NME Radio Roundup 10 January 2022: Father John Misty, Tierra Whack, Noel Gallagher and more

Tierra Whack ended her 2021 with a potent reminder of her skill and versatility: three EPs, dropped a week apart: ‘Rap?’, ‘Pop?’ and ‘R&B?’. The opening track of the last of these releases, ‘Heaven’, is anchored by a resonant chorus: “Heaven has all my favourite people / I wanna go there / And do a show there.” Though the Philadelphia rapper is best known for crafting colourful microuniverses, this sobering, emotive song ranks high in her discography. – Karen Gwee

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Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds are done with their next album, and ‘Trying To Find A World That’s Been And Gone’ is the first taste of it. Released while still a demo, this song could take a different shape in the future, but it already sounds complete, shifting easily from atmospheric to anthemic. – KG

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Waltz-ready ballad ‘Funny Girl’ is the first single from Father John Misty’s fifth album, ‘Chloë and the Next 20th Century’, out this April. Over lush woodwind and swooning strings, Josh Tillman sings wryly and romantically about a magnetic star and showbiz native who “knocked me out when you charmed the pants off Letterman”. – KG

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New York collective MICHELLE’s latest single ‘Expiration Date’ is full of deceptively simple melodies and perfectly judged sonic flourishes. The third single off the five-piece’s upcoming album ‘After Dinner We Talk Dreams’, ‘Expiration Date’ is about what happens when a romance comes to term – the loneliness that descends when the last embers go out. – KG

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Are you sick of hearing terms like ‘NFT’, ‘cryptocurrency’ or ‘the blockchain’? So are Alt-J on this song ‘Hard Drive Gold’. “Don’t be afraid to make money, boy,” they chant on this tongue-in-cheek track from their fourth album ‘The Dream’, out next month. – KG

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Go ‘Three Dimensions Deep’ with Amber Mark, who will release her debut album later this month. The R&B singer-songwriter channels some deep pain on new song ‘Most Men’, an expression of heartfelt empathy for other women who’ve been done wrong by players and trifling men. – KG

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With ‘Outlaw Love’ The Districts add more vivid brushstrokes to their ‘Great American Painting’, their fifth studio album out next month. Cherry Glazerr’s Clementine Creevy contributes backing vocals to this song, which singer/guitarist Rob Grote says “is about reassessing the past and realizing how much of your perception is colored by your particular set of experiences and beliefs”. – KG

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Weaving understated vocal melodies through Bonobo’s liquid production, Joji melds seamlessly into producer Simon Green’s sonic universe on ‘From You’. Making this song, the woozy final single from the latter’s new album ‘Fragments’ out this Friday, Green said, “I remembered all over again how much I loved crowds and movement and people connecting with each other.” – KG

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Big Thief’s upcoming album ‘Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You’ was recorded in four separate sessions in different places in the United States. The song ‘No Reason’ was created in the Colorado Rockies, and features mellifluous flute by the multi-instrumentalist Richard Hardy, whom the band sought out after they heard him playing in a nearby lookout tower. Another gorgeous track from a double album that’s no doubt full of them. – KG

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In December Sinai Vessel, aka the Nashville-based musician Caleb Cordes, dropped a preview of his fourth album in the form of five demos. They include the track ‘Best Witness’, a quietly gut-wrenching song about friendship and care. “Sweet brother, can I call you?” he asks in a particularly devastating verse. “I’m not doing well / Can you state the obvious? / Will you say you love me still?” – KG

Listen: Soundcloud

Looking forward to the Winter Games? No, not the Olympics in Beijing next month – we mean The Micronaut’s new album, ‘Olympia (Winter Games)’, which is itself a companion to 2021 full-length ‘Olympia (Summer Games)’. And as you may have guessed by now, every song on this chilly new record is named after a sport. ‘Curling’ features The Micronaut’s frequent collaborator Moritz Fasbender (billed as bernhardt). – KG

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On ‘Green Goddess’, the latest single from Sea Power’s upcoming album ‘Everything Was Forever’, Jan Scott Wilkinson and Martin Noble celebrate “everything green from the Lake District to the New Forest”. “The places I love to be which are quiet and restorative,” Wilkinson said in a statement on the song. “There are dark and complicated things going on but sometimes it is good to forget this and go to the places and where you are happy.” – KG

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Brighton five-piece Youth Sector fill their latest single ‘Is Blood’ with stirring post-punk guitar and effervescent synths – as well as an energetic critique of chest-thumping patriotism that ignores how empires are built on violence. Hear more from the art rockers when their new EP ‘Adult Contemporary’ drops February 18. – KG

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