By Corey Bodin

The month of June brought some exceptional new music to our rotation. Here are some of our favorite new adds!

La Sécurité is a five piece rock group that mixes the subversiveness and defiant attitudes of classic punk with the catchiness and danceability of the New Wave era. The charm of their newest album, Bingo!, really lies in its attitude and sass. Vocalist Éliane Viens delivers all of her parts, which include lyrics in both English and French, with a snarky, sarcastic tone. It would be best compared to the vocal style of a 90s Riot Grrrl, in that her lines are expressed in sing-songy, playful taunts, often being spoken rather than fully sung. The record immediately shoves this humorous, cheeky attitude in your face with the opening track “Snack City”. This tattletale style makes for a lot of earworms. However, this doesn’t distract from the fact that the lyrical content on some of these songs is quite interesting. “Deny” explores a dysfunctional relationship, while “Trixie” destigmatizes sex-workers. The vocalist approaches these topics with a genuine but humorous attitude, while also leaning into absurdity on songs such as the title track, “Bingo!” About a quarter of these songs are in French, which adds another unique layer to the band’s identity.

In addition to the captivating vocal performance, we get a lot of catchy melodies from the guitar, which plays some nasally and choppy lead lines that interact with the vocals in an almost conversational way. For example, listen to the way that the lead guitar and vocals compliment each other on the track “Nah Nah”. Another thing that stands out is how these parts play out over some really funky bass lines, reminiscent of those played by Tina Weymouth of The Talking Heads. I would extend the Talking Heads comparison even further to include the keys. La Sécurité has some very angular and aggressive synth parts that interlock with the rhythms set by the bass and drums. For example, the song “Detour” features a repetitive, tinny, lead line being hammered over a tight bass groove. The interplay between the different instruments makes this record super fun to listen to. Overall, it feels very danceable, while maintaining its punk edge from the grungy production and rowdy vocals.

Voyage Mental, the newest album from French singer Laure Briard, is gentle, austere, and quaint. The style of music that Laure Briard draws from is called Ye-Ye, which refers to a musical and cultural movement that took place in France in the 60s. Ye-Ye is strongly tied to feminism, as it was a female-dominated genre of pop music that focused on sexual-freedom and an overall carefree attitude, which was represented in both the lyrics and the laid-back, lounge style instrumentation of Ye-Ye music. You can hear some Ye-Ye influence from Briard on her new album, especially on songs like “C’est quoi ces gens”, “My Two Hours of Sleep”, and the opener, “Rocking Chair”. The instrumentation plays a big factor in cultivating such a sweet, charming sound. Many tracks feature beautifully finger picked acoustic guitar, with some of those parts having a bossa nova sound to them. The bossa nova influence really comes through in the percussion choices, such as the use of hand drums and shakers on “Respire”. While I don’t know any French, I was able to translate the lyrics, which are fittingly romantic and meditative, touching on concepts like nostalgia, day-dreaming, and the desire for simplicity. Briard’s voice is smooth and comforting, and feels especially intimate on tracks with minimal accompaniment, like the title track, where beautiful harmonies are backed solely by a piano and acoustic guitar.

This is my personal favorite of the month’s adds: So Help Me God by Kelsey Lu. This album showcases a seamless combination of Kelsey Lu’s smooth, soulful, songstress-esque vocal style, with synth ambience, electronic IDM-style rhythms, and small touches of orchestral instrumentation. Kelsey Lu comes from a classical upbringing, being trained in cello and piano ever since she was a child. Such a background allows Lu to have a firm grasp on music theory and composition, and that manifests itself in a very nice way on this record. Never do the compositions seem pretentious or overly abstract– the sound of this album, rather, is incredibly tasteful and sophisticated, with many small production and composition choices that, while subtle, allow an already pleasant listening experience to be uplifted into something even greater. That is to say, that Kelsey Lu manages to find a very unique and distinguished sound in the pocket between expertise and experimentation.

Listening to this project front to back really allows one to appreciate how many different areas of music Lu is truly exploring, and how many different styles she manages to draw inspiration from. For example, we get strong art pop vibes on tracks like “Cutting Off The Head Of A Ghost” and “Only The Lonely”, which place Kelsey Lu’s voice over shimmering and lush string arrangements that are accompanied by a more mainstream, 80s style drum machine. These tracks also highlight some of the intricacies of Kelsey Lu’s vocals, specifically her vibrato and breath control, which are almost akin to those of the pioneering art pop legend, Kate Bush. Pop tracks like “Running to Pain” focus on modern electronic production and upbeat synth instrumentation, while “Portrait Of A Lady On Fire” is much softer, with a focus on ambience and texture. My favorite track on Kelsey Lu’s So Help Me God is the ballad “852”, which is comparatively quite liminal in its instrumental composition, but one that really puts the focus on the passion and emotion in Lu’s vocal performance.

TEEN BLUSH’s 2019 is a compilation album that includes demos, B-sides, and rarities from the synth-pop artist’s back catalog. The title is fitting, as this really is a great encapsulation of the dreamy alt-rock sound that we were getting at the end of the 2010s, especially creeping into the Covid years. Simple electronic drum beats, hazy synth pads, and drowned out lead guitar lines are staples of the music that was making a comeback at the time, and TEEN BLUSH exemplifies that on tracks such as “Tennis Court”, “Go Anywhere”, and “You Wonder”.

The lo-fi style of production gives this project a nostalgic feel, which certainly is the vibe that TEEN BLUSH is trying to achieve. That nostalgia exists on a few different levels. First of all, these tracks are archives from the early 2020s, so listeners that are college students or are on the verge of young adulthood are bound to feel a natural nostalgia, even if 2020 was only 6 years ago. The other layer is that the alternative rock being released in the pre-pandemic/early Covid era was already harkening back to the washed out textures of 90s shoegaze, and even the gloominess of 80s goth music. The song “Just Friends”, for example, manages to capture that post punk vibe with its prominent bass line and brooding atmosphere. There are, however, some more upbeat tracks on 2019, especially the ones that are more focused on achieving a modern synth-pop sound akin to that of MGMT, such as “Earth Candy”. The combination of modern electropop influences with the gloomy, drowned out sounds of 80s and 90s alternative rock make TEEN BLUSH’s 2019 a successful appeal to nostalgia.

Be sure to tune into KVCU to hear these great new adds in our curated 1190 mixtape!