E^ST – The Alley E.P.

It is far too easy to view E^ST (pronounced “East”, the moniker for Melisa Bester) by facts and figures before anything else. All the standard comments like “can you believe that she’s still only a teenager!” and “Oh really? She’s from Australia?” sadly do sometimes have the power to push creative expression into the background. However, this is far from the case with E^ST’s The Alley E.P, which stands as overwhelming proof of her artistry,  as well as a forceful mission statement.

The Coneheads – L.P.1. aka “14 Year Old High School PC-Fascist Hype Lords Rip Off Devo for the Sake of Extorting $$$ From Helpless Impressionable Midwestern Internet Peoplepunks L.P.”

The Coneheads are incredibly easy to pin down yet simultaneously impossible to grasp. By titling their album L.P.1. aka “14 Year Old High School PC-Fascist Hype Lords Rip Off Devo for the Sake of Extorting $$$ From Helpless Impressionable Midwestern Internet Peoplepunks L.P.”, The Coneheads are completely aware that they can be simply written off as Devo impersonators. They know the joke of the music industry, yet they do not joke around. Well, not in the conventional “ha ha” sense. 

Miley Cyrus – Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz

………..Okay. Let’s get this over with.

The Weeknd – Beauty Behind The Madness

Abel Tesfaye has had a crazy couple of years as new age pop/R&B savant The Weeknd. After achieving almost immediate cult acclaim with his three superb mixtapes House Of Balloons, Thursday, and Echoes Of Silence in 2011 (compiled soon-thereafter as Trilogy in 2012), he delivered the surprisingly underwhelming debut LP Kiss Land before striking it big with a terrific guest spot on Aria Grande’s Love Me Harder last year. The Weeknd is a distinct voice in modern pop. A definite personality, Tesfaye is conceptual enough to appeal to the indie crowd, yet slick enough to mingle with the big time pop stars. So, riding of the true breakout success of Love Me Harder, Tesfaye has made his pitch for international stardom in his own right, on his own terms, inviting us to explore the Beauty Behind The Madness…

No Famous Death – Dark Joy

What does it take to be original? For the artistically minded, that is one of the greatest goals to achieve, yet also perhaps the most unattainable. Indeed, every day that passes it gets harder and harder for absolute originality to be realised. In the realm of current music, the well accepted belief is that there is nothing new anymore, it is all a rehash of something that came before it. This statement does hold perhaps more truth then fabrication, but still, there are ways around it. For example, on first inspection, No Famous Death and their album Dark Joy, is comparable to a lot of sounds if they were corrected with an IF…Mumford & Sons IF they were much less overblown,

Mieke – Mieke (E.P.)

Elissa Mieke is Canadian, a uni graduate, a part time actor and model, and a songstress. While these previous aspects of information before ‘songstress’ do not necessarily determine the success of a musician, in this case, they serve to inform the music on Mieke’s debut E.P., as it is thoughtful, glamorous, yet understated and wise.

At times, Mieke sounds more or less like a vocal double of Zooey Deschanel (except maybe a tad less twee), especially so on the effervescent Move On, the kind of track She & Him should be writing. Replete with sugary harmonies, a gliding lead vocal, and an insistent percussive beat, Move On is by far the most positive sounding track on the E.P., despite being at its core, a tender urge to break out of a life seemingly repeating the same tediums each day (much like how Mieke repeats many of the song’s visual images). Magnolia meanwhile nods along with an alluring smoothness that successfully matches subtle guitar descendings with reverb effects and bright vocals, coming off like Sharon Van Etten song. And Vulture delights in showing off some simplistic yet pretty string arrangements with a tale of love and misguided devotion.

Sleeping Alone is at once refreshingly childlike as it is mature. An arresting portrait is painted of life that can be so easily tossed around by the expectations of modern society. “There are a hundred other beds where you could sleep/But let’s be honest, there’s more we wanted” Mieke sings in a voice of utter conviction. Being a part time model and actor herself, Elissa Mieke is more than likely aware of the objectification of women in society, and here she is on Sleeping Alone, taking a stand in beautiful form. She is undoubtedly helped by her instrumentation on this track, which features stellar piano, all sparkling and tinkling with majestic sway, supplying the perfect compliment to Mieke’s sorrowful delivery.

While Elissa Mieke’s E.P. does lack a certain sense of magnetizing gravitas and persona, there is enough charm and substance here to warrant revists. This is one of those “finding their voice” E.P.s, and by the sound of it, Elissa Mieke is pretty close to that.

Mieke EP is out 28th of August

3.9/5

Yanni Markovina

yannimarkovina@hotmail.com

Dr. Dre – Compton

To what may be the surprise of many, Compton was only recorded in a few short, even rushed months. But despite the reputation that Dr. Dre has for being an obsessive and a perfectionist when it comes to creating music, his projects have all been created in surprisingly normal, and even short amounts of time. The Chronic only took a few months in 1992. 2001 was whipped up quickly just to prove he still had street cred. This reputation, or indeed, this myth, can be contributed almost solely to Detox, the legendary album supposedly over a decade in the making. The more time passed, the more its cult grew, almost akin to that of The Beach Boys’ Smile…until the simple announcement that it had been scrapped stopped everything dead in its tracks. That Detox will never be released is perhaps for the best, its legend was far better than what anybody could imagine. It’s just like that quote from 500 Days Of Summer, “Robin is better than the girl of my dreams. She’s real”. Just replace ‘Robin’ with ‘Compton‘ and ‘girl’ with ‘album’ and ‘She’s’ with ‘It’s’, and you get the situation.

Albert Hammond Jr. – Momentary Masters

Back in early 2006, The Strokes released First Impressions Of Earth, an album which was considerably darker, heavier, and longer than what The Strokes had done previously, not to mention one that also received much divisive opinion and criticism (plus, it may or may not have started the expression YOLO). It would be another 5 years before The Strokes would return with the quirky Angles. Meanwhile, in LATE 2006, Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. released Yours To Keep, his debut solo album that sparked questioning as to who was the true genius behind The Strokes’ sound.

Copywrite – A Heart Of Glass

Do you remember when you were a teenager? (I’m aware that some people who are reading this might not be a teenager yet, but bear with me). You felt you could do anything, that the sky was the limit. You had ideas, dreams, wishes. New thoughts and sounds would rush through your mind. The sad reality though is that a lot of people never know how to channel these attitudes into reality. Practically everyone is guilty of it, hell even I am! However, whatever dreams and thoughts Australian band Copywrite had during their teens, they not only realised them, they turned them into living, breathing, ferocious articles of music and released it as an album called A Heart Of Glass.

Eves The Behavior – Eves The Behavior E.P.

Lorde has a lot to answer for. Actually, let me rephrase that: because of Lorde, it has become too easy for the internet and the music industry at large to throw labels upon young female songstresses, preferably of an indie-electronica leaning. Could it be that greedy music publishers are desperate to get their hooks into anyone who could repeat the runaway success of Royals? Could it be that Lorde as already inspired a legion of performers in her wake? Or could it be that people are just lazy, and not willing to accept a new individual talent without comparing it to something else? It’s probably a bit of all three. Either way, I bring this up so it can be the first thing you leave at the day when discussing twenty-year-old Hannah Karydas, or, Eves The Behavior; who may be from a similar genre of music and may be of the same gender as Lorde, but that should not overshadow such a brilliant new talent.