Ones To Watch: Eddi Front to Big Black Delta
This week’s Ones To Watch include the most beautiful song you will hear this year from Eddi Front, and Big Black Delta’s sweary electro-goth.
Wow. ‘Gigantic’, the only track currently available from Brooklyn’s new angel, is simply breathtaking. With only a shatteringly beautiful piano and achingly touching voice, Front (pictured, right) has singlehandedly made all the aloof, edgily whimsical singers with Instagram redundant. Her mournful baladeering is the latest in an exemplary tradition of bringing the torture of break ups to art, but few have given an audience so much profound honesty that you want to cradle each note next to your chest. As she hushes “I’ll be out of this hole soon enough, Take my ring off” you can sense the love dissolving, evoking an hour glass’ disappearing sand. The only thing more heart-wrenching is that there isn’t more to hear yet.
GIGANTIC by EDDI FRONT
This Hoxton trio have the best band name for stammerers like me since Dananananaykroyd. Their jagged beats and gothic guitar crunches come straight from a whiskey joint in hell’s basement which has recently adopted a disco policy. By mixing industrial-lite stomps with sharp synths and Amanda Palmeresque vocals they’ve managed to create a world where The Crow’s wearing John Travolta’s Saturday Night Fever flares and pulling off all the moves. Harmony Boucher’s vocals are startlingly foreboding and their songs’ tempos moan with tension, yet distorted guitars and 80s synths give a poppy openness, which Pills Week particularly exploits. If the nu-noir revolution’s already started then they’re taking it to stadiums.
“Just gimme indie rock!” When Lou Barlow shouted this in 1991 he never would have believed 21 years later those four words would be gospel for four London slackers. Whales In Cubicles sound exactly like all the bands that make 90s distorted rock brilliant, but rather than go all shoegazy as so many London bands are currently doing WIC have opted for huge riffs and apathetic anthems. New single ‘Nowhere Flag’ is swathed in cynical “ooh ooh oohs” which smooch Pavement and Red Kross before being wedgied by Gail Greenwood’s bass. By capturing the carelessness of epic indie rock they’ve given the fuzz box a fresh poppy energy.
Brighton’s Gemma Williams’ enchanting solo masterpieces are laced with lo-fi murder folk and droning harps which are more like PJ Harvey’s foray into the autoharp than Joanna Newsom’s twee fixations. Her voice wobbles with a tender tremolo which disintegrates under her words as though Antony Hegarty has stolen Shane MacGowan’s prowl. The simplicity of the songs on forthcoming album The Bird School Of Being Human, is reflected by the relentless avian theme – all the songs are named after different birds – giving a sincerity and commitment to a concept which Williams has gracefully perfected. The years experimenting with folk and exploring Europe have yielded mesmerising results.
Diego diego by Woodpecker Wooliams
Los Angeles-based gothy-synth tyke, and M83 collaborator, Jonathan Bates is doing everything right. Not only has he stolen Foo Fighters’ trick of naming his band after UFOs and called a song ‘IFUCKINGLOVEYOU’, but he has two drummers, just like Adam Ant – awesome. Each of Bates’ tracks are bruising electro rampages through the 80s, ransacking Ministry for their agro and Sisters of Mercy for their spell book. His rhythms are dominated by piercing snares and pulsing tempos which allow the dark reverberations emanating from the pit of his Macbook to give a wonderfully oppressive depth. If Blade Runner was a vampire movie set in space it would be sound-tracked by Big Black Delta.
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Bongobongoland
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http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=505242887 Robert Cowlin
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