New music guide The Neu Bulletin (ShitKid, itoldyouiwouldeatyou, Microwave & more)

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

Words: Tom Connick
28th September 2016

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.

itoldyouiwouldeatyou - Letters

What itoldyouiwouldeatyou lack in punctuation, they make up in passion. The massive bunch of emos (not being rude, there’s about seventy of them) weave complex yet relatable everyday narratives across their debut ‘I Am Not Your Fault’ EP. ‘Letters’, from which that record takes its name, is a heart-wrenching highlight. It’s out now via Failure By Design Records.

ShitKid - Oh Please Be A Cocky Cool Kid

ShitKid’s debut EP has cropped up in a Neu Bulletin before, but this new video for undoubted highlight ‘Oh Please Be A Cocky Cool Kid’ gives it a jolt of fresh energy. The band’s bleached-out, nails-down-a-chalkboard sonics match up perfectly to the spaced-out, drugged up haze of the clip. With a second EP on the way, and a debut UK show this Friday, this Scandi sensation’s brattitude is well deserved.

Jack River - Palo Alto

“I wrote and recorded ‘Palo Alto’ through so many moments in my life that the song became a kind of folder for memories and sentiments over a long stretch of time,” explains Jack River (Holly Rankin to her mother). That storyteller’s position is evident throughout - harnessing the same cinematic scale as Black Honey, it’s a dazzling, run-for-the-hills breakout moment. Her first EP, ‘Highway Songs No. 2’, is out next Friday 7th October via I Oh You.

Microwave - Dull

Atlanta indie-rock troupe Microwave don’t always offer the quick-fix solution of their namesake, but given time they’ll stamp out any hunger for melancholy storytelling. ‘Dull’ is a huge, heartbroken highlight from their incoming new album ‘Much Love’, out this Friday on SideOneDummy.

Stevie Parker - Better Off

Linking up with ‘The Cure’, Stevie Parker’s new’un pushes her further into the upper realms of dove-voiced, huge singer-songwriters. Straddling a tightrope between slinky R’n’B and more classic, considered balladry, it’s a haunting next step.

Arbes - Sun On My Back

With ‘Sun On My Back’, Melbourne’s Arbes take psych-rock down the beach. A skipping, playful take on Australia’s prominent spacey export, it’s as if Alvvays overdid it on the wacky baccy and went for a midnight dip. New EP ‘Psalms’ is out October 7th on Sports Day.

World Radio - New Romance

Imagine The 1975 dove back into their black wardrobes, and you’re halfway to World Radio. It’s the middle ground between Healy and co.’s sugar-rush antics and the gloomier underbelly of such 80s excess - undoubtedly stuck in a past decade, but harnessing the same attention to detail that Dev Hynes eventually dragged a star turn out of. Ones to keep an eyeliner-clad eye on.

Tags: itoldyouiwouldeatyou, Listen, Features, Neu, Neu Bulletin