Wray - Apatia
Wray are a shoegazing band from Birmingham, Alabama, which might seem a little odd because shoegaze has always been synonymous with the UK, specifically the Thames Valley area. Then again, the shoegaze outfit they’ve most frequently been compared to are Swervedriver, who were from Oxford but sounded American – their hazy motorik boogie like My Bloody Valentine if they’d been reared on Steppenwolf. To further confuse matters,Wray, the Alabama band who sound like a British band who people assumed were American, are at their most Anglophile on new track Apatia, all dreamy atmosphere and fey, listless vocals. If you want something a little more (born to be) wild, try their self-titled debut album, released here on 26 January. But if comatose dream-pop is your bag, try Apatia.
Spazzkid - Daytime Disco
Spazzkid is one of those alternative-music names, like The Negro Problem, designed to provoke, challenge or annoy, but don’t expect aggro-noise to go with it. Daytime Disco is divine twinkling, electronic pop, featuring the coy, cute vocals of Yoojin Lim, a Korean singer-songwriter who operates as Neon Bunny. Spazzkid, you might be surprised to learn, is also an alias, for producer and songwriter Mark Redito from Los Angeles, even if his music sounds like what I think of when I see the terms J-pop or K-pop – sugary vocals over candy beats and marshmallow melodies. Redito has been making music of this sort for quite a while, and you can hear a lot of it on Spotify. He’s just signed to the excellent Cascine label, which specialises in shiny synth-pop with a melancholy undertow, and he’s got one foot in the PC camp, with Kero Kero Bonito featured on a remix of Daytime Disco that, now that I think of it, does seem designed to provoke, challenge and annoy.
Victories at Sea - Florentine
Victories at Sea are the second band this week from Birmingham - but this time from the English Midlands - although apparently they spend a lot of time in Manchester. They sound quite Mancunian, too, halfway between New Order and Delphic. It’s that old chestnut, dolorous indie disco, with a fresh spin. The band have supported Savages and Editors, and you can imagine them, on a good day, making the headliners sweat. They’ve released one EP of angsty anthems called In Memory of, and now there’s Florentine, which is their clearest bid yet for mass appeal.
The Away Days - Best Rebellious
The Away Days have also supported Savages – and Wild Beasts, Massive Attack and Belle & Sebastian – in Turkey. Why Turkey? Because that’s where these dreampoppers – named the Away Days because they “don’t feel like belonging anywhere” – are from. There has been Russian shoegaze of late, not forgetting shoegaze from Alabama, but this is the first shoegaze band I’ve heard of from Istanbul. That being their home city, there is inevitably a political inflection to their gauzy guitar daze, although, notwithstanding the title, Best Rebellious is mainly built around swooningly descending melodies.
Ryn Weaver – Octahate
Meet Ryn Weaver. Get used to the name, because you’re going to be hearing from her a lot in forthcoming months. Her debut single, Octahate, may not have charted in the boring old normal charts when it was first released last June, but it did stay at No 1 on Billboard’s Twitter real time emerging artists chart for eight weeks, while her debut EP, Promises, topped the Billboard Heatseekers album chart in August. Those are good, valid, highly substantial and credible hit parades. Also: Charli XCX, Hayley Williams of Paramore and Jessie Ware all tweeted about her, which makes sense, because in a way the California girl sounds like a cross between all three. Other things you’ll soon be sick of reading about her: she studied at New York’s Tisch School of the Arts, Gaga’s alma mater, and she’s been working with producer Benny Bianco (Jessie J, Katy Perry, Kesha). She describes what she does as fairy pop, possibly because “sparky if anonymous daytime Capital radio pop” is more of a mouthful.
