Retiree – Gundagai
This four-piece from Sydney, a sort of down-under version of Jungle or a stoned Hot Chip, make a beauteous kind of cool, enervated house music and gentle funk with tropical antipodean overtones – nicely listless music to sway to, whose mesmeric throb and dubby production have drawn comparisons to Arthur Russell. They put out a low-key 12-inch on Plastic World last year, and their next release, on which this track features, is called This Place and comes out on 22 June. Meanwhile, watch the scenic video - shot in Gundagai in Australia - and enjoy the trip.
Nordic Giants – Rapture
Nordic Giants are an instrumental post-rock duo from Brighton who sound like they could be a group of musicians from Scandinavia or Iceland – they make a sound (or rather, “carve soundscapes”) as if they were Sigur Ros’s more epic, cinematic and majestic siblings. “Cinematic” is about right – each of the band’s songs is accompanied by a short film to backdrop their live performances. They’ve just released their debut album, A Séance of Dark Delusions, on Kscope, a subsidiary of Snapper and a label home for the contemporary prog likes of Steven Wilson, Anathema and the Pineapple Thief. Nordic Giants’s music is suitably ambitious and portentous, with the sense of a band, to paraphrase one of their own song titles, giving flight to the imagination. They’ve quietly amassed quite a following, too, as many of these new/neo-prog bands are tending to do: they just headlined a show at London’s Village Underground.
Hippo Campus – Suicide Saturday
On Suicide Saturday, Hippo Campus – four teen Minnesotans, signed to Transgressive – come across like Future Islands’s enthusiastic kid brothers. They even had their own Future Islands-style, late-night-TV moment recently when they appeared on Conan O’Brien’s show and exuded glee about being there. They give good joy. In fact, they’re so excited at being in a band they’ve even given themselves nicknames - take a bow, Whistler “Beans” Allen (drums), Zach “Espo” Sutton (bass), Jake “Turntan” Luppen (guitar) and Nathan “Stitches” Stocker (guitar). On the title track of their debut EP, Bashful Creatures, they might sing, “I don’t give a shit”, but clearly they do. The music is ebullient Vampire Wekeend-ish indie with hi-life inflections in the rhythms and guitar. “Don’t try to fight it any more,” goes the refrain to the irresistible title track. You really won’t want to.
James Canty – Deborah
Not to be confused with the younger brother of Fugazi member Brendan Canty, this James Canty is a really interesting character. He’s a young Londoner whose eccentric storytelling and cockney tones have been compared to everyone from Jacques Brel to Syd Barrett, or like Ian Dury declaiming over Philip Glass-y keyboard curlicues. His Love EP, produced by Joe Wills (All We Are, Mikhael Paskalev), is a showcase for Canty’s twisted tenderness on tracks such as Deborah, or Strangers, on which he counts sheep, gets to 700, but still can’t sleep. The music, with its shivers of strings, is ingenious and gorgeous, while the voice is refreshingly different.
Teddy – Happy Tim
Teddy is the name employed by friends Tom and Eddy, who apparently live in Withnailian squalor in London, where they write their smart, sour electronic pop/R&B songs (shades of Beta Band/Steve Mason’s output) before the place crumbles around them. If Happy Tim is any measure, they specialise in acid wit and accessible earworms. It’s one of those songs - like the Kinks’s David Watts or the Undertones’s My Perfect Cousin – that satirise one of society’s “straights” or politically suspect types, in this case an “archetypal city slicker” with an allergy to immigrants that verges on the pathological: “I wanna live on my own, away from the refugees / I wanna live on my own, away from their disease / this is happiness / this is happiness / this is happiness … ” Probably its only failing is timing – had they released it a bit earlier, a certain Nigel might have found it useful.
