This is always an exciting time of year, as we look forward, past the dried out turkey now unimaginatively transformed into a nice curry limp sandwich, past the holiday slump, past the crap Christmas compilation albums. Our thoughts look forward with hope, and turn towards what we can look forward to in the harsh light of 2013. I’m already planning gigs into March, and it’s a great chance to think of…not necessarily who is a guaranteed cert to make it (whatever that means), but instead, who we’d like to see, and who’s got a fighting chance. It’s a strength of God Is In The TV that we’re a diverse lot, and we’ve invited our writers to make some very personal recommendations. There’s around 30 recommendations for you to get your teeth into; this is Part One of three, and in no particular order whatsoever….
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The Horn The Hunt
The word ‘anthemic’ has to be one of the most over-used in music, now applied to just about anything you can imagine a football crowd singing along to. The Horn The Hunt make music that could be anthems in the original sense though – spiritually rousing entreaties to follow their glistening banner into the dark. As if to prove the point, they filmed their latest clip, ‘Black Fire’ in an actual cave http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDjnm24k_Bw
(Wes White)
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SWISS LIPS
If you’re seeking perfect pop in 2013, look no further than Manchester 5 piece Swiss Lips. Covering often quite dark lyricism behind upbeat electro-pop and baleric sensibilities, Swiss Lips make sharp, straight to the point, pop music. Fear not though, Swiss Lips may unashameably embrace pop but it’s far from the usual drone and drull that adorns the pop charts at the moment. Like most Manchester bands before them, they’re not afraid to embrace an interesting array of effects and vocal styling to make each song stand apart by its own unique merit. If you’re a fan of the likes of Fenech Soler and Friendly Fires, Swiss Lips may just be your band of the next year.
http://soundcloud.com/swiss-lips/sets/swiss-lips-1/
(Matt Healy)
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HAIM
Being a Yorkshire lad I am currently worlds away from the sun soaked summer anthems LA sisters Este, Danielle and Alana Haim are crooning about. A recent string of UK tour dates has been captivating audiences nationwide, and the girls are back to rock some arenas in support of Florence and the Machine. If these girls aren’t massive come 2013 I will eat my flat cap and make my whippet watch.
(Aaron Lewins)
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Jemima Surrender
Millie Phipps has long deserved more attention than she’s had for her solo songwriting project – if you recognise the name, it’ll almost certainly be thanks to the song by The Band which she takes her stage name from, rather than the woman herself. Seeing her supporting Thought Forms and Hysterical Injury at a Pussy Riot benefit gig late this year, though, it was clear that the gap between talent and attention is starting to become untenable. Every song is a journey, sometimes in more than one language, and if she keeps playing gigs like that someone’s going to notice. At the time of writing, meanwhile, you could still be one of the first 100 followers of her Facebook page… http://www.facebook.com/JemimaSurrender
(Wes White)
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PINS 
At a point when the rest of the world was, with some justification, going gaga for happenings down in the Smoke, I happened (far later than I should) across the band that friends of mine had for quite some time been routinely referring to as ‘The Mighty PINS‘. Four girls, who never set out to be an “all-girl band” but then found it suited, this crew have come out of Manchester this year like a lurcher out of the traps. Chatty and up for a laugh, their demeanour belies a rock solid vision of exactly what they want to sound like and who they want to be. If you’re in Manchester Xmas week, you can still see them for three quid. That won’t last long, these girls are THE future of clatteringly British post-punk guitar music. Clever with it, too.
(Mike Hughes)
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FIDLAR
Wichita Recordings snapped up a record deal with LA punks FIDLAR (which gets my vote for acronym of the year- Fuck It Dog, Life’s A Risk) to assure that the band can bring their punk rock party anthems on an LP format to UK isles early 2013. A recent support slot for Sweden’s sweethearts The Hives and a couple of critically claimed EP’s in 2012 has got 2013 wrapped around FIDLAR’s little finger.
(Aaron Lewins)
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Sheen
If you only ever heard the beguiling and delicate ‘Hey’, it might be enough to make you fall for Sheen. Guitar chords roll towards you like breaking waves, while Aneta’s vocals soar, Sigur Ros-style, above them. But it wouldn’t be the whole story – live, all this is there, but coupled with visceral moments that get you somewhere in your chest as well as your head. Get a sense of it in this version of ‘Luminaire’, recorded as part of the ‘STRANGEHEADS’ art installation earlier this year –http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vILB8yR6nmc
(Wes White)
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HOOKWORMS
Hookworms have been Leeds’ little psychedelic secret for a while now, but buzz has been growing with each live show, with the band even being picked as the act to follow up Dead Skeletons at the Liverpool psych fest – high praise indeed! Singer MJ conveys such honest emotion onstage that it sits perfectly with the bands hypnotic sound. With bands such as Vision Fortune, Hookworms are making sure 2013 is the year of the weird.
(Aaron Lewins)
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Great Pagans
I knew a few things had already been written about Great Pagans elsewhere, so before I started writing this paragraph I did a bit of scouring the net to get a sense of the journalistic mood. The overriding impression is – they *really* suffer from over-wordy reviews. So just for once, we’ll just say – they’re great, check them out. Go on.
(Wes White)
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ICKY BLOSSOMS
You might detect a certain provenance about Icky Blossoms. Hailing from Omaha Nebraska, the old stager in the band is Tilly And The Wall‘s Derek Pressnall, moonlighting here alongside vocalist Sarah Bohling and lead guitarist Nik Fackler. I caught these at a live show – or to be accurate, their last two songs, upstairs in a restaurant in Texas – back in March and they hit me pretty large. I’ve been slowly letting them seep into my brain since then, and more so since their album came out. Best intro to them is ‘Perfect Vision’ – god knows I would have died for that buzz break even back in the 80’s, it’s gorgeous. Right now they’re touring the ass out of the Eastern US and Canada, and they’ve just finished a road trip with the aforementioned Tilly. Derek must have had sore hands after playing two sets every night. The video is a live take, which is kinda salutary.
(Mike Hughes)
