Playlist: Now my heart is hanging by a thread
This month’s Fighting with the Undertow playlist includes Turnstile, The Cure, Billy Idol, Pinkshift, One Step Closer and Minimal Faff.
Welcome to Fire Red Sky’s latest playlist of the 20 best punk rock, alt rock and indie music tracks released in the last month recently.
Fighting with the Undertow, a line from the same Bob Mould song that provided the name Fire Red Sky, aims to help me (and hopefully you too) wade through the deluge of new music and maybe hook our next favourite band or album.
I usually update the Spotify playlist each month with 20 new tracks and try to include each band/artist just once per year to challenge myself to keep seeking out new music.
Here’s some highlights from the latest instalment of Fighting with the Undertow:
This seems like a really obvious choice for inclusion, which might make me sound like a sanctimonious prick (though ‘niche music fan’ is my preferred nomenclature), but there’s no denying Turnstile’s upward trajectory. They’re powered by hardcore but transcend the genre’s usual musical and commercial confines, the latter evidenced by being in a position to give the first interview of their current album cycle to the New York Times. ‘Look Out for Me’ breaks my usual playlist rule of one-song-per-album, but self-imposed writing rules be damned, Never Enough is already on my albums of the year shortlist and seems sure to grace many a year-end roundup as the band increasingly looks like this generation’s At The Drive In, tearing things up on ever-greater stages. ‘Look Out for Me’ continues their genre fluidity, opening with chiming chords that could have been borrowed from an 80s pop song but make perfect sense as they float above insistent, rolling bass and drums as the song quickly becomes moshpit-ready. After seesawing from hardcore to shimmering pop the song’s second half recalls ‘No Surprise’ from 2021’s Glow On, if it were stretched out and given shape with an electronica beat.
Along with Dinosaur Jr one of the other bands with semi-regular inclusion on this playlist is The Cure, though the latter are unique in being able to do shots with Olivia Rodrigo, while probably pining for Deftones at Glastonbury this year. Nu-metal seems a minor theme in this playlist and on his remix of ‘Warsong’ from the Mixes of a Lost World reworking of last year’s Songs of a Lost World, Deftones singer Chino Moreno – with whom Robert Smith has some history – dials back the track’s Nico-eque pump organ, adding a groove the original only hinted at.
‘Wildside’ initially comes across as an update on Iggy Pop’s Real Wild Child (Wild One) from two other punk rock survivors, Joan Jett complementing Billy Idol’s own rasp. Musically joyful but lyrically world-weary its sense of cruising-highway-freedom is undercut by an expression of regret at exiting a relationship that was meant to last (“This wasn’t the plan, but I can’t change who I am”). The song’s taken from Dream Into It, a concept album about Idol’s life that’s his ninth solo album and first in just over a decade.
Both Pinkshift’s ‘Evil Eye’ and ‘Jinx’ by One Step Closer show a surprising influence from nu-metal, though given that Scowl’s Kat Moss enthused about Limp Bizkit (with whom they've toured) on the Turned Out A Punk podcast last year maybe not that surprising. Having started out sounding like an update of Paramore, Baltimore’s Pinkshift enthusiastically adopt drop-D tuning and some Bizkit mannerisms on ‘Evil Eye’, with singer Ashrita Kumar singing “I’m not gonna freak out” in a manner that suggests she’s very much on the edge of doing just that. Meanwhile, One Step Closer, from Wilkes-Barre in Pennsylvania, opt for sound on ‘Jinx’ that echoes elements of Linkin Park – ironically, given that the straightedge hardcore band isn’t actually named after the recently-rebooted nu-metal giants.
Does the word ‘faff’ even translate outside the UK? I don’t know. It’s one of those English words for when you “can’t be arsed”, don’t need the “bother” or something is just “a bit of a faff”. It makes for an amusing choice of name for Manchester melodic punk band Minimal Faff given their heartfelt urgent sound. Inspired by the pervasive, pernicious nature of addiction, ‘Fight’ – taken from the band’s Inner Resolve debut EP – is about reaching out to your loved ones and letting them know that they aren't alone in their struggles. It’s also a kick-arse tune.
Fighting with the Undertow - May update
Turnstile – ‘Look Out For Me’
Pinkshift – ‘Evil Eye’
Lightheaded – ‘Same Drop’
Billy Idol – ‘Wildside’ (feat. Joan Jett)
The Cure – ‘Warsong’ (Chino Moreno remix)
Stereolab – ‘Aerial Troubles’
Graveyard – ‘Ship of Fools’ (with Goat)
Long A, Bit Mother Gig – ‘Disolve’ (with Tanya Donelly)
Softcult – ‘Pill to Swallow’
The Bouncing Souls – ‘United’
Cancer Bats – ‘Backstab the Rat Race’
7Seconds – ‘Tied Up in Rhythm’
One Step Closer – ‘Jinx’
Racing Mount Pleasant – ‘Racing Mount Pleasant’
Midwife – ‘Signs’
The Lemonheads – ‘Deep End’
Minimal Faff – ‘Fight’
Armlock – ‘Strobe’
Blondshell – ‘Event of a Fire’
Raue – ‘Crave’
Playlist image by Maksym Sirman on Unsplash