Motor away

Quick post to make up for not posting while we do some heavy duty catching up. Motorifik are Idrisse Khelifi of Paris and Phil Kay of Manchester and Working For A Nuclear Free City. They work in the field of pop gone wrong, borrowing those damned Be My Baby drums and a general Spector (via Velvets) production quality plus a blissed out vocal with plenty going on underneath. An album of the same name is out on November 15th.

Motorifik - Secret Things

Easily impressed

As people who like to keep track of everything bard in exile of Peterborough MJ Hibbett is up to, we're pleased to have in our hand The Forest Moon Of Enderby, his and the Validators' forthcoming (18th October) B-sides and rarities album . Yeah, a rarities compilation for MJ Hibbett If you would like a smaller beer please ask for one. Still, there's a good number of live favourites on it, including this one, known to bring grown men to tears (not us, we're hard, but we have evidence). True story, apparently.

MJ Hibbett & the Validators - Leave My Brother Alone

Get the CD, put it in your computer and find Hibbett's Superstore, a large set of Hibbett solo efforts, unreleased songs and Fuzzy Warbles-like odds and sods from advert commissions, radio jingles and 'stuff'. Among them, this demo for an update to Hibbett's celebrated Hey Hey 16K:

MJ Hibbett - Hey Hey 64K

Hibbett celebrates this release with a handful of dates for his Edinburgh two-man sci-fi rock opera extravaganza Dinosaur Planet - Stockton on Tees The Waiting Room on 24th October, The Green Dragon in Croydon on the 27th, Northampton in November - and his 'world tour in a room above a pub' Totally Acoustic, every fortnight at The Lamb, Lamb's Conduit Street, London Wc1N, starting on 11th October. There'll be a podcast for each night, and guests include Andy Hudson of Pocketbooks fame, The Bobby McGees of The Weakest Link fame, Pete Green of Corporate Juggernaut/The Sweet Nothings fame, Keith TOTP of being mates with Eddie Argos fame, Chris T-T of being mates with Frank Turner fame and Gavin Osborn of being mates with Daniel Kitson fame. A quick catchup session for Hibbett's work? Check his/their Bandcamp.

Happy land

Welcome to a reason to be excited about 2011, yes, already. Let's Buy Happiness, a bunch of Newcastle youths, are a band we first wrote about back in February but things have been rolling along towards some sort of result ever since, with a John Peel Stage Glastonbury slot and The Great Escape gig soon to be followed by appearances at the behest of In The City and one of Drowned In Sound's tenth anniversary events, with Southsea Fest this weekend. Echoes of the Cocteau Twins and Sugarcubes can't be overlooked, but there's flavours of a range from Emiliana Torrini to Modest Mouse too, a crystalline soundscape of delayed guitars and aereated, glimmering production. This is an example of what they can do from last year's No Hot Ashes EP:

Let's Buy Happiness - Devil Show

...and I'm terrified of what comes next

So you caught the news that Johnny Foreigner have signed to Alcopop! Records and have a six track EP out in November?

Oh, you did. As you were. For the record, though, the label say "Yes there are frenetic guitars, with urgent  vocal hooks and giant noise-pop chorus – the double drum tracked coda to 'the wind and the weathervanes' is probably the loudest thing the band have ever recorded,  but there’s a real tender side on this EP too – ‘robert scargill wins the prize’ floats on a ukulele and  a fuzzy organ bass and 'yr loved' is mostly whispered vocals and harmonics loops."

Perhaps you also caught the recent suggestion from Alexei that the fabled pre-Kelly album We Left You Sleeping And Gone Now is getting a digital wash and brush-up release soonish, with cartoon liner notes. All give, this band. Which reminds us...

... what you may not be across is this Sparklehorse cover which their new lords and masters passed on to us:

Johnny Foreigner - Most Beautiful Widow in Town

Falling stars

We know we've written about Falling & Laughing some time in our history because they quote us on their press release. The Birmingham duo of singer/guitarist Dunc, who's also in Lime Chalks of playing our last live night fame, and drummer Darryl write heartfelt songs then throw dynamics at them. You think it's going to be the Field Mice, then it turns up and turns into something less easy to follow. Their four track EP Bunnyhood is out on Odd Box next Monday.

Falling & Laughing - Roly-Poly

New Vic

Here's a pleasant surprise we found while clearing out the inbox, a new song from Vic Godard. Going to need a quick history here, we think...

Vic Godard was a nascent punk singer who, at Malcolm McLaren's suggestion, formed a band to play at the 100 Club Punk Festival in 1976, the watershed for the nascent scene (the Sex Pistols, Clash and a debuting improvisational Siouxsie and the Banshees were on that same bill, the Buzzcocks and Damned heading the second day). They supported the Clash on the White Riot tour and took Bernie Rhodes on as manager, who promptly fired the lot and re-mixed without Godard's knowledge their sole single, the properly great invention of post-punk before punk had taken hold that is Ambition:



Godard reformed Subway Sect in 1980 and released a rockabilly and northern soul influenced album, What's The Matter Boy? (Shirley Lee of Spearmint wrote the sleevenotes for the twenty years on reissue, which instantly puts it on our radar) but after several other attempts and a spell as a Tin Pan Alley crooner retired and became a postman. In 1993, at the behest of Rough Trade's Geoff Travis, he returned with an album produced by fan Edwyn Collins released on the briefly resuscitated Postcard label, and has recorded on and off ever since. He's just played the 1-2-3-4 festival in Shoreditch and releases a new album, We Come As Aliens, on October 11th.

Before then comes the Blackpool EP, only available via PayPal for £5 plus p&p from GNU inc Records (thegnu@hotmail.co.uk) Recorded with literate lowlife Londoners the Bitter Springs, it contains four tracks written with Irvine Welsh for a failed musical. The lead title track is proper uke-led end of the pier vaudeville:

Vic Godard - Blackpool

Captain peaky

Quick giveaway to tide over the mid-festival season gaps, and it's another Birmingham artist. Captain Polaroid is giving away a couple of EPs, with a third pending, of fuzzy, opinionated lo-fi. Home recording is living music.

Captain Polaroid - When the Controversial Artist Became a Middle Class Commodity

Clearer skies

A long time since we've mentioned Under Alien Skies, the elusive Prestatyn duo having tipped our scales spectacularly back in February. Things have gone - alright, kept - quiet since, but we have a brand new track to share, which we had to get up online pretty much at first listen. Sonically? AnCo are there, as always an umbrella term for their beachfront sequenced weirdness in a descriptive hurry, but something nagging away says Yeasayer too (both albums). As before, though, nothing entirely sticks, not in description or in the texture of the track.

Under Alien Skies - Overseas

Right, one more old summer chart tomorrow, the playlist and Weekender stuff is busily being schedule posted, and we're off to Latitude for the weekend. We shall report back; in the meantime let us know if you'll be there too, and moreover who thought putting Dirty Projectors, Kristin Hersh, Jesca Hoop and Mitchell Museum, four artists playing no other festivals we're going to this year, on at exactly the same time would cause no angst whatsoever.

The sports desk

Where It's At Is Where You Are, who have been giving this away free, refer to it as being by a mysterious indie supergroup, but given it was first released ten years ago by Sportique* (featuring members of Razorcuts, Heavenly and the Television Personalities) it's not exactly iamamiwhoami. Still, it's rowdy enough in a lo-fi sense and had it been released properly it could have been 2010's own Official Colourbox World Cup Theme.

Sport For All - Sport For All

(* Internet hivemind! What was the slogan that Sportique initially coined that was something about playing songs as if on the radio in the 70s? Google is no help on this)

Short music for the longest day

Formerly Edinburgh based Fuzzystar is friends with our old, currently in semi-hiatus, favourite Kat Flint and follows a not dissimilar path of very clean and clear yet not quite straightforward indie-folk - those who downloaded the couple of My First Tooth mp3s we've had up on the site in the past will be across what's going on, or fans of It Hugs Back or the Candle Thieves; others, on a grander scale, have mentioned Sufjan, Lou Barlow, Elliott Smith and the Lemonheads. This is from their self-released debut EP Late Night Radio.

Fuzzystar - Even At My Worst


If you're of much rougher stock, Alright The Captain (“heat fuzzed out surf to twisted funk to stylised angular heaviness. Something for everyone who likes having their cerebral cortexes turned inside out while they wait!” - Sweeping The Nation) have put their 123.EP up for free Bandcamp download.

Foot loose

Shoes And Socks Off is Tobias Hayes, once of post-hardcore lordships Meet Me In St Louis, but for some years now trading as an intimate lo-fi singer-songwriter. His first three recordings are being issued as a box set called 'Don't Blame Yourself, It's In Your Blood', available only from gigs or made to order from the Big Scary Monsters shop and with a load of bonus content including videos, demos, covers and anything else he found lying about.

Shoes And Socks Off - Protect Your PC

Album four is called Robin Hood Waiter Champion Have-Not and is out on 9th August. Every week up to then a video for each track is being released, such as this one.

Museum piece

And the hits just keep on coming. This one from the much mentioned here Glasgow psych-art-"junk pop" restless souls Mitchell Museum, who offer this from forthcoming album The Peters Port Memorial Service, out 12th July:

EDIT: yeah, we did think it funny that we were initially sent their new single, out on the 14th, to be given away for free. Instead, here's an exclusive remix.

Mitchell Museum - Warning Bells (Coachacola remix)

They're doing T In The Park, Latitude and Wickerman over the summer, and before that launch their new single on the 9th at Glasgow Nice'n'Sleazys, pop into London Social on the 8th and go by Leicester Orange Tree on the 6th. Where will we be this Sunday? Er, elsewhere. Review commitments. And Mitchell Museum will be within walking distance. The rending of garments has already begun. Go there and tell us what it was like. Please.

LED! sound system

So we've gone a bundle already about Love Ends Disaster!'s album in the recent past, and now we have proper news. City Of Glass is coming out on 26th July through Warning! Records, online, indie stores, through Rough Trade with a free five track EP of new songs, the works. They've also leant us an edit of the some species of anthemic opening track:

Love Ends Disaster! - City Of Glass (Cowboys) - Radio Edit

Birthday presents VIII

Alright, so maybe yesterday's contributions didn't quite conclude matters, but this Super Furries cover is far too good to abandon to fate. Benjamin Shaw makes "songs of nausea, noise, love, desperation, hope and hilarious anecdote", EP I Got the Pox, The Pox Is What I Got seeing him baring his tortured soul in lo-fi recording and electronic subterfuge.

Benjamin Shaw - Hello Sunshine


Also in Birthday Presents...
Heartbeeps - FYH (Mat Riviere)/Internet Forever vs Pagan Wanderer Lu - Break Bones (chipped bones remix by PWL)
Paul Hawkins & Thee Awkward Silences - The Angriest Dog In The World (Superman Revenge Squad)
Rev. Diva Schematic - Paper Planes (MIA)
Paisley & Charlie - The Lucky One (Au Revoir Simone)
Of Mice And Mental Arithemtic - Mica (Mew)/Major Kid Sun - Peacebone (Animal Collective)
Vom Vorton - Alan Bean (Hefner)
MJ Hibbett - Dreaming (Allo Darlin')/Fly Me To The Moon (Frank Sinatra)

Birthday presents VII

Concluding our series of exclusive covers - you may have seen a video for this on Indietracks blog but the mp3 hasn't been made available before now, so here's MJ Hibbett (who's playing our Indietracks warm-up on July 22nd, full details here) covering Allo Darlin's excellent recent single:

MJ Hibbett - Dreaming

And as a bonus, Hibbett does Sinatra:

MJ Hibbett - Fly Me To The Moon

Birthday presents VI

In follow-up to yesterday's offering from Of Mice And Mental Arithmetic, Tom from the band fires up his Vom Vorton solo project for a version of a track from Hefner's last album, 2001's Dead Media, dedicated to the fourth man on the moon.

Vom Vorton - Alan Bean

Birthday presents V

Formed from the ashes of the much admired Deirdres and Lardpony, Of Mice And Mental Arithmetic are an instrument swapping delight of expansive indiepop thrills. They've delved admirably deep too, for a track from Mew's Denmark-only second album from 2000, Half The World Is Watching Me, and one of the few tracks on it not re-recorded for their international breakthrough Frengers.

Of Mice And Mental Arithemtic - Mica

And alongside that, Sophie from OMAMA passed on this cover. We don't know a lot about this person, except that he may be connected to Derby's piratical wonders Seas Of Mirth, but we know it takes some cojones to strip Animal Collective back this far.

Major Kid Sun - Peacebone

Birthday presents IV

We've written about Detox Cute & The Beauty Junkies before - "their idea of pure pop, which Cowell would never understand, and with fragments in view of Helen Love, Saint Etienne and the Pet Shop Boys, not to mention the founding days of synth pop... lovely, loving melody and melancholy." Their alter ego Paisley & Charlie take that latter bit as its starting point, much like Saint Etienne if Bob and Pete had taken Stephen Duffy in his various guises as their starting point. They're on an Indietracks train come July, and here they 'do' Au Revoir Simone.

Paisley & Charlie - The Lucky One

Birthday presents III

Something slightly different today, perhaps to reflect our ongoing dips into the well offbeat. The Attery Squash are Ricardo Autobahn and Rev. Diva Schematic. One of them was in the Cuban Boys, of Peel/hamster bothering fame. They're best known for the single Devo Was Right About Everything, which Devo later voluntarily remixed, and its spinoff viral hit Charlie Brooker Is Right About Everything. Half of them now take MIA on a more earthly electronic bent.

Rev. Diva Schematic - Paper Planes

Birthday presents II

Second in our selection of exclusive covers is someone whose new album we appraised just the other day, the creeping dread of Paul Hawkins & Thee Awkward Silences. Here he and they tackle another overly literate writer, one that we've been banging on about for a couple of years now but who managed to gain his widest sweep of press popularity this year through his long defunct band Nosferatu D2, Ben Parker AKA Superman Revenge Squad. Bonus points, like Jimmy Saville used to suggest, for anyone who can name the source of the spoken bit at the start.

Paul Hawkins & Thee Awkward Silences - The Angriest Dog In The World