Neu This Week In New Music (17th August 2013)

Credit to Kendrick Lamar, but the guy nearly stole the show altogether this week with one single verse. He almost had Neu and DIY forgetting that there were a ton of exciting new bands doing the rounds and putting out some of their best material to date. Once the ripostes were over and done with, it was business as usual.

For starters, a band with a ridiculously amount of promise heaped on their shoulders somehow managed to pull it off and release their best track to date. A so-called slacker upped his scrappy image by releasing a video more tongue-in-cheek than your average Dizzee Rascal single, and a group with huge promise just burst onto the scene, with the kind of song established bands four albums in would do anything in their power to release.

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

TRACK OF THE WEEK
Wolf Alice - She


‘Watch me’, runs the closing words of ‘She”s opening line. Jealousy spelled out in crimson colour soon follows. Ellie Rowsell brings forth every spitting form of vocal spite available. ‘She’ sinks in and out of embittered consciousness. The promised, professed ‘watch me’ statement is honoured throughout. Every trick in the book is sent cascading into the foreground. It’s Wolf Alice at their dynamic, all-thrills best. Not a second is spared in their attempts to send grunge-induced melodrama into exciting new territory. Mission accomplished.

VIDEO OF THE WEEK
Travis Bretzer - Hurts So Bad


So it might be a little bit boring for Travis Bretzer, waking up every day in a beer-soaked mess, turning on his computer and seeing his name plastered next to sentences containing the words ‘Mac DeMarco’. It probably gets pretty irritating being associated with a fellow charming guitar-wielding heartthrob who bends his notes and sends loved-up messages to the subjects of his songs. Sure. Still, in his ‘Hurts So Bad’ video, which pits every character in a milk-soaked nappy (yep), Travis doesn’t exactly shirk the comparisons. Only a select few individuals could make a video like this. Musicians who don’t really give a rat’s arse what anybody thinks of them. Running riot with tongue-in-cheek ideas, Bretzer’s doing himself justice when airing a nappy-heavy cowboy-style face-off. Nobody else would, you see.

DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK
Inner Oceans - Ready Your Ghost


However low-key its emergence might be, sometimes a song is just destined for its big day. Consider Icona Pop’s ‘I Love It’. Eventually, it got there. Ok, Inner Oceans, a group from Denver, aren’t sporting sweet Scandi-pop for the masses. But there’s something remarkable about ‘Ready Your Ghost’. Its chorus, its buzz-saw synth line by way of M83, its quiet folky lulls, all represent something that’s waiting for a higher calling. Who knows, Inner Oceans might have tons of these locked up safely, prepped for action. Several bands can’t come up with more than one of these, despite all their hurried attempts.