Carte Blanche Music

All Good Things – Machines

december 11

You might not have heard of All Good Things, but you may very well have heard their music. This group of Los Angeles-based musicians of varied backgrounds (everything from Halestorm to Britney Spears) have built a fanbase by supplying music to video games and soundtracks. They’ve done this without anyone really knowing who they are, until a growing army of fans tracked them down.

Only a year and a half ago, All Good Things (Dan Murphy – vocals and guitar, Andrew Bojanic – guitar and vocals, Liz Hooper – bass, keyboards and vocals, Miles Franco – guitar, bass and vocals, and drummer Randy Cooke) decided to go public. They put out the album Machines, full of anthemic, bombastic rock tracks, and the title track is the first single off it. Explosive stuff!

For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.

border breaker, single track

Perfect Son – It’s For Life

december 11

Last summer, I recommended the song Malomiasteczkowy by Dawid Podsiadło. A great song, but ‘difficult’, for it was sung in Polish. In that respect, It’s For Life by Perfect Son stands a better chance of being picked up outside his home country Poland, as it has English lyrics. The first good signs are already there; the song entered the European Border Breakers Chart at #50 last week. This position was achieved through airplay in Poland and Slovakia, but hopefully the song’s visibility in the EBBChart will stimulate radio stations in other countries to play the song as well.

Perfect Son is the stage name of Polish singer and producer Tobiasz Biliński. Sometime in 2016, just as the began to find success with his electropop project Coldair, he decided it was time for a radical change. Bilifiski restarted his career as Perfect Son, making complex yet accessible pop music. It even got him signed to legendary record label Sub Pop, once the home of The Jesus & Mary Chain, Nirvana, The Postal Service, Saint Etienne and The Shins, and currently of The Afghan Whigs, Fleet Foxes and Soundgarden, to name but a few.

Cast, Perfect Son’s debut album, is slated for release on 15 Februari 2019. It’s For Life is the long player’s first single.

For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.

indie | pop

cover, single track

The Orielles – It Makes You Forget (Itgehane)

december 10

2018 has been one hell of a year for The Orielles. Everything grew: the attendance to their shows, their success in general and also the number of band members. Originally made up of sisters Sidonie B and Esmé Dee Hand-Halford and their best friend Henry Carlyle Wade, they recently recruited a new member, Alex Stephens, on keyboards.

Early this year, The Orielles (who chose their band name as a homage to The Shirelles) released their debut album Silver Dollar Moment, which includes the single Let Your Dogtooth Grow. But in an era where artists can’t afford to rest on their laurels, they now come up with not one, but two brand new songs, bundled on a good old-fashioned double A-sided single. The A-side – a tale about their neighbour’s cat – is called Bobbi’s Second World, but allow me to concentrate on the AA-side…

There, we find It Makes You Forget (Itgehane), a song that was already great in the original version by Peggy Gou. The Orielles have turned the electro/acid tune into an indie disco stomper to great effect. They explain: “After noticing a passion for songs that make us emotional, want to dance and quite literally ‘forget’, we decided to cover one of Peggy Gou’s latest floor fillers, ‘Itgehane aka It Makes You Forget’ hoping that we could evoke the aforementioned qualities of music within other listeners!”

For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.

disco | indie | pop | rock

werner's weekly

Werner’s Weekly (week 50)

december 10

In the past, when people were only exposed to music that was released in their own country, December was a month where nothing much happened, as far as new songs were concerned. Nowadays, with millions of artists all around the world putting their music on platforms like Spotify, available for everybody all over the planet, things are different. Of course, this month, you need to plow through all the well-intentioned Christmas mayhem (don’t look any further, these are the all-time highlights), but then you’ll find a wealth of great new tracks. By Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kakkmaddafakka, KT Tunstall, Smallpools or Underworld, for instance.

Below you’ll find the cream of the crop: Werner’s Weekly, your compass to the music that matters. Treat your ears via the Werner’s Weekly player in the sidebar and/or click the links for more info:

- The Vaccines – All My Friends Are Falling In Love (Wildcard this week)
- The Lighthouse – Catch Fire (Wildcard last week)
- Art Brut – She Kissed Me And It Felt Like A Hit
- Bob Mould – What Do You Want Me To Do
- Calogero – On Se Sait Par Coeur
- Grimes feat. Hana – We Appreciate Power

For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.

electronic | indie | pop | punk | rock

chart, ebbchart

European Border Breakers Chart 7 December 2018

december 7

This week, all of the 31(!) (re)entries in the European Border Breakers Chart land in the bottom half of the Top 100. 13 of those 31 make their maiden trip into the chart.

The highest entry marks the first time a Polish artist manages to penetrate the main chart. Perfect Son’s (pictured) debut single It’s For Life comes in at #50, powered by airplay in Spain, Switzerland, Latvia and neighbouring country Slovakia. Polish acts Me And That Man (with four tracks), The Deyna Family and Branko only reached the Tips by Country Chart before.

European Border Breakers Award winner Alice Merton and chart regulars like Nana Adjoa, Tamino and Sam Fender also make an entrance this week. These are all 13 newcomers:
#50: Perfect Son – It’s For Life
#55: Alice Merton – Funny Business
#56: Feng Suave – Venus Flytrap
#65: VC Pines – Garden Of The Year
#70: Pinty – Tropical Bleu
#78: You Tell Me – Water Cooler
#80: Dramas – Comfort Zone / Robot
#87: Nana Adjoa – Simple Things
#89: Tamino – Chambers
#91: Hank Von Hell – Wild Boy Blues
#92: Park Hotel – Nothing To Lose
#95: Sam Fender – Spice
#96: Ex:Re – Crushing

Meanwhile, the Streaming Chart counts 8 entries, 6 of which are tracks off Czech artist Million+’s debut album Krtek Money Life. Apart from their home country, the act scores in neighbouring country Slovakia.

For the full Top 100, click the ‘EBBChart’ tab in the top menu of this blog (loading of the PDF may take a little while). More charts, like the Tips (ranking the tracks that are on their way to the Top 100), the Airplay Chart and the Streaming Chart, are available at www.europeanborderbreakerschart.eu, where you can also listen to all of the tracks and watch their videos, as well as share them via social media.

album track

Art Brut – She Kissed Me And It Felt Like A Hit

december 7

Art Brut, or as the Brits call it, Outsider Art is art by self-taught or naïve art makers. When Eddie Argos formed a band, in 2003, he thought Art Brut was the perfect name for it. One of the first things he subsequently did, was writing a song about forming a band. It became their first hit.

15 years later, and seven years since their latest effort Brilliant! Tragic!, Art Brut just released their fifth album Wham! Bang! Pow! Let’s Rock Out! Argos’ trademark speak-sing delivery is still omnipresent, but we get horns as an added bonus. For instance on my favourite album track She Kissed Me And It Felt Like A Hit.

The song title refers to The Crystals’ controversial 1962 single He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss). “I love a big glorious love song,” Argos says about it. “This is one and it’s about love at first kiss, it’s about immediately knowing the person you are with is even better than appearing on Top Of The Pops and what could be more glorious than that?”

For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.

indie | punk | rock

single track

Calogero – On Se Sait Par Coeur

december 6

At the end of August last year, French musical veteran Calogero released his seventh album Liberté Chérie, which features singles like Je Joue De La Musique and 1987. Only three months later, a Deluxe Edition followed, containing seven additional tracks, like the brand new song La Vraie Vie and three songs recorded live in the famous Abbey Road Studios in London. Another bonus came in the shape of a new version of promotional single On Ne Sait Par Coeur (now featuring Clara Luciani, who has since broken through with her own single La Grenade).

With 300.000 copies of Liberté Chérie sold in France alone, and yet another edition of the album (now including a DVD) now instores, bass player/singer Calogero decided to release On Ne Sait Par Coeur as his new commercial single at last. Excellent choice!

For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.

pop | rock

single track

Grimes feat. Hana – We Appreciate Power

december 6

After months of teases, Canadian singer, songwriter and producer Claire Boucher (commonly known as Grimes) finally released new music. The dark, driving track We Appreciate Power features additional vocals from longtime collaborator Hana Gabrielle Pestle (or simply Hana). It’s Grimes’s most aggressive single to date; sonically, it sits somewhere between power pop and straightforward industrial.

We Appreciate Power comes after a year full of collaborations with other artists (Janelle Monae’s Pynk, for instance) and marks Grimes’s first new song since her 2015 album Art Angels. The track is slated to be the first single off her forthcoming, still-untitled (and unplanned) fifth album.

For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.

industrial | pop | rock

single track

Bob Mould – What Do You Want Me To Do

december 5

Bob Mould hardly needs an introduction. In the eighties, he was the frontman of Hüsker Dü (who recorded the original version of Therapy?’s hit Diane), and in the nineties of Sugar (check their classic track If I Can’t Change Your Mind). After that, he recorded a long list of solo albums, the most recent one being 2016’s Patch The Sky.

Recently, Mould announced his 13^th album Sunshine Rock will be out on 8 February 2019. Following hot on the heels of its title track, What Do You Want Me To Do is the album’s second single. He calls it “a quick take on shaky relationships, coincidental debauchery and the emptiness that typically follows such follies.” A great track if you’re as much a Buffalo Tom fan as I am.

For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.

indie | rock

single track, wildcard

Wildcard (week 49):
The Vaccines – All My Friends Are Falling In Love

december 5

The Vaccines have never been caught writing a song that was not catchy, but with their new one, they raise the bar of catchiness.

The band released their fourth album Combat Sports only in March of this year, but All My Friends Are Falling In Love is a new tune altogether. It came about after frontman Justin Hayward-Young joined forces with songwriter Cole MGN. They penned a track that combines The Vaccines’s distinct guitar-led sound with infectious bubblegum pop choruses. Long-term followers of the band will be familiar with the song, as they already played it live. The recorded version is an anthemic offering, that manages to capture the live energy.

This week, All My Friends Are Falling In Love by The Vaccines provides a welcome counterpoise to the grey days of Autumn. This joyful single is the new Carte Blanche Music Wildcard!

In the Wildcards 2018 playlist you can find all of this year’s Carte Blanche Music Wildcards so far.

pop | rock

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All Good Things – Machines

Perfect Son – It’s For Life

The Orielles – It Makes You Forget (Itgehane)

Werner’s Weekly (week 50)

European Border Breakers Chart 7 December 2018

Art Brut – She Kissed Me And It Felt Like A Hit

Calogero – On Se Sait Par Coeur

Grimes feat. Hana – We Appreciate Power

Bob Mould – What Do You Want Me To Do

Wildcard (week 49):
The Vaccines – All My Friends Are Falling In Love

Wildcard (week 49)

Werner’s Weekly (week 50)

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