Catchup session (2)

Bear Cavalry - Roman Summer

Gosport's Bear Cavalry count Nick Grimshaw as a fan, have covered Skrillex with his backing, supported Rizzle Kicks and been remixed by Kissy Sellout. And yet we're still giving them the time of day. That's because this cut from debut EP Maple Trails takes from the Tall Ships playbook of harnessing complex math guitar part interplay, post-punk rhythms, big ol' infectious choruses and a nagging sense that all isn't quite correct.

Roman Summer by Bear Cavalry


Jethro Fox - Before

There's a lot of listening gone into Liverpudlian Fox's work, which somehow resembles a cleaned up and verse-chorus-versed Panda Bear or home studio'd Local Natives, matching sampled rhythms to anthemic chord changes, sinuous guitar parts and simple choruses big on held notes and wordless appellations. This could be going somewhere really quite interesting.

Before by Jethro Fox


Peter Wyeth - Sing To Me

Part of Humming New Time EP, the first release on Tom Morris of Her Name Is Calla's own label Olynka Records. Wyeth has been playing around the Leicester scene (including, full disclosure, an STN gig) for a while creating subtle magic out of acoustic guitar, loop pedals and field recording found sounds. the EP is "a collection of improvisations recorded on an iphone and a handheld recorder", but if that sounds too dry don't worry about that, it's imbued with invention that retains an experimental, questing edge around its self-imposed pastoral sparsity parameters.




Beth Jeans Houghton & The Hooves Of Destiny - Sweet Tooth Bird

Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose is now so close - 6th February, to be exact - you can almost touch it (maybe), but there's just time for another single, a big rousing thing clocking in at just over two minutes (yes, I know what the YouTube timer says) that were it not for the tone of Houghton's voice would bear precious little comparison to the folk regime she arrived in. Warning: contains vomiting scene.




The Cornshed Sisters - Dance At My Wedding

Meanwhile the trad alt-folk (it makes sense to us) revival continues apace with another north-eastern set, a Newcastle female foursome newly signed to Memphis Industries and with an album in April produced by that label/area's high achiever Peter Brewis. It apparently contains "wondrous tales of waterbabies, beekeeping, marriage, soothsayers, men in sequined suits, making pies out of people and the axis of love and bombs"; the debut single incorporates both lyrical heartbreak and a three-part harmony on the line "good job on the gravy".

Dance At My Wedding by thecornshedsisters