September Round-Up: The Ever-Changing Format

We meet again, end of the month, we meet again. This month has gone super mega really fast which is very unsettling and this has led me to start this post on the penultimate day of September. Classic Jat. I have also been dreading writing this for the past couple of days SO after five months or so of the new monthly round up format, I thought I'd switch it up again because really, who cares?

Let's see how this one pans out.

Exciting thing - I reached post number 1500 on the daily site this month, which is actually ridiculous.

MONTHLY PLAYLISTS: YouTube / Spotify / Deezer

What follows is a series of tweets and things I tweeted about over the past month which I either really enjoyed or really didn't enjoy. There are some other things here too - but I always find my Twitter feed is a nice thing to work off. I'm @WIIHAMB in case you missed that at the top of the page or you don't make it to the bottom.


I went to see Alessia Cara play her first show in London at the start of the month and it was super duper really totally cool and all I want is to hang out with her and have a great time. I can't wait until post-album when Alessia Cara has a full actually proper live band and is playing a venues five times bigger than Barfly. Things will be better then.


Chinah came to London twice this month, and the first time I chose not to go and see them. WHICH WAS DUMB. Luckily they came back last week and I went to see them and it was great and they were great and I really hope I get to see them loads more soon and also that they release some sort of EP or album-esque thing soon too.


September Song to Pretend You're in a Music Video To goes to this absolute banger. No seriously, every time this comes on I strut down the street like I own the place, fake screaming the chorus at the top of my lungs. Love it love it love it.


I became absolutely entirely really obsessed with London four-piece Fours' debut EP 'Everything I Never Said'. It's perfect. It's so so so great and I can not wait to go to a live show and lose my shit.


This is the first of two videos that I've completely fallen in love with this month. 'Good Girl' is a pretty new direction for English duo Aquilo, and I wasn't sold at first at all, but this song is unbelievably good. The video is super cool as well, kind of like a coming of age... but really like a coming of sound kind of thing. Look, I don't know, it's all just great.


The second is this little masterpiece. I've loved Erik Hassle for so many years now and his excellence shows absolutely zero signs of slowing down. New single 'Natural Born Lovers' needs to be framed in some kind of pop music hall of fame PLEASE.


I actually posted 'Can't Have' at the end of last month but it had taken me a little while to grow an unbelievably unhealthy obsession with it. Not only does this song leave me in a fairly emotional state anyway, the fact that Steven A Clark's album 'The Lonely Roller' isn't released in Europe until mid-November is even more of a blow, especially seeing as it's already available across North America. BUT Clark is playing a London Show the day before my birthday which is cool. Although it would be cooler if it wasn't a Monday.

Here are some releases that I thought were really suitably average this month:

So I was super disappointed with all of these. 'That's The Spirit' was just an average rock album at best, and we all know that people were only losing their shit because it was such a drastic change in sound for Bring Me The Horizon. Upon a second listen CRJ's 'Emotion' wasn't as average as I first thought, but seeing so many people hype it up prior to it's eventual UK release, I was expecting it to be monumental. 'Caracal', another fairly big disappointment. In hindsight Disclosure's debut wasn't that great overall, was it? But on paper, the features on 'Caracal' look incredible... the songs just don't match up to that. Finally, Fetty... Fetty, Fetty, Fetty. The deluxe version of Fetty Wap's self-titled debut is 20 tracks long, which I initially thought was EXCELLENT news. Eight tracks into the 20 and I wanted it all to end. There are points that are genuinely great, but unfortunately, the majority of the hour and quarter long record just sounds like one long song.

Here are a load of releases that I actually thought were great this month:



None of these are particularly surprising choices, I don't think, apart from Gabrielle Aplin. I've never been a fan before, just not my kinda thing, but I really thoroughly enjoyed this album. The others pictured were obviously also good, I wouldn't have included them if they weren't.

“Hey Natalie, Just wondering if you’ve had a chance to listen to-“ No. No I haven’t.

— WhatIfIHadAMusicBlog (@WIIHAMB) September 21, 2015

Daily feels.

.@OhWonderMusic vibes 💙💜💙 pic.twitter.com/17zmr1hZsu

— WhatIfIHadAMusicBlog (@WIIHAMB) September 16, 2015

I went to Oh Wonder's first ever show ever and it was really nice and it looked a bit like this.

The above is a thing that is happening which is cool. APART FROM THE FACT THAT OVER THREE DAYS ALL OF THESE THINGS ARE HAPPENING AT EXACTLY THE SAME TIME WHICH IS ESSENTIALLY REALLY FUCKING AWFUL. Like, why would you curate line-ups like this and then be like "meh fuck it, we'll have them all on the same three days"? WHY? This is really cool though, anyone mildly interested in music should spend at least two days in east London for this.

Thought about rating songs on a scale of YAS!-YASSSSS! but it’s all got a little confusing even for me.

— WhatIfIHadAMusicBlog (@WIIHAMB) September 4, 2015

This was almost genuinely a thing... for about five minutes.

A Chat with The Gospel Youth (@TheGospelYouth) at Hevy Fest (@HevyFest) "We still have a massive point to prove.” http://t.co/ShuOhAzDCu

— WhatIfIHadAMusicBlog (@WIIHAMB) September 3, 2015

I finally posted my first ever legit real interview at the start of the month. It's actually cool and not boring, so it would be actually cool if you checked it out.

Finally, I probably can't leave without saying that I went to see Halsey's first UK show early this month and it was... insightful. I wouldn't say that I didn't enjoy it but... it was a weird one to be a part of.

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ICYMI - This Week on WIIHAMB - 2015 Week #38

In case you missed it - You shouldn't have, but just in case you did.


I am so unbelievably tired. I'm currently trying to catch up on the sleep I missed last Saturday night and it's really just not working out for me. I went and saw Chinah play The Lexington on Thursday which was super cool, they were so good, and now all that I am is annoyed that I could have seen them twice this month. I saw State Champs as well, which was cool because I don't really go to that many rock things anymore and for some reason I'm seeing them again next Saturday too - yolo right?
Everything this week is "excellent" - no really, I actually used that word in every post.

Keep up to date with all of the daily goings-on over at WIIHAMB Daily.

Sunday
Erik Hassle, I have no idea what you’re doing or how you’re doing it but it sounds incredible. I always feel sad about Erik Hassle, I feel like he should be a much bigger global pop success than he is. Especially when you just roll out tracks like ‘Natural Born Lovers’. I've been absolutely rinsing this all week because it's just so excellent. There's also now an official video for this which is great.


Monday
I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to get around to posting this new Lostboycrow song. ‘Powers’ may be the strongest vocal performance we’ve heard from the Californian so far, which is pretty impressive because everything else we’ve heard so far has been excellent. Forever stoked on Lostboycrow.


Ellie Goulding can do and will never do no wrong. ‘On My Mind’ is just another slice of pop masterpiece from Goulding’s ever-growing catalogue of excellence. I don’t think that this is much of a drastic change of direction for her either. Of course it’s very different from anything on ‘Lights’ but it’s not miles away from Halcyon’s sound overall. Not one iota of me is going to be able to wait patiently for her album which is due for release at the start of November.


Tuesday
Once I got into it, I really enjoyed some of Troye Sivan’s recent Wild EP, including but not limited to this track ‘Fools’. But it did take me a little while to get past the fact that it was Troye Sivan. Overall the EP seemed much more mature than what I thought he was capable of releasing. Glades are a Sydney based The XX/Chvrches-esque trio and their cover of ‘Fools’ is absolutely stunning. And it’s also available as a free download on Soundcloud, BONUS.


Wednesday
Samm Henshaw’s debut EP The Sound Experiment finally saw its actual real life release this week! ‘Autonomy (Slave)’ features on that EP and it's really cool, as is all of Samm Henshaw’s music. Henshaw’s vocals in particular are so strong and pretty unique, there aren’t many people so young coming out with this calibre of music. Henshaw is also playing some headline dates at the start of November - great news!


Throwback Thursday
This week Evanescence’s ‘Bring Me To Life’ led me to create a playlist which I called Manson & Friends, featuring a load of good and bad 00′s rock. I was reminded of this song by Stone Sour. I want to say it was their debut single? Regardless, eight years on it still sounds excellent.


Friday
TĀLĀ and MssingNo are both London based artists who have paved an amazing platform for Korean girl group WA$$UP’s to storm into our lives. I enjoy K-pop as a standalone thing anyway, but when it’s entwined into a track like this that’s almost “gritty” in an electronic pop crossover way, it sounds so excellent.


Saturday
I’m a little muddled about Etham’s back story but the bottom line is that ‘Cold Love’ is the first song to be taken from a new project courtesy of the London based artiste. ‘Cold Love’ is probably one of the most mature tracks I’ve heard this week - and I don’t really know what that means, but mature feels like a good word to use to describe this song. Etham’s vocals are excellent and there’s a perfect balance of guitar solo that doesn’t make the song feel self-indulgent at all.


September playlists so far: YouTube / Spotify / Deezer

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ICYMI - This Week on WIIHAMB - 2015 Week #37

In case you missed it - You shouldn't have, but just in case you did.

Another cool couple of shows this week in the form of Oh Wonder's live debut and Hildamay's not reformation (???). Also it would appear that Alexisonfire are officially a band again, which really agitates me, and I may or may not, realistically I probably won't, do a post about that. I may also do a post about Chloe Grace Moretz and the music she likes and how she goes about posting it... but then again I also probably won't. Let's get on with this shall we.

Keep up to date with all of the daily goings-on over at WIIHAMB Daily.

Sunday
I’ve heard a few Ava James songs over the past couple of months and they were good but I wasn’t hooked… until I heard ‘Between Sheets’. There’s no question about the calibre of artists James is working with on the prodcution side of things. On previous tracks she’s paired up with Tropics and Maths Time Joy, and now Leo Kalyan has taken the reins. James’ voice is huge and undeniably the focal point of this song. Who knows what could be next for this London based 21 year old.


Monday
Oh so you like Florence + The Machine, but you don’t like listening to Florence + The Machine songs? That sounds weird, but it’s a thing I suffer from. And luckily Fours are here to cure this horrible disease. Frontwoman Edith Violet’s vocals are very reminiscent of Welch’s and matched with bouncy indie-pop the result is magical. Along with this track, ‘Leave Me’, the other two tracks from Fours’ Everything I Never Said EP are also on their Soundcloud page and they are both great. I really didn't give 'Leave Me' enough credit in my original post, the song, the lyrics, everything are so so so great. I've genuinely listened the Fours' EP about 30 times this week.


Tuesday
“Zara Larsson? Natalie, are you sure?” Believe me, I was skeptical, I mean, I thoroughly enjoy MNEK’s music but I’m not a Zara Larsson fan. Upon listening to ‘Never Forget You’ everything I ever thought I believed flew, darted, in fact, out the window. This. Is. A. Banger. It builds like the most perfect pop song should. A duet that you just had no idea would work AND IT DOES. More excellent random collabs in the future please, universe.


Wednesday
AQUILO GOES POP. And it’s alright, you know. I’m not in love with the chorus, but this seems like a cool direction for the duo and for the album that they’re apparently making.This song is actually far better than I’ve made out in this post, it is really good, you should listen to it, you might as well, it's right here.


Throwback Thursday
Listening back to Hadouken in 2015 is very peculiar and the first question you find yourself asking is “did I really used to enjoy this?”. I think I did, which is absolutely mind-blowing. ‘House Is Falling’ along with that ingenious 90s sample on ‘Mic Check’ are the only two Hadouken songs that are worth listening to five years on. ‘House Is Falling’ should have been a huge hit really, actually a genuinely great pop/dancerock (or whatever genre this is, post-grindie?) crossover. Ah well.


Friday
It’s fair to say that I was quite excited when I saw that Great Good Fine Ok had put out a new song. The Brooklyn based duo only release tracks that make you want to walk down the street pretending you’re in an epic summer music video even when it’s monsoon weather (a la London right now) and ‘Take It Or Leave It’ is no different. Their vocals are always really strong too, soft effortless tones that blend so well with the rest of everything.


Saturday
Don’t be fooled, Keyes’ ‘Black Magic’ isn’t a cover of the latest Little Mix single, although I have no doubt that that would sound excellent. ‘Black Magic’ is in fact Keyes’ follow up to previous single ‘Veins’ which I posted and I loved, and I still love. I had no idea that Keyes was from the UK (I bet I did, and I’d just forgotten) but it’s cool that someone new and not from the US is making fun pop songs like this.


Finally a Disclosure song from the new album that I like, and there’s not even a guest feature! Howard Laurence himself takes on vocal duties on ‘Jaded’ and it’s so much better than any of the tracks the brothers took sole control of on their debut. I’m hopeful that some of the songs on their upcoming album ‘Caracal’ will be equally as good as this is.


September playlists so far: YouTube / Spotify / Deezer

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