Vol. 34-2026 of WECB Friday – our report cards from the first Friday listens.
THE PLAYLIST
THE REPORT CARDS PIECE BY PIECE
FONTAINES DC – Rating 8.00 – Marianne transforms escape into vertigo: Chatten sings the desire to disappear while the strings amplify the sense of catastrophe. The tension is palpable and grows without giving in to mannerism, until an ending that opens an emotional crack rather than closes it. Hypnotic.
CLEO SOL – Rating 8.00 – Intimate and introspective neo-soul and R&B piece focused on personal growth, learning to trust oneself and overcoming the past. Sophisticated!
JUNGLE – Rating 8.00 – Fascinating and sunny, Sunshine dusts off the retro dance taste of the Seventies with elegance without nostalgia. Sinuous grooves, imaginary palm trees and a production that seems filtered by the light of the sunset. A hedonistic, calibrated and surprisingly chic record. Seductive.
LEON BRIDGES – Rating 7.50 – Leon updates his soul with a more rhythmic step and dancefloor-oriented writing, without losing his vocal elegance. The summer component works. A pleasant evolution, yet to be explored further. Solar.
ERYKAH BADU & THE ALCHEMIST – Rating 7.50 – Badu and The Alchemist build a language where soul, jazz and hip-hop become material to decompose. The grainy beats of the Alchemist meet Badu’s vocality without forcing its identity. Enveloping.
CORNELIUS – Rating 7.25 – Cornelius pushes the funky towards a nervous and smooth dance-pop, with an elastic groove that does not give up refinement. Mazaranai works in terms of dynamics and measure, even if the formula remains more effective than surprising. Vibrant.
CENTRAL CEE – Rating 7.00 – Central Cee brings London drill into pop designed for the stadium, with TheTeama song born from the collaboration with Coca-Cola for the new Premier League season. The production compresses its phrasing into a dry and peremptory structure, more functional to the collective impact than to formal research. The result retains a certain roughness, but the commercial destination is all too legible.
SHYGIRL – Rating 7.00 – Shygirl attenuates the club arsenal for an oblique ballad, where voice, cello and distortions build a restless intimacy. Alyse it has atmosphere and control, but remains more suggestive than incisive. A good change of register, not yet a turning point. Suspended.
TROYE SIVAN – Rating 7.00 – Troye transforms adoration into an almost hypnotic trip-hop drift, suspended between psychedelia and oblique pop. “She’s The Best” proceeds by subtraction, with a deliberately elementary refrain and an ending that accelerates without breaking its languid geometry.
SAM SMITH – Rating 7.00 – Free, safe, without structural cages: Sam Smith crosses pop with fluid writing, more interested in the gesture than the formula. No revolution, but a now clear identity, capable of moving without forcing.
BLOC PARTY – Rating 6.75 – Pigwig finds an unresolved balance: the guitar urgency remains, but the singing becomes crowded until it loses bite. The chorus attempts a pop take that isn’t always convincing. A curious piece, more interesting than successful.
WEEZER – Rating 6.50 – More introspective writing, dry guitars. The formula remains recognizable and retains a decades-long hold. Their style!
REX ORANGE COUNTY – DANIEL CAESAR – Rating 6.50 – indecision focuses on sentimental inertia with a collected pop-soul, where Rex Orange County and Daniel Caesar fit together without forcing. Intimacy works.
JORJA SMITH – Rating 6.50 – Jorja continues to move between R&B and club music without letting herself be caged by labels, but here the balance appears less incisive. The rhythmic intuitions are not lacking, but the writing rarely transforms more refined than memorable.
KASABIAN – Rating 6.50 – Kasabian straddles the border between dance-rock and festivalism with a muscular song, built more on rhythmic impact than surprise. The groove works, but the formula appears already sedimented and the anthemism ends up prevailing over the writing.
CARLY RAE JEPSEN – Rating 6.50 – Carly Rae Jepsen returns to preside over the dance-pop territory with Motivationa song that works on immediacy. The smooth production and elastic chorus build a pleasant track, designed to move naturally between radio and dance floor.
POP ICON – Rating 6.50 – Hurt tries to take Icona Pop away from the pure euphoria of the track, seeking a more intimate dimension. Caroline Hjelt and Aino Jawo slow down the pace and focus on vulnerability, while the rest oscillates between smooth dance-pop and already sedimented formulas.
LIGABUE – Rating 6.50 – Something for you reiterates Ligabue’s lexicon without looking for new coordinates. The solid and introspective writing once again takes us into his world without too many pretensions.
GIUSY FERRERI – Rating 6.50 – Giusy seeks a new physiognomy in pop, with Cosmic Void it remains more interesting in its intentions than in its delivery. The production supports a compact piece, however devoid of authentic expressive gaps. A transition yet to be brought into focus.
KAYSEYE – Rating 6.00 – No conceptual research for the girl band for a song that is consumed in the urgency of clubbing, driven by rough production and pounding rhythms. Energy offsets structural predictability, leaving its mark only where pop calibration derails.
The article SONGS OF THE WEEK: new record releases (21 August) #NewMusicFriday comes from WECB.
