New year, new bands - 20 for 05 and how they did

At the end of 2004 I made a CD for friends with songs by 20 bands who hadn't released albums yet, with their inclusion based on if I liked them and (very importantly) if their website had easily downloadable songs as much as if they had any chance of success. OK, that is partly just an excuse for the large number of all-round failures here, but it's very interesting to look at what happened to them all. The tracklisting was as follows:

Kaiser Chiefs - I Predict A Riot See Sound Of 2005 piece.
The Departure - Be My Enemy I made fun of The Dead 60s for a rerelease of a number 30 single making the same place again, but the rerelease of The Departure's debut All Mapped Out actually managed to make 3 places lower. A big failure, suffering from the start from a general perception of artifice even more than The Bravery did, as well as the fact that their album was decent but unspectacular.
Bloc Party - Helicopter See Sound Of 2005 piece.
The Boxer Rebellion - Code Red I came across them in 2003 when they won a competition to play the Glastonbury new bands tent, beating Keane in the process. Their atmospheric Cooper Temple Clause like rock found a slightly unlikely home on Poptones, who did at least release an album, Exits (more than some bands here managed) which puzzlingly failed to include either this or their previous single. They are apparently already at work on a second album.
Saint Rose - Call For Calm Dramatic, slightly shoegazey indie and brilliant live, their website triumphantly announced a major label deal towards the end of last year, but now doesn't even exist. A bit of searching around finds that they are now The Bright Space.
Fans Of Kate - Tape 23 A keyboard-driven power pop band with a brilliant live set full of great and immediate songs, I'm genuinely surprised that they weren't more of a success in 2005. They've lost a member but are currently recording an album hopefully due for release before summer.
Arctic Monkeys - Scummy Now called When The Sun Goes Down, this is their next single. I don't think that I could have imagined at the time, having heard this one song on a CD from a friend and seen the occasional mention of them on messageboards, that it will be a surprise if it isn't number one, but there was a certain obvious spark here.
Vib Gyor - Church Bell Prog-indie discovered on the same CD, they have one of those names which sounds cool til you work out where it comes from. Not much mainstream attention here yet but they have supposedly been called 'a heavenly hybrid of Coldplay and Sigur Ros' by Entertainment Weekly in the US. Mmm. Can be heard on Myspace.
Mellowdrone - Fashionably Uninvited American and slightly electronic take on new wave, they haven't got anywhere yet but have an album 'The Box' coming out in a couple of months and sound like this.
Mystery Jets - On My Feet The most odd song they've put out so far, full of chanting and generally offbeat. More commercial (and Coral-like) songs like Alas Agnes and relentless publicity have managed to push them to the edge of the top 40, although whether they get any further and if their album is any good may depend on whether they manage to balance the two styles well.
HAL - Worry About The Wind Possibly their biggest problem was the massive gap of about a year between the release of this sweet, breezy single and the next one. Either that or The Thrills going out of fashion. Whichever, their album failed to make much of an impression in any sense, but Play The Hits was another great single.
Cranebuilders - So What Could I Do Nowhere at all on the commercial radar despite Elbow connections (supported them, on their label, Guy offers backing vocals throughout) but they did at least get a really good album full of haunting songs like this released.
Cherryfalls - In Your Arms Again A bit of a cautionary tale for new bands this one - they were signed to Island and released two fairly impressive singles in 2004, predictably slightly like later Coldplay but with a certain added force (some loud guitars and Standing Watching did contain the line 'I want to find you, I want to fuck you up') and supported Feeder, gradually becoming more known. They then in March 2005 released the astonishingly drippy My Drug, which sounded like it was written by a focus group and put anyone else's supposed critical grabs at success (Athlete, Snow Patrol) in perspective... and it did worse than Standing Watching did. At this point Island of course dropped them, before actually releasing their promising but inconsistent album 'Winter/Winter' but after sending out promos of it to the press.
At the moment they are trying to recreate themselves and confusion reigns - they may or may not be named The New York Fund. Or Ten City Run.
Mirima - Twister Mirima might still wish that they were Cherryfalls, though, as their site descriptions are starting to appear increasingly desperate.
Grand Transmitter - Under The Wheel Released one excellent EP of Muse/Buckley-like angst rock on Morning Runner's original label and have now seemingly vanished. The link to their official site from the label one goes here. Ulp.
Engineers - Come In Out Of The Rain They achieved surprisingly good reviews on the likes of Pitchfork but despite the NME's best efforts shoegazing never took off again here. Personally their album was one of the biggest disappointments of the whole year, failing to build on the promise of some gorgeous singles and managing to almost all go at a crawl but still achieve no atmosphere, until a fantastic final song which made the rest of it seem all the more limp in comparison. Oh well.
Pioneers - Slow Down Similar in sound as well as name, a mini-album was recently released and a full album may emerge sometime this year - perhaps they'll do a better job.
Pellumair - Iris One of three bands on here to no longer exist, which is quite a success rate! They split just before releasing their debut album of hazy acoustica 'Summer Storm', which is something which some other bands should have considered doing in the past, perhaps...
Morning Runner - Oceans Checked out on a the basis of a mention as Parlophone's priority for the year, this simple and beautiful piano song turned out to be unrepresentative of their sound in general, and they seemingly spent the year being forced down the throats of the public (Seemingly millions of support slots, most notably for Coldplay) to only a little avail. It's not difficult to see why, especially after Starsailor adopted a similar sound to almost as bad a response, but they have enough fine moments (second single Work the best example) to suggest that they might eventually win over a few more.
Lisa Brown - Picture House See forthcoming feature on new bands for 2006!