As we head into fall, there’s a rush to get all the material recorded during the pandemic out there. Let’s not allow these tracks to fall through the cracks.
1. Glass Animals, I Don’t Wanna Talk (I Just Wanna Dance)
Single (Republic)
RIYL: Something funky
Glass Animals, who were birthed in Oxford, just like Radiohead and so many others, are back with a new single for the first time since last summer’s Dreamland album. It was written as an antidote to COVID by encouraging people to bust out and dance. We gotta do something to break out of this pandemic funk, right?
2. Daisy the Great X AJR, Record Player
Single (S-Curve/Hollywood)
RIYL: The current trend of collaborations
One of the things that have come out of the pandemic is the rise of collaborations as artists connect and then swap files online. AJR is no stranger to this (cf. their work with Rivers Cuomo) and has now hooked up with Brooklyn-based indie-pop band Daisy the Great.
3. Sueco, Paralyzed
Single (Atlantic)
RIYL: Sweden?
If you plug in “Sueco” into Google Translate, you’ll see that it’s Spanish for Sweden. In this case, it’s William Schultz, an LA rapper once known as Sueco The Child. After racking up more than 3 million TikTok views for a song called Fast (he’s now got about 400,000 followers), he’s back with this new track that’s seeking to build on that momentum.
4. Clever Hopes, Made You Mad
Artefact (Independent)
RIYL: Easy alt-country
Clever Hopes is a collaboration between actor and director Andrew Shaver and actor Eva Foote. This lead single is based on a real-life broken relationship; Andrew’s girlfriend arrived home from a trip to Paris and told him to get out. He grabbed some things (and his hockey gear, of course) and drove from Montreal to Toronto where he wrote this song over a bowl of chicken stew. Confessional, this.
5. Dear Rouge, Fake Fame
Single (UMG)
Recommended If You Like: Hating social influencers
In light of the recent internal Facebook report about the harmful effects of Instagram, Vancouver’s Dear Rouge hits hard with a song about those excretable social media influencers who try so hard to prove that their lives are better than ours. If you’re sick of that whole fake celebrity culture, you’ll find much to enjoy with this song. Dear Rouge’s third album will be here in early 2022.
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