I have the pleasure of working with someone who has a rather eccentric and unconventional music taste. I get to learn all about a whole side of music I didn’t know existed but also get incite into a cynic’s view of pop music. One night he and his band went through the UK’s top 40 and there wasn’t a single band on the list. I thought that in his old age of thirty he maybe just didn’t recognise some of the new pop bands names. However; when I decided to test his theory I was blown away to find the only band with a featured song was Clean Bandit. Some questionable exceptions might include Maroon 5, Train and The Vamps but in the words of Max Bemis, “They’re only actors who can play guitar”.
Now I’m not going to say the charts are the be all and end all of music just look at who NME awarded best band recently but they’re a clear indication of what the radio and masses are playing. Biffy Clyro and Arctic Monkeys seem to be the only British bands to consistently break into the charts with the likes of former giants Bloc Party and Kasabian seemingly dormant. However; there is still more to British bands than the usual crowd doing the ‘remember us’ festival circuit.
Gritty British indie bands are still keeping up the powerful guitar driven image as Wolf Alice pummel us with riffs and VANT
https://twitter.com/wearevant/status/832379413434081281
prove that they still have something relevant to say as well. Baby Strange prove that the north is still the place to go for that raw power that drives the British scene. Finally Jaws and Teleman bring a bit of older influences back into the limelight with hints of shoegaze and Krautrock.
Circumnavigating the world of music 