Weekly Column - The Hot Five

Track of the week: Yeah Yeah Yeah’s – ‘Sacrilege’

I can’t believe it’s come around to this time of the week already! To be honest I haven’t been as impressed with the material I’ve been searching through this week, but it makes me appreciate the five tracks that have made it to this list even more because they tracks that have some kind of identity. This first track, my track of the week, could have gone in last week but I decided against it in the end. Clearly, however, it is a grower, and Karen O’s vocals are as majestic as ever. It’s great to see a band producing good material (2009’s It’s Blitz! is well worth a listen) whilst maintaining such a unique style, thanks to their cleverly scarce instrumentation and unique vocal. Their new album, Mosquito, is set for release this coming Monday, and I for one can’t wait.

Also, there’s a full choir in this. That is all.

Bridie Jackson & The Arbour – ‘All You Love Is All You Are’

Here’s an interesting one. This Newcastle-based four-piece have won the Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition, and will be taking to the Pyramid Stage at Worthy Farm on the last weekend of June. There are some great vocal harmonies throughout, and their sparse instrumentation creates a very intelligent and atmospheric sound, influenced by artists such as Feist and Joanna Newsom, that could certainly be soon to cause a rather large stir. If you’re interested in this, check the other side of their latest release, ‘Scarecrow’.

Celestial Shore – ‘Valerie’

This is something that little bit different. To be honest, that’s why it’s here. I appreciate the art-y element to this track, but unfortunately I can’t say that I find the triplet drum fills particularly easy on the ears. Having said that, there’s something in their indie rock sound that could be great if it’s reined in properly. This experimental track suggests the built up of such frustration in places – blurts of guitar and drums after muttered vocal lines that evoke emotions differently to the norm of a 3-minute pop song about unrequited love, despite this song being about a girl too... The vocals strongly depart with the line “Valerie gets wasted at a party let’s leave before she gets worse”. Okay, so it might be a bit Marmite, but I think Celestial Shore is a band to keep an eye on…

The Black Brew – ‘Can’t Find It Here’

A fantastic track that shows an example of slide guitar and deep-south blues in the 21^st century. It caught my eye straight away because of the likeness to the great ‘Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground’ by Blind Willie Johnson, the only song currently in two solar systems I believe. At this point I started doing some digging to say a bit more about the background of The Black Brew – and I was shocked to find out that they hail from a town called Nässjö in Sweden, and consist of Rickard Lindberg on “guitar/stompbox” (I love that he lists stompbox – so old school) and Marica Svensson’s fantastic blues vocals. This band has clearly developed through much exposure to early American blues music, and there’s a somewhat authentic feel about this track.

Hidden track of the week:

Peter Bradley Adams – ‘The Longer I Run’

A friend of mine introduced me to this track a few years ago, and since then I’ve really got into Peter Bradley Adams. This song was taken from his 2008 album Leavetaking (for those with good faith and some expendable income, or have a Spotify account, it’s well worth a listen) and features captivating vocal harmonies from the fantastic Caitlin Canty, who together with Adams formed the band Down Like Silver, see the track ‘Wolves’. ‘The Longer I Run’ has something genuine about it, be it in the melody, the vocals, or Adams’ acoustic guitar work, but it makes the song very appealing. This four-minute track, and the following eight tracks of the album too, are all well worth a listen; you won’t be disappointed.