[Elevator 2014] :: Bands On The Rise

In a semi-annual feature on this website, we predict bands and artists who are primed to erupt in the following calendar year. In terms of critical batting average here, we've been both too early, too late, and also not at all. This game is more art than science. What follows is a list of acts that have a chance to make a major impact in 2014, though if you end up reading this after the fact, you've already heard them on the radio or in a commercial/film sync - most of these bands already have or will have publishing deals in the near future. The game isn't what you know, but when you know it, a fractious pseudo-celebrity culture as limited as it is stupidly exciting. Indie rock is a weird term, and an even weirder world as some bands get held aloft, Simba-style, as the next heirs to some brief and silly throne. But all of this is a bit inside baseball, and more importantly, the following bands and artists represent what pop might well sound like in the coming months.

Magic Man





This is less prediction than absolute certainty given their aesthetic odes to the Killers and Passion Pit's arena-sized hooks. Already toting a deal with a Columbia Records imprint and a respected publishing outfit, Magic Man's 2014 LP is going to be everywhere. With the right push, these guys will be doing some version of the Capital Cities game this year, achieving Top 40 ubiquity based on strong, memorable pop songs. If it happens in March, it will be one year to the day they played for about six people in our mutual hometown of Providence, RI. If indie rock was a stock market, and I were your stupidly exuberant broker, I would be encouraging you to leverage yourself to the hilt on Magic Man this year.

Broods





With a newly inked deal to Polydor in the UK and Capitol Records in the US, and this was largely based on the strength of one song, Broods is poised to transcend the slow-drive, neon burn of even a popular Internet band like London Grammar. Sure, at some point consumers are going to short the living life out of the R&B market in indie rock, but for now majors are attracted to the sound and will push the world James Blake built three years ago on unsuspecting music consumers in the United States. None of this takes away from the strength of "Bridges," a sexy parabola of a chorus and all the fecundity that producer Joel Little (of Lorde fame) marshaled with shrewdness on a track like "Ribs". If slow jams make a break this year, it could well be in the body and sound of Broods.

Thumpers





Sounding like a consecrated combination of Foster the People and Local Natives, Thumpers, a recent Sub Pop signee, craft life-affirming pop-rock almost type-cast for a filtered Levi's ad. On breakthrough, "Unkinder (Tougher Love)," the band stutters and leaps toward a spinning chorus. The implications: We are all young, and yes, life is hard, and, sure, love is harder, but we're all going to be fine in the end. This combination markets equally well to the young and the not. As long as the sparklers light our lives, forever around this fire in our skinny jeans, shirtless with boundless energy for the next thirty-or-so-seconds until we arrive, breathless, at a beach at sunrise. Wilderness, wild, life, youth and love, Thumpers provide a lyrical and sonic image of this self, and this self sells as beautifully as it sounds.

Prides



Prides was the male version of Chvrches in 2013 and find themselves poised to make a break in 2014. With UK and US label deals in place or in the works, Prides could well come storming out of Scotland with as much energy as the purveyors of "The Mother We Share". "Out of the Blue" likely isn't the song that will break them in 2014, though it was an absolute burner in 2013, which means it all comes down to their next single, tied to their forthcoming EP, setting the stage for an LP later in the year. As they sang on their only single of this year, "You break the surface, take the lead" which is about what we expect them to do in 2014.

Rainy Milo





Rainy Milo charmed with "Deal Me Briefly" in 2013, and though she doesn't seem to make it into the conversation with the other would-be starlets of 2014 - and here Chloe Howl comes to mind, someone already famous enough not to make a list of this type - Rainy Milo has the vocal chops and connections to make a big impact on the coming year. In our year-end list, the comparisons to Lorde are there, though it will take a mountain of organic momentum, or a song like "Royals" to seize blogs and heavy-rotation radio alike. She may seem like a reach for 2014, but the A&R gut says otherwise.

Wolf Alice





Easily the hardest of this bunch, Wolf Alice, seem more interested in making great rock music than achieving popular fame. For instance, their decision to include topless cover art on one of their 2013 singles indicated a cavalier approach to commercialism that may hamper their ability to crossover into mainstream circles - though it didn't hurt Sky. Wolf Alice, we suspect, doesn't care. "Bros" proved enormous in 2013, "Blush" and "She" backing the initial offerings with 90s alternative radio sonics. If it works for Wolf Alice in 2014, it will be a mixture of the Joy Formidable and the Silversun Pickups plan, a big single sometime in the early part of the year that begins to crest by the summer festival season, just in time for major media outlets to pick up on their sound as an "alt-rock revival". The most optimistic view has them on Alternative radio by the end of the year if they can pen their "Lazy Eye" to riches.

Top 50 Songs of 2013 :: [40-31]

Welcome to our annual countdown of the 50 best songs of the calendar year. Songs must be from an EP, LP or demo released during 2013 and no band may appear twice. Today, we count down 40 to 31.

40. Challenger - "Back To Bellevue"



The synthesizer work from John Ross remained enormous in 2013, "Back To Bellevue", a single from a forthcoming 2014 LP slamming in and out of a few different movements, never ceasing its desire to traffic in Reading Rainbow aesthetics. The burnt neon of the song's second half, the most intentionally elevating bit of independent music this year, left the listener near the top of the room. It was also about an insane asylum.

39. Salt Cathedral - "Move Along"



Like an ethereal Tune-Yards, Brooklyn's Salt Cathedral presented one of the most compelling cases for the future of "World Music" in the body of single, "Move Along". A series of dreamy modulated pitches, the arrangement lifted off the ground, crackling with energy and insistence. The friscalating guitars chased each other around, but it was ultimately a IDM finishing kick to recall Aphex Twin that transfixed the listener.

38. Magic Man - "Paris



When we wrote about Magic Man in 2010, there was no sense that they would one day attract the eye of Neon Gold and Columbia Records. They were a small band with a tight debut record. Poised to have an enormous 2014, a year where they will likely be pushed to have a Passion Pit-sized debut LP, the band turned in one of the great singles of 2013 with "Paris", the moment after the moment but before The Moment.

37. ALVVAYS - "Adult Diversion"



Like a pumped up Tennis or the reconstituted and cuter Pains of Being Pure at Heart, ALVVAYS stormed out of Toronto with a winking odes a twee and post-punk aesthetic. "Adult Diversion" proved exactly that, a song that lead the listener toward something more adolescent, maybe less serious. Of course, the stakes emerged as higher than expected in the final movement, a doubling of the previous impulses in layers and intent.

36. PAPA - "Young Rut"



It was all Tom Petty for LA's PAPA this year. "Young Rut" held one of those down-stroke guitar patterns that erupted into something explosive in the chorus, Americana with an edge of the coast. It wasn't as simple as "Won't Back Down", but "Young Rut" described some of the atrophy of youth, an underrated trope of the past two generations.

35. GEMS - "Medusa"



A head full of snakes proved an appropriate visual metaphor for the sultry rhythm and blues of DC's GEMS. "Medusa" shared a bit of menace with its low-end, but the essence was in the crystalline and untouchable vocals of Lindsay Pitts. In the second half, she sings, "All the dreams become haunting memories", which sort of sums up the project, the density, beauty and terror of "Medusa".

34. Blood Cultures - "Indian Summer"



No one knew much about Blood Cultures in 2013, a strange and undeniable track, "Indian Summer" from the wilds of New Jersey. The synth-stabs were as good as any since, "Dance Yrself Clean", though the intent here proved vastly different. The essentializing of the lyric, "I'll have to let you go" in the final movement was exactly the departure the listener sought, a recession that was far more explicable than the arrival of "Indian Summer".

33. Fancy Werewolves - "Ghosts of Detroit"



"Shut up, get in," went some of the first lyrics of Fancy Werewolves' "Ghosts of Detroit", one of the best unsigned songs of 2013. The synthesizers showed up for the pre-chorus, just in time for the drum fill that carried the listener to the chorus for the eponymous lyric and one of the refrains from a rock band you hadn't heard of this year.

32. Laura Marling - "Where Can I Go?"



With her obvious love for the folk of the 1960s West Village, Laura Marling, in additon to being an irreconcilable heartbreaker, sounded a lot like cleaned-up, pretty, female Bob Dylan on "Where Can I Go?". However, the initial melody borrowed more from "Afternoon Delight" before spiralling into a full-blown folk trope buffet. The difference was Marling, a vocalist and guitar player of such dignity and power that these old paths felt new again.

31. Wise Blood - "Alarm"



"I can't think," sang Wise Blood on "Alarm" before claiming he needed his "personal space". The arrangement recalled Moby's Play, a soulful piano that plowed along in the background. Of course, the wake-up here was the the horn loop at the top of the arrangement. As news reports, literally, poured in, Wise Blood held the cacophony together with a melody that was as memorable as it was instantly singable.

[Contest] Ticket Giveaway for Sir Sly @ Brooklyn Bowl [10.24.13]

The arrival of the synthesizer apocalypse approaches one day closer on the bombastic and hook-riddled slam, "Gold" from Los Angeles band Sir Sly. Out on a fall tour, the band takes the song and its live act to Brooklyn Bowl this Thursday night, October 24, with support from the ebullient Magic Man and Bel Heir, and we're giving away two free tickets to a lucky New York reader. To enter either: 1. Email 32feet(at)gmail.com with "SIR SLY Contest" in the subject heading or 2. Tweet a link to this post with a tag @32feet. Entries must be posted by 3pm EST tomorrow. We'll select and notify the winner by tomorrow (Wednesday) evening. Thursday's show is 21+ and doors are 8pm.

Magic Man :: "Nova Scotia"

The great hope of Providence, RI, Magic Man recently hooked their cart to the Neon Gold imprint of Columbia Records, meaning you might be reading this in early 2014 when one of their songs ends up in a Taco Bell commercial and your Shazam-ing turned Googling leads you here. Their mercurial rise will be completely earned and entirely righteous. After all, it isn't cheating when the game has already been fixed. You aren't skipping steps when you've always written hooks this sticky. Having heard some of the unreleased cuts live a few months back, Magic Man are an easy prediction for an intensely relevant band in the summer of 2013, portending an absolute heater of a next calendar year.

On The List :: Magic Man @ Fete Music, Providence, RI [3.28.13]

By pressing a heart icon, some 2,500 people have indicated their affection, maybe even their love, for Magic Man's latest single, "Texas" on the Hype Machine. More than twice this number fell in this sort of "like" with the band's other recent single, "Paris", a song that drives at heretofore unknown spot between the Cure and Passion Pit. In the past month or so, this was good enough to make the band one of the most discussed and buzzed about bands in certain corners of the admittedly cavernous Internet. On this night, a languid and clear weeknight in Providence, RI, Magic Man played to far less than 5,700 or 2,500 people. This is the quietude before the noise, and there exists a rather substantive gap between what happens on the Internet and what happens in a midsized American city on a Thursday.

The band opened with a song off their coming LP, a song they know and their audience doesn't. The main lyric is, "what are looking for?", which represents an appropriate rhetorical question for the Providence five-piece to ask of the label and A&R community. It was also an enormous opening movement. Frankly, given the sound coming from the stage, it was abundantly clear that this band is going to make themselves and someone else loads of money in 2014. Frenchkiss Records should come calling, and if they don't, Glassnote should, and if they don't, the majors should take a long look. Unconcerned with these long-view derivatives, the set built into old material, "Darling" from Real Life Color before transitioning back to the two recent singles, "Paris" and "Texas". It wasn't just a mediation on places; this is West Providence, Olneyville, a neighborhood that houses noise bands, lower-middle class moral victories, RISD student lofts and a weird, half-hearted gentrification. There are no miracles here.

The band thanked the audience at the end of their set, joking with the sound guy to, "cue that sad Ryan Adams music". Obliging, the sound guy played a piano ballad that wasn't from Adams' catalog, causing the adorable Magic Man keyboardist to say, sardonically, instructively, "Sadder." The band packed their gear, chatted with three fans who approached the stage, and I turned to the bartender and said, "you'll remember this band in a year's time."

Magic Man :: "Texas"

Boston's Magic Man, now a slightly different outfit based in my hometown of Providence, RI, were one of our favorite discoveries of 2010, and their debut record, Real Life Color, represented the best independently released album of that year. Reconstituted a bit, Magic Man, returns with booming single, "Texas", the second hint of a coming full length. The synth hook gives a bit of an homage to EDM, a drunk loop that weaves along, frenetic, like an urgent trip through a moving and disorganized crowd. Like the best music of restless and surging youth, "Texas" describes the specific power and peril of being young - the imagery is a veritable Levi's ad "sun-kissed light", "bonfire burning tonight", "at home on the road", "remember the time we slept on the roof" - a final movement of drums that thrill to the downbeat and an organized chaos brought into place and time, a bit like the youth that is never quite wasted on the young.

[Preview] Magic Man @ Piano's Tonight [6.27.11]

One of the best records that it seemed not enough people heard was 2010's Real Life Color from the electro-pop brains of Boston's Magic Man. Over the past 15 months, they are the band I have recommended most and most directly, as they occupy this soft center between sounding critically credible and dreadfully committed to pop music. Still up for pay-what-you-will download from the band's bandcamp page, Real Life Color is full, deep and immensely replayable, with track two, "Monster" clocking in as our 12th favorite song of 2010. Tonight, as a part of Future Sounds' on-going series of showcases, The Rumble, the band takes the stage at Piano's at 10pm. The show is free and, like their album, not to be overlooked.

Top 50 Songs of 2010 :: 20-11 [My heart hides in a cassette tape]

20. Owen Pallett - "Lewis Takes Off His Shirt"



The big news this year was Pallett stepping out from behind his old moniker, Final Fantasy and becoming, in no uncertain terms, himself. And then he released a nearly perfect concept record about bipolar farmer, Lewis, and the problems of his magically real universe. Pallett's signature strings come on like a storm, building and menacing at the edges before washing over the arrangement with a fury and taste for renewal. The lyrics, beautiful and delicate, end up settling on single edict, "I'm never gonna give it to you." It is beautifully oppositional, independent and wholly itself.

19. Fang Island - "Daisy"

A 2010 reviewer called Fang Island the sound of "everyone high fiving everyone." On "Daisy," an explosive, decentralized rock song, the band traffics in nonsense lyrics and chord resolutions so big they pull the plane out of the nose-dive, reset the financial markets and, yes, organize a six billion person high five at the apex of an arrangement built to crest. In a year with too much anxiety for too many people, Fang Island took this gospel of freedom on the road and to the people: Less worry, more hand slapping.

18. Band of Horses - "Dilly"



Band of Horses did the crossover this year, making more money than ever before and managing to frustrate some of their loyalists. The record was too pop. It was being sold in Starbucks. It was built for sync. "Dilly" cut through the hype and the criticism to divine one of the great choruses of the year. Modulating between three pitches and settling on easy rhymes and platitudinous lyrics, "It took a tall one to see it/two to believe it/three to just get in the way," made it instantly memorable, singable and infectious. In 2011, this will be the soundtrack for some dreadful movie trailer. The crossover is dangerous, but it works.

17. Computer Magic - "Running"



We have a certifiable music crush on Danz from Computer Magic. Her string of one-off singles dominated 2010 in intervals of her choosing and with shocking consistency for an artist that admits she's only been making music for a few months. On "Running," uneasy synths swirl and sway in the ether, as her voice sheds pretension and asks the simple, if fleeting question, "And I'm running all the time/Can you catch him before I go?" No one is making better laptop pop anywhere right now.

16. French Films - "Golden Sea"

It was a year dominated by the surf rock of the Drums and the Weezer-beach vibes of Surfer Blood and the stoned summer of Wavves and Best Coast. Amongst all this coastal music, everyone missed the Finnish upstarts French Films and their buzzing and propulsive "Golden Sea." Track one of the Golden Sea EP, one of the best of the year, the song of the same name takes us to the water, but there is a trick. The slurring lyrical delivery sharpens around the final chorus, "It was only a dream," as plinking synths erupt like children let out for recess, proving the best beaches are the ones we go to in our minds.

15. The Naked and Famous - "Young Blood"



It was the wanton hopelessness of the central lyric, "fall back in love eventually," that kept "Young Blood" from being one of those blind anthems of youth. The Naked and Famous explored the concept of unfettered younger days with a hint of the despair that always creeps near the edge of such meditations. Fact is, lionizing youth is a losing battle, every day the romance a little less intense, each moment a little less pure. It was those words, "fall back in love eventually," that gave a certain, hopeless and hopeful finality to these breathless, sparkler-holding, bleeding-from-the-arm, jumping-in-the-deep-end days of miracle and wonder.

14. Frightened Rabbit - "Nothing Like You"



The next move is never clear for a band who made their name by being miserable and now, against the odds and better advice, are happy. So it was not by choice that Frightened Rabbit fostered a different sense of pathos on 2010 release, The Winter of Mixed Drinks. The band was famous now, and the lead singer was in a relationship that he repeatedly and fondly referenced on stage. The only thing worse than being happy is trying to fake misery. So, Frightened Rabbit angled to describe how they got happy. The pointed and furious "Nothing Like You," took the romance of the platitude in the title, turned it entirely around, not as a compliment but as an accusation. The most damning line is the first one, "This is a story and you are not in it," before offering a shovel for this previous love to bury herself.

13. The Radio Dept. - "Heaven's On Fire"

On the cusp of super-stardom, Sweden's the Radio Dept. released their best record, Clinging To A Scheme in 2010. Sunny single, "Heaven's On Fire" hid something darker, a perfection inflamed, maybe by an arsonist, from just one look at "you." The power of this significant other - and here we mean this literally - is not unidirectional; its capabilities both productive and able to destroy. Over bouncy keys and lighter-than-air drums and guitars, the vocals belay this danger. One of the best songs of the year, hiding in plain sight, ready to light your perfect world on fire.

12. Magic Man - "Monster"



Boston's Magic Man released one of the best truly independent records of the year, Real Life Color, a twinkling bit of electro-pop that made no apologies. On "Monster," a nearly six-minute epic, there are three distinct movements, each colliding into final marching orders, "Find your monsters, don't tell you friends," turning human psychology into a gigantic internal game of Manhunt. As for the outside world, they tell us to, "leave the world in a jar but come back to it." We are reminded of the great frontier inside, of the terror and beauty that lie within us, and of the stunning little keyboard band in Boston.

11. Blair - "Hearts"

It was a little guitar record from a girl in Brooklyn that grabbed us by the throat in 2010. While at times it was reminiscent of a twenty years later Exile In Guyville, this wasn't so angled against love or at sewing up a busted heart. If anything, Blair's Die Young, and its most seminal track, "Hearts" is about being in love with youth, what she calls the yearning and aching of young life. In her fortune cookie wisdom, Blair confides, "my heart hides in a cassette tape", one of the most subtle and winning lyrics of the year. The final minute finds a spinning conclusion with the hyperventilating title lyric recast as texture. We never had this song on cassette, but we spent most of the year hiding in this digital record, a new, modern love.

Magic Man :: "Monster"

This is about hiding and waiting. Magic Man, a sparkling and fuzzy synth outfit from Boston, generate "Monster," a song that exists somewhere between the tribal pop of Tanlines and the electro instrumentation of The Postal Service. A slow burn and a propulsive drive, it would be easy to reduce ourselves to an attention span that bores easily and doesn't have time for the popping down-beat appearing at 1.20. The chorus hides out like a committed Sardines player, attracting followers and size until only one seeker can't find the group location. Huddled behind a couch, or in the back of a closet in a forgotten bedroom, until 2.24 when the discovery unleashes relief, peels of laughter and an instruction: "Find your monsters/don't tell your friends." It twists the focus inward. For a song that resists being found, but is also completely after us, the directive is to dig down, to find something hiding and collecting dust in the quiet of our subconscious. The method is the madness; if the chorus is deep with in, we are going to have to fight to find the beauty in the breakdown.

Listen :: Magic Man - "Monster" [zshare]

You can get the whole Magic Man record for free at their bandcamp. It's outstanding.