PopMatters made a selection of new artists who are expected to brake quite big quite soon (for some it had actually already started to happen). Among the selected there are: Polaris music award winner Backxwash; indie-rock foursome Porridge Radio; critically highly acclaimed Sault; Moscow all-female prog/post-punk girls Lucidvox; genre-defying Bartees Strange.
Switch presents his impressive flow on 'Cleopatra's Nose', with a helping voice from Killah Priest; plenty of Christmas songs, but Julia Jacklin's 'Baby Jesus Is Nobody's Baby Now' deserves a proper listen; similarly, Porridge Radio's 'The Last Time I Saw You (o Christmas)' is for those who don't really like the holidays; Lushlife delivers some spacey jazzy-rap on 'Hessdalen Lights'; Scottish folk singer James Yorkston shares a baroque pop single 'Ella Mary Leather'; Every Time I Die share their first new song in four years, a melodic metal-core 'Desperate Pleasures' with some math-core energy.
Female artists and female-fronted bands - like Dua Lipa, Charli XCX, and Porridge Radio - have outnumbered men on the shortlist for this year's Mercury Prize, for the first time in its 29-year history, Sky reports. A total of seven female or female-fronted acts (of 12 nominees) made the 2020 shortlist; the previous highest total was five. In general, this year pop dominated the shortlist, with none left of the field albums.
The nominees:
Anna Meredith - ‘FIBS‘
Charli XCX - ‘how i’m feeling now‘
Dua Lipa - ‘Future Nostalgia‘
Georgia - ‘Seeking Thrills‘
Kano - ‘Hoodies All Summer‘
Lanterns on the Lake - ‘Spook the Herd‘
Laura Marling - ‘Song for Our Daughter‘
Michael Kiwanuka - ‘KIWANUKA‘
Moses Boyd - ‘Dark Matter‘
Porridge Radio - ‘Every Bad‘
Sports Team - ‘Deep Down Happy‘
Stormzy - ‘Heavy is the Head‘
Idles released a powerful remix of Sex Swing's 'Passover', minimalist and atmospheric, a new song; 'A New Kind of Sky' is timeless psych-folk by the Hanging Stars; Rider Shafique and The Bug collaborate on dark industrial hip-hop 'Burn'; Porridge Radio find a different angle to themselves on Lala Lala collaboration 'Good For You'; industrial trap meets grindcore on Luma's 'Lionsblood', it sounds strange and it is strange; Manonmars' 'Pidgeon' is psychedelic hip hop gem; Monte's 'Mirla' is the sound of bird dying.
Porridge Radio have a great new album 'Every Day' out, they promoting it today with livestream via YouTube at 9:50 am ET. Yo La Tengo‘s Ira Kaplan is filling in as DJ on WFMU from noon-3 PT. Christine and the Queens is preparing "guests and weird concepts" everyday at 6 pm ET on Instagram. Ben Gibbard is livestreaming solo performances from his home studio everyday at 7 pm ET (listen to his take on 'Green Plastic Trees' below). Miley Cyrus will host another hourlong live stream on Instagram starting at 11:30 am PT. United We Stream is going to stream music from Berlin clubs and artists. Billboard, Brooklyn Vegan and NPR keep a list of online shows.
"What 'Every Bad' really sounds like is the sea, churning then soothing, a constant battle between birth and destruction" - Stereogum says, poetically, about their latest Album of the week choice. Sonically, the Brighton band leans "in a bunch of different directions - straight-up indie, dream-pop, heaving ’90s alt-rock, the moodier edges of Britpop", but what it comes down to is a portrait of "the condition of being young and trying to locate something stable inside, some clarity about your own identity and dreams".
Paramore's front-lady Hayley Williams has a solo debut album coming out in May, and she announced it with 'Simmer', a subtle exercise in how to draw the line between wrath and mercy; Scottish folk, Hindustani classical music and jazz make great companions on 'The North Carr' by James Yorkston, Suhail Yusuf Khan and Jon Thorne; U.S. Girls does some almost-religious rock at 'Overtime'; 'I Can’t Read 97' is an acoustic version of David Bowie's 1980s song by his short-lived hard-rock band Tin Machine; Porridge Radio reinvent the Pixies’ loud-quiet-loud trademark on 'Sweet'.
