Laura Groves (picture by Suzie Howell)
This week’s round-up of Getintothis’ Patrick Clarke’s finest new music finds features Stevie Nicks-meets-Kate Bush pop, the Irish heirs-apparent to the Radiohead throne and an impeccable psych-soul debut.
Formerly Blue Roses, as whom she released her 2009 debut of the same name, Laura Groves‘ latest EP is one to beg questions as to why neither moniker isn’t markedly more well known.
The record, the Commited Language EP draws from influences slick, smooth and sensual, a blend of Tango in the Night synths, a swirl of echoing dream-pop vocals and a heavy dose of individualist charm.
This is electronic pop at it’s most spellbindingly intringuing from the Bradford-born singer-songwriter – the title track slipping from swirling, suspended verse to a superlative Stevie Nicks chorus with elating ease, Dream Story finding rapturous middle ground between Grimes and Kate Bush for a consummately low-key EP.
Irish trio Cloud Castle Lake, meanwhile, find their touchstones with the likes of Sigur Rós and latter-era Thom Yorke, the ethereal, enswarming knife-edge delicacy of Glacier, their latest, a tune simply to devour.
Taking the momentous-if-melancholy pinpoint drums of In Rainbows with soft stabs of piano and a waiflike falsetto, Glacier is captivating from the off in its airy elegance, yet as it almost unconsciouly crescendos into a potent dovetail of swarming texture proves that the three-piece can still leave you reeling.
London’s Alex Burey, finally, is proving a magesterial mastery of his own when it comes to all things seizingly tender on Inside World – remarkably only his debut, given it’s impeccable potency.
Self-described, and to a tee, as ‘psych-soul’, it’s a listen of enthralling scope, capacious, echoing brass to evoke Screamadelica and Spiritualized, coatings of echoing distortion atop smokey vocals and stirring-yet-smooth neo-soul instrumentals. All hyperbole aside an ensnaring, transporting EP, this writer’s favourite so far this year.
