In partnership with Wide Awake
As you’d perhaps expect – given that it’s headed up by the team behind London’s essential new music melting pots Moth Club and the Shacklewell Arms – there’s a wealth of rising talent on offer at the 2023 edition of Wide Awake.
Many of the most exciting new acts on the bill will play on their biggest platforms yet, after rising up the ranks at live institutions like The Windmill, cutting their teeth at the top-notch gigs staged by festival partner Bad Vibrations.
The festival’s DIY ethos doesn’t just end with its stages, either. This year, Wide Awake is partnering with the 100% independent, anti-capitalist publication Hate Zine, who explore social change and politics through the arts, on a series of panels and workshops focused on the housing crisis, the environment, and gender equality. On site, you’ll also find an independent vendors market with artist album signings hosted by London indie label Rough Trade, and the city’s homegrown brewery Five Points.
Ahead of the festival, here are NME’s five must-see picks.
Blondshell
Attention Liz Phair fans – the biting grunge-rock of Blondshell may well push your buttons. Based in LA, Sabrina Teitelbaum previously made breezier pop music under her old moniker BAUM, but she’s since admitted that the finely-tuned rage she now channels feels far more natural. Cuttingly witty and fuelled by uneasy angst, her self-titled debut ‘Blondshell’ – released earlier in 2022 – is the perfect introduction. It veers from the widescreen sway of ‘Kiss City’ and its stand-out one-liner (“I think my kink is when you tell me that you think I’m pretty”) to the spikily self-aware ‘Sepsis’ (“I’m going back to him/I know my therapist’s pissed/We both know he’s a dick”). Catch her live now so you can bang on about ‘seeing her in the debut days’ when she hits the big time.
O.
Weird and wonderful graduates of the richly eclectic music scene surrounding Brixton venue The Windmill, O. have a fairly strange set-up – Tash Keary drums and Joe Henwood toots away on a honking great baritone saxophone. Though it all admittedly sounds rather odd, their music hits with surprising intensity given its minimal foundations – its interlocking grooves landing somewhere between experimental jazz, funk, and dance. The duo recorded their first single ‘OGO’ with producer Dan Carey’s cult indie label Speedy Wunderground, and previously supported the similarly left-field Black Midi on tour.
Butch Kassidy
Hailing from West Ealing, Butch Kassidy also cut their teeth at vital London venues like The Windmill and East London institution The Shacklewell Arms. Inspired by the desolate shape of no-wave – 1970’s New York’s avant-garde reaction against new-wave – their live performances bring to mind the likes of Suicide, Sonic Youth, and DNA, with occasional bright melodies emerging from their brutal, brilliant noise rock. Pack your earplugs for this one; it looks like they could give the decibel-busting likes of My Bloody Valentine a run for their money.
Shygirl
Running in the same circles as some of the pop scene’s most exciting minds, Shygirl takes the pulse of London club music, adds a sprinkle of saccharine noughties pop, and whacks a tonne of barely-concealed innuendo on top for good measure. From the monstrous bass-rumbles of ‘SLIME’ to ‘Firefly’s breezier ‘90s house influences, Shygirl’s voice is the constant knitting it all together – her delivery cool, collected, and brilliantly nonchalant. No wonder Danny L Harle, Arca, Mura Masa, and Sega Bodega have all been queuing up to collaborate.
Jockstrap
Opening your debut album with an acid-housey, Primal Scream-style epic opener called ‘Greatest Hits’ is what you might call a power move, but it’s hard to blame this London duo for fancying their chances. Both graduates of Guildhall School of Music & Drama – a prestigious incubator for classical talent – Georgia Ellery and Taylor Skye take their forensic knowledge of melody and instead use it to tear down the grand walls around them. The sweeping Disney strings that burst out of ‘Glasgow’ – the band’s accidental festival anthem – could be one of the best moments of Wide Awake. Just don’t, for the love of god, Google them at work.