Poll Picks ‘The ABC Club’ as UK’s Best Unsigned Act

NME Breakthrough have named Halifax shoegazers The ABC Club the best unsigned band in the UK, beating hundreds of other acts through NME’s own judges and a further public vote.

Hundreds of underground bands were reduced to a final five by the NME panel after which a vote opened to the public decided The ABC Club as the winner, earning them a Radar magazine feature, a gig at Club NME in London and an NME-produced EPK.

The five piece are also set to play a midnight after-show party with Foals in Leeds on the 29th October, the exact venue is yet to be confirmed.
Recently they demonstrated their versatility with a peeled back rendition of their new song “Go Set Go” for the BBC on which frontwoman Zandra Klievens‘ raspy range is emphasised by the quiet folksy riffs beneath, the slow delivery retaining a balance of assurance whilst still lazily swaggering along.

On all other occasions, musically Zandra is backed with a sound not unlike a Johnny Marr jam with Albert Hammond Jr, mellowed out with an earful of artsy-80’s indie, with shimmering effects and harmonic picking strung along tidy tub-thumping.

Get Set Go by l.radarmaker

The ABC Club aren’t wildly different to your average mass-breeding waves of harmless alternative indie-in spades and it’s hard to tell at this point whether The ABC Club will add to the saturation in the soft rock market. But for now, even for the gentle zest of Zandra Klievens’ vocal chords, it doesn’t matter how long it takes them to go from being the best unsigned band in the land to more major label filler, it’s definitely worth checking out.

Daniel Robinson