News The Month That Was: February 2014

Dusting off the cobwebs from January, February always marks a point where album releases come by the bucketload. On the 24th of this month, two five star-rated records came out on the same day (we’ll get to that later). On top of that, awards season got into gear, festivals urged punters to empty their pockets every single day and major labels started hedging their bets on brand new acts (previously unheard before the beginning of 2014) to take the year by storm.

Some controversies cropped up. We heard one of the most divisive speeches in years from one of the world’s biggest bands. X Factor winner Sam Bailey emerged with quite possibly the most haphazard, horrifying album artwork of recent times. And in slightly less controversial but nonetheless surreal events, Kylie Minogue hitched up to a pub DIY hosts plenty of its shows in and turned the place into a neon-pop haven.

Stealing the show from all the above however was an endless supply of new music from veterans acts to fresh-faced chancers. Groups wedged in with ‘Sound Of…’ chatter finally made their claims heard loud and clear, and potential shoe-ins for the Mercury Prize practically laid one hand on the trophy without giving anyone else a say.

Best BRITs In Years

On the day of the 2014 Brit Awards, we published a round-up of the best things to ever happen at the glitzorama celeb-bash. In the case of most, if not all, these celebrated moments and controversies, it was difficult to imagine anything remotely similar happening in 2014. Granted the best part of this year’s event was spent marvelling at the size of Pharrell’s hat, but a good chunk of attention was also devoted to brilliant performances. Word’s since focused on Alex Turner’s closing speech, but it’s easy to forget just how colossal and health-and-safety shunning their show opening set was, flamethrowers galore. Lorde and Disclosure’s collaboration started off a little nervy but it eventually got into gear and them bam, out came an Aluna. The only true tragedy of the BRITs was the lack of George, who must’ve been tapping along somewhere to ‘White Noise’ on a can of Tetleys. Given the nature and the audacity of the Arctic Monkeys’ show-stealing speech, it’s amazing how even that’s been outweighed by the subsequent chatter. Love it or hate it - and people fall pretty firmly to one side - it made for a talked-about moment, more opinion-splashed than anytime in recent memory. And if the BRITs is to serve any important purpose apart from making Bastille Dan smile, it’s to get people talking.

High Five

2014 set itself an unbeatable standard this past Monday, 24th February. St. Vincent and Wild Beasts both released albums that picked up five-star ratings on DIY. Both are career highlights. Annie Clark - current DIY cover star - mixed daunting intellectualism with instantly gratifying pop and Wild Beasts pretty much did the same, only in their own falsetto-led way. Both remark on the sheer weirdness of living in 2014, right now, with one eye on a gadget at all times and a few pennies short of change. Wild Beasts’ ‘Present Tense’ is being labelled in most parts as political, but when speaking to DIY frontman Hayden Thorpe said “can’t marry the ugliness of politics with the escapism of music. To me they come from a different realm.” On top of those two gigantic releases, Arthur Beatrice brought out their gorgeous, perfected debut and Neneh Cherry returned with the stunning, Four Tet produced ‘Blank Project’. Beat that, 2014 (seriously, if you manage it you’ll be our favourite).

Sound The Klaxons

Despite its inevitably, a Klaxons return seemed like the most unlikely prospect going before February. Last year they played The Great Escape in Brighton and yes, new material was incoming, apparently, but given the calamity of their second record nothing was 100% set in stone. ‘There Is No Other Time’ put (almost) all the snarky remarks to bed. Gorgon City produced, anyone dissing its chart intentions wasn’t quite getting the point. Klaxons aren’t the same pill-popping fashion-dodging loons from back in 2007. In fact nothing in the present day really resembles that year, come to think of it. ‘Golden Skans’ remains timeless - and unparalleled by Klaxons’ standards - but it’s great to see the guys returning with some genuine intent. Plus, James Murphy’s contributed at least something to their third album so bloody hell, we could have a triumphant regaining of form on our hands.

The Horrors Return

It’s been promised for the past year and a bit, but ‘I See You’ struck even the most prepared like a ton of bricks. A returning track - and not even the single - from their new record ‘Luminous’, the song pays its dues to previous Horrors material while still aiming lightyears ahead. DIY’s Kyle MacNeill called it a song that “thunders through the speed of light barrier like a hot knife through butter.” That same day, ahead of the single’s unveiling Kyle summed up the band’s ability to seamlessly blend art and rock. “It’s never pretentious or contrived; you’re not going to suddenly get twenty-three minutes of pure white noise or chopped and screwed moos of Tanzanian grass-fed cows.” That’s ‘I See You’ in a nutshell, and that’s exactly what makes ‘Luminous’ the most anticipated new album of the coming months.

Enter The Jungle

Give it a couple of months and Jungle will be anything but the faceless collective they arrived claiming to be. That is unless they somehow manage to spend an entire week at SXSW, Texas avoiding sunlight and remaining unseen. Shadowy figures (although brains behind the project T and J’s faces have been marked out in a recent press shot), relative enigma really doesn’t matter at this point. It pales in comparison to the funk-trotting singles themselves, all of which have gradually gotten better by the second. First ‘Platoon’, then the ultra-assured ‘The Heat’, both of which amounted to a signing on XL Recordings. Then came ‘Busy Earnin’’ this month. Sounding the sirens, anticipating the applause, it’s the sound of a Grand Theft Auto session being compressed into a four-minute pop song. Jungle are untouchable right now. Claims they’re the most exciting new band in the country aren’t even close to being hyperbolic.