JAMILA WOODS ft. NONAME
Vry Blk ★★★★
Chicago native Jamila Woods is a musician, poet and activist, hitherto possibly best known for featuring on Macklemore's White Privilege II: a well-intentioned but toe-curling meditation on race relations released earlier this year. It is with a much surer hand that she returns to that topic, with dreamy, nursery-rhyme melodies concealing some very blunt words on the treatment of African-American males at the hands of the police. ("If I say that I can't breath / Will I become a white line?")
FRANCIS AND THE LIGHTS ft. BON IVER & KANYE WEST
Friends ★★★★
They'll be there for yooooou… Yes, the gang's all here. Jake Schrieier directed this minimalist, one-take music video. Francis Farewell Starlite brings the dance moves. Justin Vernon provides atmospherics and falsetto vocals. And Kanye just brings that dynamite smile.
TALOS
Your Love Is An Island ★★★★
"Your love is an island / I'm scorched in the sands of it…" This swoonsome new track from Cork singer-songwriter Eoin French's forthcoming O Sanctum EP was mixed and produced on location in Iceland. The burning sofa motif, meanwhile, is straight out of the Book of Exodus.
BRITNEY SPEARS ft. G-EAZY
Make Me… ★★★
RCA
Make Me… is a much-delayed, umpteenth comeback single, by a (sometimes) troubled former teen star, featuring a guest spot appearance from a rapper so non-descript he might have been assembled from parts found in a box marked Generic Guest Spot Rapper. So expectations aren't sky high. Yet, you'd have to say it's a pretty good song. And it is the pop superstar, rather than the own-brand rapper, who does the bulk of the heavy lifting. "It ain't a choice for you," purrs Britney. "You've got a job to do, I want you to raise my roof." Structural engineers, form an orderly queue.
