death by snow patrol

Until recently I had started totally losing faith in new bands. Good ones seemed so few and far between that I started listening almost exclusively to dance music in its various shapes and forms. There's been the odd half decent album out in the last couple of years that I've really got into... Arcade Fire's first two albums were amazing and I also liked a couple of other less known records like The Low Anthem's Oh My God, Charlie Darwin and Chunk of Change by Passion Pit... but producers like Parov Stelar, Joy Orbison, Foamo, Burial, Fake Blood, Switch and Diplo's brainchild Major Lazer and a million others have generally made the dance music scene a much more appealing place in recent years. Not to mention totally changing the contents of my itunes library. Despite this surge of brilliant DJs and producers though, I've really missed listening to the type of music I grew up to... bands like Blur and The Smiths and Radiohead who had guitars and lyrics and stuff. Since the early noughties, I've become increasingly frustrated by the overwhelming shiteness of new bands, which by some sick miracle have become massive household names thanks to dooshbags like Jo Wiley and the corporate clones over at Q Magazine. I'm talking about the middle-of-the-road, mindless drivel of Snow Patrol (eugh), Scouting for fucking Girls (bleugghhhh), the bloody Hoosiers and a kind of Pandora's Box of lame ass, skinny-jean-wearing bands which all come under the horrible generic title of (dare I say it) 'Indie.' SHUT UP! There will always be shit music around, but at least now there's a few tiny rays of light which permeate this horrible little radio 1 blanket of rubbish... Finally, there's something to get a little bit excited about... Bands like Mumford and Sons, Miike Snow, Bombay Bicycle Club and The Temper Trap are finally getting some interesting, uplifting and genuinely good 'guitar' music back onto our airwaves. And FINALLY after years of releasing brilliant but scarcely known albums, Parisian band Phoenix are getting the acclaim they deserve. There are a few other new bands which deserve a bit more recognition too, like L.A's Local Natives, whose debut album Gorilla Manor is an absolute corker. (Below is a clip of their cover of Talking Heads' Warning sign, which is great in a Fleet Foxes/Arcade Fireish kind of way).

For the first time in ages I don't find myself desperately scrabbling around for good new songs to listen to. It's a good feeling.