It’s not for the cock, it’s for some artists…

by It’s not for the cock on Tue, 2009/12/15 - 7:50pm Post to Twitter

Not content with eating cheese and doing the washing up, my Christmas holidays have already led me to write a blog post on a couple of bands and artists I’ve been sweating happiness over recently. These guys aren’t particularly new and have no real string of affiliation connecting them, other than they’re all absolutely fantastic and should get on with 2010 like a house on fire. Ya dig?

First up is this young man, one Ernest Greene A.K.A Washed Out from South Carolina. Almost sounding like a cheesy 80s throwback, Washed Out drapes gorgeously dreamy synths around sturdy beats and hazy vocals to create something akin to feeling warm, gooey chocolate run down your throat. With songs like the phenomenally blissed out ‘Feel It All Around’, Greene smoothly and consistently creates songs which simultaneously draw a reaction from your brain, your heart and your feet.

Let that dipping chocolaty audio goodness seduce you NOW.

Here, now, sitting on a scruffy red sofa outside some sort of retail establishment, we have the one man band from Leeds- Spectrals. This plucky young lad seems to have an overwhelming penchant for music created long before his, and indeed probably most of our, time. Combining early doo-wop with rockabilly and surf only projecting it through walls of fuzz and tinny recording, Spectrals has a fine way of half hiding his prettily constructed pop songs. When something sounds like the Pulp Fiction soundtrack but performed and recorded in an abandoned warehouse in Northern England, it can only be a good thing.

Here’s that good thing.

London’s superb Trailer Trash Tracys dress the bare, stark bones of their songs with the beautifully swelling voice of Susanne Aztoria and the raw majestic quality of Jimmy Lee’s enveloping guitar. They released ‘Candy Girl’ as a single on No Pain In Pop this September and, if this is anything of an indicator, 2010 should see them sweep slowly but surely into the hearts of music fans via both lonely bedroom sessions and live venues.

Sweep sweep.

Joy Orbison is a DJ/Producer from London who is beginning to create some discernible ripples among the world of music. Not only has he he made the most underrated (outside a few pretty specific circles) single of the year in ‘HYPH MNGO’, he’s also a possible name to eventually be whittled down to the shortlist of the BBC sound of 2010.  Much more importantly than all that though, the aforementioned ‘HYPH MNGO’ adds something often lacking in Dubstep, colour. The song rockets around with enough bass and heavy beats to drive the dance floor, but it also offers waves of optimism and snippets of euphoria within  its fantastically crafted structure.

Listen to J- Orb.

It would be easy to make lazy comparisons to other female centric bands, but there’s no need to cheapen Wetdog with this as they’re more than capable of standing up on their own two legs. Their fast, art school-esque post punk is driven by the bass guitar with the drums and guitars seemingly running doggedly after it. The vocals, meanwhile, flit between ironic and knowing delivery to theatrical, flourishing  singing just as the songs themselves trotter off happily down whichever tangent their impulses seem to take them.

Check it out HERE.