Welcome Philly R&B band Marian Hill to B3SCI. We’ve been spinning the brilliantly simple “Whisky” the entire week. Perhaps what’s most refreshing about “Whisky” and Marian Hill is there’s no “winking” or “hand waving” to the more blog friendly tropes of the current wave of R&B, “Whisky” doesn’t try to be anything more than what it is: a really really great song that also happens to be R&B. Very well done.
Marian Hill – WhiskyMarian Hill
: (Facebook)
Rating 8.3
We love Jody Brock. The South West London soul man definitely evocates the power and visceral quality of the best vocalists of that genre’s golden era (e.g. Donny Hathaway, of whom we are certainly picking up a vocal influence) while channeling an immediacy and right-now-ness that pulls at you straight through headphones and grabs at you, demanding, pleading that you need to listen. Check Jody’s excellent brand new “Stormy Weather” single below.
Jody Brock 
(Facebook)
Rating: 8.3
Nottingham UK act Amber impresses w/ the both melodically lyrically very strong “Kites”. Still quite young, the band (the oldest member is 20) met at university only last year, sound very ready to make an immediate impact w/ their lo-fi meets destined-for-arenas sized songs. Sample “Kites” from Amber’s debut “Noah” EP below.
Amber (Soundcloud)
Rating: 8.3
Lovely. The mighty Eliza and the Bear knock out another fantastic track w/ the triumphant drama of new track “Friends”. “I got friends, I got family here”, be prepared to not only be shouting that line by the second or third chorus but expect to have it in yr head for at least the rest of today (it’s definitely stuck in ours). Absolute A+. We need more music, guys!
Eliza and the Bear 
(Facebook) (Soundcloud)
Rating 8.2
Pop songwriting oddball Dent May returns with “Born Too Late” the lead single from the Mississippi-based artist’s third LP, Warm Blanket. Recorded in a (at least according to PR) haunted Victorian mansion in St. Augustine, Florida; May recruited locals to record many of the record’s insturmental bits and bobs. Recalling the 60’s-80’s pop songwriting student blend of artists like Mayer Hawthorne; “Born Too Late” achieves it’s B3 Rec’d status on the very stength of its songwriting. Obviously Mr. May is a bit of a hand here, effortlessly blending varying schools/genres/era of melodic construction into a seamless melange of high quality tunefulness. Warm Blanket is due August 27th.
Dent May 
(Facebook)
Rating 8.4
Straight out of Miami, Robby Hunter Band puts up an ace with “Treat You Right” (feat. GostWridah). An impressive follow up to prior releases, “Hard On Me” and “Corazón”, “Treat You Right” is a nice mix of hip hop, funk and indie styles, all into a perfect slice of beach music in under 3 minutes. By Brian Litwin
Robby Hunter Band 
(Facebook)
Rating 8.3
Absolutely fantastic! Very little information exists online on “Stay Inside”‘s point of origin Raleigh Ritchie, an artist out of the UK (we’re assuming via accent); literally though, our man has barely 100 follows on Facebook. That aside, “Stay Inside” is so so good; the work of a very special/accomplished artist. We can’t wait for more.
Raleigh Ritchie (Soundcloud)
Rating 8.2
Brooklyn synth pop upstarts Little Daylight ably follow up recent successes “Name in Lights” and “Overdose” w/ the summery 80’s-esque bounce of new track “Glitter and Gold”.
Little Daylight (Facebook)
Rating 8.3
Oh yes. Nu-wave R&B girls start taking notes, new Mad Decent signee LIZ blows the nascent genre’s script out the box w/ her Picard Brothers-produced gem “U Over Them”. You need this track in your life right now.
LIZ 
(Facebook)
Rating 8.3
If you frequent b3sci, then it should come as no surprise that we’re excited about this advance stream of Solitary Trip, the debut EP from spaghetti western friendly, psychedelic-rockers, Men’s Adventures. In fact, we’re so excited that Brian Litwin from the team caught up with both Jimmy and Alfie from the band for a quick chat about the new EP, affinities for vintage comic books, time era rock and roll and more. Have a look at the interview as well as sample the forthcoming Solitary Trip EP below, officially available on June 25th via Dirty Bingo Records.
B3SCI: Your debut EP Solitary Trip is due out June 24th. Is there anything that you guys will take away from this release… that you can tell as of now?
Jimmy: Yeah all I’ve ever wanted to do is make records, and having something published has been an interesting experience, a good one too! I look forward to and will be taking everything I’ve learnt making this record and applying it to the next one.
B3SCI: Is there anything that you expect listeners to take away?
Jimmy: The band and the record is supposed to take you on a journey, what kind of a journey is obviously down to the listners interpretation. I would say that’s just one of the meanings behind the title Solitary Trip
B3SCI: We’ve read that you’ve explained your incredible single “Feeling Bad” as a song that forms into something which could be in a Tarantino movie. Must say, I totally agree. Are you fans of Quentin? Does he influence your work?
Alfie: I don’t think we ever actually said that, alot of people have said “Feeling Bad” especially could be heard in one of his films which I understand. But yea, big fan of his films and his soundtracks, I couldn’t say they’ve ever directly influenced our music but I would love to work on a soundtrack or score for one of his films someday.
Jimmy: The biggest influence someone like Quentin Tarantino has on our music is the fact that he is a genre director and we are essentially a genre band. At the moment we are heavilly shrowded by western comparisons, which is fine and we’ve kinda asked for it, but there is a lot more to us than that…
B3SCI: You site Ennio Morricone as an inspiration. Do you forsee large symphonic orchestration, and possibly film score focus, in the band’s future?
Jimmy: Well we have put some strings on “Welcome Home” and “B.B Vulture”, we worked with Dan Merrill on those, he was a pleasure to work with and I am still blown away with what we achieved there. I would love to work more on music for films. I hope some directors or film makers will read this and get in touch. In a band, you have to stagger releasing stuff and playing stuff live. With something like a film score, the inspiration is right in front of you, the director has provided that for you. You take that, write something, record it and leave it there. That’s really appealing to me!
Alfie: My dream is really for Men’s Adventures to keep getting bigger as a band and to start doing stuff like this live. As i previously said, all my words are with images in mind and that very much applies to films as well. A friend of mine at the BFI has been putting on musicians playing new original scores over classic films and that’s definitely something we plan to do when the time is right.
B3SCI: The whole brand that is Men’s Adventures is engulfed in 60’s and 70’s throwbacks. What are some your favorite aspects of that time period?
Alfie: I’d throw in a little of the 50’s and the 80’s too. I think the innocence and romance of alot of songs and films from the 50’s and 60’s, you dont get that anymore. I would’ve loved to have joined my parents and uncles and aunties at alot of the gigs they attended in the 70’s and 80’s. The clothes and the vinyl they have handed down to me from that period have been a huge influence. I have pink Cramps vinyl sleeves and posters on my bedroom walls that they gave to me, maybe thats why I chose pink for our EP cover.
B3SCI: Is there a tie-in with your passion for comic books? I don’t usually mention the album artwork but something about it caught my eye. Tell us the deeper meaning of this background and the woman raising her arm.
Alfie: It’s not so much comic books, originally we were inspired by men’s adventures magazines and the stories they would tell, always about a guy and a girl but always set somewhere far away and exotic or dangerous, they provided cheap thrills and to me they flowed like songs when reading them, so I wanted to do that with my lyrics. For me, when writing our songs I always have the illustrations from those original magazines in mind but we don’t want to use them in our artwork as hopefully the words help the audience to paint that picture themselves. This is very much the western adventures though. As for the woman, she’s there because the songs are all about women I guess, everything revolves around them. She was actually used on the cover of our first EP too so i guess she becoming a bit of a logo. The sun was inspired by the artwork for the film The Big Country.
B3SCI: Did you grow up listening to this era of music and at what point did this music become a major influence?
Jimmy: I grew up on a stable diet of Westerns, Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy films. They all had beautifully crafted songs and pieces of music to accompany them. When you really listen, you cannot help but be moved by that. I have never stopped loving those films I grew up on. We had a lot of time to think, write and record after the demise of both our previous bands and out of that time came Men’s Adventures.
Alfie: Yeah, I think after our last bands which were much more punk and rough around the edges with pretty pointless political or self indulgent words we had to think what we really wanted to do. My mum and my grandma would sit me down and watch Westerns with me constantly, my granddad did the same with Laurel and Hardy too actually haha. So I guess I grew up listening to this type of music in films and its just stuck, it naturally creeped out.
B3SCI: We’re giving you guys a free ride in our B3SCI time machine. Where and when are you going… and why?
Jimmy: To be honest if that were a genuine possibility, I think I’d just wig out and accidently pick somewhere really lame, then spend the rest of my life hating myself for the wasted opportunity OR just spend my entire trip worrying that I’m gonna fuck up in the future, and end up not really having a good time. It’s probably best I don’t get in…
Alfie: I’ll get a little high and get in. 1881, Tombstone Arizona at 2.45pm, to watch the gunfight at OK Corral and see what Wyatt Earp’s sayin. Or! in true Men’s Adventure fashion I would obviously take it back to before ‘she’ left me…
Interview By Brian Litwin
Men’s Adventures (Facebook)
Rating 8.3
In. love. “When” is the breezy new single from Italian duo M+A. The first announced track from M+A’s sophomore LP These Days, is sleek, sophisticated and infinitely catchy. In 2013, we need more tracks like “When”.
M+A 
(Soundcloud)
Rating: 8.3
This week marks the release of “Hustler”, the new (and just) second single from internet and UK based pop sensation Josef Salvat. B3SCI writer Erin Feathers recently caught up with Salvat for a quick Q&A about his rise to notoriety, knack for brooding lyrics and other messy cerebral stuff. Have a peek at their conversation below.
B3SCI: You are quite the internet sensation this year. Congratulations. Do you find yourself constantly smiling or are you overwhelmed by all the attention?
Josef Salvat: I haven’t really had time to think about it all, which is probably a good thing! But when I do it’s a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B.
B3SCI: Earlier this year your beautifully understated ballad “This Life” premiered with a bang. Your catchy maudlin lyrics and vocal cadence have people comparing you to Lana del Rey. Do you feel like you can relate in any way? What sort of an opening statement is “This Life” for you as an artist?
Josef Salvat: The comparisons are really flattering, I think she’s excellent. I think “This Life” is probably more a part of an opening statement than ‘the’ opening statement and hopefully that will become clearer as I release more stuff.
B3SCI: While we are on the subject, what are you most grateful for in this life?
Josef Salvat: The people in it – my parents, my friends, people I’ve worked with – I’ve been amazingly lucky in that department.
B3SCI: How is it finding your sound and image as an artist in light of becoming such an ‘overnight’ success?
Josef Salvat: I think the term ‘overnight success’ might be a bit premature. But essentially I’m still just doing what I want, to my own standards, which is what I’ve always done. The one difference is, now that people are watching, I have to learn from my mistakes faster than I used to.
B3SCI: Can you picture yourself crossing over from Pop to another music genre? If so, what genre(s) entice(s) you?
Josef Salvat: ‘Pop’, as I conceive it, is a pretty broad genre and one that allows you to dip into a whole bunch of different styles at the same time – so whilst my influences might shift around I don’t think I’d stray so far as to leave it altogether. But you never know. At this point I’m not sure where I’d go.
B3SCI: Your latest track “Hustler” is an immense hit amongst the blogosphere. The video is beautiful as well. Can you tell us a little about the song and how the video concept relates with your vision?
Josef Salvat: I guess “Hustler” was me trying to voice the psychology behind certain self-destructive behaviours. I tried to reflect that in the video and draw that distinction between the process of thought and all the messy cerebral stuff that goes on inside.
B3SCI: We noticed you have a gift for brooding lyrics. Is it difficult ever to translate seemingly real life struggles into your music?
Josef Salvat: It’s not something I can consciously do very well – if lyrics come about something then they come. If I sit down and go ‘I’m going to write a song about this’ I’m rarely happy with the end product.
B3SCI: Now that you are based in London, have you taken into the live music scene?
Josef Salvat: Absolutely – there’s no place like it.
B3SCI: As an artist what basic message do you hope to convey for posterity?
Josef Salvat: I don’t really have a basic message – I think I’d find that kind of limiting. And if one appears, it probably won’t have been dictated by me but inferred by others, which I think is usually what happens.
Interview by Erin Feathers
Josef Salvat (Facebook) (Purchase on iTunes)
