This week I have one new discovery to share with you, a Live Lounge track and then the best of the recent releases. It’s been a brilliant couple of week’s for indie music with 3 particularly strong releases. I’ve chosen my favourite track from both The 1975’s debut and Sheffield’s finest Arctic Monkeys 5th LP and from London Grammar who released their debut this week I’ve picked a remix of their current single that I hope you will like.
Timothy Work – Waves
Opening with melody driven guitar, this one builds into an indie rock track with slightly drowsy vocals and very soft underlying drums. It’s a more chilled out indie track full of sound and shows some promise from this guy.
The 1975 – Is There Somebody Who Can Watch You
Soft, beautiful and almost ballad-esque featuring melodic piano backing up the soft only just heard vocals. It is different to everything else on their debut and therefore stands out but it does fit the sound well whilst also showing that this band have a lot of talent up their sleeve and they can do more than just upbeat indie tracks with pop catchiness that makes you want to dance. A truly wonderful track.
Arctic Monkeys – Number 1 Party Anthem
This deceivingly titled track is less dancefloor filler and more ‘last song before the disco ends so just grab any random guy or girl if you’re not already coupled up’ song. With it’s swaying rhythm, chilled vibe, soft drums and gentle strummed guitar it gives you the perfect opportunity to really listen to Turner’s Northern tone and the lyrics he has written. It’s a beautiful track, one that along with the rest of this album shows how Arctic Monkey’s sound has grown, not just incorporating sounds of the greats but creating a sound all of their own, which if not already considered great it will be in the future.
London Grammar – Strong [Shadow Child Remix]
With the original of this track being a soft, slow, almost haunting track with emphasis on the vocals, this remix understandably uses that brilliant and wonderful voice as the basis for everything else to fit around. Whilst also using big beats to give it a danceable rhythm that compliments and doesn’t detract in any way from that amazing voice of London Grammar’s lead singer Hannah Reid.
Bastille – We Can’t Stop [Live Lounge]
Bastille have basically ruled my listening over the past few weeks between checking out the new releases. After a festival packed summer and Sunday’s headline iTunes Festival performance, the London quartet entered Radio 1’s Live Lounge for the second time this year as part of the Live Lounge month. In true Bastille style it wasn’t just a straight-forward cover of a popular song of the moment but a much improved version of Miley Cyrus’ ‘We Can’t Stop’ [the fact they made that song listenable is something that should be applauded] mixed with a little of Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself’ and ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ – that old school cheese-fest of a track. It’s a brilliant cover and they somehow have managed to make all this work and sound like a credible and very good cover, I’m not sure exactly how Bastille manage taking questionable songs and a mish-mash of genres to make a good track but they are clearly very good at it.
Mixtape Couture 