Blog: Breaking More Waves

Here's one of those new / not new bands. That is to say that San Cisco's debut single was released somewhere near the start of 2011 in their homeland of Australia and the follow up EP came out at the start of 2012. But even with the world wide web sometimes as a UK based blog it takes a bit of time for artists, bands and songs from other parts of the planet to find their way to us. So it is with this young group, a four piece consisting of Jordi Davieson (Lead vocals and guitar), Josh [...]

Since we last posted on Gabrielle Aplin a lot has happened. There's been a whole string of sold out dates, she made her debut TV appearance on BBC2's review show , entertained a traffic logged M1 motorway with an impromptu performance , announced another tour and most importantly has inked the dotted line with a major label. As we identified last year Gabrielle's route to getting signed has been to build the all-important fan base first and aside from playing live the vast majority of this has been done via a succession of [...]

The seed of a clue had already been planted late last year when Misty Miller appeared on her facebook under the caption "a preview of what's to come," dressed in black, sneering at the camera, holding devil horn fingers above her head. Cut forward to 2012 and five new songs have been whacked up on line. Fans expecting more of the same sentimentally sugary sweet ditties strummed on ukele about romance will probably have had to sit down. Because Misty has [...]

Today's musical recipe involves 1 part glitch pop, a quarter of a Beach Boys 'wee-oo', 2 parts gentle crooning r 'n'b flavours and 1 part late-night creamy smooth smoochiness mixed together, before whisking in a measure of gospel styled backing vocal chanting and a hint of noise. Pop that all onto the internet for a few months and voila, you have created Red Velvet by D-E-W-L . Who are D-E-W-L ? Well that's for the internet detectives to find out, but our Google searches tell us that they may be a duo (there's certainly two people [...]

Some of the more intimate performances at the Great Escape festival 2012 came at Brighton's Marwood Coffee Shop as part of Sofar Sounds . Amongst the musical highlights were Breaking More Waves long term favourites Slow Club and new girl on the block Laurel whose song Next Time has become one of our latest obsessions ( you can hear it here ). For your listening pleasure streaming below are live acoustic versions of [...]

If you've ever felt cheated out of a brighter future The Milk's new single Every Time We Fight , due on June 24 is the song for you. Full of the bands adrenalising soul sound, impassioned vocals and irresistible hooks it also features a video shot in a working mens club in Dagenham by Inbetweeners star (and long-time fan of The Milk) James Buckley. The film has a back story of a factory closing and how the people then come together as a community. Buckley himself plays the worker who rallies them together. Written at [...]

The Chevin are possibly one of the most deeply unfashionable bands around. They are therefore all the better for it. Channelling the spirit of U2, The Killers and The Alarm with all of its pomp and glory The Chevin (which is pronounced The Shevin) simply don't do small. New single Drive released on May 28 through So Recordings certainly gives Bono and co a run for their money. It's full of stadium straddling, powerhouse sonics that will [...]

We've posted about Ronika before on Breaking More Waves. Here's another post. This multiple posts thing makes us suspect that we are signing up to the Ronika fan club. Earlier this year we mentioned that Ronika is not the tallest of pop stars, but as we all know that never did Kylie Minogue any harm, or Nik Kershaw for that matter. (Go look him up kids - your pop music knowledge isn't complete until you've heard [...]

York may not have the musical lineage that the likes of Manchester, Liverpool or Glasgow have (Shed Seven anyone?) but Partyclub are certainly attempting to put the place on the map with a heap of smiles. Having labelled their music as 'indiebounce' their single Young and Free picked up the support of BBC Introducing leading to daytime airplay on Radio 1 as well as support from this blog. Now they're moving from the bounce to the [...]

We've had a strange relationship with Jessie J. We liked Do It Like A Dude . It was a bit mainstream-edgy (without ever being alternative) and promised much. Unfortunately since then if we plotted a graph of Mystic Meg turned pop star, with the Y axis labelled 'pleasantly intrigued' down to 'nauseated and annoyed' the graph would have slipped below the bottom to 'vomiting and angry'. But here's a fact (that is if you believe everything you read [...]

They've already been described as Julie Andrews in hell (by Paul Lester in The Guardian ), cutesy dream pop (by our favourite blog sister Flying With Anna ) and a delicate spoonful of sugar adventure of pretty tunefulness ( by ourselves ) but those last words were written a long time ago, in 2009. Yet it seems that it's only now that The Hall Of Mirrors are slowly beginning to pick up the media attention that they deserve. At least there's no question of the group being a hype band, shoved onto the scene with no [...]

If you're a fan of new music the chances are you've probably already come across Haim (pronounced as in time not rain), the Los Angeles four-piece consisting of Danielle, Alana, Este and (the non-pictured drummer) only man in the band Dash. So we apologise if we appear to be 'late' or 'not on the case' in only featuring Haim in an introductory new wave feature now, but the fact that the group have at the time of writing just over 2,500 followers on Twitter and 4,862 likes on Facebook suggests that there's still a huge volume of people [...]

"An ache inside your soul, fearing the unknown, don't hide yourself away from being happier," begins the lyrics of Paper Crows new song Happier . Now let's face facts happiness in pop music has always been pretty unhip. When he was reminding us that heaven knows he was miserable now Morrissey was effectively also reminding us just how damn savvy he was. Sarcasm built with a steadfast dislike of the world and yourself is the ultimate in cool when you're young. Of course as you get older, you just become a grumpy old git that nobody wants [...]

Foxes aka Louisa Rose Allen, the Southampton born now London based 22 year old has been a regular fixture on Breaking More Waves since we first put her name up in lights last August when she was still using her real name. Since then we've discussed her name change ( the potential confusions with Lucy Rose and Lily Allen were always going to be too much) and her new name (that disorientates some even more with Brighton band Foxes! loitering around). So just to cap off and seamlessly link this all together we finally got to see Foxes (the [...]

Music appreciation is made up from the fabric of relationships. The relationships we have with songs, with bands, the people we go to gigs with; they're all bonded through the emotions of love, hate, sexy one night stands and intimate long termism's. The internet has changed relationships though. Facebook and other social networks have given many people the sense of having many of them, but the depth and quality is actually very superficial. Our relationship with music is similar; [...]

The last time Seasfire cropped up on Breaking More Waves was just a few days ago. Now here we go again. This time it's a cover version and rather like our favourite cover of the year (the wonderful take on Lana Del Rey's Million Dollar Man by the beautiful Alice Jemima ) Seasfire have also taken a song by a contemporary artist that we like and very much put their own spin on it. So just as we're huge fans of Alice and Lana, Seasfire interpreting Lucy Rose very much floats our boat. [...]

Today we introduce a new band that press Breaking More Waves buttons, tick all of our boxes and massage our ears in exactly the right way. They're called Churches and consist of Iain Cook, Lauren Mayberry and Martin Doherty from Glasgow. All members of the trio have past or present histories with other bands, namely Aerogramme, The Unwinding Hours, Blue Sky Archives and The Twilight Sad but Churches sound nothing like any of those bands. Instead their debut [...]

The iconic image of The Smiths outside the Salford Lads club was used on the sleeve of the Queen is Dead vinyl album. Now who is this chap in this video outside the same building and other locations? It's certainly not Morrissey returned, although he does pull some nifty dance moves that we're sure Mozza would be proud of. Whoever this long grey haired groover is he certainly seems to be enjoying the sounds of Swiss [...]

Like pretty much what seemed the whole of the UK music blogging community (or at least those based in the southern half of the country) Breaking More Waves was at the Great Escape Festival in Brighton last weekend. Here's a band that we saw by the sea that impressed. They're called Seasfire . You may have even read about them on this blog before . [...]

As the sun sets on the third and final day of Brighton's Great Escape Festival we offer up 10 more thoughts on the 2012 event and some of the bands that played. More musings both here and here from the previous days. 1. Established artists sometimes steal the show at 'new' music festivals Admiral Fallow is [...]