Looking back on some of the origins of bands we recommended in our first year. We want to see what kind of music was hitting our radar.
We recommended 22 English acts in our first year of blogging about new music. That’s just over 10% of the musical artist we recommended. Candidly some of our favorites were rockers like The Avenues and The Great Leslie which are relative newcomers we hope you’ll get on your radar. This is a sound we love, and we look forward to anything new from these bands (the same can be said for longtime rockers Circa Waves and Sea Girls). One big surprise came from then-19-year-old guitar savant Tom Sheldon. Tom reached out and shared his song “Don’t Help.” The song blew us away.
Somewhere between rock and pop, we found bands like Carpark, Fickle Friends, and Dolores Forever. Also in this group were singer/songwriters who created great songs (Hattie Briggs and Luke Sital-Singh certainly stood out).
Olivia Dean, Sam Henshaw, and Hope Tala caught our ears and garnered recommendations for R&B tunes. If you haven’t found Sam Henshaw you are missing out on an absolute beast!
Yard Act and Black Country, New Road came out of the Post-Brexit New Wave movement and put out some of the most unique music that was recommended. I still can’t get enough of Yard Act’s “Dead Horse.”
The great thing about music today is that listeners don’t have to settle for what is on corporate or local radio (if local radio exists in your area). Steaming opens the opportunity to hear bands from all over the world. We hope those who follow our Instagram and those who read the blog take full advantage of this and check out these bands.