New music guide The Neu Bulletin (Dope Lemon, Weird Milk, Polo & more)

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

Words: Lisa Wright
22nd February 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.

Dope Lemon - ‘Home Soon’

Dope Lemon is the solo moniker of Angus Stone (he of ‘& Julia Stone’ fame) and, if new track ‘Home Soon’ is anything to go by, it’s a magical thing. Taking the easy, breezy slacker charm of Mac DeMarco at his most horizontal and pitting it against the kind of sun-drenched funk that shows he’s been raised listening to the masters (James Brown, Sly & the Family Stone et al), it’s a track that demands to be played with beers, pals and the kind of day where the only plans are that there are no plans. (Lisa Wright)

Weird Milk - ‘This Close’

London quartet Weird Milk have been pricking up ears on the live circuit in recent months, but they’ve been holding out on delivering anything in recorded form until now. ‘This Close’, however, proves it was worth the wait. Full of swooning 50s lilts and goosebumps-inducing harmonies courtesy of co-vocalists Josh King and Charlie Vaughan, it’s like a lost Last Shadow Puppets relic - if both of them were Alex Turner.

Polo - ‘Soak’

Taken from recent debut EP ‘Alice’, ‘Soak’ finds Newcastle trio Polo dealing in pure soulful pop. Like AlunaGeorge on a bunch of downers or All We Are if they’d been raised on Erykah Badu instead of ABBA, it takes undulating beats and crystalline vocals (courtesy of singer Kat McHugh) and melds them into a heartbreak banger that’ll still allow for a little shoulder shimmy.

Hunck - ‘Little Woman’

There’s a particular strain of psych pop - from Conan Mockasin in bed surrounded by Japanese babes on last album ‘Caramel’ to LA Priest’s unbuttoned silk PJs - that lends itself to an aesthetic last seen in a moustachioed 70s porno. This is no bad thing, however, as Londoners Hunck understand. With the louchest of basslines and a video doused in just the right touch of sleaze, ‘Little Woman’ shows Hunck as a band wonderfully out of step with the modern world.

Soy Christmas - ‘Get Upset’

Named after vegan festivities and possessing the kind of lo-fi charm that would make Daniel Johnston look like Matt Bellamy, you’d be forgiven for pigeonholing New York’s Soy Christmas before you’d begun. But get past the name and there’s joy to be found. Channelling the wonky, twinkling electronics of The Postal Service, ‘Get Upset’ errs just on the right side of twee to be a bona fide gem.

Tags: Dope Lemon, Listen, Features, Neu, Neu Bulletin