Butter wouldn’t melt on the bitter-sweet melancholy in the latest 90s Britpop-rooted single from the independent Orange County, CA-residing artist, Port Streets.
Dream Girl, Decide is a surreally imaginative lament over a mentally hospitalised loved one. I mean, is there any more definitive sign of the times than that? We’re all losing our marbles in dating pools scattered with them, but cute sentiments still stand over the lush organ lines and blissfully pure vocal harmonies.
The Blur influence finds just the right level of nuance, avoiding assimilation from the strength of the rays on the blissfully constructed indie rock hit that uses Grandaddy-Esque synths and hooky guitar lines to seal this track’s place in your synapses.
Dream Girl, Decide is now available to stream on Spotify.
Hailing from Columbus, Ohio, Did I Hear Dare? smash out that brand of mid-Western alt-rock that seems timeless and at the same time bang up to date. ‘I Can Feel (You and I)’ could just as easily be from 2001 as the first month of 2021, and that’s no bad thing at all. Think Killers, Kings of Leon, and maybe a little Arcade Fire for good measure. There’s a definite Brandon Flowers touch to the vocal, a cracker of a bouncy lead guitar line, and a perfect pop-indie-rock lift coming into the chorus, itself an absolute earworm of a radio-friendly-unit-shifter.
The follow-up to their 2020 EP ‘The Ghost Stories’, ‘I Can Feel (You And I)’ is a perfect prelude to 2021 for Did I Hear Dare?.
You can check it out on Spotify now, and follow on Facebook.
Ever since the earworm contained in Heavy Salad’s Psych Pop sophomore release Battery Acid made itself right at home, I’ve been psyched by the promise of the debut release by the Manchester-based masters of good vibes.
The wait is almost finally over. The Cult Casual LP produced by Ross Orton (Arctic Monkeys) is due for release on September 25th via Dipped in Gold Recordings. Ahead of the LP release, they’ve released their psychedelically rapturous grungy Pop teaser track The Wish. It’s so timely it is almost serendipitous.
The Wish is an accessible introduction to the debut album which promises a smorgasbord of enlightenment-aiding experimentalism. The driving punchy Rock rhythms possess a convictive bite and drip with a bravado-less Alt 90s-style cool which will appeal to any fans of Pavement, Dinosaur Jr and Weezer.
With the feisty instrumentals perfectly paired by the exuberantly high-vibe vocals offering mantras such as “I cannot save you, I can’t even save myself”, it will be hard to determine what you fell in love with first, the powerful lyrics or the tone which shatters the Manchester mould. So many Manchester-based artists succumb to the ease in the process of assimilation for their sound. But with Heavy Salad, their sound is so revolutionary that if they were handing out invites to their cult, you probably wouldn’t need to think twice before accepting.
The massive choruses in the Wish go down like a euphoric storm as they allow you to consider the futility in attempting to rescue everyone in a world where we’re all without a compass in the chaos. If you’re as afflicted with empathy and nihilism as I am, you can consider the Wish a playlist essential.
You can check out the official video to The Wish via YouTube, add the track to your Spotify playlists, or download the single via Bandcamp.
Cult Casual will be available to stream on all major platforms from September 25th, or you can pre-order the album here.
Keep up to date with future releases via Facebook.
