Taken from this week’s Future Pop mailer. Click here to subscribe.
With today’s cool kids listening to grime, alt-R&B and whatever’s the latest trend in electronic music, not many indie acts have managed to win a young fanbase in the past few years. However, independent label Dirty Hit have done it twice, with The 1975 and Wolf Alice. The indie music scene seems to be pinning their hopes on their labelmates Pale Waves to follow in their footsteps. They were the only British band to make the BBC Sound of 2018 list, and appear on the cover of both DIY and Dork’s Class of 2018 issues. The group started out as a girl duo, before adding two boys to make up the numbers. I appreciate the ’80s teen goth look and broad Mancunian accents, and some of their tracks are quite catchy, but I feel musically they have been influenced a little too much by The 1975, who they’ve toured and collaborated with in various ways. Their biggest single Television Romance just sounds like a 1975 song with a female vocal. Personally I’d like to hear their ’80s references coming through more directly, rather than filtered via current sounds. However, Dirty Hit have shown they can make indie music relevant to a post-subcultural generation, so let’s see if they can do it again.