France isn’t necessarily the first location that comes to mind for pop punk exports, but a few great bands have emerged over the past few years including Connies and the truly excellent Shapers.
Here’s another new band from France – South Berkley, a four piece outfit that should appeal to lovers of post-‘Take Off Your Pants…’ era blink-182. Their second single ‘Glass N Sparks’ provides a decent teaser for their debut LP (‘Too Slow’), which is due this summer.
A maker of often undervalued and eclectic solo works, Bluetones frontman man Mark Morriss has a big cult following away from his “main career”. Over the past few years, he’s provided soundtracks for various David Walliams projects and released a brilliant covers album, ‘The Taste of Mark Morriss’, on which he puts his own stamp on artists as stylistically diverse as Madonna, Scott Walker and The Sisters of Mercy. [Watch Mark covering Sisters of Mercy in his living room here.]
For all Britpop fans, the annual Star Shaped Festival is the most exciting thing on the yearly calendar. Previous events have seen appearances from most of the Britpop greats, including Echobelly, Space, My Life Story and The Bluetones.
Active on the live circuit since Halloween 2017, Runhidefight is a relatively new band fronted by Geeta Simons (formerly of Swisher). They’ve been championed by Rodney Bigenheimer and Sirius XM radio, been likened to Cheap Trick and The Sonics and they’re about to play live on the same bill as Justine and The Unclean.
Following the success of Gary Crowley’s ‘Punk & New Wave’ box set last year in which the legendary DJ explored a variety of great alternative music without presenting the well worn hits, Edsel are set to repeat the formula again this coming March with a Steve Lamacq curated four disc box.
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