The Fresh 50

Have you ever stopped to think just how awesomely exciting the Australian music scene is? No? Well we here at Rip It Up Digital certainly have, so much so that we just couldn’t keep it to ourselves. So we decided to make a list celebrating the very best in Australia’s emerging musical talent. We call it The Fresh 50.

The cultural cringe is a thing of the past as Aussie musos have proven time and again we’re a force to be reckoned with on the world stage. Whereas we were were once considered a gimmicky stereotype thanks to Men At Work or Olivia Newton John, now we’re producing some of the freshest music on the planet.

So what do we mean by fresh? Well fresh can mean a lot of things in music. It can refer to new and forward-thinking ideas, a cutting edge take on something old and stale, or simply being fresh meat on the market. We took all this into consideration when selecting our Fresh 50 talent, picking out the acts that we think are gonna be big wigs in the future. But we also thought we needed a couple of rules, so to be eligible for The Fresh 50, artists:

   - Had to be active in the past 12 months (1 July 2009 – 1 July 2010)
   - Had to still be active as at 1 July 2010
   - Could not have more than one full-length album to their name (EPs not included)

So with all this in mind, here are the first 10 lucky participants in Rip It Up Digital’s Fresh 50.

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#50   The Snowdroppers

Rekindling an archaic style of music will land a lot of bands on shaky ground from the get-go. The problem with a lot of blues artists these days is they toe they get caught up in the old ways without breaking any new ground. Sydney four-piece the Snowdroppers don’t just rekindle the blues, they take a bath in it. Their 2009 debut Too Late To Pray reminded us of the best bits of the blues without getting lost in the past, like a crazy ho down held in a rusty shed but with neon lighting and advertised on Facebook. In one foul swoop, The Snowdroppers have shattered the stigmatism with one sure-footed kick to the teeth.

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#49   The Frowning Clouds

Lo-fi has come to be in direct correlation with coolness. It seems the grittier, the harsher, the louder your musical textures are, the more street cred you possess. The Frowning Clouds are no exception. Hailing from some embryonic garage in Geelong, this five-piece probably haven’t listened to anything recorded after 1970, and they sound like it too. It’s like Strawberry Alarm Clock partying with The Who in a Waterloo Sunset. Yeah it’s lo-fi, yeah it’s analogue, yeah they’re not the first band to sound like this, but you’d be hard-pressed to find one that sounds better.

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#48   MM9

Have you ever thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if Australia could have its very own Nine Inch Nails?’. Well the search is over, MM9 are here to give you your electro-rock fix. Of course to write this lot off as nothing more than a Nine Inch Nails pastiche would be selling them unfairly short. But the cunning combination of heavy electronics and apocalyptic guitars does draw certain comparisons. MM9 make heavy rock for the new-raver – it’s melodic enough to stick in your head, the BPMs are perfectly suited for toe-tapping, and the grunty vocals remind you they’re no soft cocks: they’re tough as nails.

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#47   Cabins 

Imagery is a very powerful tool in music and Cabins know how to work it in droves. Their Velvets-meets-Steely Dan sound alone reminds you of some dusty cattle station out in Dingo Woop Woop with its twangy acoustic guitars and Leroy Bressington’s Dylan-esque inflection. Then you hear the lyrics: “She was young with eyes like diamonds/that must have hurt having eyes like diamonds/but you’re crystal clear/and your sheets are white/it’s not the same”. It’s effortless words such as these taken from Oceanic Blues that set Cabins apart from the rest. Look out for them playing at a town square near you!

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#46   The Salvadors 

It’s easy to see why The Salvadors’ Misspent Youth EP was such a hit with tastemakers around the country. It was the product of 18 months’ laborious work recording, editing, re-recording, mixing, mastering, remixing and, finally, releasing. Throw into the mix a name and line-up change and you’ve got a pretty tumultuous time for this Adelaide five-piece. But the work obviously paid off for them. Misspent Youth is brimming with spiffy pop melodics and dirty rock jams, resulting in the radio thrashing of lead single Atacama Disco. Who knows, the born-again Salvadors might just be the musical saviours we all didn’t know we needed.

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#45   The Holidays

It seems The Holidays have tried everything to show the Australian public how good they are. They’ve made subtle changes to their pop-tastic sounds, they’ve released singles, they’ve relased EPs, they’ve released...more EPs and singles. Like an attention-starved toddler, the Sydney four-piece are just begging for kind words and praise. And if people were just willing to listen to them, those kind words and praise wouldn’t be far away. Their latest single Moonlight Hours could be the theme tune for a sitcom set in some tropical paradise it’s so damn chock-full of catchy rhythms and soul-cleansing melodies. But for now The Holidays wait impatiently in the wings, like that annoyingly talented friend of yours that just won’t leave you alone.

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#44   Deep Sea Arcade

It’s just a matter of time for Sydney’s Deep Sea Arcade. It’s just a matter of time before they release that one killer single that makes them megastars. In only one EP they’ve managed to pull out the flare gun and get the right people looking in their direction. With just two radio-friendly singles they’ve demonstrated their variety as musicians – Don’t Be Sorry shimmers in the cool reflective moonlight while I Could Be Lonely incites a riot in a ‘50s American diner. It might be too early to tell what lies ahead for Deep Sea Arcade but given their output so far, you’d think the words ‘bright’, ‘young’ and ‘things’ could be applicable if properly arranged.

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#43   Lost Valentinos

Lost Valentinos just seem a bit, well, lost. Things looked so promising at the start, but then they just lost themselves somewhere in the recording of debut album Cities Of Gold. Its first half is a precociously accomplished run-through of the indie-disco phenomenon – the beats drop, the bass squelches, the guitars screech, the vocals echo, what more could you want? But then things take a strange turn and that bouncy dance rock band morphs into some emotional post-punk beast exhaling breaths of angst and sorrow. It’s a shame really because Lost Valentinos really nailed that dance-tinged rock sound. The other thing they did – whatever it was – just wasn’t them. A rest and regroup will surely see Lost Valentinos rediscover their hip-shakin' groove.

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#42   Otouto

Quirky girl pop has been a mainstay in Australian music for a long time now, but especially so since thick-framed, lens-less glasses became fashionable for post-adolescent females. Otouto are the quirkiest quirks that ever did quirk. Like The XX before them, where Otouto excel is not necessarily in the sounds they produce, but the sounds in between. Their debut album Pip is a work of minimalist pop art. Gorgeous harmonics between sisters Hazel and Martha Brown and fragmented drumming courtesy of Kishore Ryan (also of Kid Sam, but more on them later) combine to make Otouto one of Australia’s most unique and intriguing musical outfits.

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#41   House Vs Hurricane

It seems the synthesizer just can’t keep from infiltrating every aspect of modern music. There might be a natural affinity between the synth and pop music, but post-hardcore? Yep that’s right, House Vs Hurricane incorporate the synthesiser into post-hardcore music like they were never meant to be apart. And it makes for some pretty impressive results. Their debut album Perspectives displays why House Vs Hurricane have emerged as one of Australia’s go-to bands. ‘What’s that? A big international tour? Okay, we’ll get House Vs Hurricane to support’. It’s not a bad reputation to have – and one that’s so far earned them supporting roles with the likes of Bullet For My Valentine, The Amity Affliction, and, later this year, Enter Shikari. It won’t be long before they’re tearing up Australia with their own headline tours.

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