BOWERYLDN EDIT 6 15 SEPTEMBER
There are two sides to Blood Orange’s latest. What starts out as as a quintessentially Dev Hynes number, centred on romantic declarations and jazzy inflections, soon takes a darker turn. Rung in by choppy guitar chords, the track’s second half shifts the lyrical focus from supportive declarations that to more grim, aggressive accusations. A dual-toned mindset that’s a promising – if not overwhelmingly positive – look at where Hynes is heading post-Freetown Sound.
Pale Waves – Television Romance
Striding out of Manchester under the watchful eye of label mates and co-producers The 1975, Pale Waves’ Television Romance is pop perfection, cut from the same black cloth as Matty Healy and co.’s debut. It’s a stadium-sized electro-rock classic in waiting, but thrives on that same fusion of adolescent longing that made The 1975 such a household name. Just two songs in, their protégés look destined to follow them to similarly lofty heights.
