In this edition, we bring you tracks that hover in that space between summer and fall, desperate, devotional laments, and surf-rock tracks that transport you right onto the coast.
Listen to the full playlist right here:
Wotts – “Surrender”
Wotts opens with steady, confident beats you might be met with on the dance floor, a bit early into the night when people are stuck between dancing and not-dancing. The singing moves under the beat, deep and sure. It’s a moment of clarity held in a song – the desire to move with instinct and arrive at a moment of discovery. The alternating buzz of synth beats flowing into an electric guitar arrangement captures this movement. “Surrender” makes a case for throwing yourself full-bodied into the uncertain, but leaves room for the occasional slowing down or pause, the moments of hesitation.
GISKE – “August Came”
The coming of August brings moments of hovering. After changing colour and texture, the leaves are caught between attaching and detaching, clinging to stems and barks or falling to the ground. GISKE suspends moments like this in “August Came”. The warm, full sound of guitar strings in the style of a country song about a well-worn and loved landscape, accompanied briefly by the sharp, clear lilt of a flute generates the sense of at once encountering something familiar and unfamiliar. You know this sound but something unexpected comes at you. It’s the way in which the light shifts has the possibility to change the rendering of leaves hanging in the air and dancing. To change an image from cool to warm, turn something foreign into a moment of bliss. GISKE makes the interesting choice to fill a four minute song with the same frame – leaves hanging and dancing – appearing over and over again. With each repetition, the suspension of the image is made possible. The leaves hover higher and lower, the feeling of waiting seems more and more acute.
Ker – “Love to You All”
Ker opens with birdsong and a haunting melody that leaves you unmoored, before transitioning into the familiar guitar strings and drums of a rock song with a short piano arrangement. There is a sense of great distance and longing created by this opening which is pursued in the rest of the song. A soldier holds a memory, carrying the fading script of an old letter. If there is desire attached to this personal artifact, it remains suspended, caught in a moment in time. Reaching for and accessing the memory of this desire is the extent of its fulfillment. Love is floated to travel many miles, but we can’t see the moment of its reaching. This persistent, incomplete waiting permeates the song, ringing in Ker’s singing.
Den Edie – “Oh, Dear Lord”
Den Edie opens “Oh, Dear Lord” with a computerized, otherworldly sound with a shimmering synth layered on top of it and a low “May the Lord be with you” before bursting into passionate country-esque singing. Accompanying the singing is a rolling beat along with steady, upbeat guitar. As the guitar recedes at around the 2.5 minute mark, it does so to let the desperation of the lyrics come through – the singing takes centre stage, softening on the lines that describe what the lord has done for him – “Lord gave me whiskey, Lord gave me gin/ Lord gave me time to do it all again.” The track is a demand and a lament rolled together, as he asks – “Oh dear lord, what do you have to say?”
Stephen Jacques – “surf spot steamer lane“
Stephen Jacques previously explored the mythology of the American West on his album Pioneers and Fragrant Flowers, and this lead single from his upcoming Santa Cruz-themed record keeps that same wandering spirit intact. The uniquely titled “Surf spot steamer lane” opens rapidly, the guitar strums and clear cymbals crashing in together before the vocals arrive a couple seconds later. The sound leans into a jangly, sixties-inflected surf-rock frame, but the vocal delivery pulls it somewhere else – a lower, gravelly voice that sings with a certain lilt. Titled after a legendary spot in Santa Cruz, California, the song is grounded in the adventures and histories of the place.
