Features

Nova Saints, The Twilight Sad, Giles Likes tea, 28 Degrees Taurus, The French Quarter - MySpace Monthly: May

GodisintheTV 06/06/2007

MySpace Monthly is back! It's taken a half-year's hiatus, but despite vicous rumours of its implosion, MySpace survived Facebook's rise and rise, and managed to retain its internet superpower status with the continuing recruitment of the best of new music, and here, for the first time in 2007, the GIITTV sieve is once again called into action to sift through the MySpace sands and uncover the new bands that you really should be talking about.

Last week Clark Summers had the pleasure of seeing Nova Saints at Nottingham Trent University as part of the annual Dot To Dot Festival. These Bristolians have a fan in former Verve axe-man Nick McCabe amongst others and play the kind of delicious shoegaze/psych-rock that once made Ride and early Verve (we're talking “A Storm In Heaven” era here) so viscerally thrilling. The self-released debut E.P. (1,000 copies only) can be ordered from Rough Trade but point your browser in the direction of the Nova Saints MySpace and go check out their space-y delights!

On a more pastoral tip the indiepop underground continues to thrive. Giles Likes Tea like picnics, Billy Bragg and biscuits, they're also Northamptonshire's best kept secret and are surely deserving of your attention, while, on a similar tack, The Steadies sound like early Belle & Sebastian after one too many gins i.e. teary eyed and a little contemplative.

It's also surely only a matter of time before Glaswegian four piece The Twilight Sad break through. Like their peers (the similarly awesome) Fields they mix folk-leanings with distortion and effects oh and they've got some lovely melodies and did we mention that their artwork and song titles are just as great? In fact, just go and buy the record (Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters) already - it's out now on Fat Cat.

Staying in Scotland, the un-Scottish named four piece The French Quarter draw their influences from the likes of Clinic, Mogwai and Arab Strap and it shows: the two tracks on their myspace show clear potential of a new band developing a sound in that vein. Far from the wannabe Joy Division stylings of the Edtiors the band have an expansive palette that extends into post-rock atmospherics on the instrumental track "Fast." While "Old/New" contains some doomy vocals to go with its insistently prodding guitars,and post punk rhythm, it doesn't out stay its welcome either clocking in at a concise 2.46. Check that out, along with the rest.

Finally for this month, a band similar to Asobi Seksu, 28 Degrees Taurus couple cute-overload South East Asian influenced melodies with Sonic Youth-esque guitar drones. There's less fuzzy J-Pop and more echo canyon with a laid back, cool delivery. Aquarian Love bubbles along gently (quite literally in parts), enjoying a Status Quo-esque rock'n'roll riff on the verses. Jagershots is an utterly charming paen to getting fuzzy on Jaegermeister, and who could deny the neccessity of such a song? Lovely.

Plenty to get your teeth into there, so feast on Murdoch's internet-based money machine and seek out some new music to support this summer.

Shaking the GIITTV sieve this month were Clark Summers, Angus Reid and Bill Cummings. Tim Miller supervised.