Prides :: "Out Of The Blue"

Glasgow three-piece Prides announce their arrival with a nasal and modulating synthesizer loop. Sitting just short of the five-note hook for MGMT's "Kids" in terms of pure catchiness, "Out Of The Blue" leverages this synth line against slamming percussion loops and a glittering backdrop of digitized sounds, an instantly memorable debut single. Sounding a bit like We Were Promised Jetpacks playing an Erasure cover, the winsome moral victories of Scottish music blend easily with the adolescent fatalism of synthesizer pop. Much of the charm of "Out Of The Blue" lies in the repeated lyrical motif of the word, "no", a head-shaking, visceral and emotive response. An instant-repeat candidate, the kind of band that will seize the ears of talent buyers and A&Rs alike, "Out Of The Blue", despite all these assorted "no's", only waits for the larger affirmation that surely awaits in the coming months.

The Vestals :: "Perfect Pain"

Emotional rock never dies, it just changes its delivery system every few years. The Vestals, a band with a churning and consumptive first single, "Perfect Pain," traffic in this maybe-insipid sentimental geography and the chorus is the archetype, waxing, "Say you'll stay the same/please don't change/it's a perfect pain." The refrain is rooted in three notes, the band modulating between them as the the arrangement, a chunkier Pains Of Being Pure At Heart or maybe We Were Promised Jetpacks playing twee music, unloads a carbonated strum pattern and chord resolutions that feel necessarily life affirming. It's so serious, it's nearly silly, a diary read at Marshall Stack volume, break up emails shouted aloud years later, and yet "Perfect Pain" is full of hooks and winning melody. Pop is, after all, a mirror. If this is a bit embarrassing in its lyrics, so are we all.

The Cast Of Cheers :: "Animals"

A sweet intersection of the friscilating guitar arpeggios of Foals and the slam-along shouts of We Were Promised Jetpacks comes the The Cast Of Cheers and their top-of-the-room single, "Animals". The melody dodges itself along a modulating and instantly memorable rise and fall, a mimic of the guitar and the pebbled bass line. Everything is set at angles, a sort of potential energy that continues to collapse into a chorus, simple and true, about the horrifying commonalities of human romance. Not surprisingly, the conclusion is, "we are animals," a shouted and triumphant revelation. The final fade out representing that moment before we break and pass a nasty and brutish salvation around like the State of Nature, ripping one another to shreds.