New music picks

One completely random thing I remember about my last job in New York — so, around 2007 — was that a girl in my department liked a band called The Wombats. Although I’m sure she played me some songs from their MySpace page, all I really knew about The Wombats was that they were an indie band (my co-worker was a Brooklyn hipster) with a name I always confused with The Wiggles.

In fairness, wombats and The Wiggles are both native to Australia.

So I have to laugh that today I’m recommending The Wombats as a new music pick. Does that mean they’ve become more mainstream in the last eight years or that my taste in music has become less commercial?

The couple of reviews I’ve read about Glitterbug suggest the former is true. On their third album, the Wombats sound less indie and more poppy, according to critics, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.

Glitterbug is harmless fun, the type of music you can have playing in the background without it being too distracting. I can’t speak to what the Wombats sounded like on their first two albums, but this one reminds me of Bastille or Passion Pit with a little bit of The Cure mixed in for that ’80s vibe.

Another new music pick: Chaos And The Calm from James Bay. A singer-songwriter from England, Bay’s been labeled an artist to watch in 2015 by music critics worldwide and it’s easy to see — well, hear — why.

His sound has been described as a mash-up of Sam Smith and Marcus Mumford (of Mumford and Sons), and I’d say he looks like the lovechild of Jack White and John Mayer. He’s kind of soulful, kind of rock, and kind of folksy all at the same time — and I kind of like it. A lot.

Tell me, what are you listening to these days?

(photo of Aether Cone via Instagram)