>>> Here at Philebrity, we’ve known for a long time that the local music scene is cyclical: The quality of local music tends to follow a pattern of boom and bust that perhaps Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, could explain a lot better than we ever could. In general, though, this pattern seems to follow a five-year cycle. Think of it: In 2005, for instance, you had artists — all Philadelphian — as diverse as Diplo, Espers, Man Man, Dr. Dog, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and so on, all generating a lot of heat through word of mouth and small-but-packed club gigs. Since that time, bands have done what bands do: Graduated to bigger venues and audiences, broke up, or relocated. With that in mind, we’ve started looking around for the next generation of Philly bands, to try and see who’s gonna articulate whatever this next, upcoming boom period for Philly music will be. (2010 is less than two-and-a-half months away! Get cracking, people!) So far, among other things, we’ve noticed one dominant trait about much of what will come to define the Class of 2010: They’re straight up NERDS, yo — but endearingly so. We think this might be a good thing. Take, for instance, Eat Your Birthday Cake, a Philly band who just released their debut EP, I Know You Can (pictured). They thank Jens Lekman in the liner notes and sound like nothing so much as The Sea & Cake minus all that pretentious art-school gobbledy-gook. We’d like to invite them over to drink red wine and draw pictures.

>>> Same goes for It’s A King Thing — what is it with all the full-sentence band names? — who hail from “The Haddons, The Hills & The Heights of suburban Philadelphia.” The Kingers have a more traditional, fuzzed out, 90s indie rock sound, pursued, though, with the same kind of gentility as Eat Your Birthday Cake. They make us wish that new episodes of Gilmore Girls were still in production. If these two bands haven’t met yet, they totally should, and collaborate on one of those mumblecore movie soundtracks. They have a song whose chorus is “I want to kiss your face off,” and if you can’t relate to that, we don’t wanna know you.

>>> And lastly, in the realm of hip-hop/godknowswhat, there is Lushlife, whom we told you about a little while back and with whom we are still totally smitten. Lushlife’s take on what we can only call “orchestral chamber hip-hop” has been the big discovery of the season over here, and other people agree; a remix album of Lushlife’s Cassette City long-player is currently in the works with contributions from Jimmy Tamborello (The Postal Service, DNTEL) and Broken Social Scene. We’ll let you know more about all of these artists when we inevitably book the “GEEKSOUND ’09″ show, which will hopefully be in the Philebrity office and feature Yellow Submarine Cookies.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 4:40 pm.