Music writer Nic Harcourt joins Take Two host A Martinez for Take Two's weekly new music installment - Tuesday Reviewsday.
What's on Nic's playlist?
Artist: Fitz and the Tantrums
Song: Handclap
Summary: LA’s own Fitz and the Tantrums have announced a new self titled studio album, which will drop on June 10th. The lead single is called “HandClap." The song is a primal tale of love and lust, a call to arms in the late hours of the night,” says lead vocalist Fitz. “It’s the X-rated version of ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ happening on a dance floor. Fitz and company will support the new album with an extensive summer tour.
Artist: Darling James
Song: “The Itch”
Summary: On his second single under the moniker Darling James Melbourne-based songwriter James O'Brien (ex-frontman of The Boat People) tackles this question in a stomping, fizzing self-produced pop adventure titled 'The Itch."
Filled with falsetto vocals, an incessant staccato drum figure and loaded with atmospherics, the track conjures up a sense of urgency and surrender: no matter how big we think or how long we ruminate, "The Itch" reminds us that the patchwork of needs and urges that make us human have a habit of dragging us back to earth.
His debut single last summer 'Ultimatum Talk' marked the start of Darling James' journey with a colossal bang, snagging a triple j rotation add and clocking over 100k plays on Spotify. With a debut EP to be unveiled later in the year.
Artist: the Rubens.
Songs: "Hallelujah"; "Hoops"
Album: Hallelujah
Summary: The Rubens are a five-piece alternative rock band originally from Menangle, New South Wales. The band comprises the three Margin brothers, Zaac, Sam and Elliott, and friends Scott Baldwin and William Zeglis. Their debut self-titled album The Rubens gained them domestic success with it reaching No. 3 on the ARIA Charts and being nominated for a J Award for Album of the Year. In May 2015, the band released the lead single from their second album, called "Hallelujah."
The follow-up single from the album, the title track "Hoops", reached number 25 on the ARIA Singles Chart in 2015 and was voted number one in the Triple J Hottest 100 of 2015 The album with both these tracks was just released here in the U.S.
Artist: Black Mountain
Song: Florian Saucer Attack
Album: IV
Summary: For most rock bands, naming an album IV may imply a lack of imagination, but coming from such studious classic-rock scholars as Black Mountain, it's a gesture loaded with significance. As history has shown, hard-rock bands tend to view their discographies like batting orders, and—whether officially or otherwise— a numerically branded "IV" has come to represent the clean-up hitter stepping up to the plate with the bases loaded. It's the moment where bands capitalize on established strengths and set out for parts unknown.
And Black Mountain's IV plays the fourth-album role to a tee, rolling up the weed-scented riffage of their 2005 self-titled debut, the prog-sized ambitions of In the Future, and the pop-focussed finesse of Wilderness Heart, all while embracing electronics with a zeal that suggests the band's relationship with modern music has become somewhat less tortured.