TLOBF :: Ones to Watch 2009

As 2009 pokes its cheeky nose just round the corner, our faithful and intrepid writers at TLOBF come up with the bands they think should make you sit up and take notice next year…

Rich Hughes
Having spent most of 2008 keeping my head above water in terms of music (it becomes a surreal experience running a website like TLOBF when you’re constantly bombarded by THE NEXT BIG THING), my tips for 2009 might not be as left-field as some of the other choices included here. One band I really want to see do well are It Hugs Back. Their debut will be unleashed at the beginning of next year, and for those of you crying over the demise of The American Analog Set, be depressed no longer. This is what you’ve been waiting for. Gorgeously simple and smooth grooves that can cause the pulse to rise, fall and flatline to the sound of beauty. It’s not going to set the World alight, but for those of you who haven’t heard ‘Other Cars Go’, you’ve missed out on the single of 2008. Another band I can’t wait to hear a long player from are California’s Crystal Antlers. Their boozy shake up of 70′s prog rock and Black Keys blues had me looping their recent EP constantly. What on earth the album will sound like will be anyone’s guess. One thing IS for certain though; it won’t be boring. Personally, there’s only two things that can pip all that and it’s the fact that 2009 is an M. Ward and Andrew Bird album year. Unless Mr. Ward does something VERY stupid, Hold Time might be the only thing to knock Andrew Bird off his lofty perch. I think 2009 is shaping up to be a rather great year…

Rich Thane
Bit of a mystery this one… Memory Cassette seems to be pretty much anonymous; there are no photos and no live shows. Not even the names of anyone involved have been shared. Not sure if this is a good thing or a pose or if they are just shy. It does make a change though. They have been showcasing tunes on blogs like Gorilla Vs Bear, 20 JazzFunk Greats and I Guess I’m Floating under various names, including Weird Tapes. There is a dreamy, hazy (ok, druggy) feel to all of the music and it seems to have Donna Summer on one arm and Kevin Shields on the other and be hurtling toward something truly great. There is even one song that sounds a little like Smashing Pumpkins pre-egomania. There are songs but they are just a little out of focus, out of reach. They seep into your subconscious and wrap themselves around your heartstrings. It’s toe tapping too. It’s kind of excellent sex music too. Or maybe that is just me. The one thing it definitely is is compelling. And sensual. And pretty damned beautiful. It bypasses a lot of my usual analysis and just hops straight into Favourite Music. There is a short EP on Something In Construction doing the rounds that is coming out in the New Year, that sums them up very nicely. Or just head over to Hype Machine and hoover up the goodness.

Simon Tyers
2009 has the potential to be a really interesting and exciting year for new British talent, so instead of scholarly careful consideration I’m just going to splurge a load of hyperbole out in this one paragraph on the grounds that if you throw enough shit at a wall some of it will stick. (Disclaimer: none of these are shit.) Firstly, our two best placed contenders for British Mini-Arcade Fire status. Edinburgh’s Broken Records taking a Beirut hat-tipping interlocked melodrama to the big places, while Hereford teens Gossamer Albatross are founded on dramatic Owen Pallett-esque strings and swooping, very Brit-folk vocals. Thirty Pounds Of Bone, leading lights of the Devon/Brighton based Drift Collective, gave notice with a low-key album in 2006 that traced a path between English folk delicacy, sea shanties and new Americana. There’s an EP in the next couple of months and an album in the autumn. Now that the NME’s New Yorkshire bandwagon has moved on Leeds and its environs seems to be producing no end of exciting new bands under its own steam, Grammatics’ pirouetting dramatic ambition, the slow burning tension of I Concur and the electronically aided killer songwriting of Napoleon IIIrd, whose In Debt To was the great lost album of 2007, to name three. Rose Elinor Dougall used to be in the Pipettes. No, keep reading – she now sounds like a coming together of Broadcast’s retro-futuristic electronics, early 90s post-baggy pre-Britpop indie pop and the English folk revival’s vocal emotive wistfulness. Picture Books In Winter are friends of Los Campesinos!, are also based in Cardiff, also employ a violinist and also like a careering ADD indie-scented melody but seem more focused and more emotionally honest. Also from Cardiff, The Victorian English Gentlemens Club’s much overlooked 2006 debut mixed skeletal bass-driven Pixies-isms with Wire dynamics and male/female three-way vocals to great effect, and a second album is due in 2009. Brighton’s 4 Or 5 Magicians also look to US lo-fi, but the Pavement/Built To Spill side of swirling, slanted melodies and lyrical wryness. Finally, after knocking around for a couple of years West Yorkshire’s melancholy acoustic singer-songwriter Laura Groves has been signed by XL, renaming her project Blue Roses to mark her change of attitude.

Tom Whyman
The Empty Set, with an album provisionally due out on Tough Love Records early next year, the Manchester/London duo should be surefire contenders for overlooked indie-pop gem of 2009. Tommy Ogden’s science textbookworm-y Magnetic Fieldsianisms are the stuff of songwriting magic, holding hands with Belle & Sebastian as they skip firmly into the same tradition as Cole Porter. The Great Eskimo Hoax – I could really do with a press release for this one, or at least having seen them live or something, but all you need to know – all I guess, for now, I really *can* know about Great Eskimo Hoax is the two most recent songs on their myspace, ‘Camp Beatbox’ and ‘Coma Rhythms’, and how amazing and awesome and dancescape-y they are. They move in esteemed company too- those two songs were recorded with Yannis from Foals and their tour coming up in the new year was booked by Hugo from Jonquil. Pretty good indication of what they sounds like too- a pretty straight weld of ding ding ding guitars with “ooo oooo ooooo”s. (Which btw there’s nothing that isn’t good about).
Next up, Tubelord. Ro Cemm thinks they’re just “Hundred Reasons filtered through Los Campesinos and A” but I see nothing that isn’t awesome about that triumvirate (well, maybe A in practice but still, IN THEORY) and besides it’s not even really accurate. Whilst there might be something distinctly ‘pop-punk’ about Tubelord, they’re forged in somewhere much more cryptic and arcane and schizophrenic really. Watch out for Big Scary Monsters labelmates/recent tour partners Blakfish too for a somewhat more primate take on the same sound. Sparky Deathcap are now London-based, but their ragged Mancunian troubadourisms flow in the tradition of Phil Elvrum or Bill Callahan who constantly sounds like he’s singing sodden and lovelorn from the top of a hill in a storm. Since about the middle of the year he’s been making an ever-increasing number of each-better-than-the-last songs available via his myspace, including the truly masterful ‘Winter City Ghosts’, which means if current trends continue then he’ll be, if not a massive star by the year’s end, then at least established in a good few people’s hearts and brains as one of the most rewarding below-ground artists in the country.