Listener’s Songs of the Week: New tracks by Queens of the Stone Age, U2, and more

by Queens of the Stone Age

This rather lovely, lovelorn, somewhat meandering and perhaps unexpectedly dialled-back song finds QOTSA winging it in the studio (this only the second take apparently) but then taking it briefly to the heights we would expect. This follows their very approachable Easy Street single, also on their forthcoming album Perfecth out October 30 which is neatly placed before their Auckland show at Spark Arena December 20. And that kids, is how you manage the career strategies. – Graham Reid

by U2

As the contribution to the forthcoming star-studded Shane MacGowan tribute album 20th Century Paddy, interestingly, U2 is not performing something earnest but a knockabout cover of the Pogues’ 1960s-ish soul-pop number that made a small dent in the US charts in 1988. Having Bono sing his most meaningless lyric is possibly what MacGowan would have wanted. – Russell Baillie

by Nick Ward

Young Aussie art-pop guy and multi-instrumentalist Nick Ward samples 20th century piano great Glenn Gould playing (and possibly humming to) J.S. Bach’s Goldberg variations in this sweetly manic number that seems something of Ward’s weird ode to the joys of playing piano itself. It’s from his forthcoming sophomore album on which Kody Nielson is a producer. – Russell Baillie

By Morning Silk, Alisa Xayalith

The Los Angeles-based former voice of The Naked and Famous, who released her debut solo album last year, gives New York pop-rock outfit Morning Silk a boost on the his-and-her vocals on this lush synthesizer-washed number. It’s one that wouldn’t have sounded out of place if it had turned up in a setlist by her old band. – Russell Baillie

by Jonathan Personne

Anyone looking for something a little different may well find it on this dream pop-cum-synthscape song which glistens and glows quietly, the kind of thing you want in the headphones as you walk by a lake on a warm day in early spring. Personne out of Montreal – the singer/guitarist in Canada’s Corridor band, signed to Sub Pop – was behind the earlier bass-funk Rêve américain single and this is another announcement of his solo album Répertoire out now. If it’s cool and French, you want out of a newly designated enemy of the United States then here’s le fix pour vous avec un video très cute. – Graham Reid

by Stef Chura

Detroit’s Stef Chura does nothing especially original on this third single in advance of her third album Dancing Alone on the Concrete (out October 2), but she does it so well. Here channelling something between 1960s girl groups, Genya Ravan (of Goldie and the Gingerbreads and a respectable solo career in rock with Ten Wheel Drive) and Blondie, Chura delivers enjoyable dance-pop with an aching lyric, a trashy sentiment and half of R.E.M. (Peter Buck, Mike Mills) backing her up. And they don’t get out bed for just anyone. Turn this and the collar of your leather jacket up and dance. – Graham Reid

by Karleshia

If anyone can sing “don’t tell me how to live” it is this Ōtautahi Christchurch artist who was formerly a worship leader but came out as gay and that was the end of that career path in the church. This song – his first music in seven years – is given a soaring and traumatic delivery and the lyrics tell of the interior emotions as much as outlining what he went through: “They said pray a little harder. I didn’t know any better”. The song’s title also embodies a torn dichotomy, and the forthcoming EP (out October 30) is Church Trauma. It might sound like song as therapy, but Holy Low is undeniably moving and powerful. We’ll see if the sentiments can command a whole collection of songs. – Graham Reid

by SorchaLula featuring Merlin Webster

Here’s the single with a subtle sound you immediately want over a whole album. Wellington DJ SorchaLula – Katie Louise Martin, we believe, described everywhere in a quote from her bio as “mysterious, mercurial and multi-faceted” – is originally from the Isle of Man (that much we did find out). Here she offers a scratchy, supple, bass and drum-driven slice of deep house-cum-reggae which leans into dub. With guitarist Merlin Webster – aka Tim Webster of Newtown Rocksteady – providing the fluid melodic hook this is an impressive debut which lands somewhere between laidback and a reggae lope. An EP is promised but meantime here’s a five minute instrumental you wish would play on even longer as it renders you horizontal. – Graham Reid

by Cindy

Clearly this Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland four-piece didn’t get the Spotify memo which says get to the point within 10 seconds or listeners will move on. To their credit, this garage rock band weave their way lazily into this multi-part song with a full minute of soft instrumental passages before singer Gloria Florence’s slow and echoed vocal enters. And it’s another minute before the hailstorm of guitars arrive for a while, then the song winds back down again. And then … This is a brave but very appealing single in the current climate of short attention span songs and apparently it closes their album The Way I Do out September 4. We’re guessing their previous trashy, thrashy single Sunsets Don’t Excite Me is more typical of the album and what they’ll deliver on their month-long national tour. – Graham Reid

By Konstanty Andrzej Kulka violin, Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, Kazimierz Kord conductor

Mieczysław Karłowicz was a colourful harmonist and a superb orchestrator in the late-Romantic style, as this sprightly violin concerto, which had its premiere with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1903, shows. However, we rarely hear his music today. That’s the result of two things. First, there’s so little of it. His entire oeuvre reaches only 14 opus numbers, comprising songs, 10 orchestral works and a sole piano piece. Second, and relatedly, he died young. Karłowicz was just 32 when he was killed in an avalanche while skiing. He left his entire estate to the Polish Music Society, where he’d been a director. – Richard Betts