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Unearthed: The Best New Music At Liverpool Sound City 2015
It’s that time again, festival madness descends on Merseyside as the annual Liverpool Sound City Conference and Music Festival gets into full swing this weekend featuring massive names like The Flaming Lips and Belle & Sebastian, but rummage amongst the line up and you’ll find some incredible new bands to check out. Here’s our pick of the best:
FRIDAY 22nd May 2015
ADY SULEIMAN
Stage time: 5.30pm @ Cargo Stage
If you’re a regular reader you’ll already be familiar with Ady because we never shut up about him. He’s just released a killer new split demo with one of our other favourites George The Poet – classic songwriting, a voice like golden syrup and enough of an edge to make you look drastically uncool and way too old to be watching him, but you should go and do just that anyway.
BAD MEDS
Stage time: 6pm @ Evol’s Baltic Stage
People are already picking up on this proto-punk / early hardcore revivalist trio featuring members of Hot Club de Paris and Dan Croll’s live band. Growing up in England’s provincial north on daily doses of 80s weirdo punk, classic guitar solos and total boredom, the scene was always set for some kind of escape. Bad Meds’ self-titled debut EP is out now and is Maple Death Records’ third release.
Listen to new single ‘Hoax Apocalypse’ here:
TOR MILLER
Stage time: 7.30pm @ The Record Store
Signed to Glassnote Records, this young 19 year old pianist from New York is a real talent – in the same vein as the big balladeers currently ripping up the charts like James Bay and Ben Howard, Miller has something a little more authentic about him that really separates him from the pack. A stunning vocal and some deft musicianship are just the start of it, check out the live video for ‘Now And Again’ here:
SATURDAY 23rd May 2015
SILENT SLEEP
Stage time: 12.15pm @ Atlantic Stage
Silent Sleep is the current music project of Christopher McIntosh, who played in Liverpool bands 28 Costumes and Hallo…I Love You! until April 2010, when he moved himself to Berlin. He returned to Liverpool at the start of 2012 and set about putting together a merry band of good folk and local faces to perform on his solo material. Unassuming, self-effacing, a brilliant musician – an all round top Scouser who you should definitely be checking out.
THE SUNDOWNERS
Stage time: 3.00pm @ Atlantic Stage
If you like your Scousers on the cosmic side and you still wear an Afghan coat and some absolutely outrageous flares, it might be time to have an enormous mid-afternoon joint, polish off that tab of acid you’ve been saving and get yourself down to see The Sundowners – welcome to the dawning of the age of aquarius, pull up a cushion and get loose:
THE BOHICAS
Stage time: 7.30pm @ Baltic Stage
This lot – for want of a better phrase – blew our fucking tits off last year at SoundCity. We stumbled across them on a tiny stage and thought to ourselves “well, if nobody picks this lot up we’ll eat our hats” – thankfully, our diet remains hat free and The Bohicas now have a very nice little team behind them. If you like swaggery, interesting garage rock, this lot are for you. Pop that collar you handsome devil.
SUNDAY 24th May 2015
ALLUSONDRUGS
Stage time: 4.15pm @ Cargo Stage
Multi-genre-melding grunge weirdos who NME hailed as “a mesmerising concoction of psychedelia” and who put on one of the strangest live shows you’re likely to see across the festival. Guitarists hanging upside down from railings? Check. Shambolic demented shamanistic meltdowns? Check. Riffs big enough to sink a battleship? Check. A must see.
Watch the ‘Am I Weird?’ video:
FIZZY BLOOD
Stage time: 8.15pm @ The Record Store
In 2014 Leeds quintet Fizzy Blood released one single – the swaggering, caustic retro rock of ‘January Sun’ – which landed them a slot at Download Festival, a main support slot on a UK tour with legendary punks The Dead Kennedys and a raft of support from the media including BBC Radio One. Not bad going for one song, and this year sees the release of their debut EP ‘FEAST’.
Check out the video for the single here:
JENNIFER DAVIES
Stage time: 10.15pm @ Cargo Stage
Already touted by Pop Justice and Fred Perry as a serious contender on the emerging alt-pop scene, Jennifer Davies recently released her debut EP ‘Lapse of Time’ and played a handful of shows with friends The Wombats. If you like Scandi-pop/Robyn/Kyla La Grange/Charli XCX we can highly recommend you head down and check out her amazing voice and impeccable musicianship for yourself.
Watch the video for ‘Disconnected’ with Wonderland Magazine here: