Little Thief, The Crom, & wht.rbbt.obj
In celebration of their recent engagement, Bristol based duo Little Thief have released the single, “Lost in Love,” and, to be quite honest, this track is like nothing we’ve ever heard before; therefore, instead of embarrassing ourselves by drawing useless comparisons to the majors, we will tell you that their music is raw and gritty, in your face, and definitely not what we were expecting when we saw the press release. “Lost in Love” is undeniably driven by its consistent bass line, emphasized by the staccato pulse during its refrain. Fitzgerald assumes vocal duties for the first half of the song, then Williams, his bride to be, makes an appearance. Apart, their voices are fantastic; together, they are magical. This song is quickly becoming one of our favorite indie balls of fire for the year, so if you cannot catch them on their current UK tour, you should definitely jump all over that play button. It is also worth mentioning that Little Thief’s single contains a B-side– a fantastic cover of Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire,” which is so far removed from its original version that we, at first, believed it to be the actual single. Then, of course, the vocal melody comes in and gives it away. Much the same as “Lost in Love,” the bass is the driving force behind this rendition and also merits a listen.
Since we’ve already mentioned the idea of honesty, we must admit that we nearly skipped “Silver Spoon” from Scotland’s The Crom– not because it isn’t good enough, but because our impatience almost got the best of us. The synthy intro spans on for about thirty seconds before your ears are rewarded with an extremely delicious distorted bass line, followed quickly by the pounding of drums, then, at the one minute mark, you find that you’re scorching along with the main rhythm. At 1:17, the vocals come rolling into what we originally assumed was an instrumental, but they are well worth the wait in all of their overdriven tube glory, a golden staple for this particular breed of indie music. The Crom recently won a nationwide battle of the bands and their album has been nominated for a Scottish Album of the year Award. We don’t even want to imagine how ridiculous we would have looked if we had not given “Silver Spoon” its fair shake, which you should do as well by pressing play:
Finally, we are extremely delighted to share with you an amazing act that hails just a few stoplights away from UpToHear headquarters. Ladies and gentlemen, nail down your furniture and tighten your trousers– wht.rbbt.obj will blow everything you own out of Earth’s orbit. They recently sent us an unmastered version of their latest, "Once More Down The Rabbit Hole," and we have never been more excited to share something with the world. Does it sound like PJ Harvey on steroids? Is this some long lost relative of Amy Winehouse or some already-famous band who is just f’ing with us by sending their unmastered tracks? We don’t know! But, even unmastered, "Once More Down The Rabbit Hole" already sounds like the big leagues, with its retro and bluesy instrumentation and its dynamically jazzy and soulful vocal work. The kicker is that it has not yet been released, so the lyric video will have to be enough to hold you over until October 20th:
And please do not feel bad for not being able to pronounce the band’s name (White Rabbit Object). Apparently, they did this to keep their identity a secret, but with music like this, we doubt it will be a secret much longer. For those who would like to see them live, they have some upcoming dates: 10/1 Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN • 10/21 Louisville, KY • 10/22 Nashville, TN • 10/23 Memphis, TN. “Once More Down The Rabbit Hole” will be available on your DSP of choice October 20th! Pre-save it it here because you will hate yourself if you miss it!
-TM