As the Grammy’s took place a few days ago (and are probably STILL taking place megalolllllzzzzzz), I’m going all-out contrarian and making sure to only include artists who are flying under the radar this week.
So this week’s best new music round-up includes a few bands who I’ve only recently discovered. Lunch Ladies, San Fermin, Honeyblood, New Portals and Bing & Ruth – all excellent, all deserving of your attention. Especially San Fermin, they’re currently making me feel all sorts of nice.
Lunch Ladies – Love is Overrated
Lunch Ladies are a New Jersey based dream-pop band and the gorgeous ‘Love Is Overrated’ is the second single taken from their debut LP, Down on Sunset Strip out March 10th. And unlike the actual lunch ladies who worked in my school, I didn’t accidentally call this band ‘mum’.
San Fermin – No Promises
San Fermin are an eight member collective led by Brooklyn composer and songwriter Ellis Ludwig-Leone. ‘No Promises’ is taken from their forthcoming third album Belong, due in April. It’s a magnificent, multi-layered thriller of a track and it may also be my favourite thing I’ve heard this year so far.
Honeyblood – Babes Never Die
The Glasgow two-piece are back with ‘Babes Never Die’ the title track from their second album, released last year.
The following video contains footage of the duo on tour performing and generally having lots of fun. Their fans look nice and well behaved too. It’s basically the polar opposite of Justice taking delivery of handguns and bottling fans in their concert film ‘A Cross The Universe’. But hey, maybe Justice started off merely sticking their tongues out and jumping out of boxes to scare each other too. Let this be a lesson for us all.
New Portals – Stereo
‘Stereo’ is the new single from Belfast duo New Portals, and acts as the title track of their debut EP due out March 10th. Liam Neeson was previously down to act as the title track, but due to scheduling conflicts the band had to go with an actual song rather than the tenuous basis for my shit joke.
Bing & Ruth – The How of it Sped
Another Brooklyn-based collective steered by a genre-straddling contemporary composer, only this one is described as ‘ever evolving’. Which sounds terrifying – especially if you saw Shin Godzilla. But never fear, it just means that pianist David Moore gets through quite a few band members, rather than suddenly developing the ability to exhale a focused blast of nuclear radiation across Tokyo.
‘The How Of It Sped’ is taken from Bing & Ruth’s new album, No Home Of The Mind, which is out this Friday. And in all serious, it’s astonishingly beautiful.
And if you’d like to hear more new music from January and February 2017, check out our ever-evolving* Spotify playlist below.
*This time I do mean the nuclear breath thing.
