Una Skott (Denmark) – Caravan Lovers (single/future album track)
First time here for Una Skott who is also the front woman for Télé Rouge, a Danish French language band (a rarity, for sure) and ‘Caravan Lovers’ is the second single from her forthcoming solo debut album.
Una has an interesting background, falling in love with music, the movies, the French language and travelling all at the same time which goes some way to explaining why she writes most of her songs in French (rather than the mainly English here, for the first time) and which is, naturellement, the language of lurve.
Also why she travelled to France to hone her songwriting skills but not why she then moved on to numerous African countries including Ghana, where she learned to play the two-stringed Ghanaian guitar, the koloko, as well as various drums. That can wait until another day.
The storyline is a clever one; two lovers who for some reason or other can only meet in an abandoned caravan at night (in the video it’s Le Camping Paradis!) I assume that’s the movable home on wheels, not the thing that ploughs its way across the Sahara Desert.
The thesis is that they come under such pressure keeping up this surreptitious nocturnal liaison that they end up hating each other.
It’s a bright bubbly thing, vaguely cinematic in the arrangement with the main melody led by a xylophone or glockenspiel by the sound of it and has a distinctly 1960s flavour to it.
Dream pop at its best.
Oh, and he’s a multi-instrumentalist specialising in the guitar and the video is all her own work.
Find her on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UnaSkott
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unaskott/
Conchis (Finland) – Trouble (single/future album track)
NMC likes survivors and Conchis is one of those for sure.
Working on her debut album in 2017 she was stricken with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and ME and when she was able to work again to any degree it was always haltingly, especially where vocal takes were concerned.
But she’s savvy enough to have used these impediments to her advantage, helping her create contrasts between light and dark, smooth and rough, melancholy and exhilaration.
I did listen to her first single, ‘Cray Cray’ and to be honest wasn’t too impressed with it but this second one, ‘Trouble’, is a different kettle of fish altogether.
The song concerns the juxtaposition of two ideas, unhealthy relationships and the element of fire. The two, both dangerous in their own right, can go together quickly into a conflagration (you could read that as violence although that is never actually suggested) and that is what appears to happen here.
Indeed she admits that there is a certain culpability about the song in that she has in the past allowed herself to be attracted to men that she knows are going to be bad for her but has gone ahead with it anyway.
You might interpret that as gaslighting herself.
She has used both experimental forms (in the verses), which I take to read as the manifestation of those bad relationships, and powerful synthesised chords in the anthemic choruses, which are then presumably the conflagrations.
Along the way she also uses samples from routine day to day objects and there are some intriguing sounds in there which are hard to place.
Stylistically she reminds me of Lorde.
‘Nuff said, I reckon.
I thought she’d named herself after a vegetable but it turns out it’s a character in a novel. And photos of her are almost non-existent.
On occasion that that might irritate me but not so in this case. It just adds to the allure.
The album ‘Chapters’ will follow on 25th October and draws heavily on the symbolism of the Tarot card. All very intriguing.
Find her on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iamconchis
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamconchis/
