Northampton isn't famous for it's rock'n'roll. There's goth kings Bauhaus, perennial rockabilly rebels The Jets, crooner Des O'Connor and rapper Slowthai, but that's about it.
Well, you can add Empyre to that list, as the Northampton quartet triumphed in our most recent Tracks Of The Week contest with their Hit And Run single, and deservedly so. We hope they'll raise a glass in celebration, perhaps at the King Billy. Good pub, that.
Enjoying the relative success of second and third positions were Troy Redfern's The Fever and Those Damn Crows' See You Again, so congratulations to them too. There's a new batch of hopefuls below, and we hope you enjoy funnelling them into your ears.
The Golden Grass - Howlin
New York trio The Golden Grass return to our lives with a swinging psych-boogie wonderland that stealthily packs in a lot more deft fills and shifts than that straight-ahead, southern-tinged opening verse might suggest. Things quickly get weirder, but never too weird to be fun. If Traffic and The Pretty Things hung out in the swamp with Lynyrd Skynyrd and a few hallucinogens, they might have emerged with something like this. We also love that their upcoming album (out in April) is called Life Is Much Stranger. Exactly, life is much stranger!
Arielle - ‘73
There are young ‘old souls’ and then there’s Arielle. A bone-deep analogue junkie with her own signature Brian May guitar, she’s just released a driving, slide-heavy new single (and the title track of her next album), which is also a love letter to her orange 1973 Volkswagen Bay Window Bus – straight out of the Almost Famous parking lot. The other, equally old-school vehicles in the accompanying video are namechecked by model and year. And the music itself? A pocket-sized Aladdin’s Cave of 60s and early 70s colour: all Stevie Nicks vibes, Allmans sunshine and great wardrobe.
Märvel - Catch 22
Rocking and raging like the leather-trousered lovechild of The Hellacopters and Thin Lizzy, this newly released deep cut from the Märvel vaults (part of a forthcoming compilation) is rock’n’roll for boozing and poring over your old gig passes and 7-inches – pausing every so often to declare ‘yeeeehh!’ and ‘theydonmakeemlikethisanymore!’. Except of course they do, or at least these guys do. “Sometimes, no matter how hard you try you end up with your beard in the mailbox or pants down to your ankles with a school-bus full of idiots laughing at you,” the band reason, of the drive behind the song (well… don’t we all?). “You just can‘t win. And even more sometimes, you‘re in a relationship where you can‘t stand each other but still can‘t exist without each other.”
The White Buffalo - Act III: Heart Attack
A burly, Jesus-bearded master of dark outlaw/americana storytelling, Jake Smith tends to have a brooding aura about him. Almost zen, even. So this toe-tapping, honkytonk-thumping barnstormer came as a fun surprise, as did Smith’s sick moves in the video. Okay, so there’s clearly pain behind the partying, but he flits between both faces so seamlessly you’re never quite sure which is which, making it all the more relatable somehow; after all, haven’t most of us tried to drink/dance/vogue our way past our demons at some point?
The Cold Stares - Throw That Stone
"I was drawing from my heroes like Son House, Blind Willie Johnson and even Johnny Cash,” says singer/guitarist Chris Tapp, of this eerie, atmospheric wreath of acoustic delta smoke, cut through with the darkest outlaw country. “To me, Throw That Stone speaks to the redemption that can be found by not judging others. I felt that was what Cash did with the prison stuff, and Son and Willie did that with blending the gospel into everyday life." One of the softer numbers from their next album, Voices, out in March.
L.A. Edwards - Already Gone
The rising Californian family’s (LA and his brothers Jay and Jerry) new video features a boxing match in a gothic western bar (sort of like an episode of Cheers, but more fighty). It pairs atmospherically with Already Gone, a bright, dreamy swirl of americana, pop and heartland rock textures – powered by a big-hearted, singalong melody, with pleasingly bittersweet twists that creep up just when you think you’ve got its major-key groove figured out.
Malina Moye - Say My Name
"Guitar rich, bad bitch," sings guitar sensation Malina Moye, before rhyming it with "Upside down Hendrix licks". It's a great line, and the song is pretty good too. It nestles comfortably at the pop/r&b end of the pop-rock spectrum, but there's some blistering solo work and enough squelch in the riff to conjure up the spirit of Jack White. Moye has played alongside Buddy Guy, Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Eric Gales, but Say My Name is very much her own thing. "Saying a person’s name forces you to understand someone’s story," she says. "And view them as a person and not just as a number or a hashtag."
The Last Rockstars - The Last Rockstars (Paris Mix)
It's Yoshiki and his superstar pals, and the best part of a million views in just two days tells you exactly what kind of level of anticipation there is for this most super of Japanese supergroups. The Last Rockstars begins with Yoshiki alone at the piano, but soon spins off on all sorts of crazed tangents, with riffs that thunder and a chorus that soars like an eagle and a lyric that follows the line "we are the rock stars" with credentials. Shiny and impressive.
