Neu This Week In New Music (29th June 2013)

It’s bound to be a lonely world when you’re a solo artist. But there are no longer any limits. You can project your music how you want, where you want, on a whim. It can be a full representation of who you are and what you’re inclined to believing in, or it can be some satire-heavy side-project that you couldn’t care less about. And backing all of this is the fact that, given some plucky pound notes or maybe a friend who can ‘get you a copy of Ableton’, you’ve all the tools of the trade right before your fingers. Just about anybody can access these things, and use them for their will.

In this week’s new music round-up three very different solo artists stood out. Each artist is wild in ambition, unafraid to push the limits. And each of the three strikes gold. Here’s the best of what happened this week in new music:

TRACK OF THE WEEK
Ellery James Roberts (Kerou) - Kerou’s Lament


The return of Ellery Roberts was never going to be a modest little event. WU LYF - the band he once fronted - had plenty to say, shirking subtlety in the process. While Los Porcos have taken a somewhat different route, opting for intelligent, retro-enhanced pop, Roberts is more concerned with making his point loud and clear.

‘Kerou’s Lament’, his debut work under new name Kerou, is pronounced and proud. Every word is like a gruesome punch to the guts, system overload. Few could get away with being as heavy-handed as Roberts, but there’s something about his approach that charms, not least when he’s writing bittersweet melodrama such as this.

VIDEO OF THE WEEK
Lorde - Tennis Court


If you were a video director, and you’d been given Lorde’s ‘Tennis Court’ as a starting point, and you could do anything with it, free reign 100%, is this what you’d opt for? Probably not. It’s a pretty vivid track, this. It gives you distinct impressions of school bust-ups, romance, bubblegum pop in high resolution. Only the song’s video proper goes down an opposite route, focusing the camera on Lorde herself for the entirety, in one single, daunting shot. Elia Yelish-O’Connor already looks positively iconic, so the daring feat is pulled off with ease. All the same, it’s a brave move opting down the opposite route of the one everyone’s pointing you towards.

DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK
Astronomyy


Astronomyy does a great deal. He places a whole host of exciting tidbits into his songs. But he doesn’t overdo it. And that’s where the magic comes in. He could, for instance, go whole-hog with samples and let them do the talking, but instead he wraps them up in gentle guitars and loop-rooted vocals, during debut ‘Don’t Need U’. He could play the multi-instrumentalist card and throw everything into the fire to see what burns first, but he’s a smart cookie, is Astronomyy, and he opts for restraint when cacophony’s a more tempting alternative. Keep it up, and he just might be one of the country’s brightest pop prospects in years.