Fresh Bake Column: This week’s best music releases

Christopher Rodriguez/Staff Writer

The second week of February had much to offer including a playful take on Valentine’s Day blues, a veteran band nearly falling asleep at the wheel and an Atlanta rapper looking for his place in the burgeoning trap scene.

Here are the noteworthy releases that should be added to your playlists.

1. Thundercat- “Friend Zone”

Thundercat may have always seemed the traditionalist in a typically wonky scene of L.A. beatmakers, adding his bass guitar wizardry on the sidelines of songs by the likes of Flying Lotus and Kendrick Lamar. But on the latest single from his upcoming album “Drunk,” he seems determined not be taken seriously.

Over a loose funk-inspired number with wobbly basslines and frantic keys provided by frequent collaborator Mono/Poly, Thundercat tells his significant other not to call him and that he’d “rather play Mortal Kombat anyway.” He even borrows a certain Lamar lyric to emphasize his need for space. The tongue-in-cheek affair is only bolstered by the fact that it was released on Valentine’s Day.

2. Little Dragon- “High”

On her first release since 2014, singer Yukimi Nagano gets the band back together for more of the R&B-inspired electro-soul we’ve come to expect from a Little Dragon release.

The song drifts down softly with ambient bass and a faraway electronic whirr that sounds like a satellite signal. Nagano offers up her fantasy as if whispering in a lover’s ear “Over the North Star/Sleepless so far/Together we are,” her vocals often blurred at the edges as she floats over the affair. By song’s end, she escapes us entirely as the repeated “high” slowly fades away.

3. Bernice- “Don’t Wanna Be European”

Bernice, the project of Toronto based producer Robin Dann, releases this first single from an upcoming concept album that revolves around the friendship between a girl and a bear. In the midst of bubbly electronic textures, Dann sings about loneliness as the world comes in around her.

“Don’t send the guns after me,” she pleads, later adding “I don’t wanna be anywhere else.” Her voice comes through in layers, a reflection of the two characters she inhabits. Just as the production begins to surrender to interruptions of white noise, she switches perspectives.

“I wanna be the kids making out under the moon who got only love in mind” reflecting a deep-seated human desire that rises above the song’s occasionally head-scratching concept.

4. Father- “Hands”

“Hands” opens up what may very well be a busy year for Atlanta rapper Father. A figure from the more surrealistic leanings of the trap genre that bred contemporaries ILoveMakonnen and Key!, Father opens with a disarmingly simple repetitive approach.

“Hands on sight, on sight” he lazily raps, nonchalantly calling out haters over the spare electro inspired beat. He breaks into a spitfire delivery in the second and third verses, throwing out confident and deceptively witty one-liners that merit a chuckle  (“I’m the star/ This is your favorite show/TV on the radio.”).

With this and other upcoming releases, Father looks to set himself up as the leftfield figure we need in the exploding Atlanta trap scene.

5. Jesus and Mary Chain- “Always Sad”

The second single from their upcoming album Damage And Joy (their first in 19 years),  the Scottish dream pop forefathers are still brooding, but ever more self-conscious.  Within the swirl of hazy guitars, lead singer Jim Reid sounds as detached as ever when he says with a sigh “Guess I’m always sad.”

Reid is balanced out when he is joined by guest vocalist Bernadette Denning who channels a languid teenage fantasy (“You ain’t like those other guys.”) The duet is reminiscent of their 1994 Hope Sandoval collab “Sometimes Always”, but here, Denning and Reid lack the urgency that made the other rise above its simplicity. While the band still sounds cohesive as a unit, the tongue-in-cheek intention doesn’t always stick.

Fresh Bake is a weekly column that reviews new music   releases in various genres. Christopher Rodriguez also hosts a weekly  radio show on The Roar, where he plays latest releases.