The Good Natured - Lovers

One of the beauties of writing a music blog is that everything is time stamped and dated, so it’s like a little miniature musical history book, complete with embarrassing writing and bad music selections, for everyone to look back on. Having said that when we glance over our shoulder at past chapters of Breaking More Waves we’re pretty content with what we’ve done. Sure in hindsight there may be the odd artist or two who we would have rather not fallen in love with, but that’s just like real relationships isn’t it? Everyone has an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend that brings the statement “what was I thinking,” to the brain in their past. If they haven’t they haven’t lived.

Thankfully since we first became a little bit infatuated with The Good Natured back in March 2009, we’ve had no reason to shake our head in despair. We’re still lovers, not haters and our patience is soon to be rewarded with (finally) a debut album called Prism. From it comes this appropriately titled new song called Lovers which sounds a little like it has come straight out of a glossy 80’s teen movie. “You and I could be lovers, but you and I will never be in love,” declares Sarah McIntosh. Ouch. There’s no doubt who is in control here in this energetic and saucy romp from the opening lines about being on top to the lines “come on boy I’m taking over, time to play my game.” We're assuming that game isn't Scrabble or Top Trumps, but whatever it is Sarah is boss it seems.

Lovers is free to download now. Do it and sex up your life.

The Good Natured - Lovers

A Message From Santa (Guest Post)

Ho ho ho kidz. Santa here. Come an' sit on ma lap and make an old man very happy. Don’t worry about the smell of sherry, dear old Santy-pops haz been getting himself a bit pissed ready to get through the winter with a few drinks to warm himself up. I’m looking forward to sliding down your chimney and unloading my sack all over your stockinggz. Don’t forget, none of that leaving me milk and mince pie shite. Just a big old glass of sherry OK? Or even better, just leave the bottle. 

Yule ‘ave to excooze the odd spelling miztake on this here blog post, but the normal musical elves have shat of out of the building and left me here on ma todd, sat in me ‘comedy’ Christmas y-fronts at this laptop, trying to work out what this bogging iz all about.

So from now till I go off and creep into youngsters bedroomz and give ‘em what they want I’m gonna give you sum some moosical goodness. Starting today with this lot. There’s The Good Natured, who iz some hot young fillie wiv a bit of a dark side. She’s covered that Christmas Wrapping song. Cor, I’d like to have a go at unwrapping her one day. She’d be thankful for the present I gave her. Then there’s Pins doing Kiss Me Quickly (It’s Christmas). Ho ho ho, now that’s the sort of offer I like. Forget the mistletoe and just get straight down to it. After all Christmas and Santa only come once a year so we’d better make it worfwhile. Well done Pins you seem like dear old Santa’s sort of gurlz. Finally there’s Gabriel Bruce doin’ Silent Night. Now I fink I got a bit confused here becoz I thought old Gabriel was that bird thatz done that John Lewis advert thing and I was quite ready to slip her The Power of Love if you know what I mean, but it seems this Gabriel is a man! A man! Oh well, beggarz can’t be choozerz, and Santa’s quite a randy old sod when he’s had a few drinks. I’ll take anything. Come on Gabriel Bruce, over ‘ere, its time to make it a not so silent night. Gabriel, come back…..

Oh and if anyone sees Rudolph tell him he lookz a c*nt with that shiny red nose. An absolute one. Here’s the tunez. Happy f*ckin’ Christmas one and all.

The Good Natured ft Collette Carr - Christmas Wrapping

Pins - Kiss Me Quickly (It's Christmas)

Gabriel Bruce - Silent Night

The Good Natured - 5-HT

The transition from blog crush to fully formed recording artist with a record label and an album can sometimes seem to take a very long time. Certainly it seems that way with The Good Natured who first cropped up in March 2009 on Breaking More Waves and have been sporadically releasing songs ever since.

However it seems that finally an album is on the way and the first taster of what that record might sound like is in the form of 5-HT. Sarah says of the song “5-HT is a chemical within the human body which helps to release serotonin in our brains. The song explores the contrast between love and pain, and the notion that love is a drug.”

Certainly 5-HT reminds us of drugs. Kids remember – we are in no way condoning drugs, certainly not illegal ones.  Instead we are merely imagining that if for example we had been at some sort of late 80’s / early 90’s warehouse rave, dressed in flares and an acid smiley face t-shirt, gurning like a loon and if we had by chance consumed some not quite legal substances and had perhaps heard some bouncy, full on hardcore tracks such as Injected With A Poison by Praga Khan or Bombscare by 2 Bad Mice we might have stored those songs in our head. Then with said tracks filed away we could have waited over 20 years and then taken those ‘top one, nice one, sorted’ influences and applied them to the rather fantastically massive hands in the air chorus of this song, which is frankly epic, mental and brilliant.

Music – one of the most brilliant chemical rushes to the brain. Who needs drugs?

The Good Natured - 5-HT

Vince Clarke / The Good Natured - Ghost Train

Take an old stager who has in his time been part of Depeche Mode, Yazoo, Erasure, The Assembly and VCMG and match him up with young upstart but old Breaking More Waves favourite Sarah McIntosh (aka The Good Natured) and the result is Ghost Train. Juxtaposing the very human passion and excitement of youthful love / lust “you drive me wild with your touch,” with an almost robotic emotion free vocoder treatment to Sarah’s voice, Ghost Train is a curious yet oddly compelling pop tune. Drinking games in the moonlight, kissing in the dark, popping red balloons and letting the music play all make up what Sarah describes as “a magical time when we ride through the night, silver stars in our eyes, on the ghost train of love.”

Let the music commence, the computers throb, the electronics pulse and enjoy the journey with this new electro-geek twosome, brought together through musical marriage. 

Vince Clarke & The Good Natured - Ghost Train

The Good Natured - Video Voyeur (No Ceremony/// Remix)

Unlike commercial publications who in order to attract readers / hits  have to feature certain artists that meet the demographic of their audience, being truly independent means we can do what we like. This is what fan journalism is about. There’s no reason for us to feature the latest buzz act (hello Azealia Banks) if we don’t love their music. However, if we want to feature a whole weeks worth of adoring gushing N-Robz (hello Nicola) posts we can. We could even rename our blog The Nicola Roberts Appreciation Society if we wanted to without any worries about loss of readership through re-branding.

So today here’s a remix. We’ve been long-term lovers (and when we say long term we mean in the sense of the timescales of music blogs, which in the main operate at a hump ‘em and dump ‘em speed of about 2 milliseconds) of The Good Natured and have been getting quite frisky with No Ceremony/// of late, so when you put the two together for a bit of a remix orgy the chances are, as a fan, we’re going to get quite excited and jump in to enjoy the fun.

Like any coupling there’s usually someone who’s a little more dominant and in this case it’s No Ceremony/// who are in the driving seat, so for balance we’re also streaming the original Good Natured track, a solo effort (no we’re not doing a masturbatory pun on that) which we didn’t post when it first came on line as we were busy with all of our end of year run downs. Play both, but don’t deliberate the differences, that’s like comparing a girlfriend / boyfriend with a previous partner. Just enjoy each one for what they are.

The Good Natured - Video Voyeur (No Ceremony/// Remix)

The Good Natured - Video Voyeur

The Blog Sound of 2012

Over the last 15 days Breaking More Waves has been publishing its very own selection of artists, musicians and bands that it believes are Ones to Watch for 2012.

New act tip lists seem to get more numerous every year and none is more ubiquitous than the BBC Sound of list, which we will be posting our thoughts on separately in a few weeks, after our traditional run down of our favourite ten albums of 2011.

Back at the end of 2010 a small bunch of independent music bloggers, including Breaking More Waves discussed the idea of collating the combined thoughts, knowledge and passions of the UK blogging community to create the Blog Sound of 2012. The idea was in no way intended as a platform to criticise the BBC’s Sound of List, which Breaking More Waves has previously been involved in and continues to support. The BBC’s list acts as an invaluable tool to help new artists gain strong media publicity for their music in a time when it’s becoming increasingly difficult for such acts to establish themselves. The Blog Sound of 2012 is more an experiment to decide if a pool of UK music bloggers can come up with some interesting alternatives.

33 music blogs were involved in the voting process, with each one nominating 5 acts for the list.The participating blogs were A Tidal Wave Of Indifference ,Breaking More Waves, God Is In the TV, Sweeping The Nation, The Von Pip Musical Express, The Recommender, Faded Glamour, Drunken Werewolf, Flying With Anna, Not Many Experts, Underclassed Idle Ideas, Sonic Masala, Mudkiss, The Ring Master, Both Bars On, Music From A Green Window, Dots And Dashes, The Daily Growl, And Everyone's A DJ, Kowolskiy, Just Music That I Like, Cruel Rhythm, The Blue Walrus, Music Fans Mic, Seventeen Seconds, Eaten By Monsters, Seven Sevens, Unpeeled, New Rave Brain Wave, Peenko, Music Liberation, My Bands Better Than Your Band and Song By Toad.

From these blogs suggestions a most voted for long list of 15 artists has been collated, of which a top 5 will be published in a few weeks, with an eventual winner being announced. Because of the selection of blogs that voted, the final list has a fairly strong bias towards indie / rock and folk / acoustic music but there's still much variety within.

And here, in no particular order are the 15 artists that have been chosen as the Blog Sound of 2012.

Houdini Dax – Brit-Pop influenced rough n ready psychedelic indie rock (Link to Facebook)

Lianne La Havas – Soft acoustic songwriter with soul and jazz tinges (Link to website)

Theme Park – Indie band recalling Talking Heads with danceable tropical pop (Link to Facebook)

French Wives – Glasgow based jubilant indie (Link to Facebook)

The Good Natured – Female fronted trio with dark pop undercurrents. (Link to website)

Alt J – Loose sounding, quirky, organic groove based band from Leeds. (Link to Facebook)

The Jezabels – Surging indie rock from Sydney with strong female vocals (Link to website)

Lucy Rose – Sweet, pure, honey voiced gentle acoustic singer songwriter. (Link to website)

Bastille – Easily accessible, catchy, Hype Machine soaring pop. (Link to website)

Washington - Dramatic confident pop from adopted Oz girl born in Papa New Guinea (Link to Myspace)

Friends – Rhythmic girl fronted band with a hint of Tom-Tom Club and R ‘n’ B references. (Link to Myspace)

Meursault –Tagged as folktronica in some quarters, with 2 LP’s already behind them. (Link to Facebook)

Daughter – Sparse experimental female fronted folk (Link to Facebook)

Beth Jeans Houghton – Leftfield alt folk with all sorts thrown in (Link to Facebook)

Outfit – Layered sounding indie group that have been compared to Wild Beasts. (Link to Facebook)

Of the 15 acts chosen 3 of them also appear on the Breaking More Waves Ones to Watch list ( Lucy Rose, Lianne La Havas and Outfit) with one of them (Beth Jeans Houghton) appearing on our own Ones To Watch list back in 2009. 8 of the 15 have appeared in some form or other on the blog this year, suggesting that the tastes of Breaking More Waves are not always that far removed from our blogging peer group.

As always with anything that we feature on the blog, we recommend that you listen to all of the artists above – maybe you’ll discover something that you haven’t heard before and love, which is ultimately the point of music blogs.

Keep a look out for the top 5 and winner of the Blog Sound of 2012, coming soon – in the meantime here are a couple of tracks of two of the nominated acts that we've never featured on Breaking More Waves before - The Jezabels and Friends.

The Jezabels - Endless Summer

Friends - Friend Crush

The Good Natured - Skeleton

Certain music bloggers can be a competitive bunch sometimes, always trying to outdo each other, wanting to be the quickest to post about the latest buzz band, working up a sweat about how many hits they’re getting as they proclaim how they’ve fallen in love with the next new artist that they probably won’t be listening to at all in six weeks, let alone six months. The blogging world is a pretty inward, naval gazing scene at times. Yet here’s the deal - 99.999% of people couldn’t give a flying fig about music blogs. All they care about is if they like a song or not, not who discovered it first or who got the track the most listens on Bandcamp or Soundcloud and certainly not how many hits the blog gets. It's only bloggers who care about hit counts, unique visitors and average length of time spent on the site. No one else outside of the music industry gives two monkeys.

Which brings us to The Good Natured aka Sarah McIntosh. To the blogging world The Good Natured is no longer a new artist, the hype / buzz period being well and truly over. Hell, we first featured her on Breaking More Waves back in March 2009. Yet to most of the world she is new. In fact the vast majority of the public have yet to hear of her. In an unscientific test Breaking More Waves asked 36 people if they’d heard of The Good Natured. 35 hadn’t and 1 thought it was a type of organic salad. That person was right incidentally.

It’s for this reason that today we’re featuring her current single Skeleton. It’s been out there online and on radio for listening for a while already, but today was the official release date of the song and there’s still a huge amount of work to be done. Just a few thousand plays on music blogs aren’t going to propel The Good Natured to a bigger audience and the sad reality-check fact is that with a record deal in place a bigger audience is required for the deal to be sustained.

So, if you’ve not heard Skeleton yet, spend a few minutes here, press play and if you like what reaches your ears when it finishes then go to iTunes and buy the track, especially as The Good Natured is also giving you this rather fresh and super-hot remix by Grum for free download below.

The Good Natured - Skeleton

The Good Natured - Skeleton (Grum Remix)

The Good Natured - Be My Animal

Until yesterday Radio 1’s Fearne Cotton was in our view the embodiment of pure evil – the Anti-Christ of radio. Proof is that on our Twitter we get regular suggestions from Twitter itself that we should follow her, even although we have tweeted our hatred of young Fearne. It's all part of her blonde-bland evil world domination plan. Plus she seems to think Scouting For Girls are amazing. In fact she seems to think everything is amazing. Or beautiful. Ok that’s a little strong, in reality Fearne is probably a wonderful and gorgeous human being, we hear she does a lot of work for charity, but we have never been a fan of her output. Sorry. But then yesterday for a few blissful minutes Fearne redeemed herself. She aired the first daytime Radio 1 play of our sometimes blogged countess of dark electro pop – The Good Natured.

Last month we gave you the video and download of the B side to the new single, and now it’s time to throw out the whole shebang, with the A side - Be My Animal. “Kill me now, kill me now,” intones lead singer Sarah icily. “Sinking my teeth into you, it’s not enough, it’s not enough,” she also adds provocatively. Add in a significant amount of rubbing up against walls and flexing her arms and fingers in a slightly “I’m quite arty really,” way in the video and what you have is a moderately disturbing pop tune – in a good way. For once, if it’s good enough for Fearne ‘She-Devil’ Cotton, it’s good enough for us.

The single and video stream below, and for those who like a freebie (and let’s face it, many of you won’t even read the ‘comedy’ text we’ve written here) your eyes will be peering selfishly downwards towards the little download arrow below - we’ve also put a slow mournful cover version of The Wombats new single – Tokyo (Vampires and Wolves) by The Good Natured up with this post for your pleasure. Fearne if you’re reading, you can have a download as well, then let’s meet for a drink and sort out this attitude problem we have with you. Maybe we’ll even become friends and then Breaking More Waves can come on your ITV 2 show. It would be as Fearne would say, 'amazing'. In the meantime here’s The Good Natured

The Good Natured - Be My Animal by partisanpr

The Good Natured - Tokyo (Vampires and Wolves) by partisanpr

The Good Natured - Prisoner

If you search the internet for The Good Natured, the chances are that you may well come across “Juice that doesn’t cost the earth.” This Costa Rican environmental liquid freshness may be rather thirst quenching, but it certainly wouldn’t be what we were looking for. The Good Natured we’re talking about is one Sarah McIntosh who, since we first posted about her back in March 2009, has slowly been developing her songs and her image – a blend of reasonably accessible electronic pop with gothic / fetish undertones. In a world that seems to be dominated by big voiced female singers, it’s rather refreshing to hear Sarah’s slightly one key couldn’t care less vocals – it’s like suddenly realising that you’ve been hanging out with the same bunch of friends for too long and have forgotten that anyone else exists.

The Good Natured will soon to be releasing a new single, entitled Be My Animal. “I am searching for you, I’m following,” Sarah begins, displaying slightly stalker like tendencies before delivering the sprightly hook line “Wo-oh-oh be my animal.” Her vocal reminds us very much of another Sarah – one Sarah Blackwood from mid-90’s electronic pop group Dubstar.

The song is backed by an even better tune Prisoner. In an about face move The Good Natured are releasing a video for this song rather than the lead track, although a video for Be My Animal will surface very soon. Girls, if you watch the Prisoner video, which was directed by Lorenzo Ricciarelli, this really is a lesson in how not to do your make up. It was inspired by the film Tie Me Up Tie Me Down by Pedro Almodovar. Lyrically Prisoner touches on dark ideas of a trapped relationship and the physical and emotional powers lovers have within it. “How I love it when you put me in a place that’s out of sight, I never see the day, never see the light.” On the basis of these words we certainly wouldn’t want Sarah as our girlfriend – she seems a little scary on record at least, but we’ll quite happily have her music.

You can grab Prisoner below for free download by clicking on the arrow and also see the video.

The Good Natured - Prisoner by partisanpr

Latitude 2010 - Review (Part 1)

The attempt by Festival Republic to establish and market Latitude as a safe and family friendly festival took several steps backward this weekend. The horrific reports of two alleged rapes on the site, the partial collapse of the canopy structure over the Sunrise Arena stage (pictured above before collapse) on Friday afternoon, and Crystal Castles lead singer Alice Glass throwing punches at a member of the crowd during their Main Stage set on Saturday evening all spoilt what was otherwise a good natured and friendly vibe. It highlighted the fact that despite festivals ethos of love, peace and harmony, such events can be high risk environments.

Under sunny skies girls waltzed around the site wearing flower and leaf headdresses, people relaxed in deckchairs by the now famous multicoloured sheep adjacent the lake, whilst the cream of Central St Martins and Chelsea graduates displayed fashion shows. Despite a few regulars grumbling that the site was even busier than years past, that there was a more boisterous teenage element present (lured no doubt by acts such as Florence and the Machine, Crystal Castles and Vampire Weekend) and that the toilets were still the disgustingly smelly long drop types, overall Latitude 2010 still had a significant amount of chilled goodwill at its heart.

The ‘quiet opening’ on Thursday night got underway with a special midnight set in the middle of the woods by Tom Jones, performing songs from his critically acclaimed album Praise & Blame. With a full to capacity crowd and delayed by technical hitches, Jones arrived on the small stage to ask “Can you hear me OK?” and received a roar of approval in reply. However as his set progressed a significant portion of the crowd grew restless shouting for Sex Bomb and Delilah - hits that Jones had no intention of playing. This was no nostalgia trip, but an opportunity for Tom to display the essence of his talent - his remarkable voice; a soft mix of Presley and Cash - going back to his roots. With a band including Ethan Johns of Kings of Leon and Laura Marling production fame, that played upbeat rock n roll and gospel tinged ballads, Jones may not have delivered a typical crowd pleasing set, but for those who were prepared to listen with an open mind, it was sterling stuff.

The Sunrise Arena is a beautiful fern lined clearing in the woods, covered with a tent-like canopy for shade and shelter. It provided a safety related incident on Friday. Following well received sets from local acoustic singer songwriter Mathew P and the indie-folk-rock of Kurran and the Wolfnotes, a small lunch time crowd were waiting for country singer Delta Maid, when one of the heavy central support poles to the canopy dislodged and kicked out, falling to the floor, presumably from wind force pressure. Luckily because the space was relatively empty nobody was hit or hurt. With the canopy now partially collapsed security were quickly on hand to clear the area and the public asked to leave, the stage closed for the time being.

Over at the Lake Stage local band These Ghosts drew a young home crowd to witness their brooding, epic and passionate guitar anthems. “You are the most beautiful people. Thank you for making this the best day of our lives,” their overawed lead singer proclaimed in a believable way. Next up the sensual eyed ex-Pipette and every geeky indie boys pin-up poster girl Rose Elinor Dougall took the prize for biggest stilettos of the day. Her songs reference late 80’s / early 90’s indie and Casio keyed 50’s film noir. Come Away With Me sounded not dissimilar to The Sundays, the intro to Start / Stop / Synchro hinting at Broadcast. Less commercial than The Pipettes, these songs are likely to be significantly longer lasting.

The Lake Stage continued to push out varied new bands all afternoon. The bobble hat wearing welsh surf-guitar instrumentalists Y Niwl got a varied crowd dancing. Their sound may be obvious with it’s 60’s Hammond organ and garage-twang guitars, but it was perfect for the glorious sunshine - it wouldn’t have been at all surprising to find Quentin Tarantino running down the hill in Bermuda shorts signing the band up for his next film soundtrack,

“This is my sister, she spat water on my groin,” a member of Yuck announced from the stage. It certainly made a change from the standard “Are you having a nice festival / good time,” question that virtually every band used all weekend as their conversation piece with the audience. Squalling guitars, whiney vocals, fuzzy shoe-gazing pop, Yuck have got indie-rock-like-it-used-to-be down to a fine art and are appealingly good. They’re starting to give The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart a run for their money.

Gold is her name and it seems that Gold is her colour - for Alice Gold had either overdone it with the fake tan or has gone a few rounds sunbathing. Looking more like a Jordan wannabe than a rock star she belted out her MOR rock-pop with a big pair of lungs, to a small crowd of curious onlookers most of whom were passing by on their way to buy food or drink.

Sarah from The Good Natured first came to our attention as a bedroom-demo keyboard lass back in 2009. Now playing as a three piece band she’s ditched the keyboard, relying instead on a backing track. Displaying a girlish nervousness between numbers, her performance was entirely composite and confident during the songs themselves. She prowled like a hotpants and black eyeliner wearing tiger, thrusting her arms towards the crowd, throwing the microphone lead around her neck and dropping to her knees to sing in her strangely captivating flat tones. Sarah is certainly playing at being a ‘proper’ pop star, but possesses a darker edginess. Fortune Teller was a hooky swirling danceable beast and Your Body Is A Machine a deeper scratch below the surface.

The scratch becomes a darker wound with Esben and the Witch. The Brighton trio were primitive, experimental and powerful, the reverb laden female vocal more than ghostly, the drums, thrashing guitars, electronic beats and pulses of ambient noise not for the fainthearted, but all spectacularly good. One of the highlights of the afternoon at the Lake Stage for those who like their music a little eerie.

New bands led to more established artists on the main stage and then The Word sponsored 6,000 capacity tent, as day turned to night.

Laura Marling’s second album I Speak Because I Can may be bolder than her debut but would her songs transfer in the huge open space of the main stage, known as the Obelisk Arena ? The answer is yes, her hushed folk sound and quality musicianship only being slightly spoilt by sound bleed from the booming Wild Beasts set from The Word stage. Devil's Spoke and Rambling Man were authoritative and passionate, and when unadorned of her backing band she bears fruit with songs of beauty. Not so much the shy or humble girl she once was, Marling even engaged in some between song banter and got the crowd to accompany her on a whistling solo.

In the Word Arena Richard Hawley was un-typically quiet in between songs, which he finally explained was due a bout of bronchitis. Despite this however his lovelorn melodies were timeless and wonderful, particularly during Tonight The Streets Are Ours which was so romantic that if babies haven’t been created to its sound, there’s something tragically wrong with the world.

It’s left to The National to send folks back to their tents with the best set of the day. It’s powerful, weighty and intensely euphoric. Matt Berninger’s baritone is imposing, the bands music almost overwhelming, layered, lush and hugely emotional. They start with the slow build of the exquisite Runaway, and by the time they reach Bloodbuzz Ohio and Fake Empire grown men are on the verge of weeping. Mass singalongs occur. It’s that good. It’s that exhilarating. It’s moments like these that make you realise that, in the moment, music is that important. The National are now challenging Radiohead as the worlds best rock band. Even bigger stages surely beckon. Very special and the perfect way to end the first day.

Latitude 2010 Day 2 and Day 3 review posts will be published daily this week.

Latitude 2010 - Preview

(Photograph Copywright Andi Sapey used courtesy of Latitude On Line Press)

“It’s more than just a music festival,” is the tag line for Latitude. This is undoubtedly true - Latitude has a fantastic range of cultural entertainment from comedy ( Emo Philips, Ardal Ohanlon, and Rufus Hound to name just three ), literature (Hanif Kureishi, Bret Easton Ellis, Julie Burchill and Garry Mulholland), to theatre, opera, poetry, film and cabaret. Yet even if it didn’t have all of these things, it would still stand up to scrutiny in terms of its musical line up. Not just because of the headliners (this year Florence and The Machine, Belle & Sebastian and Vampire Weekend do the honours) but because of its rich pickings of smaller acts further down the bill - more of those in a moment.

Set in Henham Park, Southwold in Suffolk, Latitude is run by Melvin Benn, who is also responsible for organising Reading and Leeds festivals, together with an input into Big Chill and Glastonbury. Latitude is his venture into the more artistic side of festivals - taking elements of smaller boutique festivals, moulding them with bits of Glastonbury but without the warped late night madness / truly alternative ‘anything can happen’ vibe. It has gained a reputation in some circles as a ‘festival for those who grew up at Reading and Leeds but now prefer reading The Guardian, drinking Cappuccinos and lighting barbecues instead of setting fire to gas canisters and portaloos.’ There’s certainly an element of this to Latitude - it lacks the energy and edginess of an event such as Reading, yet for those who want more than just a bunch of indie and rock bands in a field near an industrial estate, Latitude provides. From its now famous coloured sheep, the beautiful Sunrise stage set in the woods, the lake stage with the lily shaped lanterns that light up at night, to the unusual and unexpected - this year for example will see Tom Jones play a set at midnight in the woods on the opening Thursday night and Kitty, Daisy and Lewis soundtracking The Blues Brothers film; Latitude has a significant amount of care put into the curation of the performances.

But despite Latitude being about more than just music, Breaking More Waves will be mainly, but not exclusively, enjoying the performances of the bands and artists of a musical variety. We’ll be bringing a full review of Latitude 2010 shortly after it finishes, and if our wireless technology stands the test we will also be attempting to live tweet our way around the event. Follow us on Twitter here to catch those.

Earlier we mentioned the many new acts on the bill, and below we present Breaking More Waves Top 5 new acts to see at Latitude 2010.

Clare Maguire

With an album being recorded with Fraser T, (Tynchy Strider, James Morrison) Clare Maguire is a name that remains unknown to many. We first wrote about her at the start of January 2009 after hearing her collection of demos that displayed an artist with obvious talent - she has a hugely powerful and gutsy voice that stands the test versus pretty much anyone you could care to line her up against. So confident were we that Maguire has the voice to be a huge commercial success that we named her in our Ones to Watch List 2010. Yet up until now there has been nothing from Maguire, her record company keeping her quietly under wraps. Come Latitude 2010 we’ll be better positioned to judge if Maguire has fulfilled the early promise that her demos such as the sultry Strangest Thing suggested. There’s no You Tube footage to view, no music clips that we have permission to put out, but if you’re going to Latitude, head down to the Lake Stage when Clare Maguire plays. It could be something very special.

Morning Parade

Morning Parade may not be creating anything particularly new or ground breaking, but what they do they do exceptionally well. Big rock tunes with indie /dance crossover, they seem to have arrived fully formed and ready to step up to the next level. You can grab a free download of their song Marble Attic which we featured a week or so ago here.

The Good Natured

Since we first featured The Good Natured aka Sarah McIntosh on Breaking More Waves back in March 2009, she has been featured on the last Kitsune compilation, released Your Body Is A Machine as a single, played a number of gigs and bagged herself slots at various festivals including the Isle of Wight, V and of course Latitude. Slowly growing her profile rather than being exposed to huge hype, she seems to be bringing a darker edge to synth pop. “We are influenced by self love and benevolence, narcissism is overwhelming, vanity is quite exhausting, self indulgent, hedonistic, blame it all on your upbringing,” are not the typical lyrics of your modern day pop star. An intriguing prospect. Here's an acoustic arrangement of the single, the original video and song can be seen here.

Yuck

Yuck have made fairly regular appearances at Breaking More Waves since the beginning of the year. Like all great noise pop bands, Yuck surge with fuzzy guitars, but under the racket have a neat line in melody. Their Camden Crawl set was one of our highlights of that event, and although their music may be more suited to sweaty dark basements, we eagerly anticipate their arrival on an outdoor stage. Here's the song Georgia by Yuck.

Rose Elinor Dougall

From ex-Pipette to indie credibility, to providing vocals for Mark Ronson, Rose Elinor Dougall has been on some journey since she offered up her first solo offering Another Version of Pop Song back at the end of 2008. With a debut album Without Why due for release at the end of August, Rose Elinor Dougall holds the unlucky status of being one of the miniscule number of artists we have interviewed for the blog, before deciding that interviews didn’t fit with what we were about. What does fit though is Rose’s rather wonderful dreamy melodies.

Latitude 2010 takes place on the 15th-18th July 2010 and is completely sold out.

The Good Natured - Your Body Is A Machine

Let’s face it, comparison is inevitable. Writers are sometimes criticised by those who don’t write for so called ‘lazy journalism’ when they use comparisons to describe new artists or acts. There’s no laziness in this, it’s a natural and effective way to communicate and ultimately that’s what someone who writes is trying to do. A picture paints a thousand words, and a musical comparison is the equivalent of that very picture.

So we make no apology for drawing in some comparisons against The Good Natured. We started over a year ago when we first featured Sarah McIntosh here. At the time we mentioned a slightly flatter sounding Rose Elinor Dougall and Kate Nash. We’re sticking with the Dougall reference in terms of vocals, but now want to add some more.

Those who have been following the blog for sometime may have gradually gleaned the recurring themes that we often return to and will continue to return to. Fashion and pop music is one of those themes. The two are intrinsically linked. They come in waves, then eventually the wave breaks and is replaced by something else. Right now the wave we’re riding is still one of glamour and dressing up. Lady Ga Ga, Florence and the Machine, La Roux, Little Boots and Bat For Lashes for example have all brought colour and a sense that performance should be about far more than just the music.

These are the comparisons that right now we are touching The Good Natured with. For the imagery, fashion and make up used in the new video for Your Body Is A Machine follow this glamorous path, but with a darker, more gothic style. It may have been created on a relatively small budget but Sarah looks impressively fantastic in it.

And the music ? Your Body Is A Machine is a re-recorded and glossier version of the song that was originally track two on The Good Natured limited edition hand packaged EP released last year. It has also recently appeared in remixed form on the Kitsune Maison 9 album. A sophisticated and achingly cool piece of electro-pop, it’s completely of the moment but also has a gentle warmth to it that is endearing.

Your Body Is A Machine

THE GOOD NATURED | MySpace Music Videos

The Good Natured - New Waves @ Breaking More Waves

The Good Natured is one Sarah McIntosh from Reading, Berkshire UK, and yes she is another young female singer songwriter with a keyboard and a slightly vintage fashion sense. But before you switch off thinking ‘Not another Kate Nash’, the fact is that she is that she’s pretty good.

The back story here is that Sarah found an old tatty keyboard at her arthritic nans house and thought she would put it to some use. The results may be lo-fi but they show a great dance pop sensibility that if it develops further could lead to a growing audience. With a voice somewhere between a slightly flatter more melancholic Rose Elinor Dougall and the aforementioned Nash with less stridulance, McIntosh brings stuttering electro with soft Casio overtones to songs such as Heart Of Stone. On this particular tune she mocks “I‘m not listening to what you say,” with wrath to someone who broke her heart. Then on How Can I Believe In You there are one hundred mile an hour baby drum and bass beats mixing it up with a home made church organ sound whilst Sarah sings sullenly over the top of it all. With a bigger crisper studio production these songs have a potential to reach out to those who enjoy this currently popular genre of music. Rock boys will hate it, but Breaking More Waves says yes please !