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Oct 11, 2024 By Mark Redfern (with Caleb Campbell)

Welcome to the 33rd Songs of the Week of 2024.This week Andy Von Pip, Caleb Campbell, Mark Moody, Scotty Dransfield, and Stephen Humphries helped me decide what should make the list. It wasn’t the most inspiring week for new tracks, so we considered over 20 songs and narrowed it down to a Top 8.

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 Sophie Thatcher, Crows, Nada Surf, Hinds, Oceanator, 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 8 best the last seven days had to offer, followed by some honorable mentions. Check out the full list below.

1. The Cure: “A Fragile Thing”

The Cure are releasing a new album, Songs of a Lost World, on November 1 on Fiction/Capitol. This week they released the album’s second single, “A Fragile Thing.”

Songs of a Lost World will be the iconic band’s first studio album in 16 years. Previously the band shared its first single, “Alone,” which is was also #1 on our Songs of the Week. “A Fragile Thing” isn’t as strong a single, but in a weak week for new tracks it easily landed at #1 again.

The Cure’s frontman Robert Smith had this to say about the new single in a press release: “‘A Fragile Thing’ is driven by the difficulties we face in choosing between mutually exclusive needs and how we deal with the futile regret that can follow these choices, however sure we are that the right choices have been made…it can often be very hard to be the person that you really need to be.”

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 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. Ekko Astral: “Pomegranate Tree”

Washington, D.C. punk band Ekko Astral drew critical acclaim earlier this year with their debut album pink balloons. Billed by the band as a “mascara mosh pit,” the record was sprawling, noisy, and confrontational, but also was deeply personal to the band. They first got their start partly as guitarist Liam Hughes’s graduate thesis and partly as a place for frontwoman Jael Holzman to vent her frustrations. The record was a work of anxiety, fury, and unity, with many of its best moments coming as the band blazes in ecstatic collective catharsis. “We’ve got solidarity with all the missing murdered people,” Holzman declares on “Devorah.”

To that end, the band have been speaking out over the past year about the mass death and displacement inflicted on the Palestinian people. Both Holtzman and drummer Miri Tyler are Jewish women and they’ve watched as the death toll in Gaza has continued to mount and the violence has steadily escalated into the West Bank and Lebanon. Earlier this summer, they released “Holocaust Remembrance Day,” a stirring protest folk effort that reflected on a series of formative experiences Holzman went through as an American Jewish person. The band released the track via Bandcamp and donated the proceeds to Gazan families in crisis.

This week, they were back with another new single, “Pomegranate Tree.” In contrast to the previous single’s sparse approach, “Pomegranate Tree” is a tumultuous desert rock expanse, dotted with caustic guitar tones and discordant textures. The track unfurls slowly, opening on an ominous drum and bass groove before filling out with twinkling keys, droning guitars, and a searing refrain: “Nothing is the same as it was.”

Initially, the lyrics wrestle with the death and destruction in Palestine, as well as the helplessness and fury of watching it unfold. Holzman confesses, “I’m losing all my friends/My melatonin’s not enough/I’ll never sleep again/The violins won’t end/My melatonin is a burning refugee/Under pomegranate tree.” However, the track’s most explosive moment comes as the band turns toward DC, taking aim at the inaction from the beltway in the track’s climactic rallying cry: “THE DISTRICT SLEEPS ATONED TONIGHT.”

Tyler explains of the track, “It’s exhaustingly heartbreaking to watch a symbol of your childhood community transform into a symbol for genocide, or to watch people you used to respect defend the actions of an extremist right-wing government. Jael and I grew up Jewish in America. We were taught we had a “homeland” that we had an obligation to. We were *not* taught about the human beings that lived there prior. We were taught to celebrate victories. We were taught simply that they hated us. We were taught that this violence was righteous. But there is no such thing as righteous genocide, and experts around the world agree– including Jewish survivors of the Holocaust –the violence being carried out by the IOF is indeed genocidal. And the fact that these atrocities are being carried out in the name of our faith, culture, and community– well, it’s enough to keep us up at night.” By Caleb Campbell

3. Rose City Band: “Lights on the Way”

This week, Rose City Band announced a new album, Sol Y Sombra, and shared its first single, “Lights on the Way.” They also announced some North American tour dates. Sol Y Sombra is due out January 24, 2025 via Thrill Jockey. Check out the album’s tracklist and cover artwork, as well as the band’s upcoming tour dates, here.

The band features guitarist/vocalist Ripley Johnson, pedal steel guitarist Barry Walker, keyboardist Paul Hasenberg, and drummer John Jeffrey.

“With Rose City Band, I’m generally trying to make uplifting music, good time music,” says Johnson in a press release. “This time I couldn’t avoid the shadow being more of a presence. There’s no getting away from it. The shadow is always there. So, I left it in.” By Mark Redfern

4. Youth Lagoon: “My Beautiful Girl”

This week, Youth Lagoon (aka Trevor Powers) shared a new song, “My Beautiful Girl.”

“Songwriting just feels like receiving messages from a portal and transcribing them,” says Powers in a press release. “Some nights I’ll wake up at 3 AM and words feel like they’re bludgeoning my skull with a baseball bat. Most times, I don’t even know what they mean. I don’t think I’m supposed to. It’s only my job to listen, be constant, and write them down. And if I’m not a faithful steward of that job, those words will find someone else who is.”

“My Beautiful Girl” follows another new song, “Lucy Takes a Picture,” Youth Lagoon shared in May (it was one of our Songs of the Week) and “Football,” a new song Youth Lagoon shared in January that was also one of our Songs of the Week.

After releasing two albums under his given name, last year Powers revived his Youth Lagoon moniker and released a new album under that name, Heaven Is a Junkyard, in June 2023 via Fat Possum.

Read our 2011 interview with Youth Lagoon.

Read our 2015 interview with Youth Lagoon.

Read our 2023 interview with Youth Lagoon. By Mark Redfern

5. Kim Gordon: “Bangin’ on the Freeway”

6. Shower Curtain: “you’re like me”

7. Tunng: “Didn’t Know Why”

8. Yukimi: “Break Me Down”

Honorable Mentions:

These songs almost made the Top 8.

Alice Costelloe: “My Whole Life”

Kim Deal: “A Good Time Pushed”

Du Blonde: “Next Big Thing” (Feat. Skin)

Her New Knife: “purepurepure”

Elias Rønnenfelt: “Soldier Song”

Vundabar: “Life is a Movie”

White Denim: “Second Dimension”

Here’s a handy Spotify playlist featuring the Top 8 in order, followed by all the honorable mentions:

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