I discovered Gizmo Varillas a couple of years back as he shares the same management as Jack Savoretti and has played various support slots alongside him. Though now based in London, Gizmo is a Spanish singer-songwriter who released his debut record El Dorado last year. Not one to shy away from the musical spotlight, however, he's back with second record Dreaming Of Better Days due for release on 6th July (pre-order the record here.)
Check out the latest single from the album, One People, below - I'm hoping to catch Gizmo this evening as he's playing at The Great Escape! He's got some more UK shows coming up, including a London headline show this Monday - find all the dates and ticket info here.
Exploring the boundary between percussive and electronic, Undone is Greta Isaac's first single of the year, a strong return following recent tunes Tied and Comfortable. Though I recognise her name from years back when Greta performed with fellow Welsh musicians The People The Poet, this new single is my first introduction to Greta's solo music and I'm really enjoying it. Writing of the track in a premiere for Earmilk, Greta writes that "'Undone' is a character who adores to be adored and sees people as fun challenges to be pursued, where the goal is to make them fall in love with you where the feelings will never be reciprocated."
Nick Mulvey returning to the live stage as a headliner at Bushstock Festival last year, premiering some beautiful new tunes and just being his generally wonderful self was a highlight of the year for me. It was a total joy to be part of the crowd, and the atmosphere was incredible. He released his second record Wake Up Now back in September, somehow matching the beauty of first record First Mind. A highlight of the record is In Your Hands and the track has recently been given a beautifully simple music video - writing of it, Nick explains that "I wanted something raw and playful and intimate. Loosey goosey, lo-fi mixed media and fun to make." Check it out!
If you like what you're hearing, Nick Mulvey heads out on tour in the UK this month. All dates except the Royal Albert Hall are sold out - grab tickets for that show (which I predict to be pretty magnificent) here.
I was a little late to the Jungle party, discovering them a few months back when I heard the single Busy Earnin' on an advert. I raced to Shazam to find out what I was listening to and checked out their self-titled record which was released back in 2014, and really enjoyed it. They've just completed a UK tour with my favourite Rae Morris (all kinds of gutted that I didn't manage to get along to a show) and recently shared two brand new tunes. Both tracks are incredibly strong, a really positive sign of what's to come from the duo's upcoming second album - my personal preference is the upbeat Happy Man (likely as it's the closest of the two to Busy Earnin') which you can listen to below, while House In LAis the slower of the two, almost cinematic, a showcase of their falsetto vocals.
You can also check out Happy Man on the blog's 2018 Spotify playlist here - get following for my favourite tunes through the year!
I've been a big fan of Dawes since I caught them supporting Mumford & Sons back in 2012 in Nottingham - their first two records had me hooked instantly with tunes like When My Times Comes, A Little Bit Of Everything and Fire Away and I adored their set at the show. Since then, they've released three more incredible records and I've been lucky to see them play live four more times in London, three of which were across one slightly whirlwind weekend in 2016 (which I wrote about here at the time) where I made a friend in the audience of a show at Islington Assembly Hall, and attended two acoustic shows with her the following day. I met the band that weekend and my love for them was well and truly cemented if it hadn't been already, and so the wait for the next UK shows started...
It seems that the wait may soon be over (once the band get through a US tour supporting the mighty Electric Light Orchestra, no less...) as they've recently announced the follow up to 2016 record We're All Gonna Die. Their sixth studio album Passwords is due for release on June 22nd (my birthday week - what a treat!) and it's lead single is the punchy Living In The Future, which you can check out below... the music video features a dog at the end, which is always a good thing!
It's a cracking music video and I'm enjoying the track - one of the best things about the band is that they're continually evolving, bringing changes to their sound between records, keeping it fresh, exciting and usually completely brilliant. If Crack The Case, the track shared alongside the single is anything to go by, the record is going to be just as great as everything that has come before. While less of a song and dance has been made about second trackit is in my opinion the better of the two, a laid back ballad showcasing the sublime songwriting skills of Taylor Goldsmith, that I believe make him one of the best lyricists of our generation.
While the sunny weather returns for a couple of days, I'm hoping that if I wish hard enough, it'll stick around for The Great Escape - I'll be down in Brighton volunteering at the festival in a week's time, and I'm really excited for it! What better to do in the Sun than to watch Summery videos and listen to Summery tunes - and this new track from Berlin/Byron Bay based indie chaps Parcels certainly fits the bill. I adore this, and the accompanying 80s style video. Check out their latest tour announcement here!
Almost a year since leaving Oxford, I'm still keeping an eye (and an ear or two) on the local music scene, and long to get back to the beautiful community of artists. It is an incredibly supportive and collaborative environment for musicians, artists and fans alike, and a key member of the local scene is Aiden Canaday, who I met while volunteering at Oxjam a couple of years ago - he's an artist, promoter with Divine Schism and is a member of local band The Cooling Pearls.
Take yourself to the band's Facebook page and you'll note their fairly self-explanatory biography... "Aiden Canaday, Alex Pratchett & Sian Lloyd Williams wrote and recorded the album 'The Honoured Meal of the Stranger' in 2010 with no intention of playing live as a band. They have just started recording the follow up."
8 years since their debut record, which they describe as "quite folky, lo-fi and weird", the band, who have had an evolving line-up with fifteen different members over the years (including members of Maiians, BE GOOD, Flights of Helios and Cat Matador)are back with a cracking new single, and I'm delighted to be premiering its video! For context, I hadn't even been to my first proper gig when these guys were last releasing music, so this is a pretty exciting return - watch the video below...
The song, entitled Black Elizabeth, was written on Aiden's Mum's old piano in Wales "after a dream involving floating food delivering the mantra "you are the Black Elizabeth" over and over to me as I lay on my kitchen floor". It's pretty abstract and presents a musical montage of various instruments and sounds. The video was filmed by Maiians member Sam King in Tokyo last year, while Aiden was visiting - it serves as a 'day in the life' style clip, offering an insight into the local area and culture, beautifully soundtracked by the soothing tune. It even comes complete with Japanese subtitles!
If you're in Oxford (lucky you!) and like what you're hearing, The Cooling Pearls play a Divine Schism show at Oxford's The Wheatsheaf tomorrow evening (11th May) supporting Radiator Hospital - find more info and grab advance tickets here!
Alongside the likes of Catgod who I interviewed recently (read that one here) Little Brother Eli are one of my favourite local musical discoveries to emerge from my time in Oxford over the past few years. They've got a new song coming out on the 18th May as well as a bunch of festivals this Summer so I interviewed them to catch up with everything LBE, check it out below and keep an ear out for the single!
First things first, introductions! Who are Little Brother Eli and how long has the band been going?
We are a 4 piece disco rock outfit originating from Oxford. We started the band wayyy back in 2013 (back when we all still had hair…)
You’ve got a brand new tune called Our Kind Of Love coming out on the 18th May. Tell us a little about the story behind the tune… was the writing and recording process any different to your previous releases?
We really just wanted to try something totally new this year. We’d done the blues rock thing to death and it was time for us to be more of ourselves in a recording. The song was originally a piano ballard, but Josh funked it up on the bass, Adam added the chorus harmonies and all of a sudden it turned into a real dance track. We went into the studio and recorded it just as we played it at rehearsal - we’re really excited about showing the world this one.
This is the second new single of 2018, following up Tooth which seemed to be received really well with a sold out hometown launch gig and lots of positive reviews from blogs and fans alike. Do you have an EP or album in the pipeline? I certainly hope so!
We don’t have any album plans yet, but we have recorded a heap of singles and deciding which ones to put out is hard. The reasoning behind why we don’t want to put out an album quite yet is purely creative - there is often a long gap between recording and releasing an album because it’s such a large body of work. We wanted to keep things fresh by recording the music we’re into right now and releasing it quickly (not what we were into 8 months ago).
I’m really enjoying the video of you performing the track live at a Sofar Sounds show in Bath earlier this year. (For those who don’t know, Sofar Sounds is a series of gigs in spaces you wouldn’t usually expect to hear live music, where the audience signs up without knowing which artists they’re going to see.) You guys seem to get around to lots of Sofar shows - what do you enjoy about playing them? Personally, I think that in comparison with a traditional gig the more relaxed environment really helps to highlight Alex’s incredible vocal range and the beautiful harmonies you guys have!
Why thank you! You’re not fighting the sound in the venue at a Sofar Sounds show and you get a intimate atmosphere with the audience - so yeah we love them! However, there’s nothing like having Benji on the drums at an electric gig driving us forward.
Talking of gigs - what festivals plans do you have for the next few months?
A fair few: Truck Festival. The Great Escape. Lechlade. WoodstockLive. SmithdownFestival. GreenbeltFestival. There are a few still in the pipeline as well.
I know just as well as you guys that Oxford is a wonderful place to be, for many reasons and perhaps especially for its fantastically rich music and art scene. Which are your favourite local artists at the moment?
We’re super lucky to be where we are. Check out Chris Barker & The Premium Leisure! They played one of our monthly Eli Nights at The Monarch in Camden and were fantastic. Willie J Healey was on bass too (another Oxford monster musician).
Finally - what’s in your headphones at the minute? If I could recommend you one record at the moment it would probably be Empty Handed from Christof van der Ven - it’s beautiful!
Last rehearsal we were digging Superorganism’s self titled album. There are some pretty huge songs on there.
It's been almost a couple of months since Gengahr released their second record Where Wildness Grows into the world - it's a beautiful collection of tunes and one of my favourite records of the year so far alongside the likes of Rae Morris, The Vaccines, Cosmo Sheldrake and lots more - it's been a really great year for music so far! The Gengahr chaps recently shared the song I'll Be Waiting on an EP alongside acoustic versions of the track and three others from the record. The stripped back instrumentals help to create even more of a focus on Felix's trademark falsetto, and the release is 18 minutes of pure beauty. Get listening and check out the record Where Wildness Grows here.
Catch Gengahr on the final shows of their current UK tour at KOKO in London this evening and Cardiff's Globe tomorrow night!
With their third studio album Kindness Is The New Rock and Roll due for release in a couple of days, Peace have shared the video for their recent single You Don't Walk Away From Love - shot in a single take, it's a bit of a film nerd's dream, and it helps that the song is pretty great too!
Premiering the video on the NMEwebsite, frontman Harrison Koisser describes it as a "classy and expensive video for a deep and meaningful song [...] it reminds me that outside of the grit, spit & uglier bits, there is still some good left in this world" with the video's director Jonnie Craigadding that "we wanted to work with the effects of colour on people and their emotions, to kind of visualise what it feels like to be in love. Shooting on film is the only way. We grew up with imagery shot on film, so all of our photographic based memories live in that rich grain colour spectrum. I think it strikes a chord with people that digital never could."
