Monday Music’s the one weekly post in which SOIWT dispenses with its London-only rule, and goes global. Here’s this week’s instalment:
The Sandwitches – The Pearl
And first for a musical sound unlike anything you’ve ever heard, courtesy of Hardly Art records. There’s flickery feedback and a musty distant feel, like an illicit long-player recording from the 1940s; there are vocals so warbly that mums across the land will sing along; and there are tremulous organ swirls so deliciously dense and thickety that you want to dive in and get lost among them on purpose, never to find your way out.
Frankie Rose – Know Me (mp3)
One of 2012′s would-be stars, Frankie Rose’s pop-rock songs are brooding, intelligent and multi-layered – but not so brooding, intelligent and multi-layered as to forego a seriously hummable chorus. (out on Slumberland)
The Penelopes – Now Now (mp3)
Moonboots to the ready – here’s some sun-kissed electro-pop from the new French duo, all groggy verses and fingers-in-the-air peaks.
Gem Club – 252
Fuck. This delicate slowburn, also out on Hardly Art, is powerful enough with its stripped-back piano and suddenly-soaring vocals. Throw in a sensational video twinning adolescent rites of passage with bodily horror and you’ve got one bug-eyed blogger.
Dustin Wong – One Head
This reminds me, at first, of Clint Mansell’s score for Requiem For A Dream such are the brain-scrambling industrial samples used by the former Ponytail front-man. In the middle it becomes more carnival-like, though; a feverish instrumental cantation. This comes from a recent release on Palmist with London act Gentle Friendly. (via SEXBEAT)