WITH festival season fast approaching and line-ups coming in thick and fast, there’s no better time to acquaint yourself with some new music from artists who may be taking to the stage at your nearby event. This week’s New Music Radar features a mixture of local acts and some of the UK’s most sought-after emerging acts. Check it out below.
SHREDD ‘ROT’
After the colossal sonic assault that was last year’s Eat Your Enemy EP, Glasgow garage-rock trio Shredd are back with a brand new track called ‘ROT’. Known for their manic and formidably noisy live shows, the band’s latest offering captures all of this relentless feral energy in an explosive four and a half minutes. And while they maintain their lo-fi allegiance aswell as the bearings of their established sound, it’s clear that the trio have continued to refocus and refine as this is perhaps one of their most muscular and potent singles to date. Built on a thunderous rhythm section that leaves you hooked from start to finish, Chris Harvie’s voice melts into the distortion and we are left with a rip-roaring instrumentation that bites, soars and crashes. Shredd know their strengths and they play to them wonderfully on this brain-melting number.
Pip Blom ‘Ruby’
After years of demos and single releases that date back to 2013, Dutch indie rocker Pip Blom and her band are preparing to release their debut album Boat at the end of May. Having already unveiled its scuzzy lead single ‘Daddy Issues’, we have now been gifted another preview by way of a brand new gem called ‘Ruby’. A clamour of guitars and vocals that effortlessly switch between coolly disaffected and euphoric, the track erupts into a rapturous chorus that sweeps you away in a rush of joy. It’s another earworm of a track to add to her impressive repertoire.
FONTAINES DC ‘Boys In the Better Land’
After months of anticipation, today marks the arrival of the explosive debut album by Fontaines DC. Every bit as thrilling as we hoped it would be, ‘Dogrel’ is biting, visceral and poetic in equal measure and is all set to be included in a stream of ‘end of year’ album lists come the end of 2019. Ahead of its release, the band gave us one final preview earlier this week by way of ‘Boys In the Better Land’. A track that will be familiar to those who have bore witness to their incendiary live shows, this reimagined version captures the band at their fiery best. Quicker and more biting than its original, it barrels with excitement from start to finish.
Beabadoobee ‘If You Want To’
The new Dirty Hit signing (home to The 1975, Wolf Alice, The Japanese House and more) unveiled brand new visuals for ‘If You Want To’ this week. Lifted from her 2018 EP ‘Patched Up’, the video has brought the nineties-indebted track to our attention with its confessional lyrics and earworm of a chorus. Laying bare her mental health struggles, the track gives her bedroom pop approach a fuller sound and is undoubtedly the standout of an EP which stands her in good stead for the future.
Courtney Barnett ‘Everybody Here Hates You’
Fast gaining a reputation as one of the world’s most prolific songwriters, Courtney Barnett returned this week with a brand new single called ‘Everybody Here Hates You’. It follows the release of last year’s album ‘Tell Me How You Really Feel’ and is said to have been produced during a period when she was listening to a lot of Jeff Buckley. Exploring feelings of alienation and inadequacy, the track is inimitably Barnett in its direct, self-deprecating lyricism while her voice alternates between deadpan speak-singing and swooping choruses. There’s some nice bluesy flourishes in there too over the signature crunching, grungy guitars.
Paris Street Rebels ‘Kings of Balado’
Paris Street Rebels deliver an ode to T in the Park on their newly released single ‘Kings of Balado’. A starry-eyed follow-up to previous offerings ‘Freakshow’ and ‘I Don’t Wanna Die Young’, the Fife quartet are set to strengthen their burgeoning reputation with this nostalgic trip back to Balado which explores the fleeting connections that are made at festivals in one all-important weekend of mind-boggling revelry and hedonism. Delivering the narrative in vivid, captivating fashion, frontman Grant Malcolm switches between almost spoken word and a gritty rock vocal as the slow-burning track builds to a climactic, calls-to-arms finale that will have music fans yearning for festival season.
Amyl & the Sniffers ‘Got You’
Following the sonic assault that was ‘Monsoon Rock’, Amyl & the Sniffers are back with a new offering called ‘Got You’. Said to be one of the ‘sweetest’ songs included on their debut album, the track still packs an incendiary punch. Capturing the excitement and starry-eyed feelings that come with a burgeoning relationship before things take a dark turn, ‘Got You’ roars with scuzzy guitars and a formidable vocal performance from Amy Taylor.
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard ‘Planet B’
Taken from their forthcoming LP ‘Fishing for Fishies’, Aussie surrealists King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard have unveiled a thrashing new single called ‘Planet B’. Roaring straight into full-on thrash metal territory, the band channel some major Metallica and Megadeath in this track which rampages through some massive riffs and thunderous rhythms to create one of their most potent offerings in recent memory. Whether this is a sonic curveball or a sign of things to come from the new album, it’s a menacing and hugely compelling return.
