Tony Stamp highlights some of his favourite singles of the past year, including psych rock, Jamaican pop, dancefloor bangers, and RnB.
Fazerdaze - Thick of the Honey
Photo: supplied
Amelia Murray returned in 2022 with the Break! EP, which showed her flair at penning indie pop gems was stronger than ever, and housed them within a conceptually intriguing package. Each of these songs was single-worthy, but ‘Thick of the Honey’, co-written with Bic Runga, was particularly ear-grabbing: a bit thornier than usual, and operating around some borderline funk fretplay.
The song’s title alludes to the hustle of downtown Auckland and the lifestyles of the corporate class; aligning it with Break!’s running theme of feeling stuck.
The Weeknd - Less Than Zero
Canadian Superstar The Weeknd released an album about a radio station that plays in the afterlife. He said he pictured purgatory as a traffic-jammed highway, and Dawn FM was on everyone’s car stereo.
The LP seems to find him grappling with past behaviour and trying to make amends, and he saved its most musically uplifting track till its near-end. ‘Less Than Zero’ was co-written with Swedish pop music titans Max Martin and Oscar Holter, and co-produced by The Weeknd’s regular collaborator, experimental electronic musician Oneohtrix Point Never.
The result is fantastically feelgood on its surface, but burrow deeper and you’ll find some characteristically unsettling lyrics.
Lady Wray - Through It All
Lady Wray got her start when she was signed to Missy Elliott’s record label in the nineties, and since then has released just three albums, one of which was this year.
The single ‘Through It All’, was instantly inviting, the kind of song that feels like a comforting hug from its opening bars. Gritty soul drums and a vocal loop lured me in, and then Wray’s hard won wisdom kept me sticking around, offering soothing affirmations to a partner in between impassioned vocal vamping.
Leikeli47 - Chitty Bang
The opening salvo from Brooklyn rapper Leikeli47’s third album Shape Up, ‘Chitty Bang’ makes reference to the similarly-titled 1968 film, but that’s where any comparisons end.
Leikeli has never revealed her face since starting out in 2010, always performing and posing in a balaclava, but she has dropped her guard slightly, so Shape Up spreads out not just in terms of genre and delivery - there are sung RnB ballads here alongside propulsive dancefloor cuts - but lyrical content too, telling stories about love and loss across multiple songs.
‘Chitty Bang’ though is pure, unfiltered swagger, an announcement that its star is here to entertain you.
Jamie XX - Kill Dem
Photo: supplied
Jamie XX came to prominence as the producer for The XX, adding beats and bass to the trio’s minimalist melancholy. As a solo artist he’s proved more exuberant and dancefloor focused, and in 2022 released ‘Kill Dem’, a track he said was inspired by the energy of the Notting Hill Carnival and its sound systems, which he experienced as a teen.
He samples and speeds up Cutty Ranks ‘Limb by Limb’, and it’s instantly infectious, daring you to not move your hips, or at least nod your head.
KH - Looking at Your Pager
Elliott School in Putney England was attended by Jamie XX as well as Kieran Hebden, better known as Four Tet. He also released a banger this year, opting for the initials KH over his usual moniker.
Hebden has followed the opposite trajectory to many musicians, starting out downbeat and increasing his tempos each year following an immersion into club culture. Here he flipped a vocal from American girl group 3LW into something particularly propulsive, custom made for festival crowds to go nuts to.
Spoon - Wild
When Lucifer on the Sofa came out this year, it was slightly startling to note that Spoon have been a band for over 30 years. But frontman Britt Daniel hasn’t lost his knack for belting out relatively straight ahead rock tunes.
One on track they enlisted super producer Jack Anotonoff, who nudged the song ‘Wild’ into slightly poppier territory, without getting too sugary. The way layers of instruments keep getting added works particularly well, resulting in a hands-in-the-air anthem from the almost-veteran rockers.
Earth Tongue - Miraculous Death
The duo of Mermaiden’s Gussie Larkin and Ezra Simons create a full band’s worth of noise as Earth Tongue, huge sludgy riffs alongside precision drumming and doubled vocals. Simons is also a director, and the pair compliment their metal-tinged psych rock with visuals that lean into its fantastical edge.
The single ‘Miraculous Death’ came with a video that homaged 70s horror and Giallo films, Larkin stalked through a gothic estate by Simons wielding an array of garden tools. Imagery and music complimented each other perfectly, the duo working as well on screen as they do on stage.
Koffee - Run Away
Koffee Photo: supplied
The Jamaican musician Koffee is remarkable for many reasons, including her Grammy win aged nineteen just two years after she was discovered on YouTube. The title of her debut album Gifted is a bit of a boast, but as a Bob Marley acolyte, she keeps its music upbeat and positive.
That’s despite the everyday hardships referenced in her lyrics, which are delivered in a free flowing, conversational manner. Occasionally, as on ‘Run Away’ she’ll find a melody strong enough to sit on, and the results are pop gold.
Charlotte Adigéry, Bolis Pupul - HAHA
French/ Belgian duo Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul released an album in March called Topical Dancer, which paired dancefloor rhythms with observations about racism, xenophobia, and a range of other pertinent topics. It also included inventive use of candid recordings like phone conversation, and on ‘Haha’, the use of Adigéry laughing, which was stretched out to song length, and ended with the payoff “guess you had to be there”.
Orlando Weeks - Big Skies, Silly Faces
The Maccabees were an English band active during the 2000s who peddled a twitchy type of indie rock. They called it a day in 2017, and in his subsequent solo career singer Orlando Weeks has reinvented himself, ditching the manic yelping for something more soothing, to go with the synthetic soundscapes he favours. His second album Hop Up was a celebration of fatherhood, and the single ‘Big Skies, Silly Faces’ featured its most touching observations about being a dad.
Vera Ellen - Homewrecker
After her 2021 album It’s Your Birthday proved she had an abundance of talent outside her band Girl Friday, Vera Ellen released the single ‘Homewrecker’, hopefully the first salvo from a followup LP.
It has her continuing in a similar vein - glorious pop hooks meeting rumpled delivery and distinctly New Zealand vowel shapes. Apparently the title refers to Ellen’s “inner demon creating chaos where it senses harmony”, but her music balances those two impulses perfectly.
Best Bets - Whataworld
An abundance of cynicism defined the debut LP by Christchurch’s Best Bets, summed up in its title On An Unhistoric Night. It was full of stories about the misguided privilege of mountain climbers, and equally misguided athletes-turned-musicians, with a healthy amount of self deprecation courtesy of songs like ‘Always on the Losing Side’. ‘Whataworld’ had the band flinging themselves into outright nihilism, with a chorus that repeats “tell me when it’s over”, and packs in plenty of hooks and guitar frenzy.
Hannah Everingham - So Long Underground
What really impressed me about the debut by Otautahi’s Hannah Everingham, besides the inventive songwriting and her remarkable voice, is her knack at knowing what to add, or not add, to each of her compositions. Strings, twinkling pianos, and layers of percussion come and go depending on the song, and on the album’s deceptively breezy opener ‘So Long Underground’, Parisian accordion and lilting trumpets compliment the meandering guitar and vocal perfectly.
Cat Power - Here Comes a Regular
Chan Marshall, better known as Cat Power, released a third collection of cover songs in January, imbuing other people’s songs with her distinct personality. On her version of ‘Here Comes a Regular' by The Replacements, she switched their strummed acoustic for a melodious piano, ratcheting up the song’s aching melancholy to beautiful effect.
