Best New Tracks Of The Week: 11/3/2024
Yes LCD Soundsystem are back and yes there was a pretty good chance going into this list they would be at the top spot 99 out of 100 times, see whether it came to fruition.
5. Punish - Ethel Cain
I still get some dolls unhappy with my review of Ethel Cain's breakthrough Preacher's Daughter where I pointed out how inclined she is to senselessly waste time with both too many songs and songs that wander on for way too long. With her even longer follow-up, I can already feel similar instincts creeping in but this lead single does have me biting my tongue a bit. Despite definitely being both longer and slower than it needs to, the subtler cracking darkness that the Ethel Cian persona has always been wading through is very much intact and it's clear why she's made a name for herself by doing it so well.
4. AAA - FLO
R&B girl group FLO have as much potential as anyone right now and they've been showing it off with great singles for a few years. Despite the fact that I hadn't loved their past few singles to drop this one is right back to form. From the buttery smooth instrumental and harmonizing on the chorus to the personality-soaked verses separating each of the members they continue to carry the torch for a lost art and I can't get enough.
3. Phantom Island - King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
Consider me FAR more surprised than you are. Despite a stretch through the second half of the 2010s where Australian psych-rockers King Gizz released a TON of material I love, it's been a LONG time since I was really feeling any of their work, which is wild because they've released a lot. "Phantom Island" is the best single I've heard them drop in 5 years at least with a vibrant orchestra backing a playful slinky and irresistible little number. It's even met with the kind of bravado you'd want from a frontman at the center of all this instrumentation, very happy to hear it.
2. x-ray eyes - LCD Soundsystem
Leave it to LCD Soundsystem to fake us all out, acting like they don't actually have a new record on the way just to pull up with another certified classic. This track does so much right that the band has been doing for nearly 20 years from the infectious refrains to the looping structure to the way it builds and builds with strange instrumental diatribes around its core. It's exactly the reason we all love this silly band so damn much.
1. Crazier - Ab-Soul (feat. JID)
It was hard to imagine anything other than LCD taking the top spot but I didn't anticipate Ab-Soul showing up with his best song in at LEAST 8 years, and to be honest I think it could go down as my favorite song he's ever dropped. From the eerie off-kilter instrumental to a ridiculous opening verse from JID where he audaciously shouts out Ryan Shazier, to a hilarious, cutthroat, wordbending appearance from Soul himself in the second half, everything about this song is ridiculously good. I wasn't head over heels for the last few Ab-Soul singles but this song alone has me locked in to his new mixtape, what a filthy song.
