5 songs you need to hear this week

Every Thursday, the Paste staff and contributors will choose their five favorite songs of the week, awarding one entry a “Song of the Week” designation. Check out last week’s roundup here.

Song of the Week: Mock Media, “Rat Bastard”

A white-hot riff straight out of “Just What I Needed” rips through the lead single and title track from Mock Media’s forthcoming third album, and it’s accompanied by simmering percussion and chanty gang vocals. The Vancouver band’s latest single is chock full of the stickiest phrases, ones that arrive hammed-up with a Rick Springfield-meets-The Clash, ‘80s power pop sheen (“Illuminated by the old! porch! light!” “You’re actin’ like an annnnnimal”). A bright and badass guitar solo tailor-made to be blasted with the windows down ties it all together. We’ve reached the point in the year where potential Songs of the Summer start rolling out, and “Rat Bastard” instantly made my personal list of contenders. —Grace Robins-Somerville

NEO GEODESIA: “Dream Team of Preah Khan”

NEO GEODESIA, the electro-persona of French-Cambodian composer Saphy Vong, is my latest hang-up. His new record, Oknha Stamina, combines ceremonial Cambodian music with videogame punch/kick attack cues, bamboo percussion, martial arts combat, ambient synths, and powerviolence. Think: Los Thuthanaka in Street Fighter. Vong describes it as a “metaphorical exploration of the entertainment of the elites from ancient times until the modern day.” The album’s best chapter, “Dream Team of Preah Khan,” draws on the redemptive story of Khmer wrestler Chov Sotheara. Vong imagines an all-woman sports team escaping the marauding forces shaping contemporary Cambodia—exploitative garment production, sand dredging, “artefact theft”—to reclaim the Preah Khan Reach, a sacred Khmer sword. The result is a playful, polyphonic decoration of dramatic and agile rhythms, keyboard riffs, colorful twists of mood, and gliding sci-fi tones. The song’s cosmic momentum powers past the album’s “boxing orchestra” tension with a chorus hook, but it never lapses into retro. In “Dream Team of Preah Khan,” history bends but never echoes. —Matt Mitchell

Ruth Garbus: “I Think I’m Ready Now”

The first verse of Ruth Garbus’ “I Think I’m Ready Now” won’t let go of me: “When I penetrated that man, I felt just like a dog / Getting fucked is the season of the world, my life springs forth / Into the jewel of creation, the arched back of the imagination.” That’s one hell of a greeting. The song is musically bare but threaded with perverted silver linings and interstellar chain reactions. “As relaxed as a woman can be when she’s filled with blood, my inner bitch was enterprising,” Garbus hums, in her Nico-meets-Newsom register. “And vain, and vain, and vain.” The guitars and pianos are braided until, in the song’s final corridor, their fanned-out, impish-jazz textures brighten toward a baroque changeover, and Garbus’ voice thins out into a soothing falsetto. “I Think I’m Ready Now” is part-feral rebirth, part-midlife unmooring. —Matt Mitchell

Starker: “Lala Ft. YL (Prod. Laron)”

I only got put onto New York hip-hop label and crew RRR (“Real Recognize Real,” obviously) recently, but listening to LIVING TYPE DANGEROUS Vol. 1, Starker’s excellent new record out this week, I feel like I arrived just in time. Of the 19 songs across the album, half a dozen could probably slot into this list, but I have to go with the Laron-produced number “Lala.” It’s a killer look at the long-standing partnership between Starker and RRR founder YL, their off-kilter flows flipping and dipping over the beat, somehow both in the pocket and dancing around it. There’s a contagious playfulness to the track, whether it’s from the adlibs behind every other phrase, the childlike “lalalala”s permeating the whole track, or Laron keeping the whole thing sweet and hazy. It’s time-honored East Coast shit through and through, at once reminiscent of the New York scene of old and utterly of-the-moment. —Casey Epstein-Gross

The Tubs: “Fade to Black”

To put it bluntly, I am not a Metallica fan. I have never thought to myself, “Man, I want to listen to a Metallica song right now.” But for the first time, I’ve found myself actively enjoying a Metallica song—and it’s all thanks to The Tubs (who do like Metallica) turning “Fade to Black” into a jangly, wild folk-punk rocker. I’ve been a Tubs-head for a minute now, and ever since I caught their set at Pop Montreal last September (easily one of my favorite performances of the fest), I’ve been eagerly awaiting the band’s next drop. They just signed to Merge, and released “Fade to Black” to celebrate. Turns out that all you needed to do to sound exactly like R.E.M. is be The Tubs playing a Metallica song. The outro especially is a thing of beauty: heavy, distorted guitars and percussion that never drown out the bright fingerpicking at the cover’s core, highlighting it instead. It just goes hard as hell, guys. —Casey Epstein-Gross

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