Fiercely passionate music fans are amongst the most suspicious people I’ve come across. Perhaps there’s good reason for a healthy level of cynicism due to the equally cynical track record of the music industry, but there is something slightly wrong with treating every polished and accomplished new track with the distance that you’d give a bomb-shaped abandoned bag. So approach London Grammar’s “Hey Now” without any pretensions at all, because as their publicist succinctly put it, they’re just a new trio from London, and that’s about that. What’s far more interesting is “Hey Now” itself, as it burns [...]
Whilst we’re all reeling from the bombshell of music industrialists voting for the names of acts which they quite like in the BBC Sound of poll, I thought it might be a pretty good chance to, you know, write about some new music. Only Real didn’t make the BBC Sound Of list but, despite what the scale of reaction to the list might have you believe, that doesn’t mean that his music is either irrelevant or any less worth listening to than those who are on the list. In fact, if you’re one of those people who have a niggling [...]
So yesterday the longlist of the Blog Sound of 2013 was announced. Last year I felt the need to preface the list with a justification of the existence of the longlist itself, but now I don’t really see the need for that; anything that is drawing attention to new music should be encouraged, and that this year’s Blog Sound longlist contains so many exciting new artists is just an added bonus. Admittedly, none of the five artists that I wrote about made it to the list, which only highlights the variety in tastes between bloggers, and the strength [...]
It said a lot that as the 2013 GIT Award was launched last week , two of last year's nominees in the form of Loved Ones and Ninetails were in the process of unveiling new material to deserved praise from national press. What better evidence could there be of both the success of the awards, and the underlying strength of Liverpool’s music scene without which the awards themselves couldn’t exist? My view may well be slightly clouded on this matter, though, so I removed my so called “Liverpool goggles” and took to the internet to canvass some of the [...]
From Frank Ocean to Miguel via NZCA/Lines, pop music has been wonderfully reconfigured this year. Phoenix native YUS continues this vein of subtle originality with the pessimistic “Nowadays”. It’s a gentle sigh of a song that patiently builds to a weary R&B shuffle that captures the feeling of resigned hopelessness perfectly, and somehow even makes it feel like a desirable state of mind. And when you start getting tricked into thinking things like that, you know the music must be good. Tweet
This is definitely one of those rare songs that sound just far too accomplished for such a new artist to have made. You’ve probably heard of London via Vienna artist S O H N by now – his song The Wheel was deservingly widely blogged, and has since clocked up more than 180,000 plays on SoundCloud, leading to his signing to Vagrant earlier this week. If it seems a meteoric rise within thirty days, well, it is. But it’s entirely in proportion with his talent – we’ve not heard intricately put together electronica ballads this innovative and touching since a [...]
Bristol is a city that grabs you by the neck and forces bass culture down you, whether you want it to or not; it must be one of the only cities in the world where timid freshers are inducted by a heady mix of Julio Bashmore and Mosca. It’s fortunate, then, that the city is so adept at popping out genuinely interesting new producers, otherwise the initiation would be far less bearable. The latest in a long line of these talents is Artifact, whose Worn EP was dropped at the start of this week. “Drain” is the perfect introduction to [...]
Literally a week ago I was stood in a smoky room in at the inaugural Liverpool Psych Fest, about to have my mind blown by guttural Sheffield noise-rock duo Drenge . Silhouetted against the strangely fitting backdrop of a child chasing a balloon across war torn Paris, Drenge don’t do theatrics or so much as stop except to change tunings, but instead pile through a clutch of intoxicating garage rock gems, each delivered with a genuinely impressive vitality. Nothing’s being reinvented, but listen to the wonderfully titled “People In Love Make Me Feel Yuck”, and try tell me that [...]
When it comes to labels like 4AD, there are some very good reasons why their staff get paid to work with music, and you and I do not. Take their newest signing, Indians, the solo project of Copenhagen’s Søren Løkke Juul, who appears to have been plucked out of nowhere with such a fully formed and evocative sound that it all just seems highly suspicious. But, of course, he wasn’t plucked from nowhere, it’s just that in decades of being a record label, 4AD have pretty much worked out the whole ‘discovering new talent’ thing. And it is talent that [...]
Melbourne based jangle pop merchants Twerps today release the carefree and accidentally flawless “Work It Out/He’s In Stock” single on Underwater Peoples. Like many people, we seem to have been completely blissfully unaware of the release of their debut album last year, so thank god they didn’t take it to heart and kept absent-mindedly slipping together passages of woozy slacker pop. The lazily strummed chords of “He’s In Stock” have all the flippance and sweltering brilliance of Real Estate, so it didn’t surprise us to find out that Twerps have recently been supporting them on tour. Carelessness aside, they’ve also [...]
Raw talent is far harder to find than you might think – and so when I first stumbled across the poignant, sultry tones of Liverpool-based band Tear Talk, I was even more impressed to learn that they all only started to play their respective instruments one year ago. I had already fallen for the patiently built evocation of “Parallel”, but going back and listening to it with the relative youth of the outfit in mind cast it in an altogether more promising light. Spread thinly across almost five introspective minutes are enough haunting melodies and confessional lyrics to do comparisons [...]
One of my favourite bands, Wave Machines , are back with some more disorientating, incoherent pop music. “Ill Fit” is the first single to be released from their new album, and tentatively suggests that they’ve got even better during the period they’ve been gone. “Ill Fit”, as ever, sounds like the sort of deranged pop music which only Wave Machines would think was a good idea, let alone attempt, even less pull off with this sort of swaggering style. This insanely smooth piece of left-field pop will be released on 22nd October, and you can catch them next month [...]
“Tarifa” is the first track that we’ve heard from Dublin based producers Forrests*, but there’s enough almost-peerless quality squeezed into these iridescent four minutes to bare excited comparisons to Four Tet and the melodic side of Gold Panda. The song itself slowly evolves into a shimmering, propulsive cut of electronica that almost physically sighs with resignation, such is its downcast nature. But it’s not pessimistic; “Tarifa” is too euphoric for that. Instead, it’s realistic. Lots of things in the world are shit, we’re just going to have to face that, and with subtle electronica like this, you might just find [...]
Well this is predictable. But, in a way, that’s exactly why I’m writing about a song that was released approximately 55 days, 12 hours, 41 minutes and 36 seconds ago. Those 36 seconds are a long time within the blogging community. As anyone who is familiar with music blogs will be aware, posting or not posting about a song because other blogs have or haven’t posted about it is potentially one of the worst things in the world at the moment, closely followed by President Assad. It’s that sort of self-conscious competitive instinct that makes blogging more about egos than [...]
Look, something’s got to be popular, and it should be Ruby Goe. It would be pretty hard to argue that there’s no place in the world for popular mainstream pop music with accessibility at its heart, at the expense of everything else. And when it’s done as well as Ruby Goe does it, it might start making all those miserable indie albums that Pitchfork tell you you like feel pretty dull. The reason why she does pop music so well is because she’s taken no compromises; the emphasis here may be on obvious hooks, heavy beats and big melodies, but [...]
Get as many ears as you’ve got around this. This, the new track from Liverpool’s prodigal son of melodic folk/pop, Dan Croll , is also his first official single and will be released by his own Racquet Records imprint on 17th September for you to waste all your meaningless earthly money on. On “From Nowhere”, Dan is channelling some Veckatimest-era Grizzly Bear, but with his undeniable pop appeal rather than their introspection. Everything else is 100% Dan – breezy melodies which sound more effortless than breathing, the raw candour of his lyrics, an entire kaleidoscope of different hooks, and [...]
As the inimitable Lt. Aldo Raine once said, ‘arrivederci’ . I’m leaving to become a homeless person in Italy for two weeks in the hope of running into either Porcelain Raft or Silvio Berlusconi, which does unfortunately mean that for fourteen tear stained days you will have to find your new music elsewhere. However, all is not lost, because in this post I’m going to throw at you a load of stuff that I have been meaning to post and would have carefully written about over the next two weeks. Instead, it’s going to be Soundcloud links and [...]
Personally I feel like there are far more pressing things to direct my fury towards, such as the impending doom of being submerged under the completely unavoidable marketing campaign known as the Olympics, but many people seem to feel like Adele is an ever present evil that must be dealt with. For these people – here is one more reason to irrationally dislike a person that you’ve never met. Dante is Swedish. This, of course, means that he was born to construct pop songs of the sort of simplicity and originality that most other people [...]
Ironically, when we know nothing about a new artist more words are taken up in attempting to emphasise just how unreasonably anonymous this new artist is than would otherwise be taken up going through the usual names/locations/background/bic ep size routine. And even more ironically, even more space has been taken up by pointing out this illogical state of affairs. Perhaps we should all just calm down and listen to some music. The reason I mention this all is Circa Waves , for though the prospect of having no inane background information on which to [...]
D E N A is a young songwriter and producer from Bulgaria who has recently relocated to Berlin, and if the three songs currently on her Soundcloud are anything to go by (they are), she’s one oddball Eastern-European pop-star in the making. Her track “Cash, Diamond Rings, Swimming Pools” is destined to divide opinions like the war in Iraq, but is obviously far more important. It’s one of the most gloriously unselfconscious pop songs we’ve heard in far too long, managing to sound like M.I.A but without the uncomfortable self-importance, yet with all the crossover appeal that “Paper [...]
Not Many Experts
Slaughterday Weekend: Oh, good, Korn is still kicking.
Do You Miss Girl Talk? Then Listen to This Bruneaux Mash-Up Album
Boards of Canada – Reach For The Dead
