Tkay Maidza's Song Getting On HBO's 'Girls' Has Only Made Her Bigger & Better

There are some marketing advantages to this globalised world for artists who don’t quite fit the fashion of their homeland. An Australian musician doesn’t necessarily need to be big in Wagga Wagga before they’re big in Washington or Wrexham.

Sure, we know how good the straight outta Adelaide Tkay Maidza is. But American tours and once-odd promotional chances like getting a song played over the credits of Girls make the profile international, rather than just domestic. Cause and effect, the art also steps up. Follow Me (Dew Process) is reflectively just that bit bigger to match her obvious skills and growing reputation. It’s polished and assured dance pop, without making her generic to that form. Our girl is obviously still in there, and that’s a good thing.

Relatedly, it can sometimes take years to work out what face you want to show the world. Michael Di Francesco might be known as the guy from Van She to a certain cohort among you, but since 2004 he’s had sporadic turns under the Touch Sensitive shingle. Lay Down (Future Classic) is of this guise’s tongue-in-cheek but not quite kitsch style that has him touring the world with Flight Facilities making perfect sense. ‘Sporadic’ is quite strong enough a word so far, it’s over three years since his last thing, Pizza Boy, had people declaring it quite the thing and expecting bigger things immediately. But this is a man whose simple standard for putting something out is ‘Would I keep this on my iTunes?’. The classic fizzing skyrocket synth noise of this suggest yes, he should. 

But wherever you’re from, there’s apparently still a need for a gimmick to make people take notice this time, even if you were praised for the last thing you did. Real Estate remain a splendid classicist pop band where the guitars chime and people sing of the mysteries of love, even after the usual lineup wobbles and exits, and deciding which way the music should go. The pastel glow of Stained Glass (Domino) shows they can still make the tunes, and offer the visuals to go with it in two forms – the colour and movement of this ‘standard’ version, or by following the link it includes, you can wander off to a technicolour dreamland where you can do a paint-by-numbers thing to the background according to your own tastes. Hey, at least it’s not another of those 360-degree things, which are started to just give me a migraine. 

The cleverly-monikered Hollow Everdaze add a touch of the psychedelic to their take on it, while never forgetting their still making a pop song to hold your attention without the aid of chemical help. Cartoons (Deaf Ambition) has an aptly kaleidoscopic video to go with it, although its animation seem to owe more to late-period Talking Heads than Yellow Submarine. But try and not be totally distracted as rural Victorian images cut-and-paste by, as a lesser band could possibly build a new song just on the breakdown bit of this, such is the flood of ideas that keep coming at you. 

And then less can be more. Didirri is of that modern folk model that takes up a proportion of community radio playlists, with Blind You (Title Track) at first seeming sparse and even austere, until you are carried along on his so-expressive voice which engages and holds you. Be annoyed this obviously gifted kid is only 22 – the talent is nascent, perhaps not even fully formed. But you get the feeling he will find that right song at some point, and become unavoidable. 

The straight outta Lake Macquarie Alex Knight is maybe even to closer to that point. The Brightness name he works under again sometimes could be counter-intuitive – there always seems that bit of fragility and doubt in what he does. Talk To Me (I Oh You) has that quality – it’s one moment slightly ramshackle, but merely in having the conversation he’s facing down whatever is troubling him. Somehow it all falls into place – albeit with maybe that couple of complicated pieces missing – but as he looks you in the eye in the clip, you almost feel like saying ‘No mate - it’s ok, really’. His humanity is a good thing. 

Some though are more eager to please, more anxious to be liked. Inheaven are straight outta South London, the references in their back-story deliberately placing on a line somewhere between the ever-fashionable angst of both the punk and grunge eras, with Vultures (PIAS/Inertia) coming at you with a suitably fairly frenetic boy/girl expression of disaffection - although the hair’s more shampooed, conditioned, combed, and shinier than the predecessors they’re trying maybe trying to recall or emulate. It’s more music designed by committee to appeal to those young moderns who think they should be talking about rebellion, but have to wait for dad to pick them up from the gig to transit them to the barricades.

The bio came with a sentence in capitals letters, just in case you missed the message: “FOR FANS OF TOM PETTY & THE HEARTBREAKERS, MATTHEW SWEET, R.E.M., BIG STAR, BADFINGER, JIMMY WEBB, RYAN ADAMS and RICHARD HAWLEY”. Well, there’s enough there to be going on with. Straight outta Watson’s Bay John Rooney has always made power pop of quality, but while that’s perfect pop music to many of us, the wider world occasionally needs to be clipped around the ear to notice. Fairground Ride (independent) shimmers perfectly like a Kevin Shirley-produced and Mitch Easter-involved item should. Your head will bob along with it, perhaps involuntarily.