(Andy Synn highlights three more home-grown heroes)
Some of you may have noticed (or maybe you haven’t, I don’t know how much attention you all pay to what we do around here) that my “Best of British” articles rarely feature any of the “bigger” names (relatively speaking) from the UK scene.
Partially that’s because, obviously, the site’s general ethos is to dedicate more of our time and energy to the less-exposed, less “mainstream-friendly” bands out there, but it’s also because, to be honest, a lot of the bigger names and famous faces just… don’t really do it for me.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s lots of bands whose “mainstream-friendly” sound still appeals to me – bands who play and perform with just as much conviction and creativity as any of their more self-consciously “underground” cousins – but there’s a certain formula for success, carefully curated and algorithmically adjusted for maximum appeal, that some groups follow which simply sounds hollow to my ears.
But I think it’s safe to say that none of these three bands – one we’ve covered here before, one we’ve clearly overlooked for far too long, and one making their highly anticipated (and already highly praised) full-length debut this year – are what you would call “formulaic”.