It’s almost, almost, a little unfair to line up our other hopeful women alongside one as established as MNDR. Her past in writing hits for major labels aside, MNDR was thrown abruptly from blog scribblings to what must have felt like major pop stardom by the newly sage Mark Ronson, who included her on his #6 charting single “Bang Bang Bang”. If the music industry weren’t paying attention to her pre-Ronson (which they were anyway) then certainly now if there are any record labels left with any coppers knocking around they will be trying to throw them at Amanda Warner and writing partner Peter Wade.
Regardless of her potential to become stumble into mainstream success, we’re more interested in MNDR because of her ( /their, we’re not completely sure about the terminology) recent EP which mixed slick club-tinged production with energetic pop hooks. No, it’s not exactly a news-worthy musical innovation for music, but great pop music has always been more connected to stirring emotions and capturing imaginations than innovation, and Warner’s slightly left-field charisma and Wade’s faultless production should leave them with no problems in either of those fields.
I’m not entirely sure about The Good Natured’s chances to start tussling towards the top of charts. I’m not questioning the quality of her music at all, her slightly twisted laments are more than my kind of melodrama, I’m just unsure as to whether the “record buying public” are willing to buy into something as honest and frankly, dark, as The Good Natured’s music. Just having a quick scout through the top 40 now, it would seem that the public are much more ready to buy records with the following deep messages subtly concealed within their poignant lyrics: “I’m going to tell you that I don’t want you to change to try and create a romantic moment”, “I’m afraid that you are cooler than me”, “I love not thinking about my average life” and so on, and so on… Quite whether they are ready to open themselves up to anything with any more depth is something I would love to be proved wrong on, but whether or not she’s embraced by the mainstream, I’m still more than excited to hear more and more from this exceptionally talented young woman.
After describing The Good Natured as “dark” and “twisted”, we’re stuck with exactly where to go with FOE. Produced by the evasive and equally brilliant Entrepreneurs, FOE is the Sonic Youth loving, leather jacketed older sister to The Good Natured’s pant-wetting younger sibling. In the tormenting “Tyran Song”, FOE chants “are you ready for the next big thing” and, well, the public definitely isn’t. Her furious lyrics and grunge-gone-electronica production will be far too terrifying as they are now for most, but mainstream success is undoubtedly not the goal. If the direction of this series of posts wasn’t towards future mainstream success, then we wouldn’t have mentioned it at all, but seeing as it is, we think it’s far more likely for her to be signed by someone like Young Turks/Merok and release a frightening album that ends up adored by the alternative media and ignored by Radio 1. But that’s fine with us, and probably what she would demand anyway.
As a rule; free things are always, constantly and without exceptions absolutely depressing. By definition, they’re usually designed to make you buy other things which, obviously, is detestably sneaky and therefore worthy of hate. They’re almost by some unwritten rule of thriftiness underwhelming and weak, like that Chemical Brothers “album” of remixes by drugged up bedroom hermits that the Sunday Times seems to give away every week, and that watered-down free shot of beer brewed solely to force you to feel guilty about not buying an entire bottle. In fact, the only free thing that I’ve received recently that packed a punch was, literally, a punch in the face from a terrifyingly furious chav for trying to protect my idiotic friend who, quite predictably, had made some sort of perhaps unnecessary comment about said chav’s mother. I preferred it to the shot of beer, anyway.
I’ll have to admit at this point that I am actually lying. The term “without exceptions” above was probably misleading. There is an exception. Now, I think you probably know where this is heading. Except I’m not going to lead this into an anticlimax by giving you away a free impotent remix of a fey, untalented indie band who’s manager happens to be an old friend of mine. Downloading music for free, legally, is no longer new or exciting. Thousands of artists are struggling to grab your attention right now, each one trying to convince you to steal their music with their consent like some sort of musical self-flagellation that has become necessary to build a following of interneted music geeks, but I can barely remember the last time that a free EP was worth the listening time alone, let alone two enormous paragraphs of frankly irrelevant pre-amble.
London’s rising producer of the minute Entrepreneurs has definitely changed those perceptions. Of course we’d seen the name flung across all of the right places, and recently come across him again in the guise of FOE’s producer, but not once did we consider that it was possible he’d release an EP of ball-swallowingly terrifying industrial pop that, quite simply, is the most original, breathless and focussed EP we’ve heard all year. Somehow, it manages to be both as accessible as Lady Gaga pummelling her record label execs to death with the heel of her shoe and weirder than, well, Lady Gaga. For that feat alone you are sort of obliged to download the EP. And if you don’t agree with us, well, you can have your money back; because this is 100% guaranteed to be better than a punch in the face, but hit you just as hard.
Guaranteed – this track will smack you straight in the teeth. Unexpectedly brilliant pop music with a morbid tone and an incredibly throaty voice (though I guess that now I’ve said it, it’s actually pretty expected). Nobody’s going to start jabbering about her being “the next [enormous female artist]” anytime soon, as if having uterus and making music with your voice makes success inevitable, but all that means is that you can bypass the whole I love her/she becomes popular/hate the woman sequence and just appreciate the tunes. And if she becomes huge, whatever.
RSS
Newsletter
Twitter
NetworkedBlogs
