Back in February we featured a new duo called League. The back story was something along the lines of an architecture and journalism student who dropped out of college, choosing to live in a tent on the beach and make music, which sounds very romantic but frankly if we were their parents we’d probably be very cross. “Don’t you know that new bands aren’t making any money from music these days you two idiots? Now architecture on the other hand, there’s a fine profession; plans, elevations, dealing with planning officers, contract administration, project management, site supervision, leaving your stamp on the world whilst getting paid a fine salary. Now stop being lazy bums and get back to college.”
Thankfully, we’re not the parents of League, who have been dabbling away and come up with the How Do I Know EP – a three tracker of psychedelic surf pop. It’s the lead track from the EP that has our love the most, with its scabrous ball-grabbing synth line and hazy vocals. It’s the sound of your young before-you parents smoking a load of drugs and dancing naked in the sunshine before they got boring, got mortgages and got you. Responsibility sucks sometimes, we need bands like League to remind us of this fact.
With The Jess Hall Band the name says what it does on the tin. They’re a band and their singer, songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist and leader is called Jess Hall. Simple.
Except it’s not that simple, because there’s more than just forming a group and writing a bunch of songs; you have to be good. Thankfully Jess Hall is just that. She has an uncanny knack of writing easy on the ear, radio friendly melodies and is blessed with a voice that it’s pretty much impossible not to like. Listen to Play Shy, the debut single released on Dec 5 through Hi-Tone Records and you’ll see what mean; enjoy the hand claps and acoustic guitars creating a clattering rhythmic backing to Jess’s sweet and deliciously light vocal. Hear The Jess Hall Band at the end of a long day and you’d have to be a hardened cynic not to feel a summery skip in your heart.
It probably explains why as yet The Jess Hall Band hasn’t been a name cropping up on the blogs. Most bloggers may be enthusiasts of music but they can also be cynics. To generalise, Hall’s style and sound doesn’t fit the typical blogger’s musical mind map. Give them some glitchy electronica, dirty fuzzy guitars or dark bassy rap and they’ll be all over it. Some Pitchfork, Gorilla vs Bear or Stereogum coverage helps to.
In her songs Hall manages to conjure a mix of deft acoustic song writing and sparkle that makes her stand out in a genre that is much over saturated at the moment with half-decent but hardly inspiring performers. What Hall and her childhood friends from Wiltshire do so well is to create hooky, memorable moments within the tunes – fundamentally these are pop songs played with acoustic instruments. Play Shy is the one that starts her off on what could easily be a very bright future. To see further demonstrations of her talent have a look at some of the bands cover version videos - playing Angus & Julia Stone (here) and Alicia Keys (in her kitchen of all places,below).
Delilah’s Chaka Khan referencing Go (first featured in these quarters back in August) has become one of the sleeper hits of autumn in the UK. With just the right amount of radio exposure and tours with the likes of Chase & Status and Maverick Sabre, she’s become a real commercial proposition without having been burdened with the weight of hype and expectation. It’s a difficult line for an artist to straddle – over exposure can so quickly lead to backlash, but Delilah seems to have got it just right.
So now it’s time for some new material. With lyrics about loneliness, falling apart, being left lost and ‘pointing a gun towards my oldest friend’ Love You So may not quite be the happily romantic pop nugget that you might expect from the title. Musically it bears fruit as a classy string-laden mid-tempo piece of excellence, giving the strongest suggestion that Delilah will soon be finding her way to the radio-waves again.
Yesterday we read something on the internet written by a US based blogger (David Greenwald of Rawkblog) that suggested that you shouldn’t rush to post about a song and should give it due consideration - post something thoughtful about music you actually like seemed to be the advice. Now we fully understand where David is coming from; too many blogs rush to post the latest remix sent by a PR company to hundreds of bloggers, in an attempt to get listed first on Hype Machine, irrespective of quality or if they really feel passionate about the music. But we also fundamentally disagree that everything should be thoughtful. Music is like sex. It’s not always a bloody intellectual exercise – sometimes you just feel the emotion and have to go with it. You hear something, so beautiful, so incredible, so f*ckin’ noisily brilliant that you want to tell the world about it there and then. Sometimes you just want to rip each others’ clothes off and do it. Wherever you are. This is what makes blogs different from the traditional music media; the immediacy.
Sure, in the world of professional journalism there’s a place for considered analysis of music and sometimes even on a blog it makes sense to sit back and take a more reflective view. But sometimes, like we did a few hours ago, you press play and hear something so powerful, so dramatic and so hugely exciting you just HAVE to tell the world about it. It may not be well-thought out, it may not be rational or studious, it may be the heart talking rather than the head, but when it makes you jump up and go WOW, punching the air with delight and adoration, you don’t want it to be secret. As a music fan you want the world to know.
This is what we’re doing with Embers. We want you to know about them now. Their sound, from the three songs we've heard, is grandiose dramatic rock that shimmers with layers of transcendental noise sitting somewhere between the climaxes of Glasvegas and the shattering force of My Bloody Valentine. There’s even a hint of the good parts of Embrace in there somewhere. It’s incredible stuff. Tunnel Vision is the apocalyptic sound of World War III spat out of musical instruments, Without Fear or Favour verges on being some sort of religious experience and Days Turns Into Weeks takes stern pianos and synths to create a hymn of cinematic barefaced brilliance.
We could have waited a week, listened carefully and come up with a well balanced and reasoned argument as to why Embers have just become our new favourite band, but when we’re this excited about such an incredible noise we want as many people as possible to know as quickly as possible. Why delay something that could make a lot of people very happy?
Someone put this lot in a massive studio and give them the production and recording weight they deserve please.
This is Embers. Embers are four people from Manchester. They write music like this.
