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: The Tubs, “Who’s Gonna Love You Now?”

I’m a bit of a latecomer to The Tubs, discovering them for the first time when they played possibly my favorite set at last year’s Pop Montreal. It was riotous and absurd and downright fun, a crowd of lifers crammed into a shoebox basement; I’ve never seen so many men in their forties crowdsurf. That was eight months ago, and I’ve had “Chain Reaction” perpetually stuck in my head ever since. But, at long last, the Cardiff foursome has given me something new to chew on. “Who’s Gonna Love You Now?” is all wild guitars and twinkling organ, smashing through propriety with anthemic zeal. Frontman Owen Williams is singing straight from his gut, shouting each line with the kind of belt you can only do with your eyes screwed closed. He skewers the romanticized fantasy of escaping to a new city for a fresh start, leaving your old life behind in the process: “Well, who’s gonna pay the rent?” he scoffs, as if mocking himself for having the audacity to consider it at all. “Baby, it’s your life / But who’s gonna be there waiting when it falls down?” The Tubs have always been stellar at earworms, and—to quote a fantastically apt comment on Reddit—this one is ”a perfect slice of 60s sunshine pop ran over by a beer truck.” —Casey Epstein-Gross

Brennan Wedl: “Pretty Little Fantasy”

Our most recent Best of What’s Next pick has officially announced her new self-titled album with a gutsy introduction: “I’m not a girl, I’m a freakazoid!” Thick riffs and Brennan Wedl’s wonderfully muddy and deadpanned contralto on “Pretty Little Fantasy” serve as further proof of the tear she’s on. Plus, Brad Cook and Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield co-produced it. “I know you see me as somebody’s daughter,” she sings; if Wedl is anyone’s daughter, she’s the hell-raising lovechild of Liz Phair and Lucinda Williams. “I’ll be so sweet it’ll make your tongue bleed,” she snarls—like she means it. —Grace Robins-Somerville

PJ Harvey: “Voyager”

Ladies and gentlemen, Polly Jean Harvey is floating in space. For her first release since the earthy, dredged-up I Inside The Old Year Dying, Harvey has sent us a transmission from the cosmos: a new single, sung from the perspective of NASA’s Voyager 2. A synth flickers alongside her soft, pooling vocals, the echo of each line filling in the space between each minimalistic phrase. An orchestral assist from arranger Dario Marianelli tethers Harvey to terra firma as she drifts through the Milky Way, her voice dissolving into stardust. —Grace Robins-Somerville

Sam and Louise Sullivan: “Down On Love”

As a Tusk evangelist, I like every second of Sam and Louise Sullivan’s new song “Down On Love.” Recorded in the same house as Star Moles’ Highway to Hell and more Rubber Band Gun albums than any two-armed fool could carry, the Love & Devotion lead single is a perfectly shaggy and splashy “manic, chromatic, folk-rock thing” that landed after the Sullivan siblings drew a blank on a 2012 rap beat but reconfigured it into a moody riff anyway. The snare splatters, Sam and Louise’s voices play off each other, and the guitar spills all over the place. “Down On Love” is, as Louise expertly puts it, “wonky pop music” with a family band’s ramshackle flavor, well-earned after years spent making percussion out of coffee cans and exercise-ball drops. And, with Star Moles singing backup, Jem Seidel behind the kit, and Rubber Band Gun’s Kevin Basko’s fingers on just about everything else, the song sounds as peerless and strange as it does damp and muscular. —Matt Mitchell

This Is Lorelei: “Billy Came Back”

To quote the most-liked comment on the “Billy Came Back” music video: “he is officially on the mount rushmore of white boys.” The “he” in question is Nate Amos, best known as This Is Lorelei and even better known as the guitarist in Water From Your Eyes (or vice versa). Amos’ solo rise has been one of the few real-deal indie darling come-ups in recent memory, and he’s used his newfound reverence to convince the likes of Jeff Tweedy, Hayley Williams, Waxahatchee, and his own father and sister to sing his songs. Despite being on—what seems like—perma-tour, Amos continues to churn out albums at an impossible clip, and his Matador debut, The Singer In My Band, spawned out of his road-bound schedule. “The ideas incubated while daydreaming in the car without access to any instruments,” Amos said, “so instead of being home and writing on the guitar or a computer, they developed slowly and subconsciously, existing as a sort of intangible thing while looking out the van window.” “Billy Came Back” is a neat lead single with gentle backup vox from Amos’ sister, Sarah, and excellent instrumental breaks. Nate drinks from his fountain of melody while singing about Billy, but maybe he’s also singing about himself: “He’s got every song he’ll ever want to sing.” —Matt Mitchell

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