Carte Blanche Music

Bear Hands (feat. Ursula Rose) – Blue Lips

January 8th, 2019

Since the release of their 2007 debut EP Golden, and first full album Burning Bush Supper Club three years later, Bear Hands did a lot of touring, including opening slots for like-minded larger bands like Vampire Weekend, Passion Pit, and MGMT. In 2013, they scored their first real hit, when Giants became a surprise Top 10 hit on Billboard’s Alternative Chart.

Now, the Brooklyn indie band kickstarts 2019 with laid-back, groovy new single Blue Lips, which features Ursula Rose. She also co-wrote the track, and a couple of other ones to be released later. Lead singer Dylan Rau says about Blue Lips: “The song is about listening to someone’s problems over and over and over until you die and your lips turn blue. Excuses, promises, optimism crashing on the rocks of reality and getting bored with someone’s schtick and hanging up on them.”

The song is part of an EP, that also contains new track Ignoring The Truth, as well as 2016 single 2AM, and Back Seat Driver (Spirit Guide), which was released last year.

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

single track

As December Falls – On The Edge

January 7th, 2019

One of the great things of 2018 was the resurgence of female fronted rock, although it didn’t really reach the mainstream yet. Will As December Falls do the trick? They just might…

Although they sound like a great mix of Paramore and Fall Out Boy, they’re in fact a British quintet, formed in 2014 by Bethany Curtis (vocals), Ande Hunter (lead guitar/vocals), Will Brown (rhythm guitar), Timmy Francis (bass) and Lukas James (drums).

After a few EP’s and singles, the band founded their own label ADF Records to release their upcoming self-titled debut album. Following Ride and One More Night, On The Edge is the record’s well-produced third single, and their strongest so far.

Curtis says about it: “I wanted to write a song that said that it’s okay to feel how you feel. You don’t need to conform to something that you’re expected to be. (…) I wanted to say that it’s okay to be crazy. It’s okay to not be happy. It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to get angry and not look perfect all the time. It’s okay to be you.”

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

indie | rock

werner's weekly

Werner’s Weekly (week 2)

January 7th, 2019

After last week’s Carte Blanche Music Top 2018, which was Werner’s Yearly, basically, here is a brand-new edition of Werner’s Weekly, your compass to the music that matters. As always, it contains the two most recent Carte Blanche Music Wildcards, and the best new releases in alphabetical order:

The Lottery Winners – That’s Not Entertainment (Wildcard this week)
Mokono – Signs (Wildcard last week)
Cat Pierce – Human Experience
Christon – Closer To A New Day
Emmy Wildwood – Everything Hurts
900 Miles feat. The Kooks – Hold Tight

Click the links for more info and listen to each of the tracks via the Werner’s Weekly player below.

For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist. Also added last week: The Gift, Sofi Tukker, Sting, Reel Big Fish, and many more.

chart, ebbchart

European Border Breakers Chart 4 January 2019

January 4th, 2019

In less than two weeks, during the next edition of the ESNS conference and festival, the new Music Moves Europe Talent Chart will be launched. This chart will act as an important selection tool for the Music Moves Europe Talent Awards (MMETA). Starting today, the rules that go with that chart, will be applied to the European Border Breakers Chart, to make a smooth transition possible.

Without giving away too many details at this moment (stay tuned, folks 😉), I can tell you this: at the request of the awards committee, former winners of a European Border Breakers Award, this year’s MMETA winners and participants of the Eurovision Song Contest are no longer eligible for the new chart. As a consequence, artists like Alice Merton, The Blaze and Blanche no longer appear.
Also, the rule that tracks will automatically fall off the Top 100 after a chart run of 52 weeks, has been abandoned, allowing several tracks back in the list.

Partly because of these changes, this week’s EBBChart counts a staggering 38(!) (re)entries, 6 of which are total newcomers. Among them, for the first time, we find an emerging European act from Malta (The Travellers). This week’s Streaming Chart welcomes its first ever Croatian act (Lost Sky). Congrats!

These are all of the first-timers in the main (airplay and streaming based) Top 100:
#27: Sam Fender – Play God
#61: The Travellers – Ħafi Paċi Kuluri
#62: Umi – Friendzone
#68: Okay Kaya – Dance Like U
#80: Biig Piig – Flirt
#81: Tamino – So It Goes

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.

single track

Christon – Closer To A New Day

January 4th, 2019

Two years ago, when I just started this blog, one of the first tracks I recommended was the then-new single Perfect World by Dutch singer-songwriter Christon Kloosterboer. Later in 2017, he released the EP’s Towns and Cities. In 2018, however, he mainly composed and produced for other (EDM) artists. Also, he released tracks under clever anagram aliases like North [Sic] and Sir Notch. The latter, especially, is well-known to the Carte Blanche Music readers, as his summery single Gimme That Sunshine ended up third in Your Favourites (2018).

For 2019, the artist dusted off his proper name. Throughout the year, he will release new songs as Christon. Closer To A New Day, a track he wrote in Nashville with Emery Dobyns, is the first of them. It’s about a boy and a girl who drive off in their car at sunset, leaving their troubles behind, heading for the sun. An epic song that references Coldplay, both musically and in voice.

Don’t be surprised if this ends up in a movie, TV series or commercial one day.

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

pop

single track

Cat Pierce – Human Experience

January 3rd, 2019

Since Catherine Pierce – half of the duo The Pierces, which is currently on hiatus – started creating her first solo album without the backing of a record label, she released six singles.

The latest, Human Experience, came out on Boxing Day. It’s a beautiful, mystic song about birth and death, with a rather creepy intro and a chorus that Lana Del Rey would kill for.

Pierce’s album is slated for a 2019 release and will, according to the singer, be more personal than the music she released with her sister. “Although”, she says, “Allison and I are talking about doing more music together because we miss it.”

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

electronic | indie | pop

single track

900 Miles feat. The Kooks – Hold Tight

January 3rd, 2019

I’d love to tell you more about 900 Miles than that it’s a new artist project by London-based producers Zdot & Krunchie. Alas, they keep all information under wraps, which is, of course, their good right.

Following up on Stuck On Loop (feat. Pepper Rose), Hold Tight is only their second single. It’s sung by The Kooks frontman Luke Pritchard, it’s also available in an acoustic version, and it’s going to be huge in no time. That’s all folks, let’s let the music do the talking…

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

indie | pop

single track

Emmy Wildwood – Everything Hurts

January 2nd, 2019

In 2013, Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Emmy Wildwood (ex-frontwoman of garage rock band Velta) started a solo career. This spring, she’ll release her new EP All My Blood, which will contain her recent single Down Down and the brand-new follow-up Everything Hurts.

The latter sounds like a very well executed attempt to make Fleetwood Mac’s Tango In The Night-era sound her own. The track even has the same driving rhythmic basis as Big Love. Lyrically, Everything Hurts is a triumphant empowerment anthem, inspired by ‘the moment that survival instincts kick in during a crisis’. “We’re taught as women to constantly withstand everything in all of our relationships, romantic or otherwise, so things have to be really bad to get the strength to fight for fair treatment and justice,” she says. “Because we’re taught not to speak out, it’s in those rock bottom situations that we tend to find or remember our power.”

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

indie | pop

single track, wildcard

Wildcard (week 1):
The Lottery Winners – That’s Not Entertainment

January 2nd, 2019

Let me start the new year with a song from late 2018, that was criminally overlooked by… well, everybody really. Including me. And being overlooked isn’t going to win this band the lottery, so I’d better set things straight…

The Lottery Winners are a British four-piece, formed in 2008 by Thom Rylance (vocals/guitar), Robert Lally (guitar/vocals), Katie Lloyd (bass/vocals), and Joe Singleton (drums). They were signed to Sire Records, a subsidiary of Warner Records, by music mogul Seymour Stein in 2016.

After releasing a few singles throughout the years, and extensive touring late 2016 and early 2017, the band are now working on their debut album. That’s Not Entertainment is the first, rather brilliant single off it, and it deserves to be a hit. For starters, it’s the first Carte Blanche Music Wildcard of 2019!

In the Wildcards 2019 playlist you can find all of this year’s Carte Blanche Music Wildcards so far.

pop | rock

chart, year-end chart

Your Favourites (2018)

January 1st, 2019

Happy New Year from ‘all of us’ (that’s me) at Carte Blanche Music! Like the past year, 2019 will undoubtedly be full of musical surprises. Especially when you’re open to let some new sounds into your life. And if you don’t have the time to find them yourself, please let me help! Simply follow the Carte Blanche Music playlist on Spotify for daily updates of great new music, or bookmark this blog.

Carte Blanche Music doesn’t intend to list all new releases. On the contrary: I make a strict selection and only give you the best new music, twice a day. Since last year, I restrict the number of recommendations to two per day: one around 9AM, and the other around 7PM (CET). This limitation provided for a 35% increase of the number of views per post in 2018.

This brings us to the question: which of my recommendations have been viewed the most throughout the year? In other words: what are your favourites of 2018? The answer is: a totally different set of songs than my year-end list, the Carte Blanche Music Top 2018 😉 and that’s totally fine!

Just a few statistics to kick things off:

Your Favourites (2018) contain nine songs that were in Your Favourites (2017) already, and apparently stuck with you
The full Top 3 of your list contains Dutch artists (in total, there are 21 tracks by acts from the Netherlands. Dutch fans are the best)
36% of the visitors are Dutch (like myself … Hi mom!)
19% of the visitors are Americans, 16% are from the UK; a total of 87 nationalities have come by in 2018 (dank je wel, thanks, merci, obrigado, danke schön, etc.!)
26% of all traffic comes from direct searches for specific titles, so Carte Blanche Music also seems to have an archive function
Other important referrers are Facebook (22%), and Twitter (13%)
Impressive: the relatively high position of Mokono’s debut single Signs, the final Carte Blanche Music Wildcard of 2018

Okay, I can hear you thinking: ‘Don’t bore us, get to the chorus’, so here they are… Just two more things: all of these great songs (plus 1.000 more) are in my Carte Blanche Music 2018 playlist, and the links below direct you to my original recommendations for more information. Now, enjoy the music! Read More →

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Bear Hands (feat. Ursula Rose) – Blue Lips

As December Falls – On The Edge

Werner’s Weekly (week 2)

European Border Breakers Chart 4 January 2019

Christon – Closer To A New Day

Cat Pierce – Human Experience

900 Miles feat. The Kooks – Hold Tight

Emmy Wildwood – Everything Hurts

Wildcard (week 1):
The Lottery Winners – That’s Not Entertainment

Your Favourites (2018)

Wildcard (week 4)

Werner’s Weekly (week 4)

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