It’s Friday, which means it’s time for Spark’s music expert and legendary L.A. radio DJ Nic Harcourt to weigh in on what new music he’s got on repeat at the moment. Below, he shares his newest picks added to his Spark Radio playlist and shares a spotlight on his favorite earworm of the week.
NEW:
Lorde: Te Ao Mārama / Solar Power
Holly Humberstone: Scarlett
Clinic: I Can’t Stand The Rain
Mini Trees: Moments In Between
Angels & Airwaves: Spellbound
Nation of Language: A Word & A Wave
Sasha Keable, Jorja Smith: Killing Me
Sufjan Stevens, Angelo De Augustine: Cimmerian Shade
Bomba Estereo, Leonel Garcia: Como Lo Pedi
SPOTLIGHT:
LORDE – TE AO MĀRAMA
Lorde has shared a companion piece to her recent album Solar Power with versions of five songs sung in Māori, the native language of New Zealand’s indigenous people. The new versions are on the Te Ao Mārama EP with proceeds being distributed to Forest & Bird and Te Hua Kawariki Charitable Trust.
“Many things revealed themselves slowly to me while I was making this album, but the main realization by far was that much of my value system around caring for and listening to the natural world comes from traditional Māori principles,” Lorde writes. “There’s a word for it in te reo: kaitiakitanga, meaning ‘guardianship or caregiving for the sky, sea and land.’ I’m not Māori, but all New Zealanders grow up with elements of this worldview. Te ao Māori and tikanga Māori are a big part of why people who aren’t from here intuit our country to be kind of ‘magical’, I think. I know I’m someone who represents New Zealand globally in a way, and in making an album about where I’m from, it was important to me to be able to say: this makes us who we are down here. It’s also just a crazy beautiful language — I loved singing in it. Even if you don’t understand te reo, I think you’ll get a kick out of how elegant my words sound in it. Hana’s translations for ‘Te Ara Tika / The Path’ and ‘Hine-i-te-Awatea / Oceanic Feeling’ in particular take my g-d breath away.”
