Tag: artist to watch
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Artist to Watch: Blaenavon
Since the debut of their single ‘Into the Night’ in 2013, Blaenavon (pronounced Bly-nay-von) has evolved their sound to have an identity just as recognizable as long-established bands. Their sound has been described in a variety of ways from indie-rock to alternative-pop, but the three members identify themselves to be an ghostjazz band.
The members; Ben Gregory, Frank Wright, and Harris McMillian; started their journey as teenagers in school which makes it an obvious and exciting development to see the evolution of their records as the members have grown older. Ben Gregory, the front-man and songwriter, has honed his creative process to be a meticulous analysis of each work as it compiles a relevant story to things happening in their lives. It all comes down to three maturing individuals telling their life story.
Transgressive Records has debuted Blaenavon’s Miss World EP and Koso EP which have gained rave reviews from fans and others in the industry. Their latest release ‘My Bark Is Your Bite’ was released on Spotify on October 3 this year and is no less than captivating than the rest of their song portfolio. The conveyance of each track’s story can be heard through the fundamental technique and underlying grit of the vocals. As they continue to take the UK by storm on their first headlining tour, it can be assumed that Blaenavon will continue to tell their story through music for a long time.
UPCOMING NYC DATES:
11/01 – Brooklyn, NY @ Baby’s All Right
11/02 – New York, NY @ Berlin
Artist to Watch: Gideon King & City Blog
All about bringing together musicians that have a passion for jazz, Gideon King & City Blog is straight out of New York City with a modern twist on the classic jazz genre. With elements of jam bands and big band sound, Gideon King & City Blog released a full length album titled City Blog that is a sultry love letter to the city that never sleeps.
More interesting than the name of the band itself are its members. Boasting some of the most diverse talent available, Gideon King & City Blog managed to get together James Genus, the bassist from Daft Punk and the Saturday Night Live band, Carolyn Leonhart, a key member of Steely Dan’s vocal team, and many other notable musicians. With such a wide variety of members, the sound can only be described as a collective.
City Blog grabs you by the hand and drags you onto the dance floor with its creative and smooth style. City Blog is a rainy date night in Manhattan, where your date offers you their umbrella after a delicious meal at an upper scale restaurant. The album as a whole can only be described with scenarios, because it gives off more than just words. The feelings are present in every improvised piano part, while skillfully crafted with a surreal-sounding mash of backing instruments that all get their separate time to shine in solos.
The title track “City Blog” displays the album clearly and honestly: it’s cool to the touch and easy on the ears. The good thing about jam bands and their derivatives are that the music can never get repetitive as long as you have a decent pairing of vocals, which Gideon King & City Blog have excelled at.
“Friendship Cliche” takes on an alternative indie rock spin, if you consider having a horn section and wind instrument section as rock. All the combinations of instruments result in such a visceral experience that can only enhance surroundings. The only criticism on City Blog stems from the slowness of some of the tracks, particularly “What Say You” which drags on for the full four minutes.
Aside from a couple misses like that, the funk is alive and thriving in New York City among lots of different aliases, but Gideon King & City Blog is a name to remember.
Gideon King & City Blog can be found on its Facebook page, here.
Artist to Watch: Idiot Grins
Recent trends in music have revolved around synth pop and overproduced albums, so it is rare to find a big band sound in the mix. Idiot Grins, a five man soul rock band from Oakland, California, has managed the impossible. By getting musical help from Johnnie Bamont, the saxophone player from Huey Lewis and the News, and Mic Gillette, the trumpet player from Tower of Power, Idiot Grins lends a homage to the greats of years ago. Big Man transcends the line between old and new by making a soulful big band swing that sounds like it belongs in the ‘60s, but was made in 2015. The best part, it makes you want to sing along too.
The 11 track album hits all the right notes with each song being reminiscent of the last, without sounding exactly the same. “How To Get To (Baltimore)” is classic and upbeat, with a chorus that sounds almost exactly like the chorus from “Science Fiction Double Feature” in Rocky Horror Picture Show. That isn’t a bad thing, either. The call-and-response element of the music makes the listener want to croon along.
Another standout from the album is the second track “Poppy Piss”. A swing tune that is simple (Keep It Simple, Stupid) is a good indication for the style of Idiot Grins. The song is two and a half minutes of almost the same beat, which seems repetitive, until you get to the wild vocal ups and downs of lead singer John Hansen. The variation is necessary in a track of the same melody, but Idiot Grins has the whole change game under control.
A complaint would be that the majority of the album is ballad-style, with slower melodies dominating the flow and energy of the initial three tracks. That’s not to say that those songs aren’t good in their own right, seeing as “One Reason” and “Paso Robles” are excellent representations of versatile styles. “Paso Robles” utilizes a country croon while “One Reason” is the stereotypical “down-up” beat from the ‘60s with clean sounding horns that really make the track special. Instead of a slow-down near the end of the album (with an exception for the tangy “Ovaltang”), a much needed pick-me-up would have been a better way to seal the deal on Big Man.
Despite minor issue with maintaining a cohesive flow of energy and rest within the album, Idiot Grins puts a modern spin on classic instruments minus the grainy quality.
Big Man was released on April 6, 2015 and is available for purchase or download at the Idiot Grins website.
Artist to Watch: The Boy From The Crowd
From London, UK, The Boy From The Crowd is made up of Vinny Placa and Vegas Ivy. With Placa on vocals and guitar while Ivy manages drums and percussion, The Boy From The Crowd creates a blues-infused rock sound that walks the line between cult favorite and top 40s, resulting in songs that are eclectic but still make you bob your head to the beat. Their most recent release titled Where the Bees Come to Die introduces the band’s mechanical and lyrical skills, while also allowing room for improvement.
The first track, “Revelator”, showcases The Boy From The Crowd’s London rock flair with bluesy influence. The sound is catchy, upbeat and progressive throughout despite the repetitive lyrics, while the differences in the song are shown through the changing instruments and the evolving bass and guitar riffs. The use of backing vocals is spot on, especially with its use in the chorus as more of a shout and as a quieter, more intimate repetition for lyrics within the rest of the song.
“All I Need” shows a musical style similar to a combination of earlier Kings of Leon, the White Stripes and The Arctic Monkeys but with a scruffier lead singer (if that was even possible with Kings of Leon). Halfway through the song it cuts to silence with the lead singer still singing, allowing a really nice change of pace. Overall it flows very nicely, however for a five minute song some differences in instrumentation and vocals are necessary.
Different than the prior two tracks, “The Road” sounds more drowned out and surf rock-esque, giving much more of a pop sound. An interesting inclusion to the album, “The Road” really showcases the versatility of the band in terms of genre experimentation, but the guitar hero solo about halfway through the song indicates that some further tweaking is needed to perfect a cohesive sound for an album.
The final two tracks are “All I Need (Single Edit)” and “Where the Bees Come to Die”, both of which have issues. “All I Need” is on this album twice, and with only five songs total that is unnecessary repetition without much change between the two versions (although the second “All I Need” cuts out about a minute and a half of useless jamming). “Where the Bees Come to Die” has a bluesy steel guitar introduction that sounds too blues-influenced to be surf rock but still retains intrigue. The entire ending track is an instrumental, which is a strange choice considering there are only three true songs on the album.
Overall, The Boy From The Crowd has the chops to create something exciting and catchy, but falls short in delivery on Where the Bees Come to Die. The lack of cohesiveness on the album indicates some indecision in terms of the style of the band, which can either be a good thing or a bad thing for the future of the band. However, the interesting style of blues and rock is definitely something that holds promise.
The Boy From The Crowd released Where the Bees Come to Die on December 7, 2015 and is currently available for purchase on its Bandcamp, here or on The Boy From The Crowd website, here.
Artist to Watch: Bad Reed
With only one official musical release, Bad Reed is transcending genres. The four piece jack-of-all-trades band from Brantford, Ontario shows their versatile chops on the Bad Reed EP. Over the course of three songs, Bad Reed manages to capture elements of psychedelic funk metal, rhythmic southern blues and synth rock in a way that is reminiscent of the ‘90s.
“Punch It”, the first track off of the EP, introduces refreshingly clear vocals to the hash-mash of instruments going on in the background. The song builds up, gradually including more guitar parts and more synth patterns until the lead vocalist is slowly lost into the mix. Whether or not that effect was intentional is unclear, but if the purpose of the track is to have the listener melt into their surroundings, then it works very well.
A personal favorite, “Slackjaw Romance” creates the perfect balance of calm and cool. It sounds like something you’d hear in a jazz nightclub around 12 a.m., and commands the same attention from listeners (no matter where they are). The combination of dark lyrical content and swanky yet collected vocals results in a track that is both memorable and catchy.
The final track “Cassava” sounds like a lost Incubus track, allowing singer Sydney Sollazzo to showcase her range and smooth delivery. About halfway through the track is a mini acoustic session that is a confusing break from the previous progression, but segways nicely into the remaining two minutes. Using acoustic guitar parts and drowned out synth as a build up and the reintroduction of electric guitar and drums is made possible by the consistent nature of the straight-forward vocals, which tie the tracks together where they otherwise would have fallen apart.
Bad Reed released the Bad Reed EP on June 13, 2015 and is currently available for free download (or suggested donation) on its Bandcamp. More information about the band Bad Reed is available on their website, here.
Artist to Watch: Allie X
When was the first time you felt X? If you’re wondering exactly what X is, we don’t know either. Allie X is the latest iteration in the career of Toronto born pop artist Alexandra Hughes.
After studying voice and piano at the Interlochen Arts Academy in the early 2000s, she released her first known album Ladies and Gentleman in 2006. Three years later, she appeared on the Canadian version of the BBC show “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” and began to receive widespread recognition throughout her home country. Then in 2010, she released a self-titled EP that showcased her foray into the world of pop music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQmDD6tYNXQ
Reborn again as ALX in 2012, Hughes dropped a macabre synth-laden paean to a dead lover in “I Will Love You More.” From there she left Canada to ink a publishing deal out in Los Angeles and work with producers Billboard and Cirkut. Everything was set into motion rather quickly once Katy Perry tweeted a link to her 50+ million followers labeling X’s self-produced “Catch” as her spring jam.
Nearly a year after the initial release of “Catch,” Hughes is readying her debut EP Collxtion I for release on April 7.
But what is X?
X is the world in which the shadowy singer resides. Enigmatic and often cryptic posts have popped up at random intervals throughout the entire campaign to help fans deconstruct the artifice of the artist, one of which culminated in the release of a snippet of “Tumor” taken from the EP. The entire concept of the project revolves around collecting images, notes and GIFs that the artist releases through various channels to decipher X. The high-brow leanings of this project echo the conceptual of Lady Gaga’s Fame campaign, but with far less transparency to who X is as a person.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CO8bNPOHqxs
As an artist, X takes roots in human psychology. The jarring, almost seizure inducing video for “Catch” heavily employs Jung’s psychological theory of the shadow self and anima as well as genderless human bodies. The importance of this video to Hughes’ career makes far more sense once her musical background is explained. For the first time throughout the campaign, she removes her sunglasses and shows her eyes. The encapsulated butterfly escaping from her mouth at the tail end of the video is a metaphor for the reinvention and continuance of her career.
While Allie X is possibly Allie Hughes’ most successful project this far, this mysterious artist could very well change her stage name once again after X is completely revealed and release another album in the future. But for now, fall into the crystalline world of X and don’t look back.
Artist to Watch: Years & Years
In five years, a lot can happen. Most students will complete their secondary education in less time. Even a president’s first and possibly only term is over and done in four years. For the British electronic pop trio Years & Years, five years is what was needed to generate substantial waves on the blogosphere and British radio.
The band was fully formed back in 2010 when vocalist Olly Alexander joined the then quartet following bassist Mikey Goldsworthy hearing him sing in the shower. Then in 2013, the now trio signed with French record and fashion label Kitsuné – which is home to artists like Phoenix, Two Door Cinema Club, and Hot Chip.
Moving forward, the trio released two commercially unsuccessful singles, despite being critically acclaimed by music journalists and bloggers. This opened a doorway for the band the following year when the group signed to Polydor and gained recognition for its first release “Take Shelter.”
Fast forward to 2015, and the band has certainly captured the attention of the world after being named the winner of the BBC Sound of 2015 poll. Years & Years were quick to springboard off the promotion and release the Y & Y EP not even a month ago.
Alexander’s voice can fit into nearly any situation, from the boy band tinges in “Desire” off the now trio’s latest extended play the Y & Y to an emotionally affected and uncredited feature in the explosive garage house anthem “Stronger” off Clean Bandit’s New Eyes. Band member and beat maker Emre Turkmen is able to play off the strength of Alexander’s chameleon vocals to create a majestic yet atmospheric soundscape as evidenced in the euphoric “King.”
“King” is truly unlike anything I’ve heard in the last year and definitely a song most mainstream pop acts would have killed to use as their own single. The soaring vocal hook is coupled with a synth mimicking a royal procession as a deeper bass grinds away underneath. It’s extremely easy to get lost in the various components of the song and that’s not a bad thing in this case because it shows that each layer is interesting on its own.
https://soundcloud.com/yearsandyears/king
The EP ends on a less upbeat note with the simple downtrodden piano ballad “Memo” as Alexander sullenly airs his feelings out to an unknown lover “Who wouldn’t want it when he looks like that? / I want you stay / and if I try my hardest, would you look my way?”
https://soundcloud.com/yearsandyears/years-years-memo
Years & Years’ age and musical versatility is exhibited in a fleeting 15 minutes and hopefully the group is able to continue its momentum by making its way stateside either on its own or as an opening band. The breath of fresh air it offers is much needed in both American pop music and British pop music. Don’t sleep on them for too much longer or you’ll find yourself in the dust this time next year.