The Future is Mine and it Owes me Fuck All
It's always well worth paying attention to the BBC's annual list of 'who to look out for in the forthcoming year'. Which in 2007 went as follows:
1. Mika
2. The Twang
3. Klaxons
4. Sadie Ama
5. Enter Shikari
6. Air Traffic
7. Cold War Kids
8. Just Jack
9. Ghosts
10. The Rumble Strips
I was fully expecting Mika to be there at #1... I mentioned a few weeks ago that he's clearly destined for stardom, and since then most of the press have been raving about him. Since then i've heard his album (Life in Cartoon Motion) in full, and while it doesn't consistently reach the heights i'd hoped for, Mika's got charisma in spades and i'm quite curious as to what will happen to him this year. He's definitely a pop star, but how much he'll enter the nation's hearts remains to be seen.
This was the song he closed the show with in December. Once again you'll need to get in touch with your gay side to truly apprecitate it.... but you're gonna have to work pretty hard to resist the pop brilliance at work here. The word 'fabulous' (dahling) is the one that's settled in the front of my cranium.
MIKA - LOVE TODAY
The Twang, at #2, are another of these 'we're better than the Stone Roses us' Northern bands. They don't seem to exist much outside their myspace page at the moment, and yeah they sound OK in a Kasabian kinda way. I guess Cloudy Room is the one most worth a listen....and for my foreign guests I should probably explain that 'Gianluca' refers to 'Gianluca Vialli'. Who was a footballer. Vialli rhymes with 'Charlie'. See?
I think I can probably skip the Klaxons. I may have talked about them once or thrice.
Sadie Ama, at #4, is 19. And reminisces about when she "was so young she didn't even understand about the whole music industry". She's Shola Ama's sister, and will probably infest the airwaves with slick but soulless R&B all year. I couldn't find much to get excited about on her myspace. It all sounds fucking dreary (and surprisingly poorly produced) to be honest.
However rather Sadie than 'Enter Shikari'. You think a cross between trance and heavy metal sounds good? I don't. It doesn't.
Then we have 'Air Traffic'. Now I worked for quite some time at the company here that looks after Air Traffic Control. So I half expected the band 'Air Traffic' to be a bunch of engineer misfits with wirey hair and a smell of potato peelings. But no, they're a well-groomed and presumably deodorised outfit, with not a leaky biro in sight.
This excellent single shows them veering towards Coldplay / Keane territory with the piano lead and soaring chorus. But no, I think that does them a disservice. I'm put in mind of Guillemots as well... great hooks, a great tune and not afraid to rock out when it matters.
AIR TRAFFIC - NEVER EVEN TOLD ME HER NAME
Actually this is very good indeed... check it out. There's also a video here if you want to see what they look like.
OK. I give in. I'm going to have to listen to Cold War Kids aren't I. I'm usually suspicious of blog hype coming from the States, after discovering that Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! were shite. But yeah. I will have to investigate. If someone could recommend me a couple of songs i'd be grateful.
Right, where are we? 8. Good. Nearly there!
Well i've heard this Just Jack chap quite a bit on the wireless recently. He's got a song called 'Stars in Their Eyes' where he sings Mike Skinner-like over some house beats. I don't like it much to be honest... but why don't you take a look for yourself. I suspect it'll be top ten in a couple of weeks, as Radio 1 have been giving it a lot of play.
Ghosts are on tour with Air Traffic over the next couple of months. Tipped for super stardom by several sources, they're a classic pop-rock group a la The Feeling. More about them when my copy of their single drops through the letterbox early next week, but they seem to have the gift of pop in abundance. Check the songs on their myspace for evidence. Your toes will be a-tapping.
Finally (woo!) we have Rumble Strips. I'll direct you to the Daily Growl for the music, rather than stealing the tracks & claiming them as my own! They sound a rowdy bunch, and I was going to compare them to Dexy's Midnight Runners (Hate Me You Do in particular) until I read on the aforementioned Daily Growl about "inevitable Dexy’s Midnight Runners comparisons". Damned inevitability.
Anyway if you like the sound or look or both of them, then both tracks are worth a listen. 'Hate Me You Do' being best of the pair. There's more on their myspace of course, but 'My Oh My' is the only one that really caught my attention.
1. Mika
2. The Twang
3. Klaxons
4. Sadie Ama
5. Enter Shikari
6. Air Traffic
7. Cold War Kids
8. Just Jack
9. Ghosts
10. The Rumble Strips
I was fully expecting Mika to be there at #1... I mentioned a few weeks ago that he's clearly destined for stardom, and since then most of the press have been raving about him. Since then i've heard his album (Life in Cartoon Motion) in full, and while it doesn't consistently reach the heights i'd hoped for, Mika's got charisma in spades and i'm quite curious as to what will happen to him this year. He's definitely a pop star, but how much he'll enter the nation's hearts remains to be seen.
This was the song he closed the show with in December. Once again you'll need to get in touch with your gay side to truly apprecitate it.... but you're gonna have to work pretty hard to resist the pop brilliance at work here. The word 'fabulous' (dahling) is the one that's settled in the front of my cranium.
MIKA - LOVE TODAY
The Twang, at #2, are another of these 'we're better than the Stone Roses us' Northern bands. They don't seem to exist much outside their myspace page at the moment, and yeah they sound OK in a Kasabian kinda way. I guess Cloudy Room is the one most worth a listen....and for my foreign guests I should probably explain that 'Gianluca' refers to 'Gianluca Vialli'. Who was a footballer. Vialli rhymes with 'Charlie'. See?
I think I can probably skip the Klaxons. I may have talked about them once or thrice.
Sadie Ama, at #4, is 19. And reminisces about when she "was so young she didn't even understand about the whole music industry". She's Shola Ama's sister, and will probably infest the airwaves with slick but soulless R&B all year. I couldn't find much to get excited about on her myspace. It all sounds fucking dreary (and surprisingly poorly produced) to be honest.
However rather Sadie than 'Enter Shikari'. You think a cross between trance and heavy metal sounds good? I don't. It doesn't.
Then we have 'Air Traffic'. Now I worked for quite some time at the company here that looks after Air Traffic Control. So I half expected the band 'Air Traffic' to be a bunch of engineer misfits with wirey hair and a smell of potato peelings. But no, they're a well-groomed and presumably deodorised outfit, with not a leaky biro in sight.
This excellent single shows them veering towards Coldplay / Keane territory with the piano lead and soaring chorus. But no, I think that does them a disservice. I'm put in mind of Guillemots as well... great hooks, a great tune and not afraid to rock out when it matters.
AIR TRAFFIC - NEVER EVEN TOLD ME HER NAME
Actually this is very good indeed... check it out. There's also a video here if you want to see what they look like.
OK. I give in. I'm going to have to listen to Cold War Kids aren't I. I'm usually suspicious of blog hype coming from the States, after discovering that Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! were shite. But yeah. I will have to investigate. If someone could recommend me a couple of songs i'd be grateful.
Right, where are we? 8. Good. Nearly there!
Well i've heard this Just Jack chap quite a bit on the wireless recently. He's got a song called 'Stars in Their Eyes' where he sings Mike Skinner-like over some house beats. I don't like it much to be honest... but why don't you take a look for yourself. I suspect it'll be top ten in a couple of weeks, as Radio 1 have been giving it a lot of play.
Ghosts are on tour with Air Traffic over the next couple of months. Tipped for super stardom by several sources, they're a classic pop-rock group a la The Feeling. More about them when my copy of their single drops through the letterbox early next week, but they seem to have the gift of pop in abundance. Check the songs on their myspace for evidence. Your toes will be a-tapping.
Finally (woo!) we have Rumble Strips. I'll direct you to the Daily Growl for the music, rather than stealing the tracks & claiming them as my own! They sound a rowdy bunch, and I was going to compare them to Dexy's Midnight Runners (Hate Me You Do in particular) until I read on the aforementioned Daily Growl about "inevitable Dexy’s Midnight Runners comparisons". Damned inevitability.
Anyway if you like the sound or look or both of them, then both tracks are worth a listen. 'Hate Me You Do' being best of the pair. There's more on their myspace of course, but 'My Oh My' is the only one that really caught my attention.
posted by headphonesex @ 2:22 AM
