Breaking More Waves has been on a rather extended break whilst I enjoyed a summer holiday and attended Glastonbury and Latitude festivals. Before I get back into regular posting let’s take a dive into a handful of tracks that nearly got away. Ranging from sultry disco pop to intense indie, these are the ones I’ve been playing out a lot. Rosalía – F*cking Money Man As the Guardian pointed out, Rosalía's ultra-modern take on flamenco has been embraced by ‘the kind of websites that make it their business to write earnest articles about the socio-political significance of pop stars’ and that those sites have indeed ‘begun writing earnest articles about her socio-political significance.’ There’s probably a whole bunch of reasons for this but most importantly it’s probably because Rosalía’s album El Mal Querer is rather bloody brilliant and that she’s become such a big star in Spain it’s impossible to ignore. She was as sharp as a blade at Glastonbury this year and now her latest track F*cking Money Man (released whilst I was basking in the sun by the pool in Torrevieja) piles on the sass. It’s also managed to upset a few language purists as she mixes a few ‘Spanishisms’ in amongst the mainly Catalan language lyrics. Alice Jemima – Dancing in Love Having been out on the road supporting Sophie Ellis Bextor recently, Breaking More Waves long term favourite Alice Jemima creates a new genre with new single Dancing in Love; I’m calling it soft disco. It’s played in the sort of club where you sit on extremely comfortable low-slung modular sofas, the music is never too loud to give you tinnitus and everything wraps up before midnight so that we get a good night’s sleep and no hangover. Trust me, this is the best sort of club. There’s no kebab on the way home either, just a healthy handful of berries and a small spoon of yoghurt. The song is the opening track to Alice’s forthcoming second album Everything Changes (does anyone else immediately start singing that Take That song when they hear that title?) which includes a tune called Binge Love You, which I guess is better than binge drinking at least. She’s out on tour later this year and has more dates with Ellis Bextor (who co-wrote the track with Alice) in autumn as well. Walt Disco – Past Tense Glasgow based Walt Disco are one of the more interesting new wave bands out there. Are they goth? Are they pop? Are they indie? Are they New Romantic? Are we all bored of trying to put music into specific category boxes? Whatever they are, they’re magnificent. It’s why I booked them to play Dials Festival in Portsmouth this October on the same stage as other Breaking More Waves favourites The Blinders, Another Sky and Saltwater Sun (tickets for our tiny baby all day festival can be found by clicking this link – a bargain at £20). Much has been made of singer James’s Potter’s extravagant and theatrical vocals and correctly so. It’s nice to have someone singing with such gusto. The video features a girl coming to terms with the death of a friend, which leads me neatly on to the next selection (it's almost as if I planned this)... The Murder Capital – Don’t Cling to Life Whilst we’re talking of coming to terms with death, Ireland’s The Murder Capital give us the cheery title Don’t Cling to Life for their new single. One of the most intense yet strangely tender groups I’ve seen live in 2019 The Murder Capital matter. Clocking in at just two minutes and thirty-two seconds long, this is a demonstration of why.
Abbie Ozard – Heartbreak Radio ‘Heartbreak Spotify Playlist’ doesn’t really have the same ring to it as a song title does it? Radio is still more romantic. I was pleased as punch to see Abbie Ozard’s newbie Heartbreak Radio sneak its way onto the Spotify New Music Friday UK playlist last week. Having posted Abbie’s tunes a couple of times on the blog (first back in 2018 with the song Average Disguise) it’s nice to know that someone else out there is taking notice. Heartbreak Radio is one of those snappy uptempo indie pop numbers that hammers along with a playful tunefulness and finds Abbie linking memory of past relationships to music. She’s improving with every release.
The last (and first) time that Manchester’s Abbie Ozard appeared on the blog was almost a year ago with her single Average Disguise. Since that track she’s released a further single Gone and a cover of East 17’s Stay Another Day, at Christmas time of course. Now it’s time to catch up with Abbie through her latest release and her best so far - Growing Pains. She describes the song as talking about a young person’s perception of love and the confusion that comes with it. “I wanted to write a song that makes teenagers feel less isolated when falling in and out of love and struggling with identity and acceptance.” The sound is Abbie’s chirpiest yet and if you’re a fan of old school indie – the sort that in the 80's wasn’t afraid of the floppy fringe and dancing bashfully in the corner with a pint of snakebite and black – you’ll probably like this. There are hints of artists such as Hazel English and Rose Elinor Dougall here, and even perhaps the more pop moments of The Cure, so if those names mean anything to you, it’s probably time to press play. Words like summery and dreamy are almost inevitably going to crop up when describing this song - and let's face it there's a lot worse things in life - so embrace it. You can catch Abbie at Liverpool's Sound City on May 4th if you're from that neck of the woods. Abbie Ozard - Growing Pains
When I started writing Breaking More Waves nearly 10 years ago I didn’t really realise what I was getting myself into. I just started posting about music that I had heard and liked (and posted the occasional festival review and what I now know to be called a ‘think piece’) with no thoughts about if anyone would read it. But just in case someone did read it and just in case an artist wanted to tell me about their music I put my email address on the blog for people to get in contact with me. It was my personal email address. Why on earth would I set up one for the blog when this was just a small personal project? 10 years later that email address remains on the blog as a way for people to contact me, except these days it receives over 200 submissions every 24 hours. It amazes me on a daily basis how much new music is released. And because there is so much music put out there every day, it makes me sad to think of how many of those artists will get little or no coverage from small scale personal blogs like mine right up to the Pitchforks of this world. I probably read less than 5% of the emails I receive - full time work and having a life take precedent. I’ve had to change my personal email address of course. The old one is now just for the blog. My mum was getting annoyed when I wasn’t replying to her because her messages got buried in between submissions from Japanese heavy metal bands and the latest glitchy new wave electronic bedroom pop artists single promotion. Sorry mum. Now I reply pretty quickly to her so we're all good. But now I have to say sorry to the artists as well. Because although it can still be a lot of fun discovering new artists via the in box, I’m still just as likely to discover new music through a whole variety of other channels. Such as today’s new singer songwriter. Her name is Abbie Ozard and she hails from Nantwich, Cheshire. If she did ever send me an email (I've just checked - I don't think she did) the chances are I probably would have missed it anyway. Abbie has already been picked up by BBC Introducing Manchester and last year won the inaugural Words & Music Song Contest, a competition that included 6 Music’s Chris Hawkins and singer songwriter Thea Gilmore as its judges. So it's not just me that has noticed her, although at the moment most of the attention on Abbie has come from the Manchester area. The song that has grabbed my ears is Average Disguise; it's a dark torch song cast from the witching hours. It was the track that won her the competition and it was released at the start of this year - but it's still worth your time now. The most important ingredient of quality is time. Average Disguise is full of powerful brooding textures and ghostly cinematic guitar rattles and it is frankly rather wonderful. Abbie names Daughter and Marika Hackman as influences and you can definitely hear that in terms of the atmospherics of the song – it has elements of the epic, the cinematic and the nostalgic to it, although this is no copycat – it very much stands out as a very well-crafted piece on its own. It’s early days for Abbie Ozard, but I’ll be keeping close tabs on her to see what comes next, for this sounds impressive. Abbie Ozard - Average Disguise
