FUTUREPROOF PICKS 03-09-26

Hello world,

Here’s your latest FP Picks update .. loads of great new music as always inc trx from Radio Free Alice, Silver Gore, Sarah Meth & lots more. If you like what you hear please follow and share this playlist, it helps us keep doing our thing by getting the algorithms on our side. Also please support the artists featured in any way you can!

Until next week

Helen (Futureproof) x

Sarah Meth – Don’t touch me you’re my hero

Sara Meth recently announced her upcoming debut full-length Something Shameful and she says of the single: “It’s a bleak time for women in creative industries whether you’re an artist or working behind the scenes. It’s a relationship-based business and with that comes a blurring of boundaries, which can lead to a lack of understanding of what’s appropriate behaviour. Sometimes it feels like the culture around music doesn’t seem to be improving, and young female musicians aren’t protected enough. This song speaks to my frustration at that situation, and having to question people’s intentions. Turning uncomfortable feelings and situations into something I can be playful with gives me a sense of agency in a world where that can quickly be taken away. Women are constantly told not to make a song and dance of these things….I guess this is me saying why not !”

Beck – Disappearing Act

Beck has shared the ethereal new single Disappearing Act, taken from his upcoming album Ride Lonesome. Beck stated: “The musicians from my original touring and recording band that I recorded Sea Change, Morning Phase, and Mutations with—Smokey Hormel, Joey Waronker, Justin Meldal-Johnsen, Roger Joseph Manning Jr., and Jason Falkner—reconvened with me at my favorite studio (Room B at United Studios in Hollywood). We had Nigel Godrich, who worked on Sea Change and Mutations with us mixing all the songs. It had been a decade since we went in the studio and recorded Morning Phase. This time It felt like the playing and the chemistry had evolved and deepened—a sound that’s come together over the decades of working together. While we were revisiting a musical and physical place, it also felt like we were finding new sounds and emotional textures along the way.”

Willie J Healey – S’All Good

Willie J Healey recently shared his new album 143, made with producer Loren Humphrey in New York, the man behind his acclaimed 2023 album Bunny. Vintage textures, keen lyricism, and a unique worldview that unties the observational and the romantic, Willie again finds a way to tap into something universal. He says of the single: “S’All Good came from me messing around with guitar tunings and pitching stuff down on my 4-track after a sad few weeks. It was kinda my “accept all outcomes even the sad ones” type lesson. There’s some beauty in that. I took it to Loren in NYC and we got the basic tracking done – I then finished it off at my house in Bristol.” The album’s called 143 because a friend sent a message using that code and it took him a while to figure out that it means “I love you.”

This Is Lorelei – Oh No Now My

This Is Lorelei (aka Nate Amos) has shared anthemic new single Oh No Now My, taken from the upcoming album The Singer in My Band. Nate states: “Oh No Now My is a song that ate itself – there were 3 versions of it before it landed here, where it has nothing in common with the original. I think it’s good but it’s hard to sing. I hope you like it.” He wrote the songs in his car, with no instruments and says: “It’s funny, I sent my dad the album after I finished it, and he said it was kind of an “on the road beatnik” album and that reframed it for me,” says Amos. “It really is like a collection of chaotic experiences that you have while travelling. They’re also very much little works of fiction with elements of truth to them.”

Yard Act – You’re Gonna Need A Little Music

Yard Act embrace the chaos with latest album You’re Gonna Need A Little Music. The title track is one of the record’s highlights, driven by a tinkling piano riff that lingers in the background. The storytelling paints a vivid picture, creative and fun. The more pop-oriented chorus recalls “We Make Hits” or “Dream Job”, it’s a fascinating outlier but one that works a treat to take a brief pause from the melee. The album shows a band in maximum flight, not afraid to change direction, still with the open and fun storytelling but immersed in a darker soundscape. It’s a shift that, for the most part works wonderfully well, making this another distinct chapter in Yard Act’s career to date.

Clyde Crooks – Coldest Day of the Year

Clyde Crooks steps into the fire of newfound love on the single Coldest Day of the Year, taken from upcoming EP Hark. He told BEST FIT the single “is about the vulnerability of letting love in, changing ourselves for that love, and healing somewhere along the way. A reluctant love song, sure, it’s about love. But it’s also about sobriety and grappling with addiction. That’s really what this song is about. It’s those things in conversation with love, and romance, and that part of life”. The synth-heavy goth pop track is accompanied by an intimate music video, featuring a solo Clyde Crooks intently striding through a flickering dark room. It’s reflective of the artist we find on the track; past demons still weigh heavy on him, but he’s intent on outrunning them.

Silver Gore – Don’t Tell Your Friends

Alt-pop duo Silver Gore have dropped catchy new single Don’t Tell Your Friends. “This song is about having secrets,” says singer Ava Gore. “It’s also about being contradictory – feeling one way and acting another sometimes is just the way we are. Oftentimes friends have an opinion of their idea of who you are and when you display yourself in a different way they find it hard to deal with and to understand – so you resort to masking and changing your behaviour socially to fit their idea of you. But we’re all always shapeshifting. Sometimes it feels like I’m living in a pretend world and we’re all pretending and trying to be the same people we were yesterday or last year. But we’re done doing that now. The real fun starts when you can be yourself unapologetically however you feel today!!!”

Radio Free Alice – Crying With You

Australian new wave/post-punk outfit Radio Free Alice recently shared their infectious anthem Crying With You, taken from their upcoming debut album What’s In Between. Lead singer Noah Learmonth says: “We wrote Crying With You whilst on a writing retreat in Joshua Tree in California. We were staying at this beautiful property owned by producer Nicolas Vernhes, surrounded by desert and Joshua trees for about a week and recorded a handful of demos and jams. The verse and chorus were originally different songs, but we stitched them together, which is something we like to do quite a lot.” Noah says of the album: “We’ve lived with these songs for such a long time and they’ve become such a big part of our lives, so knowing there’s now a date when they’ll finally exist outside of us feels incredibly cathartic.”

Thoom – I’m Going Back to Lebanon

Thoom could have made two records: one rooted in American pop and another in experimental, punk-influenced Arabic music. Instead, she made the album Everyday, Everything Is At Stake, because separating those sides of her music would have meant separating parts of herself. Less a confession than a record of survival, the result is, in Thoom’s words, “messy, pop, Arabic, experimental, and unapologetic.” This track moves through the complexities of a relationship alongside Thoom’s own experience of feeling torn between two places. With family members living through war in Lebanon, Thoom has grown up knowing that returning home can never be taken for granted, turning “I’m going back to Lebanon” from a simple statement of return into something more complicated: a hope, a question, and a return shadowed by uncertainty.