Cougar Microbes

The first thing to strike you about this young songstress from Detroit is the uniqueness of her voice.She’s got a sickly sweet nostalgic twinge that’s a little bit Lykke Li and a retro flair that’s a little bit Paloma Faith and the rest I just can’t place.

Refreshingly, her tracks show the kind of production and instrumentation that other current pop records glimpse at but never fully grasp. Take ‘Choice Notes’ for example, with its plucky piano chords, hand clap percussion and xylophone tinkering. It’s rammed packed with musical entertainment yet it still manages to retain a light happy –go- lucky pop feel.

‘Medicine’, is equally whimsical with layered backing vocals and choral chanting. With lyrics such as “I won’t take my medicine” and ‘so thanks for nothing’ there’s a nursery rhyme feel to it that adds some playful personality. In contrast, ‘Gimme Me Heart’ graduates towards more teenage years and is drenched in a school-crush-style cooing that makes you wonder if Winston had cartoon doves fluttering above her whilst in the recording studio.

Normally, the idea of a female singer /songwriter producing theatrical boutique pop would see me run to the hills or at least towards the nearest record collection in search of an auditory antidote. However, in the instance, Alex Winston has won me over and wooed me with her form of picture perfect pop and shall seek no immunity from it.

‘Choice Notes’ is out now on HeavyRoc.

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Post by the vanishing Ruby

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TRACKS:

For a few years now the name Rosie Oddie has been popping up on those ubiquitous “Ones To Watch” lists and as a hot topic of conversation on the lips of friends in the know.

Having ditched the previous working title of ‘Rosie Oddie and the Odd Squad’ for the slicker Oddyssey moniker the singer and her gang recently released their ‘Black America‘ EP.

The title track would be a suitably edgy sequel to Kim Wilde‘s 80′s classic ‘Kids In America‘ almost 30 years from that singles original release . ‘Companion‘ starts of as an intimate affair and peaks into a full blown dramatic number that could easily be the next Bond theme.  ’Alan‘ takes on a retro 60′s quality and is suitably larger than life and satirical.

Rosie’s raspy delivery channels an unexpected and often brilliant cross between the styles and deliveries of Cerys Matthews of Catatonia fame, Róisín Murphy from Moloko and Paloma Faith managing to be both sassy and mischievous . In the meantime the band showcase a big confident sound that lends a theatrical (and dare I say almost burlesque) characteristic to their output.

Having demonstrated that they can be  larger than life on record now is time to for me to catch the London outfit live; if those same friends from before are to be believed this should be quite an experience.

For more tracks check out myspace.com/oddysseymusic