America-centric thinking is far too easy a habit for us stateside music fans to adopt, but the influence of our brothers across the Atlantic in the great United Kingdom should not be overlooked. Join us as we dig into the best that Britain has to offer.
I didn’t even bother to watch The Brits last night. If you read my rant about the NME Awards last week then you’ll have a pretty good idea why. The UK’s answer to The Grammys has long lost its lustre. Gone are the days when Oasis famously baited INXS front man Michael Hutchence and socialist indie outfit Chumbawumba drenched Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott. Nowadays, it resembles the long-defunct Smash Hits Pole Winners Party; little more than an excuse to celebrate the commercial big-hitters in UK pop and not much else.
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NME: The Best of at Least Six Months Ago
Does anyone really care who wins at this month’s NME Awards bash in London? Little more than an annual opportunity for the flailing print magazine to hype the bands it hopes will sell copies, it’s long lost the aura of importance it once had. In the era of blogosphere-fueled success stories, the very notion of an awards ceremony feels painfully dated. We already know who everyone rates. We read the blogs, subscribe to the feeds, chat on Twitter and hook up on Facebook. By the time the “Best New Band” are drunkenly clutching their statuette we’ll have already moved on to the next.
So what about this year’s candidates? In the aforementioned “Best New Band” category, The Big Pink, Bombay Bicycle Club, Mumford & Sons, The xx and La Roux feel like they’ve been around for ages. In the case of The Big Pink and Bombay Bicycle Club, it’s hard to appreciate that their debut albums are only a matter of months old, such has been the extent of online hype surrounding them. Between the two of them, The xx and La Roux have dominated the last year in British music, hitting heights far beyond anything that could have been achieved before the advent of the internet.
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America-centric thinking is far too easy a habit for us stateside music fans to adopt, but the influence of our brothers across the Atlantic in the great United Kingdom should not be overlooked. Join us as we dig into the best that Britain has to offer.
“Oh Manchester, so much to answer for,” sang Morrissey on The Smiths’ era-defining debut back in 1984 as the city drowned in post-industrial greyness. As the decade moved on, though, rain-soaked monochrome gave way to Ecstasy-drenched psychedelia as acid house took root in the Hacienda, paving the way for the defiant optimism of Britpop. For more than a decade Manchester dominated the British musical landscape. From The Buzzcocks to Oasis, Joy Division to Happy Mondays, The Smiths to The Stone Roses, the once-mighty hub of North Western industrialization had evolved into a vibrant centre of independent creativity to rival London.
Then nothing. Since the late nineties Manchester’s impact on the UK music scene has been almost non-existent. While the capital was revitalized thanks to post-punk artisans The Libertines and other provincial cities grabbed their share of the limelight, Manchester slumbered. Until the emergence of Delphic, that is. Entering the UK album chart at number eight, Delphic’s debut album arrived on a wave of widespread hyperbole from the music press.
Embracing the pre-Britpop innovations of their hometown, the Lancashire-based outfit channel the electro-rock experimentation of New Order and the MDMA-fueled swagger of Happy Mondays into their bleep-laden indie-disco. Emerging from the synth-pop revival that has given rise to Editors, White Lies and Klaxons, Delphic pain over every beep and oscillation in their forward-thinking neo-rave, and it shows. Manchester rave on indeed.
