The Sound Influx Playlist 11.11.13

Okay, so we're a day late, and we took a week off. We're sorry, really we are. Sadly this isn't our day job and most of our day jobs are getting somewhat hectic as the Christmas break starts peering its chilly head.

Fear not though, we're back for a fourth edition of the Sound Influx Playlist.

This week we've gone very much remix and feature Monsieur Adi and Tourist as well as the likes of Sub Focus' track with Kele and Sudanim's working of How To Dress Well's &ItWasU. Without further ado, we should probably give it to you for your earholes to consume?




Featured tracks this week...

Sudanim - U Dont Have 2 Worry
by Braden Fletcher

How to Dress Well's record Total Loss feels like it came out ages ago now. It's been a year and it has definitely not dated. Conveniently, South London DJ/Producer Sudanim has reworked the highlight of the album &ItWasU into his own powerful beast. Keep a watch out for him and Her Records a lot in the future.

Grouplove - Ways To Go
by Braden Fletcher

They're finally coming back with their second record and with it will be doing a string of rather intimate shows in the UK so now seems like the best time to put the most recent Grouplove single, Ways to Go into the Playlist. It's huge sounding and with any luck, the band will finally erupt over here in the way they did in the US of A!

Bombay Bicycle Club - Carry Me
by Toby McCarron

A fantastic indie debut, a heart-felt acoustic album and a disappointing mis-match of a third album; this time Bombay Bicycle Club seem to be embracing their electronic side. Carry Me is Bombay's most dancey and arguably club ready hit to date. With swathes of synth and a particularly impressive high-budget interactive video. It's not there to be loved or remembered, simply to move your body to at 3am at club NME.

Well everyone, that's it for another week. We'll hopefully be back again next week and we hope you'll be with us.

In other news, the picture for this week's playlist is very much Movember themed. Grow them staches SI readers!

Grouplove - Spreading Rumours

Remember the summer of 2011?  The summer you couldn’t avoid Foster The People whilst their equally good Californian counter-parts Young the Giant and Grouplove skirted the edges and touring Ameri-rocker friends Cage the Elephant and Manchester Orchestra also released solid records?
You’l probably only remember Pumped Up Kicks, but on the smaller stages at all of the festivals you’d find Grouplove tearing it up in joyous and energetic fashion and out of all of their East Coast fleet, they’re the first ones to return. So how is their ‘difficult second record’?

Spreading Rumours starts with the enchantingly dense I’m With You. At first listen it sounds like a pulsating trip into the more grown up version of a band that was in their debut and preceding EP full of reckless abandon. The further into it you venture however the more you realise that this is a band that have spent plenty of time in the studio making their version of an American Carnival sound like the complex yet enjoyable time it is. This care to the complex continues in Borders and Aliens, as the band take a more mathematical backline and give it the kind of chorus that you’d expect to fall somewhere between The Maccabees and Biffy Clyro’s newest work.

Schoolboy and Ways to Go have more of the summertime feel that was on their first record; the latter of which sounds much like Tongue Tied’s older brother, before the middle-filler of the record comes in. It’s in this though that Grouplove show their true colours. Whilst the tracks themselves lack the hooks that could make them great sounding live songs, the lyrical content feels more honest. Sit Still deals with the issues of being noticed whilst in response to much of the ‘hippy’ criticism that came from the media two years ago “I’d rather be a hippy than a hipster // So come sit at my table” is blasted out of Christian Zucconi’s powerful voice.

Hannah Hopper’s voice too has matured and strengthened also. On Didn’t Have to Go, she rivals the power that the likes of Charlotte Cooper and Hayley Williams have honed over the years whilst filling it with raw emotion. If it didn’t have such a strange backing track, the track could be heartwrenching.
Raspberry feels just like Cage the Elephant at their best whilst album closer takes from the similar closing style as album one and the kind of sound that Dry The River tried to pen down last year. It’s a fairly cop-out ending but at the same time; it feels fitting to a record that even in the predictable parts feels like a keeper.  

8.5

Braden Fletcher

Grouplove - Tongue Tied

Californian five-piece Grouplove specialise in catchy, summery songs. This latest release, from forthcoming album ’Never Trust a Happy Song’, is no different. After a short acoustic intro, a shimmering, glorious melody kicks in, and your fixation with this song has begun. The rest of the song continues along the same lines, with a hypnotic chorus and a soaring bridge to finish, leaving the listener craving for more.

It doesn’t matter whether you listen to this song once or constantly, its melody will sneak into your head and never escape. Not that you’ll complain, you’ll be too in love with Grouplove to even notice.

By Calum Stephen