Hell's Belles

Vintage sounds, dusty grooves, and 21st-century freaks.

Like this.  A lot. This is a fuzzy pyschedelic dream, complete with banjo.  (I know, right??)

Here’s what we know about Conner:

He’s from Texas.  And you don’t mess with Texas.

He likes Bon Iver and Bob Dylan.

He’s pretty darn smart, in a book fashion.  (He went to Yale University.)

This tune is not a fluke.  (You can get a whole EP from his facebook page and find this out for yourself.)

According to his twitter profile, he eats farts for a living.  Which, if he’s still a college student, may very well be true.

This morning’s Soundcloud trawl has turned up a few beauties:

Fat Cat is no stranger to the scuzz, having given us the Awesome-Squared Odonis Odonis at the end of last year.  The parade of excellence continues with Milk Maid.  From their album ‘Mostly No’, out on July 9th.

I admit to being somewhat skeptical of Broken Hands when I turned up to see them at an A&R-packed show at the Bull and Gate several months ago.  Being on the young side, they literally wore their influences (Britpop) on their sleeves (and haircuts).  My internal chants of “pleasedon’tbelikeBrother pleasedon’tbelikeBrother pleasedon’tbelikeBrother” were cut violently short at the first chord.  Dudes can play. I expected (feared) a dirtier Oasis or Libertines, and got a psychedelic cocktail of  Tame Impala and The Stooges. If You Need To Lie is their second single, independently released on 7″ vinyl and download on May 28th.

Pepe Deluxe have been motoring for years, but they still manage to stay on the right side of kitsch. Go Supersonic is a fizzy J-pop-esque gem.

Stepping away from the 60s for a moment, I’ve pilfered this one from The Quietus’s Soundcloud feed – Gazelle Twin’s Changelings is given a dreamy electro-noire treatment by John Foxx and the Maths.

A nice little bit of lo-fi pop sludge that probably owes Lou Barlow a pint or two. You can line their pockets with beer money buy purchasing their split 7″ from Manchester-based “micro-label” Iceapades.  Or you can get it on Bandcamp:

Sunday 29th April @ Common, Edge Street, MANCHESTER – w/ Brown Brogues & Former Bullies SINGLE LAUNCH
Saturday 5th May @ The Black Cap, Camden Crawl, LONDON – Moshi Moshi stage
Sunday 6th May @ Rover Return, Sounds From the Other City, SALFORD
Sunday 27th May @ Trof Fallowfield, MANCHESTER – w/ Beta Blocker & the Body Clock, King of Cats & No Womb

Red Bull Music Academy Radio have an excellent archive of online radio shows. Being the obsessive music historian type, my favourite is Fireside Chat. It’s an hour long show with a single legendary artist talking his (or her) way through their career highlights. It’s very handy for swotting up on those artists that your favourite bands worship, but you just haven’t yet got round to listening to. It’s like a musical version of Cliff’s Notes. Mark Stewart did one recently, and it’s well worth a listen: