Neu This Week In New Music (21st September 2013)

Be it from a band or a bedroom producer, something’s given way in the past week. Eyes are beginning to cast towards 2014, and in turn the names who might in some part make a grand impact.

Barely a second after festival tents came down for the final time in 2013, the mind’s already flickering towards the future and the acts capable of soundtracking ridiculous hedonism next year. A couple of names stepped up to the chase.

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

TRACK OF THE WEEK
Honeyblood - Bud


Nip it in the bud. Quit crying out for something special when it’s right before your very eyes. If guitars are genuinely lacking characteristic players and festivals are minus an anthem, Honeyblood are here to solve every non-existing problem. ‘Bud’ wholly justifies why so many people were on about these Glaswegians being something special. Rough demos and word-of-mouth shows gave hints, but nothing like this: Nothing as big and unabashed and triumphant as ‘Bud’. A watershed moment? Quite possibly.

VIDEO OF THE WEEK
Telegram - Follow


Again: Behold a band doing things the right way. They might please critical customers with their retro-enhanced knowhow but by hell they’re also capable of winning over fans in their thousands, are Telegram. ‘Follow’ is a bolshy, all-guns-blazing rock ‘n roll giant in waiting. Tents will spill over and late-night parties will open their doors to this band if they keep going the right way about it.

‘Follow”s video casts the band in some kind of retrospective light. It wouldn’t be surprising to see it crop up on a BBC4 documentary about bands that stole the 80s, etc. But hidden behind the nostalgic visuals is a song that’s vitally now, ready for 2014 and whatever, ahem, follows.

DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK
MAS YSA


Honeyblood and Telegram might be built for stages and flailing arms, but MAS YSA? He’s a different customer. Goodness knows where he came from. An upbringing of travelling back and forth from Montreal to Brazil to Brooklyn, apparently. How any of this has rubbed off on his gutsy debut song ‘WHY’ is anyone’s guess, but he’s definitely picked up some mighty ambitious intentions on his journey. ‘WHY’ is Bon Iver gone techno, swapping ambiguous lyrical twists for some straight-up Casio loops. Thomas Arsenault is onto something, because sure as hell nobody’s come close to making music that even barely resembles ‘WHY’.