Every Friday, Atwood Magazine’s staff share what they’ve been listening to that week – a song, an album, an artist – whatever’s been having an impact on them, in the moment.
This week’s weekly roundup features music by Emma Ogier, The Beaches, Tinashe, Cut Worms, Deidre & the Dark, Violet Sands, Kowloon, Marilyn Hucek, Dean Stacy, Ronboy, Nite Bjuti, London Grammar, Deadbeat Girl, Madilyn Bailey, Elif Dame, GANZ, Kat Hamilton, Merrick Winter, & Melotone!
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:: “Consider Me a Winner” – Emma Ogier ::
Mitch Mosk, New York
An irresistible groove and radiant melodies all but ensure that “Consider Me a Winner” stays true to its name: The second single from 19-year-old Emma Ogier finds the Nashville-based artist shining bright as she reckons with life’s inescapable changes, acknowledging that which she can and can’t control in a flurry of gorgeous harmonies, fierce drums, and fervent guitars.
Boy from Carolina
had me blushing
right behind him him
But I kept quite missing you here telling me to talk
So I bought myself some daffodils
Pretended that he gave them to me
They wilted by the windowsill
The faucets drying up
but I’ve got no one to talk to
so I’ve been talking to myself
And all my fictions are showing up,
the people in the posters
on my walls are growing up
and if I survive the winter and I do it all alone
God consider me a winner,
the baby in the mirrors saying damn you’ve grown
Released today, “Consider Me a Winner” is a warm, wondrous, and cinematic reverie. Ogier’s emotionally charged vocals resonate with raw passion and youthful energy as she reflects on past and present – what’s come and gone from her world in just a few short years. “The people in the posters on my walls are growing up,” she sings in a visceral, vibrant chorus. “And if I survive the winter and I do it all alone, God consider me a winner, the baby in the mirrors saying damn you’ve grown.” This is her coming-of-age moment, and yet as the weight of reality presses down and all around her, she pushes back with an even greater intensity.
One can’t help but feel like this is what Fleetwood Mac’s songs would have felt like, had the band started making music in the 2020s.
“’Consider Me a Winner’ is about fear, and the uncontrollable nature of change,” Ogier tells Atwood Magazine. “This song is how I imagined the semester might be without my best friend and former roommate, when in reality it was far from lonely. Change is inevitable and we win by adapting and evolving.”
Arriving just a month after her smoldering debut single “First Base” introduced Ogier’s charming country-influenced indie pop sound to the world, “Consider Me a Winner” is a spirited seduction that highlight’s Ogier’s poetic songwriting, her captivating vocal abilities, and the fiery charisma she injects into her art. Consider her a winner; with raw talent like this, she’s already won.
Don’t worry ’bout me dear
I’m restless in this coffin
We used to call it home
before the opaque went and tossed it
I’d like to think you’re doing ok
Snowed in craving hospice
I read to pass the time these days
Singing not as often as we would
But I’ve got no one to talk too
So i’ve been talking to myself
And all my fictions are showing up,
the people in the posters
on my walls are growing up
and if I survive the winter
and I do it all alone
God consider me a winner
The baby in the mirrors
saying damn you’ve grown
:: “Me & Me” – The Beaches ::
Josh Weiner, Washington DC
Lollapalooza is coming up next week and I’m looking forward to having it begin! Like many festivals, this one represents the dual excitement of seeing some of the acts you know and love perform, while also discovering plenty of bubbling-under-mainstream talents in the process.
One notable member of the latter category is The Beaches, a rock group from Toronto that’s been together for a solid decade and is gearing up to release their second full-length album, Blame My Ex, this fall, after having stuck with EPs for quite some time. If I play my cards right, I’ll get to catch them on Thursday afternoon (they’re one of the earliest acts that day, so we’ll see how things go). But anyways, their newest material– particularly the highly up-tempo recent single, “Me & Me”– indicates that they definitely have what it takes to get the crowds at Grant Park (or just about anywhere) super pumped up.
:: “Talk To Me Nice” – Tinashe ::
Julia Dzurillay, New Jersey
Tinashe curates a specific aesthetic with her music, even expressing her disdain for limiting artists to one genre. (She claimed that, in doing so, it limits creative expression and freedom.) Influence from dance, R&B, pop, and hip hop are noticeably present in 2023’s “Talk To Me Nice.”
This is Tinashe’s first single in several months, perfectly ushering in a new era for the vocalist. It’s fresh and effortlessly cool. The vibes subtly change about halfway through, reflected in the lyrics.
“This a feeling that money can’t buy,” she sings. “Couldn’t be fake if I tried / Loyalty, what the money can’t buy / You only get one chance, only one try / I give you feelings money can’t buy / Couldn’t be fake if I tried / Loyalty, what the money can’t buy / You only get one chance, only one try.”
:: Cut Worms – Cut Worms ::
Ben Niesen, Pacific Northwest
There’s a very real simple appeal to this Cut Worms record: Sunny, summery melodies soundtracking music for your next young adult film. I can see it now: some podunk Texas town, featuring your standard clique of weirdos and bozos, all looking for something more in this life than God and Country. He’s always had a taste for Townes van Zandt, but this is outright Beach Boy buoyancy stuck in the panhandle.
Lovesick lyrics lilt against elegiac wont, introverted swoon tunes caught in the dreamtide for a social self. Max Clarke sings as if he took the step forward, leapt backwards and now rues his instincts in song. As if he wishes for the same pluck and strum in his light and breezy guitar. Take It And Smile” sings as much, taking a lazing organ melody and swishing chord progression to lament in laidback fashion:
“Can’t believe in nothin’ that I tell myself/
Can’t rely on the promise that it all will be well/
I wish that there was somethin’ I could say or do/
Doesn’t feel any better just to know it’s true/
And it gets worse all the while/
How can I just take it and smile?”
I mean god damn, Clarke. I’m not going to rest on some TikTok platitude (“he just like me, fr, fr” comes to mind), but I’ve met this guy before–no seriously, it happened at a King Tuff in concert at the Star Theater in downtown Portland–and this is the lyrical chops I’ve been waiting for; he’s always made likeable tunes, but this is a song that says, or at least, asks something worth asking. How do we just take it and smile? I’ll have to ponder that one, but the next time I see him in Portland, I’ll make sure to have an answer.
:: “Desert Rental Home” – Deidre & the Dark, Violet Sands ::
Mitch Mosk, New York
She may be Savoir Adore no more, but Deidre Muro can’t escape the haunting, hypnotic tones that have long defined her artistry. This holds especially true for “Desert Rental Home,” the dusty, cinematic, and all-consuming new song from Deidre & the Dark, Muro’s solo project, and Violet Sands, the trio comprised of Muro, Derek Muro, and David Perlick-Molinari (French Horn Rebellion).
This room is getting smaller every day
We eat where we work where we sleep where we play
I’m getting close to having to run away
Don’t know what’s beyond, it’s a chance I could take
But where would you want to be
If we could just break free
Released July 21, “Desert Rental Home” is an intoxicating immersion full of sonic heat: Spectacular vocal harmonies tickle the ears over a soundscape drenched in reverb, with light effects giving the guitars a light twang reminiscent of your favorite Spaghetti Westerns. Ethereal, dreamy, and beautifully dramatic, Muro and co’s performance is utterly, achingly enchanting.
As Muro explains, this is the only song she was able to write during the pandemic lockdown in 2020. “I was feeling very isolated at home with my 1 year-old son while David, my husband, kept our business afloat, working out of a makeshift bedroom studio, for most of the hours of most of the days,” she explains. “Delusion starts creeping in when you’re unsure how long this will be reality.”
Let’s take a vacation to a desert rental home
A modern one that we can make our own
For just a long weekend of space age domestic bliss
Just enough time to forget about all this
I’m not sure who I am anymore
The things I used to chase, they don’t thrill me anymore
I’ll show you pictures of the one I like
So just give me your card and I’ll book it tonight
Muro describes the song as a “grandiose fantasy” that grows out of a quiet, intimate space. Gentle hints of psychedelic wonder add to the magic as the single progresses, creating a cathartic, captivating “escapist dream.” Think The Flaming Lips meets Arctic Monkeys and Beach House: An astral haze engulfs the ears as we’re brought deeper into Muro’s sun-soaked fever dream. It’s beautifully unsettling, and yet, we can’t stop listening. “Desert Rental Home” is tranquil, soothing, and altogether irresistible.
Let’s take a vacation to a desert rental home
A modern one that we can make our own
For just a long weekend of space age domestic bliss
Just enough time to forget about all this
:: Come Over – Kowloon ::
Kendall Graham, Nantucket, MA
Lately I’ve been revisiting Kowloon’s 2021 debut album, Come Over. It’s pretty much been my summer soundtrack. Ever since the L.A.-based musician released his first single, “Wake Up” in 2020, I’ve been obsessed. The track is included on the album, and it sonically sums the album up perfectly: a bouncy but soft gem of pop music straddling the line between hope and listlessness amid a backdrop of mid-tempo dream pop and melancholy, groovy synth pop.
Whether it’s the warbling harmonies buoying “Hollywood is Under Water,” the breezy guitar licks of “Late Last Night,” and “Life in Japan,” the sunny synths of “Paradise,” or the thick basslines of “Walk With Me,” Kowloon succeeds in warring feelings of hopelessness, self-doubt, and wanderlust against a careful optimism, and a chafing desire to fall in love with someone in particular and nothing at all. It seems like he’s invariably edging away from one feeling, wary of any feeling of permanence, imagining it like a stasis needing to be rebelled against, in search of perpetual motion.
On Come Over, Kowloon expertly crafts a sense of modern romanticism, which is to define that romanticism as a bit detached, and concerned with a very individual method of expression. You can hear it in the timbre of his voice, and in the lingering ennui of his production. His music is at once colored in a bleak monochrome and bursting with muted neon light.
:: “Man of The House” – Marilyn Hucek ::
Kelly McCafferty, New Orleans
Marilyn Hucek is back with an incredible raw and honest performance in her new single, “Man of The House.”
In a stripped down performance highlighting Hucek’s vocals and emotion, she sings about love and loss and what grief looks like when you have to pick up the pieces that have been left behind.
For anyone experiencing a loss, this song will hit home. The full version comes out today, and we can’t wait to listen.
:: The Bathtime Tapes – Dean Stacy ::
Joe Beer, Surrey, UK
Dean Stacy demonstrates the power of isolation in his new EP, The Bathtime Tapes. The unique birth of this EP stems from the artist’s desperate need to lock himself away from any and all distractions in order to allow his mind to focus on creativity. So off he went, locking himself in a bathroom for a week straight, where he wrote, performed and recorded the entire EP. Over the seven tracks, it’s interesting to see where his mind wandered, as he delves into complex emotions and topics that may have been avoided had he been preoccupied with YouTube, video games and pornography – all things that he has admitted to taking up much of his time.
Stacy shares, “My writing is cynical, almost brutally so. All of these songs attack something whether it be myself, my audience, or modern America as a whole. The goal is to drag in all the cynics and misanthropes and convert them into emotionally intelligent, caring people. This is just the first step.”
The Bathtime Tapes is as weird and wacky as its conception. Knocking down typical genre walls, the artist blends them all together, creating something that he calls, “vile alternative, folksy, punk garbage.” Keeping audiences on their toes with each track, this EP is a fun, insightful and interesting listening experience.
:: “Oceans of Emotion” – Ronboy ::
Mitch Mosk, New York
One of the searing standout tracks from Ronboy’s 2022 independently-released debut album Pity to Love, “Oceans of Emotion” got its own re-released this past week, and we couldn’t be more grateful to rediscover this heated eruption. Churning synths and feverish guitars create a captivating backdrop, over which Ronboy (née Julia Laws) spills her soul with fiery passion:
Oceans of emotion let you down
Oceans of emotions watch you drown
Your light eyes ground me
Your lashes fluttering
I know you’re not listening
I know you’re not listening
I know you’re not –
“I was experimenting with some mean synth sounds when I came up with the lead synth-bass line,” Ronboy tells Atwood Magazine. “It was one of those “aha” moments. This was in the first wave of my more gritty sounding material. Honing in on the intensity was liberating, especially coming from making generally slower, soft-sounding music. I record my own vocals and, after a particular take, let out this guttural yell. Almost hesitantly, I sent the scream to Sam who processed it into this absolute rage of reverberation. It’s my favorite moment in the song.”
Heavy and uncompromising, “Oceans of Emotion” is an engulfing experience that promises to send shockwaves through the body. It’s an intense, cathartic journey to behold, and a perfect reintroduction to get audiences listening to Ronboy’s Pity to Love, a wondrous and hard-hitting record that beautifully blends the intimate with the intense.
So much latency
I won’t tell you everything
Oceans of emotion let you down
Oceans of emotions watch you drown
Your light eyes ground me
Your lashes fluttering
I know you’re not listening
I know you’re not listening
I know you’re no
:: “Witchez” – Nite Bjuti ::
Chloe Robinson, California
Nite Bjuti utilize raw, experimental sonics to craft their tantalizing track, “Witchez.” All about those legacies that are easily forgotten, the song stunningly illustrates the plight of medicine women, healers, and radical Black women throughout time. With profound storytelling atop intricately woven musical backdrops, the vibrant piece powerfully comes to life.
The Afro-Caribbean project consists of Candice Hoyes, Val Jeanty and Mimi Jones. These immensely gifted women design unique music that reaches down into the deepest part of your soul. With Haitian drums, bass and electro percussion, the threesome’s eccentric style truly sets them apart from the rest.
:: The Remixes – London Grammar ::
Ben Niesen, Pacific Northwest
It’s a shame how often remix albums are discarded as ancillary products. They are tangential to an artist’s oeuvre, no doubt, perhaps peripheral, but I hesitate to call them non-essential. A remix can often illuminates an otherwise overlooked or forgotten track to reignites an original affection. This such the case with London Grammar’s latest record compilation, The Remixes, aptly titled and featuring such heavy hitters as Disclosure, Flume, Bonobo, SebastiAn and goddard., among others and tracking at over an hour of raver’s paradise.
For my money however, the remix of the record is Henrik Schwarz’s rework of “Wasting My Young Years.” The original is a hauntingly sparse piano piece perfect for crying yourself to sleep after seeing London Grammar open for the xx on your birthday, striking out on a crush and then wondering if you’re just wasting your youth, rinse and repeat. But that’a different story for a different time. Hannah Reids vocal performance on the original leaves the vapors of notes outside the performative range. In other words, her voice sounds outside of itself. The refrain echoes and fills cavernous environs, as if recorded in a concert hall:
“I’m wasting my young years/
It doesn’t matter here/
I’m chasing more ideas/
It doesn’t matter here.”
Schwarz emphasizes this with phasing vocal samples, layering on top of each other as if blown through a box fan. A back-and-forth drum loop clocks the entire track. Her voice grows strong over fractured phrases of “baby” and “we are” before stopping on a singular piano stroke; Schwarz’s master stroke. He couches the piano in a several bar caesura and I can’t decide whether to dance or cry. So why not both?
:: “When You Went” – Deadbeat Girl ::
Mitch Mosk, New York
There’s a deep, dynamic fire burning in the depths of South Florida-born, New York-based Deadbeat Girl, and it all comes out in their smoldering and feverish new single, “When You Went.” From brooding, melancholic depths to the breathtaking UK garage beats that spark a fire in our hearts and drive the song forever forward, Deadbeat Girl demands our undivided attention. Wearing their heart on their sleeve, they sing of loss and longing; of solitude and emptiness; of the weight of absence on the heart and mind:
Don’t say you didn’t cry
Nothing here was cut and dry
Stolen lipgloss, purple skies
Don’t say you need a friend
You knew this was gunna end
What a waste the time we spent
Love it more if it is the wrong thing
Stuck inside a rock but it’s a soft place
When you went
Breathe it in even if it’s killing me
Should’ve been my rock but you’re the enemy
(Why’d you leave?)
“When I wrote this song, I was in the process of healing from a relationship in which I felt very betrayed and belittled,” Deadbeat Girl’s Val Olson explains. “I’ve come to realize that it’s okay to be upset about the things that you go through. It’s okay to take the time to really feel it and bask in it. I want people to find comfort in the music and scream along to if they’re going through something. ‘When You Went’ is definitely a song that you can let loose and dance to, as well as cry to.”
And I don’t need
Your sympathy
Feel deceived
While you just feel release
(Don’t say, Don’t say)
If this is what 2020s emo sounds like, then I’m all in. “When You Went” is an exhilarating fever dream: The kind of all-consuming immersion you have to experience for yourself in order to fully understand. Deadbeat Girl has captured our hearts with a cathartic, charged, and churning seduction of the soul.
Don’t say you didn’t cry
Nothing here was cut and dry
Stolen lipgloss, purple skies
Don’t say you need a friend
You knew this was gunna end
What a waste the time we spent
Love it more if it is the wrong thing
Stuck inside a rock but it’s a soft place
When you went
Breathe it in even if it’s killing me
Should’ve been my rock but you’re the enemy
:: “Serious” – Madilyn Bailey ::
Josh Weiner, Washington DC
Small-town Wisconsin native Madilyn Bailey has had some rough experiences over the past couple of years– three surgeries, 317 shots, and one failed IVF transfer among them— but it seems like the darkness has been conquered and some happier news is finally about to emerge. For one, she is now a mom-to-be, as announced on her Instagram page last month. And furthermore, after years of promo singles and cover songs, Bailey will finally be putting out her first studio album next month, entitled Hollywood Dead.
“Serious” is one of a trio of lead singles– “Doomsday in LA” and “Tattoos & Therapy” among them– that have been released from this album, and this one seems to have been inspired by her younger self, who may have been hesitant about entering a committed relationship at first but now has been solidly married for nine years to soon-to-be-dad James Benrud. Bailey recalls what it was like to once be somebody who was “nervous that a relationship will get in the way of their future plans but meets someone they just can’t stop thinking about… and this is a serious problem.”
This is the kind of person who, as she sings, “[makes] me feel like a fool, ‘cause [they] make me break all my rules.” Bailey herself evidently figured this one out, but perhaps there are some listeners out there in the earlier stages of romance for whom these lyrics could be a pretty handy instruction manual? In any case, the singer’s powerful vocals and lively pop production choices are sure to make a powerful impression on listeners of all stages of life.
:: “Killing It” – Elif Dame, GANZ ::
Joe Beer, Surrey, UK
Amsterdam based Elif Dame opens up about her journey with her mental health in her latest single “Killing It.” No stranger to being vulnerable with her listeners, her previous single “Celexa (Buy Me Time)” spoke about weighing up the pros and cons of going on medication. “Killing It” is the next chapter, where we hear the artist singing about being on medication and it starting to help her, but at the same time, battling her concerns about being on the edge of a manic episode. It’s raw, it’s real and for many, her music is very relatable.
Both tracks are off of her upcoming album, Securely Detached, which will dig deeper into these themes, whilst also seeing the artist finding empowerment in reclaiming her life. Dame confides, “It’s about reframing my co-dependent relationships and about my time on the waitlist to get mental health care. It’s about the important process of learning what it means to put yourself first.”
“Killing It” is a beautiful melting pot of Jazz and R&B influences, soul-drenched vocals and mesmerizing beats from fellow Amsterdam artist GANZ. This track is the perfect song to put on when you want a moment of self-love and self-care. You can’t help but sit back and indulge in her sweet, silky sounds.
:: “No Regrets” – Kat Hamilton ::
Chloe Robinson, California
Every relationship, good or bad, always has things that can be taken away from it. Even if it ends in complete destruction, at least it was a learning experience. Though we can feel some shame surrounding our past, do we ever truly have regrets? Kat Hamilton explores this concept of looking back at a partnership in “No Regrets.” With soft, airy vocals gliding atop delicate piano, that aching emotion is deeply felt. She passionately sings, “we were something dumb, we were something tragic, we were poison laced with a little bit of magic.” Those lines vividly express this idea of taking the ups with the downs.
Hamilton’s rare musical style knows no bounds, beautifully blending folk rock and pop. “No Regrets” is off of her five-track EP i wish this was a love story. The Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter takes you on a captivating expedition of heartbreak, desire and everything in between. It is easy to get lost in her rich, vulnerable nature.
:: “Try Me” – Merrick Winter ::
Mitch Mosk, New York
There’s an intimate ache at the heart of Merrick Winter’s latest single: A pain that no amount of comforting folk music can sugarcoat or cover up. The London-Los Angeles singer/songwriter and producer laments America’s gun violence epidemic in “Try Me,” a hushed and heartfelt reflection on the pain wrought to so many communities – including his own:
“‘Try Me’ is a song about the wave of successive school shootings that have swept across America since I was a child,” Winter shares. “So often the perpetrators are kids. Recently I discovered that a similar tragedy had happened in my hometown after I left, and suddenly the narrative became very real, very personal. It deeply affected my community, and really got under my skin. I wanted to write a song that explored how it might happen in any small town in America, but I wanted to do it with empathy – to just imagine for myself how it could have gone so wrong.”
“Trying hard to be silent, try to hold it in,” Winter sings as he attempts to understand the mind and perspective of someone who could perpetrate such violence. It’s a noble attempt at seeing things from the other side – even a side we might not want to hear from; a side we don’t think we could possibly understand.
And while it hurts to hear this song in its entirety, “Try Me” exists as a testament to all the preventable pain and suffering in our world, and all the loss we could have prevented with the proper healthcare services and gun laws.
:: “Running Cold” – Melotone ::
Mitch Mosk, New York
Jazzy and dreamy, “Running Cold” is warmer than its name suggests. The final song off Melotone’s recently-released four-track debut EP And… Beyond (July 21, 2023 via Think Twice Records) is a smoldering enchantment full of glistening guitars, brooding bass work, and richly emotive vocals:
I hate how long it takes, I hate how long it takes,
To be at borders with your skin, and let go,
A midnight interchange, I see myself refrain,
Like a body running cold, I crawl back home to your door.
Where the glass is full,
Where the glass is full,
Where the glass is full.
“Plucked from a place of fruitless infatuation, ‘Running Cold’ unpicks the fragility of seeking refuge in romantic memories,” Melotone frontman Alec Madeley explains. “Lyrically, the song centres on how we can quite easily distort the genuineness of these memories for our own comfort.”
The ache in Madeley’s performance melds into the charm of the band’s instrumental work, crafting a tune that feels as much like a moody lullaby as it does a daydream. Intimate and absorptive, this song proves an immersive, undeniable enchantment.
Caught your echo in the grass, before the words collapsed,
Down the centre of the plain, where your call rang out.
Tireless sirens in the foreground, push me back straight home to your door.
Where the glass is full,
Where the glass is full,
Where the glass is full.
I hate how long it takes,
I hate the way I break,
When confronted with your call,
When confronted with your call.
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