Habibi/ Cardamom Garden EP
Hailing from Brooklyn, New York, Habibi (Arabic for "my dear") is an all-girl indie quintet initially founded by Detroit natives Rahill Jamalifard and Lenny Lynch. Grown to include three more members (Erin Campbell, Karen Isabel and Leah Beth Fishman), the band dropped their self-titled debut full-length LP in 2013, offering a collection of lo-fi tunes that marry psych-rock with '60s girl-group pop, surf punk, and New Order basslines. It was a strong, cohesive album that pleasantly recalls the much-missed indie girl groups from the late 2000s like Vivian Girls and Dum Dum Girls.
Five years after their debut, the girls have finally emerged from silence to bestow upon us their new EP, Cardamom Garden. Sung in both English and Farsi, the four-track output highlights frontwoman Jamalifard's Iranian heritage and the band's shared love for Middle Eastern cultures and melodies. This is then combined with the sound they've been trading since day one - a winsome amalgamation of girl group harmonies and psychedelic garage rock.
Opener Khodaya [Oh God] starts off with soft strumming guitars and tambourine rolls before the tempo tightens, making way for roaring drums and serpentine guitar lines. The lyrics (that is, if you could call the harmonised chanting of "khodaya" lyrics) add a certain solemnity to the proceeding and, before you know it, the whole thing has already vanished into thin air. Gypsy Love quickly fills in the void with the similarly lurching melody. The subject matter is a mysterious woman whose exotic allure has both fascinated and eluded a man (or a woman, let's not assume here) to no end ("And the way she moves, she's on a different beat/ I want her next to me/ But she's out of reach/ She's my love, my eastern love…").
Buoyed by breezy surf guitars, next track Nedayeh Bahar [Song of Spring] finds Jamalifard alluding to the spring season in Iran, which also heralds Nowruz or the Iranian New Year. "And when she's gone/ The wind sings her song/ It sings along," she croons before reciting spoken words in Farsi. Keeping the momentum going, final track Green Fuz is a reworked cover of Randy Alvey and the Green Fuz's cut of the same name. The raw energy of the original may have been replaced by the band's surfy riffs and vocal harmonies, but they have pulled it off with aplomb.
Despite its criminally short length of just over nine minutes, Cardamom Garden EP is a solid successor to Habibi's equally brief self-titled 2013 debut (11 tracks clocking in at 29 minutes). The blend between the sonic aesthetics of the Beach Boys and the Shangri-Las is already hard to resist, and now with deeper, more realised Arabic influences added to the mix, this EP will continue to delight and hypnotise long after it's ended.
The Playlist
Phumjit/ Cheep Pa Jorn
It's been eight long years since homespun four-piece Phumjit's last studio album Bangkok Fever, and just when we thought they'd fallen out of the indie orbit, they are back to surprise fans with new music. Taken from their forthcoming record Midlife, Cheep Pa Jorn [Pulse] is a simple soft rock production that highlights Phumjit's song-for-life sensibility. The lyrics capture the daily struggle of a burnt-out nine-to-fiver, from a stressful morning commute ("People never stand on the right on the BTS escalators") to mindlessly browsing the internet during work hours ("Reading Blue Planet on Pantip, daydreaming away"). Can relate.
Kacey Musgraves/ High Horse
With her latest offering, High Horse, a single off her third LP, Golden Hour, US darling Kacey Musgraves shows us how to serve up a delightful country-meets-pop track that wouldn't sound out of place on a dancefloor. Here, the three-time Country Music Awards winner channels her inner disco queen while still keeping her honky tonk guitar riffs intact. "And I think we've seen enough, seen enough/To know that you ain't ever gonna come down," she sings, refusing to have any of her lover's higher-than-thou nonsense. "So, why don't you giddy up, giddy up/And ride straight out of this town!"
D Gerrard/ Mang Mao
After dropping his terrific genre-blurring debut EP earlier this year, D Gerrard returns with a new track entitled Mang Mao [flying termites]. Following in the same footsteps as his previous material which blends pop-R&B with soul and hip-hop, the song finds The X Factor Thailand alumnus half-singing, half-speaking over the acoustic guitar's swaying groove. "'Cuz I don't know what should I do to get inside of your mind/Even there is him and you/But you're the one of a kind/And baby girl you got no clue/Reason why am I blind," he sings in one breathless, accompanied by pillowy horns.
Chad Valley/ Impartial
Known for his dreamy and laid back approach to his sound under solo project Chad Valley, UK singer-songwriter Hugo Manuel has over the years supplied us with the perfect soundtrack to hazy summer days. With his third album, Imaginary Music, looming on the horizon, he's setting out to do the same and more with its first taste, Impartial, which he said was inspired "by Prince's drum programming and Sade's sophisticated cool". Set to gentle Balearic synths, the song ebbs and flows as Manuel sings about the ambivalent feelings of going on a first date.
Let's Eat Grandma/ Falling Into Me
On their 2016's debut full-length Gemini, Jenny Hollingworth and Rosa Walton seemed to make music just for the sake of being quirky. But that was two years ago, now the Norwich pop duo with a weird name has made their return with the promise of their studio follow-up, and judging by latest offering Falling Into Me, we're in for some solid pop that doesn't mess around. "I pave the backstreet with the mist of my brain," goes the opening verse bolstered by blooming retro synth. The track then weaves in and out of house and techno, making its near six-minute runtime feel like a journey worth taking.