January 19, 2010
With the calendar recently flicking over from the last year of last decade to the first year of this decade, it's time to no longer look back, but forward. And, after consulting with tea leaves, Turkish coffee grounds, animal entrails, beetle tracks, smoke signals, and my dickety knee, I've come up with this red-hot hot list of bands that will treat 2010 as their own personal coming-out party. Some are established indie acts about to get huge, others are hotly-tipped hype bands bound for glory, others just seem like likely types. But all will end '10 better known and loved than they began the year.
DominoThe '00s found Owen Pallett —violin virtuoso turned one-man-band— making music as Final Fantasy, authoring songs about crushes on video-game characters and Dungeons and Dragons-themed concept-records (2006's He Poos Clouds, one of the decade's best albums). Now, legal reasons have convinced the Canadian carrot-top to go moniker-free on the immense and impressive Heartland. Pallett's third album is a narrative-driven set taking place in the fictional, fantasy realm of Spectrum; its suite of spectacularly-orchestrated songs told from the perspective of a farmer, sung unto a God named Owen. It's a work of ambition/hubris that Pallett pulls off with aplomb, and sure to be the set by which he'll truly make his name.
Jason NocitoBaltimore's
Beach House are regular touring buddies of
Grizzly Bear. BH vocalist Victoria Legrand has even lent her voice to a couple of GB cuts: first
Veckatimest standout “Two Weeks,” then “Slow Life” from the
Twilight: New Moon soundtrack. Now, armed with the mighty
Teen Dream, Beach House are staring at a 2010 a lot like their friends' 2009: a slow-building fanbase exploding into unexpected popularity via a very-impressive third LP.
Teen Dream is an album of bashful grandeur, pushing the same simple Beach House instrumentation —organ, guitar, programmed drums, voice— into brilliant, bold new shapes. Expect it to be amongst the year's most praised platters.
3. The Morning Benders
Rough TradeWhen you spend 2009 playing shows with breakout darlings Girls and crossover superstars Grizzly Bear, it seems likely that big things of your own may be brewing. So it goes for San Francisco's Morning Benders, who, though two EPs, one LP, and five years into their existence, have thus far toiled in something resembling obscurity. No chance that'll hold in 2010: the band are sitting on a veritable goldmine in their second record, Big Echo. Produced with requisite sparkle by Grizzly Bear sound-designer Christopher Taylor and due for a March release, worldwide, through the Rough Trade empire, Big Echo is the sound of a band on the brink of blowing up: the Morning Benders buzz starting to build months in advance of the record's release.
4. Warpaint
Angel CeballosDefunct Detroit girl-group Slumber Party coined one of the more musically-evocative portmanteaus of the '00s when titling a record
Psychedelicate. It's a term we can happily apply to glamorous Los Angelino lasses Warpaint, whose delay-draped, drum-spattering, ghostly-sung slowcore drags Cocteau Twins-y dream-pop into gently psychedelic realms. The suspiciously-photogenic trio met at a casting call, but turned their back on acting, and soon thereafter recorded their debut EP,
Exquisite Corpse with Red Hot Chili Peppers guitar goon John Frusciante. Having just signed worldwide to Rough Trade, they've been recording their debut LP with producer Tom Biller (Beck, Karen O, Liars), and will spend early '10 touring with
Yeasayer and Akron/Family.
5. The Strange Boys
In the RedBlatantly retro rock'n'roll bands are rarely much chop, but Austin, Texas natives The Strange Boys manage to make electrifying jams out of electric guitars, valve amps, pushbeat drums, and through-a-toilet-roll vocal yowls. Wearing their love of
Nuggets-era garage-rock tropes proudly on their black leather sleeves, The Strange Boys have the defiant swagger, hook-happy songwriting chops, and unironic
joie de vivre needed to pull off their mock-vintage shtick. Inked to garage-rock institution In the Red in the US and Rough Trade everywhere else, the band are celebrating the February-due arrival of their second record,
Be Brave, by touring through the United States with Chain and the Gang, Deerhunter, and
Spoon.
6. Male Bonding
Sub PopThere's innumerable no-fi, willfully-sloppy, painfully-trebly hipsters clamoring for hype, but Male Bonding have the benefit of being inked to
Sub Pop. The London lads sound a lot like a rockband circa 2010: all post-Abe-Vigoda guitar klang, caterwauling vocals, and boundless energy bundled up into deliberately-crappy recordings that push the levels until songs are saturated in overdriven fuzz. The trio —best buds with post-hype survivors Vivian Girls, obvious fans of
No Age— have some impressive hooks hidden beneath the bad-sounding recordings (like “Year's Not Long,”), and if the scuzz-rock backlash hasn't turned into a tsuanmi by the time their debut LP lands, you should be hearing heaps re: Male Bonding before '10 ends.
7. Surfer Blood
Ian Witlen'90s-styled anthemic indie-rock is due for a big, big revival in 2010, and leading the charge is young Floridian fivesome Surfer Blood. On their raucous, ridiculously cocky debut disc, the band earn comparisons —at various points— to
The Pixies, Dinosaur Jr, Sebadoh,
Spoon, and Weezer, with surf-guitar-esque guitars going from quiet to LOUD as they marshal massive, yell-along, air-drumming-friendly, distortion-crunching choruses. Though their name is semi-ironic, JP Pitts and pals play their six-stringing ruckus with melodies so bright they can only summon summer days; albeit, perhaps, summer afternoons in the early-'90s spent listening to
Surfer Rosa...
8. Freelance Whales
FrenchkissIf you're a New Yorker, you may've passed Freelance Whales on subway platform or sidewalk, kicking out their rollicking twee-pop jams in genuine busker fashion. On their debut LP, Weathervanes (self-released last year; due for proper Frenchkiss release on March 16), the quintet go well beyond the acoustic instruments —banjo, mandolin, harmonium— they haul outdoors, dappling Judah Dadone's high-pitched singing in effects, keyboards, drum-machines, and washes of choral harmony. Armed with both bright melody and detailed production, the band manage to walk that mythical musical line: instantly-memorable yet rewarding on repeat listens. When Weathervanes gets unleashed, don't expect to see Freelance Whales in the subway anytime soon.
9. Suckers
Victoria JacobLast year, Brooklyn oddballs Suckers made a minor splash with their debut, self-titled EP. It featured four-tracks of gloriously indefinable racket, filled with lusty singing, bashed percussion, a warped sense of pop 'classicism,' and inevitable hints of
Animal Collective bubbling under the surface. Fittingly, it came produced by Anand Wilder from Brooklynite genre-defiers
Yeasayer, with whom Suckers share a disregard for stylistic orthodoxy. Since then, the band have been bunkered down making their debut LP with producer Chris Zane (who's worked with Passion Pit and the Walkmen), and, if it's filled with cuts as killer as “
It Gets Your Body Movin',” then the world is truly Suckers' oyster.
10. Sleigh Bells
Will DeitzThe easiest pick to click in 2010 is Sleigh Bells: a band elemental in their brilliance: just rhythm, noise, and energy. Whilst Derek Miller bashes his Akai Beatstation until its ear-bleeding beats crumble into fuzz, Alexis Krauss coos, caterwauls, and screams; these noisy jams openly evoke M.I.A., early
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and shrill Canadian new-ravers Crystal Castles. But, for all the distortion, Sleigh Bells are clearly a pop band: “Crown on the Ground”'s brutal sub-bass and glass-breaking synths doing little to disguise hooks so big and bold they could top the charts. Inundated by hype circa CMJ 2009, the duo are assumedly weighing up million-dollar record-label offers, and will deliver their debut LP before the year is out.
