This edition we bring you desperate, electrifying bangers, soulful musings on time, retrospectives on the worst pains of adolescence, and gut-wrenching sincerity.
Listen to the full playlist right here:
Patti Zlaket – “clock keeps ticking“
Zlaket’s first single in over two decades opens her upcoming album Dance Again on a fresh yet familiar note. “Clock Keeps Ticking” runs on pop-soul instincts layered over rock and roll drive, her voice rich with decades of experience. The lyrics take center stage, and the melody carries them almost floatingly – “The more I pull on the hands, the less sure I am, it’s when the pace quickens.” The title itself becomes the song’s engine – a reminder that time moves whether you’re paying attention to it or not. What’s striking is how little urgency the arrangement betrays given the subject – the groove is steady and patient. There’s a soulful undertow here, seductive in the way only a singer who’s lived inside these melodies for years can manage.
Reetoxa – “Bottle“
Jason Mckee wrote “Bottle” at fifteen and then tucked it away. Now, thirty years later, the track has finally been recorded properly – and the wait between writing and recording has written itself into the song.
The track opens on a rugged guitar riff that invokes adolescent angst. McKee’s voice, grainy and lived-in, sings lyrics written by a teenager helping a friend through a mental health crisis, and the friction between that youthful urgency and his current, weathered delivery makes the track what it is. The bass is brilliant – it makes the whole song come alive. It ebbs and flows with the emotional peaks of the song, becoming the track’s spinal column.
A Project Called Love – “Chance Encounter”
Jay Hope starts this one bare: just an acoustic guitar and his voice, close enough that it feels like you’ve wandered into a conversation mid-sentence. The strumming is simple and stunning. Somewhere around the one-minute mark the bass and drums show up, and the track diffuses into the atmosphere. Keys and strings show up piece by piece, and by the time they’ve settled in, Hope’s voice has gotten more urgent to match. It is the steady guitar that holds the song together — it never gets buried, no matter how much gets stacked on top of it, so the song’s center stays put even as everything around it moves outwards.
Lost Lot – “Ready To Hide”
“Ready to hide” opens with distant, almost industrial sounding guitar before plummeting into a full-bodied roll as the drums join in. “It’s just you and me, we’re up against the world,” the vocal delivers early on. The singing is absolutely stunning, hitting gorgeous high notes and twisting with the tune. The lyrics are desperately sincere and heartfelt, and the layered harmonies stacked over the rhythm completely do it justice. Delightful little pieces of rolling drum beats surprise us every now and then. Past the two-minute mark, a piano-touched bridge slows things down just long enough to catch your breath before the song swells back into another soaring refrain. This is one of the best songs I have heard in a long time, and is definitely the thing your playlist is sorely missing.
Watch Me Die Inside – “Boring“
The track opens on atmospheric, intense piano. It is layered with little pieces of sound that almost haunt it, giving it something of a dystopian edge. Low, desperate screams are layered over the singing. This adds greatly to the haunted energy of the song, making it equal parts desperate and spooky. Around the two-minute mark, a metal drumbeat crashes in and the vocals turn more aggressive, and the already high energy climbs even more sharply, as does the clawing desperation that the song is laced with. This electrifying track is anything but boring.
