I'm not going to lie : I was scared about 2017, music wise. Most of my favourite bands have released their new albums in 2016 already, and I wondered who on Earth would be there to provide me with new sounds. Fear not, myself - so far, 2017 is a very solid year for music, and February is yet another proof of it.
Tours & Festivals
It's that time of the year again : festival season is coming closer and closer, and names are dropped by the ton every hour of every day. My two favourites have followed the tradition, of course. Download opened the month by announcing over 45 names, including the likes of A Day To Remember, Northlane, State Champs, As It Is, Moose Blood, The LaFontaines or Dinosaur Pile-Up. It was announced the day after I was starting to come to terms with not going this year - now that's just plain rude.
Slam Dunk, which I am very much going to, announced about twenty names this month, and I like a whole lot of them : Deaf Havana, We Are The Ocean (for their last ever festival appearances), The Maine, Sorority Noise, Stray From The Path, Seaway, Boston Manor, The Ataris, Neck Deep and Turnover. Someone will have to try and find a way to split themselves in two. That someone is me.
(There was also another Reading & Leeds announcement, and I find it a bit sad, empty and samey. Eminem again, really?)
Bury Tomorrow have finally announced the bands that will support them on what will be their biggest headline tour ever. Alongside the excellent Crossfaith (who will most definitely bring the party) will be the equally excellent Black Peaks, and Any Given Day, that I have yet to listen to. I trust Bury Tomorrow, though. They're probably excellent too.
As if blink-182 going on tour wasn't great enough as it is, they are offering us brilliant support acts in the process. The UK will have Frank Turner and The Sleeping Souls and one of my favourite bands, The Front Bottoms, on their shores, and mainland Europe gets none other than A Day To Remember. Winning the lottery seems a great option right now.
The spring will be very busy for Cambridge boys Mallory Knox. After finishing their own headline tour in April, they will accompany Enter Shikari on their European stint to celebrate the ten year anniversary of Take To The Skies, and then, will join Canadian pop punks Simple Plan for the fifteen year anniversary of No Pads, No Helmets... Just Balls. I shall be everywhere. How, no one knows, but I shall be there.
Albums & EPs
I have started listening to Lower Than Atlantis with World Record and, since then, I have been a firm fan of the London quartet, supporting their every endeavour and accumulating the live experiences. I was very excited to hear their fifth album, Safe in Sound, and I have not been disappointed. One of my favourite things about their work, and one of the things that made them stand out for me is how accessible their music is, and then, when you think twice, it's not that easy to get into. The structure of their songs and their lyrical content is different from the trend - they've never really been a trendy band, to be fair. Safe in Sound, in that regard, is a true Lower Than Atlantis record. The songs are raw and disconcertingly honest (Had Enough, Money), and when they're about the most sung about subject of all, love, they have a twist no one else really has (the beautiful I Would and its subtle Jimmy Eat World like influences). In Safe in Sound, LTA have experimented with new sounds - the excellent Boomerang is more electronic than anything they've ever done, I Don't Want to Be Here Anymore features strings. All those changes and risks taken showcases Lower Than Atlantis' extreme versatility and strengths : Mike Duce's songwriting and the fact that you can never, absolutely never pigeonhole them. Safe in Sound is evolution done right, grand at times and pure, unalterated LTA the whole way through, and hearing it live is going to be a treat.
Decade hadn't released a new album since 2014's Good Luck, and let me tell you one thing - Pleasantries was more than worth the wait. It is desperately catchy from the get go, to a point where it would make you sing along to literally anything - I mean, Anaemia is about vocalist Alex Sears finding out he had a hole in his heart and heart murmur aged fourteen, and yet you find yourself tapping your toes to the beat and echoing the words. I'm not going to beat around the bush here - Pleasantries is nothing short of perfect. It has all the elements I have adored in Good Luck, the charm and the catchiness that made me fall head over heels in love with Decade in the first place, and yet it's not a carbon copy of its predecessor. The nineties sound that was hinted at in Good Luck is explored more this time in songs like Wasted or Geist. Pleasantries is more mature, follows a more logical path (Wasted, Sunbeam and Brand New Again are a little story of their own), and it keeps everything that makes Decade the brilliant band they are. Every song is beautifully crafted and created, the song writing is stunning and full of metaphors (Sunbeam, Peach Milk), and it ends in the little explosion that is Capsules, a track about existential dread and the common "what the fuck am I doing here?" worries. If you needed a sensitive, wonderful reminder that you're not alone in this little thing called being a human being, listen to Pleasantries. (There's also a lot of tambourine, Smart Casual era Kids In Glass Houses vibes in Daisy May and Alex Sears' heavenly high notes in Human Being. What's not to love about that)
In Boy Blue, The Menzingers wonder "Is it finally true we're not getting any younger?", and I can't think of a better way to describe After the Party. At first glance (and listen!), it's catchy pop punk with hints of the early noughties and, at times, 80s influences (Lookers, Living Ain't Easy). Once you scratch the sunny surface, though, you realise it's deeply deceiving - kinda like the noughties song you sing along to in a club, dancing beer in hand without stopping to realise how damn sad the lyrics are. After the Party is a giant metaphor about getting older and growing old, thirteen different ways of wondering where did our youth go, and now the party's over, what the fuck do we do and where do we go from here. It's full of nostalgia (Thick As Thieves, Tellin' Lies), full of reminiscing (Lookers), and full of disillusion about the trials and tribulations of becoming an adult, a real life one, with troubles and worries (Midwestern States). It's an album that tries to come to terms with growing up, with dreams that haven't come true, with other people growing up and you feel left out. It's a beautiful, bittersweet tribute to the good old days and the growing pains of your mid to late twenties.
My interest for Ryan Adams' music was sparked when, in 2015, he released his very own take on one of my all-time favourite albums, 1989 by Taylor Swift. Prisoner, though, is the first of his albums that I properly discover. The eighties vibe I had loved in 1989 is still there, alongside some country music elements I didn't know to expect (harmonica, anyone?). There's something about his music that makes me feel like the cool girl in an eighties film, and there's something about his music and his way with words that is so vivid and colourful, so full of emotion, it feels like every single one of his songs is soundtrack material. I don't know much about Ryan Adams, but I am getting hooked, slowly but surely, and I can tell Prisoner is one beautiful album. When someone writes songs like Shiver and Shake or To Be Without You, so powerful I could actually shiver and shake over an imaginary someone I'd miss, I'm usually on board, because this is what music is all about.
This month's pop-punk fix is provided by Farnham's very own Homebound and their newest EP, The Mould You Build Yourself Around. I could play it cool and say it's just pop punk with a lot of angry finger pointing and pizza slices being thrown around the place but a) I like the vocals way too much for that, there's something I can't quite pinpoint that gets to me more than your average shouty dude and b) the Four Year Strong vibes, especially in Distrait, are so much more present than your average "we're trying to be The Story So Far" pop punk vibes. The Mould You Build Yourself Around isn't reinventing the wheel of pop punk, but it's surprising, and it's bringing its own, personal vision to it, and I am very much on board with it.
In Boy Blue, The Menzingers wonder "Is it finally true we're not getting any younger?", and I can't think of a better way to describe After the Party. At first glance (and listen!), it's catchy pop punk with hints of the early noughties and, at times, 80s influences (Lookers, Living Ain't Easy). Once you scratch the sunny surface, though, you realise it's deeply deceiving - kinda like the noughties song you sing along to in a club, dancing beer in hand without stopping to realise how damn sad the lyrics are. After the Party is a giant metaphor about getting older and growing old, thirteen different ways of wondering where did our youth go, and now the party's over, what the fuck do we do and where do we go from here. It's full of nostalgia (Thick As Thieves, Tellin' Lies), full of reminiscing (Lookers), and full of disillusion about the trials and tribulations of becoming an adult, a real life one, with troubles and worries (Midwestern States). It's an album that tries to come to terms with growing up, with dreams that haven't come true, with other people growing up and you feel left out. It's a beautiful, bittersweet tribute to the good old days and the growing pains of your mid to late twenties.
My interest for Ryan Adams' music was sparked when, in 2015, he released his very own take on one of my all-time favourite albums, 1989 by Taylor Swift. Prisoner, though, is the first of his albums that I properly discover. The eighties vibe I had loved in 1989 is still there, alongside some country music elements I didn't know to expect (harmonica, anyone?). There's something about his music that makes me feel like the cool girl in an eighties film, and there's something about his music and his way with words that is so vivid and colourful, so full of emotion, it feels like every single one of his songs is soundtrack material. I don't know much about Ryan Adams, but I am getting hooked, slowly but surely, and I can tell Prisoner is one beautiful album. When someone writes songs like Shiver and Shake or To Be Without You, so powerful I could actually shiver and shake over an imaginary someone I'd miss, I'm usually on board, because this is what music is all about.
This month's pop-punk fix is provided by Farnham's very own Homebound and their newest EP, The Mould You Build Yourself Around. I could play it cool and say it's just pop punk with a lot of angry finger pointing and pizza slices being thrown around the place but a) I like the vocals way too much for that, there's something I can't quite pinpoint that gets to me more than your average shouty dude and b) the Four Year Strong vibes, especially in Distrait, are so much more present than your average "we're trying to be The Story So Far" pop punk vibes. The Mould You Build Yourself Around isn't reinventing the wheel of pop punk, but it's surprising, and it's bringing its own, personal vision to it, and I am very much on board with it.
An album I didn't like as much as I thought I would is Zombies in Broadway by Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness. I love Andrew McMahon, I do, and I've always loved Jack's Mannequin and Something Corporate a great deal. I find it hard to get into Zombies by Broadway. It's not a bad album per se, it's good, solid pop music with catchy hooks and a song like So Close could easily stay stuck in my head to the point of insanity. But I can't get over the twenty one pilots vibes everywhere (I mean, Andrew is almost rapping in Brooklyn, You're Killing Me) and where it's not twenty one pilots, it's inspired by One Republic, and I can't do more than the odd song here and there. It's a shame because I love Andrew, I really do.
THE PLAYLIST
This month's playlist includes :
- As always, extracts from the albums that stood out, and tracks to get you excited for future releases (namely While She Sleeps. It's already a strong contender for Album of the Year and it hasn't even been released)
- Songs that have been graced with music videos - As It Is' Hey Rachel will tug on your heartstrings, The Summer Set's Jean Jacket will take you on the ride of a lifetime, Architects allow you to relive their beautiful Brixton headliner in Gravity, The Maine show you what it's like to be in a band in Bad Behavior and if you needed to have your feelings toyed with a little more, With Confidence have picked the stunning ballad Long Night as a new single.
- Two pop punk heavyweights coming back in the form of All Time Low and the legends who gave them their name, New Found Glory.
- Linkin Park coming back, too, and surprising everyone in the process because nope, that's not what you expected them to do, and nope, that's also not going back to Hybrid Theory sounds but yes, it's actually really good.
- Some great rock music with Vant and The Amazons.
- The catchiest song released this year, at least, courtesy of pop princess Katy Perry.
- Lana Del Rey coming back. Need I say more?
- Sorority Noise being Sorority Noise - honesty and feelings at their finest. They have also released a beautiful cover of my favourite Brand New song, Me Vs Maradona Vs Elvis. You should listen to that too.
- Speaking of covers, Marcus Bridge of Northlane released a cover of Pvris' Holy and it's gorgeous. That's also something you should be listening to.
- I'm doing this for the greater good because it breaks my heart and makes me miss Brighton a lot more than I already do, but checking out the brilliant Murderhouse isn't that bad an idea.