Big Ned.

Every January, the music magazines and broadsheet pull-outs run the obligatory ‘who’s going to make it big this year’ article.  Most of the time they’re completely identical to one another, and the crushing inevitability of Little Boots and Florence and The Machine dominating the festival season this year is as depressing as it is manufactured.

I was over visiting my folks the other day, and had a flick through the local paper while I was there.  To give this some context; the front page was a story about the debate raging over the hanging baskets.  That’s how we roll in my ‘hood boyeee.  Of course the teenager writing the music pages had compiled a 2009 list, only being a local paper he was only allowed to mention bands from within a fifteen mile radius.

One of these was Big Ned.  They produce doom-laden two chord Americana (which is an oddly popular sub-genre round these parts.  One day when I’m feeling a bit more verbose I’ll expand upon that in a Paul Morley-esque manner.) and have a single out on the Optimo record label – so will presumably be playing there sometime soon.  They’re surprisingly good.  Have a gander at their mySpace, or on the Optimo website.