Collected here is a brief mix of songs to keep in your back pocket for the moment midterms roll around. An even assortment of piano solos and ambient electronic music, these songs are melodic, instrumental, and, most importantly, nestled in that sweet spot between beautiful and not-too-distracting.
No longer a collection of question marks on a club’s marquee, Thom Yorke’s side project now has both an honest-to-God name—taken from the title to a track on his solo LP The Eraser—and a brand-new single to boot. Atoms for Peace includes the likes of Red Hot Chili Peppers’ bassist Flea and Radiohead’s long-time producer Nigel Godrich, and “Default” marks their opening salvo, a hint at what to expect when the supergroup releases its debut album this February.
First, a warning: listening to this song may cause faint feelings of inadequacy. After all, self-doubt is only natural once you realize that BenZel, the duo responsible for the track’s production, is in fact a pair of young teens from Osaka, Japan—aged 15 and 16. They may be too young to drive (in Japan, at least), but their backing track to British R&B breakout Jessie Ware shows off an exceptional talent belied by their youth. It’s enough to make you question just what it was you were doing when you were their age.
Two years is an awfully long time to hold your breath. Nearly two whole years – that’s how long it has been since Jai Paul’s last (and his only) song was released. Since the falsetto menace of that first demo, “BTSTU,” happened to find itself caught on the web, it has been played in sets by Thom Yorke and even sampled by Drake. Still, no new material from Jai Paul himself in all that time – no album, no EP, not even a meager single. Until now.
A great deal has changed for Chairlift since the release of the first full-length in 2008 – founding member Aaron Pfenning left to go solo with his electronic project, Rewards; the duo he ditched – singer Caroline Polachek and multi-instrumentalist Patrick Wimberley – signed to major label, Columbia Records; and (how can we forget?), the group’s track “Bruises” found its way into homes nationwide on the saccharine back of a series of iPod Nano commercials. Now that the dust of this tumult has settled and been put to proof on record in their sophomore effort Something, the question stands: how does Chairlift sound now?
