New Music

I’ve been exploring a lot of new music tonight. I started out listening to Best Coast, a Californian girl that has an innocent voice, much like Alessi’s (Alessi’s Ark) and kind of reminds me of Camera Obscurer but yet her songs are much heavier and fuzzier in their production. The song writing style reminds me of the Vaselines, with some perfect little hooky lines constructed around the most economical use of 3 chords. Its not the kind of music that I could listen to for weeks on end but the girl had some really little pop tunes. The Best Coast Youtube videos led me to a band called Male Bonding, who are an East London outfit that have a similar fuzzy Vaselinezy sound but with a bit more punk than pop. Then later on the Guardian website I stumbled across a girl called Anna Calvi, who has just put out a record on Domino and seems to be the PJ Harvey of the next generation (without wanting to pigeonhole her too much). She had a really strong and powerful and confident voice and wasn’t afraid to experiment a little with her song writing, in a way that reminded me of Polly Jean. Being away from ‘home’ has put me more in touch with current affairs in the UK, as I browse the news websites daily but I have become increasingly out of touch with music, so I feel the need to catch up a little, especially in time for my arrival at Glastonbury. That catch up started tonight.