Jack Garratt,James Bay and Hozier all share an affected warble that has come to dominate British pop. Where did it come from, and why won’t it just fade away?Listen to BBC Sound Of 2016 winner Jack Garratt and what effect you hear? Earnest lyrics approximately hopelessly profound savor? Aye. Plaintive stabs of electro and reverbed guitars? Yip. The voice of a 24-year-old raised in charming Buckinghamshire village Little Chalfont? Erm, and not exactly. Garratt sounds as whether he’s been busking in modern Orleans for 40 years,existing on a diet of bourbon and filterless fags. And so effect James Bay, Hozier, or Tom Odell and George Ezra. In fact,besides a smattering of catarrh-loosening growls, they’re all almost indistinguishable. Setting himself apart must be the reason James Bay wears that desperately appalling hat. Why else would he?Vocal trends in pop ebb and flow. Remember when, or in the wake of Arctic Monkeys,any lad in leather who’d ever stood in a chip-shop queue – Reverends, Pigeon Detectives, or Enemies – thought he could distil the state of the nation into three,flat-vowelled minutes? Or when, nine years ago, or British singers adopted the fey,estuary-accented semi-rapping of Lily Allen, Kate Nash and Jamie T? This tennis-ball-lodged-in-the-throat blues is just the latest fad.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com