Alex G’s Bobby: bringing the rootin’ tootin’ fiddle into the 21st century

TRACK OF THE WEEK

Alex G
Bobby

It’s difficult to make a fiddle sound innovative in 2017, but here comes Philadelphia multi-instrumentalist Alex G with an Americana-caked love song befitting of both a dusty front porch and the night bus. He often uses off-kilter melodies and unusual effects to throw simple pop songs askew, and here he’s taken the familiarity of country’s longing lyrics and languorous rhythms and spun them into something new.

Frank Ocean
Chanel

Frank Ocean has been nothing if not candid when it comes to talking about sexuality. It’s a theme that provides the foundation of Chanel, yet here it feels a little less meditative and nostalgic than usual. With his vocals pushed to the forefront – sometimes spitting so rapidly he overlaps himself, other times relaxing into the sparse production – Chanel sees Ocean taking full command of a space he’s created for himself.

Charli XCX
3am (Pull Up)

Since finding her soulmate-collaborators in PC Music and amping up the glossy-yet-trashy pop aesthetic she’s cultivated from the off, Charli XCX seems to have graduated from songwriter with an impressive list of guest features to full-blown sonic powerhouse – an impression that 3am (Pull Up), which sounds like Popcaan and Whigfield threw up in a slush machine, only serves to reinforce.

Girlpool
123

Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad have a way of drawing out the emotional detail from places of silence. Opening with hushed vocals over gentle guitar and bass before drums properly kick in, 123 eases you into a body of water that gets choppier and choppier until it’s fully crashing around you; a lover’s barney that escalates to breaking point, ready to be resolved and repeated.

PWR BTTM
Answer My Text

Who hasn’t spent an evening pretending to have a nice time home alone practising self-care, when in fact your eyes keep darting to your lock screen as you scream internally: “ANSWER MY TEXT, YOU DICK!” That is the predicament of PWR BTTM’s Liv Bruce on the aptly titled Answer My Text, in which an evasive suitor is given a sardonic but also deadly serious verbal lashing. In a glorious burst of emotion, Bruce unpacks the tragicomedy that is modern dating for anyone who’s ever been left on read.