2012-13: THE YEAR OF THE LAD?!

It's been all about the ladies for a while, Adele, Florence and the Machine, recently Jessie Ware among more established favourites Patti Smith, Bat For Lashes, Cat Power who are still putting out great records. Strong female artists, with integrity, creativity, scrumptious voices and summat to say for themselves.


Here's the thing... I've been doing some research this morning, having a good old listen to a heap of cd's that have been on my desk for a bit too long. It turns out I'm mostly impressed by the lads right now, these three in particular.


Tom Odell, Matt Corby and Jake Bugg have been bubbling under for some time and now it seems are storm-trooping through that ice. I'm not saying there's been no decent solo man talent to break through in the last year or two. If you like a bit of Ed Sheeran, that happened. Ben Howard is genuinely marvellous and I'm impressed he got a Mercury look-in and there've been loads of dead exciting male-fronted bands, The Vaccines, Alt-J, Splashh, Django Django.  However, it might just be that in the next year or so we get the gift of song from this generation's Nick Drake or Bob Dylan and these three singer-songwriters are good place to start I reckon.  Jolly good.