Speakers in Code

If their name wasn’t enough — look, getting an email with the words SEX BBQ in the subject line is startling but awesome — Atlanta’s SEX BBQ has outdone themselves with their first single, “Wake Up”. The combination of the childlike lead vocals and concertina on the verses with the heavy guitars and menacing lilt of the chorus gives the track a weirdly innocent eeriness — or maybe an eerie innocence. It’s part punk rock, part nursery rhyme, and all terrifically unique, unlike anything else I’ve heard this year.

It’s kind of the perfect track for a haunting season in October, for the grey skies and earlier darkness of the fall; look behind your doors and under your bed before you go to bed, because SEX BBQ might be waiting for you. LISTEN HERE…

Your week has been missing a shot of good old fashioned soul music, hasn’t it? Just be honest with yourself. It has. That’s why you’re about to be crazy about Nashville’s Willie & the Giant and their debut single “Ain’t Gonna Wait”, which is lush with horns and smooth guitars, set off by frontman Will Stewart’s vocals which never quite seem to fit against the music, in a staggered and staccato pattern that absolutely works for the chorus, where Stewart pleads that he ain’t gonna wait no more. The vocals hurry over the horns, the horns push against the guitars and the organ, the whole song tilts forward a little bit like a drunk, but it all ends with a perfect chord and a perfect fade out. LISTEN HERE…

There’s so much that’s just said in the name of this band, and the name of this song, before you even get to the video: the fierce and shaky camera work, the half punk, half bluegrass sound, the lyrics that are driving towards something new and perfect and familiar. It’s driving and mesmerizing and holy Lord, I want that orange pick up truck. This is my anthem for this year, loud and full of battering banjos and snare drums and fuck you lyrics. The escape of this video is what I want in my life. VIEW HERE