[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 :: [20-11]

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 20 to 11.

20. Okkervil River - "Down Down The Deep River"



No one did intimacy and nostalgia better in 2013 than Will Sheff and Okkervil River on "Down Down The Deep River". He took us into the tents of his past, using the the imagery of his childhood in a deeply cold New Hampshire, Sheff dished lines like, "We can never go back, we can only remember" which were tautological and still important. We are submerged by memories, his and ours, as the song, surges past six minutes, undeniably Okkervil River's best work since 2005, another memory we can only remember.

19. TV Girl - "She Smokes In Bed"



TV Girl described attractive self-destruction on "She Smokes In Bed". It wasn't a new idea, more like a trope really, a woman, fecund, damaged and damaging, sitting blithely in bed smoking the cigarette that will kill you both. Explosive femininity of this type does little to reason through why this woman is so compelling - see the chorus here, "Ba ba ba" - but "She Smokes In Bed" and its pumping soul-loops built a universe in which we were all happy to burn.

18. The National - "Demons"



What was surprising on the National's latest offering, Trouble Will Find Me, was the relentless ability of  Matt Berninger to be miserable in public. With a hefty six-figure income playing music to an adoring fan base that fills arenas, a brother who seemed to outweigh his problems in easy measure, Berninger still managed to dish lines like, "When I walk into a room, I do not light it up ... fuck." It was work being this sad, or maybe it was the pathos we expected from the band, Berninger providing us what we wanted even when he and we had undeniably changed.

17. Shy Girls - "Second Heartbeat"



2013 was the last days of the R&B craze and Shy Girls arrived as one of the last best pieces of the Empire with "Second Heartbeat". It was simple, quiet even, a reminder of the bizarre beauty of the 1990s of our memories. The chorus wrapped itself together in two parts, the drums almost a hair off-beat, the alleged "Second Heartbeat" of the title. It was, briefly, unity.

16. Wolf Alice - "Bros"



The Joy Formidable never went away, they just had their sound hijacked and turned up by Wolf Alice, among others. It was part Silversun Pickups, it was part the Pretenders. The explosion of the first movement, guitars and vocals erupting from some unseen location provided the magic of the Prestige that emerged over and over again. "Forget everyone", they told us, and this was easy. Nothing sounded as big and brash as "Bros", as the band sang, "there's no one quite like you," we suitably reflected the sentiment back. "Are you wild like me?" provided the best bridge of 2013, the last quiet movement before a wave of destruction returned.

15. Phosphorescent - "Song for Zula"



No song had the power to make you more miserable in 2013 than "Song For Zula". Pulling threads from Springsteen's "Streets of Philadelphia", string loops designed to cut, and lyrics like "I saw love disfigure me into something I am not recognizing," "Song for Zula" was a punch to the chest, a stab to the side, a caved-in knee; pick you visual metaphor here. "I will not open myself up this way again", Phosphorescent sang to us, explaining all the weakness he wouldn't let "Zula" see, though "Song for Zula" was exactly this window in his heart. "I do not lay here in the dark waiting for thee," he sang, though he would and did exactly that.

14. Emily Reo - "Coast"



It was the best unsigned LP of 2013, Emily Reo's seasick, laptop symphony, Olive Juice. Its best song, "Coast" stuttered over seven minutes, a mixture of Grimes and Beach House, the charm of Computer Magic and the baroque brilliance of the Postal Service. Modernity never sounded so broken, dated or beautiful as Reo's charming vocoded vocal soared out over a sea of keyboards. There were hints of menace and dystopia, a song that took too many shots of digital cold medicine before walking the world a trailing and dizzy mess. This is what 2013 sounded like for some of the hyper-literate and increasingly distant elite. It was, for seven and a half minutes, beautiful.

13. Mt. Wolf - "Hypolight"



Mt. Wolf jumped out of the gym this year, and then broke up, leaving us with a few scant songs and the promise of things to come that never would. "Hypolight" proved a brilliant and troubled composition, made all the more dour by the band's later break-up. "Put another light out", ringing as one of those lyrics so general that their application is only a matter of having a meaningful relationship with the aesthetic and emotive worlds. There was no debating the soaring, crystalline head voice of the first chorus, the onset of the drums reminding us that this all began on the ground. "Hypolight" was already tragic as a piece of art, and became more tragic still, now that its creators are no more.

12. Mary Cassidy and Jon Lawless - "Make It Do"



There was a particularly languid evening this August spent listening, largely, to Haim remixes and Jon Lawless and Mary Cassidy's "Make It Do". The dominant reflection of that night was a head-nodding, "This is just so good," twinkling keys set against Cassidy's delicate soprano. The two iterations of the chorus, trafficking in a rap-video chic (something Lawless did well before Lorde was a teenager), were finally united in a figure-eight weave through the arrangement's last moments. Cassidy was a dream and Lawless, a genius, as "Make It Do" evaporated from view in the same ethereal manner which it arrived; it was and is so good.

11. RAC - "Let Go" [ft. Kele and MNDR]



The RAC finished remixing other people's work by remixing their own. "Let Go" sounded like a Kele song, or a MNDR song onto which the RAC threw a sheen and a backbeat. But this was the debut RAC single, original work that sounded like a remix already. Were the lines between the remix and the mix blurring when a DJ sought out to two solo artists to guest on his own music? Of course, narrative is dead; the call was coming from, as it were, inside the house. Still, "Let Go" held one of the best hooks of the year, MNDR at the top of the room on the title lyric, Kele occasionally mumbling beneath. It wasn't quite a dance floor burner - it didn't have the BPMs - rather, it was one of the best pop songs of 2013, the kind of thing that Top 40 radio should well have put in heavy rotation, and, for you, thankfully didn't.

Wolf Alice :: "Blush"

Wolf Alice continue their assault on the fuzz rock pantheon with slow jam, "Blush." A brittle and slow opening gives way to feedback-drone pathos, singer Ellie Rowsell repeating the meaningless and meaningful hook, "punch drunk, dumb struck, happy happy." It unwinds like slow-dance Smashing Pumpkins, reverb-heavy guitars sluicing backwards as the dreamy Rowsell mummers "happy" like a mythical panacea. Her final indictment, "curse the things that made me sad for so long," this, the last dance of dire times.

Wolf Alice :: "She"

Britain's answer to Silversun Pickups, Wolf Alice release "She" from forthcoming debut EP, "Blush". Recalling the greatest moments of 1990s alternative radio, "She" rips along on fuzzy and chunky guitars, an empty breakdown that portends a screaming, crashing conclusion. Soaring above it all is vocalist Ellie Rowsell, a powerful slice of fecundity in the maw of electrical guitars, like a garage version of Ritzy from Joy Formidable. Rowsell represents the soul and power of the massive wall of "She", making this alleged woman at once dangerous and ineffable.

Wolf Alice :: "Bros"

"Forget everyone," intones Wolf Alice singer, Ellie Rowsell, in the midst of the propulsive opening movement of recent single, "Bros". It's an easy request from this London quartet, as exploding post-punk guitars ricochet off one another in a super-heated arrangement that removes any idle thoughts of anything or anyone else. "Bros" manages to sound a lot like a dreamy version of Silversun Pickups, "Lazy Eye" - admittedly, this comparison could start and stop with the drum pattern - mixed with Rowsell's spot-on Chrissy Hynde impression. And it is this, the Pretenders comparison, that sticks the most in the song's bridge, where a fragile and fecund Rowsell asks, "Are you wild like me?/Raised by wolves and other beasts." Both singer and arrangement smolder with hints of violence and attraction. This lyric about a dangerous and unremembered world, Wolf Alice is a band with which to forget everything.