News This Week In New Music (23rd March 2013)

Last week we declared the discovery of this year’s Official Summer Anthem 2013. Turns out we were being a bit premature - and so were Anushka, the fools - in ringing the celebrate-good-times-alright bell. We put the pre-made Mojito’s away, closed the windows, and allowed Winter to have the misery-induced last laugh. The only thing remotely capable of cheering up new music fans across the rain-sodden UK was a bit of soul, remoulded and modernised for the coldest year on record. Our track of the week, video of the week and choice discovery, however disparate, are all laced together in a spirit of soul, an ability to channel otherwise conventional pop through something challenging and most importantly, thrilling. Here’s to the soul revival, creeping in through every corner in the country.

TRACK OF THE WEEK
Motherhood - Blood Blush


”Aint about the soul, brothers’, goes the mantra, before a puzzling statement: ”Ain’t no soul in us.’ This guy’s kidding around. ‘Blood Blush’, a new track from Joe Robinson’s Motherhood project, is just about as soulful as it gets when you’re referring to a Birmingham boy with a synthesiser. Out via. the Blessing Force collective, it’s probably the best offering we’ve heard from those parts since Trophy Wife’s emergence. Folks from the Midlands can do soul, don’t you worry. Motherhood are turning heads and convention in equal measure, all on the back of this terrific new song.

VIDEO OF THE WEEK
Outfit - Performance


Part of us hoisting this up as video of the week is all in the name of being overly excited about Outfit’s debut full-length. A shoe in for a Mercury Prize nomination, surely, but forget all your prize nominees, and even your ‘this is the best video you’ll see all week’ lark, Outfit are quite simply going to produce a debut free from outside influence or peer ranking. It’ll be a standalone work of art, like nothing Liverpool’s ever produced. And that’s why we’re so thrilled about the prospect of seeing it emerge this year. Anyway, this gorgeous, feather-filled clip from the mind of Isaac Eastgate helps ease us into the excitement.

DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK
Joel Compass


Word’s spread fast on this guy for the past month or so. Anyone we speak to tends to go ‘have you heard that guy sing?! Did you know he’s only nineteen years old?!’ Each conversation is more hysterical than the last, so it’s with relief that our very own Martyn Young stepped up to the challenge of writing some words about Joel Compass that were as free from hyperbole as possible. ‘There’s a palpable sense of emotion and yearning, the realisation that he’s compelled to make this music as his only form of release’, he said of ‘Back To Me’. Either Joel’s born to do it, as Martyn suggests, or he’s a lucky sod with an amazing singing voice who’s begrudgingly giving up a career in being a pilot to become a worldwide superstar instead.