The Wake

In the hectic pace of my sleep deprived, London life style, I had very little time to relay all the great new bands I’ve discovered. So I write to you know from a café in Madrid with some suggestions and news.

Initially, I was quite disappointed with the proclaimed hot new bands of the moment in London. Bands like: New Young Pony Club, Does This Offend You Yeah?, Scouting For Girls, The Hoosiers, Guillemots, Pigeon Detectives, The Enemy, Ipso Facto. They’re all either boring electro groups trying to ride that long past new wave revival, sad Libertines rip offs, weak piano soft rock, or just plain shit.

The next level is bands that are a good listen and pleasant enough, but are incredibly over blown given the quality of their tunes. Within this I would include The Wombats, The Young Knives, These New Puritans, Foals, and The Envelopes.

This is all natural, as there is of course a need for new bands to be discovered and enjoyed. It’s just that in our haste to find them, a lot of these bands get bigger than would seem appropriate, but that’s no new or passing trend.

One band who’s capitalized on the hipster dance music movement is Canada’s Crystal Castles. I saw them towards the end of April at the Camden Crawl festival. They’re one of the bands who’ve found that by merely name dropping the perfectly obscure, yet super trendy old dance group, you can vault yourself into indie stardom. The band has welcomed and reiterated any comparisons to fellow Toronto duo, Death from Above 1979. This same strategy worked wonders for Brazilian faux-band CSS, with their indie hit “Lets make love and listen to Death from Above.” I’ve seen this in many other recent success cases, like the Wombats and their song, “Let´s dance to Joy Division,” with Joy Division being a hot band to associate with at the moment.

At the forefront of the over hyped movement is an American group, from Florida, called Black Kids. They’ve been playing all the big venues, getting loads of Internet hype, and hitting all the major t.v. and radio shows over here. Their big single, “I’m not gonna teach your boyfriend how to dance with you,” has failed to sweep me off my feet into the flowing river of press love they’ve been floating on recently. Here’s my review of it.

Another group who I´d classify as over blown is Vampire Weekend. I saw them perform earlier this winter at Rough Trade Records in East London. They’re currently the biggest name in indie music. Appearances on SNL and the cover of Rolling Stone have solidified this notion. I enjoy the African influences hear in their tunes, but their lyrics are under developed and unimpressive. Two other groups I saw at Rough Trade Records, just off Brick Lane, were Pete and the Pirates and Sebastian Tellier, both of whom are garnering loads of support as of late.

There’s a group out called White Lies who are garnering loads of interest. They’re perfect for any Interpol/ Editors fans out there.

Adam Green, good friend of the Strokes, has recently put out a new album, Sixes and Sevens. Green formed the group the Moldy Peaches in 1998 with Kimya Dawson. Green is very popular in Germany, and I´ve seen a great deal of promotion for him in Madrid.
The Moldy Peaches have benefited from their inclusion in the Minnesota based movie, Juno, which was written by Diablo Cody, a former stripper and writer for City Pages in Minneapolis.
Here´s a hilarious song Green wrote about Jessica Simpson, entitled “Jessica”

Another NYC singer song writer/ vagabond is Jeffery Lewis. He travels Europe with his brother and band mates, and crashes on couches of his fans every night. He also is a comic book writer.

The Swedish Invasion has continued on. Last year it was big releases from Jens Lekman, The Knife, The Hives, and José González.
The next in this line will likely be I Was A King, Pirate Love, Maribel and Blackstrap, but most surely will be, Pacific Who come across like a goofy electronic European version of the Beach Boys

Another big group is the collaboration between Super Fury Animal’s front man Gruff Rhys, and producer Boom Bip. Their debut album, Stainless Style, is a synth heavy pop record, sure to crack college radio charts across the globe. The group is called Neon Neon

One of the best bands and acts I’ve heard here in London is Mystery Jets. They´re as famous for their music as they are for the fact that they all live on an Island on the Thames river, and have thrown some wild parties there, with sets played by many area bands such as the Noisettes, Lady Larkin, and Acoustic Ladyland among many others.

The big news over here has been of course, Amy Winehouse. She was featured on a cover of the Zutons, “Valerie” on Mark Ronson´s album, Versions, which has been played at all the clubs here in London throughout the spring.
Winehouse is covered as frequently as David Beckham and Pete Doherty here in the papers. She was a graduate of the Brit School in London. The Brit School also unfortunately produced Lily Allen, Kate Nash, and Adele, all of whom are terribly annoying.

A British female singer songwriter who I do like is Holly Golightly
, who performed on the White Stripes album closing number, “It´s True That We Love One Another” off of 2003´s Elephant.

And while we’re on the country pairings topic, M.Ward has a new album out with Zooey Deschanel (the older sister from Almost Famous). It´s called She and Him . Enjoyable stuff. It´s also been rumored that M.Ward is in the studio with Conor Oberst and Jim James of My Morning Jacket.

The Kanye produced, and featured, tune, “American Boy” by Estelle was the biggest club hit of the Spring in London