This South-Eastern bright and chirpy, indie-pop music washes straight through you. It knocks you under the waves with a power rarely experienced on these shores. And as you hit the water your legs struggle to keep you afloat and you start seeing strange shapes, colours, bubbles and blinding light above (or below) as you balance between sand and sky. This is what The Joy Formidable manage: a balance a dream-like disorientation with the measured chaos of pop music.
Screaming Tea Party charm, swoop and generally be very bird-of-prey like, hovering above watching everyone else struggle to string a few notes together down below, effortless going down for the kill. This London three piece sound familiar, but with added lo-fidelty venom, a few more high notes and a wider range they sound different to the last deja-vu. They’ll seek out and take you down with an impatience and to stick-it-to-you-ness. Run breathless, but they’ll catch you.
*****
Go listen to slower, but still awesome “Cracked up Dietrich” @ myspace. And buy their stuff @ Stolen.
A lot of new British bands are given plane tickets dumped in the Texas Desert and then forced to play South-By-South-West (SXSW) in Austin to pay for their journey home and simultaneously try to show-off some of the best new music Britain has to offer… here’s a run down of my picks for the agenda-setting festival.
BEARSUIT
MP3: Steven Fucking Speilberg: Speeding South-Eastern indie-pop gets revved up screeching from motorway to dirt-road to railway-track looking for the line that takes them to the sea, smiling throughout knowingthey are crazy.
CAPITOL K
MP3: Drum St Song: A Tropical outlook on grey-skies - endless possibilities and endless interesting noises all try to fit together and get along. Everything.
THE IRONWEED PROJECT:
MP3: Down To My Grave: Upbeat, sideways looking Delta-Blues from Manchester. Oh Yes. Absolutely. Worth your time.
THE INDELICATES
MP3: Julia, we don’t live in the 60s: Hard-working, and honest, driving a wedge between Morrissey and Art Brut’s Eddie Argos, digging out the gold and discarding the burnt relationships and isolation found within.
THE WHIP:
MP3: Trash: Irrepressible electro pummelings. Oh America we spoil you. The Rapture may have started in America and the rapture may well be the end of America. But until that moment we just whisper in your ear: (dance and throw off your feet).
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Some of the bands I’ve written about before are attending:
I would continue to ask you to vote for me in the NME award (nominated: Best Music Blog) but as they’ve failed to send me an invitation to the awards ceremony, I’ll have to do a Speilberg and boycott. So call you local congressman/ tribal elder etc and get it sorted.
A couple of months months ago I wrote about Frightened Rabbit and said they have “a folky wisdom and an air of confidence that streams in through the windows, freshly blown out by tornadoes and hurricanes… Frightened Rabbits feel like renewal… pop songs that quickly turn melancholy into bright sunshine“.
Now: so much is so much bigger, but big enough to hold it’s own weight, it doesn’t droop or get lost, and it doesn’t seems lazily nostalgic. There is no lazyness but a vertically inclined indie-pop energy and depth. Jump! Into that Scottish Loch! In the middle of the hottest Scottish summer! It’ll cure you! Track of the Month.
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This is a track from “Midnight Organ Fight” out April 1st on Fat Cat. They are playing some British, then Italian shows before heading out to South By South West in Texas.
Recently I’ve been enjoying Justice’s Fabric Mix, which Fabric rejected. It’s disco, it’s self-indulgent and it’s idiosyncratic. They gave it away for as a Christmas mix.
I stopped doing a podcast recently to concentrate on this site. Luckily for you, “Not Your Usual Bollocks” music podcast is still going strong.
Breaking news:
It seems I have been nominated for an NME award (Best Music Blog) alongside The Hype Machine (a music blog aggragator operated by a very nice guy), The Modern Age (A blog about music, pop culture, the Strokes, puppies, Jack White, and cute boys.), Spinner (AOL music site), and Stereogum (the worlds most popular music blog: it used to have a slight Britney fetish).
Nothing But Green Lights is based in the UK, solely features U.K music, and it is operated by one guy. I have permission to give all of the mp3s I feature away - so don’t feel guilty about taking as many as you like.
They swagger through door. People look up, they wink a collective wink. The crowd parts. They think it’s so simple they’ve been up there for so long - they deserve it. Indie-Rock presented by the consistently-on-fire Stolen Records. Let’s Wrestle don’t just spin around in pointless chorus-led circles in their English urban sprawl - they float, follow the ley-lines and probably don’t care for dirty-dancefloors: this sounds so much more free. Triple filtered, triple strength.
"...Afrobeat has gone all desert-storm, with instrumental precision: an assault of funk and drum... the sandstorm churned up behind it betrays kilowatts of energy and a solar rhythm" [11th May: more] | [Photo credit]
"It’s fresh and exciting in a way that doesn’t sound bedroom produced, ill-considered or lost on a journey to nowhere and back. It’s thoughtful and soulful, and there’s not much better to prepare you for a night of excitement, fireworks and bonfires than a some low-key electronica."
[5th November 2007: more]
