As Elon Musk saves/ruins Twitter (delete as feels appropriate), it's reassuring to know that some online services aren't subject to the whims of thin-skinned tech bros/genius innovators (delete as feels appropriate).
Like our Tracks Of The Week, for instance, which proceeds unwaveringly, week after week, separating the musical wheat from the non-musical chaff no matter who's in charge. Last week it was Those Damn Crows who took home best-in-class, while Sorry Audio and Wheel received merit badges. Congratulations, everyone.
So here's Those Damn Crows again, before we introduce another eight contenders for the biggest prize in anti-social media.
This week it's another eight contenders, and more voting. Let's get started, shall we?
Massive Wagons - Skateboard
You know – you just know – from the moment the dancing cheerleader appears that Wagon-in-chief Baz Mills will be getting his drag on before the video is up. And he does, but that’s not what makes Skateboard such a worthy contender in this week’s TOTW dogfight. Another shining advocate for MW’s new album Triggered!, it’s a solid-gold banger wrapped in more riffy, pop punk-edged bounciness than Tigger in a trampoline shop – with a stereo blasting Thunder and Ugly Kid Joe classics. Yeah, imagine that.
All Them Witches - Holding Your Breath Across The River
And now for something completely different, and we mean completely different. Six and a half minutes of slow, moody psychedelia, flecked with spoken-word musings, piano sprinkles and atmospheric notes of the world music that’s long-inspired frontman Parks (all set to a low-lit kaleidoscopic video that’ll soothe any hungover post-weekend heads, or send you on some sort of woozy trip), Holding Your Breath Across The River sounds like Pink Floyd in the desert, peyote in hand, heads full of free jazz, communing with rattlesnakes and watching the sun (or what might be the sun…) begin to set. Fuck yeah!
Nickelback - Those Days
Another year, another week, and Chad Kroeger and co continue to prove just how awful they are by… erm, releasing a rather good new single? Fresh off their next album Get Rollin’, this latest track from the polarising Canadians is a driving, sweetly nostalgic rock ballad, revelling in the hazy memories of a bunch of rock’n’roll lifers, and set to a warm earworm of a tune that’s set up camp quite nicely in our heads. Wait, why do people hate them so much again?
Little Man - Heartburst
Minneapolis’s Little Man call themselves “60s/70s classic rock with strong guitar hooks and lyrics themed around spirituality, zen, love and good ol' sexy rock'n'roll fun!” It’s certainly a lot of fun. Produced by John Fields (Soul Asylum, Switchfoot, Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus), Heartburst stomps and shimmies along like Typhoons-era Royal Blood hitting the floor with the Dandy Warhols, at a 70s club night. The fact that frontman Chris Perricelli appears to be wearing Elmo as a jacket (when he’s not dancing around topless in glittery scarves) is obviously a plus.
Devin Townsend - Lightworker
Inspired by pioneering spiritual thinker Ram Dass – and even featuring a recording of his voice in the mid-section – Lightworker channels Devin’s dreamy-meets-heavy new age trademarks into a deeply effective ode to facing your demons and being human. “I wanted a story about a guy who is so attached to his past, and the pain of loss, that any time the ‘monsters’ of his past appear, he runs from it,” Devin says. “As a result, he has to live the same dramas over and over again. It’s not until he stands and faces his fear that he can move past it.”
October Drift - Lost Without You
“It's a song about heartbreak and helplessness,” says frontman Kiran Roy, of this stirring, uptempo new one from the Taunton rockers, confidently marrying atmospheric alt rock heartbreak with fuzzy, grungy meat. “Inspired by a long-distance relationship, with my girlfriend living over 400 miles away in Scotland. It’s about missing loved ones and the struggle of being apart.”
The Pearl Harts - More
Excellent south-east London duo the Pearl Harts are back, and they're back with a single that adds a little polish to their gritty blues-rock sound, as if Shirley Manson and Butch Vig have been brought in to sprinkle a little techno-dust over the recording. “More is a sassy, sexy, post-ironic stab at the consuming world that we live in," say the band. "One can be encouraged to ‘have more’, ‘do more’, ‘expect more’, ‘be more’. The amount of ‘more’ is overwhelming – it’s like a never-ending hamster wheel." It really is. And there'll be 'more' of the same, no doubt, on the pair's second album Love, Chaos, due early next year.
Kings Of Chaos - Judgement Day
Matt Sorum's all-star Kings Of Chaos collective have been playing shows for a decade, but Judgement Day is their first recorded release. Also starring his old Guns N' Roses/ Velvet Revolver buddies Slash and Duff McKagan – alongside fellow Velvets alumni Dave Kushner – it's a chunk of predictably hard-drivin' rock'n'roll with a video that stars Billy F Gibbons as a radio preacher. It's also got dancing girls and fast cars and motorbikes and other suitably red-blooded paraphernalia. There'll be a debut album arriving around this point next year, so we hope there'll be more of this sort of thing in the meantime.
