Music to drink tea by
Great British Hopes
Great British Hopes: The Sailplanes
03 years ago
Every now and again I’ll run across something that I instantly love. Coming up with new content for here on a daily basis means that I post a lot of stuff that I like, but don’t have that immediate connection with. The ones that do tend to be the bands that end up being part of our Great British Hopes series. Assuming that they are British of course.
The Sailplanes are currently based in Berlin, but luckily for me they formed in London. They make a kind of noisy, messy pop that is difficult to categorise. My first thought was to label them as “Life Without Buildings on ritalin”, but that sounded more insulting than it should. The song structures certainly resemble LWB though, stop/starting and jumping all over the place. Then some of their songs started sounding like “the best thing Nosferatu D2 never recorded”, which is fitting as they seem to have both come from the same scene.
Reading back I can see that I haven’t managed to articulate my excitement for this band at all. They really are the best thing I have encountered in a long time though. Choosing just one song to post was a hard enough battle in itself. Just download Tilted and listen for yourself. Then go to their site and download all the rest.
Great British Hopes: Copy Haho
03 years ago
I was always under the impression that Copy Haho were actually called Copy Halo. I’m not entirely sure why, as that isn’t exactly a more logical name. In fact, I only noticed that it was Haho last week, several months after first listening to them.
Those several months ago, I liked what I heard, and did intend to feature them. Promptly, I forgot all about them, as if often the way. Then I noticed that they are one of the Awesome Pals, and projected them right back into my blog field of vision.
Copy Haho are by far the best thing to ever come out of Stonehaven in Scotland. The fact they are probably the only thing to come out of Stonehaven makes that honor a little unfair though. Hyperbole aside though, Copy Halo have obviously spent much of their youth playing Pavement records and a whole bunch of other 90s American indie to death. Words border on the laconic, melodies gently move around in the background, only occasionally leaping into action.
There is certainly a gap in the current indie scene for this kind of lazy slacker rock. Bands like 4 or 5 Magicians and My Sad Captains often come close to filling this void, but never quite seem to do so. Record labels seem to be wary of this kind of music, and I can’t for the live of me figure out why. Granted, it’s never going to sell out a stadium, but it’ll certainly get the indie kids moving. Or at least gently swaying.
Website / Myspace
Great British Hopes: Projekt A-ko
13 years ago
Two Great British Hopes in a row. Both from Glasgow. Both really bloody good.
Every now and then a band I’ve never heard of previously will come out of nowhere that I immediately fall in love with. Usually these bands tend to be ones that play on my nostalgia for the US indie scene of the 90s. Projekt A-ko is no exception to this, drawing from the Pavement, Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jnr playbook.
Marching in as if it’s still 1993, the band instantly assault the ears with lots and lots of noise. The guitar is all over the place and what harmonies there are tend to be drenched in distortion. And what distortion it is. Never really letting up for the whole four minutes, it could so easily be a horrible sounding mess. Instead, it turns out to be something wonderful.
Yoyodyne will be released on April 20 via themselves and is available to pre-order now via their Myspace page.
Great British Hopes: Dananananaykroyd
03 years ago
Talk about your unwieldy band names. Getting the right amount of anananana is bad enough, but then there’s the double header of Aykroyd not being the simplest name to spell either. The funny thing is that the music fits the name. If you’d asked me beforehand what I’d think a band called Dananananaykroyd would sound like, I’d go with loud and fast. And that’s exactly what we have.
The thing that takes one aback about Glasgow’s Dananananaykroyd is just how loud and fast it is. The vocals jump straight in, not sung, but fucking shouted. A dual assault of two drummers quickly follows. None of this is an opening gambit, nor is it limited to the song. This is the sound of desperate for you to hear them. This is the sound of a band that makes even labelmates Johnny Foreigner sound relaxed.
The risk with music like this is whether or not it can work in a full album setting. It’s easy to run dry when you use up this much fuel in just three minutes. A bunch of singles and an EP show they are on the right track. We’ll find out in a month if their ability matches their ambition, but they certainly seem willing to try.
Hey Everyone! will be released on April 8 by Best Before. The band is also participating in new WTFblog Awesome Pals, alongside Los Campesinos!, Sky Larkin, Johnny Foreigner, Favours for Sailors and a bunch of others. In other words, the entire good end of the British music scene.
Great British Hopes: The Joy Formidable
03 years ago
While at Reading back in the summer, I didn’t get much of a chance to see bands playing on the BBC Introducing stage. The lowliest stage of the festival, it was just a small tent with bands you’ve never heard of playing to people passing by on their way to one of the chip vans. I’ve no doubt that a lot of these bands would have been talented, but in the limited time that a festival allows, you tend to head for what you know. So the only band I ended up seeing there was The Joy Formidable. In retrospect, I wish I’d gone to see the car crash of a set by the FF’ers, but that’s a different story.
I went along being vaguely familiar with one of their songs, and if I’m honest, because there was no one better on at the time. It was worthwhile though. They played a good little set to a good little crowd and all was right in the world. Then I didn’t think about them again for another six months. Exploring their website shows that things have seemingly picked up for them. Tours with Howling Bells, album and single releases are all in their recent past.
Which is good because there aren’t a great many bands around that sound like this at the moment. Or maybe there are and I’m unaware of them. But this is noisy, dirty pop, vocals leaping in all over the place even if you can hardly make them out. It feels like something that would be right at home next to My Bloody Valentine, just with a little more melody. Lazy comparisons aside, it works for them, and it seems to be getting them a following. Not bad for a band that was only being introduced by the BBC six months ago.
A Balloon Called Moaning is now available as a free download from the band’s website, or as a CD/poster pack from the same place.
The awesome Cradle single is also available now via Try Harder Records. On 7 fucking inch only.
Great British Hopes: Butcher Boy
03 years ago
Great British Hopes celebrates new British music that is really bloody good.
As I was preparing to write this, I came across a fact that threw this piece into question. I tend to write these Great British Hopes pieces as a way of talking up the absolute best from all of the new bands I hear. Doing some research on Butcher Boy though, I discovered that they have been playing for 11 years. Which begs the question of whether they can really be hailed as a hope for the future of music. I decided to go with it though, as regardless of their longevity as a band, this is just too damn good.
Butcher Boy have floated around my mind for a while now. A Drowned In Sound review here, the odd promo email there. Even with that though, I never paid them much attention. I got the impression of another Scottish miserablist, and really, a man who already has a complete Arab Strap collection probably can’t take much more. Then the magic phrase appeared. “Compared to Belle and Sebastian” read the email, and I was in*.
Not that the end result is Belle & Sebastian exactly. Sure, you can hear those elements in the strings, but this is a band that is more down to the earth. Earnest lyrics sung out by someone who has listened to a lot of Smiths records but doesn’t quite know how to be Morrissey. No, if I were to place this on this indie pop landscape, I’d slot it alongside recent Swedish offerings like Jens Lekman or Pelle Carlberg. The sound is certainly British, but it likes to travel.
This kind of indie pop seems to be short supply in the UK at the moment. Butcher Boy may have formed 11 years ago, but with their second album release in three years, one gets a sense that they may have finally found their way.
React or Die will be released in April, but the lovely How Does It Feel To Be Loved? is selling advance copies through their shop right now.
* It occurs that I’ll probably now getting death metal bands mentioning the fact they sound like Belle & Sebastian in their promo emails.
Great British Hopes: Sky Larkin
13 years ago
Great British Hopes features the rare new British bands that don’t make me want to go deaf.
The mighty Wichita Recordings have recruited another into their already daunting ranks with the signing of Sky Larkin. The Leeds band have been floating around critics’ radars for some time now, but it’s taken until now for them to find a home. This now means that their first full length abum will be arriving sometime in the near future, with it recently being recorded in New York.
Molten, previously a single, is one of the songs on it, and while not their strongest work lyrically, it does give a good sample of the Sky Larkin sound. The guitars are rough, noise drops in and out constantly, and vocals occasionally shout from the background. It’s a hell of a lot of noise for only three people to making really.
Now how about touring again with fellow Wichita band Los Campesinos! to flog both of their albums? Just saying.
Great British Hopes: Elle S’appelle
13 years ago
Great British Hopes features band that are great, British, and fill us with hope for the future of music. Or something like that.
Cheerful, upbeat songs with melodies that go all over the place. Throw in some random shouting and handclaps. No, the result is not Los Campesinos! for once (more on them later though!), but rather Liverpool’s Elle S’appelle, who manage to capture the same kind of sound with less than half the number of band members. Very efficient and very impressive. It may all be a little too sickly sweet for some, but it works well for those of us that don’t need our indie music to make us want to kill ourselves.
Website / Myspace
Great British Hopes: Kotki Dwa
03 years ago
Great British Hopes collects the best bands from THE WORLD OF TOMORROW!
Posting about Kotki Dwa on here has been a long time coming. I originally intended to write about them when I first came up with Great British Hopes last year, but never managed to find the time. Still, nine months on and they still sound as good as they did in the first place.
The band are a three-piece from Bristol, Leeds and Milton Keynes, because being from one place is just so last year. They make straight up indie rock with just a dash of electronica thrown in. It’s all rather to the point, and much as it may pain me to admit, radio friendly. Which when you’re as good as this, may not actually be a bad thing.
MP3 Kotki Dwa – Pad
Great British Hopes: Royal Treatment Plant
03 years ago
Great British Hopes collects the very best in unsigned acts from the UK.
This week saw the release of the first proper release from Royal Treatment Plant, the eight song Hope is Not Enough. Over the past two years, the band have really blossomed, moving up from a rough support act for Los Campesinos! into a solid band in their own right. Their excesses have been reigned in and everything is a little bit more polished. In a lot of bands I would be moaning about that, but in works in Royal Treatment Plant’s favour. The vocals of lead PP have undergone the most significant change. Now moving between sweet and bitter and aggressive at just the right moments, she dictates the tone of these songs perfectly. Crack Whore, one of the gentler songs on the record, demonstrates this growth perfectly.
