This week in music from Owen Myers: new AlunaGeorge, K-pop from T-ARA and Lykke Li
SONG OF THE WEEK: AlunaGeorge - 'Attracting Flies'
After the brilliant diptych of 'You Know You Like It' and 'Just A Touch' last year, it seemed that AlunaGeorge were elegantly dovetailing into midtempo territory, but 'Attracting Flies' is another irresistibly weird pop banger. Switching the R&B booty-grind vibes of their earlier uptempo cuts for a tectonic techno-pop bounce, it glides along with the wobbly iridescence of The Knife's Deep Cuts (as noted by Disco Naïveté). "Everything you exhale is attracting flies" is also probably the sweetest way of calling someone out as a shit-talker that I've ever heard.
RUNWAY EDIT OF THE WEEK: Glass Candy - 'The Possessed' (Extended Runway Edit)
Apparently this was premiered at a fashion show the other day. No one seems to be able to tell me which one though I'm afraid. A looming and spacious Italo cut with Ida No's sighing vocals and the looming Biblical reference "through a glass, darkly", it's the second track that we've heard from the forthcoming After Dark 2 (after Chromatics' 'Cherry'). I also just found this brilliant video of Ida No being interviewed with flashcards by Italians Do It Better in-house director Alberto Rossini. She talks of sleeping til noon, the muffled snow in Montreal and sharing a birthday with Brigitte Bardot.
VIDEO OF THE WEEK: Valentina - 'Wolves'
Valentina gave a brilliant diva turn on Joe Goddard's 'Gabriel' last year, but her debut single reins it in a little, with a bewitching illustrative video from London-based artist Richard Forbes-Hamilton. The film depicts a wandering child luminous strokes and treading through a treacherous, dream-like new world that's midway between Le Petit Prince and Pan's Labyrinth. The pace unexpectedly picks up halfway, morphing into a Robyn-esque discoballad with a patter of drums and strings. On Yours Truly the video was accompanied with a text: "When the moon rises we climb into our beds as adults, but under the covers we lie as children."
MUSE OF THE WEEK: Starred - 'Mayday'
"The Unforgettable Face Of A Muse", proclaimed The New York Times this week of Liza Thorn, the singer of fuzzed-out rock band Starred (with Matthew Koshak) and frequent photographic subject of Hedi Slimane. This week, Starred premiered 'Mayday', a song about Damien Echols of the West Memphis Three with a video intercutting footage of Echols with Thorn sleeping on leopard-print sheets. Unsettlingly gorgeous.
K-POP SONG OF THE WEEK: T-ARA - 'Bunny Style'
Is bunny style a fluffier version of doggy style? T-ARA seem to think so in the furry-featuring video for their new Japanese single. The seven-piece slutdrop and sashay to the ludicrously catchy track in a K-Pop vision of kawaii that blends the schoolgirl style and trance-pop of AKB48 with a daffiness - and rap breakdown - that's unmistakably Korean. In a slow start of the year for K-Pop, it's the best single to appear since Girls' Generation's 'I Got A Boy'.
PERFORMANCE OF THE WEEK: Lykke Li - 'I Follow Rivers' (feat. Mark Ronson)
Ronson's delta blues-tinged guitar flourishes make for Lykke Li's best television performance to date, and the song sounds lovelier than ever. Surely we're due another album from her this year?