VV BROWN
A 24-year-old from Northampton, Vanessa Brown has recovered from a brief and
unhappy spell in America, under contract to a label that wanted to position
her as a bootylicious R&B star; she is now set to light up 2009 with
what she describes as music that is “dramatic, charismatic and, frequently,
as mad as a box of frogs” - or, to put it more succinctly, “doo-wop-soul”
(albeit at the more bonkers end of the spectrum). A Betty Boo for the
Noughties, she has co-written hits or sung backing vocals for Madonna,
Pussycat Dolls, Westlife and Sugababes. Now, with tracks as barking but
brilliant as Crying Blood and LEAVE, she is nicely poised to enjoy a few
hits of her own. Yes, she raids the retro-soul cupboard, but she adds to her
swag bag a liberal dose of up-yours attitude (most of her songs were
inspired by an unmourned ex), pop nous and berserk, full-frontal catharsis.
And a voice to shatter glass.
LEAVE will be released on Island on March 2; www.myspace.com/vvbrown
FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE
The winner of the 2009 Brits Critics’ Choice award (which last year went to
Adele), Florence Welch, 20, may well emulate her predecessor’s success.
Melding folk and blues with excursions to wilder musical shores, as
previously visited by the likes of Siouxsie Sioux and Bat for Lashes,
Welch’s songs - notably her debut single, Kiss with a Fist, and her current
release, Dog Days Are Over - showcase a fiery, feral singing style, and
lyrics that look both unblinkingly and allusively at love, revenge, death
and domestic violence. As charismatic, in her own, utterly distinctive way,
as VV Brown, Welch looks and sounds like a star. The revelation that the
increasingly reviled Johnny Borrell has been helping with her songwriting
may dent her chances momentarily (how nails must have been chewed and heads
held in hands when that slipped out), but she is good enough to get over
that, as should we.
A new single will be released on Island in March; www.myspace.com/florenceandthemachinemusic
KARIMA FRANCIS
This 21-year-old from Blackpool first made waves at the In the City music
conference in Manchester just over two years ago, and anyone who has
witnessed her startlingly raw and intimate live shows will know why. Her
debut album, The Author (released on March 9), captures her essence, mixing
stripped-bare confessional acoustic songs with more strident and forceful
tracks such as her forthcoming single, Again. She is already being compared
with Joan Armatrading, Tracy Chapman and KT Tunstall. Francis has more than
enough talent of her own - not to mention an extraordinary voice that can
switch from a wail to a coo in the space of a single phrase - for us to
quickly forget the comparisons and concentrate on this singer and her
visceral songs. To watch her on stage and see this diminutive and shy
retirer hold back her head and roar is to experience music at its most
transformative.
Again will be released on Kitchenware on March 2; www.myspace.com/karimafrancis
FRANKMUSIK
If 2009 is going to be mainly about 1980s-style electro and synth-pop, Vincent
Frank will be one of the artists in the vanguard. A male Robyn, the
Croydon-raised musician, 22, has made a debut album with the producer Stuart
Price (Madonna, the Killers) that positively bursts and billows with lethal
hooks and washes of synths, and generally parties like it’s 1984. Coming
over like a one-man Aha appreciation society, the former fashion student
flirts dangerously with Mika-like hyperactivity and look-at-me irksomeness,
but pulls back from the brink thanks to a bracing whiff of genuine, rather
than artful, eccentricity and some amazing tunes. His next single, Better
Off as 2, captures exactly why people are so excited about him: with a giant
synth-bass exploding beneath him, Frank carries on as if he is in a
completely different song, half Gary Barlow, half Shalamar. It shouldn’t
work, but it does - emphatically so.
Better Off as 2 will be released on Island on March 9; www.myspace.com/frankmusik
LADY GAGA
Stefani Germanotta, a 22-year-old performance artist from New York, is about
to hit Britain (her single, Just Dance, is released on January 12), and it’s
likely to get messy. Her provocative techno-disco is brutally effective,
with something of her Christian-namesake Gwen’s daffiness to it, and a track
record of collaborations with Akon, Britney and Fergie bolster her claims
that her own time has come. Her barely-there attire and single-entendre
utterances won’t hurt her chances, but where her Ladyship really scores, on
her debut album The Fame, is in showing an understanding both of the
absolute paramountcy of hooks and of the fact that, for all that you may
look like you’re playing at it, behind the costumes and make-up, you have to
be deadly serious about what you’re doing. Some call her the new Madonna. In
fact, in the sense of Madge’s steadily deteriorating artistic output, she’s
the old Madonna: 1983-85, to be precise.
The Fame will be released on Polydor on January 19; www.myspace.com/ladygaga
LELE[SPEAKS]
This unsigned teenager from south London has a mouth like a machine gun - and,
in an age of tightly controlled, gimlet-eyed young celebrity wannabes,
praise be for that. Prolix she may be, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t
editing what emerges from that gabby gob, however much the ramshackle,
ADHD-like trolley dash through the genres of techno, rap, metal and ska that
soundtracks her words may suggest otherwise. Insouciant and lippy, Leanne
Jackson’s lyrics - “Eurgh, ain’t you crude/ Don’t you know that I’m a prude/
You got me losing all my food/ Just because of you, you stinking perv” - are
the type that strike terror in the play-it-safe, defending-their-patch old
guard (and praise be for that, too). She thinks what she does is pop music,
and, if you’ve the ears to listen closely, you’ll realise that, beneath the
bombast and the short-attention-span versifying, that is exactly what she is
doing.
A new single will be released in March; www.myspace.com/leleisbanging
TERRY LYNN
Terry Lynn Williams’s first album, Kingstonlogic 2.0, is one of the most
exciting debuts I’ve heard in ages. A passionate, furious, playful, snarling
polemic from the tough Waterhouse (“a place well known as a slaughterhouse”)
neighbourhood of the Jamaican capital, it throws reggae, dub, techno,
electro, rap and pop into the blender, wields its pen and thunderous
ricochet rhythms against injustice, corruption, hypocrisy and violence, and
introduces a genuinely innovative and thrillingly multifaceted new talent to
music in 2009. There is a sharp sense of menace behind these songs, as if
the gun with which Williams poses on the sleeve is constantly in danger of
being used to settle matters - an appropriate undertone, given the culture
in which she grew up, and which she excoriates on the album. Everything MIA
should be, but isn’t (there’s not a hint of catwalk chic here), Terry Lynn
is a real find.
Kingstonlogic 2.0 will be released on Phree on March 2; www.myspace.com/terrylynnkingstonlogic
LISA MITCHELL
A runner-up on Australian Idol when she was just 15, the British-born,
Oz-raised Mitchell, now 18, presents an intriguing prospect: her forthcoming
single, Neopolitan Dreams, both bears flowers and bares its teeth, and demos
for her debut album suggest her songwriting could go either way. She is
currently at work in London with writers who have collaborated with Amy
Winehouse and Adele, among others, as well as Ed Harcourt, whose influence
can clearly be heard in the more noirishly romantic elements of her music.
The single is at once fey and slightly fierce (commenting on her heartache,
Mitchell sings: “It sure takes its precious time/ But it’s got rights, and
so have I”), while Love Letter conjures up a carousel revolving slowly
and pointlessly in an abandoned ghost-town fairground. So, she’s going to
turn out kooky and cute or weird and alternative. With luck, it will be a
bit of both.
Neopolitan Dreams will be released on Sony BMG in March; www.myspace.com/lisalisamitchell
PASSION PIT
In the absence of a second album from the Ben Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie)
electro side project the Postal Service, here is a new Boston five-piece
with a debut EP, Chunk of Change, that glories in many of the same cadences,
synth-driven chord sequences, melodic hooks and propulsive drum-machine
beats thatmade Give Up so indispensable. The brainchild of Michael
Angelakos, Passion Pit are all unhinged falsetto vocals, shiny candy-coating
and, beneath the punching-the-air euphoria, lurking misery. When, on Cuddle
Fuddle, Angelakos screams over the tinny, nursery-rhyme-like piano: “Let
down your hair /Let down your hair/Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!”,
you realise you’re in the presence of a properly odd, and possibly slightly
deranged, madcap musical genius. In other circumstances, you might run a
mile, but Angelakos’s songs are so addictive and sugar-rich that you stick
around. Any fan of the Postal Service, Cut Copy, Hot Chip or LCD Soundsystem
will love this. Chunk of Change will be released on Columbia in February; www.myspace.com/passionpitjams
THECOCKNBULLKID
Anita Blay, a 23-year-old musician based in east London, is a real electro-pop
star, described last year as the UK’s “answer to Kelis” and a hit with
audiences at Camden Crawl and Latitude, among other festivals. Her slightly
larger-than-life image and wardrobe make it easy to miss the pop-savvy skill
with which she fastens onto the listener’s ears and memory banks, then
pummels away till resistance is futile. Currently holed up in the studio,
putting the finishing touches to her debut album, Blay is offering a hint of
what’s to come with her new single, I’m Not Sorry, and the minimal,
wonderfully weird and definitely Kelis- and Neneh Cherry-recalling Boys and
Girls. “As long as there are boys,” she sings on the latter, a song with the
sharpest whip-crack beats since the heyday of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis,
“there will always be girls/And as long as there are girls, there will
always be trouble.” To which the best response is probably: “Well, you’d
know.”
I’m Not Sorry will be released on Moshi Moshi on March 2; www.myspace.com/thecocknbullkid
