The Hottest Day
Selina Martin, from Disaster Fantasies (independent, streaming here)
No matter what your December soul may whisper at the sight of this infectious single’s title, Toronto song magician Selina Martin’s theme is not a warm beach but the scorching you can get from a bad relationship with an emotional trickster. The tune’s rollicking energy may be the salve that cools a wound that takes almost forever to heal.
Chinatown
Destroyer, from Kaputt (forthcoming on Merge, streaming here)
The crunchy, crackly start to this track gives the song a quotational feeling that is probably fully intended, by one of our most referential songwriters. The tune’s loose, jazz feeling and the sweet melancholy of Dan Bejar’s lyrics (twinned in the chorus by soul/jazz singer Sibel Thrasher) would go well in a French cinema romance, at the moment when the camera skims wet Parisian streets.
Fire & Water
Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, from iTunes Sessions (Vagrant Records, streaming here)
This is the smouldering follow-up to last year’s Magnetic Zeros ubiquitous single, the cozy front-porch anthem Home. The powerful soft push of Jade Castrino’s pop alto shows some cousinship with the voice of Cat Power, as Castrino and band slouch toward the kind of transcendence you can only reach in a magic bus.
Written On the Forehead
P.J. Harvey, from Let England Shake (Island Records, streaming here)
The woozy underwater sound and the tenuous hopeful tone of Harvey’s singing in this fearless strange number suggest that she may be entering her Yoko Ono period. It’s a fascinating and ultimately catchy glimpse into the shape of her next new world.
