Clock Opera - Lesson No. 7

Favorite lyrics: You crouch like a hunter, seconds from a kill.

Dark, biting, and aggressive, Lesson No. 7 starts out as a hate list of attributes before the bass line hits, so heavy it falls onto your shoulders like a dead weight you want to shake off. Leading into lyrics about want, it's a song that holds a lot of desperation and disbelief, a dissonance of notes that are humanized by the vocalist's low, smooth sound; a voice that easily infects your mind in long counts of emotional cacophony. It's like a full-on musical attack, leaving you feeling like you did something wrong solely by the determination behind the song.

Glitter Pox rating: 82% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

The Paper Kites - Featherstone

Favorite lyrics: when you go what you leave is a work of art / on my chest on my heart

The Paper Kites have a kind of Avett Brothers thing going on in Featherstone. It's calm, but has a long distance top-of-the-world feeling, with a steady clock-ticking beat in the background that grounds the music to something earthly. It's rare to find a song with a sad story that's still optimistic, but because of it Featherstone has a kind of take-on-anything mood, like being at the beginning of something new.

Glitter Pox rating: 70% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

The Lumineers - Ho Hey

Favorite lyrics: I don't know where I went wrong / but I can write a song

The Lumineers have that extra something that defines them as good folk music, where the rawness of the vocals and the ingenuity of the percussion draws you in. It's a simple song, but it sounds like it's being sung outdoors, with a group of people stomping their feet, which is also a characteristic of the best kind of folk music - where the listeners feel genuinely involved in the music. 'Ho Hey' has a similar sound to Of Monsters and Men, with a feel to it that's as inviting as a summer bonfire.

Glitter Pox rating: 68% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Headphone - Ghostwriter

Favorite lyrics: I'm not even here.

This is like an audio version of an experience like The Bell Jar, a descent into something nonsensical but acknowledged by the writer in clipped, tangent lyrics of stream of conscious thoughts. The song is very solid all the way through, like footsteps in tandem being overlaid with more intricate beats. It's a personal song, but in an almost controlled-chaos kind of way, like the lyrics are the interior and the music the exterior of a person slowly disintegrating.

Glitter Pox rating: 74% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

The Features - Lions

Favorite lyrics: Not even lions can tear us apart

This song is like trying to force two musical magnets apart, the intro beat is so push-and-pull; but you want to be right in between those sassy magnets, feeling their unbalanced energy, because what they're giving off sounds really, really good. When it leads into the vocals, there's a tension break inside the calming voice of the singer, like an attempt at a resolution with the back-and-forth of the guitar progressions, until the music starts back up again and it blends into something universal. It's a very listenable song with a few layers of eccentricity that your ears will be happy about.

Glitter Pox rating: 82% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Jun Miyake - The Here and After

(track #2)

Favorite lyrics: night has thrown its heels at our door and stormed its way in, bidden / our feet in drunken incantations

Jun Miyake is a composer/musician who has collaborated with many other great musicians, and what's produced from his work with vocalist Lisa Papineau and the Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra, in The Here and After, is something soft and tribal, a perfect fit for the dance movie, Pina, it was featured in. The vocals exercise an eerie but moving feeling, echoing a beauty and closeness to nature or spirit or something other than purely human, a kind of ethereal lightness. There are multiple instruments, from wind to brass, that jumble together into a masterpiece of a symphony to back up her voice, which makes it echo even louder. This song whispers to you in a way that makes you want to move in expression, but in the gentle whole-bodied flow that only dancers seem to achieve.

Glitter Pox rating: 90% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

The Best Friends With Wolves Club - Again and Again and Again

The Best Friends With Wolves Club - Again and Again and Again

With a Beirut-like intro and a vocalist with a sadistic love approach, this song is like a Halloween party for scorned lovers. It's a morbid storybook of characters that Tim Burton would probably adore. It's upbeat with a weirdly hopeful sound, for as bitterly pessimistic as the lyrics are; it's not the kind of words you'd expect to be accompanied by a ukulele, but it's all the better for it.

Glitter Pox rating: 66% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Bethan - Vague

This song is as subtly menacing as an unblinking stare, with haunting echoes and ocean waves in the background making it seem like a never-ending approach. It almost sounds like a storm being smothered. Whispering hisses and shaky vocals add to the solid strength of the singer, giving the sound a kind of wavering intensity. It's like whatever the history behind this song is, you can hear the effect of it in the music, but there's a power in it because of that.

Glitter Pox rating: 77% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Givers

Givers is a great group of musicians that offer up a different sound to each song, but with the same familiar feeling of jumpiness - like the music can't help but bounce. 'Up Up Up' is something you get more into each time you hear it. It's hard to find a song that can so easily and readily cheer someone up, and the way it's spaced is brilliant, slowing down to slowly feed you into the insanity of the chorus. It's kind of reminiscent of Grouplove's 'Colours,' in style and in general good vibrations. 'Meantime' feels like an entire album inside of four minutes; it transitions into so many different blends of music so smoothly that it seems much larger than a single song. 'Ceiling of Plankton' has a more indie rock singer/songwriter quality, but just when you think you know where the song is going, it surprises you in pacing and intensity. Definitely a group to become newly obsessed with.

Glitter Pox rating: 87% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Jhameel - The Human Condition

The Human Condition requires consistent movement, which is kind of the point of the song. If you were challenged to stand still while listening to this you'd probably fail, with its double vocal and catchy guitar. And while there's a lot of upbeat modern music, what makes it different is its lyrical content; when you hear a song about humanity, it's generally rough and critical and bitter, about killing the planet or the disconnection of feelings, and they're great because we're all a little angsty. But a song about a changing generation that's actually positive is refreshing. It's like a message against becoming jaded and for becoming alive, a kind of revolutionary speech in song - or at least one that doesn't make you hate people.

Glitter Pox rating: 77% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox