Weekender

IF YOU ONLY BUY ONE RECORD THIS WEEK...
We just did this the other day, go and read that. Mystery Jets' Serotonin? That's out tomorrow, isn't it?

SOMEWHERE TO GO
The hydra of world encompassing hipster-avant that is Broken Social Scene have a quick festival warm-up at Sheffield Corporation on Friday 9th, and stand by your workstations, north-eastern manufacturers of cymbals, as Sky Larkin support. Elsewhere the Indietracks community has, we dunno, fired up the boiler and filled the smokebox. Tender Trap are on tour promoting their new album Dansette Dansette, and we especially like the look of their date also on the 9th Upstairs at The Library in Leeds, supported by the gentle geniuses Standard Fare (playing for us in Leicester on the 22nd, remember), who put Philadelphia out as a single on the 12th, and, for their first gig outside Birmingham, the not exactly lyrically parsimonious LookiMakeMusic. They play Liverpool, Oxford and Rough Trade East the week after.

BANDS START UP EACH AND EVERY DAY
Birmingham bands influenced by Los Campesinos! - it's the new Seattle grunge. The July Days do it the other way round, in that the male singer has too many words and too few frantic indiepop seconds to get it all in and the female singer plays glockenspiel. What they also remind us of are the self-contained expansive indiepop worlds of, say, Esiotrot and Foxes! One of the songs even takes on a ska-pop bent and still works.

THERE'S ALWAYS A FESTIVAL SOMEWHERE
T In The Park is your headline weekend this, erm, weekend, an enterprise so mammoth that Laura Marling is on the fourth stage, and not even headlining (behind Julian Casablancas, whoever's still interested in him solo) and a billing so scattershot that you end up with Diana Vickers followed by Broken Social Scene, or 3Oh!3 on immediately before Dirty Projectors. And Jay-Z, king of the western world and all it surveys, knocked off headline status by Kasabian. We hope someone has to explain that all to him. Echo & The Bunnymen are on the Futures stage. Oxegen is much the same, almost too literally, only Arcade Fire pop in to take top billing ahead of Jigga. Earth Wind & Fire are playing the main stage. The Drums, Dirty Projectors and Wild Beasts form the Saturday top end of the fifth stage. Such size is dizzying, so let's instead turn to Lounge On The Farm, actual farm-based hijinks in Canterbury where the main stage is the Cowshed, because it's a cow shed. Truck, eat shit. Hercules & Love Affair, Martha & the Vandellas and Toots & The Maytals are an oddly all-encompassing danceable trio of headliners; look further down and we see Friday has These New Puritans, Male Bonding and Peggy Sue; Saturday features the Wave Pictures, Slow Club, Lucky Soul, Frankie & the Heartstrings, Summer Camp, Hot Club de Paris, the Television Personalities, Kitty Daisy & Lewis, Jah Wobble and, naturally, The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown; Sunday offers Bad Manners second top of a reggaefied main stage day, Rose Elinor Dougall, Jesca Hoop and Gaggle.

WHAT ELSE?
Anyone who shared in Indiecater's recent World Cup themed compilation may be interested in a tie-in event on Satudary 11th at the Buffalo Bar, Highbury Corner, £7 in. This time it's The World Cup of Indie, in which sixteen bands are put into a draw and 'play each other' by performing a song to, possibly, a panel of actual musicians who decide who should progress, and the same until N1 indie has its winner. Keith TOTP & His Minor UK Indie Celebrity All Star Backing Band are involved, which seems far from fair, with Applicants, Cop On The Edge and Brontosaurus Chorus also taking part.