An ear to the ground for the sound of 2010

Published on Sunday 3 January 2010 20:58

THERE has been a great deal of looking back at the past decade in the last few weeks; now it is time to consult the tipster sheet for 2010 and highlight some of the more interesting contributions to the musical landscape of the new year. Here are some of the diverse new bands, old bands, gigs, albums and songs to listen out for in the coming months.

MOST EAGERLY AWAITED POP SHOW

Lady Gaga

Did you see her on The X Factor? OK, she didn't have much competition from the contestants (though Jedward put up a fight with their increasingly insane numbers), nor from the bland production line of guest performers – not even batty Whitney Houston and her malfunctioning wardrobe – but her routine with the zombie dancers in the giant bath and the toilet seat piano stool has to be one of the most bizarre pop performances of the age. Pray that she brings her outsize suite to the SECC on 1 March – or at least an equivalent level of demented spectacle.

MOST IMPRESSIVE GUEST LIST

Gorillaz, Plastic Beach

There are a few contenders here. Christina Aguilera has been working with the ber-cool likes of MIA, Santigold, Goldfrapp and Ladytron on her as-yet-untitled forthcoming album. Massive Attack's new album, Heligoland (due out 8 March), features their most impressive roll call of guest vocalists yet – regular collaborators Horace Andy and Martina Topley-Bird are joined by Damon Albarn, Elbow frontman Guy Garvey, Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval and Tunde Adebimpe of TV On The Radio. But Albarn himself has amassed the most intriguing line-up for the third Gorillaz album, Plastic Beach. Rapper/actor Mos Def has already let slip that he will be rendered as a cartoon character called Sun Moon Stars. We can only guess at the possible cartoon alter egos of the other guest players, Snoop Dogg, Lou Reed, Bobby Womack and Barry Gibb…

MOST AUDACIOUS TV TALENT SHOW GRADUATE

Adam Lambert

You may think you know the kind of pop "stars" turned out by reality TV shows, but Adam Lambert, the flamboyant, charismatic, openly gay goth rock screamer from San Diego who was the runner-up on last year's American Idol, is a different breed and you'll know all about it when he releases his debut album, For Your Entertainment, over here in March. It features songs written by some usual suspects – Linda Beautiful Perry and Ryan Bleeding Love Tedder – and some rather more intriguing composers, such as Lady Gaga, Muse frontman Matt Bellamy, P!nk, former Darkness singer Justin Hawkins and Rivers Cuomo of cult college rockers Weezer.

YOUR NEW FAVOURITE BAND

The Drums

Around nine years ago, the UK was going loco for a supercool gang of young men from New York with sharp style and sharper cheekbones who wrote irresistible indie pop tunes. The Strokes' debut Is This It was recently hailed as the greatest album of the decade, so things worked out quite well for them. As we move out of the Noughties, history may be about to repeat itself with The Drums, who also have the NY postcode, the cheekbones and the tunes, and were garnering attention practically from the moment they formed last year. Whether the nation will share the tipsters' enthusiasm remains to be seen, but this preppy, post-punk / surf pop-loving four-piece – who cite long-defunct Glasgow indie band The Wake as an early influence – are definitely the young pretenders to keep an eye on when the annual NME tour hits Glasgow on 5 February.

MOST OFFICIAL BOOTLEG RECORDING

King Creosote

"Official bootleg" may sound like an oxymoron, but when you have recorded about 726 albums, as Fence Records supremo King Creosote has, conventional recording styles must lose their charm a little. And so it is that this year's Fence Homegame festival (12-14 March, in picturesque Anstruther) will involve a mass bootlegging exercise. King Creosote has ten new songs which he would like to be recorded for a live album. He will play all ten songs at seven separate gigs over the weekend. Each gig can accommodate 40 people. In order to gain entry, patrons must have on their person a recording device of some description (even if it's just a mobile phone) and agree to record the gig. Then all 280 attendees are invited to distribute their recordings in whichever way they see fit. Sock it to The Man!

BEST CONCEPT FOR AN ALBUM

Everybody Was In The French Resistance… Now!, Fixin' The Charts, Volume One

Mad Paul Vickers, late of Dawn of the Replicants, has written and recorded a rock opera called Itchy Grumble with Edinburgh weirdniks The Leg (out on 15 February on SL Records), which concerns an immortal protagonist and a sequence of events which few, it would be fair to say, could anticipate. Art Brut frontman Eddie Argos, however, has adopted a more accessible and arguably more fertile concept for his new band Everybody Was In The French Resistance… Now! – that of the reply song. Argos and his partner Dyan Valdes have selected some of their favourite lyrically troubling pop songs and written ripostes in the style of the original songs for their debut album Fixin' The Charts, Volume One (out 25 January on Cooking Vinyl). So they respond to Michael Jackson's Billie Jean with Billie's Genes (in short, the kid is definitely your son), to Kanye West's Gold Digger with Coal Digger, to Sinatra's My Way with My Way (Is Not Always The Best Way), and so on, righting pop wrongs as they go. The possibilities are endless.

MOST LIKELY UNLIKELY HIT

Owl City, Fireflies

No-one seems entirely sure why unknown act Owl City came from nowhere to top the Billboard Hot 100 in the States in November last year, least of all Adam Young, the modest young man from Minnesota who is Owl City. But that's a lot of people digging an otherwise unremarkable winsome electro pop song composed in his parents' basement. How it achieved that success is an easier question to answer – the usual YouTube and MySpace word-of-mouth might just have played a part in Fireflies' massive sleeper success to date. The track is out here in February, accompanied by a short tour (no Scottish dates though), with the album Ocean Eyes to follow in March.

LEAST AWAITED SEQUEL

Eminem, Relapse 2

Arguably would have been the year's most awaited sequel. But then we heard Relapse…

And finally, some new acts with Caledonian connections.

Scottish duo Electric Music AKA are now trading under the name Boo Hooray and release their classy new album, Haunted, on 25 January. Available on the same day is the self-titled debut from Erland & the Carnival, a psych-folk trio formed by ex-Verve guitarist Simon Tong, who take their name from their Orcadian vocalist Erland Cooper.

RM Hubbert, erstwhile member of Glaswegian post-rockers El Hombre Trajeado and now solo guitarist, "will play for food" round your house, if you book him, in support of his debut album, the flamenco-influenced First & Last, which is being sold on a pay-what-you-like basis.

Young jazz singer/pianist Jonathan Carr is a more mainstream proposition in the Jamie Cullum mould. He spent two years studying at Boston's prestigious Berklee College of Music but has now returned to his native Scotland and plays King Tut's in Glasgow with his nine-piece band on 9 January.

CRITIC'S CHOICE

The Yummy Fur

Nice'n'Sleazy, Glasgow, 7 January

A VERY brief reunion – one hometown show, one date in London and a handful in the States – for the indie punk noiseniks everyone wishes they'd paid more attention to first time round. The ex-members haven't done too shabbily since the band split in 1999. Singer Jackie McKeown now fronts 1990s, and Paul Thomson, recently voted Scotland's Greatest Ever Drummer went on to play in that band named after an Austrian Archduke…

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