Indie track
TRACK: Neighbourhood Watch – ‘Focus Up’: Toronto quintet telling indie-rock tales of growing up
NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH are a young five-piece outta Toronto with a really simple mission: they love making music about growing up. Clear, concise and ready in your ‘hood with melody and storytelling. Singer-guitarist Tristan Surman – who’s joined in the Neigbourhood Watch, keeping an eye on your endz, by pianist Tyler Moretti, bassist Thom Elgie, lead …
SEE: The monochrome video for The Lathums’ ‘Foolish Parley’
BE SURE: if 2020 didn’t stop ’em, it’s pretty unlikely that whatever weird curveballs 2021 has to bowl at us, this year won’t trouble the rise of Wigan’s new favourite guitar pop sons, The Lathums. They’re ready and willing in the blocks, and the crack of the starting pistol for this year is the noir …
TRACK: Tindersticks cover the Television Personalities’ ‘You’ll Have To Scream Louder’ – new album next year
NOTTINGHAM’S finest, Tindersticks, are all set to release a new album in 2021 on City Slang, their home for most of the past decade; and they’ve dropped their first single, paying homage to one of the lost greats of Eighties’ British post-punk and indie – Dan Treacy, and the Television Personalities. They’ve decided to take …
TRACK: Porridge Radio feel the darker Yuletide vibe with ‘The Last Time I Saw You (O Christmas)’
PORRIDGE RADIO are drawing down the curtain on 2020 with one final, fine salutation: their own contribution to the vein of alternative Christmas songs which Low kicked off back in ’99 with that mini-album that made Yule songs cool again. It’s entitled “The Last Time I Saw You (O Christmas)”, it’s out via Secretly Canadian, and …
PREMIERE: Graywave – ‘Like Heaven’: surging, solo dreampop beauty
GRAYWAVE is the upcoming one-woman musical project of Jess Webberley who, after being a member of various other bands, decided to strike out with her own collaboratively untainted version of what a cracking dream pop aesthetic might be. She followed her instincts; and a listen to the track we’re premiering here today, “Like Heaven”, and …
TRACK: Tacsidermi – ‘Gwlr’: a glide of blurry Welsh psych
GWENLLIAN ANTHONY, bassist, keys wizard and more with Carmarthen’s award-winning indie outfit Adwaith has, on and off, over the past few years, been jamming and writing with Matthew Kilgariff, who’s been touring member of Gwenllian’s home band, a little creative side gig; but as 2020 stuck out its viral tongue and thumbed its nose at …
TRACK: Melin Melyn – ‘Rebecca’: announcing Cymru’s latest quirk-psych crackers
GORKY’S. (There’s never any escaping Gorky’s, and how great they are, let’s face it. If you were really lucky, you actually could’ve seen them at the Hacienda.) Meilyr Jones. Gulp. El Goodo. The river of brilliant and wayward Welsh quirky, psych-inflected bands floweth ever on; and rounding this bend in our canoe, we come across …
TRACK: New Bums – ‘Billy, God Damn’: a freewheelin’ acoustic slide blues
ONE – and there are many more, but for now, this – one of the many reasons we over at Backseat Mafia love the good folks at Drag City, is that they have a huge roster of brilliant artists who mix and collaborate and create anew; and that DC fosters and releases such new breeds …
TRACK: Maps – ‘Sleep Today’ (Go! Team remix): a grinsome tune to banish the winter blues
JAMES CHAPMAN, the South Midlands producer better known to lovers of a stonking good tune as Maps, has followed up his single from a month or so back, “Sleep Today”, with a Go! Team remix of that selfsame track. We adored the original when it dropped a month back, noting: “It’s a glorious pop rush, …
TRACK: Leif Vollebekk – ‘Long Blue Light’: beautiful alt.folk from Montreal
CANADA’S Leif Vollebekk is another excellent alt.folk singer-songwriter in a country that seems, these past few years, to produce them just for fun. Andy Shauf, Patrick Watson, Yves Jarvis, Sing Leaf … there’s so much delicate and necessary songsmithery being produced north of the 49th parallel. He’s just released a digital two-track EP, “Long Blue …