Music Wrap: The must-listen to tracks from the last month

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JADE FLORENCE
WORDS BY ELIZA SHOLLY

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What month is it even!? July? April? I hath indeed lost track. This month I had a lot of random events, and at each, the obnoxious Taurus in me demanded the aux. I have a playlist for everything: an awkward friend reunion, the front seat of an Uber, post-coital pillow talk – hell, I even made the playlist for my grandpa’s funeral (may he rest in peace).

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Potentially ill-timed jokes aside, I love a good Spotify playlist, and making them is a practical lesson in self-care. This month, I thought I would use this intro to shout out some of my favourites. In no particular order…

If you’re looking for an introduction to my music taste: ‘Shollywood Radio’

A plethora of upbeat, house-informed music: Disclosure’s ‘Record Bag’

Songs for a lo-fi mood: ‘Chilled But Not Boring’

Music that’ll make you feel: ‘Real Good Shit’

New music outside this column: Pitchfork’s Best New Music

If the song ‘Levels’ soundtracked your highschool experience: ‘Songs That Get Drunk White Girls Excited’

For those light and bright mornings: ‘Music To Poach Eggs To’

While you’re perusing, put some of these new releases on in the background.

Elsy Wameyo – Nilotic

If Sampa The Great and Tkay Maidza had an equally impressive baby, it would be Elsy Wameyo. The Kenyan-born Australian musician is transcendant; and as I looked to find information on her to underpin this piece, I could find very little. Shocking, I thought, considering how impressive her self-produced debut EP is.

Spanning six tracks, Niolitc is what you should play when you want to walk in somewhere like you own the place. It’s a collection of fire-fuelled, powerful frustrations that dances effortlessly from one track to the next. This is atop my list for album of the year, with ‘River Nile’ my obvious standout track. Rinse it before she’s selling out venues.

Future – I Never Liked You

By way of introduction, I Never Liked You is Future’s ninth studio album, the follow-up to his May 2020 album, High Off Life. Future’s production bread and butter is his hectic reliance on autotune. He pioneered the medium and has sometimes used it to compensate for his lacklustre lyricism.

While many are dubbing this album some of his greatest work to date, it seems to me as if he has tipped the scales on the lyricism/autotune situation, giving us a higher quality of one (lyrics) but less of the other (autotune). Say what you want about Future, but there is a reason he’s lasted so long in the trap genre, and for that, you must applaud him.

Confidence Man – Tilt

Confidence Man have been listening to their ether, because we all just want to have some damn fun. The latest album – the second from the Brisbane-turned-Melbourne four-piece – is a perfect cocktail of large and in charge dance tracks, with ’80s synths and gleeful nothingness.

In my mind, the only comparable act is Aqua, who wrote a song about a Barbie Girl that had us so entranced, you can’t imagine not singing when it comes on. That’s what Confidence Man gives on Tilt: catchy silliness and simple pleasure. Start with ‘Holiday’ and ‘What I Like’.

Supershy – ‘Happy Music’ and ‘Something on my Mind’

The multidisciplinary man of my dreams, Tom Misch, is back with perhaps his most ambitious project to date: an electronic-music pseudonym, Supershy. Posting to Instagram, he dropped two tracks as an introduction to his new alter ego, dubbed ‘Happy Music’ and ‘Something On My Mind’. “This dude Supershy has dropped his first two tracks,” he wrote, adding “I’m digging these! Check them out”.

Other notable mentions

Kanada The Loop – ‘Life on Mars’

Lizzo – ‘About Damn Time’

Eliza & The Delusionals – ‘Halloween’

Sampa The Great – ‘Lane’ ft. Denzel Curry

Action Bronson – ‘Jaguar’

Oscar Key Sung – ‘Saturn Returning’

Teenage Joans – Terrible

Muna – ‘Kind of Girl’

Justin Bieber – I Feel Funny

IDK – Taco

Mallrat and Azealia Banks – ‘Surprise Me’