This week’s tracks reviewed: Childish Gambino, Gaika, the Lemon Twigs

Childish Gambino
Summertime Magic

What is summer without a song featuring steel pans and likening love to sitting in the sun? I’ll tell you what it is, it’s winter. So it is with relief I can announce that, 17 weeks into the current heatwave, summer can finally begin. The sort of song that makes you use the word “vibes”, this has been quietly calculated to play on repeat in a beach bar on a Balearic island at sunset, and with its vapid junior-school rhyming scheme it’s almost a joke. And yet! Vibes!

Gaika
Immigrant Sons (Pesos & Gas)

Sorry to bring up the World Cup but if we were giving out Golden Boots for musicians in 2018, Sophie would be a strong contender: she’s on basically every good song, and there is more excellent production work on this rallying cry to rebellion from Brixton’s Gaika. That’s not to say it’s all flamethrowers and shouting: in fact it’s a cool, calm call to arms with ominous twinkles and strident horns signalling the fight to come. Plus: the chorus is catchy af!

Juice WRLD ft Lil Uzi Vert
Wasted

Either love is a drug or Juice WRLD and Lil Uzi Vert just love drugs; I suspect here it’s the latter. Acting as a kind of Chumbawamba for the SoundCloud rap generation, the shopping list of benzos, goofballs and girl problems are dealt with between GTA sessions and Avatar: The Last Airbender reruns. Chuck in a line about avocados and how no one can afford a house and you’ve got yourself the most millennial song ever released.

The Lemon Twigs
If You Give Enough

If there is one thing missing from modern music it’s a concept album about a chimpanzee raised as a human boy. So thank goodness for the Lemon Twigs who have said fuck it to the “difficult second album” and gone full oddball. All gentle piano and waltzing strings, this wouldn’t be out of place in the emotional third act of a Disney film. Guys, I think the chimpanzee might be OK.

Mø & Diplo
Sun in Our Eyes

It’s nice that Mø is having a nice time and it’s nice that she’s made this nice song imagining the end of a relationship that hasn’t started yet, but honestly nice is boring. I miss the old Mø who was slightly annoyed with her emotions and liked tearing up the town. The worst thing about it is that we can’t even blame Diplo because Mø has been working with him for years. Ugh, hate not being able to blame Diplo.