Taken from this week’s Future Pop mailer. Click here to subscribe.
One of the most talked-about acts of the festival was an Australian group on their first trip to the UK. I featured Confidence Man’s single Boyfriend (Repeat) as Song of the Week back in October last year, when I spotted it in the Aussie Shazam chart. At the time I compared them to CSS and LCD Soundsystem, but live their vibe is more 80s/90s – think B-52s and Deee-Lite. I hadn’t seen anyone talking about them before the festival, but once I got there everyone seemed to have heard of them, and word had quickly spread that they were great fun. Since my feature, they’ve released a follow-up single, a cheeky novelty song called Bubblegum, and signed to legendary London indie label Heavenly. As they haven’t put out any proper music videos yet, you can only get a sense of what they’re about by watching live performance videos such as this and this. The group, fronted by the perfectly named Janet Planet, is making the most of their inaugural UK visit with four London gigs, four sets at The Great Escape, and three shows at the various Dot To Dot Festivals this weekend. They’re also starting to find their place in the international music scene thanks to influential friends – they’ve supported Charlift (and Bubblegum was mixed by one of the members), and just released a remix of Magpie Eyes by their new labelmates, Saint Etienne. I don’t think Google image search will be bringing up pics like this when you type in “Confidence Man” for much longer.