This Week’s New Music: Slaves, Warpaint, Best Coast, Lorde

This week’s column features a whole bunch of female singers, with the exception of Slaves’ Where’s Your Car Debbie, below, which is a shouty-man-song. Also, just to clarify, the presence of Rebecca Black’s Saturday is not because it is good, but rather for the exact opposite reason.

Slaves – Where’s Your Car Debbie

A garage band from Tunbridge Wells in Kent, these guys are being championed by NME, Radio 1 and (my favourite) BBC Radio Kent’s New Music show. As the title would suggest, the song is about the search for the car belonging to a girl named Debbie. They’ve hit that perfect balance between radio friendly catchiness and shouty garage rock, meaning you might find yourself screaming ‘where’s your car Debbie’ uncontrollably for about the next week.

Best Coast – This Lonely Morning

A music critic once said, “No one can rhyme ‘crazy’ with ‘lazy’ like Best Coast’s Bethany Constentino.” It’s a tongue-in-cheek comment on Best Coast’s delightful simplicity, both in song writing and performance. Critics will scoff at their two-chord verses, but Constentino’s heartfelt and direct vocals can make you feel all summery, the pure essence of their home-state, California. This is a new video for their recent track, This Lonely Morning.

Warpaint – Biggy

If The Saturdays were brought up on a mixture of Elliot Smith and Radiohead, they might have formed Warpaint instead of a vapid dance group. Warpaint are pretty weird. And this latest offering, a single released ahead of a new album (suitably named ‘Warpaint’) does not disappoint. On Biggy, beautiful falsetto vocals float over contrastingly harsh synth, pumping rhythmically in the background. Their second album will be one to watch.

Lorde – No Better

Occasionally The Venue will play Lorde’s Royals, a thumping bass driven track garnished with the New Zealander’s youthful yet mature vocals. The 17 year-old was well-known in her home-country long before BBC’s Radio 1 started playing her track, Tennis Court, earlier this year (around the same time as Wimbeldon, aptly). And, as she releases a new standalone song called No Better, we are grateful for her import.

Rebecca Black – Saturday

If you thought things couldn’t get any worse for the music industry, you were wrong: Rebecca black has just released another single, Saturday. This is (presumably) ahead of her upcoming album, Days of the Week, including hit tunes such as Monday, Wednesday, and Doomsday, a song about the inevitable mass-suicide of humanity should Rebecca Black continue to make music. The video features a bunch of cool white kids having more fun than you have ever had and, since Rebecca black is only 16, they’re not even drinking alcohol. I’m only assuming they’re not drinking alcohol because a policeman bursts through the door at the end and arrests the only other black man in this video, completely ignoring any suspected under-age drinkers. This song isn’t even ‘so-bad-that-it’s-funny’, it’s just generic mainstream trash.