What We've Been Listening To This Week...Feral Family, Life, Protomartyr, The Black Lagoons, Dense, Pottery, Eyesore and the Jinx

Links to music in blue

Sheafs topped our list of the new releases last week and we started the week celebrating another band from the Steel City, Feral Family. The band have just released a new single Better Days and from our perspective its their best yet. Produced by the magic (garden) fingers of Gavin Monaghan (the Blinders, the Twang, the Lizards etc), Better Days follows on from 2019’s ‘The North’ and ‘Crying on the Inside’. Its breathless, powerful indie music at its best.

It’s been less than 6 months since Life released the excellent ‘Picture of Good Health’ but they returned this week with a new single Switching On and it’s a welcome return. Switching On has a bit of a dub feel to it, building into a mighty crescendo of squalling guitar. The band are (Covid19 permitting) touring next month, and we look forward to seeing them play at the new London venue Lafayette.
   

​A month or so later and US band Pottery hit our shores, and they’ve just released another single from it Take Your Time. Like its predecessor ‘Texas Drums’ its pretty frantic but also darn good. They seem to have bulked out their sound as well which makes their forthcoming album an intriguing prospect. Fellow Americans No Age also impressed us this week, with their new single ‘Turned to String’. The single is the first to be taken from their forthcoming album ‘Goons be Gone’ which launches on June 5th. The band remind us of a cross between the Ramones and the Lemonheads, quite slacker rock, which is obviously no bad thing.        

Touring across the UK last week were Prettiest Eyes, label mates of the Oh Sees. They were supported at their gig in Leeds by local psych garage band Dense who we thought we’d check out. Their latest single Fever Dream came out in December and it’s a fine tune – noisy vocals, noisy guitar, chunky bass line. Fever Dream is the bands second single, and their debut Displaced Face is also worth checking out.

Another band from Leeds and also of a psych garage persuasion are the Black Lagoons, who’ve just released a new single Best Western. It’s a moody little number which funnily enough sounds like it could be taken from a spaghetti western, and it follows on from The Heat which the band released in January. Their first EP ‘Illusions, Incoherence and Fever’ came out in 2018 which sits more squarely in Cramps/swamp rock territory. It’s quite an interesting experience listening to that EP alongside ‘Best Western’ and ‘The Heat’, the band have definitely got something about them, and they remind me a bit of Avalanche Party.

Further down the M62 in Liverpool, Eyesore and the Jinx have just released a new single ‘Nightlife’. Nightlife is jagged, quirky post punk which we discovered on the latest Restless Bear Spotify playlist. Its good, go listen.
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Concluding our round up for this week is the new single from Protomartyr, Processed by the Boys. I’m just in the process of getting acquainted with the band who release their fifth album in June, but they seem to be hugely influential amongst the current crop of post punk bands such as Egyptian Blue and the Palpitations. Processed by the Boys has a jutting guitar line, vocals like Nick Cave and even a bit of saxophone in subtle interplay. This is quality stuff.
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Our fiver playlist, featuring five of the tunes from above is available to follow and listen to here
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BY THE WAY – if you’ve not already signed the petition for government support of independent music venues, please do so here