TOMORROW ON OUTQ: NEW YEAR, NEW MUSIC

For those of you who are new to No Expiration, every Wednesday morning at 9 am ET(ish) I am a guest on SiriusXM OutQ's The Morning Jolt with Larry Flick.  I talk about music, unsurprisingly.  This week, I'm talking about new music - mostly artists who are not well known in America. (I may wash it down with  songs from upcoming albums by The Drive-By Truckers, R.E.M., Social Distortion and DJ Shadow).

Rumer is a singer in the vein of Karen Carpenter. She has a very soft voice - Burt Bacharach is a fan, and I think he wrote some songs for her. It's not really my thing, but I have enjoyed some of her songs, including "Slow" and "Aretha." She's pretty popular in the UK, and I could see her doing pretty well here, a la Adele and Duffy.

John Grant is an American artist who no one in America has heard of! Or few people anyway. But his debut solo album (he used to be in a band called The Czars), Queen Of Denmark, was Mojo magazine's #1 album of the year! He also sounds a bit like The Carpenters, but also Cat Stevens or other '70s soft rockers. But his music is pretty painful. He has a song called "Jesus Hates Faggots" which describes what it was like for him, growing up gay in the midwest. I don't know if his music would appeal to me, but I'm interested to hear what he sings about - he has something to say, no doubt about it.

Warpaint is a sort of psychedelic rock band who used to include current Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Josh Klinghoffer. Former Chilis guitarist John Frusciante has worked with the band in the past as well - he mixed and mastered their debut EP, Exquisite Corpse. I read about them in Mojo as well, and I dig them so far.

I guess I'm in a real '70s mode: Grace Potter & The Nocturnals (the most well known artist on my list for this week) are definitely '70s kids. They may not be old enough to remember the '70s, but their music is definitely very '70s: they remind me a lot of Heart in the '70s (a point that was hammered home when Ann and Nancy Wilson joined Grace Potter & The Nocturnals onstage at VH1 Divas last month). Their new self titled album has a bit more glammy and less hippy of a vibe.

The Duke and The King are another very '70s-ish band.  Led by Simon Felice, formerly of the The Felice Brothers, they are a bit funkier than that band. They're another American act that you can't really find in America: I couldn't find their songs on iTunes, but I did find "Shaky" on a CD that came with an issue of the British music magazine Uncut.

Thee Spivs remind me of a lot of '70s British punk rock bands. Their songs are short and tight, so it's no surprise that I dig them. Their album is called Taped Up.

We may talk about some other new bands, but this is a handful of artists that I figure lots of people aren't familiar with yet.  Hope you hear something you enjoy!