New music guide The Neu Bulletin (Breakfast Muff, LICE, Slow Dancer & more)

DIY’s essential, weekly guide to the best new music.

Words: Will Richards
26th April 2017

Neu Bulletins are DIY’s guide to the best new music. They contain every single thing that’s been played at full volume in the office, whether that’s a small handful or a gazillion acts. Just depends how good the week’s been.

Alongside our weekly round-up of discoveries, there are also Neu Picks. These are the very best songs / bands to have caught our attention, and there’s a new one every weekday. Catch up with the most recent picks here.

Breakfast Muff - Babyboomers

Rising stars of the Glasgow DIY scene, Breakfast Muff include members of Joanna Gruesome and Spinning Coin, and new single ‘Babyboomers’ is a vicious pound to the heart, one which barely stops for breath. “Be a better you!” vocalist Eilidh McMillan yells, and it’s a refrain delivered with such force that it’s impossible not to feel energised and affected. ‘Babyboomers’ is fuelled by anxiety and anger, but the unavoidable undercurrent of defiance is the one that sticks, and that which makes Breakfast Muff quite so exciting. (Will Richards)

San Felu – At The Foot Of Cartha Martha There Is An Infinity Wall

For almost two years the mysterious San Felu (sometime collaborator with Mancunian poet Simon Armitage and self-styled moorland occultist and Neptune bather) has been quietly releasing a string of surprisingly dramatic singles that evoke the doom-laden atmospherics of The National and Fleet Foxes’ sweeping folk. On this latest single, the drama is stripped back somewhat, instead presenting what at first seems like a gentle acoustic number. Across its span though, ‘… Infinity Wall’ unravels to reveal beautiful harmonies, lilting and soaring piano melodies before descending into a climactic vortex of electric guitar licks and reverberating, glitch-ridden electronics. San Felu take their time putting a song together, but have once again proven that good things come to those who wait. (Eugenie Johnson)

LICE - The Human Parasite

LICE have been bubbling around the basements of Bristol for a while now, and debut single proper ‘The Human Parasite’ sees the four-piece emerging, on their hands and knees, with their tongues firmly in cheek. The band have supported The Fall recently, and vocalist Alastair Shuttleworth has the same barely-keeping-it-together swagger as a certain Mark E Smith, always on the brink of collapse yet thoroughly entertaining because of its lack of stability. (Will Richards)

Pom Poko - Jazz Baby

Pom Poko explode into new single ‘Jazz Baby’ with all the intensity and fizziness of a bottle of Coke and pack of Mentos. All fidgety art-rock riffs, the track has layers of guitars flying in every direction like knives. That is, until the song folds out away from the chaos into a soaring, measured chorus-of-sorts, one that shows the Norwegians as capable of writing refined pop songs as well as fiddly math-rock. (Will Richards)

Slow Dancer - It Goes On

Melbourne singer-songwriter and ATO Records signing Slow Dancer has recently been touring with Margaret Glaspy, and ‘It Goes On’, from his upcoming LP ‘In A Mood’, rolls along with the same rose-tinted nostalgia as his tourmate. ‘It Goes On’ sounds completely effortless, and it’s the ease with which Slow Dancer flits between country-influenced guitar licks to something closer to indie-rock that makes him such a fascinating prospect. (Will Richards)