The Under 30 Club: The Best Young Music Makers of 2014
Web Extras | Dec 30, 2014
A survey of some of the best young talent that has played live in our studio. Listen to individual sessions below, and don't forget to check out our original list of 13 Under 30 from earlier this year, including performances from Haim, John Fullbright, Le1f, Asgeir, Hurray for the Riff Raff, and more!
The sister duo First Aid Kit is from Sweden…but you’d never know it listening to their new album The Lion’s Roar. What they make is a kind of Americana, with acoustic guitars, autoharp, lots of layered, sisterly harmonies -- and shout outs to Emmylou, June, Gram and Johnny (no last names needed).
On the strength of a self-recorded demo, the young Tampa-born, New Orleans-based singer and guitarist has already signed with a big label, opened on tour for Jack White, played on Letterman and Conan O'Brien, and performed at festivals like Lollapalooza and the Newport Folk Festival. His recently-released self-titled debut was recorded by in-demand producer Andrija Tokic (Alabama Shakes, Hurray for the Riff Raff). Needless to say, it's been a busy time for Booker.
For a band that shares its namesake with a certain influential TV drama, Twin Peaks sounds nothing like the quirky and unsettling moods evoked in the David Lynch and Mark Frost series -- nor the eerie dreamscapes composed by Angelo Badalamenti. Instead, the young Chicago garage rockers simply chose their name because it "sounded cool." It does, certainly, but the band's sneering bursts of feedback and scorching guitar riffs also sound way cool -- especially when cranked up real loud.
Even with just a finger-picked guitar and a lone suitcase drum, Alejandro Rose-Garcia can command an audience. Performing under the moniker Shakey Graves, the Austin, Texas songwriter and one-man-band brings a theatricality and cool confidence to the stage -- whether he's unfurling graceful folk songs, or juked-up, road-hardened rockers about an array of tragic characters and ne'er-do-wells.
Sarah Jaffe became known as a folk singer-songwriter making quiet acoustic songs on her 2010 debut. Over the last few years, however, the Texas native has transitioned to pop, enlivening her stormy songs with a denser sound full of industrial electronic beats and synthesizers.
The members of We Were Promised Jetpacks were only 19-year-old University students in Glasgow when they released their moody and emo-ish debut These Four Walls in 2009. The Scotland band's third record, Unravelling, reveals substantial maturity amid the diamond-sharp hooks.
Au Revoir Simone is a band capable of immense angles on love through tiny observations, transporting you with lines that reveal much by saying little. With glittery '80s electro-pop, bouncy neon-colored hooks, and stuttering dance beats, they don't wallow too long in sadness. Full of depth, mystery and allure, but also, well, fun, Au Revoir Simone is making its finest music yet.
The best partnerships have a push-pull dynamic that forces each member out of their comfort zone, and nudges them into new territory they may not have found by themselves. Case in point: Sylvan Esso, the new project from singer Amelia Meath, of the mostly a cappella Vermont folk trio Mountain Man, and Nick Sanborn, of the North Carolina rock band Megafaun.
PHOX's members all share the same hometown of Baraboo, Wisconsin. After graduating high school, each left home to pursue an array of passions: music, cosmetology, and even a job in Homeland Security. But eventually, they all found their way back to Wisconsin, moved into a house together in Madison, and soon began writing and performing together.
Adult Jazz has a way of making expansive, otherworldly sounds with very little. The band makes room to stretch and allow for sonic exploration, and the songs feel like fully-formed statements capable of transporting the listener somewhere else.
Echosmith's youthful appeal (the eldest member is 21) and ear for earworms is working; their most popular single "Cool Kids" has over 80 million plays on Spotify and more than 15 million views on YouTube. The phenomenally popular group played a jangly new single and talked about their love of Debbie Harry.
Little May makes folky indie pop songs that are equally spacious ruminations and lovely soft harmonies. The Sydney, Australia trio began by covering songs like Eagle Eye Cherry's "Save Tonight" in high school.
While he's still only 28 years old, Blake Mills has become a musicians' musician. A highly skilled guitarist and session player, Mills has collaborated with and enlivened recordings from practically everyone: Jenny Lewis, Conor Oberst, The Avett Brothers, Norah Jones, Beck, Pink, Neil Diamond, Julian Casablancas, Kid Rock, and Lana Del Rey, to name a few. He's also perhaps most recently known as the guitarist in Fiona Apple's touring band.
When Anthony D'Amato was a student at Princeton, he slid a handmade CD under the door of a professor. The professor in question was/is no ordinary academic, but Paul Muldoon, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, critic and poetry editor of The New Yorker. Muldoon took an interest in D'Amato's work, and the two began an investigation into the art of songwriting.
The two sisters create haunting folk pop songs that hint at a wisdom beyond their years -- Madeleine is 20 years old, while Lily is 17. The Indiana natives were first discovered on YouTube after an original song and video caught the attention of Sufjan Stevens. The two are now on a mission to write three albums in three years.
Stylistically, it is true that the rock in which Houndmouth trades owes a great deal to the Southern Gothic of artists like The Band, but the rousing choruses and clear-eyed lyricism of a song like "Krampus" are delivering on a feeling that has very obviously been lacking in pop music for the last few years.
Dum Dum Girls burst onto the scene in 2008 on the strength of visceral, messy songs, and the charisma of vocalist Dee Dee Penny. But as the one-woman project morphed into a full-fledged band, that primitive grit has been incrementally sanded down, revealing a new polished side to Penny's aesthetic.
Considering he's still too young to drink legally, Parker Millsap's voice has a remarkable whiskey-tinged world-weariness of songwriters decades his senior. Yet the Oklahoma-bred musician seems to come to his soulful, yet gravelly croon honestly: he grew up in in a small town Pentecostal household, and is part of that region's so-called Red Dirt music movement which blends classic folk, country and gospel traditions.
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