As 2017 gets into full swing, we’re already excited for the amount of new music that will be released this year. In the next few months, we have albums from the likes of Ryan Adams, British Sea Power and Los Campesinos! to look forward to. We’re also very excited for gigs by the likes of Annabel Allum, Hannah Lou Clark, Young Legionnaire, Strobes and more in the local Surrey and Hampshire area.
We’ve moved home over the past month so we apologize for the radio silence. With all that stress now behind us, we promise this year we’ll be posting more regular content and are eager to hear from more bands and are even thinking of new ideas for regular features. More on that as we move forward. Anyway, here are some of the highlights from our inbox over the past month or so…
Get Inuit – ‘Barbiturates’
Get Inuit have won so many fans over the past 18 months or so with their awesome live show and sound that combines the pop hooks of Supergrass with a dirtier Spring King-esque edge. ‘Barbiturates’ is a live favorite that finds the band venturing into slower and more intense territory. With a slow-burning minute of build-up, the song then jumps into life and you can’t help but smile as they sing: My body is a dust collector, my brain has no health inspector’ and somehow fit the slightly unwieldy title into a gorgeous melody. Do the kids still pogo like back in the Britpop days? This is the song to bring that move back…
Slumbers – ‘Doboom Sloom’
Signed to our friends at Sports Day Records, Slumbers are proving themselves to be a very special band. ‘Doboom Sloom’ opens with a gentle and hummable aesthetic that owes a debt to Bon Iver but then adds a welcome dose of optimism and humor. Sabrina talks about how she doesn’t want to get out of bed and how she has no motivation before then moving onto listing the great things about your own company including how great it is to ‘draw all the time’, ‘watch Adventure Time’ and ‘sit in my room and listen to some tunes’ while staring at the moon. As she becomes happier, the sound becomes more akin to something like Jenny Lewis fronting The Shins.
The Dears – ‘We Lost Everything’
Montreal’s The Dears have made a welcome return after six years away and ‘We Lost Everything’ is the first single from their new album. With a more electronic influence from the likes of New Order and LCD Soundsystem, this song is less bombastic than what has come before but no less powerful. It starts with Murray A. Lightburn stating ‘There was a warning… we lost everything’ before finishing the song by pleading ‘I never wanted to do this alone’ over and over again.
The New Faith – ‘Look the Other Way’
Formed by members of Lyrebirds and The Strange Death of Liberal England, The New Faith are a band from Brighton we’ll be keeping an eye on throughout 2017 and beyond. ‘Look the Other Way’ is a song that will appeal to fans of avant-garde troubadours like Patrick Wolf and chamber-pop specialists including Andrew Bird and Sufjan Stevens. As the song becomes more orchestral, the singer pleads with the subject he’s just lost about how ‘I wrote you a song about us’ and how ‘I thought I’d be better off alone’. And then a blast of E Street Band-esque brass comes in, which is always (quite literally) music to our ears…
Droughts – ‘Welcome Back’
Droughts are a Chicago band who came to our attention because William Covert, drummer with our favourites Space Blood, is also in them. A four piece who specialise in a brand of intense emo with elements of post-hardcore, they’ll get you psyched for a mathy new year. ‘Welcome Back’ is the first single from their debut album (released via Skeletal Lighting in February) and is full of healthy screams, complex riffs and brutal drumming in the vein of Terrible Love.
Filed under: New music, Preview Tagged: alternative music, Canada, Droughts, Get Inuit, indie, indie music, Montreal, new music, pop music, rock music, Slumbers, soundcloud, Sports Day Records, The Dears, The New Faith, YouTube
