FOE
I chanced upon FOE (aka Hannah Louise Clark) on MySpace about a year ago and thought the few gothy indie-pop songs she had posted online were excellent, so I was very pleased to see lots of buzz building up around her over the last few weeks. Unfortunately I’m not as keen on her new single Tyrant Song as I was on her early demos, so I hope the pressure of having people pay attention to her hasn’t scared her away from her previous poptasticness. Here’s my favourite of her early tracks so you can see what she’s capable of. I do like the new pink wig look, though. Tyrant Song is part of a recently released EP called Hot New Trash, which is available to listen to on SoundCloud, but still nothing from it is really grabbing me and the mocking of throwaway pop music in several of her songs is worrying territory. I hope FOE is not going to literally become my foe.
Poptasticness: 55% Hit potential: 51%
Bluebell
It appears from their social network sites that Bluebell and FOE are already friends, and it makes sense as they’re both trendy young indie-pop girl singers (well, Bluebell is actually a duo but it’s clearly all about lead singer Annabel Jones), but their music couldn’t be mistaken for each other’s. The one song they’ve put online so far is Normal Heights, which comes with a video that’s basically a Tumblr in video form – loads of cool-looking pictures which don’t really mean anything. Still, Tumblrs are very popular these days so perhaps it’s a clever marketing technique to make such a Tumblr-esque video. As for the song, it’s quite shapeless and directionless, but Annabel has a lovely voice (extremely similar to Missy Higgins, the Australian singer) and the song does pick up towards the end. It’s certainly not an instant pop hit but there’s enough here to make sure I’ll be looking out for what they do next.
Poptasticness: 67% Hit potential: 44%