It’s been our hardest-ever weekend on the Listening Post. Thirty of the best new tunes we’ve ever had together in one place – but then quite unbelieveable numbers of people showed up with a strange bias towards one particular artist. Our warmest thanks to all the loyal friends who gave up their time to listen to all thirty tracks and agonise over the five they loved best. Team Freshnet’s Simon Poole brings you the results…
Click Read More for the full list.
ALEX HIGHTON – Hip With The Kids
Well this is the perfect track to ease us into this week’s Fresh Faves. All aspects of this song seem to fit together like a jigsaw, Alex’s clear and clever lyrics alongside the troubadour-esque guitar are a thing of beauty. Even if this style of music isn’t your bag, you can’t help but imagine kicking back in the sun with a niiice chilled pint of cider in hand. Lovely!
BON ARROW & DEADLY STARE – LonelyRoad
Everything about this one shouldn’t work, but somehow does, and does so really well. If indeed this is the product of just a person letting go in the back room like it says on Bon Arrow’s Facebook page, then I’d like to hear more from letting go in other rooms too. It’s like the music of Tom Waits with the harmonies of Minnie Ripperton, mad and beautiful all at the same time.
BOOK THIEVES – Spinning Yarns
This four piece Liverpool band hit the indie-rock nail right on the head. The music and vocals seem to take turns throughout and then give in to the classic big crescendo ending. If it’s indie-rock you want, look no further.
DEBS McCOY – Nightingale
Singer songwriters have it quite hard really, usually one person with an acoustic guitar, the possibilities aren’t really endless, are they? Thankfully though, from time to time someone like Debs McCoy will come along, make your ears prick up – and make you think that there is still life in the genre yet.
FORMES – Turn Around
I thought when Turn Around first kicked in it was going to be some Pink Floyd cover, but then the vocals of Steve McNamara take you somewhere else, not too far away, but far enough. This bunch of Yorkshire lads can be found gigging around Leeds if you fancy some psychedelic head nodding.
HOLY VESSELS – Springtime Bloom
Brighton four piece Holy Vessels bring a nice slice of Americana with a dusting of Country and Western to this week’s Fresh Faves. Even if these two genres are not close to your heart, I dare you to not let Springtime Bloom get at least one of your feet tapping, and maybe a bit of thigh slapping may follow.
LA SHARK – Mr Modern Man
Our Host with the Most did a Post about this one just the other day… check it out here
MONMON – Punch Drunk
BOOM, and now you’re awake aren’t you. Punch Drunk is exactly how I felt when I first heard it amongst this week’s playlist. My first impression was Dr. Feelgood, which is a good thing, but then MonMon take it a little further from the pubrock and onto something more. I’ll be keeping an eye out for these guys playing in my neck of the woods, although I’m sure I’ll hear them coming.
SCOTT RUDD – Bullshit Love
Well apparently Scott Rudd’s music is full of dark thoughts and regret, this may very well be the case, but thankfully it doesn’t drag me to those places. In fact it does quite the opposite and even the title of Bullshit Love puts a smile on my face. It’s banged out at just the right pace to stop the subject matter from darkening your day.
SEA KAY – Stride
Stride is the winner of the shortest Fresh Fave this week. The simplicity in the song has an almost childlike feel to it, even to the point that some of the lines seem a little too long for the verses, but this doesn’t matter in the slightest, just like when you used to leave the square peg lodged in the round hole. It might not fit, but so what.
THE PAPERCLIP FORUM – Hazard Lights
Now if you’ve been waiting all these years to hear an Aphex Twin and Crass collaboration, then your wait will be a long one. Alternatively you could do what I did and listen to Hazard Lights by Paperclip Forum. I’m glad this one made the grade this week, as this lovely noise is my personal Fresh Fave of the week.
WOODMAN STONE – Does Madonna Dream?
I’m kind of hoping that the artist’s name is in fact his real name because it is mighty cool. If it isn’t then I’m onto Deed Poll first thing. Does Madonna Dream ticks a lot of my “like” boxes: trumpets, snares and – most of all – a whole song written around a single thought that could quite easily pop into any normal person’s head and then pop straight back out again. Thankfully Woodman Stone is on hand to expand these thoughts and put them to music.
Posted by Simon 9 July 2012
Argh didn’t quite make it to the top table this week! (obviously these are all better tunes).
We got excited at one point on Saturday that we might make it, but because of the voting shenanegans, we’re left feeling (roll out football references) sick as a parrot with a head cold. Anyway a big thank you to everyone who did listen vote properly, next time we will try harder.
Lovely to hear from you Terrorists. A few things…
1) these Fresh Faves aren’t “better” tunes than the others in Batch 20 – it’s only that more people happened to rate these in their Top Five. But music’s always subjective.
2) Getting into the Fresh Faves doesn’t automatically guarantee radio airplay on my 6 Music shows – again, music’s always subjective.
3) I pick my own personal favourites – not just from the whole Listening Post – but from everything submitted to our dropbox here on Mondays-Thursdays.
4) Your track “Harder” is definitely one of those favourites and will be appearing on my BBC Introducing Mixtape sometime in the next few weeks.
5) And we can do that because you – unlike three of this week’s Fresh Faves – actually bothered to read the instructions and upload your track to BBC Introducing in the first place!
Hia Tom cheers for the thumbs! Sorry ‘better’ wasn’t the right word, indeed we liked some of the tunes much more than our own (and thought the Faves all had merit to be ahead), as you say with a mix of tunes you’re going to get a bunch of subjective likes (& dislikes).
A great big handshake and high five to all the kind people who listened to our track, especially those who enjoyed it enough to say so. Also thanks to the other bands for their ace tunes, this was my first trip to the listening post, but with this kind of quality I will be back regularly for a listen.
Thanks very much Tom and everyone who listened to (and liked) my song. I’m one of the guilty three who didn’t upload their song properly! I have given myself a slap and rectified this now. Cheers Al
Hi All,
thanks SO much to everyone who took the time to listen to my track and to vote for it…..really blown away that folks liked it to be honest. Oh, and……ahem….thanks to the one rather enthusiastic/overzelous comment that made me giggle.
There were so many top tunes up this week. I really enjoyed going through them all….and downloaded a few to listen to in the car on the way down to the shops……while nursing some glandular fever-type thing and generally feeling pretty pants……the tunes were certainly a good tonic.
Thanks to all who make this post possible and for your time..(moderators…contributers…..listeners….voters…..et al..)…..I’ll be back to listen and hopefully contribute again.
Toodlepip
Debs
Cheers-a-lot to you all.
Tom and the team – you have a good thing going here.
Congrats to those who made it to the final list, some really great (and varied) tunes in there.
Thanks to those who listened to my song, means a lot! Thanks also to Tom and the introducing team, I will definitely be recommending this to other people and will enter again at some point!
Just noticed my BBC introducing wasn’t updated with the track I submitted…d’oh!
p.s. wooooah! I somehow seemed to have missed listening to ‘Bon Arrow & Deadly Stare’ until now – just brilliant!
images of Holly Golightly & The Brokeoffs meeting Willy Wonka……..on Diazepam (the lot of them!)…….and I mean that in a REALLY positive way! Great great track
D
What a lovely day! It’s so good to feel chosen, particularly by such gifted musicians and full on music lovers. It’s good to feel part of something as well – the internet can be a lonely place. I’m afraid I shall keep on posting now until you tire of me!
Best Wishes One and All
The name, Simon? I shall write about that elsewhere and post a link
I’m made up LONELY ROAD made it into the FRESH FAVES. However I must say this song is a collaboration between BON ARROW (me) and DEADLY STARE (Vid & Scott)- all the vocals done in the back room on laptop – all music done in a basement in Montreal. Credits – listed on BON ARROW soundcloud page.
Oh and I adore Tom Waits!
Thanks for the comment Debs McCoy. Nice ‘Nightingale’ yourself.
Thanks so much for including Hazard Lights and to everyone who listened and liked it. It’s the third track I’ve uploaded here and I’ve missed out twice before, so it feels even better to make the cut this time!
I’ll definitely be back next week to see the next batch. As Sea Kay said, you have a good thing going on here.
Glad to be a part of the first batch voting. Even though my song didn’t get a mention here, it was nice to receive an email that my song had been listened to on BBC Introducing. Thanks for the votes and I look forward to sending more material soon.
Thanks a lot Team Freshnet fir includin’ us on the Listenin’ Post again an thanks tae everyone who gave oor Fancy Pants a blast! Sorry we couldnae listen in an vote this week but we were survivin’ the mudbath that was T in The Park! Back votin’ next week an hopefully back on the listenin’ post soon. Cheers everyone! Steve an Rich Mule.
What a brilliant experience. Massive thanks to Tom and everyone in the Freshnet Team. And also massive thanks to all who took the time to listen, and to vote. We would love to stick around and give feedback to artists and contribute to this forum in the future, and we are looking forward to discovering new music, artists. Who knows maybe we can even arrange some meet ups, jams, gigs and collaborations:)
On that matter – yes, any of you planning a trip to France and thinking of planning a Paris gig, do be in touch and maybe we can sort something out.
PS they’re suckers for British bands over here (that hasn’t changed for at least 50 years)
Hello, and thank you to everyone who voted for us we are very happy to be in this list. Thank you to Tom Robinson as well for picking us in the first place and listening.x
Such a nice thing to be involved in. Think we gave a good account of ourselves and we’ll be back soon with another track. Enjoyed listening to so many of the other tunes. I’ll remember to vote next time too.. cheers!!
Chuffed to have made it onto the listening post and even more chuffed to have picked up a few votes and some new great music to listen to. Thanks to all.
Really happy to see a system as simple as vote for what you like, rather than vote for your mates band. Glad to see a lot of people getting involved too. Cheers for anyone who had a listen to our track. Peace x
A great batch of songs this week, was great to see our track in the fresh picks, thanks to all who voted! Nice to receive an email from the BBC Introducing team too to say our track has been listened to.
@Sea Kay – Well if you can set us up then we would love to come over to Paris and take the Capital by storm…or maybe just play a few tracks haha. If you want, email me and we will see if we can arrange a gig swap or something. I know a nice little place in Liverpool that used to be big in the 90’s, thats back up and running, and would be a fine place for anyone to play!! 🙂
Helps if I include our email addtrss!!
bookthieves@hotmail.co.uk
Hi SeaKay, MonMon would consider un sojourn de Paris.