Thursday, August 23, 2012

From the inbox pt 1: This Many Boyfriends/TOY/The Hundredth Anniversary/Moscow Youth Cult

What was the promise to ourselves? Don't leave too much of a backlog in future? Well, at least there's a very good reason - Doesn't Your Balloon Ever Land? is still very much available and recommended, approaching the total amount raised by its predecessor already.

Speaking of which, as a follow-up to both recent posts and the compilation, the splendid Her Parents album and Amateur Historians EP are out now. Out soon is...

This Many Boyfriends - Number 1

TMBs' self-titled album, recorded (in the Albini sense, we suspect) by Ryan Jarman, is out 8th October, preceded by a week by this single. Chiming when it needs to, literately romantic in a way few truly manage, nodding to the Morrissey/Collins/Hayman/McRobbie holy quadrangle of indiepop but clearly comfortable in their own skins. Like the sound of that? That's good, because we're putting them on on October 16th at Leicester Firebug and we expect you all to be there. Yes?




TOY - Lose My Way

Someone else up to single-before-the-album stage are the progenitors of our new favourite game, looking at their invariaby monochrome publicity photos and trying to guess which one's the female. The album is out 10th September; a week before comes this murky, psych-y, vaguely Spiritualized-y single, priding itself in its slowly emerging depths and the way it kisses off the shoegaze affectations and heads for the heart of the sun.




The Hundredth Anniversary - Caroline

This Brighton outfit have only existed since January but they already know what they are - namely, a cooled down British bedroom version of the ambitious coasting emotion of, to take a fairly evident example, the Walkmen. Singer Eleanor Rudge sounds like Katherine from Evans The Death (with a hint of Micachu), the band like a warmly uncoiling spool of chiming melodic guitar lines reminiscent of the Sundays (sidenote: how come nobody's calling for a Sundays reunion with their influence becoming more apparent? It'd be better for their mystique if they didn't, of course, but...) They release a fresh double A side on October 1st and play in Brighton with Fear Of Men on the 20th of that month.




Moscow Youth Cult - Love>Lore

More long time STN favourites, MYC's debut album Happiness Machines is out now and well worth your time, synth circuit board bending that takes those well worn 80s Electro compilations, slips ambient collections behind the jewel case and throws the whole package into an industrial sanding machine. This taster plays with motorik rhythms, touches the electronic horrors of Zombie-Zombie and ends up back at 'VHS Pop' home base frazzled by the experience.

Love>Lore Moscow Youth Cult from Lo+LOAF TV on Vimeo.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Sweeping The Nation presents... Doesn't Your Balloon Ever Land?

Buy here

Last April we unveiled We Make Our Own Mythologies, a handpicked selection of artists representing the cream of newish UK talent who we'd been writing about over the previous few years, raising literally a few pence short of £190 for charity.

Sixteen months on, we thought it was time to update the selection. Presenting Doesn't Your Balloon Ever Land?, twenty-five fresh selections harvested from talent we've praised on these blog pages, stylistically and fidelity wayward as you'd expect, some exclusives/rarities. It's available on a pay what you want basis with a set minimum of £3, and all proceeds will go to Macmillan Cancer Support, the charity that provides practical and advisory support for cancer sufferers. May we extend very grateful thanks to the artists and their representatives who helped out and generously donated tracks, with particular thanks to the labels Alcopop!, Brainlove, House Vs Home, Melodic, Philophobia Music, Popty-Ping and Robot Needs Home.

Onwards...



Her Parents - Win The Lottery, Kick The Fuck Out Of Your House
Kicking off with an exclusive advance track from debut album Physical Release by an offbeat twisted punk band featuring members of Dananananaykroyd, Internet Forever (qv) and Stairs To Korea.

Runaround Kids - Lesser Loved
TWirily melodic guitar pop running atop a knife edge from the other great Wakefield trio, taken from the Runaround Kids Vs We Are Losers split 12" EP on Philophobia Music.

Heavy Petting Zoo - Deathproof
Fiery, fuzzy lo-fi coiled spring garage rock from Swansea youths who've earned Yeah Yeah Yeahs comparisons.

Standard Fare - Dead Future
Sheffield's smart janglepop titan trio, "the best and most loveable aspects of indie guitar music" according to the Sunday Times, offer a track from most recent album Out Of Sight, Out Of Town (Melodic Records)

Just Handshakes (We're British) - Cut And Run
Exclusive new song from the effervescent janglers with a twist, offering sweet summer pop with hidden depth.

This Many Boyfriends - Just Saying
A recent offcut by the wry, quasi-ramshackle NME-endorsed funpoppers ahead of their debut album, due in October and produced by the Cribs' Ryan Jarman.

Fashoda Crisis - Hunting The Poor For Sport
A preview of the Jowls Of Justice EP, due in October, from the vituperative Southend trio who, to quote themselves, "play from the bottom of their twisted, blackened tumourous little heart"

Amateur Historians - The Party And The Aftermath
From their very recent debut EP New Homes/New Hopes, Belfast's contribution to the Pavement-to-Johnny Foreigner lineage of indie rock pulled into exciting new shapes.

Screaming Maldini - Life In Glorious Stereo
Expansive pop geometry from the sextet's forthcoming debut album, full of choral flourishes, trumpets and strings.

T.O.Y.S - Mirror
Yet another northern trio, landing somewhere between lo-fi garage and motorik freakbeat as led by organ and fuzz bass, this track from a forthcoming EP on Odd Box Recordings.

Maybeshewill - Спутник-2
A B-side from recent sessions of glitchy, turning monumental confident post-rock from the Leicester instrumentalists.

Mowbird - And We Have A Winner
An as yet unreleased swirling psych-twang slacker odyssey from much admired Wrexham band who play Green Man this very weekend.

Joanna Gruesome - Pantry Girl
A cut from the recent self-released EP by slackers who simultaneously recall the British and American early 90s arms of shoegaze and noisy college rock.

Anguish Sandwich - So Gone
And yet more music that falls short of high fidelity. Reverberating quietly efficient while still cracked Pixies-ish riffs, this is from last year's No More Cows EP.

Nature Set - Avalanche
A Sheffield micro-supergroup injecting pop with undefinable menace while still capable of filling an indie dancefloor. From the If I Crawl, You Crawl EP on Dufflecoat Records

Spectral Park - Filler #54
Luke Donovan, who is Spectral Park, is working on his debut album but dropped off this rough offcut, a miniature of almost literally warped bedroom radiophonic psychedelia.

Napoleon IIIrd - The Hardline Optimist (Radio Version)
A mildly reworked new mix of a track from the constantly inventive 2010 album Christiania (Brainlove Records).

The All Golden - Bright And Early
Hitherto unreleased sunkissed pastoral psych-pop instrumental from Pete Gofton (J Xaverre, George Washington Brown, Johnny X)'s latest project.

Fire Island Pines - Oh Therese
Luxuriantly sophisticated maxi-pop from Wadebridge, Cornwall sextet whose kitchen sink small package melodramas has garnered venerated Smiths/Pulp comparisons.

August Actually - Another Fucking Love Song
An as yet unreleased slice of delicately wry folk-pop.

Katie Malco - Sad Eyes
Fife-originating, London-based, lyrically sharp acoustic pop with an optimistic aura. Produced by the co-writer of Snow Patrol's Run, this, from last year's Katie Malco And The Slow Parade EP.

Backyards - Statues
The album's ninth act from Yorkshire, from this February's If You're Scared EP comes an atmospherically complex, heart on sleeve dynamism that emotively carouses into lush strings.

LookiMakeMusic - I Don't Make Threats, I Make Promises
From splendidly titled EP Hate Me For A Reason, Let The Reason Be Hate, the wordy Birmingham 'post-indiepopcore' types hover between emo (in its original meaning), mathrock and post-LC! elaborate underground.

Haiku Salut - Vowels As Clear As Church Bells
Baroque, neo-post-rock, folktronica... whatever, it's three women of Derbyshire exploring avant-orchestral languid instrumental soundscapes. This is from last year's How We Got Along After The Yarn Bomb EP.

Internet Forever - 3D (Body In The Thames Anaglyph mix)
And to finish, the shadowy remixer/producer reworks a track from the splendid debut album of this year from the twee-noise trio of repute.



That link to that album again: Doesn't Your Balloon Ever Land?

Wednesday, August 08, 2012

Tender Trap - Step One

Call and response girl group 101 fun from Amelia and co, their splendid fourth album Ten Songs About Girls finally set in place for 10th September. A rallying cry in the casual form of a literal guide to how to start your own girl pop revolution, it's classic girl group pop with edge that never knew melodrama. Also features the word 'eschew'.

Monday, August 06, 2012

A Dark Horse - These Butterflies Are Here

Dublin duo A Dark Horse are along the lineage of but don't quite fit properly into the modern chamber folk subset. Intimate while shimmeringly crisp, its overambitious impulses are kept carefully back so the song reaches somewhere but remains planted within the detail and how it all fits together - if, say, there's Bon Iver references to be made, it's the filled out expansive live sound around that first album. They released a self-titled EP today.

Friday, August 03, 2012

PAWS - Jellyfish/Miss American Bookworm

Two bracing blasts of mid-fi noise pop, the former a single out this week, the latter a mere album track, from the Glaswegian trio who are newly signed to Fat Cat. Oft supported by avatars of quality Song, By Toad, the former track is a nasty, muscular rolling surf/skate whipsmart cut, while the latter shifts from coasting West Coast-influenced distorted fuzzy indie rock to Sonic Youth/No Age-ish melodic freakouts not exactly so much imperceptibly as with a great squeal and cloud of tyre smoke. Both harbour energy and ferocity to spare. Both will be on debut album Cokefloat!, out October 1st and produced by knob twiddler of increasing distinction Rory Attwell (Evans The Death, Veronica Falls, Yuck, studio on a boat)



Amateur Historians - These Cities Are Stealing My Soul

A band named after a Johnny Foreigner lyric, so obviously we started writing the entry long before clicking play on the track. Luckily, it turned out to be very much worth posting. The Belfast trio's taster of debut EP New Homes/New Hopes, released 15th August and which in single form also has a remix from Adam LookiMakeMusic's Future Wife guise, is in its sub-two minute faux-clumsy collapsing card pyramid of tightly fractured guitar phrases, pacey personalised lyrical cadences and call-and-response backing vocals starts its family tree at Slanted & Enchanted Pavement, course through the Kinsella bands, LC! and Scottish lo-fi, ending up a stop along from Ace Bushy Striptease. Splendid. Also, almost certainly precision targeted/manufactured for STN's benefit.

Thursday, August 02, 2012

Her Parents - Don't Know

Well now. Her Parents are component parts of Dananananaykroyd, Internet Forever, Stairs To Korea and someone else, according to the press release "they play faster-than-light punk music to smash things to", and their forthcoming album Physical Release, out 20th August, is 11 tracks and 17 minutes long, betraying an almost complete lack of overt seriousness. For public starters, 81 seconds of SST-influenced chantalong hardcore. They support Johnny Foreigner at Highbury Garage on the 18th, and around that date there'll also be something of theirs on... I've said too much.

Darren Hayman And The Long Parliament - We Are Not Evil

As prolific as he is, we've been waiting a while for Hayman to complete his Essex Trilogy. The Violence, released 5th November, is a double concept album on the Essex Witch Trials, wherein about 300 women were executed for witchcraft in the eastern counties of Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk between 1644 and 1646 under the watch of infamous Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins. If that sounds a little too much this should put your thought to some rest, an elegant introductory scene setter from the perspective of the Witchfinders, delicate folky guitars with hints of woodwind in the background. Hayman and band play most of the album at the Lexington on August 29th; some time in September Hayman releases Lido, an instrumental album about open air swimming pools. Yes.

Wednesday, August 01, 2012

Corin Tucker Band - Neskowin

If there's been a drawback with most of Tucker's solo material (ex-Sleater-Kinney, like you need reminding) it's that it's too in hock to US bar band motifs, all choogling and Cadillac drivetime aimed. There's a little of that about this track from Kill My Blues, out in the autumn, but with a heap of art-rock fracture that better suits this level of Tucker yelping.

Ace Bushy Striptease - More Parts Per Milijas

The cuddlecore titans have a new EP of this title (link includes official apology to Dirk Kuyt) out about now, featuring tracks from their fifth album, Outside It's Cold Just Like The Inside Of Your Body And, due in October through...what? No, they just have that way with titling things, and believe me, we've seen some of the prospective song titles on the album. Anyway, it's an even more ragged take-on of Gareth Campesinos' extended football metaphor habit - in fact, Ace Bushy trend followers, it's their second titular tribute to a Wolves player, following the early Michael Kightley Is Pretty Rad. They'll be doing the half time draw before long, if they still have the half time draw at Molineux. The EP features a Pavement cover, if you want an advance indication.



Ace Bushy Striptease - More Parts Per Milijas from Ace Bushy Striptease on Vimeo.

Post War Glamour Girls - Tremor

The dark, tremeloed spaghetti western heart gets infected by Nick Cave murder ballad viscerality and emerges as brooding dramatics that switch almsot imperceptibly from swoon to threat. Post War Glamour Girls are from Leeds and release tremendously titled four song cycle EP Tragic Loss; He Had Such A Lovely House next week.