From blog frenzy (yes, we were involved) to major label deal, Cults finally released their debut album in the UK yesterday. Here’s some footage from when the band hit Brighton for the Great Escape festival, filmed for Bowlegs at the Marwood Coffee Shop. “Kick ass coffee & life changing cake,” the shop states; high claims indeed.
Although the bands official Great Escape performance at Horatio’s bar on the pier was somewhat underwhelming, the shoot of this song – The Curse – seems to have a bit more of a cool bite to it. For comparison we’re also streaming the original amped up version in Soundcloud below.
For our next three posts our attention turns to what in many ways is a prelude to the main UK outdoor summer festivals – Brighton’s Great Escape. Like a smaller European version of SXSW, The Great Escape is a 3 day multi-venue, multi-gig, urban festival which has a particular focus of new music. Although there are a number of other similar events in the UK, Great Escape is certainly the biggest.
In theory the idea of multi-venue festivals sounds brilliant. Stroll from club to pub displaying your wristband proudly, catching bands as you please, with no worries about the weather, the toilets or getting a bad nights sleep because some wide-eyed douche-bag in the tent next to you wants to stay up drinking all night and shouting his head off. Urban events are very much festivals of convenience. You don’t need to pack your wellies or lug an arm draining 24 pack of lager across miles of fields.
However the reality can be somewhat different – venue capacities can mean that popular acts can become easily over-subscribed leading to a significant amount of your time being spent standing in queues. With the festival being in an urban setting the sense of freedom and inclusivity can be lost, making the event seem just like a series of gigs and parties rather than something magical where the normal rules of society don’t apply. And if you’re not able to make it home every evening and have checked in to a cheap hotel or hostel you still run the risk of being kept up all night by drunk revellers running up and down the corridors and slamming doors.
However, at all the Great Escapes Breaking More Waves has attended, we’ve never missed a band that we wanted to see and never been thwarted by the long queue. As a result we’ve seen intimate shows by what are now some of the biggest selling UK acts both home and abroad. It seems almost bizarre now that we caught Adele singing in the so-small-you-couldn’t-swing-a cat bohemian environs of the Red Roaster Café. Likewise we watched Mumford & Sons occupy a third on the bill spot in a performing arts theatre alongside Laura Marling, Noah & The Whale and a certain Jay Jay Pistolet, now better known as the lead singer of The Vaccines.
So how do you ensure you get to see the artists you really want to see? Here’s our simple tip-list:
1. It pays to be organised. Work out your timetable (with a reserve plan) before the event – it’s all listed on the website (here) or in full colour programme preview PDF (here). Check the venue capacities if you don’t know them (again listed on the site) – don’t expect to turn up to see a ‘buzz’ band 5 minutes before they are due to play in a 100 capacity venue. In fact with the Great Escape don’t expect to be able to wander from venue to venue as you please. Tickets are selling fast (Saturday day tickets have already sold out) so gigs will be busy. Be prepared to get to venues early for bands you particularly want to catch.
2. Go to the daytime gigs as well as the evening ones. Our experience has shown that these gigs are a little less busy, particularly the early lunchtime slots and some real gems can be found in the day.
3. Sign up to the text messaging service by texing ESCAPE to 87085 and they’ll send you all of the details of schedule changes, secret shows, hidden parties, venue capacities and much more as they happen on site. There’s an initial sign up charge of £1.50 plus your standard network charge. After that you will not be charged to receive notifications from Great Escape.
4. Use Twitter. The micro-blogging site can be invaluable as a supplement to the text service, plus you can find out lots of other information from punters, bloggers, journalists and bands that are playing. Of course, as a start we recommend that you follow us (here). We’ll be tweeting regularly from the event.
5. Don’t forget the Alternative Escape which gives you even more choice of gigs and parties to attend. All shows are completely free with your festival wristband although these gigs are also open to the general public.
So with plenty of time to still plan your timetable, let Breaking More Waves assist you with a few recommendations of artists to see, starting in this post with Thursdays line up. We’ve listed the currently confirmed times and venues for all of the bands playing, but please check the final programme as they may be subject to change. Practicalities mean that we won’t be at all these gigs ourselves but all these acts come with our full approval. Friday and Saturday's line up recommendations follow soon in the next two posts.
Alpines – Prince Albert 15.15 and Komedia Studio Bar 21.15
First featured on Breaking More Waves back in October 2010, the self-named night pop of Alpines has been a regular feature ever since. The London male-female duo have had a huge number of comparisons thrown their way with names such as Bat For Lashes, Fever Ray, Portishead, The XX, Massive Attack and Zola Jesus being mentioned. Their music has an ethereal, electric and slightly menacing trip-hop /pop aesthetic to it and with a major label deal through Polydor in the bag one question that the Great Escape may help answer is can the bands very studio based sound be pulled-off live ? There's at least two chances to check them out on Thursday.
Where better to hear the surf-pop-harmonies of Oxford five piece Fixers than a pier on the sea? Another band that are rapidly becoming Breaking More Waves regulars, the bands new EP Here Comes 2001, So Let’s Head For The Sun is four tracks of brilliantly playful and experimental harmony laden pop that owes significant debt to Brian Wilson, Animal Collective and spaced-out spot-on genius.
On the same bill as Fixers, New York boy and girl duo Brian Oblivion and Madeline Follin have been the talk of the blogosphere for some time (they first appeared on Breaking More Waves in March 2010) Like Fixers, Cults offer nostalgic reference points for a modern day indie pop audience, covering bases from the twee twinklings of Go Outside to this slightly brasher offering – Abducted.
Hailing from Melbourne, Australia, Miami Horror are not hugely known in the UK, although elsewhere in the world 2010 album Illumination has gained significant recognition with its blend of hands in the air, cheddar smothered, sugary disco references and dance-floor bangers. If you like the Bee-Gees, Abba and Michael Jackson but also like fist pumping electro (with a hint of New Order guitar) then for a late night Thursday boogie you could possibly do no better than shaking your arse off at Coalition.
OK, strictly speaking this show is on Friday being in the early hours of the morning and the band are playing later in the day after (hopefully) some sleep at Above Audio at 14.45, but really this is part of Thursdays proceedings. If the idea of dancing round your handbag club-bound stylee to Miami Horror really isn’t your thing, why not try this show put on by fellow music blog My Band’s Better Than Your Band. We’re convinced you can’t go wrong with the off-kilter indie of Dog Is Dead. We’ve previously compared the Nottingham based group to Mystery Jets, Local Natives and slapped on a reference to Beach Boys harmonies as well. The first band in ages to make the saxophone cool again, Dog Is Dead are gloriously uplifting and full of big pop ideas. Fresh (or not so fresh as the case me be) from some support slots with Brother, Dog Is Dead bring more invention and thrills than anything the Slough based abomination of a band could ever provide.
This is lovely. No, not just lovely, but really really lovely.
The source of this loveliness is Cults. Cults are New York boy and girl Brian Oblivion and Madeline Follin, a duo who found themselves at the centre of a blog-buzz storm last year with their two songs Go Outside and Oh My God. Since that rage they’ve bagged themselves a record deal and are readying an album, due May. You Know What I Mean – an irresistible 50’s / 60’s mum pleasing torch song dragged from the imaginary vaults of Motown then drenched with wall of sound splendour reminds us a lot of the much overlooked but brilliant British band Lucky Soul. Inevitably given the major label backing and blog hype, Cults will gain more attention than Lucky Soul ever have, that’s the way the industry works – but as far as we’re concerned all that matters is the music, not who is funding them – and this song is divinely nostalgic. It’s the first hint at what the long-player may sound like.
Cults are currently out on the road stateside and will be back in the UK in May for a number of shows including Brighton’s Great Escape Festival.
Happy New Year. Welcome back to Breaking More Waves 2011 after our short break, or if this is your first visit, hello it’s lovely to meet you. This is the first of two posts today, the other which will appear in a short while concerns the annual UK Blogger Album of the Year poll run by the excellent Sweeping The Nation blog.
New Year is a time for resolutions to be made and changes to be implemented. This includes Breaking More Waves.
2011 will see a number of minor alterations to the blog. This is the all singing all dancing, version 2.0 - slightly leaner and meaner. Yes, just like governments that are hit by recession we're making cuts. Here's our budget announcement.
Reviews of gigs and concerts are to be no more. These are the posts that get the fewest number of hits / readers and although we’ve never wanted or attempted to be a big hit blog, it seems a little pointless spending the limited free time we have writing things when only a handful of people are going to read them. Instead we'll tweet about them so follow us on Twitter.
Next, we’re also stopping album reviews. You may have noticed that we’ve phased these out in the last few months anyway. This is for similar reasons to the live gigs and concerts – although they get more hits, reviewing an album takes significantly more time and usually by the time we publish there’s already hundreds of reviews out there, so the exercise seems a little pointless. Unless we can offer some further fresh new territory or opinion on an album as part of a more discursive piece we won't be reviewing.
So what will we be covering and in what form?
Primarily we will remain a new music blog, but the emphasis will be on individual songs. However where we find a band that we love, we will post as many times as we think necessary, irrespective of if anyone else loves them or not. Where a very new band is featured we will continue the ‘New Waves @ Breaking More Waves’ feature, but the blogs are to be re- titled just ‘New Waves’.
Our summer coverage of UK festivals will continue, as these are some of the highlights of our year, but the coverage will be in a more condensed, readable form, rather than our previous long rambling reviews. More of that from May.
Our occasional discursive articles on the wider issues surrounding music will continue as lots of people have given feedback saying that they enjoy these the most and they are a little different from other blogs. We hope that some of these particular blogs will bring something fresh to the musical conversation.
And finally, as we announced in November of last year we will be introducing a new blog feature published every Monday entitled Music That Made Me. These blogs will be our reaction against what we see as a continued progression to a more throwaway culture, with people’s attention spans decreasing. They will be a very personal and autobiographical trawl through the songs that we have established long term relationships with and wouldn’t dare to throw away. It will be a weekly nostalgia trip and will give context to our tastes and influences.
In essence Breaking More Waves 2011 will be more focussed on its editorial policy. It’s more of an evolution than a revolution. The style of writing and length of article will remain the same - we realise that our posts are significantly longer than many new music blogs, but we've always wanted to appeal to those who want to engage a little more than just downloading the latest buzz track. We want to talk as well as listen. Feel free to join the conversation.
2011 holds the promise of being a mightily spectacular year for music. Let’s hope it delivers. Ready ? For starters here's three bands that could have possibly made our Ones to Watch 2011 list that we published last December if it wasn't for the fact that they were outside of the UK. Enjoy tracks by U.S band Cults, Norway's Mr Little Jeans and a remix from The Naked and Famous from New Zealand. For the rest of this week, to kick off the New Year, with the exception of Music That Made Me we'll be publishing a whole host of other new bands who didn't quite make our Ones To Watch 2011 list, but were given consideration for it and are all very good. Expect some cowbelltastic trance rock, some lo-fi C86 referencing south coast surf indie, some wonderful one man orchestral pop and more. 2011 still Breaking More Waves.
For those who don’t like ‘mystery bands’ log off now. But for those who couldn’t give a flying fling about who a band are, where they come from or what their background is as long as the music is good, stay tuned. Because Guards are very good. They create an exhilarating blend of surfy, lo-fi power-pop that’s instantly likeable, but not overtly commercial. Their lack of apparent commercial ambition has led to Guards putting their 7 track debut mini album, simply titled Guards EP up on their Bandcamp for free download. Treat your PC or laptop and smother it with their sound now.
If you’re a fan of Cults (who have produced two of our favourite songs of the year in Oh My God and Go Outside) you’ll be interested to know that, from what we can tell, there’s a sibling relationship between Madeline from Cults and the members of Guards; or rather the one and only member of Guards, for after a little digging it appears that this is a solo project by one Richie Follin. The relationship is not just in blood, but in the music as well, for Cults also appear on the Guards song Sail It Slow. Chairlift fans can also celebrate as Caroline Polacheck from the band makes an appearance on another song -Trophy Queen off the EP. However our favourite song we've heard is Don’t Wake The Dead, a happy as hell piece of organ and drums garage hi-five retro-pop that will make you want to rip off all your clothes and run into the lake after a summer party for a waterfight. It’s one of those tracks that could, if the right people get hold of it, become one of those blog buzz tracks. Just in case we’re right, get on the train early and download the EP whilst its still available below.
Go Outside by Cults is one of our favourite songs of the year. Full stop.
Now we have more. A new song called Oh My God that the band are giving away. And guess what ? It’s as nursery rhyme cute and fantastic as Go Outside. The New York band formed when Brian Oblivion met Madeline Follin whilst he was tour managing her brothers band The Willowz. His reason for managing was “because I wanted a free ride out from the east coast.” Whilst doing so he’d made it clear to Madeline’s brother that he was “totally gonna hook up with your sister.” Now he has, and we’re very glad, because we are feeling very weak at the knees about Cults right now. They’re a band that create something that has a complete pop ideal and yet also sound resolutely garage and underground at the same time. It probably explains why a certain UK chart topping pop star is rumoured to be trying to sign Cults to her newly formed record label.
When Madeline sings “I can run away anytime,” we’re hoping that she doesn’t and stays around for quite a bit yet. Here’s Oh My God by Cults to download. It certainly isn't a Kaiser Chiefs cover version.
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