Chlöe Howl - Disappointed (Video)

So where have we got to with Chlöe Howl? She first started making appearances on the internet around the same time as London Grammar, yet since then they seem to have had quite different paths mapped out for them. London Grammar’s was simple – a clear smooth one with no junctions, crossroads, potholes, dead end corners, or dog turds left by uncaring hound owners, just signposts marked single, album, tour, another single, another bigger tour. Yet with Chlöe the path has been a bit more zig-zag and at times has resembled a maze. 

There's a sense that Chlöe is very close to getting out of the maze though, for there are new songs being released and finally there will be an LP. We heard one last weekend at Bushstock called Tomorrow’s Far Away and yesterday she put out another. You won’t be disappointed with Disappointed (sorry we couldn’t resist that) which features a roller skating derby video and a slightly rockier sound, confirming what we suggested in our Bushstock review (here) about Paramore and substitute singers.

Chlöe Howl - Disappointed (Video)

Bushstock 2014 - Review

Not all festivals are created equal and Bushstock stands out because of its convenience and well -mannered audience. If you want dangerous, dirty and full-on moshpits then Bushstock is probably best avoided, but for the rest of you, it is if nothing else, a very painless festival and an event that oozes quality.

Based in Shepherd’s Bush, West London, this now annual one dayer took place in four venues all within easy walking distance of each other. It’s centre piece was (as in past years) St Stephen’s Church (pictured above) which hosted mostly, but not exclusively, acoustic based artists and remained busy all day. There were also three other venues; the elegant Bush Hall, complete with chandeliers, disco ball and grand ornate mirrors on the wall, plus two pubs, The Sindercombe Social (which replaced last year’s sweatbox underground bunker Ginglik) and the smaller Defector's Weld. Due to the close proximity of the venues it was possible to catch a large number of full sets with very little effort and venue hopping was straightforward - we experienced none of the ‘at capacity’ problems that many multi-venue festivals face.

Here are 10 things that we learnt at Bushstock 2014:

1. The early bird really does get value for money.

An early bird ticket for Bushstock 2014 set you back just £15. For that we saw 10 bands – just over 5 hours of live music.

2. There still is very little bush at Bushstock.

We mentioned this in our review last year and it continues into 2014. Because Bushstock had a relatively high quota of acoustic and folk acts (amongst their number Hozier, Eaves, Luke Sital-Singh and Alex Vargas) if you believe folk music clichés you might have expected the number of beards in the audience to be high; however, almost exactly the opposite seemed to be the case. It seemed that in this corner of West London beards are out and clean shaven is in. Hats off to Jack Garrett though who delivered a fine beard, as well as a deeply impressive mid-afternoon set that marks his name down as the UK’s rising answer to Chet Faker. Clearly excited at playing to such a large crowd (his inappropriate exclamation of ‘Jesus Christ this is surreal’ in the church got a big laugh) his deftly executed mix of electronic soul and twisted guitars fully deserved the standing ovation he received at the end. Listen to him below.

3. A cushion is the new ‘must have’ at festivals.

Or at least at Bushstock, for sitting on a hard wooden pew in a church for a number of hours requires some extra padding in the backseat area.

4. Chlöe Howl might be making pop music, but there’s a rock star inside her wanting to jump out.

The evidence?

Her band. 

Put it this way, this man doesn’t look he would have been in Steps, Girls Aloud or One Direction does he? Yet he rocked out with Miss Howl.

Her footwear. 

Not just DMs straight out the box, but proper scuffed up and well worn. 

Her energy.

Temperatures in Bush Hall may have been bordering on sauna like but that didn’t stop Chlöe Howl giving it her all, striding the stage with a don’t mess with me stomp suggesting that if Paramore ever need a new singer she could do a pretty decent job.

5. Shepherd’s Bush loves chicken.

As we walked between the 4 venues of Bushstock 2014 we counted 11 different fast food chicken takeaways / restaurants and very little else. Yes, of course there was a Nandos.

It's a shame this website (click here) never got going. It could have just posted pictures from Shepherd's Bush.

6. It’s not always Christmas at Chicken Cottage.

Last year in our review of Bushstock, we suggested that at one of these fast food joints, Chicken Cottage, it’s always Christmas, as dusty and tired looking Christmas baubles hung from the ceiling, every day of the year. We were wrong. The decorations are no more. Christmas has cancelled this summer. But you can still get a burger (chicken obviously but veggie varieties are also available), chips and a soft drink there for £2.89 (a 4p increase from last year economics fact fans). Now that’s what we call cheap festival food.

7. Layla is another word for lovely.

Shoved into a small corner stage of The Sindercombe Social, Layla’s blend of girl next door piano based pop was utterly adorable, possessing an intimacy that had the ability to turn even the most rugged football hooligan into a fluttery mess of sweet affections. Songs like Yellow Circles, New Year and Black Mud were rolled out with an easy on the ear sensitivity that felt perfect for the later part of a Saturday afternoon – the musical equivalent of a great cup of steaming coffee, a good book and a hug from someone you love. 

8. If we were to define cool we would write it like this: Honeyblood.

Two girls. Guitar and drums. A ‘we’re just doing this because we like doing it and don’t give a sh*t if anyone else cares or not’ attitude in The Defector's Weld pub. Great clothes. Great hair. From Scotland. The sort of band that make you think ‘yeah I want to be in a rock n roll band.’ That is Honeyblood.

9. Even god cannot stop corporate sponsorship.

Posters for the beer company that was one of the sponsors this year’s Bushstock inside the church? Yes, the power of the sponsor is more powerful than the lord. Praise the lager.

10. Saint Raymond does what he does well.

His indie pop may not have smacked of originality but it was packed with hooks, riffs and summery jangles that were virtually impossible not to shake a leg at in the live environment. All this with a guitarist who looked like the rock version of Gary Barlow and some men dressed in banana costumes in the audience as well.

Bushstock 2014. For fans of great music and chicken; one of our favourite one day multi-venue festivals in the UK.

Jack Garrett - Worry

Chlöe Howl - This Song's Not About You

Chlöe Howl’s tune This Song’s Not About You has been available as a free download for a while now via Amazon, but now Chlöe (or rather one of her team) has uploaded it to Soundcloud. Mind you, we quite like the idea of Chlöe sitting at home in her pyjamas, with a cup of tea in hand uploading the song to Soundcloud on her own and wondering how she should tag it. After all that’s what Beyoncé did when she uploaded her ‘no-promo’ album to iTunes wasn’t it? 

Anyway, before we get carried away, this one sounds like a demo because it is a demo. It’s a bit rough and ready, it’s a bit indie, it’s a bit punchy and lyrically it’s the modern version of Carly Simon's You’re So Vain. It finds Chlöe singing about a guy who probably spends a lot of time posing in front of the mirror, running his hand through his immaculate haircut, wondering how did someone get so good looking as him. “Ok your gorgeous, your ego’s enormous,” Chlöe fires on this giving-him-the-finger stomper, its choppy energy becoming an asset rather than a drawback.

Chlöe Howl’s debut album is scheduled for June 9th.

Chlöe Howl - This Song's Not About You

Chlöe Howl - Rumour (Videos)

At one point in 2013 we wondered what the plan for Chlöe Howl was. After the early 'tastemaker releases' of No Strings and Rumour at the start of the year things seemed to be all going in the right direction. Come summer No Strings got a re-release, and was marketed as her first official single. Then everything seemed to go a bit quiet. Now bear in mind that Chlöe had been launched to the internet around the same time that London Grammar first came on everyone’s radar, it appears that with Chlöe things were taking a lot longer to really ramp up to speed.  London Grammar have spent 2013 pushing out single after single, playing larger and larger shows and releasing a successful debut album. Yet with just 1 official single to her name and to the outside eye, not a lot else happening, there was even a suggestion that Chlöe might have stalled.

Then suddenly there was Paper Heart, an 8/10 pop song with an 8.5/10 video. Things were back on track. Since then she’s cropped up on lots of Ones to Watch / Sound of 2014 type lists including the BBC Sound of 2014 (smug alert - ours was one of the first), bagged a nomination on the Brits Critics awards and everything looks golden again.

Which brings us back again to Rumour. Having decided one re-release wasn’t enough her label are now due to have another bash with this song next year. Rumour is of course a gossip-fuelled pop scorcher and worthy of worming its way into as many airwaves and earways as possible, but what we really want is some bona fide new material. Come on Chlöe, we love the fact you're being a tease, but we know you’ve got the likes of This Song’s Not About You and Drop In The Ocean hidden away somewhere. We’d like to hear those please.

For now though, we’ll settle for Rumour, which has a new weird chess playing video and is still another very good 8/10 pop song. There's also a rather fine acoustic version of the song recorded for Vevo which you can find below.

Chlöe Howl - Rumour (Video)



Chlöe Howl - Rumour (Acoustic Video)

Ones to Watch 2014 - #2 Chlöe Howl

Chlöe Howl has been bubbling under for the whole of 2013, ever since the bouncy attitude laden tune No Strings kicked a few doors down with its Foster The People musical references last winter (we first featured here in January here). Since then she’s done the groundwork; the internet approved low key singles, the increasingly buoyant gigs, the low on the bill festival slots, support shows and most recently the colourful and clever dump your boyfriend video for Paper Heart, complete with dancing tap men, a donkey and carnival dancers.

Chlöe Howl does pop but it’s POP in capitals, full of strutting shimmying confidence, good tunes, fiery spark and lack of sugar coating lyrically. She's been dubbed the new Lily Allen, although she's not courting as much controversy as Lily has recently, but there's certainly a bit of belief to her songs. Her live shows indicate potential singles in the waiting a-plenty, including the energetic and hooky This Song’s Not About You and the punchy Drop In The Ocean. Of course pop can be a fickle world, especially when you’re on a major label, but Chlöe has enough in her bag to suggest that she doesn’t have to worry too much about that for now.

Chlöe Howl - Paper Heart (Arches Remix)

Chlöe Howl - Paper Heart

Chlöe Howl - Paper Heart (Video)

Last week NME Magazine’s cover featured a bunch of artists who were (a) young and (b) British and titled it Young Britannia 2013. This attempt at trying to band together a group of artists by geography and demographic smacked a little of the musical equivalent of casting a huge fishing net into the sea and writing about whatever was pulled up, but at least it got the NME focussing on new music rather than endlessly trying to relive glory days of the past.

One of the artists featured was Chlöe Howl, who seems to have been omnipresent in the world of new pop music this year without actually releasing a huge amount of songs.

But now there is a new tune, it’s called Paper Heart, and it’s rather good. Here are some thoughts:

1. Paper Heart is a big electronic radio friendly tune, all about a relationship ending. So subject material originality = zero, but just deal with it, probably at least 75% of pop music is about love or its end and it’s better than singing about being in ‘da club’. We particularly like the sound at about 2.39 which sounds like a sexy electronic motorbike revving up.

2. The video is a riot of ideas which finds Chlöe going the whole hog to tell her ex-boyfriend it’s over. There’s balloons, donkey shit, big scissors, interpretive dancing, coloured umbrellas, rubbish men dressed as taps, karate dudes, a military band, carnival dancers and of course Chlöe herself. It might seem like quite a lot of money to spend on telling someone the bad news, but we think it’s worth it and Chlöe seems to enjoy it.

3. Recently on Twitter we asked our followers who they thought might make the BBC Sound of 2014 list. From that minor straw poll, based on the responses received, we’d put Chlöe Howl as a front runner in the early betting.

4. Pop music often doesn't last forever, but neither does a tasty fish. Both often are there to be devoured and enjoyed for what they are before the next meal comes along.  As Chlöe is one of those artists writhing in NME's big net, she deserves to be served up, let’s just hope the big bad pop machine doesn’t spit her out back into the sea too early.

Here's Paper Heart.

Chlöe Howl - Paper Heart (Video)

Chlöe Howl - No Strings (Video)

Chlöe Howl is an interesting potential pop-star in waiting, in so far as she has been positioned as a little bit edgy (she swears in her songs) and a little bit cool (the indie blogs like her) and a little bit not-manufactured (she’s been out there, with little fuss, playing the beer sodden toilet venues to small crowds – we caught her in a three quarters empty pub in Guildford on a weekday night, playing to what appeared to be a bunch of friends/ industry types and not many others.)

We’re wondering how long this image will last? We’re suspecting the early adopters perceptions and attitudes may take a bit of a rethink when she attempts to battle it out with the likes of Olly Murs and Jessie J for chart position. Chlöe may have described herself as a 6 on a scale of 1 to Pitchfork in a recent Popjustice interview but we suspect that by the time the album comes out she’ll be more of a 2.75. After all there will probably be a new Bon Iver or Radiohead record to salivate over by then.

But let’s not worry too much about the future, because pop is as much about the here and now as it is the difficult third album (although the speed the internet works these days it’s probably more the difficult third single that needs worrying about than the long term).  So here’s a new video to accompany No Strings, the song that first introduced Chloe to the world last winter. It contains snogging, some bed action and Chlöe wearing a Velvet Underground tee-shirt which we suspect gets her another Pitchfork point or two. 

Chlöe Howl - No Strings (Video)

Chlöe Howl - I Wish I Could Tell You

We’ve already featured the first two songs from Chlöe Howl’s free to download EP, so let’s make it a threesome and complete the set with I Wish I Could Tell You, recently released to the world wide web. Having used words in the past like sassy and potty mouthed when talking about this new potential pop starlet we also suggested that she’s like a modern electronic pop version of Kate Nash that it’s OK to like (although for reasons we described yesterday, we still really love The Nasher as well), but with I Wish I Could Tell You we get the softer side of Chlöe.

This song finds the singer giving it some  ex-boyfriend angst, finding it difficult to move on from her previous relationship. “It gets a little hard to sleep knowing you were here, this other guy's good for me but you won't disappear,” she sings. What shall we do? Give her a good metaphorical slap and tell her to get on with life and enjoy the good memories? Or give her a cuddle and console her that maybe, just maybe one day if he really loves her he’ll come back to her? Sorry Chlöe, deal with it, he’s gone, stop being so bloody emo. The best way to get over one man is to get under another. So get on with that and forget Mr Right. Oh and while you’re at it tell your guitarist that the distant riff in this song sounds like a slow motion version of the one from Coldplay’s Fix You.

You can download the free EP using this link here. Expect to see Howl treading the boards live soon with a confirmed date at Brighton’s Great Escape and others sure to follow.

Chlöe Howl - I Wish I Could Tell You

Chlöe Howl - Rumour

We’ve already established that Chlöe Howl is probably not the sort of lady to mess around with. We imagine she’s the type that hung around the corners of the school playground huddled with the cool kids giving two fingers to anyone who even dared look at her, let alone talk to her. Of course this is only our imagination, maybe she was at home playing Barbie and reading a Jacqueline Wilson book (although we hear Lola Rose is a pretty edgy read).

If she was then she’s made a bit of a step up from those early teen relationship dramas as Rumour is a gossipy pop rocket about someone that goes a bit astray whilst growing up. “I’m just trying to work out how to be like myself, I’m just trying to work out these cards I’ve been dealt,” concludes the chorus. Teenage pregnancies, growing up as a prisoner of a religious fanatic and boozing on the dole are just some of the life experiences fired off over a squelchy pop bass line as Chlöe lines herself up to be the modern version of Kate Nash it’s ok to like for 2013. 

Chlöe Howl - Rumour

Chlöe Howl - New Waves

With both lyrical attitude and a commercial punch new girl on the block Chlöe Howl brings an instinctive sassiness that we probably haven’t seen or heard in British pop since Lily Allen. And with Lily away from the frontline helping build the career of Tom Odell, the crown’s there for the taking.

Navigating a map that references Pumped Up Kicks by Foster the People with confident vocals, funky electronics, Calvin Harris bounciness and I know what I’m about lyrics, her debut track No Strings is as instantly appealing and potty mouthed as they come (unless your name is Azealia Banks of course, when sweariness reaches a new higher state). It’s pure pop but with just that bit of f*ck you edge. “Have a bit too much to drink, say hello, we’re gonna go home together, we really should know better,” she sings flirtatiously before adding “but fuck your no strings” and later on “with all this love you're unprotected, I hate to think of what you're collecting.”

It’s a great start from Chlöe (who has changed her name from Howells to Howl as she launches in to her career) and we’re looking forward to hearing more pop bullets as the year progresses.

Chlöe Howl - No Strings