News This Week In New Music (14th December 2013)

This is probably the final 2013 instalment of This Week In New Music, unless something miraculous happens and Bondax suddenly release a new album or Thumpers decide to collaborate with MØ. New music miracles of this kind aren’t that uncommon, as it turns out. This week witnessed a seriously unexpected return, from a band with just one sold out single to their name, released two bloody years back. It goes to show that if you’re good enough, you can return from complete nothingness and still be just as exciting. There’s also been a last-ditch contender for most stylish-but-awkwardly-filmed-video of the year, plus another band fledging a revivalist sound while still sounding positively brilliant and refreshing like a cup of frozen eggnog.

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

TRACK OF THE WEEK
FAMY - a Ho a Hand


Screw the tradition that ‘Christmas is a time for family’. Christmas is now officially a time for FAMY. Fair enough, ‘a Ho a Hand’ is starved of jingles and sleigh bells and Justin Hawkins guitar solos, but it goes contain some cheery chanting and its title could be mistaken for something out of a ‘Now That’s What I Call Christmas’ compilation. Also, this marks the return of a group who could have disappeared off the face of the planet, and actually probably did for a while. Now signed to Transgressive for a 2014 debut album, the Londoners have returned - if we ignore the fact that half of them have been busy with Los Porcos - and they’re just as exciting as when they first arrived with the insanely good ‘Dogg Dogg’. Happy Christmas.

VIDEO OF THE WEEK
Say Lou Lou - Better In The Dark


One aspect of the Nigella fiasco that hasn’t been considered is the role of the cameraman on the TV chef’s cooking shows. Looking back at various clips, the camera doesn’t tend to stay in focus. It swerves, distancing itself from both the chef and the food. Something’s wrong. There hasn’t been enough scrutiny of this situation. The mysterious swerving-camera technique returns here, mysteriously cropping up in the ‘Better In The Dark’ video from Say Lou Lou. The two Sweden-via-Australia sisters echo their sharp, angled artwork by channelling some kind of dinner party gone tragic.

DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK
Swim Team
Swim Team EP by swim_team

On their debut EP, Austin Texas’ Swim Team bring every single tune from their school disco playlist and compress it into three songs. Think Rick Astley deciding to party with Talking Heads, or The Drums returning with a super sheened synth-pop song. It’s simple, it’s loved-up and it’s unashamedly bombastically pop. There’s not much topping this in the nostalgia stakes, and at the same time it represents one of the most refined referential sounds to emerge from a new band in yonks.