This Week’s Best New Songs Include a MN Superproducer Taking Center Stage and an Americana Hero Pretending to Be Someone Else

This week, I'd like to put a call out for terrible songs. I've passed over Katy Perry because the fish in that barrel are already plugged full of holes, but if music doesn't get worse soon I may have no other choice. Help!

Local Picks

Ant, “That Old Bongo Joint”
The Atmosphere producer is such an accommodating collaborator, it’s hardly surprising that he hasn’t released an album of instrumentals before now. And on our first taste of the upcoming A Collection of Sounds Vol. 1, he hardly leaps into the spotlight. On “Leather Soul,” the beat seems to defer to an imagined vocal rather than building as a standalone track. But “The Old Bongo Joint” is a straight-up funk jam, with a bit of “Zulu Nation Throwdown” sliced in for extra flavor.

Glamkama, “Trenchcoat Inhabitant”
Together producer Glam Toyota and rapper Gonkama are Glankama, and the former’s glitchy noise beats meld well with the latter’s abstract rhymes, which include references to “transhumanistic Congolese arithmetic” along with more quotidian needs like “send out burritos quick.” 

Good Doom, “A Powerful Hex”
This instrumental band considers themselves psych-rock, and fair enough, but that tag suggests an excess they’re too disciplined to topple into. A prominent guitar melody and a sturdy rhythm hold the title track from their latest album together.

Mati, “Poetic Flashbacks”
This Ethiopian-born singer/rapper has an album called Berhane’s Son due in August, and this advance track finds him at his introspective norm, looking for love in a world cheapened by percs and social media over a bed of electric piano. 

Sister Species, “Take Everything and Scatter It”
More precise chamber pop from this lush septet (I think I counted right—these big groups are tricky). “I would hold you if you want to be held/Like an insect in amber on my shelf,” Emily Kastrul promises, adding, “I would blame anyone but you.” Aw, that’s sweet of her. 

Non-Local Picks

Johnny Blue Skies, “Scooter Blues”
I’m mostly lukewarm on ol’ Sturgill Simpson, who's recording pseudonymously here for reasons that don’t especially interest me—his troubled baritone isn’t always a match for his conceptual ambitions. But this lazy shuffle about embracing island life not only rhymes “Eggos” with “steppin’ on Legos” and “hasta luego” with "where did he go" but dreams of being free to “lay on the beach till all my freckles connected.” Scootering away from your problems may not be the most adult thing to do, but it beats stewing in ’em.

Kim Deal, “Coast”
Deal's oblique travelogue of a miserable, reluctant stay in Nantucket and a wedding band’s version of “Margaritaville" pairs nicely with Simpson. As the horns of Mucca Pazza impersonate the most immobile marching band on record, Deal pledges to "abandon plans for the good times." Whatever some people say, she knows it’s her own damn fault.

Ice Spice feat. Central Cee, “Did It First”
She redefined rap slang during one of the more celebrated come ups in recent memory, but after a string of unenthusiastically received singles Ice’s stock seems poised to devalue faster than JD Vance’s. But here she leans on her strength—a monumentally playful pettiness—over one of those hooky, TikTok-quick RiotUSA tracks. Also glad for Central Cee to get a toehold in the U.S., if such borders matter in pop anymore.

Thurston Moore, “New in Town”
What is this, old folks’ week? Simmer down and just be glad I didn’t toss the new Pixies or Jane’s Addiction tracks in there. (Just kidding, I would never.) Like the Deal song, there’s a late-career modesty to this spare track, built from hand drums and stray atonal guitar, some of which resemble cicadas. And while hardly remaking his sound as drastically as his ex-wife has, there are some electronic noises too.

“DRUGS,” Joy Oladokun
This song is about how they don’t work, which (spoiler) they almost always eventually don’t. But for all her pitfalls (“my friends don’t call unless they need a ride,” for instance), Oladokun stays true to her (first) name, with amassed chorale voices behind her keeping it upbeat. 

Worst New Track

Halsey, “Lucky”
Britney has tactfully retracted her threat to sue over the video for this hodgepodge remake/tribute of her single, but that’s no reason for the rest of us to play nice. I'm generally pro-Halsey (despite her desire for music critics to be 9/11'd) but this is a misbegotten nod to the past that adds zip, with Monica's "Angel of Mine" tossed into the slop for good measure. The whole reason I started this feature was to make mean jokes, and this isn't even enjoyable to make fun of. We deserve better failures! 

Wanna get a local song considered for the playlist? To make things easy on both of us, email keith@racketmn.com with MONDAY PLAYLIST in the subject header. (Don’t, as in do NOT, DM or text: If I’m in a good mood, I’ll just ask you to send an email; if I’m in a bad mood I’ll just ignore it.)