Browsing Tag indie
The Lottery Winners – Little Things
2019 started with a bang, with The Lottery Winners’ That’s Not Entertainment as a (belated) Carte Blanche Music Wildcard. And now, the band have another go at the top prize. Little Things is the third single to be released ahead of their self-titled debut album, which is due on 13 March 2020.
The Lottery Winners is an album the band have spent the last two years recording tracks for, after being discovered by music industry legend Seymour Stein. You may know some of the other artists he signed, like a certain Madonna, and bands called The Ramones and Talking Heads (to name but a few). The album was produced by Tristem Ivemy (Frank Turner, The Holloways) and mastered at Abbey Road.
“This was a difficult song for me to write. It’s quite a sad one”, reflects frontman Thom Rylance. “It’s amazing how everything changes when you lose someone. Things become a lot more important. It does have a catchy chorus, and some nice ‘heys’ though, so don’t worry.”
This may very well be the track for The Lottery Winners to win them the jackpot. As they predicted themselves: ‘there’s nothing bigger than the little things’.
Recommended as well:
The Lottery Winners – That’s Not Entertainment
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
Ride – Jump Jet
(Bass) guitarist Andy Bell (not the Erasure singer) has an impressive CV. After his band Ride demised in 1996, he formed the band Hurricane #1, played bass in Oasis and was the guitarist of its successor band Beady Eye. In 2016 however, Ride reunited as a live band. A year after, they released Weather Diaries, their first album in 20 years.
The follow-up This Is Not A Safe Place came out last August. Following Future Love, Repetition and Clouds Of Saint Marie, Jump Jet is the album’s fourth single. After an intro that moves from The Cure into Simple Minds territory, layer after layer it builds into one of the best songs in the Ride repertoire.
Recommended as well:
Ride – Charm Assault / Home Is A Feeling
Ride – All I Want
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
Werner’s Weekly (week 47)
This is Werner’s Weekly, your compass to the music that matters, containing the two most recent Carte Blanche Music Wildcards, and the best of the other new releases in alphabetical order:
- The Mowgli’s – Fighting With Yourself (Wildcard this week)
- Halie – Good Kids (Wildcard last week)
- Deva St. John – The Information Age
- Dubioza Kolektiv & Manu Chao – Cross The Line
- Jaguar Jonze – Kill Me With Your Love
- Lauran Hibberd – Sweat Patch
- Vant – Mary Don’t Mind
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: Angèle, Fall Out Boy, Neon Trees, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, Pet Shop Boys, Sam Fender, The Veronicas, and many more.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
MarthaGunn – Heaven [2019 Version]
MarthaGunn are a band named after the Brighton folk heroine known as the ‘priestess of the bath’. It features frontwoman Abi Woodman and her close friends Max, Humphrey, Ally and Frankie. They take inspiration from bands ranging from Fleetwood Mac and The Eagles to Mystery Jets and Haim.
Their debut single Heaven has grown into a live favourite since its release in 2016. The band just released a re-recorded version of it, which sounds fresh all over. When sharing the track to the band’s social media, Woodman explained: “When I wrote Heaven, I was playing out a fantasy in my head and exploring a path I could only dream of taking. A few years on and I have stopped living in fantasies. I go after everything my soul desires. Heaven is a song for anyone dreaming of something more.”
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
The Twang – It Feels Like (You’re Wasting My Time)
In 2019, it’s 15 years since Phil Etheridge, Martin Saunders, Jon Watkin, Stu Hartland and Matthew Clinton formed The Twang. I’ve liked them ever since their 2007 debut single Wide Awake.
It took the band five years to come up with their fifth studio album If Confronted Just Go Mad. It marks a more poppy musical direction and the departure of Saunders. Also, it includes vocals from new female singers Cat Mctigue and Rio Hellyer. Both of them also perform for rising star Tom Grennan. Their contribution provides The Twang with a new optimistic sound, as you can hear on their new single It Feels Like (You’re Wasting My Time).
Recommended as well:
The Twang – Everytime
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
Track Dogs – On The Last Night
Track Dogs are a four-piece, taking their name from the NY subway maintenance teams. Although its members are from Ireland, the US and UK, the band are based in Madrid, where they opted for cajón instead of drums and trumpet in place of electric guitar. However, it’s their four-part harmonies that steal the show.
Having recorded over 100 songs during their career, Track Dogs just released their new album Fire On The Rails. It’s only available in its entirety on Bandcamp, not yet on other platforms. The band recorded the album on a Studer A80 analogue tape machine that was recovered from the Abbey Road Studios.
New single On The Last Night contains all of Track Dogs’ trademarks. But the string arrangements by Eli Bishop (Grand Ole Opry, Wynton Marsalis) provide extra depth to their sound.
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
Jaguar Jonze – Kill Me With Your Love
Born in Japan to a Taiwanese mother and Australian father, Deena Lynch currently lives in Brisbane. She is an Instagram artist (as Spectator Jonze), a photographer (Dusky Jonze) and a musician (Jaguar Jonze). But before she picked up the guitar herself, she managed other artists, like The Jungle Giants and Confidence Man.
As a musician, Lynch is influenced by the likes of Portishead, The Last Shadow Puppets, Nick Cave and Angel Olsen. Kill Me With Your Love is only her third single. A spacey spaghetti western rock song, which laments the downsides to love.
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
Lauran Hibberd – Sweat Patch
Hot on the heels of her critically acclaimed debut EP Everything is Dogs, Lauran Hibberd serves a brand new tune. Sweat Patch is another slice of sparkling slacker pop, where she delivers the lyrics in her signature conversational style.
Discussing the tune, Isle Of Wight’s indie darling explains: “Sweat Patch is arguably a song about drugs, but it’s not like I’m trying to be cool about it. I’m pretty much frigid with anything unprescribed. But because of that, this song is based on my idea of that world. There’s loads of songs about getting high, not as many songs about watching and I guess analysing other people do it. I guess this is me, soberly sat in a room watching all of my friends take drugs. I guess there’s also a nod to the elephant in the room, A DUDE. There’s always a dude! And I guess this song stemmed from me being into this guy, but he was pretty much into other things more.”
Recommended as well:
Lauran Hibberd – Hoochie
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
Sorcha Richardson – High In The Garden
Irish singer-songwriter Sorcha Richardson left home for Brooklyn as a teenager to study creative writing. She’d assumed her background as a drummer would lead to her playing in a college band. Instead however, she ended up recording lo-fi demos in her dorm, which gradually picked up traction on SoundCloud. After living in New York for eight years, she moved back to Dublin, where she wrote many of the songs for her debut album First Prize Bravery.
One of my favourite tracks is High In The Garden, which revisits the bitter sweetness of summer. Its vocal melody, bubbly bassline and rhythm section, make for a toe-tappy earworm of a song.
Recommended as well:
Sorcha Richardson – Don’t Talk About It
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
Vant – Mary Don’t Mind
Frontman Mattie Vant reinvented his band Vant. He assembled a new set of musicians around him (Jamie Hall – guitar, and Alice Costelloe – backing vocals) and renewed his song-writing skills. He also started experimenting with every new instrument or bit of software he could get his hands on.
The first fruits of the new-born Vant were present on the EP Exoskeleton. Now, Mattie is ready to drop his second full album. Conceived In The Sky will be out on 10 January 2020. Mary Don’t Mind is further proof of Vant’s talents and gives you something to look out for.
Recommended as well:
Vant – Exoskeleton
Vant – Propaganda Machine
Vant – Beetlebum / Talk Like Thunder
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
