Near the end of every year I like to post my Ones to Watch for the next 12 months before all the big gun lists such as the BBC Sound of get published. Sometimes I do quite well with my tips, but at other times all my Ones to Watch list shows is how faulty my crystal ball is. Sometimes the artists don’t even release anything in the following year! This nearly appeared to be the case with Mononoke (real name Katie Taylor) one of my tips for 2014. There was a handful of songs at the start of the year in question, following the incredibly beautiful and blue ballad Alice in 2013, but then nothing. In fact the songs in question such as Barefoot And Broken and Bones and Glory seemed to mysteriously vanish from the internet. It appeared that Mononoke hadn’t even got out of first gear before the brakes were applied and the engine stopped, ignition keys thrown away. But wait, the tale continued, because lo and behold Mononoke resurfaced this summer. Alice was rereleased and there was also another song called Silence For You, the title track from an EP. It seemed that 2014 was just a false start. Now there’s nothing stopping her. Here’s another one, called Graceland which is a slowly compelling piece of chill pop with everything in the right place. So why the delay? “I think I was too keen to get going before I had any material or imagery to back up what I had already put up online,’ she told her record labels website. Footnote: For regular readers, please note that I got all the way through this post without mentioning the bath pic once. I'm losing my touch. Footnote 2: This is the final post on Breaking More Waves for a week or so whilst I'm on holiday. Mononoke - Graceland
She’s still doing a relatively good job of keeping her real name secret (even if certain bloggers who have worked it out have been hiding secret clues on the internet for those who are prepared to look into the bigger picture and get the answer) but now the music is flowing again as Mononoke has uploaded her third song Barefoot and Broken for your listening pleasure. An understated piano based ballad, with a modernist pop production, Barefoot and Broken doesn’t sound like a straight to radio chart-friendly hit, but that's not a criticism. There’s a gentler subtlety at play here, but one which pays dividends on repeated listens. It’s a song to drift away to, her soft but strong vocal encased in the musical equivalent of a floating cloud. Finally a minor moan; does anyone else (apart from ourselves) really dislike the typeface used in the logo above image ? Is it wrong that we actually hate it? Poverty, injustice, war and the crimes of the world and we’re getting angry about a typeface. Save us. Mononoke - Barefoot and Broken (Video)
When we posted Mononoke’s debut song Alice last year we noticed a real reaction to it, all of which was positive. The tweets rolled in: Where had we discovered the song from? What a mesmerising tune. Who was the mysterious* Mononoke? Even the former deputy mayor of New York got in on the act stating that “I was looking for Mononoke's Alice all year,” after finding the song on these very pages. With Alice hitting the spot so perfectly, come the end of the year we listed Mononoke as one of our 10 Ones To Watch for 2014 – a risk, having only heard just the one song. Now there are two. Bones & Glory doesn’t possess the same instant butterflies in the stomach power of Alice, but spend some time with it and it unfurls into an evocative free spirited beauty. “They can never tame us, can’t contain us now, we’re weightless, bones and glory blown to sundown,” Mononoke sings tenderly against a musical backdrop of twilight-hour soft focus electronics. It’s the musical equivalent of that post-coital moment; come and enjoy it. *And for those who want to know who Mononoke is? Well, we’re not going reveal the mystery quite yet, although when her cover gets blown (as it inevitably will, as we managed to find out who she is with just a couple of Google and Twitter searches) expect a sigh of anti-climax as you realise she’s nobody you’ve heard of before. We thought we’d just put you in the picture with that one. Mononoke - Bones & Glory
We’re geting ready to say goodbye to 2013 as its sun begins to set. Before we do so, here are some 2013 blog related facts then some music: 1. This year we’ve uploaded close to 400 blog posts. 2. 400 posts is quite a lot of words (the equivalent of a novel) and a lot of music (the equivalent of about 40 albums worth). 3. If you had read and listened to everything we've posted in 2013, at a guess, it would have taken you about 45 hours of your life - the equivalent of a working week. 4. Its difficult to quantify, but we reckon we've spent the equivalent of between 7 and 8 working weeks on Breaking More Waves this year (if you include listening to music that we may / may not include on the blog and other blog related activities such as emailing artists / labels and their representatives, a bit of social media stuff, but excluding gigs and festivals). Yet despite being quite time heavy, having to balance it against the day job, family etc, at no stage has it ever felt like work in terms of the pressures and responsibilities that our real day job places upon us. We've enjoyed everything that comes from writing Breaking More Waves, probably more so this year than any year before. 5. We've seen a fair few well known blogs give up in 2013 due to the usual reasons of lack of motivation (see this post on Chromewaves for one example) or some that were on hiatus then vanished with no real public explanation (what did happen to The Recommender?). Then there were others that moved on to do other exciting things; our favourite girl on the block / in a field / up a mountain Flying With Anna closed down to open a new chapter (and blog) in her life as she set off on her travels. And so after 5 and a half years of Breaking More Waves is also stopping. Till tomorrow that is. We need a break. But 24 hours should be enough. See you at 8.30am on New Years Day? And that's it. We’re closing our year by featuring 12 of our favourite (and therefore 'best') songs we've featured from 2013, each one in video form. For once, we 're providing no commentary on the individual tracks, we think we've said all we want to say for one year. This isn’t a definitive list as we’ve chosen 1 song from each month’s worth of posts, meaning that on really good months a number of great songs have had to be sacrificed and some songs that we adore haven’t made the cut as they never had a video. If you missed any of these gems we highly recommend you press play. The artists who have created these beauties deserve at least that. We wish you a very happy New Year. We’ll be back tomorrow in 2014. Twelve from thirteen = the ones.
Today’s one to watch is the mysterious Mononoke who appeared just last month on Breaking More Waves and a whole host of ‘tastemaker’ blogs such as Neon Gold, Disco Naïveté and Listen Before You Buy shortly afterwards.
So who is Mononoke and what else do we know about her? The answer is very little, although of you're really clever with your Google searches you can find out her real name. We're naming her as one to watch for 2014 on the basis of just the one song we've heard - always a dangerous strategy - but when that one song (Alice) is so good, she becomes one to watch even if only to see if she can keep the standard up with her next release. It seems that Alice is a taster for a debut EP due early next year and that an album, recorded in a church, is or is nearly complete. For now just wallow in this beautiful and sensitive modern ballad and look forward to more from Mononoke in 2014.
What do we know about Liverpool based singer / songwriter Mononoke? For now, absolutely nothing; there’s just the music, just one song, but it’s a beautiful debut. Taking Alice in Wonderland as a metaphor for a relationship that’s gone wrong, Alice is a gorgeously faded blue ballad; probably not best listened to if you’re feeling a little bit alone, fragile and tender right now. There’s something about the lyric “you wear your party dress but there’s no party to attend,” that gets us every time we listen.
So let’s go underground with Mononoke. “Down the rabbit hole he left you alone, you call that love?” Oh. So sad. So lovely.
