New Music 2016 - Part 44 - Xylaroo - Sweetooth

Sometimes I hear something and the penny just drops. I then need to find out more as soon as possible. Xylaroo is one such act. Sometimes this happens live, at festivals and usually on the smaller stages or opening-acts on larger ones. It was not the way in this case. I heard a track on Amazing Radio. That I sought more and liked what I found is a given; so is the fact that this is now an act that is very high on my list of ones to see live.
That song happened to be  Track A' Lackin', and it turned out to be the opening gambit on their début album.

Sweetooth - Xylaroo (Sunday Best Records, 2016).

Xylaroo - Sweetooth

• Track A' Lackin'
• Consume Me 
• Sunshine 
• River of Love
• Heavenly
• Danger
• On My Way
• Boom, There Goes The Sun
• Narwhal
• Set Me On Fire And Send Me To Canada
• Lonpela Taim
• Devil In Me

Sisters Holly and Coco Chant have an enviable background from which to draw experiences for songwriting.  Currently London-based, it ranges from Papua New Guinea to Switzerland via Hong Kong and also a lengthy spell in Maidstone, Kent, UK so it is best left to them to explain that in their own words. They do that here.

What does Sweetooth sound like? Why did it immediately catch my attention? What might I compare it to?

To be quite honest it took me straight back to an evening in early September 2009. I was sat in the (then very small) Tipi stage at End Of The Road Festival and the band slated to play next was one that I had never even heard of; two sisters from Sweden, Johanna and Klara Söderberg, that went by the slightly strange moniker of First Aid Kit. They were awkward performing live back then but it was a good call and, looking back, it worked out very well indeed.
This isn't the same but it could possibly be just as auspicious. There is, I think, the palpable impression of artists making the music that that they wish to make rather than that they feel that others might wish them to make.
It's not really folk, roots or Americana and it isn't world music in its accepted sense. It is all of these things and yet none of them.