New York – Liturgy was a different sort of metal band from the start, when their debut album Renihilation came out in 2009. Renihilation sounded like a black metal album, with its witch’s howl screaming and torrential tremolo guitars and shotgun-blast drumming, but there was something else happening as well; it sounded transcendent, like someone
BROOKLYN – In but a few short years, Australia’s Courtney Barnett has become iconic within the indie under-culture for achieving the nearly unattainable: worldwide visibility and lore in an impossible-to-crack field. This paramount alt-rocker just released her first full-length record, Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit, out this week via Milk!/Mom
Austin – SXSW officially ended Sunday, but that’s a mostly ceremonial date: Saturday night hosts the last of the big showcases. Whether SXSW was structured this way or we accidentally put together a theme, Best New Bands’ Saturday schedule was made up of loud, energetic, party-all-night sets from Joey Bada$$, Sweater Beats, and Earl
Chicago – U.K. quartet Clean Bandit mix classical with electronic and deep house. Brothers Jack (bass and keys) and Luke Patterson (drums), along with childhood friends Grace Chatto (cello) and Milan Neil Amin-Smith (violin and piano) make up the band that first gained attention in 2013 with the single “Mozart’s House,” blending a Mozart tune
London – Best New Bands’ Tony Hardy was one of 40 U.K. based music writers invited by Glastonbury Festival to select a long list of 120 artists from thousands of entries to the 2015 Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition. A panel including festival hosts Michael & Emily Eavis then had the similarly daunting task of choosing
New York – The Boom Boom Room at the Standard Hotel is barely a music venue. It’s mostly a swanky bar on the top floor of a trendy Meatpacking District hotel where tourists and new-money Manhattan-ites gather to preen and feel exclusive and eat frites, which is what you eat if you want to seem
Austin – Day three marks roughly the halfway point for SXSW, and it featured some of the best day shows yet. Which was fortunate, because the weather really took a dive. Making it to both Viet Cong and Ibeyi, whose sets were just ten minutes apart, was a bit of a personal victory. Viet Cong
Los Angeles – Right off the bat of the opening track from Chaos And The Calm, the 2015 Brits Critics’ Choice winner James Bay sings with experienced aplomb. However, the British singer/songwriter/guitarist is only debuting his first LP. The affecting vocalist from Hitchin commands festival-ready tracks that balance the fine lines of soul, soft rock,
New York – Houndmouth is from New Albany, Indiana, a history-rich town just across the Ohio River from Louisville, Kentucky. New Albany was a steamboat boomtown in the mid-19th century. Its most famous product is the Civil War-era steamship Robert E. Lee, memorialized in The Band song “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” Perhaps
The Dunwells, (a promising group that Best New Bands has taken notice of over the past few years) an indie rock quartet hailing from Leeds, England, have announced the release of a new track off their forthcoming project, Lucky Ones. The extended play is due to be released in late May. Showing an abundance of motivation and plenty of