Still Covered In The Moon

No Joy “Big Life Big Leaf”

“Big Life Big Leaf” is a song that’s largely concerned with aging, death, and inevitable natural cycles, but it’s not a downer. It’s bright, it’s up tempo, it’s a psychedelic rush. It’s a song that rejoices in the very fact of being alive and excited for everything that’s possible when you’re still here on Earth. When Jasamine White-Gluz sings “I wish you didn’t have to leave,” it’s less about mourning and more about wanting someone to never leave the party of your life. And so it makes a lot of sense that the song would have to sound like the No Joy version of party music.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Suki Waterhouse “When I Get Drunk (I Want You Boy)”

The past decade or so has given us a glut of sexy/sad songs by women about lusting for men who treat them terribly, largely taking cues from Lana Del Rey’s prolific work on the subject. “When I Get Drunk (I Want You Boy)” is pretty obviously downstream from Lana, right on down to starting the chorus with a resigned “fuck it…,” but I think Suki Waterhouse is aiming for something a little more earnestly sexy and openly emotional. For one thing, that slinky bass line is too solidly R&B to give the song much ironic distance from its own sexiness. And the melancholy feels more earned than notional. The piano part carries a lot of heartbreak, and there’s a few too many lines giving away the game that the singer actively wants a relationship with this distant and ambivalent man. That note of futility and tragedy makes the song feel sexier – there’s real stakes to this hookup, even if she’s trying not to admit it.

Buy it from Amazon.