Ear Worms

A whistle stop post, with four songs that have grabbed my attention this month.

Marina (Diamandis, that is) releases 6th album Princess Of Power on 6th June. The third pre-release single is Cuntissimo, with a lavish video, a lyrical focus on female empowerment and hooks aplenty, even if mainstream daytime radio play is a non-starter. I've been a fan since her beginnings as Marina & The Diamonds, and this is great stuff.

SAULT dropped their latest album at the weekend, with little fanfare, although it apparently snuck out briefly on Spotify and was pulled, before officially reappearing on Saturday. In that short time, all of the song titles have also been reduced to acronyms. So, this is a smooth, Cleo Sol-fronted track called K.T.Y.W.S., previously named Know That You Will Survive. 

Easter Sunday saw another very welcome new release, with Jesse Fahnestock confounding expectations with 10:40 Presents Retro Fit. The 3-track single, An Alternative History, was inspired by Swiss Adam over at Bagging Area, who wrote a brilliant and fascinating post last year, imagining a divergent timeline for The Stone Roses. Jesse took that concept and has created a song that could have been, fashioning two further versions that stretch the concept whilst remaining tantalisingly within the realms of plausibility. Read about it here. Adam and Jesse, I salute you!

Last stop is Senegal-based artist Cheikh Ibra Fam's new single Xam Xam, which is "Infused with the hypnotic pulse of Caribbean zouk and Angolan kizomba, the ethereal strings of the kora, and the soul of West Africa". Fair to say that this would also sit very comfortably on an Ibiza playlist and brought a little promise of summer to a weekend at Casa K that veered wildly from sunshine to continual rain.

Xam Xam is described as "a call to embrace knowledge as the most valuable treasure of all" and, true to his word, Cheikh Ibra Fam is seen on several occasions in the video in a library and reading a book. "Libraries gave us power!" as James Dean Bradfield once sang, and he wasn't wrong.