#365ArtDrops Part 6

The great music drought of 2015 goes on then. There’s been a little chink of light here, a taste of Stuff there, some instrumental Death Grips to keep our lips moist for a day or two, still feels like a drought though.  We’ve have to resort to old Ramones demos, bits of really old Kraftwerk (and their days of flutes and long hair) to keep us going. That C Duncan single (that wasn’t quite as good as his previous one) was satisfying for a moment, that Nick Edward Harris track from his forthcoming album kept us going for a while while we waited, there was the raw thrashing metallic throwback of those long-haired punks Venom of course, and that Russian caress of 90’s shoegazing fluffiness that is the new Pinkshinyultrablast album. And yes, that brilliant bit of sunny pop from the new Go! Team album. We’ve had the English six-string cacophonists Desmadrados Soldados De Ventura, that new split 10″er from Scotland’s Ex-Wives. There’s been one or two things to just about hydrate us and get us though this ongoing musical drought, there’s the promise of the bits of the Heldinky album that we’ve actually heard, the tastes of the new Peter kernel album, the question of who Det Skandalose Orkestra are? We are still in a drought situation though, this has been a slow year for new exciting music so far. We click on the links we find in the hyperbole-drenched press release e.mails from the record labels and thier appointed voices insist on sending us, we’re hitting links on social media, the Pop Group are exciting us, but this is a drought, and it rather looks like the only way to deal with it today is with the two hours of Scott Walker that someone has posted on YouTube, what more  could you need to get through a drought?

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Will the drought end today? Well Ash Is A Robot’s new released isn’t going to help, and the threat of a five CD box set of Looper released via Mute Records isn’t going to solve much. of anything either.  Looper kind of vaguely made a mark back there, but a five album retrospective? Is anyone that bothered?  Kind of like this new track from Sonnymoon,  no idea who they are but this e.mail tells us they’ve just announced a new record out on March 23^rd. Lead track can be heard, well it can be heard right here actually…

The rest of the Sonnymoon album, The Courage Of Present Times, is only for our ears and not for yours right now. Rather like some of it, not a cure for the drought though…

“Sonnymoon, a duo from Boston, have an intuitive knack for merging a strong melody with loose grooves and sleek textures.” said someone or other, we take it that’s Boston MA over there in the USA.  “At various points it will seem as though you are listening to electronica, at other times R&B, jazz, avant-garde, even pop. Some of the songs will sound like all of the above, at once, while others will make you wonder whether you are listening to a brand new, as yet unnamed genre… Their SoundCloud says they come from Earth, but they are out of this world.”  The Guardian

The suspicion has to be that the when the Sonnymoon album tracks do start to emerge, they’ll be the more commercial and less experimental ones, don’t let those tracks stop you exploring the whole of  The Courage Of Present Times when it does come out in late March.

Hang on, here comes the next press release; “Meet your new favourite band!!  Anglo-Cali rockers We Are Harlot are set to unleash their eponymous debut album via Roadrunner Records on 30th March”, Roadrunner, that’ll be the label that inflicted Nickelback on us, actually I think I preferred the dread that was Nickelback! This is a melting pot of everything bad about soft rock, pub rock ‘n roll, hair metal and the kind of very conservative music made by people with bad beards and tedious tattoos. We most certainly have not met our new favourite band! Reluctant  to even give you the link to what we just had to listen to on your behalf, you really should thank us for doing all this so you don’t have to, do not click on this link. What did become of Bennet anyway?  You went and clicked on the link didn’t you!? I did warn you, and look at this, “Rock Sound and Alternative Press both named the album in their ‘Most Anticipated Albums of 2015’ lists”, must remember to ignore anything those two publications have to offer then, is Rocksound still around? Hang on, let’s give “our new favourite band” another chance, nah, this Denial track is just as bad as the other dreadful thing, this is like eating yesterday’s pizza.

And while we’re trawling through all these things, why do all these press releases use the same seven or eight words?! I guess this new Radiator Kings album is okay if the idea of “Tom Waits locked in a room for a month with nothing but a copy of Springstein’’s Nebraska” excites you, sound like a beige day over at Jackson Browne‘s house listened to rejected outtakes from an album The Band never bothered to release.  The drought goes on….