We’ve hit another Tuesday, where I’m once again pleased to bring you a quick rundown of artists with brand new music coming out this week. The hope is to either inform you about what’s out there, but also to maybe even remind you if one of your favorite artists is putting out something new and you simply forgot about it. So without further ado, here’s your list for this week: Aa, Band of Horses, Birds of Passage, Cashmere Cat, Casket Girls, Cibo Matto, Crosses, Fanfarlo, The Fleshtones, The Glitch Mob, Greg Laswell, Helms Alee, Illum Sphere, The Internet, Katy B, Maximo Park, Modern Baseball, Nina Persson, Nostalgia 77, The Royal Oui, Sam Roberts Band, Snowmine, Speedy Ortiz, Sun Kil Moon, Temples, Tinariwen and Yumi Zouma (featured below!). If you’re so inspired please pick some of these records up via your favorite digital or physical retailer! Now let’s get to today’s Pick Your Poison, where you can discover even more hot new music. Some key tracks you’ll want to give attention to today come from Bavaria, CHAMP, Glue Trip, Mandarin Dynasty, Mean Creek, Skating Polly, Somos and Stone Jack Jones. In the Soundcloud section after the jump, stream new songs from Death, Jerome LOL, Neneh Cherry (ft. Robyn), Todd Osborn, Todd Terje, Woman’s Hour and Wild Nothing’s remix of Yumi Zouma.
Designer Drugs – In Your Eyes (ft. Catiana Van Dinh)
Glue Trip – Old Blood
Glue Trip – Elbow Pain
Mandarin Dynasty – Perpendicular Crosstalk
Marc Maynon – Challenge of Extremes
Skating Polly – Alabama Movies
It’s been fascinating to hear the evolution of Dum Dum Girls over the handful of years that they’ve been around. They’ve gone from a lo-fi garage pop band to a slick, synth pop juggernaut, and it only took three albums and two EPs to make that transition. Basically Too True picks up where 2012’s End of Daze EP left off, which is a great thing since that was the best work they had done to date. The sound and spirit are there, particularly on tracks like “Cult of Love,” “Are You Okay” and “Too True to Be Good,” which are smartly structured and perfectly mixed to put Dee Dee’s powerful and rich vocals up front. Unfortunately, this album also falls prey to a lot of the same issues that former Dum Dum Girl Frankie Rose was met with on her latest (and similar sounding) record Herein Wild. You can hear greatness, and may have even witnessed it on a track like “Lord Knows” from the last EP, but for whatever reason on this album it feels like Dee Dee is holding herself back. Maybe it’s an artistic integrity thing or a desire to defy expectations, but it’s slightly frustrating to think that she’s wasting so much potential. For example, a song like “Rimbaud Eyes” takes the easiest and most expected structure, then trips up in its attempt to be lyrically unique thanks to difficult phrasing. In a sense the entire record is a small mess just like that, with nearly every track getting about 90% of the way to perfection, only to be undone by one aspect or another. One thing it doesn’t lack though is beauty, and thanks to some very clean production work it all sounds great on the surface. It’s when you start digging deeper that the issues present themselves. Here’s hoping Dee Dee can push past all of that mess to rediscover exactly what has made Dum Dum Girls such a compelling act these last few years.