Bossy Love – Sweat It Out
Many indie musicians need day jobs these days, it seems: Fran O’Hanlon of Ajimal is a doctor, Catherine AD is a lecturer and writer. Now Bossy Love provides further proof of the trend. The duo comprises the singer Amandah, said to be a mechanical scientist, and John Baillie Jr, former drummer with Glasgow indie outfit Dananananaykroyd, who is a part-time barbecue restaurateur. Despite juggling occupations, they’re left with heaps of energy if Sweat It Out is anything to go by – an infectious pop-funk ditty that has been described as sounding “like Prince on a trampoline”. It comes from their forthcoming mixtape, Holidates, which the pair say “feels like a journey through electronic music from 1981 right up to now” and will include a Janet Jackson cover. Sweat It Up is being touted as their first release, although there is an EP, Me + You, on Bandcamp, which is electro-pop but not quite as furiously fizzy. Must be something in the BBQ.
Owlle – Fog
Owlle is a 27-year-old Frenchmusician with synthetic-red hair who has remixed Depeche Mode and Sia and been compared to Lykke Li, Bat for Lashes and Grimes. Oh, and Kate Bush, so no pressure there, then. She has one foot in France’s arty/fashion demimonde – one of her videos features a mermaid in a black S&M suit – and the other in the realm of brooding, cinematic electro-pop. Fog, the lead track from her imminent debut album France, released on 17 November, is titled after the John Carpenter movie, and has a creeping, enveloping quality. She doesn’t just do menacing atmospherica, though: there is a track on the album called Ticky Ticky that sounds like a Eurovision song contest entry from 1994.
Attaque – Change Your Mind
Attaque is Dominic Gentry, a Colchester-based producer and multi-instrumentalist who has made the transition from feted techno DJ to purveyor of shoegaze-textured electronica. He has already come up with an album of the stuff – ON LY OU, just released. Lauren Laverne is all over it, describing his reverb-drenched moodscape as “my favourite album right now”, and 125,000 people have watched the video for lead track Change Your Mind on YouTube (unless that’s one person, 125,000 times). If you like the shifting, drifting sound of Slowdive – or even Seefeel (remember Seefeel?) – and the way their amorphous, textured music occasionally coalesces to form pop shapes, then you’ll love Attaque.
Purple – Wallflower
And now for something completely noisy. Purple are a Texan band with a fearsome singing drummer who tends, as she does in the video to the alternately surging and squealing Wallflower, to yell in people’s faces and lick their cheeks, although not necessarily in that order. Meg White never did that, let alone Karen Carpenter. Still, if you’re enjoying the current wave of attention for Sleater-Kinney and miss the days of riot grrrl, but could fancy that filtered through the stripped-down garage-punk blues of Black Keys et al, you may find much to enjoy here. Even if you’re not convinced by the music, per se, there’s little denying Hanna Brewer, the aforementioned face-licker, is lots of fun. Even if the boys in the band have to sleep with the light on.
Honne – Warm on a Cold Night
After listening to Purple, you might need to wind down with some Honne. They’re a duo from Somerset and Wiltshire who again confirm the multitasking lives of indie musicians these days (see Bossy Love ): schoolteachers by day, and practitioners of soulful synth&B by night. And it is very late-night (when do they do their marking?), with their music influenced by more of an 80s feel than is fellow crepuscular croontronicist James Blake. Released by Super Recordings, responsible for early singles by AlunaGeorge and Bondax, the similarity between Warm on a Cold Night and the Blow Monkeys has been noted by one reviewer, and once you get that comparison in your mind it’s impossible to shake it.
