Another seven days have come and gone, and another name enters the Tracks Of The Week pantheon of greatness. This time it's hotly-tipped Canadians Deraps who led the way, coming in just ahead of Welsh valley boys Those Damn Crows. Swedish melodic rockers H.E.A.T. complete this week's international podium of rock triumph.
This week, another eight combatants enter the fray. You'll find them below, bristling with rockcitement.
This week, just like every other, we've found another eight songs to excite all the different parts of your auditory system. They're below.
Creeping Jean - God Bless Honking Clover
Released as part of their The Clothes Shop 7” for Record Store Day, God Bless Honking Clover finds the Brighton rock’n’rollers channelling their inner Jack White through deliciously gritty, swaggering grooves. “Honking Clover was a mysterious social media profile that interacted with our content, claiming to be the 'tiniest man in the world',” guitarist Rod explains. “After drinking a few too many Spritz in Venice during our tour with the Rival Sons last year, we decided to investigate and it turns out it wasn't the tiniest man in the world, or even a man."
Skunk Anansie - Lost & Found
Peaking with one of our favourite Ace guitar solos (simple but searingly effective) from the new album The Painful Truth, Lost And Found builds up from staccato piano and minimal beats into one of their smartest, most stirring ballads yet, Skin’s voice all smoke, vulnerability and poise. “We wanted to evoke the loneliness and desperation that can occur in a split second by one tiny mistake,” she says. “Any of us at any time can lose the security built up over a lifetime whether it be via an accident, or a sudden twist of fate.”
Star Circus - One Hit Wonder
Part livewire glam stomper, part heartstring-tugging pop rocker in the vein of Cheap Trick with a touch of Thin Lizzy, One Hit Wonder had us happily bobbing along within seconds. "It's about someone I worked with in the music industry a few years ago," frontman Dave Winkler explains. "One Hit Wonder tells a story from the perspective of a 'hired gun' who has been used and discarded. The song delves into themes of exploitation and manipulation from an ego-driven individual, hiding behind a saintly, heroic persona, a 'man of the people' mask."
Eureka Machines - The Lovers And The Lost
There’s a moody yet sunny Lennon/McCartney-esque thump n’ swing to the verses of this piece of the Eurekas’ new album Everything, before easing into a warm, lighter-swaying chorus that mixes Britpop glitter with their own pensive but forward-kicking heart. All of it accompanied by a video in which the band sign a shit-tone of vinyl with the aid of many, many pints. Excellent.
Goat and Graveyard - Light As A Feather
Two elegantly nostalgic Gothenburg rock bands, one rather cool Record Store Day collaboration, released at the weekend as part of an exclusive 7”. Light As A Feather might not have typical pop song furniture (verses, choruses, vocals that last beyond the first stretch...) but it kept us firmly hooked, all dreamy but riffy, melodic late 60s/early 70s hippie energy, like Fleetwood Mac and The Who skipping through a meadow together after a massive bag of ‘shrooms.
The Virginmarys - My Nettle
This is one of our favourite tracks on Ally and Danny’s latest album, The House Beyond The Fires, so we were delighted to see it getting the full single/video treatment. Brimming with urgent heat that thumps you square in the chest, it soars with a brilliantly fiery yet stirring chorus that Ally started cooking up years ago, and now comes to fruition as an ode to the love in his life. Catch them out on tour across the UK in April and May – the show the VMs put on as a duo is blinding, well worth seeing.
The Sheepdogs - Down At The Khyber
Canadian rocker Joel Plaskett turns 50 this week, and, to mark the occasion, a shedload of fellow musicians recorded a tribute album entirely in secret. In addition to acts like current Sex Pistol Frank Turner and Bluenose icons Sloan, you'll find our old favourites The Sheepdogs, who've turned Plaskett's 2001 slow-burning Down at the Khyber into something suitably smooth and Sheepdoggian. Plaskett didn't know anything about the release until he was confronted with it while visiting a record store in Victoria, B.C, a moment captured in a rather lovely video.
The Mars Volta - Cue The Sun
Last month, The Mars Volta supported Deftones and played their then-unreleased latest album Lucro Sucio; Los Ojos Del Vacío in full, a typically Mars Volta thing for the Mars Volta to do. The album also confounds expectations, with the high-octane fury of their early work replaced by jazz-flecked streams of woozy, atmospheric transience. The rather lovely Cue The Sun is typical, like Herbie Hancock fooling around with Massive Attack while simultaneously toying with Hans Zimmer. You might have missed it, but the album's out now.
