By Kate Birch
With 2016 over, we look ahead to what musical talent 2017 can offer, and with the masses of acts out there in the industry there is plenty for us to get excited about. Throughout January, ICM will be highlighting one new band each day and showing just why they should be on your music radar. Our 17th band is Oddity Road.
Catfish and the bottlemen meets the offhand sound of northern indie – Oddity Road.
Four college students from sheffield; Jack, Dan, Joel and Ethan. At just 17 these lads have already played home-town’s iconic Leadmill, Sheffield 02 academy, and most recently, landed a tour with the newly signed Sherlocks.
Oddity’s instrumentals are too brilliant for a band that only formed a little over a year ago, and moody vocals – edged by the northern accent that echo’s that of indie-rock entrepreneurs: Arctic Monkeys – give them a sound that is hard to ignore.
“I’d say we like to relate our songs lyrically to real life situations. You hear a lot of stories about people’s situations with relationships and fallouts, so they’re always good to slide into a song.”
As down-to earth as their lyrics, the boys probably spend as much time playing fifa as they do practicing. Every track of theirs has found it’s “bare bones” on acoustic guitar, before being built into the full-bodied, multi-dimensional genius that forms their music.
Heavily influenced by big anthemic indie bands like Catfish and the Bottlemen, and recently the more experimental sound of bands like Peace and Amber Run have been the focal point of Oddity Road’s writing inspirations.
The band never play a gig without smashing a cover of Catfish’s ‘Cocoon’ or ‘Rango’, and their live sets are something of an enigma.
From the softer feel of acoustic strumming and gorgeous guitar melodies in ‘lost in the city’, to the drum-induced, sweet-toned riffs of youth anthem ‘Handshake’, their music has undeniable character.
An emerging band that still manage to stand out amongst the Yorkshire indie scene that has been erupting since the early noughties – keep an eye on these four.
We will be announcing a new band every day throughout the entirety of January and the ICM long list will be announced on February 1st.
Read why Black Honey and Honey Lung are Ones To Watch too.
[…] Read more about why Oddity Road are Ones To Watch! […]
[…] ‘Sheafbeat’ scene (which I may have just invented), these lads were recently chosen as one of IndieCentralMusic’s picks for 2017, and gave us a short interview that you can read […]