Foxes
With Marina, Yadi, Alex Winston and more, Neon Gold is getting a reputation for signing female singer-songwriters with long dark hair and electro tendencies. For some people another of the same will be too much, but in my world there’s always room for more if they’ve got some good pop songs up their sleeve, and all four of the tracks on Foxes’ website show great potential. Make sure you listen through to the fourth song, Night Owls Early Birds, as it’s my instant favourite. Not to be confused with the Brighton band Foxes! who I wrote about back in January last year, this Foxes is a 21 year old Londoner called Louisa Allen. No relation to Lily as far as I can tell. Her inspirations include Bat For Lashes and Kate Bush, which certainly shows, but it’s exciting to have a new Bat For Lashes type on the scene as I felt that her last album could have done with a lot more poptasticness. It looks like Foxes could be the one to fill in and provide it for us.
Poptasticness: 79% Hit potential: 42%
Delilah
She’s getting a lot of buzz at the moment, but I really can’t even feign an interest in Delilah. Since people started murmuring about the return of trip-hop the release schedules have been filled with girls whimpering over snoozesome electro music. Yasmin had a promising moment with Finish Line, but otherwise I think we’d all be much happier if Siobhan Donaghy’s career was resurrected instead. Her music sounds like this but much better, so it makes perfect sense! Delilah seems to be the most boring of this genre yet. She even manages to make Chaka Khan’s Ain’t Nobody, which she takes lyrics from for her current single Go, sound dull. She’s a good singer but that means nothing without good songs or charisma, and Delilah has neither. She’s already hanging about on the Radio 1 A List, and there are plenty of people out there who will find this music enjoyable, but I don’t think it will appeal enough to the average music buyer for Delilah to have any real mainstream success or longevity.
Poptasticness: 34% Hit potential: 55%