Weekly Music Roundup: Wet Leg, Kae Tempest, Fantastic Negrito
Week of April 11: This week, the British are coming! New music from Kae Tempest, Wet Leg, and Porridge Radio. Plus, Australian First Nations rapper Tasman Keith, singer/songwriter Lizzy McAlpine, and new funk-blues by Fantastic Negrito.
Meet Wet Leg, If You Haven’t Already
Few debuts have been more eagerly anticipated than Wet Leg, the first LP by the English duo also called Wet Leg. Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers have already conquered a large swath of the rock underground with their deadpan humor and soft/loud post-punk guitars. Their hilarious self-made videos for “Chaise Longue” and “Wet Dream” quickly got them booked on all the right TV shows, music festivals, and sold out concert venues. Their last single, “Angelica,” showed more of a shoegaze edge, hinting that Wet Leg would be more than a novelty act. Now that the album is finally out, we hear all the wonderful silliness of the band’s singles (all collected here), along with songs like “I Don’t Wanna Go Out,” which sports a guitar riff straight out of David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World” and some lovely, melancholic vocal harmonies. “Loving You” is also heartfelt, with an unexpected accordion or concertina part. Opener “Being In Love” is a good introduction, combining the speech-song delivery Teasdale uses on her funnier songs with edgy guitars, and harmonies that betray the band’s well-disguised pop instincts.
Kae Tempest’s Album Of The Year Contender
The Line Is A Curve is the latest album by the British polymath Kae Tempest. It’s also their first album since coming out as non-binary and changing their name from Kate to Kae. Previously, Tempest has been an award-winning poet, a bestselling novelist, has had several plays produced, and has released several well-received albums, two of which were nominated for the prestigious Mercury Prize. Tempest rapped as a teenager, and their approach to spoken word is deeply influenced by that, and Tempest’s songs have generally been done with Dan Carey, the producer of choice for buzzy London bands like Black Midi and Squid. That collaboration reaches new heights on this album – a collection of songs that for the first time features some guest vocalists (singer Lianne La Havas, the rapper Kevin Abstract, etc.) and which traces, poetically and somewhat elusively, a journey towards mental health. We’ve covered the extraordinary single “Salt Coast” earlier; now that the whole album is out, it’s worth checking out tracks like “These Are The Days,” which Tempest says is a turning point in the album’s narrative. It’s a song about determination in the face of persistent pressure, and about recognizing the good old days before they’re old and gone. While much of the work Carey and Tempest have produced together is rooted in electronic music, grime, and other recent sounds, this one has an almost classic Pink Floyd vibe in its steadily building music track.
A Heartache So Bad, It’s Good: New Music from Porridge Radio
The UK alt-rockers Porridge Radio are led by singer and guitarist Dana Margolin, whose lyrics can be curiously elliptical (“sick at the seams”?) or brutally plainspoken (“and now my heart aches”) in the space of a few seconds on the new single, “the Rip.” Her delivery of that latter line is increasingly dramatic – you can practically hear the veins popping in her neck – and the song becomes an anthem of heartbreak. Anthems are often epic in scale, but this one hits hard despite its small frame: just three minutes long, with fuzzed-out guitar, and a swooping synth line supporting Margolin’s desperate vocals. The song comes with a striking, if enigmatic video, and is part of Porridge Radio’s striking and enigmatically titled album Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky, coming out on May 20th.
Doomsday Never Sounded So Good: New Music by Lizzy McAlpine
Lizzy McAlpine wastes no time grabbing your attention on her new album, five seconds flat. Opening track “Doomsday” begins with a typical singer/songwriter sound – you know, strummed acoustic guitar, unadorned solo vocals – but the opening lines practically leap out at you. “Pull the plug in September,” she sings, “I don’t wanna die in June.” What follows is a variation on a breakup song: she suspects it’s coming, but doesn’t know when; and because of their different emotional headspaces, it’s not up to her, but to her narcissist lover. The guitar continues, but the sound swells with strings and piano, drums and bells and chorus; the imagery of death becomes almost liberating – at one point she sings “I feel more free than I have in years/six feet under ground.”
Indigenous Australian Rapper Tasman Keith Is Primed To Break Out
Tasman Keith is a First Nations rapper from Australia who’s preparing to release the album A Colour Undone in July, but he’s just dropped a single called “Cheque,” a swaggering bit of braggadocio set to a swirling psychedelic keyboard sound. Or at least, that’s what it settles on after a head-fake opening and a verse that sounds like something from Kendrick Lamar. The song also features the Ghanaian-Australian singer and rapper Genesis Owusu, who nearly steals the show with his breakneck polysyllabic kiss-off at the end.
Fantastic Negrito’s New Single Has A New Sound
Since Xavier Dphrepaulezz reinvented himself as Fantastic Negrito in 2014, after an early career (under the name Xavier) as an R&B singer and a near-fatal car crash, he has won Grammys in the Contemporary Blues Album category for each of his past three LPs. Although he describes what he does as “Black roots music for everyone,” the central sound of his music has been a kind of electric blues. Fantastic Negrito’s next album, White Jesus Black Problems, comes out on June 3, and the new single, “Trudoo,” shows a new dimension to his sound. Drawing on Prince’s soul and James Brown’s funk, “Trudoo” is a kinetic, exuberant song about persistence, perseverance, and uplift.
