Law - New Waves

With some murky electronics, handclap style beats and a voice that sounds like a drugged up Nina Simone or Laura Mvula rocking your earlobes, you are entering the intriguing musical world of Edinburgh based artist Law, real name Lauren Holt.

Law blew up on a number of blogs back in April but we’ve taken a little longer by new music blogger standards to get round to posting about her. It was of course inevitable that Law would eventually make these pages though, because she’s Scottish, she’s making sounds with laptops and most importantly she has a name beginning with L. These are all things that we love and although music is never just a box ticking exercise (emotional connection doesn’t work as simply as that and music is all about connecting with people), hitting a few of the right spots straight away can certainly help. Law now joins the Breaking More Waves L-club that includes Lana Del Rey, Laura Marling, Laura Mvula, Lorde, Lucy Rose, Laurel and even one of our favourite bands of the year Chvrches (OK, not technically an L but they are the masters of bad spelling and they do have a lead singer who is also a Lauren).

Currently there’s just the one song by Law (Hustle) on line, which has hooked us in with its clattering rhythm and unique almost unintelligible vocal, accompanied by a rather odd looking, grainy VHS style video which streams below. If you want to hear more, for the moment you’ll have to catch her live. She’s just starting to play a few shows, and whilst she doesn’t appear to have a Facebook account or website with much information you can connect with her via Twitter.

Law - Hustle

Lorde - Tennis Court

Cast your mind back to the video of one of the best pop songs of 2013; Royals by New Zealand’s Lorde. It ended with a tennis court and a piece of music that seemed to signal the start of another song.

Well that song has now been released to the world and it’s called Tennis Court. See what she did there?

If, like us, you appreciated, liked, absolutely bloody loved Royals, possibly more than your own boyfriend / girlfriend / husband / wife / children, then the chances are you’ll feel the same about Tennis Court. To a certain extent Tennis Court sounds like the sister song to Royals with the same style of vocal delivery, unsmothered production and honest, wide-eyed innocent lyrics. “Pretty soon I’ll be on my first plane. I’ll see the veins of my city, like they do in space,” is the line that grabs us, just because it displays how new to the big wide world Lorde still is as she marks out her place as one of those pop stars that makes us want to be a teenager again.

On repeat. On repeat. On repeat. On repeat. On repeat. Lorde is currently making 95% of other new pop music redundant.

(Also check out her new sparse and beautiful treatment of The Replacements Swingin’ Party here)

Lorde - Tennis Court

Queen of Hearts - Wicked Game

The rules of pop chapter 4.6 state that when musicians change their hair style, sometimes things go badly wrong. The transition from the beautiful long flowing locks to the short crop, or vice versa, can often say so much about what’s going on in the space inside their head. That radical new barnet may well be the precursor to your favourite and respected indie-rock act announcing that their new album will be the progressive jazz record they’ve always really wanted to make.

So what about a change in hair colour? Do the rules apply there? We couldn't find anything in the pop rule book about that.

So, to test them out we invited Breaking More Waves blog crush electronic babe Queen of Hearts to go from dark to blonde and then make some new music.*

The results are now in.

What we get is the sound of Queen of Hearts taking the cold heartbroken stabs of Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game and giving the song an icy electronic sound that fits perfectly with the sad and cynical lyrics of not believing in love anymore. It seems that at least in Queen of Hearts case we can throw our hair theories out of the window.

On this basis, when the Queen of Hearts album arrives later this year it’s unlikely to be full of improvisations worked out with a hoary, hairy heavy rock band. It seems that the queen is staying true to the beat of her synth heart.

 *Actually,we didn’t ask her at all, because if we did she’d have probably said no and for the purposes of this experiment we needed to know what’s in her head, not ours and therefore any change in hair colour has to be her own decision.

Queen of Hearts - Wicked Game

The Night VI - Thinking Of You

We’ve been waiting a very long time for this, but trust us it’s worth it.

Since Sophie-Rose’s first appearance on Breaking More Waves way back in 2010 her musical journey now seems to be reaching some sort of important point on the map. Thinking Of You is the debut single from her band The Night VI. If that name seems vaguely familiar it’s because we featured the group when they were just known as The Night and named them as one of our ones to watch for 2013. Here’s why.

Thinking Of You is an intoxicating song that takes the dreamy  glow of new hype kids on the block London Grammar, adds some guitar work similar to The XX and presses it tenderly together with the classic sounds of Fleetwood Mac. What can we say? It’s preciously seductive.

Thinking Of You is according to Sophie-Rose ‘representing a finite moment – perhaps an hour of your life; you’re missing the person that you love and at the same time hating them for making you feel that way.’ That’s an emotionally raw concept and maybe sounds just a little bit needy and obsessive, but if it helps create songs like this then we’re happy that Sophie-Rose had to feel that way.

The Night VI - Thinking Of You