FRESH MUSIC FRIDAY: Taylor Swift, Civic Video, Charli Lucas

tamsyn bellew reviews new releases from taylor swift, civic video, and charli lucas while waiting on an international eras tour announcement.

---

All Of The Girls You Loved Before – taylor swift

Listen, Lover is a no-skips album, but I still don’t understand why we were robbed of this heartwarming, vintage-inspired, first dance kind of song for ME!. This song is pop perfection – it’s instrumentation is dreamy and perfectly captures the breezy feeling of being in love. Swift also takes the transition from the bridge to the final chorus as an opportunity to show us her vocal maturity, nailing the final high note so effortlessly it caused the leaked version of the song to go viral. Its perfection is only enhanced by the subtle reference to the 10 minute version of All Too Well with the lyric “Crying in the bathroom for some dude who’s name I cannot remember now”. It makes me so excited for Lover (Taylor’s Version).

Wasted Days – Civic Video

This is the first time I’ve listened to Civic Video, and I’m pleasantly surprised! The gentle guitar riffs combined with the drums during the song’s introduction mix to create an easygoing vibe. Normally I’m not a fan of soft vocals, but this song’s fit perfectly with the instrumentation. It reminds me of summer and cruising around Manly. With these types of songs, I find they’re often anticlimactic, but Civic Video avoided that fate by shining the spotlight on the electric guitar after the final chorus. It’s the perfect summer song.

Anthem for loners – charli lucas

I think this was my least favourite song of this week’s selection. It’s not bad by any means, however it feels a bit directionless. There’s not much variation with the vocals – they’re mostly quite truncated throughout the song, and although the instrumentation does vary, the shifts between a more electronic background and an accosting one in the middle of the song feel quite awkward, and leave the guitar at the end to feel out-of-place, causing an anti-climactic ending. The guitar riff and the Lucas’ smooth tone are beautiful, but I think this song could have been improved by building more momentum throughout rather than focusing too much on the middle of the song.

---