Thursday, August 07, 2014

Worth the wait: Maybeshewill, Slum Of Legs, Wyldest, Flowers

Maybeshewill - Fair Youth

The title track of their fourth album out August 28th finds them in less brooding, almost bouncy mood by their usual standards. There's still the gradual post-rock build, twinkly breakdowns and big anthemic explosions, but in between come brass fanfares, stuttering electronics and politi-folkie who we don't think we've somehow ever mentioned on here before Grace Petrie on the very un-Grace Petrie-seeming instrument of accordion. They're touring China next month. Stitch that, Wham!




Slum Of Legs - Begin To Dissolve

We're tempted to think that the Brighton sextet are the Desperate Bicycles of post-riot grrrl or somesuch, DIY righteousness held together by audio string, but inevitably that's the trojan horse under which everything - metronomic drums, violin solos, lo-fi fuzz, lyrics based on curiosity and questioning - gets thrown in until it sounds like the Fall with a female singer deliberately smashed up and pieced back together skew-wiff, at which it collapses in on itself. A fascinating, singular debut single.




Wyldest - Wanders

Known as Wildest Dreams until... well, this upload, the duo recently won the Green Man Rising competition to open the main stage next Friday, following the great Haiku Salut's triumph in the same competition last year. Wyldest deal in tingling dreampop of a Beach House/I Break Horses stripe with a hint of Warpaint, drifting guitar lines and woozy synth effects sustaining a floating vocal in mid-air.




Flowers - Joanna

The first single from the trio's debut album Do What You Want To, It's What You Should Do (out 8th September on Fortuna POP!) sheds the fuzz and feedback of their earlier recordings and gigs - no doubt producer Bernard Butler's doing - to emerge as a more earthbound Sundays, lifted by the emotive upper register of Rachel Kenedy.

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