Tonight!

Indietracks warm-up! At Leicester Firebug! Help Stamp Out Loneliness headline! Full details here!

In case you haven't heard

Sweeping The Nation Presents..., our live arm hosted at Leicester Firebug, returns from a long hibernation tomorrow from 8pm with Wake The President, supported by Evans The Death and LookiMakeMusic. Add yourself.

Must we fling this filth at our pop kids?

In an attempt not to just talk to ourselves about them all day, we've started a blog covering the BBC4 repeats of 1976 Top Of The Pops episodes (and presumably TOTP in general over time), Yes It's Number One. Go, add to your feed, whatever.

Back to work

A changing of the calendar brings with it a time to start afresh. No, not in the 'put to rest' sense, though don't think that didn't cross our minds once or twice when we put another thousand words into the blogosphere to be met by apparent stony facedness. Anyway.

We've always posted about new and current music and the best tracks of that type, but often at several days' remove. So in place of the Myspace links and Playlist Additions and all that, what we're going to inaugurate tomorrow is Tracklist - a first thing daily post of a single track you ought to know about and why. Not that there'll be a lot of direct downloads if any at all, but think of it as a reaction to those mp3 blogs that hoy up anything they get with just a couple of sentences copied off the press release that tell you nothing about why you should care. Brand new bands or latest albums from established names, it'll all grist to the mill.

That doesn't mean we'll scrimp all that much on the usual mess of other stuff, that'll just fit round it, but consider Tracklist a quick stop guide to something to work through your day by that works in parallel to all that rot. This weekend, for instance, a full ton of reasons why you should look forward to 2011's myriad delights. Are you with us?

We'd like to thank our agent

Why not make the five and a half years of blathering, not to mention the near halving of our daily readership over the last year and a half, worth all the while by voting STN for Best Blog in the Record Of The Day Awards? You have until next Thursday.

Things we've done over the weekend to put off other work

1) Started a Tumblr for video clips and various other things that wouldn't support a blog post on their own - sweepthenation.tumblr.com

2) Opened a Soundcloud account, should you wish to add to our backlog of new band tracks in an entirely fresh way. In return, we've properly uploaded the tracks made exclusively for us of people we like covering other people we like for STN's fifth birthday:

Sweeping The Nation's Fifth Birthday Presents by Sweeping The Nation

Join and participate in both, why don't you.

Playlist additions is having a week off

Too busy to listen to loads of new music objectively at the moment, what with festivals and writing about festivals and warming up for festivals and all that. In the meantime, Brainlove Records is going on tour in September/October, and this is the player they've chosen to advertise it with, including an exclusive Napoleon IIIrd demo from the second album set for October:

Brainlove Tour 2010! by brainlove

Dates:
28th September London CAMP
29th September Norwich Knowhere Bar
30th September Leeds The Well
1st October Leicester Firebug *
2nd October Dublin The Twisted Pepper
5th October York Stereo
6th October Cardiff 10 Feet Tall
8th October Manchester Kings Arms

(* Yes, of course it's us. Who else would be stupid enough to think Brainlove artists could draw a crowd in Leicester?)

Dates are still being booked - contact John Brainlove direct for info.

It is a very good year

Introducing, to be updated throughout 2010, our playlist of the best stuff that's come out this year and is on Spotify. Why not subscribe?

We'd like to be sent stuff too - our handle is sweepingthenation, through which you might like to inform us of anything we've generally missed.

Sweeping The Nation Presents... #7

While we recover from the non-partying around the STN birthday celebrations and start to get develop some good ideas, we might as well tell you about our next live gig even though you don't come to them and it's ages away. It's a special one, though, being an Indietracks Festival warm-up. For it we're temporarily moving to the bigger Leicester Musician, where on 22nd July we intend to present...


By Rachael Smith

MJ Hibbett & The Validators
The only non-Indietracks full band public gig this year (we think) by the indiepop bard of Peterborough, just before he takes his one-man rock opera Dinosaur Planet to the Edinburgh Fringe.



Standard Fare
Some say they're indiepop's breakout band of the year. What we can definitely state is The Noyelle Beat is a superb work.



Lime Chalks
Birmingham outfit who, they say, "play indiefolklofipop or whatever you'd care to call it, and their philosophy is thus: cheerfulness, melodiousness, harmoniousness!"




As usual it'll be £4 online or £5 on the door. Register your interest on Facebook or last.fm, why not.

Leader debate

And as it's a special occasion, why not use the magic of Formspring and ask us anything about the blog, music or general chit-chat you like, within reason?

Sweeping The Nation Presents... #6

Last one for two or three months while we recharge and work out how the hell we're going to actually get people to come to these fuckers.

And this, most definitely, is a fucker. Sunday 11th April, Leicester Firebug, 8pm onwards, this:

Ice, Sea, Dead People
"One of the loudest new bands I've seen in a long while... Properly forthright, in-your-face rock music." (Steve Lamacq)



Beyond This Point Are Monsters
"Tight, talented and thoroughly entertaining, fans of the Big Scary Monsters music scene would do wise to check these lads out." (Sandman Magazine)



Logfox
"One of the most intriguing bands to emerge in Leicester in recent years" (Rockfood)


As usual it's £4 online or £5 on the door. That's five English pounds, for everyone who intends to observe the poster and the sign on the door then ask me how much it is. Facebook, last.fm, Songkick.

Sweeping The Nation Presents... #5

Still looking to break the magic twenty-through-the-door barrier, we present our fifth night at Leicester Firebug with a bill we're particularly proud of, and one that Tim Daily Growl told us was surely the best the city has put on recently (admittedly he's not from round here and doesn't take much interest in the Midlands gig scene, but even so).

Offsetting this, at the moment the Facebook event has seven confirmed attendees, three of whom don't count. Hard sell time.

On the 28th March at the aforementioned Firebug, from 8pm or whenever the soundcheck overruns til, these:

Meursault
"...strong on existential angst, Arab Strap rage and self loathing...equally capable of the lovelorn misery of King Creosote or James Yorkston... Meursault do it uncommonly well:completely absorbed and unselfconcious, they vitally don't use the noise as an excuse not to write any tunes" (The Word)



Stairs To Korea
"Reassuringly miserable and realistically optimistic, this dude from the Brainlove Records stable of excellent weirdness is another fine addition to the music stratosphere." (Huw Stephens, Kruger magazine)



Penfold Gate
"Brilliant, exciting and energetic... I can't wait to see them live" (Artrocker)




It's a fiver on the door or £4 online. Here's the last.fm and Songkick registers. That's all.

Better to know

Thanks to everyone that came down on Thursday night for an excellent night's entertainment, for which we've been receiving some very appreciative feedback. Short of numbers through unavailability they may have been, but the Indelicates acoustic power trio still shone despite technical problems (and an impromptu late display of crash gymnastics) with a set mostly of highly promising material - here's a full band version of one - from their forthcoming second album Songs For Swinging Lovers, which has been mastered (they were in Berlin first thing that morning having picked up the master tape) and will be self-released in the very near future. They're next out and about at Manchester Ruby Lounge on the 18th March, with Chester and Bristol on the horizon as well as an appearance at Feeling Gloomy at Islington Academy 2 on 17th April. The Indelicates at a melancholia night? Really? Either they're going to improvise around Stars for half an hour or someone's taking a chance on booking. Cheers also to One Cure For Man and The Falling Leaves for sterling support.

For our part, the indieing refuses to stop. Three weeks tonight we're doing this, returning to the illustrative powers of Indiehorse:

The last significant statement to be made for our next gig

Sweeping The Nation's fourth live outing is this Thursday, Leicester Firebug, £5 on the door (say hello), and we're very pleased to say The Indelicates are headlining. Reports from their gig last week in Liverpool say they're on good form, previewing songs from their imminent second album and playing family favourites from American Demo, like these two:



Two local bands support: One Cure For Man offer woozy, powerful melodic indie-rock, while, in a change to the published (on the poster) schedule, The Falling Leaves, who played Summer Sundae a couple of years ago, are power-pop with hints of shoegaze. Things kick off at 8pm. State your intentions on Facebook or last.fm

And coming up very soon, a couple of Sunday evenings out at Firebug:

28th March: Meursault, Stairs To Korea, Penfold Gate
11th April: Ice Sea Dead People, TBC, Logfox

Our next night out

Ticket link
Facebook
last.fm
Songkick

It's our fifth birthday at the end of April

What do you think we should do to commemorate? If we put on a celebratory gig, a) would you come? and b) who should we invite to headline to reflect what we do here, and would be available and willing to play a 100 capacity room in the east Midlands (hint, hint, booking agents and managers)?

These are questions we're asking ourselves while we summon up the courage to get endless booking agent knockbacks, but we'd like to know what you'd add. Don't worry, we've had ideas of our own for once too.

Fit to burst

In case there are any future anthology editors reading, we thought in a quiet moment of self-regarding nonsense we'd put together the links for everything we wrote for The Line Of Best Fit in 2009, apart from the album reviews edited down and re-presented for the STN end of year folderol.

Hazel Winter - Situation Normal Then
Luke Haines – Bad Vibes: Britpop And My Part In Its Downfall
Partly on the back of this, we got sent Truth And Lies In Murder Park, a fact-based novel by Tim Mitchell (made, we think, with Haines' cooperation) about a journalist sent to interview a rather more successful parallel version of Haines who finds himself captured by characters and mes en scenes from his lyrics. Never got round to reviewing it, but it's a fascinatingly obtuse companion piece. Even if we say so ourselves the line in this review about Alex James is one of our favourite ever concoctions, albeit originally contrived for something else. The book's just come out in paperback, with a cabbage on the cover.
The Kinks - Picture Book
Six CD box set that for some reason gives each era of the band nearly equal weight, and that 80s and early 90s output was a struggle. We're told the vast majority of the better later tracks were left off.
Rough Trade Counter Culture 08
"Last year’s Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes" is one of those lines that only amuses ourselves. Counter Culture 09 is out on February 1st and features an odd selection that takes in Mos Def, Yacht, Mariachi El Bronx, Loudon Wainright III, The Leisure Society, The XX, The Horrors, The Drums, Super Furry Animals, Broadcast And The Focus Group, Pastels/Tenniscoats, Emmy The Great, Micachu And The Shapes, The Soft Pack, Fever Ray and Tiga.
Dark Was The Night
So much anguish when we nabbed this one first. And Matt Berninger's prayer came true, which is nice.
Napoleon IIIrd – Hideki Yukawa
Why don't we just change our name to Sweeping The Brainlove and have done with it?
Shirley Lee - Shirley Lee
Especially if we're going to be lukewarm about an album by the bloke who wrote the song we're named after.
1000 Robota – Du Nicht Er Nicht Sie Nicht
German language post-punk. Wonder if anyone investigated further, no matter how positive the reaction.
Sunny Day Sets Fire – Summer Palace
Favours For Sailors – Furious Sons
And that's why they split. Maybe.
Simon Reynolds – Totally Wired: Post-Punk Interviews And Overviews
We like the debate in the comments.
The Bluetones – Expecting To Fly (Expanded Edition)
Yep. Not to cast aspersions, but another online music magazine (not to be named here, but think Trompe Le Monde) published a review of this slightly later and used the same reference to Armando Iannucci's pointlessness list without reference to where it originated.
Bill Callahan – Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle
Turned up in the UK blogger poll top 50, which perhaps means it deserves a re-visit.
Caroline Weeks – Songs For Edna
Brakes - Touchdown
Honesty time: the first paragraph (and the bit before it) were written before we'd put the album on. They should really have put Consumer Or Producer Chicken Or Egg on.
The Wave Pictures – If You Leave It Alone
Further to the opening paragraph, Stanley Brinks And The Wave Pictures has just come out with a Dave Tattersall solo album in April. We were inordinately pleased when we found out we were the second people to register the album on last.fm after Moshi Moshi themselves.
Cryptacize – Mythomania
Cats On Fire – Our Temperance Movement
To be fair, they were spectacular at Indietracks.
Golden Silvers – True Romance
The Loves – Three
It's not been made public yet but someone told us Fortuna Pop!'s newest signing recently, and we were actively astonished. Presumably it'll be announced very soon.
Awaydays Original Soundtrack
The bit about Merseyside v Leyton was original research (ie we asked someone north-western and older whether casuals would really have been listening to this stuff)
Interview with Stuart Mackay of Indietracks
Reviewed it as well, although only by cribbing STN's own longer review.
Common People - Britpop: The Story
We do keep doing this to ourselves. Another review reckoned the worst, most Britpop-timelocked thing on it was Earl Brutus! These people don't deserve the gift of music. The promo didn't have the Bob Stanley liner notes, and we'd quite like to know his defence of some of it.
The Answering Machine – Another City, Another Sorry
Let’s Wrestle – In The Court Of The Wrestling Let’s
Giving it only one less percentage point than The Low Anthem seems slightly generous, and perhaps explains why TLOBF doesn't do percentages any more, but it's not a bad album by any means, and the site editors having a difference of opinion in the comments is fun.
The Minus 5 - Killingsworth
The Duckworth Lewis Method – The Duckworth Lewis Method
Latitude Festival
Never got round to writing the extended version for STN, although this is pretty extensive as it is. It also solely focuses on the music, which means we've never previously got to relay the sight of Frank Skinner observing the bag check queue before being stopped by some bloke telling him a joke, or Robin Ince reading a Horrid Henry book to a gathering of five year olds while people like us crowded round the outside of the tent taking this curious image to heart, or seeing Simon Armitage outside the poetry tent checking the bit in his book he was about to deliver a reading of. We intend to use that Marina and the Diamonds line a lot more this year.
Interview with Rebecca from Slow Club
The observant will know it was Charles who did similar for STN, so we got all bases covered.
Hefner - We Love The City
Broadcast And The Focus Group – Broadcast And The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age
Brakes – Rock Is Dodelijk
The live album. Comma Comma Comma Full Stop isn't even the last track.
The Swell Season – Strict Joy

Into the new live year

The first two Sweeping The Nation Presents... gigs at Leicester Firebug of 2010:

Thursday 4th March: The Indelicates

Sunday 28th March: Meursault/Stairs To Korea

£4 tickets are on WeGotTickets (Indelicates, Meursault). More nearer the time.

Before we forget...

4 Or 5 Magicians recently received this glowing album review from the Irish Times. Mascot Fight's catalogue is now up on Spotify. Ace Bushy Striptease have had this due praise for their two self-issued mini albums from The Line Of Best Fit. Come and see them together on Thursday night at our expense.

How we became

If you weren't in Leicester for our Jeremy Warmsley soiree on Wednesday night, here's an idea of how it visually transpired. Plenty thanks to Jennifer Anne Simpson for these.





And one of support Peter Wyeth in full concentration:



We have a signed copy of J-Wo's 5 Versions tour EP, and soon we'll work out what to do with it. Our next night out stars 4 Or 5 Magicians and will be on 3rd December, and in a couple of weeks we'll tell you which two recent big favourites round here we're putting on in January.