It’s nearly the end of the year, the decade in fact, and that means one thing – it’s time for Some Of It Was True! to try and name next year’s big things. There’s one rule: I’ve limited myself to acts with 5,000 friends or less on MySpace – no Marina & The Diamonds for me. It’s more exciting for you, and more exciting for me. Here are my 10, then:
Moonlight Bride
I’m not sure which came first, the hairs on the back of my neck or this fourpiece from Chattanooga, Tennessee – but they sure as hell were made for each other. This is lustrous pop-rock: sometimes woozy and woodsmoke, others euphoric and Saturday night. When Justin Wilcox’s voice fully purrs, as on Young Guns, I close my eyes, and I’m in the car, heading south, sun on my back, carefree and happy, knowing it’ll all be okay soon. Then the chorus kicks in, and I gun it like never before…
MySpace (796 friends) | MP3: Moonlight Bride – Young Guns
Valentina
I blogged about this London soulstress just recently, and I’m so enthused I’m doing it again. A satin voice belying her tender years, Valentina makes warm, fuzzy music over piano tinkles or Ally McBeal-style choirs. Where Heart of Glass is the dreamy stuff of Sunday night strolls and red wine, Dulcimer Sound is a bit folkier and less polished. That’s okay, though: you get to come across all Simon Cowell, and tell friends that once the kinks are ironed out, this one’s got it…
MySpace (2348 friends) | MP3: Valentina – Heart of Glass
The Sweet Serenades
I’ve had to stop playing ‘On My Way’ while out listening to my iPod as it’s dangerous: last time I was doing a silly dance involving stiff shoulders, hip shakes and exaggerated paces on Brick Lane when I almost walked into a bemused Big Issue seller. In short, The Sweet Serenades’ extrovert rock-pop, glam and gleeful in equal measure, is irresistible. Of all the 57,283 cool Swedish acts out there right now, this duo – Martin and Matthias, no less – are right up there with the best.
MySpace (1102 friends) | MP3: The Sweet Serenades – On My Way
Freelance Whales
“I get up early just to start cranking the generator”. It shouldn’t be brilliant, but somehow it is: a joyous simple high in a joyously simple song. That’s Generator ^ First Floor, all ragtag-guitar intro and echoey folk; listen to that and then the more layered Generator ^ Second Floor and you’ll be in a dozy pop-folk swoon that a quintuple espresso couldn’t interrupt. Based in NYC , this is a band makking elegant music for dog days when rain taps on the windowpanes and you never take off your pajamas.
MySpace (1232 friends) | MP3: Freelance Whales – Generator ^ Second Floor
Fool’s Gold
The purveyors of 2009′s finest slice of trop-rock heaven: Sunrise Hotel. Already the beneficiary of numerous remixes, from Micachu to Phaseone, this was a tinkling, relentless belter, full of inaudible but exotic-sounding vocals and slaloming, whistle-pitched guitars. Other songs like Nadine are just as seductive, but with a classier, brassier edge. A January date at Madame JoJo’s is written in my diary with the inky excitement normally reserved only for the end of my girlfriend’s period.
MySpace (3578 friends) | MP3: Fool’s Gold – Surprise Hotel
Othello Woolf
The latest signing to Young & Lost Club, Woolf is into a sort of retro-neo-soul (only wanky bloggers can make pronouncements like that): starting with soft grooves, he layers in machete-sharp guitars, suave crooner vocals, dashes of dirty blues, quaint bells, digital frolics… whatever he’s inclined towards, basically. A very modern one man band, Woolf is refrshingly unique but not, thankfully, isolatingly eclectic like many contemporaries. He’s also good looking and sounds a smidge like Bryan Ferry, and the lord can only be praised for that.
MySpace (197 friends) | MP3: Othello Woolf – Stand
Bruce Peninsula
Named (useless trivia alert) after a Niagara escarpment near their Canada home, this sometime supergroup – members of Timbre Timbre and ohbijou contribute, among others, but the line-up’s never too constant - combine a spiritual zealot sound with funky gospel anthems like Steamroller. Guitars peal, cymbals tremor, horns honk, cellos swoon and amid it all, chief singer Neil Haverty makes gravelly-voiced pronouncements.
MySpace (1681 friends) | MP3: Bruce Peninsula – Steamroller
A video of the band performing Steamroller:
Real Estate
New Jersey-based purveyors of a slightly burnt-out digipop sound that’s seductively easy on the ears. On delicate songs like Fake Blues, the vocals are vulnerable and overshadowed by the most sincere of guitars; on the more lucid Beach Comber, they play a more prominent role, supported by calmer strings. Elsewhere there are drums and electronic effects, but one thing never alters: each song is constructed around a simple, yet impossibly catchy, central rhythm.
MySpace (3167 friends) | MP3: Real Estate – Fake Blues
Avi Buffalo
Has anyone sounded this earnest since Passion Pit broke onto the scene? What’s In It For is a cuddly, careering rock-pop ballad, punctuated by high-pitched singalongs, aching guitars and cutesy lines like “you know I love it when you put your fingertips around my shoulder”. Much more subdued and rather pretty is Where’s Your Dirty Mind, minimal vocals around a solemn piano and whisper-quiet guitars. Vim and variation, then – it’s easy to see why Sub-Pop have recently snapped up the youthful California quartet. Expect. Big. Things.
MySpace (2125 friends) | MP3: Avi Buffalo – What’s In It For? (MP3 removed on request)
O’Spada
The big disco-pop act of 2010? On the basis of first single Time (beloved of everyone from Monocle to the ever-maddening Annie Mac) and now the follow-up Ten Strikes, it’s very likely. O’Spada are a Stockholm five-piece – Julia’s falsetto soul-singer vocals and four boys with some drums and a lot of electric - and fuse disco and funk into one high-octane good time. You’ll possibly love them and probably hate them, but O’Spada seem set to be ubiquitous in 2010.
MySpace (2671 friends) | MP3: O’Spada – Ten Strikes
[...] worth catching are Othello Woolf, John & Jehn, White Hinterland, My Tiger My Timing, Spectrals, Sian Alice Group and many [...]
[...] the BBC does, and go for already quite well-established names, a safe bet, or 2: Do what I did last year, and pick wildly unheralded acts, and risk (as has turned out) looking like a total [...]