Slightly bizarrely, the NME has a specifically designated New Music Editor, with a silly name and an even sillier mugshot. Reporting breathlessly last week from the CMJ Music Marathon in New York, he tipped an awed readership to acts like
:: Loney,dear - 'the best indie folk band nobody's heard of' - except, of course, all those who thronged The Enterprise in Chalk Farm recently where the Swedish 5-piece entertained heroically despite a partial power-out. Things like the gently rolling swoon of I love you (in with the arms) sounded just great in the streetlamp glow and the album Sologne fairly heaves with similar pastoral pop delights (Le fever, A band, etc)...
:: Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin - see rr back in, er, Feb...
:: and Annuals from North Carolina, 'who might just be the new Arcade Fire'. Not that there's any real need for that since there's still the perfectly good old Arcade Fire about the place, but this blog dropped into Water Rats last night anyway to check. And Win & co. can rest easy, this six-piece are some way off connecting on anything like the same level. Band leader Adam Baker does the fashionable yelping thing and bangs his own drum quite literally at times, doubling up on a spare snare and galvanizing matters considerably. If anything though, on first hearing, they're a bit too ambitious musically with some slightly-too-chewy chord changes and arrangements...
[annuals]

Meanwhile, the same venue was packed out one night last week for a show by some homegrown talents just launching their debut ep but who have yet to register on the NME New Music Editor's finely-tuned radar. Who knew there was this much of an audience for the sort of epic instrumental indie sculpted by emergent Canterbury quintet Yndi Halda? Certainly not this blog. Just where were all these people when the mighty Unwed Sailor hit town last month?!
The five-song set demonstrated their fairly orthodox, classicist approach to the rock that we must call 'Post-', a kind of boiled-down Godspeed You Black Emperor if you will. Each opus follows a similar trajectory with the four frontline musicians busying themselves with filagreed variations on a slow-burn emotional theme before the pressure valve is released in a double-time explosion of kinetic energy. Some will doubtless crab at the predictability of it all but for this blog its a bit like going out for a good pizza: knowing precisely whats coming doesn't in any way diminish the pleasure of consumption...
[yndi halda]

Seems the Water Rats is fast becoming reallyrather's home-from-home of late what with Suburban Kids With Biblical Names [go] returning with their springy pop delights Dec 15 following the same Stockholm-to-Kings Cross route Hello Saferide took last week. Having been vaguely expecting just Annika Norlin and her guitar rr was super-happy to see a seven-strong line-up take the stage; horns, harmonies and handclaps-a-gogo! A diminutive presence - black rollneck and blonde ponytail behind an ever-present acoustic - Annika & co. strung together a fairly irresistible daisy chain of her major-chord ditties with their off-centre girls-world wordplay. Last bitter song, Get sick soon, Long lost penpal, the effervescent Highschool stalker [hear] had the place humming with pleasure which the notional headliners, female synth trio Au Revoir Simone, singularly failed to capitalise upon...
[hello saferide]

'Chiming guitar pop - strongly recommended for fans of jangly guitars, hardwood floors, sunlit rooms, and natural fibres,' is how retailer CDBaby sums Ephemera for the future [go], the eternally attractive (round here at least) debut set from sporadically active Philiadelphian outfit The Trolleyvox. Getting it so right so early doesn't do subsequent efforts any favours, however, and rr found follow-up Leap of folly didn't always play to their strengths and felt a bit over-considered (despite highs like One day, Fleur de Lys and Chesterman).
The bafflingly grandiose title of album #3, The Trolleyvox Presents the Karaoke Meltdown, doesn't bode too well but happily its pretty much a return to form. Unlike Ephemera there are a few tracks here which this don't hit this blog's spot (Twilight hotel, I am Annabelle, Deep blue central) where moodier chord changes and pacing prevail. But these moments are comfortably offset by more deeply pleasurable lashings of their highly distinctive combination of thick, Vox-powered electric jangle, tumbling percussion and chalky vocal harmonies.
Just you wait's urgent, Bush-beating protest pop is an exhilarating opening, the message hitting as hard as music. Great stuff. Later on, Baby you were lied to also gets political. It's less spiked with aggression but still kicks on with purpose, closing out with great shards of electric guitar. I know that you're high gets back to more (blissfully) familiar mid-tempo territory featuring singer Beth Filla at her best and a levitating chorus line. Joyride and Stoplight roses are similarly fine, Filla's dry, clear enunciation cutting cleanly through the clatter of drums and songwriter Andrew Chalfen's sparking, sparkling guitar while the whole lot of them are caught time and again in a summer shower of tambourines. Definitely reallyrather's kind of weather...
[the trolleyvox]

Recording devices at the ready December 1 for Later with Jools Holland on BBC2 when young hopefuls Keane and the Red Hot Chili Peppers are to be put quietly in their place by The Be Good Tanyas...