NoNewWaveNoFun

                                                                                                           Cross Wires Creating a new song in a day, recording it and then releasing said single as your first new material in a year is some undertaking and certainly not the done thing in the current musical climate - but that's exactly what East London post punks Cross Wires have done with new single ' Hall of Mirrors '.  The track is part of a selection of tracks that will all be completed in that limited timeframe with a view to being on a new E.P in 2021. Last years album ' A Life Extinct'  was intriguing enough to prick up some ears with 6 Music , Radio X and former Black Flag legend Henry Rollins playing tracks from it. Cross Wires are Jonathan Chapman (Vocals), Peter Muller (Guitar/Vocals), Pete Letch (Bass) and Ian Clarke (Drums) and have been slowly building up a fanbase around London over the last few years with their energetic live shows at the core o

                                                                                                     Happy Hollows         Cast your minds back to 2005. Some of you would have been downloading a different polyphonic ringtone each week, some trawling P2P sites trying to get a decent rip of Bloc Party's ' Silent Alarm ' and others would have been looking for new bands on MySpace - I was probably guilty of all of those things. For those of you young enough to be unaware of MySpace and it's effect in the post- Napster filesharing landscape, it was a game changer for a few years. Bands could create their own profile, share MP3s and could be easily searched on an accessible database. In the UK, Bands like The Arctic Monkeys went on to huge global fame on the back of their pre-fame E.P trending on the site. Another band who formed and utilised this platform to forge a modest career were L.A's Happy Hollows ; who continue to produce new material after all

Welcome to my new blog - No New Wave No Fun. My name is Stephen Birch and I've been writing about and reviewing music, both new and old, for several years. I've written for various websites and blogs including Evilsponge , Middleboopmag , Getintothis and most recently, Popped Music . I'm a big fan of music of all genres, but being a child of the 90s - my real passion lies in the alternative realm. Britpop was formative to my musical understanding - bands like Blur , Pulp and Supergrass were the first bands that really got me excited. From there came some very obsessive years as a devotee of The Smiths. Morrissey became the antihero I craved with his lyrics cutting through like a knife. The gorgeous and sometimes incredibly sad melodies of Johnny Marr fitted any mood.  As any music fan will be aware, obsessions come and go as quickly as the seasons - but the next was to take me further into any intense fanship than I had previously ventured. I f