The New Smu: May 2021

The New Smu: The best new artists in my inbox this month

Discovering great new artists is one of the most exciting things about music for me. If you don’t champion the stuff you love, you can’t complain when you only hear the shit you hate on the radio.

There is an endless and thrilling sea of music out there, but it can be bewilderingly vast and not without peril. You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you meet an artist formerly known as Prince. In this monthly review, I will be highlighting some of the most interesting releases I have heard by new and unsigned artists, wading through the audio slush pile so you don’t have to.

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Bishop Ivy – Tunnel Vision

Dreamy, swooning and melancholic indie-electronic with a glitchy, emotive undertone and rich, sweeping vocals.

Follow Bishop Ivy on Instagram and Facebook.

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Emmanuelle June – Love Arcane

A short, sharp blast of hypnotic vocals over pulsating, hard beats. Intimate and slightly claustrophobic, this is a witchy and bewitching gem.

Follow Emmanuelle June on Instagram and her official website.

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Jesse Walton – Into The Light

Emotive and melancholic but catchy, uptempo folk with sharp, well-crafted melodies and evocative lyrics.

Follow Jesse Walton on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.

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Glass Dove – Just A Conversation

Punchy synth-filled alt-rock detailing the exhausting spiral of an unproductive argument.

Follow Glass Dove on Twitter and Instagram.

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Single of the month

Callum Easter – What You Think?

Fellow Scot, Callum Easter, delivers a perfect piece of addictively catchy alt-pop with an Iggyish beat and exactly the kind of wry sardonicism I expect from my countrymen. A guaranteed earworm.

Follow Callum Easter on Spotify.

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Video of the month

WINKIE – Burn The Town Down

Director Chris Mulligan creates a neon nightmarescape that perfectly captures the intense, threatening sound of the track. This could as easily have been a single of the month for me in its own right but the video is the cherry on the top. This is what I imagine the shrieking sound of the technopocalypse will feel like when it comes.

Follow WINKIE on Spotify and Instagram.

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If you would like to submit your music to be included in a future edition of The New Smu please email me at susan@thesmureviews.co.uk and include a link to your track. I don’t care if you have 25k followers or only your dog has heard it as long as it’s interesting, beautiful, weird or wonderful.

A playlist of songs featured here and in previous months can be found on Spotify and YouTube.

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All words by Susan Sloan. More of her work for Louder Than War is available on her archive. Find her on Instagram as @thesmureviews and view Susan’s website here.

Source: louderthanwar.com