SUNDAY: Hinds
I’m still not sure what made her want to dance like that on “Saturday Night Live.” But hopefully the feeling’s passed, because the songs I’ve heard so far from her new album, “Melodrama,” have already made it clear that 2013’s “Pure Heroine,” the singer’s platinum debut, was no fluke (especially “Liability,” a Bowiesque piano ballad that feels like a page being torn from a diary in a really vulnerable moment). Lorde was all of 17 when “Royals” spent nine weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100, selling 7.5 million copies worldwide. And she scored a second multi-platinum U.S. hit with “Team” from that same debut album.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ THE SMALL PRINT
We all know punk’s not dead, but it can’t hurt to prove it as conclusively as these Rhode Island upstarts (led by Victoria Ruiz on vocals) have done with conviction to spare on “Somos Chula (No Somos Pendejas),” which translates, I am told, as “We are beautiful (We are not stupid).” When they shared the track on Facebook, they called it “a declaration of one’s ability to decolonize one’s mind, and the importance of fearlessly unlearning the ways white supremacy conditions people to think and exist.” It’s the sort of sentiment that was made to be expressed in the universal language of punk. And they express it well, as they did on a 2015 debut hailed in NME as “a joyous surge of drums, guitars, wild brass and potent Spanish-English vocals.”
These young Spanish women are touring the States in continued support of a charming debut titled “Leave Me Alone,” which would be difficult to leave alone because the songs are too contagious towalk away from. Guitar-playing vocalist Ana Perrote and Carlotta Cosials sing with personality to spare, their voices intertwining without any sense that they even tried to match each other’s phrasing. It’s the kind of sloppy that’s too often missing – or forced – when people try to make garage-rock records. This is imperfectly imperfect and blessed with indelible pop hooks. No wonder the Skinny declared it “the peppiest, jauntiest, most charismatic debut you’ll likely find in the next 12 months.”