Attack of the drones

The London electro-pop trio have moved on massively from their first kitchen sink gig at a friend’s house in the spring of 2008, to being among the first slew of bands announced for next year’s SXSW festival. The band have been among the ‘ones to watch’ lists for some time. However, the limelight that shone on the majority of solo female electro acts (La Roux, Little Boots) in 2009 is set to radiate their way in 2010.

The band – which describes their sound as “8-bit Casio drone-disco” –  has performed as part of the Levis One’s To Watch platform, Gaymers Camden Crawl, and toured with The Virgins. In addition they have run the full gamut of the festival circuit over the summer – a far cry from their live debut gig, singing astride a washing machine.

Tigs, who provides vocals, straddles a line somewhere between the looks of Katie White (vocalist and guitarist for the Ting Tings) and Scarlett Johansson, with a vocal sound reminiscent of Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The two Casio tone knob twiddlers in the background are Will and James; who appear only too happy to take a back seat from the energetic antics of their lead singer. Despite some possibly misplaced comparisons, Crystal Castles they are not, with the staccato 8-bit opening for ‘Solo’ serving up a far more commercially accessible sound than ‘Air Wave’ ever could. Another release, ‘Salt Air’, with its ‘You’ve been drinking” captivating drawl from Tigs, overlaid onto  an 8-bit surge and subtle tapping wood block, is evocative of their simplistic, yet poignant, sound.

Their first video, for the single Solo – on the French label Kitsune – saw them having a tea party in the snow at an abandoned communist theme park in Berlin.

Visit their MySpace site to download the second track ‘Slick’  from their forthcoming debut album, which has being lovingly crafted by Bat for Lashes producer David Kosten. Tigs recently described it in an interview as  “a body of work [that is] going to differentiate us from a lot of the people we’ve been unfairly compared to – it’s future classic pop.”

Chew Lips are playing live across the UK from 19th Nov to 2^nd Dec, for full details visit their website here.

Scratch and Riff

“My name is Nate, and you can consider me your neon green plastic hand-shaped backscratcher”.

Nate Campany will scratch your back if you scratch his. He may even scratch it with a used CD of the Backstreet Boys song he once penned.

Nate refers to himself as having a “normal life”. He “has a beard, credit cards, and a job”.  That job is creating pop records, for the likes of The Backstreet Boys as previously mentioned, and others such as The Click Five and platinum selling Dutch artist Ilse Delange. However, he also manages to carefully intertwine his pop sensibilities with deeper roots in the homespun, heartfelt emotive values of Americana. The Track ‘Shown’ is a clear standout on his MySpace page. A driving rural lament that simultaneously echoes the pioneering spirit of working on a chain gang in dust bowl USA whilst retaining enough pop melody to evoke a sense of real escapism. You can almost hear the US drama music supervisors clamouring to get to his door with a series of emotionally wrought visuals for him to serenade. Unrequited love in Lost, a sudden death in Grey’s Anatomy, in the right place a very powerful song.

So where does the neon green backscratcher come in? Well, in Nate’s words: “Have you ever been to one of those 99-cent stores, going up and down the aisles, not really needing anything but trying to find something to buy because it only costs 99 cents?” Nate wants you to spend that $0.99 on something he believes in – his music. He joins a growing trend among artists that are self-financing their work by utilising the devotion of a personalised fan base. He set up the website helpnate.com encouraging donations from friends, family, fans and strangers in order to help release his own material. The ‘Serenade’, is the name he gives the musicians he records with. He also includes the people who he believes have encouraged him through the site under this collaborative title.

The labour of love result, after being locked away with 12 musicians recoding live – without a trace of a pitch shifter or well vanished pop lacquer – is “The Estella sessions”. From this body of work comes the ‘The Only Bridge I Need’ EP which is due for release on 1st June 2009. A full album, ‘Estella’ will be released in late 2009.

Nate embarks on a solo acoustic tour of the UK throughout May supporting Kim Richey, Thomas Dybdahl and Great Lake Swimmers.

http://www.myspace.com/natecampany

http://www.helpnate.com/

Waking the dead

“Kooky and spooky”, said one reviewer of this singer – and the Addams Family similarities don’t stop there. Catherine A.D. sings like a gothic mermaid version of the grim reaper, luring those who hear into her warm blanket of decay and beauty – before smashing them against the rocks (as it were).

Her folk-noir sound is as effortlessly sultry as it is dark and brooding, and sees her wading into waters that are inhabited by the likes of Tori Amos, Regina Spector, and Joanna Newsom. Courtney Love went as far as referring to her as having a “gorgeous sick beautiful voice”. Her voice, in truth, is a paradox; it evokes both a haunting, ethereal sense of foreboding, tinged with glimmers of wrought desire and hope.

The whirling backing music to ‘Carry Your Heart’ sounds like the ice cream van at the end of the world – spinning out its melancholy jingle as the end draws ever nearer. ‘Grow Out’ is reminiscent of Muse’s Matt Bellamy at his intro-warbling best as it spins a death-scented novella of honey-laced lyrics over a piano that sounds as if it is tumbling off the edge of reality. ‘Unravel’ showcase’s Catherine at her evocative best; as her voice weaves a delicate web, it ensnares the listener in its carefully constructed threads.

She writes on her blog that she wants to “send satellites out to every 13-year-old [girl] who might be dying a slow death in Suburbia, nowheresville,” and be “scratched into the door of some boy’s locker as a reminder of why he has to move to London in the next two years”.

The siren is calling and those rocks are coming up fast, so it’s time to don your emotional lifejacket and enjoy a swim in a voice that’s described as like “a lake of black honey”.

Catherine A.D. is currently working on tracks for her debut album.

http://www.catherinead.com/

http://www.myspace.com/catherineannedavies

They’re cool and bored

Imagine, if you can, a remote island, devoid of all human contact, except for the musical offerings of CSS, Yelle, Robots In Disguise, Chicks On Speed, Le Tigre, and… er, Daphne & Celeste. Now imagine it has a population of three and you’ll be somewhere in the sonic region of Le Corps Mince de Francoise’s The Thin Body Of Francoise.

For those of you who thought CSS’s second album, Donkey, was a little too mainstream, then this band will have you jumping for joy in your ill-fitting Technicolor catsuit. The “three sisters of sitting bull” (Emma, Mia, and Malin) hail from Helsinki in Finland and cite “big teeth” and “Mahatma Gandhi” among their influences. The bowl haircut-sporting trio seem as comfortable covered in Post It notes and constructing cardboard guitars as they do chucking out laissez faire electro Yell Pop.

Forthcoming single ‘Rayban Glasses’ hits you with its school-chanting skip-along lyrics, and M.I.A Gangalang horn section, like a horde of well-meaning hoodies (hell bent on painting your comfortable two bed semi a shocking shade of fluro green). ‘Bitch Of The Bitches’ is Peaches through and through; minimalistic, and yet with a pop accessibility that the grandmother of electro filth could never have. The Russ Chimes Remix gives it that ‘Techtonik’ touch that seems to grace all French electro offerings these days – and it’s all the better for it.

“These experimental pop chicks with their energetic live performances and stupid hairdos are gonna be rulers of the world,” states a review on their MySpace page.

Le Corps Mince de Francoise play as part of Helsinki In Berlin at the PopKomm Festival on 9th October. They also play at the Social Club in Paris on 15th and Notting Hill Arts Club in London on 24th October.

The Ray-Ban Glasses EP will be out on 29th October on Finnish indie label NEW JUDAS.

http://www.lcmdf.blogspot.com/

http://www.myspace.com/lecorpsmincedefrancoise

Caught in the middle

“The sun is hot in the sky / Just like a giant spotlight,” sings Lenka as she takes her turn in the literal spotlight as a solo artist. Straddling a fine line between Fiest and Edie Brickell – and to a lesser, but comparable, extent, Katy Perry – Lenka is no stranger to music. She previously fronted the electronic/ambient outfit Decoder Ring in her native Australia, a group best know for the critically-acclaimed soundtrack to the Australian film Somersault.

The daughter of a jazz musician, Lenka originally sidetracked music for film completely, embarking on an acting career (having trained alongside Cate Blanchett at the Australian Theatre for Young People), featuring in a string of independent films such as The Dish and Lost Things.

However, her subsequent time with Decoder Ring sparked an interest in solo material, with an early composition ending up in a particularly ‘hands-on’ scene in Courtney Cox’s TV series Dirt. TV placements have come thick and fast since her signing to Epic Records. (“They’re a major label, but have the philosophy of an indie,” says Lenka.) The track ‘The Show’ has featured in Old Navy’s back-to-school TV ad campaign and in hit US comedy series Ugly Betty. All of which – plus 476,700 downloads as iTunes’ free song of the week – helped push her full album into the iTunes’ Top 10 albums chart. The TV integration, however, doesn’t end there, with ‘Don’t Let Me Fall’ appearing in the newly-invigorated Beverly Hills 90210 premiere episode.

The songs themselves are evidence of a girl who cites that “her first friends were trees”. Described in reviews as an “ethereal songstress”, a “pocket rocket”, and “breathy, strangely haunting,” this is crossover folk-tinged pop at its best.

Single ‘The Show’ climaxes with a seemingly drunken rabble shouting, “I want my money back!”

I don’t think you will, though.

Lenka plays a series of dates in Australia at the end of October, before embarking on the Hotel Cafe Tour in the US from 11th November

http://www.myspace.com/lenkamusic

http://www.lenkamusic.com

Fly you to the moon

Back in the 1960s, the world was treated to a vision of the future, a helmeted man whizzing round the skies of Disneyland with a tinfoil flying device strapped to his back – which was supposed to be a jetpack. “I believe in our lifetime we will see jetpacks used in commuter service between office and home, in the police department and individual family life,” said Robert May, the developer of the Rocket Belt jetpack. However, over 40 years later and we’ve still got our face squashed against the glass on the Tube and some police are still on horseback.

Glaswegian quartet, We Were Promised Jetpacks (although all only born in 1987) bemoan the false promises of science shows like Tomorrow’s World – the very people who told us CDs were indestructible. The as-yet-unsigned band, comprised of school friends Adam Thompson (vocals, guitar), Michael Palmer (guitar), Sean Smith (bass), and Darren Lackie (drums) originated in Edinburgh. The group – who describe themselves as “older than Leon Jackson” but “younger than Leona Lewis” – performed their first ever gig at Craigmount High with a cover of Jet’s ‘Are You Gonna Be My Girl?’. We get promised jetpacks and all we get is Jet. The world is so cruel.

So what do they sound like, you say? Well they namecheck Bloc Party, Biffy Clyro, We Are Scientists, and The Strokes; and to be fair the influences are apparent. It’s all a little bit ramshackle in places and, at times, sounds like standard Student Union fodder; but when it doesn’t, its jangly exuberance really holds its own. The 2007 self-released, self-titled EP contains some fairly raw gems. ‘Quiet Little Voices’ and ‘Moving Clocks Run Slow’ scratch out a frenetic pace and energy – as if they were being driven on the very hydrogen peroxide that propelled those Sixties space cadets. Plus – and this is an important ‘plus’ – they really do have one of the best band names we’ve heard in ages.

WWPJ will take to the Your Soul Bandstand at the Hydro Connect festival on 29th-31st August, alongside Attic Lights and Broken Records. In the meantime strap a bottle of fizzy pop to your back and fill it with Mentos. This is about as close as we are going to get to our shiny jetpack utopia.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm

That 60s Jetpack Guy

Finger-pickin’ drumsticks

Somewhere back in the 17th Century, a squat, stocky, relatively useless (even for eating, by some accounts) lump of a bird popped its webbed clogs forever. Dead as. Here’s hoping the lifespan of San Francisco band The Dodos has a more fruitful existence. This folktronic duo is the pairing of Meric Long (who studied West African drumming), with Logan Kroeber (who heralds from the school of progressive metal). Stemming from the same stream of consciousness as Animal Collective, this is part psyche rock, part backwater blues – i.e. music to get ambushed in a neon canoe to.

The frantic acoustic fingerpicking opener of ‘Jodi’ breezes in like snow on a lazy morning, only to be soundly trampled on by the heavy syncopated footprints of a child in a tantrum. Logan Kroeber’s primal drumming is equal parts ‘man-fitting-an-IKEA-wardrobe-together-late-at-night’ and equal parts a tribal calling to the indie waterhole. The drums, which are central to The Dodos’ ethos, create a rhythm that should by rights be jarring against the delicate intensity of Meric’s guitar playing. Yet the two interweave with such driving intent that it somehow works, with each song conveying an intricate beauty of its own.

The fact that that this drumming at times resembles the shambolic nature of a school music lesson is not lost on the band. The name of the album (Visiter) was decided upon after a set played at a school special education class, whereby a child scribbled a drawing of the duo and misspelt ‘Visitor’ as the picture’s title. The artwork now appears as the album cover. “The idea behind our record is the sound you get when you stick your head in a drum,” said Long recently. It’s that fly-or-die mentality that will set this low-key pair apart from the crowd and one step ahead of the taxidermist.

The Dodos have toured with a number of artists including Les Savy Fav, Akron/Family, Jennifer Gentle, Wovenhand, and Peter & The Wolf. They also recently appeared at the infamous Amersham Arms in London on 3rd June 2008.

http://dodosmusic.net/

http://www.myspace.com/mericlong

The Dodos – ‘Foals’

From Russia with love

Fill up your Lada with cheap vodka, it’s time to come out of your makeshift nuclear bunker and meet the real Cold War Kids.

Someone Still Loves You, Boris Yeltsin are Philip Dickey (singer/drums/guitar), Will Knauer (guitar), John Robert Cardwell (vocals/bass), and Jonathan James (drums/bass). Just where the band’s affection for the 75-year-old reclusive tennis-playing (Yeltsin once told an audience in Stockholm that Bjorn Borg’s face reminded him of meatballs) and infamously un-sober ex-Soviet leader comes from is anyone’s guess. Boris Yeltsin stepped down from office when Dickey was 7.

Philip Dickey’s first band, Thinking Version, attempted to ape the sound of Nirvana until a partnership with Will Knauer took it all in a much less gloomy direction. SSLYBY released their debut album, Broom, which was recorded in an attic over a period of eight months, in March of 2005. They posted a few MP3s on their intentionally lo-fi website (which heralded them modestly as “the third best band” on their street) and rapidly found themselves propelled to indie audio blog stardom. “Internet fame doesn’t make sense to us,” says Philip Dickey at the time. “I don’t think our lead singer has an e-mail address.” It comes as no real surprise after listening to Broom that, in fact, all the songs contained on the album were written for one particular girl – a former girlfriend of drummer/vocalist Philip Dickey. It this achingly heartfelt and modest approach to making music that is SSLYBY’s appeal. “We want to write songs that you know no one else can come up with – a song that really matters to one person,” says Dickey.

In April 2006 – with the quartet still without a record label – the band’s most prominent song ‘Oregon Girl’ made its way onto an episode of The OC. A reissuing (and re-mastering) of Broom followed with their eventual signing to Polyvinyl Records, and their highly-anticipated second album, Pershing, was released on 8th April 2008. The track ‘Oceanographers’ shows their new polished production in full effect; whereas ‘I Think I Wanna Die’ still wrestles with the same melodies and shoegazing disenchanted pop that made their early recordings so charming. Their song ‘Annie Elephant’ recently appeared in a Mastercard advert, which aired during the American Idol final.

For a band that was heralded as the one that “could succeed The Shins”, they, unlike their namesake, are certainly not staggering sideways from music’s presidential podium. US Deputy Secretary Strobe Talbot said that during the Clinton years, “Yeltsin was so drunk when he arrived in the airport in September 1994 that he could barely get off the plane. The same night Yeltsin was staggering around in his underpants shouting for pizza.” What’s not to love?

The band is currently touring the American Midwest and come to the UK in September. Playing at both The Borderline (11th) and the End Of The Road Festival (12th).

http://www.morawk.com/boris/

http://www.myspace.com/boris

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin – ‘Think I Wanna Die’

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin – ‘Annie Elephant’ (Mastercard Commercial)

France’s latest upstart upsets the pomme-cart

Yelle, aka Julie Budet, hails from the French Techtonik scene (or brand, depending on how you view it – the term Techtonik has been trademarked). Techtonik, a meld of Belgium and Dutch cultures, started in 2000 as a scene rather than a musical style at the Metropolis club in Paris – which has been hosting Tecktonik Killer nights ever since. Neon clothing and cyberpunk influences (not to mention too many decades listening to bad techno) created a sub-culture that was to be a precursor to the London Nu Rave scene. With London mining Eighties rave music, France had opted for Nineties techno/electro. If you feel like having a go at a bit of Techtonik dancing, you’d best head to the Pompidou Centre where dance-offs are the norm on the streets outside. If you’d prefer to learn the dance in your garage, look no further than Jey-Jey on YouTube – with millions of hits – to guide you through the process.

While Uffie was busy hanging out with Justice and Ed Banger, Yelle was making a name for herself with a song dissing a singer with Paris-based hip-hop group TTC (Cuizineir), entitled ‘Short Dick Cuizi’. She also appeared on the track ‘Talk To The Hand’ by Fatal Bazooka (who is sort of a French Ali G – mimicking wannabe rappers from Marseilles as opposed to Staines from what I can make out). Since then it’s been busy for Yelle: her debut album, Pop Up, was released last year; Moschino chose her music for its spring 2008 fashion campaign; and she is currently supported Mika on his Dodgy Holiday European tour.

Stand out tracks include Yelle’s reworking of Eighties French hit ‘A Cause Des Garcons’, which was picked up by Electronic Arts in the Need For Speed: Pro Street videogame.

Yelle supports Mika on 26th February at Brixton Academy in London and can be caught at the Coachella Festival on the 26th April.

http://www.yelle.fr/

http://www.myspace.com/iloveyelle

Yelle – ‘Je Veux Te Voir’ (Features Nokia Express Handset)

Yelle – ‘A Cause Des Garcon’

She’s a killer queen

Soko – as well as being a helicopter factory in Bosnia (apparently, thanks to Wikipedia) – is also the shortened name of singer/songwriter Stéphanie Sokolinski. Imagine if Kate Nash had been born in Bordeux, hadn’t had the backing of the Brit School, and owned a ukulele and you’d probably have a reasonable idea of what Soko sounds like. With half-spoken, half-sung, seemingly rambling song structures, she comes across as a shoegazing Edith Piaf for the MySpace generation. Soko started out as an actress, appearing in a number of French movies, such as Les Irréductibles, Dans Les Cordes and Les Diablesses. In 2007 she released an album alongside guitar player Thomas Semence, entitled Not Sokute, which included tracks such as ‘The Dandy Cowboys’, ‘Shitty Day’ and the now infamous track ‘I’ll Kill Her’. Soko made a name for herself via this death threat-styled song – a beautifully honest ode to being jilted (which reached number 1 on the chart of the Danish iTunes Store). Including great lines such as “She’s a bitch, you know, all she’s got is blondeness… I’ll kill her, she stole my future when she took you away,” and “She’ll dump your ass for a model called Brendan”. In October 2007 the song was picked up for use in Stella McCartney’s show at Paris Fashion Week.

New track ‘I Will Never Love You More’ would sit comfortably alongside any of Stephen Meritt’s best ukulele efforts, as she once again opts for self-confessional diary-style lyrics. Soko has also performed a wistful version of The Klaxons ‘It’s Not Over Yet’ (The Gentlemen Drivers remix) and recently covered The Teenagers’ ‘Love No’, stripping away the affected accents of the potty-mouthed trio, paring it all down to a beautifully simplified and heartfelt rendition.

Soko has supported the likes of Adele, Black Kids, and MIA and is planning to release her first album in the autumn of 2008. She, unsurprisingly, supports Kate Nash in Germany on 1st March, makes an appearance at Domino 2008 in Belgium on 17th April, and you can catch her in London as part of the Camden Crawl on 18th-19th April.

http://www.myspace.com/mysoko

Soko -’I'll Kill Her’

Soko – ‘Shitty Day’