Best New Tracks - Pitchfork

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A Sunny Day in Glasgow: "In Love With Useless (The Timeless Geometry In The Tradition Of Passing)" Posted: 08 Jan 2014 01:18 PM PST Over the span of three albums and several EPs, A Sunny Day in Glasgow have been just about the only 21st century band to do anything original within the realm of shoegaze. Their sound (and subsequent attempts to describe it) can be likened to trying to reconstruct your own dreams, though typically, ASDIG fashion ambient, dance music and dream-pop into an ecstatic whole that about defies category altogether. After a prolific four-year burst, the Philadelphia group had been silent since 2010's Autumn, Again. They recently teased that they were sitting on a new record, and finally, ASDIG reemerge with "In Love With Useless (The Timeless Geometry in the Tradition of Passing)." They've retained their proclivity for unwieldy, sardonic song titles, though the time off has invigorated them and lent a new sense of stakes to their music. The vocals have never been as clear, the production is considerably more streamlined. Though it forgoes a chorus in favor of fluid melodic phrases and Ben Daniels' warped sonics, a surprising overlay of a pitched-up hook and DJ cross-fade filters suggests these passionate introverts have gotten over their panic attacks. The one intelligible lyric—"I feel so happy, I'm in love with you"—express a sentiment that shoegaze and dance music always aspired to in their own ways, and while "In Love With Useless" isn't "club music" in practice, it's an ideal for people who are theoretically drawn to the community, if not so much the actual "dancing." A Sunny Day in Glasgow: "In Love With Useless (The Timeless Geometry In The Tradition Of Passing)" on SoundCloud.

Wild Beasts: "Wanderlust" Posted: 08 Jan 2014 10:21 AM PST Photo by Klaus Thymann As haunted coldwave synths and lo-fi drums echo throughout Wild Beasts' new single "Wanderlust", Hayden Thorpe introduces the band's first song in nearly three years by cooing, "We are decadent beyond our means." Makes sense: by 2011's Smother, Wild Beasts' sensuous art-funk had been pared down to such a pinpoint exactitude that anything short of an a cappella album would sound like a shift towards opulence. Wild Beasts have always involved themselves in all matters of lust and the opening track from their new LP Present Tense does sound like a return to the swinging, libertine lyricism of earlier singles like "All The King's Men" and "Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants", Thorpe defining the title by rhyming, "Where does the world feel voluptuous?" But that's all a feint for the subtle essentialism at work on this slow burner, where Wild Beasts rid themselves of their guitars and figuratively cut strings with a mantra of bristling minimalism: "Don't confuse me with someone who gives a fuck."