What We've Been Listening To This Week...

Links to YouTube in Blue

There were some cracking new digital releases last week: pick of the bunch was Sheafs with Total Vanity! taken from their forthcoming debut EP ‘Vox Pop’ which comes out early March on Blood Records. Total Vanity! follows on from the powerful post punk of Care Less (which also features on Vox Pop) and has more than a hint of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (a big influence on the band) about it. The EP comes in white vinyl, signed and individually numbered, and you can get it here.

One the albums that we’ve been looking forward to hearing is 925 by Sorry which comes out at the end of next month on Domino Records, and they released another impressive taster from it this week called More.  More has a bit of a Glitter band stomp about it and it follows on from one of our singles of 2019 ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Star.

White Flowers released their debut single this week Night Drive and we also saw them play live at Bedford Esquires for Independent Venues Week supporting TOY. They are very much like Garlands/Head over Heels era Cocteau Twins (no bad thing of course), with maybe an element of My Bloody Valentine thrown in. I guess if you’d have to categorise them,it would be Shoegaze or Dream Pop used as the descriptor.

Also new out was the third single by Southampton’s The Vitrines with To Come Close, a sharp bit of post punk and the follow up to last years ‘Where I Stand’.

Over in the psych rock corner, I made acquaintance with a few of the acts on the Cardinal Fuzz roster including Dead Sea Apes, Waterless Hills and wonderfully named Sunburned Hand of the Man. The latter released their wonderfully eclectic latest album ‘Headless’ last year but are shortly launching a vinyl version. You can here a bit of the album here. We’ll have a review of the Dead Sea Apes (who also have a single out with Adam Stone at the same time) album ahead of its release date next week, but suffice to say its another interesting body of work that follows on from their dub work out on ‘Sixth Side of the Pentagon’.

We’ll also have a review of the Waterless Hills album later this month. we also came across Destruction Unit this week for the first time via the Loop Facebook group – the music’s not new (their last album was 2015) but it is good if you like your noise as we do, a bit like Ian Curtis singing in a feedback laden psych band.

We’ll have more new music recommendations from new releases next week – make sure you subscribe to the fiver on Spotify if you want to hear them early.