Pop, Lock & Bops: Best of February 2019

Welcome to Pop, Lock & Bops, a monthly playlist series documenting our favorite windswept country tunes, heartfelt tearjerkers and down-right intoxicating dirty-pop club bangers.

Folk cobbler Abigail Lapell is one of those rare gifts the world severely takes for granted. Flying nearly under the radar (but not for us), the gemstone shines bright on her new cobwebbed album, Getaway, and her talent tin painting stark, yet vibrant, photographs is not clearer than on “Sparrow for Heart,” an exemplary, soul-tearing and gliding tune. The strings and horns work in tandem behind her voice, shimmering as silk drapery, and Lapell’s voice guides our hands through space and time. “Be still my heart / Oh, don’t start / Don’t start bleeding, too,” she mourns, flutes flutter fearlessly in fervent spades in an arrangement that is as striking as it is subdued. Lapell is a vision.

Alt-pop darling Illicit Ghost proves (beyond a shadow of a doubt) her true worth on “Parties by Myself.” Metallic percussion bangs and clashes against a more slickly-churned pop melody, her voice scratchy but towering with a luminescent charge. “If I could do it over again, I’d go to every party by myself,” she mutters, as she takes a winky cue from the Top 40 banger, Alessia Cara’s “Here,” but with plenty more grit and stomach-turning punch. She’s an outlier, feasting on her new-found independence, shedding past lives, and absorbing the world in heavy doses around her.

Oozing as an otherworldly creature out of a dark, dank dungeon, pop chameleon EMM shrouds herself in mystery on “Adderall,” a gluey, gooey pill we all need to swallow on a daily basis. “You blame it on the way I talk / You blame it on the way I dress,” she spits to fire back at an ex who has sought to sink her. The ghoulishly-produced anthem stretches into the silver screen, feeling big-budget and cinematic, almost as a soundtrack cut to Oceans 11 or a James Bond action-thriller.

The playlist also includes such blog favorites as: Sheare, Connah Evans, Astrid S, Olivia Henry, Camille Trust, Max Jury, Uffie, Shoffy, Wallows, Gia Woods, Emarosa, Billie Eilish, Caroline Duke, Nate Currin, Petrie, T. Thomason, Sean McVerry, Among the Acres, Annalia, Model Child, XYLØ, The Catching and Kyle Daniel, among countless others.

When all is said and done, we’ve got 81 songs to burn the lingering layers and chill of a terribly sluggish winter.

Take a spin:

Photo Credit: Gaelle Legrand

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