The Best Five Songs Released This Past Week, Pt. 25

Happy Sunday! There are a lot of new releases worth checking out from this past week. Take a look below!

Noteworthy album & EP releases:

eat ya veggies, bbno$
A World Gone By, Blake Rose
Del Water Gap, Del Water Gap
Friends That Break Your Heart, James Blake
Girls In Purgatory, Julia Wolf
Mercurial World, Magdalena Bay
A Pillar Of Salt, Noah Gundersen
22 Break, Oh Wonder
Seventeen Going Under, Sam Fender
Lady Jesus, Upsahl

In chronological order:

“Working For the Knife” – Mitski
Release date – October 5

Mitski is BACK, baby! It’s hard to believe that Be The Cowboy is over three years at this point, and many fans were speculating this past week if Mitski was going to release something soon, considering she reactivated her social media accounts.

“Working For The Knife” is pretty similar to what we heard on Be The Cowboy, so I’m very curious to see if that sound is what we’re going to get more of when she does eventually release another album, or if we will get a sonic shift. Mitski describes the song’s subject matter in a press release, stating that “It’s about going from being a kid with a dream, to a grown up with a job, and feeling that somewhere along the way you got left behind. It’s being confronted with a world that doesn’t seem to recognize your humanity, and seeing no way out of it.”

“Nikes” – Julia Wolf
Release date – October 7

Earlier this year, we interviewed Julia Wolf about her sister tracks, “RBF: Part 1” and “Resting B*tch Face: Part 2.” This time around, Wolf is back with her debut EP: Girls In Purgatory. The track “Nikes” is definitely my favorite of the non singles: like I said when I wrote about RBF 1 & 2, the way that she writes lyrics as well as sing them feels like she’s improvising, which is something I find to be really interesting and a quality that’s very R&B-esque that isn’t a popular technique in pop music at the moment (at least not that I can think of).

We’ll be reviewing Julia’s new EP soon – check it out here in the meantime.

“girls girls girls” – Fletcher
Release date – October 8

Twelve years ago (wtf), a little known pop star by the name Katy Perry dropped a song called “I Kissed A Girl,” and the world was set on fire. Suburban moms didn’t want their kids listening to it, and members of the LGTBQ community felt like it was “an appropriation of the gay lifestyle [that] exists for the sole purpose of garnering attention” (Slant Magazine).

The song’s cultural impact has returned to the current pop music climate, this time being sampled in 27-year-old Fletcher’s newest single, “Girls Girls Girls.” Not only is interesting to see an artist, who is openly Queer, reimagine the once very controversial track for reasons I mentioned above, but also because the Perry track, which is sampled in the chorus of “Girls Girls Girls,” was cowritten by Lukasz Gottwald, otherwise known as Dr. Luke.

Regardless, I will be super curious to see if this song picks up some steam in a way that most of Fletcher’s music hasn’t—particularly getting radio play.

“Coming Back” – James Blake ft. SZA
Release date – October 8

I honestly think I would have been shocked if I didn’t like a song between James Blake and SZA (where’s the album, girl?). This is the only song I’ve heard off the new album (besides the previously released singles), and it reminds me a lot of his music on Assume Form, one of my favorite albums of 2018, so I have a feeling I’m going to enjoy this album, too.

I now realize that this song is one that Jameela Jamil, who is also Blake’s girlfriend, has a producing and songwriting credit on, which has created quite the (unnecessary) drama on the internet.

“Atlantis” – Noah Gundersen ft. Phoebe Bridgers
Release date – October 8

I was doing my ritual New Music Friday listening and realized that Phoebe was a feature on this song before I had looked at the title and artist info. Gotta love being surprised by things like that! Noah Gundersen is an artist whose name I’ve heard around quite a bit, but hadn’t remembered to listen to, so I’m glad that my first experience hearing his music was hearing a song with Bridgers.

Their voices work seamlessly together on the track: it’s a really nice melody that I think adds a lot to the song. Not that I wouldn’t have liked it if it wasn’t for the feature, but I think it kept my attention once I realized that another voice was being introduced during the song.

Noah’s new album A Pillar of Salt is out now.