Famous Indiepop Albums

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1 Bandbeskrivelser (bilag til ansøgning om støtte til Copenhagen Popfest 2014) Alpaca Sports (Sweden) Out of Gothenburg and armed to the teeth with catchy pop tunes comes Alpaca Sports. They re a seven piece indiepop band formed around songwriter Andreas Jonsson. In the band s so far fairly short career they have released a string of impressive singles, and late February will see the release of their debut album Sealed with a kiss. Alpaca Sports musical universe evokes the sense of long summer nights and innocent teenage romance, elegantly wrapped in well crafted indiepop tunes. Homepage Listen The Felt Tips (Scotland) The Felt Tips began to form in late 2005 when Miguel Navarro arrived in Glasgow from Spain hoping to start a band and replied to Andrew Paterson s 18 month old ad for band members. Previously botched attempts meant that Andrew had pretty much given up on his own dreams of being in a band and he was at first reluctant to meet up. Fortunately Miguel persisted and

2 soon the pair had formed a strong musical bond, aided by a shared love of certain indiepop bands (for instance, both regularly wore Gorky s Zygotic Mynci t-shirts). Andrew s childhood friend Neil soon joined on bass and the quartet was completed in 2008 with the arrival of Kevin Hug Carroll on drums. The quartet plays melodic guitar driven songs about your life like that time you fumbled around with a condom in your darkened bedroom while trying to keep the mood alive. Well, The Felt Tips were there watching you. Homepage Listen Lost Tapes (Spain) This duo from eastern Spain hasn t yet released an overwhelming number of records. Still they have a lot of clear references to bands that ought to be found on every popfest attender s favourite mixtapes and playlists. And listening to Lost Tapes is like listening to a well composed mixtape: At times the jangly guitars and poppy keyboard sound-textures bring out memories of the best C86 sounds. Other songs drown you in fuzz, jumpy bass lines or lovely blurred vocals reminding you of something released in the early years of Creation or Sarah Records. But either way listening to this mixtape gives you the feeling of something new; something you hadn t expected or even heard before. Lost Tapes must make it very difficult for genre-sorting addicts to place them in just one music category, which make them the perfect choise for a Popfest that just aim to make people, who love every decade of indiepop, dance, smile and not sort their vinyls before they go home to make more mixtapes. Homepage Listen

3 ONBC (Denmark) ONBC are the artists formerly known as Oliver North Boy Choir. Back in they released 8 EPs all exclusively on the internet, never performing live. The band was a trio back in those days consisting of Mikkel Max Hansen, Camilla Florentz and Ivan Petersen. Mikkel and Camilla were married then, and they had both been front men in the semi-legendary indiepop band epo-555. In 2012 the band reemerged on the surface; back with a vengeance and an addition to their lineup in the form of Tanja Forsberg Simonsen, known from the bands Superheroes and Private. They more or less quit the use of electronic drums and play their jangly guitar- and keyboard-driven dream pop with a nice, soft feel to it and lovely girl/girl vocals. Their latest single is from 2012, but rumors have it that there is new material bound for release close to the Popfest. Homepage Listen Vit päls (Sweden) Vit päls is the brainchild of Malmö s Carl Johan Lundgren, and have since the beginning of the millennium been the home of Lundgren s need to express his thoughts and reflections artisticly. They are now an established 7 piece band. Throughout the years Vit päls have musically evolved from DIY recording their pop music leaning toward lo-fi aesthetics on their earlier albums, towards a more well produced and genre-wise broader palette on their latest and brilliant offering Ägd. Musically Vit Päls explores different styles, but always with a pop song and Lundgren s simple but precise lyrics about life and how to live it at its core. Lundgren s not afraid to wear his heart

4 on his sleeve, as a lyricist or as a live performer, and Vit Päls has a reputation for energetic and very engaging performances. Homepage Listen The Proctors (England) There s something about the type of music that The Proctors play that takes me back to being seventeen, stupidly thinking I was in love, and slightly obsessed with any music that sounded even vaguely like Belle & Sebastian mild accents, swirling guitar parts, maybe some twee boy/girl harmonizing happening. Granted, in a personal historical context, that all gives way to a more maudlin period (that some might say I ve never recovered from), but that s really beside the larger point: Trouble With Forever sounds like the latter part of my teenage years, placed neatly on the B-side of mixtapes for girls I liked.the song is the opening track on the UK band s new album, Everlasting Light, Shelflife Records, which features Terry Bickers (House Of love) guest guitar and is produced by Ian Catt (St Etienne/Field Mice) It s available in vinyl and CD and digital from here, with the first 100 copies on vinyl on green wax. (Also, if you head to that link, you can grab Trouble With Forever for free.) // Facebook Bandcamp

5 Close Lobsters (Scotland) Close Lobsters first came to wider prominence with the track "Firestation Towers" on the NME's C86 compilation. They signed to Fire Records and released their debut single "Going To Heaven To See If It Rains" in October They released a second single "Never Seen Before" in April 1987 which strengthened their reputation as one of the leading emerging indie bands. They went on to release two albums: Foxheads Stalk This Land was released in 1987 and Headache Rhetoric in Rolling Stone's review of "Foxheads Stalk This Land" called it "first-rate guitar pop from a top-shelf band. Close Lobsters could have been just another jangle group, but they have a lot more going for them than just chiming Rickenbackers." Their popularity on United States college radio stations led to an invitation to the New York Music Seminar in 1989, which in turn led to an extensive American tour They toured relentlessly in the UK, Germany and the United States of America and Canada. The band eventually took an extended break, but in March 2012 the Close Lobsters reformed to play the 2nd Madrid Popfest, in Glasgow, the 3rd Popfest Berlin and the 2013 NYC Popfest,