Lost Midas’s Off The Course, this week’s best new track

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/sep/19/lost-midas-track-of-the-week

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Lost Midas Off The Course (Tru Thoughts)

It’s 2014 and pop music is obsessed with space. Everything has to sound as if it were recorded in a car showroom, with crisp percussion and synth stabs echoing off its whitewashed walls. I predict nothing other than eventual doom for this trend – it bottoms out sometime in 2015 when James Blake forgets to play any notes at all on his new album – but in the short term it does produce some lovely stuff, like this piece of dreamy, aerated pop, which wafts in gently with cooed falsetto and then suddenly lobs a menacing bassline into the mix a minute in. Soothing but also unsettling, like sharing a warm bath with a box jellyfish.

ALSO OUT THIS WEEK

King Tuff Headbanger (Sub Pop)

Also good, for precisely the opposite reason to Lost Midas, is Headbanger – a three-minute chug-along in which everything is coated in a layer of thick fuzz. It sounds unapologetically like Cheap Trick, which itself is a bit of a cheap trick (arf), but one I’ve fallen for completely. Right, good tracks done. On to the dross...

New World Sound & Thomas Newsom Feat Lethal Bizzle Flutes (Spinnin’)

In a just world, every flute in existence would be confiscated and bundled into a furnace. Seriously, people have been playing that thing for millennia and no one – not even Ron Burgundy – has ever managed to make it sound like anything other than an out-of-shape, middle-aged man breathing limply through his nose. And yet still people are giving that hateful little tube of silver alloy the time of day. I despair. I really do. Anyway, Flutes is New World Sound & Thomas Newsom’s 2013 Europop chugger Flute, but with Bizzle shouting “Dench” over the top. It’ll almost certainly be massive. Another victory for the all-powerful flute lobby.

Weezer Back To The Shack (Republic)

Admitting to liking Weezer is a bit like bringing an embarrassing friend to a dinner party. “Why do you even hang around with this idiot?” everyone keeps asking you, as said friend puts a Frisbee through the flatscreen and vomits on the cat. And yet you still can’t shake those hazy memories of just how fun he/she was in the old days. Make no mistake, Back To The Shack is witless frat-boy rock of the lowest order. Terrible. Irredeemable. And yet I’ve listened to it four times today already, and it’s only 12.27am.

B*Witched The Stars Are Ours (PledgeMusic)

Crowdfunding started out with such lofty ideals. We’ll change the world! We’ll upturn capitalism! We’ll get a second series of Veronica Mars! No one imagined there would be a downside; that in 2014 people would be summoning Bush, the Vines and B*Witched back into existence, like kids foolishly messing with a Ouija board. The Stars Are Ours provides the chilling answer to the question: “What would C’est La Vie sound like with an Avicii drop in the middle.” Please don’t give generously.