New music guide The Neu Bulletin (Bonzai, Pet Grotesque, DESSERT & more)

Bonzai’s already a familiar face, having toured with Guernsey producer Mura Masa this past summer. She’s been a magnet to sweaty, full-to-the-brim festival tents. But on her third EP, ‘Lunacy’, she trades instant fix pop for something more self-facing and inventive. ‘I Did’ is a wonky taster, all clattering industrial percussion and stop-start vocal parts. This is bright, berserk and brilliantly weird.

A song just asking to be sued. Guinness take on multiple drinks brands on the ghoulish ‘Schweppes Bitter Lemon’, a disjointed and nightmarish introduction to the Scottish group’s weird inverted world. We caught them live at a recent Brixton night with Fish and Goat Girl - it was bizarre, to say the least.

Mysterious bunch DESSERT have delivered one of the year’s most dazzling videos. As strikingly beautiful as the track it accompanies, there’s not a whole lot to go on beyond a clear head for what they’re looking to achieve - the kind of fully formed statement that’s a sure-fire launchpad for greatness.

Going by the name Happy Meal Ltd., this London group have built a fast-growing rep for nudity-filled shows and no-limits stage antics. Given the rep for mayhem, their debut track ‘Is This What You Wanted?’ exerts surprising control. Built from tiny, fragmented parts, this has more in common with Liars than Fat White Family. Saw-toothed, built to provoke, it’s an impressive introduction beyond the stage.

A twisted ode to antidepressants, Pet Grotesque’s new track is a suitably disorienting head-rush. Sweet, sweeping guitar links with a Connan Mockasin-like falsetto, with the intention of distorting reality at every turn. It’s an impressive next step from the South London musician.

Where last single ‘Donuts’ took a chainsaw-like approach to unbridled noise, on ‘Ono Noh’ Dublin group Beach go down a different route. Melodic, meandering and dripping in sadness, it’s a broken-brained lament; one that proves they’ve got multiple tricks up their various sleeves.

Harnessing the same dark and stormy pop palette as early Weeknd, Boy Epic manages to craft bangers out of bleakness. Stomping, post-EDM production marries a vocal that sits somewhere near to the charts, but keeps over-polished slickness at arms’ length.

True to its title, there’s no escape from ‘Houdini’. Ultra-sweet pop schooled in the same don’t-give-a-fuck tropes as SOPHIE and GIRLI, it’s an in-your-face, bonkers call to arms referencing paedos and Satan. As you do. Like dropping a berocca in a can of coke, Cherryade’s next step is a pop explosion impossible to contain.

Tags: Dessert, Pet Grotesque, Listen, Features, Neu, Neu Bulletin