1. Summer Camp
In October 2013, the married duo Summer Camp released their second album Summer Camp, which is a lovely set of synth-driven indie-pop songs. Despite sounding light and bright and breezy initially, the album's actually quite melancholy, and in places deeply miserable. 'Fighters', for example, is a story of complicated domestic abuse, and several of the tracks (including the otherwise warm-sounding 'Two Chords') are heart-rending break-up songs. Here's 'Fresh', a single with an impressive video in which the lead singer has to lip-sync backwards, somehow.
2. Sky Larkin
Sky Larkin are definitely not new to this blog, but they've made a pretty good third album since I last enthused about them, so I'll give it a plug. The album is quite varied, a lot richer musically than Sky Larkin's debut The Golden Spike, but also darker. The album's opener, 'Motto', was a great choice for a first single, showcasing both the album's riff-driven pop-rock side and its more texturally diverse, noise-rock side.
3. Peggy Sue
In a surprise turn of events, a PR agent sent me a free download of Peggy Sue's new album this week (another reason for music fans to dip into music journalism whenever they can). I'd never heard of them before then, but I'm glad I have now - Choir of Echoes is a collection of beautifully-written folk songs with a bluesy edge which have got themselves lodged in my head since I first listened to the album about a week ago. The video for 'Idle' is below, and if you enjoy that, I'd recommend listening to 'Esme' and 'Substitute' (when the album comes out on the 27th, that is).
That's all for now, folks. Happy new year.
