Neu This Week In New Music (10th August 2013)

Three artists coming from opposite sides of the planet, disparate corners combining in a heady 7 days of new music. That’s how it went down this week, with bands from Copenhagen, Chicago and Glasgow respectively lodging themselves into the DIY stereo and refusing to budge.

Location doesn’t necessarily have a direct effect in Neu’s highlights this week but you can see fragments of it seeping into the foreground: The Orwells rebel against their surroundings, making the messiest, most frightful but ultimately American form of rock ‘n roll. Sothko - a new artist from Glasgow - takes every grey, miserable day that looms over his city and places it indirectly within his music, to devastating effect. It’s hard to say what Blaue Blume attach themselves to exactly, other than a theatrically performed, divine calling, but if they’d came out of Wild Beasts’ studio bunker you wouldn’t be at all surprised.

Here’s the best of what happened this week in new music.

TRACK OF THE WEEK
Blaue Blume - Helen


‘Helen’, the second track from Blaue Blume, already hints at the Danish band hitting some kind of eureka moment in maturity. Steady on, boys.

‘We’re so much older’ goes the opening verse, before all notions of conventional falsetto come pouring down. Dark to the bone, ‘Helen’ reaches for these depths in a theatrical sense. Jonas Smith continues to sounds like no other existing frontman, as glass-like guitars circuit the scene like a stage curtain being pulled to unveil its full cast. Rapturous applause is the only rational response to a song of such brilliant ambition.

VIDEO OF THE WEEK
The Orwells - Who Needs You


Leaders. The bomb. The American flag. Elvis. The Orwells hadn’t before been pegged in with super-paranoid 60s-era Stateside but they sure as hell are now. Golden-locked frontman Mario Cuomo prances on a stars-and-stripes-fledged stage. The rest of the band keep their heads down, thriving around while backed by projected shots of all things USA. Superman even makes an appearance, which is funny: If someone dead seriously claimed The Orwells had superpowers, you wouldn’t act surprised.

DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK
Sothko


Oh, misery. It creeps up like a numbing headache. It scrunches up all plans and chucks them to one sorry side. Still, nobody wants to know that. Misery ridden fools don’t always have the best means of conveying their gagging sadness. Sothko, though. He’s got it made. Debut song ‘Everything is fine’ uses words like ‘therapist’ ‘not at all’ ‘suffer’ ‘withdrawal’. Somehow, it’s never overbearing. That might be attributed to the clever clog’s accompanying art up above, portraying damning, crippling sadness on colour-strewn paper. It takes serious talent not to alienate with this sort of stuff.