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Sep 27, 2024 By Mark Redfern (with Andy Von Pip)

Welcome to the 31st Songs of the Week of 2024. This week Andy Von Pip, Caleb Campbell, Matt the Raven, and Scotty Dransfield helped me decide what should make the list. We considered over 20 songs and narrowed it down to a Top 10.

Issue 73 is out now. It features Maya Hawke and Nilüfer Yanya on the two covers and can be bought from us directly here.

In recent weeks we posted interviews with Nada Surf, Hinds, Oceanator, La Luz, Hamish Hawk, “Weird Al” Yankovic, and more.

In the last week we reviewed some albums.

To help you sort through the multitude of fresh songs released in the last week, we have picked the 10 best the last seven days had to offer, followed by some honorable mentions. Check out the full list below.

1. The Cure: “Alone”

There was really no other choice for #1 song of the week. Yesterday, The Cure shared “Alone,” which is the lead single from their forthcoming new album, Songs of a Lost World, which will be the iconic band’s first studio album in 16 years. Songs of a Lost World is due out November 1 on Fiction/Capitol.

The Cure’s frontman Robert Smith had this to say about “Alone” in a press release: “It’s the track that unlocked the record; as soon as we had that piece of music recorded I knew it was the opening song, and I felt the whole album come into focus. I had been struggling to find the right opening line for the right opening song for a while, working with the simple idea of ‘being alone,’ always in the back of my mind this nagging feeling that I already knew what the opening line should be…as soon as we finished recording I remembered the poem ‘Dregs’ by the English poet Ernest Dowson…and that was the moment when I knew the song—and the album—were real.”

Smith wrote and arranged all the songs on Songs of a Lost World. He produced and mixed the album with Paul Corkett. The Cure’s current lineup on the album is: Robert Smith (voice/guitar/6 string bass/keyboard), Simon Gallup (bass), Jason Cooper (drums/percussion), Roger O’Donnell (keyboard), and Reeves Gabrels (guitar). Songs of a Lost World was recorded at Rockfield Studios in Wales.

The album cover features “Bagatelle,” a 1975 sculpture by Janez Pirnat, and was designed by longtime Cure collaborator Andy Vella (from a concept by Smith). The album’s tracklist is yet to be revealed.

The Cure’s last studio album was 2008’s 4:13 Dream and Songs of a Lost World has long been in the works and teased for release several times over the years. In recent weeks the band have sent out postcards to fans to tease album, as well as updating their social media channels, launching a mysterious new website (www.songsofalost.world), and even putting up a flyer promoting the album in a pub in Crawley, the town where The Cure formed in 1978.

Since 4:13 Dream, the band have continued to tour. In 2021 Smith collaborated with the Scottish band CHVRCHES on their song “How Not to Drown.” In 2020 he collaborated with Gorillaz on the song “Strange Timez.” In 2019 The Cure were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Read our 40th anniversary appreciation article on The Cure’s 1982 album Pornography. By Mark Redfern

2. Laura Marling: “Child of Mine”

British folk singer/songwriter Laura Marling is releasing a new album, Patterns in Repeat, on October 25 via Chrysalis/Partisan. This week she shared its third single, “Child of Mine.” The album-opener is an ode to her daughter.

In a press release, Marling says the song was written whilst “bouncing my daughter in her bouncer when she was four weeks old. I hadn’t sat down to write. It’d been a while since I’d picked up the guitar, just to pass the time, so maybe that did the trick. I wrote the lullaby soon after and thought, ‘OK, maybe I could make a record this year.’”

Previously she shared the album’s first single, “Patterns,” which made our Songs of the Week list. Then she shared its second single, “No One’s Gonna Love You Like I Can,” which also landed on Songs of the Week.

Patterns in Repeat is Marling’s eighth studio album in her solo career, which follows her pandemic release, 2020’s Song For Our Daughter. Her side project LUMP, released Animal in 2021.

Of the new record, Marling had this to say in a previous press release: “Over the course of nine months, I had happily prepared myself for the fact that my life as a songwriter would be put on hold while I adjusted to life as a new parent. How delighted then was I to discover that for the first few months of a baby’s life, you can bounce them in a bouncer and play guitar all day. For the first time in my life, I was able to gaze into another human’s eyes as I wrote. Of course, new parents feel like they discovered that feeling—one of the very finest that life has to offer, of looking into the eyes of your child and feeling the enormity of the picture as a whole, the enormity of a precarious life, celestial, fragile and extraordinary, taking its place among the comparatively banal constellation of a family. This banal constellation seems to have dominated the writing of Patterns in Repeat—the drama of the domestic sphere, the frail threads that bind a family together, the good intentions we hold onto for our progeny and the many and various ways they get lost in time. So much complexity in the banal, the caged, the everyday.

“Being as I am, 34 years old, now 15 years and 8 albums into a life in song, I am unable to escape the fact that each record has served as a time-stamped chapter of my life (though some have appeared more a premonition). Now, here we are, following a youth spent desperately trying to understand what it is to be a woman, I am at the brow of the hill, with an entirely new and enormous perspective surrounding me.”

Read our 2021 interview with LUMP.

Read our 2018 interview with LUMP.

Read our 2015 interview with Laura Marling.

Read our 2013 interview with Laura Marling. By Mark Redfern

3. Silverbacks: “Giving Away an Inch Of”

Dublin six-piece Silverbacks are releasing their third album, Easy Being a Winner, on October 18 via Central Tones / Cargo. Now they have shared another new song from it, “Giving Away an Inch Of.”

Vocalist Kilian O’Kelly had this to say about the song in a press release: “This one is a love song and mostly about the balance of relationships. The main idea was that one of the lovers was going to be pleading for a little bit more compromise from their other half. I wanted to have lots of ties to nature too and I think Nick Cave’s version of ‘nature boy’ played a part there. Emma and I now have a garden in Drogheda, and with it has come a newfound interest in plants! Red hot pokers are probably one of our favorites. I always like it when human emotions are conveyed by the natural world. The delivery of red hot pokers coming out of the chorus is inspired by Elvis’s ‘Poke-Salad-Annie’ performance in Vegas.”

Silverbacks’ complete lineup is Daniel O’Kelly (vocals/guitar), Kilian O’Kelly (guitar/vocals), Emma Hanlon (vocals/bass), Paul Leamy (bass), Peadar Kearney (guitar), and Gary Wickham (drums).

The album includes “Selling Shovels,” which the band released in July and was chosen as one of our Songs of the Week. When the album was announced the band shared “Something I Know,” also one of our Songs of the Week.

Easy Being a Winner follows the band’s 2022 album Archive Material and their 2020 debut album, Fad.

Read our 2020 The End interview with Silverbacks. By Mark Redfern

4. Primal Scream: “Ready to Go Home”

Primal Scream are releasing their first new album in eight years, Come Ahead, on November 8 via BMG. This week they shared two more songs from the album, “Ready to Go Home” and “The Centre Cannot Hold.” The former was shared via a music video directed by Jim Lambie and Alex James-Aylin and makes this week’s list.

Frontman Bobby Gillespie had this to say about “Ready to Go Home” on Instagram: “After I wrote it, I sang it to my dad the night before he died. It was just me and him in the hospital. His body had given up. I think, when you get old and tired and your body just goes, ‘I’ve had enough. Time to go.’ I was trying to write about that feeling, I don’t know why—maybe I was feeling tired myself. Sometimes I do. When I wrote this song I was thinking, ‘There must be a point in your life where you think, time to go home.’”

Previously, the Scottish band shared Come Ahead’s first single, “Love Insurrection,” which was one of our Songs of the Week. Then they shared its second single, the protest song “Deep Dark Waters,” which was also one of our Songs of the Week.

Gillespie had this to say about the album in a previous press release: “I’m very excited about this album in a way that you would be making your first record. If there was an overall theme to Come Ahead it might be one of conflict, whether inner or outer. There is also a thread of compassion running through the album. The title is a Glaswegian term. If someone threatens to fight you, you say, ‘come ahead!’ It’s redolent of the indomitable spirit of the Glaswegian, and the album itself shares that aggressive attitude and confidence. They have a word for this up there, gallus. Come Ahead’s quite a cheeky title too.”

Gillespie added: “There is a message of hope in the record, but it’s tempered with an acceptance of the worst side of human nature.”

Come Ahead is the band’s 12th full length record and follows 2016’s Chaosmosis.

Read our 2016 interview with Primal Scream.

Read our 2013 interview with Primal Scream. By Mark Redfern

5. Divorce: “All My Freaks”

This week, Nottingham quartet Divorce released their latest single, “All My Freaks,” the lead track from their debut album Drive to Goldenhammer, due for release on March 7, 2025 via Gravity/Capitol.

“All My Freaks” aims to skewer the ego of the music industry with its vibrant synths, catchy riffs, and a dash of British irreverence. Speaking on the single, lead vocalist Tiger Cohen-Towell explains: “It’s a humorous/tragic caricature of an up-and-coming artist. The song laughs at our own egos, yet acknowledges the power they wield. We wanted this track to kick off the album because it feels like we’re straddling our jet skis and crossing the ocean of delusion, hoping to land on the isle of public approval.”

Divorce’s debut album was recorded over four seasonal sessions at a remote Yorkshire outpost and brought to life with producer Catherine Marks (known for work with boygenius and Wolf Alice). Drive to Goldenhammer is set to blend country, indie-rock, folk, and chamber pop influences, and the band who are known for their eclectic sound and refusal to be boxed into a single genre, promise to offer a sonically rich and lyrically heartfelt exploration of upheaval, identity, and transformation. By Andy Von Pip

6. Mediocre: “I Might Be Giant”

7. SASAMI: “Slugger”

8. SPRINTS: “Feast”

9. Samantha Crain: “Dragonfly”

10. Wild Pink: “Dulling the Horns”

Honorable Mentions:

These songs almost made the Top 10.

Amyl and The Sniffers: “Big Dreams”

Naima Bock: “Moving”

High.: “In a Hole”

Hildegard: “Cruel”

Tess Parks: “California’s Dreaming”

Trauma Ray: “Spectre”

Here’s a handy Spotify playlist featuring the Top 10 in order, followed by all the honorable mentions:

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