What do clouds, crashes and crowns have in common? More than you'd think, as it turns out — least of all providing a perfectly alliterative thematic opening to this week's edition of Exclaim!'s Staff Picks. After reflecting on some of our favourite late-blooming 2022 releases last week, we're now firmly planted in the present moment. From debut projects to long-awaited returns, these January 2023 releases have helped us through the unforgiving greyness of the long first month of the year and we hope they'll likewise be a balm for you.
See our reviews section for more deep-dives into the year in new music so far.
BUNT. & Nate Traveller
"Clouds"
(Sony)
Amid a groundswell of unbothered electronic music returning to the fore (thanks partly due to Fred again..) and ahead of what could be the most explosive festival seasons since the pandemic began, there seems to be a concurrent resurgence of early 2010s Avicii-adjacent euphoria-core EDM, most recently exemplified by BUNT.'s "Clouds." In repeatedly urging listeners to "Take it easy," the track carries exactly the kind of effortless joviality needed to commence the collective healing process on the dance floor this summer. For now, it's best served as anticipation for the thaw.
Allie Gregory
Dende
Before We Crash
(CXR / Good Partners)
R&B singer Dende opens latest EP Before We Crash in the most chill way possible. "Sensually" invites you to come in and stay awhile as the 27-year-old's warm vocal tone glides above a breezy guitar lick, singing with soul beyond his years. The six-track-project follows "Sensually" to perfection, with strong guest appearances from rapper Deante' Hitchcock on "Georgia" and fellow R&B crooner Erykah Officer on "Please U" before closing the seamlessly smooth project with "Better Than Him."
Ben Okazawa
Ché Aimee Dorval
The Crowned
(Icons Creating Evil Art)
On The Crowned — half produced with Bob Rock pre-pandemic, half self-produced in a slowly reopening world — Ché Aimee Dorval's beguiling mix of soul, trip-hop, folk and pop gleams as brilliantly as its titular ordainment. Not unlike her turn as one half of Casualties of Cool, the dark country duo with Devin Townsend, the Vancouver singer-songwriter's voice is the crown jewel here, its brilliance in her smouldering lower register and exultant highs.
Calum Slingerland
Everything but the Girl
"Nothing Left to Lose"
(Buzzin' Fly)
Tracey Thorn's voice has always been adept at embodying endless, deep-blue feelings — her aching performance on 1994's "Missing" elevates an already heart-breaking pop song to transcendent heights — but she's never sounded more wounded than she does on "Nothing Left to Lose," hers and Ben Watt's long-awaited return as Everything but the Girl. Her voice has deepened with age, adding a velvet weight to her pleas to "Kiss me while the world decays / Kiss me while the music plays." Atop sparse, electrifying production that throbs with human warmth, Thorn and Watt make pain feel like power.
Kaelen Bell
Ice Spice
Like..?
(Universal)
The "Munch" rapper's rise has been so meteoric that the first track on her debut EP is about how famous she is. With bite-sized slices of bubbly beats and deadpan sex jokes, Like..? is six tracks of pure party-starting fun. "They mad 'cause I keep makin' bops," the red-hot Ice Spice raps on "In Ha Mood." She sure does.
Alex Hudson
Maelydée
"Sortie"
(Independent)
I love it when a song somehow explodes and implodes simultaneously. Although "Sortie" — the closing title track of the debut EP from Maelydée (the moniker of Montreal's Mélissa Doyon) — cracks open the phosphorescent Quépop project as a whole, it unfurls so resplendently that I'd be remiss to not let it stand as its own three-minute, 31-second epic. Gentle synths get bolstered by bombastic start-stop percussion, then follow Maelydée's voice into a funk guitar abyss before fading out with similar softness to how it began; an exit within an exit.
Megan LaPierre
Status/Non-Status
January 3rd
(You've Changed)
While this may be an EP of cut tracks from Surely Travel, these songs don't feel like outtakes in the slightest. Swaying more to folk than the rest of Status/Non-Status's discography, January 3rd lends an overall atmosphere of warmth to the colder months. This collection may be short and sweet, yet it is eminently memorable — felt in the repeated riff that acts as a chorus in "Johnny's Song," but mainly in its brutally emotional lyricism.
Sydney Brasil
See our reviews section for more deep-dives into the year in new music so far.
BUNT. & Nate Traveller
"Clouds"
(Sony)
Amid a groundswell of unbothered electronic music returning to the fore (thanks partly due to Fred again..) and ahead of what could be the most explosive festival seasons since the pandemic began, there seems to be a concurrent resurgence of early 2010s Avicii-adjacent euphoria-core EDM, most recently exemplified by BUNT.'s "Clouds." In repeatedly urging listeners to "Take it easy," the track carries exactly the kind of effortless joviality needed to commence the collective healing process on the dance floor this summer. For now, it's best served as anticipation for the thaw.
Allie Gregory
Dende
Before We Crash
(CXR / Good Partners)
R&B singer Dende opens latest EP Before We Crash in the most chill way possible. "Sensually" invites you to come in and stay awhile as the 27-year-old's warm vocal tone glides above a breezy guitar lick, singing with soul beyond his years. The six-track-project follows "Sensually" to perfection, with strong guest appearances from rapper Deante' Hitchcock on "Georgia" and fellow R&B crooner Erykah Officer on "Please U" before closing the seamlessly smooth project with "Better Than Him."
Ben Okazawa
Ché Aimee Dorval
The Crowned
(Icons Creating Evil Art)
On The Crowned — half produced with Bob Rock pre-pandemic, half self-produced in a slowly reopening world — Ché Aimee Dorval's beguiling mix of soul, trip-hop, folk and pop gleams as brilliantly as its titular ordainment. Not unlike her turn as one half of Casualties of Cool, the dark country duo with Devin Townsend, the Vancouver singer-songwriter's voice is the crown jewel here, its brilliance in her smouldering lower register and exultant highs.
Calum Slingerland
Everything but the Girl
"Nothing Left to Lose"
(Buzzin' Fly)
Tracey Thorn's voice has always been adept at embodying endless, deep-blue feelings — her aching performance on 1994's "Missing" elevates an already heart-breaking pop song to transcendent heights — but she's never sounded more wounded than she does on "Nothing Left to Lose," hers and Ben Watt's long-awaited return as Everything but the Girl. Her voice has deepened with age, adding a velvet weight to her pleas to "Kiss me while the world decays / Kiss me while the music plays." Atop sparse, electrifying production that throbs with human warmth, Thorn and Watt make pain feel like power.
Kaelen Bell
Ice Spice
Like..?
(Universal)
The "Munch" rapper's rise has been so meteoric that the first track on her debut EP is about how famous she is. With bite-sized slices of bubbly beats and deadpan sex jokes, Like..? is six tracks of pure party-starting fun. "They mad 'cause I keep makin' bops," the red-hot Ice Spice raps on "In Ha Mood." She sure does.
Alex Hudson
Maelydée
"Sortie"
(Independent)
I love it when a song somehow explodes and implodes simultaneously. Although "Sortie" — the closing title track of the debut EP from Maelydée (the moniker of Montreal's Mélissa Doyon) — cracks open the phosphorescent Quépop project as a whole, it unfurls so resplendently that I'd be remiss to not let it stand as its own three-minute, 31-second epic. Gentle synths get bolstered by bombastic start-stop percussion, then follow Maelydée's voice into a funk guitar abyss before fading out with similar softness to how it began; an exit within an exit.
Megan LaPierre
Status/Non-Status
January 3rd
(You've Changed)
While this may be an EP of cut tracks from Surely Travel, these songs don't feel like outtakes in the slightest. Swaying more to folk than the rest of Status/Non-Status's discography, January 3rd lends an overall atmosphere of warmth to the colder months. This collection may be short and sweet, yet it is eminently memorable — felt in the repeated riff that acts as a chorus in "Johnny's Song," but mainly in its brutally emotional lyricism.
Sydney Brasil
