Our new music roundup launches with singles from Divorce, Squid, PARTICLS, MPTL Microplastics and Laundromat Chicks.

New year new Hard of Hearing! For 2025, we are excited to present a new series, Tracks, rounding up our favourite releases of the week. Kicking off the year in style we’ve got big new tunes from Divorce and Squid, a double offering from PARTICLS, new music from My Pussy Tastes Like Microplastics and Viennese jangle from Laundromat Chicks.

Divorce – Pill

Divorce are back following up the brilliant ‘Antarctica’ with new single ‘Pill’, teasing their debut album ‘Drive to the Goldenhammer’, which is out on 7^th March. The song feels like the most ambitious to date from Divorce. Opening with a grandiose and erratic 80s-style strings riff, the tune seems to have mutated out of that era into the band’s present, Tiger Cohen-Towell’s vocals and straight-ahead drums and bass bringing it home to Divorce’s familiar sound. The song brims with compositional confidence, a theatrical middle section stripping things down in a captivating flashback sequence before jangling, countrified guitars play the song out. Guitarist and co-vocalist Cohen-Towell explains, “It’s about sexual awakenings and the absolute thrill of being seen properly… all three sections highlight a different realm of my queer experience. From the get-go I wanted to have three very different sections in the song”.

PARTICLS – Loving Feeling / Face To Face

It might not be Valentine’s Day for another month yet, but London-based PARTICLS are bringing the romantic vibes early on this January with their new double A, ‘Loving Feeling’ and ‘Face To Face’. The former is a candied art-pop-meets-indie-psych ballad with an almost Alex Turner type croon to it. On the flipside, ‘Face to Face l’ meanders towards the orchestral country-folk and jazz territory that lies somewhere between Kevin Morby, Cut Worms, and London contemporaries Ugly. With empyrean harmonies and delightfully pleasant pianos, ‘Face to Face’ is a wondrous serenade for the frosty wintry nights, best enjoyed whilst sipping whiskey by the fire. An absolute double delight from the outfit. (Brad Sked)

Squid – Building 650

Steaming towards the release of their third album, everyone’s favourite krautrock/jazz/post-punk five-piece Squid have dropped their latest single, ‘Building 650’. Clanging around a triangular riff over steady driving rhythm, the song unravels in a cryptic, spikily delivered narrative that builds to the final hook, “Frank’s my friend, no true American”. The lyrics are in fact inspired by the band’s first trip to Japan, arriving in Tokyo two days after the COVID travel ban was lifted as some of the city’s only tourists. The full album, ‘Cowards’, is out on 7^th February via Warp.

My Pussy Tastes Like Microplastics – sex/pol

A mechanically churning single, ‘sex/pol’ establishes MPTL Microplastics’ flair for disorientating maximalism and acerbic songwriting. Haunting guitars poke through sounding almost flute-like, and playing off with the band’s cellist Alex Duncalf, they give the song an eerily pastoral tone. In its punk setting amid snatches of vocals, it all feels very Throbbing Gristle. Shifting focus from sex dolls (last year’s debut single ‘Plastic Princess’) to sex tourists, the harsher sound of ‘sex/pol’ is representative of the noisy chaos that  makes MPTL Microplastics one of London’s most confounding and exciting new bands.

Laundromat Chicks – Secrets

‘Secrets’ is the final preview of new album ‘Something Possessed’ by Viennese jangle band ‘Laundromat Chicks’. A freewheeling, guitar-driven tune suited to a summer holiday car ride, this track provides some much-needed escapism from the January cold. Charming vocals guide the song along, all romance and intrigue delivered with artless authenticity. Check back on 24^th January when the full album releases.