Because remember: NEW MUSIC DOES NOT STOP.
christian fitness - slap bass hunks
Please refer to yesterday's post.
Waxahatchee - Silver
Katie Crutchfield returns with a meaningful guitar crunch that harkens back to the days when we called this kind of thing 'college rock' and Tanya Donelly roamed the land. Big old hooks, self-questioning approach, streamlined for maximum emotional effect. Out In The Storm is out 14th July.
Slow Skies - Shut Your Eyes
It's been a while since we've heard anything new from Dublin's Karen Sheridan, whose 2014 EP intrigued us with its glacial shimmer and yaw. There's very little information about what this is for or from but, if slightly more approachable, it remains a delicate floating confection of Sheridan's honeyed vocal and a number of interesting textures gliding below the surface.
Two White Cranes - Miso
We last saw Roxy Brennan exploring her electronic urges as Furore; back to the guitar for a while she's almost lilting as she tackles the mental delocation of moving away. No definite news of a full release but there's some dates coming up
Wednesday, April 19, 2017
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
STN recommends: 18/4/17
Christian Fitness - Bees Mode
Reminder of STN policy: you don't write about Christian Fitness songs, you let them happen. Seems the next album's going to be called Slap Bass Hunks.
Girlpool - It Gets More Blue
When we first met Cleo and Harmony they were skeletal and direct; with maturity comes personal consideration and a filling out of a lot if not all of the gaps - listen! Drums! - which gives the music a tinge of Pavement lo-fi broken melody against the softly downcast harmonies without sacrificing that off the top of the head emotional intimacy.
Saint Etienne - Magpie Eyes
It's back to the club-ready machines, whirring dreamy synths and sequencers for the second taste of Home Counties, out 2nd June, inspired partially by the Creation Records tome but mostly by a sense of loss and missing out on the world.
Kamikaze Girls - Berlin
The Leeds duo - yeah, one of those again, we're afraid, but bear in mind what it takes for us to endorse a guitar/drums duo these days - are newly signed to Big Scary Monsters and roar out of the blocks with rough-hewn juggernaut riffs and powerhouse drums driven by focused fury. Album Seafoam is out June 9th.
Sweet Baboo - Wild Imagination
The title track from Stephen's latest album, released 2nd June, is a dreamy, one man Beach Boys on a budget concoction that like much of his best work is sweetly uplifting very much in his own world that's just a slightly more sepia printed version of ours.
Post War Glamour Girls - Pollyanna Cowgirl
For a moment there they sounded like they'd gone *cough* anthemic. From third album Swan Songs, out April 21st, serpentine guitars and James' familiar doomy vocal fighting back against the wall of indifference.
Deerful - Subjects Of Our Love
Emma Winston has done time in Darren Hayman's band and Owl & Mouse amongst others; in her solo guise - album Peach out June 9th - she takes up Gameboy and assorted slightly worn synths to create racing 8-bit electropop of a personal affirmation hue.
BEAK> - Sex Music
Geoff Barrow's other band, as you might recall, go for the motorik, vintage organ sound and turn out surprisingly slinky, if unsurprisingly dark in doing so.
The St Pierre Snake Invasion - Dick E Mozart
76 seconds of death-or-glory-but-the-former-if-at-all-possible crashing hardcore, part of the Too Pure Singles Club, from a Bristol band whose singer did the auxiliary vocals when Mclusky played their semi-reformation shows, which follows with his band's angry crash dynamics.
Her's - I'll Try
Swooningly, nimbly romantic playing itself off against Norwegian vocalist Audun Laading's distracted slacker slur, the Liverpool-based duo have turned a few heads for their somnambulent bedroom pop, all of which is collected on story-so-far compilation Songs Of Her's, out 12th May.
Reminder of STN policy: you don't write about Christian Fitness songs, you let them happen. Seems the next album's going to be called Slap Bass Hunks.
Girlpool - It Gets More Blue
When we first met Cleo and Harmony they were skeletal and direct; with maturity comes personal consideration and a filling out of a lot if not all of the gaps - listen! Drums! - which gives the music a tinge of Pavement lo-fi broken melody against the softly downcast harmonies without sacrificing that off the top of the head emotional intimacy.
Saint Etienne - Magpie Eyes
It's back to the club-ready machines, whirring dreamy synths and sequencers for the second taste of Home Counties, out 2nd June, inspired partially by the Creation Records tome but mostly by a sense of loss and missing out on the world.
Kamikaze Girls - Berlin
The Leeds duo - yeah, one of those again, we're afraid, but bear in mind what it takes for us to endorse a guitar/drums duo these days - are newly signed to Big Scary Monsters and roar out of the blocks with rough-hewn juggernaut riffs and powerhouse drums driven by focused fury. Album Seafoam is out June 9th.
Sweet Baboo - Wild Imagination
The title track from Stephen's latest album, released 2nd June, is a dreamy, one man Beach Boys on a budget concoction that like much of his best work is sweetly uplifting very much in his own world that's just a slightly more sepia printed version of ours.
Post War Glamour Girls - Pollyanna Cowgirl
For a moment there they sounded like they'd gone *cough* anthemic. From third album Swan Songs, out April 21st, serpentine guitars and James' familiar doomy vocal fighting back against the wall of indifference.
Deerful - Subjects Of Our Love
Emma Winston has done time in Darren Hayman's band and Owl & Mouse amongst others; in her solo guise - album Peach out June 9th - she takes up Gameboy and assorted slightly worn synths to create racing 8-bit electropop of a personal affirmation hue.
BEAK> - Sex Music
Geoff Barrow's other band, as you might recall, go for the motorik, vintage organ sound and turn out surprisingly slinky, if unsurprisingly dark in doing so.
The St Pierre Snake Invasion - Dick E Mozart
76 seconds of death-or-glory-but-the-former-if-at-all-possible crashing hardcore, part of the Too Pure Singles Club, from a Bristol band whose singer did the auxiliary vocals when Mclusky played their semi-reformation shows, which follows with his band's angry crash dynamics.
Her's - I'll Try
Swooningly, nimbly romantic playing itself off against Norwegian vocalist Audun Laading's distracted slacker slur, the Liverpool-based duo have turned a few heads for their somnambulent bedroom pop, all of which is collected on story-so-far compilation Songs Of Her's, out 12th May.
Monday, April 10, 2017
STN recommends: 10/4/17
Feist - Century
Leslie Feist has described Pleasure, released on the 28th, as an attempt at a more raw, guileless recording session. You can well believe that on the evidence of this, tightly wound and meaningfully sparse. With martial drums and uncluttered directness PJ Harvey will come instantly to mind, at least up until everything stops and turns into a keyboard-led coda for Jarvis Cocker to do his breathy spoken word Jarvis Cocker things over. And then it suddenly stops.
H. Hawkline - Engineers
Hot off the presses, a third taste of I Romanticize, out 2nd June, representing another subtle shift into jangling summer pop with an acidic kick all wrapped around that familiar Welsh psych-confusion template.
Chemtrails - Headless Pin Up Girl
There's quite a bit of that sunlit harmonic surf guitar sound gone ragged and exposed around the edges around at the moment. More ragged and cut to the bone than most, and notably slower if not much less spiky than their usual garage rush, London's Chemtrails release their second EP of the same title on May 12th, inspired via singer Mia Lust's pre-transgender transition keeping of secrets by feelings on not being true to one's true role and place in things.
Milo's Planes - Fidget In Paralysis
The Bristol band's Delivering Business Success was one of last year's sleeper hits, which is a weird thing to approach a record whose stock in trade is direct, Fugazi/SST-inspired post-hardcore. The first track from third album Individual Development Plan, out 12th May, compresses things even further into 81 seconds of jagged riffs, molten gang shouts and general thrusting relentlessness reminiscent of Husker Du just as they were moving away from their warp speed hardcore origins.
Marlon Brando Island - True Heroes
Pitched as a post-hardcore Walkmen, if without the organ, the power trio ratchet up the emotional intensity on this half of a debut double A side, like the National of yore coursing and careering into a razor-tipped dynamic shift that takes everyone over the edge. The kind of band you may need to keep an eye on if only for their own security.
DBFC - Sinner
The Paris-based duo float unserenely on the techno-indie dividing line, aiding psychedelia tropes with beats and layers of unstable synths. The press release makes a Primal Scream comparison, which would be apposite of the blissed out attitude of Screamadelica was added to the Kraut-dub ambience of Vanishing Point, though more accurate touchstones would be the ambient end of peak Chemical Brothers, or maybe the club-psych likes of Delakota and Regular Fries right at the end of the 90s. Album Jenks is out 2nd June.
Lush Purr - (I Admit It) I'm A Gardener
Concise, noisy, inscrutable lo-fi psych-fuzz a-go-go, Lush Purr are signed to Song, By Toad, they're playing some dates with Meursault next month and their drummer was in Copy Haho, which is as solid a start as any. Album Cuckoo Waltz is out 5th May.
Fizzy Blood - Pawn
Fizzy Blood are from Leeds, as are Pulled Apart By Horses, with whom they share a yen for heavy rock shapes undercut with their own particular worldview, pummelling HGV-size riffs against walls and careering into fists-aloft choruses.
Leslie Feist has described Pleasure, released on the 28th, as an attempt at a more raw, guileless recording session. You can well believe that on the evidence of this, tightly wound and meaningfully sparse. With martial drums and uncluttered directness PJ Harvey will come instantly to mind, at least up until everything stops and turns into a keyboard-led coda for Jarvis Cocker to do his breathy spoken word Jarvis Cocker things over. And then it suddenly stops.
H. Hawkline - Engineers
Hot off the presses, a third taste of I Romanticize, out 2nd June, representing another subtle shift into jangling summer pop with an acidic kick all wrapped around that familiar Welsh psych-confusion template.
Chemtrails - Headless Pin Up Girl
There's quite a bit of that sunlit harmonic surf guitar sound gone ragged and exposed around the edges around at the moment. More ragged and cut to the bone than most, and notably slower if not much less spiky than their usual garage rush, London's Chemtrails release their second EP of the same title on May 12th, inspired via singer Mia Lust's pre-transgender transition keeping of secrets by feelings on not being true to one's true role and place in things.
Milo's Planes - Fidget In Paralysis
The Bristol band's Delivering Business Success was one of last year's sleeper hits, which is a weird thing to approach a record whose stock in trade is direct, Fugazi/SST-inspired post-hardcore. The first track from third album Individual Development Plan, out 12th May, compresses things even further into 81 seconds of jagged riffs, molten gang shouts and general thrusting relentlessness reminiscent of Husker Du just as they were moving away from their warp speed hardcore origins.
Marlon Brando Island - True Heroes
Pitched as a post-hardcore Walkmen, if without the organ, the power trio ratchet up the emotional intensity on this half of a debut double A side, like the National of yore coursing and careering into a razor-tipped dynamic shift that takes everyone over the edge. The kind of band you may need to keep an eye on if only for their own security.
DBFC - Sinner
The Paris-based duo float unserenely on the techno-indie dividing line, aiding psychedelia tropes with beats and layers of unstable synths. The press release makes a Primal Scream comparison, which would be apposite of the blissed out attitude of Screamadelica was added to the Kraut-dub ambience of Vanishing Point, though more accurate touchstones would be the ambient end of peak Chemical Brothers, or maybe the club-psych likes of Delakota and Regular Fries right at the end of the 90s. Album Jenks is out 2nd June.
Lush Purr - (I Admit It) I'm A Gardener
Concise, noisy, inscrutable lo-fi psych-fuzz a-go-go, Lush Purr are signed to Song, By Toad, they're playing some dates with Meursault next month and their drummer was in Copy Haho, which is as solid a start as any. Album Cuckoo Waltz is out 5th May.
Fizzy Blood - Pawn
Fizzy Blood are from Leeds, as are Pulled Apart By Horses, with whom they share a yen for heavy rock shapes undercut with their own particular worldview, pummelling HGV-size riffs against walls and careering into fists-aloft choruses.
Wednesday, April 05, 2017
STN recommends: 5/4/17
Yr Poetry - These Are Not The Days Of Our Lives
For the course of 2017 sometime side project Yr Poetry is what Alexei and Junior of Johnny Foreigner are concentrating on. One Night Alive, is the first of three EPs promised this year, pay what you want but with a subscription service where for £20 a year you'll get a CD compilation of said releases, exclusive song downloads, money off any merch and whatever all concerned do from 2018 onwards. None of this would be worth typing that out without the songs, less full-band like (evidently), more electronic (indubitably, it's Junior), otherwise still explosive, still laser focused, still fixated on bad Birmingham indie/rock club nights and worse mornings after.
Christian Fitness - Bruce Hated Puppies
Talking of things done while the regular band are on a break, Falco... Falco.
Melody's Echo Chamber - Cross My Heart
Although a single came out under the radar in 2014 we've heard very little of Melody Prochet since 2012's debut album. We still don't have a release date for follow-up Bon Voyage but we do have a seven minute track that can best - no, pretty much only - be described as an odyssey, based in classically lush Gallic pop tropes but diverting itself as and when it fancies into psychedelia, prog hints, floating dreaminess, glitchy interruptions and at one stage a spot of beatboxing. It's a remarkable thing, pastoral and busy almost simultaneously, and worth your extended while.
Amber Arcades - Can't Say That We Tried
Annelotte De Graaf has a new EP under her spectral empathy guise, and this track from it builds the spire of the sonic cathedral by doing away with beats entirely, built on organ drone, guitar twang and pure emotion about either loss or never getting to know in the first place.
Fazerdaze - Take It Slow
We just wrote about Fazerdaze last week and this isn't that broadly dissimilar, but alright... New Zealander Amelia Murray, recording for Flying Nun, album Morningside out 5th May, dealing in heat-haze languidly melancholic surf-pop. She and they are in the UK from spring bank holiday weekend for about three weeks.
H. Grimace - Lipsyncer
A third track from Self Architect, out on Friday, this one less built on energy rush, more streamlined and considered. Good. It's still built on nervous tension and a coiled spring anger at societal demands into an intriguingly tangled coda, generally in no mood to become the anthem it might well easily have slipped into.
For the course of 2017 sometime side project Yr Poetry is what Alexei and Junior of Johnny Foreigner are concentrating on. One Night Alive, is the first of three EPs promised this year, pay what you want but with a subscription service where for £20 a year you'll get a CD compilation of said releases, exclusive song downloads, money off any merch and whatever all concerned do from 2018 onwards. None of this would be worth typing that out without the songs, less full-band like (evidently), more electronic (indubitably, it's Junior), otherwise still explosive, still laser focused, still fixated on bad Birmingham indie/rock club nights and worse mornings after.
Christian Fitness - Bruce Hated Puppies
Talking of things done while the regular band are on a break, Falco... Falco.
Melody's Echo Chamber - Cross My Heart
Although a single came out under the radar in 2014 we've heard very little of Melody Prochet since 2012's debut album. We still don't have a release date for follow-up Bon Voyage but we do have a seven minute track that can best - no, pretty much only - be described as an odyssey, based in classically lush Gallic pop tropes but diverting itself as and when it fancies into psychedelia, prog hints, floating dreaminess, glitchy interruptions and at one stage a spot of beatboxing. It's a remarkable thing, pastoral and busy almost simultaneously, and worth your extended while.
Amber Arcades - Can't Say That We Tried
Annelotte De Graaf has a new EP under her spectral empathy guise, and this track from it builds the spire of the sonic cathedral by doing away with beats entirely, built on organ drone, guitar twang and pure emotion about either loss or never getting to know in the first place.
Fazerdaze - Take It Slow
We just wrote about Fazerdaze last week and this isn't that broadly dissimilar, but alright... New Zealander Amelia Murray, recording for Flying Nun, album Morningside out 5th May, dealing in heat-haze languidly melancholic surf-pop. She and they are in the UK from spring bank holiday weekend for about three weeks.
H. Grimace - Lipsyncer
A third track from Self Architect, out on Friday, this one less built on energy rush, more streamlined and considered. Good. It's still built on nervous tension and a coiled spring anger at societal demands into an intriguingly tangled coda, generally in no mood to become the anthem it might well easily have slipped into.
Saturday, April 01, 2017
STN recommends... March 2017
Back once again to round off a calendar month with a compilation of the stuff we've given a push on here and the best of the month's album tracks, as well as a handful that have emerged this week that we haven't had space to write about, including Broken Social Scene, Sparks and Slowdive.
Monday, March 27, 2017
STN recommends: 27/3/17
W H Lung - Inspiration!/Nothing Is
Here is the sum total of what we can pass on about W H Lung - they're a trio based in Manchester, they release both these songs on a double A side on May 12th via Melodic, and despite no real proof of having played live yet they're already booked to play End Of The Road, Blue Dot Festival at Jodrell Bank, Sea Change and Liverpool International Festival Of Psychedelia. So there's clearly something going on here - we have our suspicions - and while we await further instruction we have the music to go on, two tracks that together reach just short of sixteen minutes, and luckily it's great in all the right psychedelic/motorik ways, replete with lack-of-air-in-lungs yelp, using that length to shapeshift and evolve through cosmic instrumental breakdown/build-up sections and intense climaxes without falling into shoegaze territory. On Nothing Is some darting, pulsing synths come into play, shifting from Philip Glass repetition into a driving, malleable shape for purpose.
Sam Airey - Lacuna
Finally after what certainly seems like far too long, the darkly intricate craft of Leeds-based Airey has been formed into album shape, In Darkened Rooms out 26th May. Inspired by Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, here his cracked, emotionally spent falsetto is close miked amid a spaciously minimalist setting recalling a less wintry For Emma, Forever Ago.
Sneaks - Hair Slick Back
Slicks is Washington DC's Eva Moolchan, signed to Merge who release It’s a Myth the end of this week. She's/it's an intriguing proposition - taut bass and drum-machine led, delivery based on repetition and how language sounds, like ESG having first heard Le Tigre, with the recording of Mary Timony and her Ex Hex bandmate Jonah Takagi drawing strength from minimalism, which is what you can draw strength from if your album is ten tracks in eighteen minutes.
Alimony Hustle - Miss GB
It's been a little while since we've heard something new from the self-examining to a fault duo, who re-emerge with spacious, smartly vaulting guitar pop without succumbing to the usual bluesy/overdriven faults duos land in. Plus it's about Zara Holland, the titular beauty queen winner who was stripped of her title after going on Love Island. More particularly, "sexism, regret, the death of dreams and, ultimately, doing what you want in the face of all of that".
Gorillaz - Andromeda
The best, we reckon, of the four 80s revival bandwagon-flirting tracks revealed at the end of last week from fourth album Humanz, released 28th April, which seems to be a (quite uneven) club record for a darkened world. Indeed this is virtually old-skool house with its spaciousness, synth flashes and twinkles plus basic insistent beat, Damon in soulful, contemplative mood with rapper D.R.A.M. content to fill in the gaps.
BABY! - Home Sweet Home
BABY! is the nom du jangle of Orlando's Kaley Honeycutt, whose offering from forthcoming EP Pick Me is a sub-two minute joyous coast of surf guitar hooks and energetic warmth, invoking personal catharsis through sunny positivity like a lost Crutchfield sister.
Fazerdaze - Lucky Girl
A track that's been around for a few weeks but we only caught up with this week, and another typically swooning eternal summer kind of offering from the revived Flying Nun Records, New Zealander Amelia Murray similarly deals in bedroom-spawned hazy sunlight-dappled pop of breathy, reverbed for extra nostalgic quality vocal and contrasting emotions, the kind that sees joy and melancholy as part of the same package deal. Her album Morninside is due in May.
Caroline Lazar – Trigger
The young Atlantan was originally parsed as one of the latest country singer-songwriter wave, but this from her new Nevermine EP is a lot more, raw and brooding in minimalism even before it starts to slowly bloom, Lazar's huge voice pushing increasingly forward, before bursting into a emotively cathartic, intense coda involving seemingly all the electric instruments available.
Here is the sum total of what we can pass on about W H Lung - they're a trio based in Manchester, they release both these songs on a double A side on May 12th via Melodic, and despite no real proof of having played live yet they're already booked to play End Of The Road, Blue Dot Festival at Jodrell Bank, Sea Change and Liverpool International Festival Of Psychedelia. So there's clearly something going on here - we have our suspicions - and while we await further instruction we have the music to go on, two tracks that together reach just short of sixteen minutes, and luckily it's great in all the right psychedelic/motorik ways, replete with lack-of-air-in-lungs yelp, using that length to shapeshift and evolve through cosmic instrumental breakdown/build-up sections and intense climaxes without falling into shoegaze territory. On Nothing Is some darting, pulsing synths come into play, shifting from Philip Glass repetition into a driving, malleable shape for purpose.
Sam Airey - Lacuna
Finally after what certainly seems like far too long, the darkly intricate craft of Leeds-based Airey has been formed into album shape, In Darkened Rooms out 26th May. Inspired by Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, here his cracked, emotionally spent falsetto is close miked amid a spaciously minimalist setting recalling a less wintry For Emma, Forever Ago.
Sneaks - Hair Slick Back
Slicks is Washington DC's Eva Moolchan, signed to Merge who release It’s a Myth the end of this week. She's/it's an intriguing proposition - taut bass and drum-machine led, delivery based on repetition and how language sounds, like ESG having first heard Le Tigre, with the recording of Mary Timony and her Ex Hex bandmate Jonah Takagi drawing strength from minimalism, which is what you can draw strength from if your album is ten tracks in eighteen minutes.
Alimony Hustle - Miss GB
It's been a little while since we've heard something new from the self-examining to a fault duo, who re-emerge with spacious, smartly vaulting guitar pop without succumbing to the usual bluesy/overdriven faults duos land in. Plus it's about Zara Holland, the titular beauty queen winner who was stripped of her title after going on Love Island. More particularly, "sexism, regret, the death of dreams and, ultimately, doing what you want in the face of all of that".
Gorillaz - Andromeda
The best, we reckon, of the four 80s revival bandwagon-flirting tracks revealed at the end of last week from fourth album Humanz, released 28th April, which seems to be a (quite uneven) club record for a darkened world. Indeed this is virtually old-skool house with its spaciousness, synth flashes and twinkles plus basic insistent beat, Damon in soulful, contemplative mood with rapper D.R.A.M. content to fill in the gaps.
BABY! - Home Sweet Home
BABY! is the nom du jangle of Orlando's Kaley Honeycutt, whose offering from forthcoming EP Pick Me is a sub-two minute joyous coast of surf guitar hooks and energetic warmth, invoking personal catharsis through sunny positivity like a lost Crutchfield sister.
Fazerdaze - Lucky Girl
A track that's been around for a few weeks but we only caught up with this week, and another typically swooning eternal summer kind of offering from the revived Flying Nun Records, New Zealander Amelia Murray similarly deals in bedroom-spawned hazy sunlight-dappled pop of breathy, reverbed for extra nostalgic quality vocal and contrasting emotions, the kind that sees joy and melancholy as part of the same package deal. Her album Morninside is due in May.
Caroline Lazar – Trigger
The young Atlantan was originally parsed as one of the latest country singer-songwriter wave, but this from her new Nevermine EP is a lot more, raw and brooding in minimalism even before it starts to slowly bloom, Lazar's huge voice pushing increasingly forward, before bursting into a emotively cathartic, intense coda involving seemingly all the electric instruments available.
Thursday, March 23, 2017
STN recommends: 23/3/17
Perfume Genius - Slip Away
The last time Mike Hadreas had something from a new album to share it was Queen, and it blew most of the year away. Like that song this bursts from a tentative opening into technicolour; unlike it this seems more metallic, less keen on outre sashaying than percussion-driven bold statements of individuality, strength through passion's vulnerability. No Shape is out May 5th.
Saint Etienne - Heather
Bob, Pete'n'Sarah's first album in six years, out June 2nd, is called Home Counties, that most London of bands getting round to considering their shared teenage years in Surrey and Berkshire. From just the (19-strong!) tracklisting business appears to be as unusual. There's a track called Sports Report! And Church Pew Furniture Restorer! And one, presumably in tribute to Earl Brutus' Nick Sanderson, called Train Drivers In Eyeliner! And Bob's finally got a track called Popmaster in! The song features an unexpectedly heavy bassline amid some quite restrained pastorial synth floatiness and Cracknell's lyrical muse stuck in suburbia.
Gallops - Crystal Trap
A third advance cut from Bronze Mystic, out 21st April, starts off in ambient waters and then slowly gains its propulsive steady vertical takeoff by means of 8-bit settings, syncopated rhythms and electronic post-rock floating before a mammoth synth sturm und drang moment. It's quite the adventure, yet again.
H Hawkline - My Mine
Huw Evans' In The Pink Of Condition was one of the sleeper hit albums of 2015, and with Cate le Bon co-producing and playing alongside Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa I Romanticize, out 2nd June, might well give him that extra push. The single is certainly classically further along his trail of shaky, skewed take on harmonic psych-pop.
Thurston Moore - Smoke Of Dreams
Neither the folkishness Moore openly loves nor the noise of yore, Moore's new album Rock n Roll Consciousness, out April 28th, was produced by Paul Epworth, which might explain some of the sheen, and features Steve Shelley and MBV's Debbie Googe, which doesn't. It's quite contemplative and thinking retrospectively of youthful hopes and ghosts, in fact, maybe a side effect of his residing in London these days.
Big Walnuts Yonder - Sponge Bath
Reminder that BWY a) is a bad name and b) are Mike Watt, Nels Cline, Deerhoof's Greg Saunier and Tera Melos' Nick Reinhart, and when we first came across the project they were essentially free jazz hardcore. This time around they're up the hypnagogic end of the scale, Reinhart taking vocals on a queasy psych-out lope. There's a track on the self-titled album, out May 5th, called I Got Marty Feldman Eyes.
Ralegh Long - Take Your Mind Back
It's kind of dizzying seeing where Long goes, as he evolved from power pop to orchestral beauty and now into a kind of country rock take on Big Star/Paisley Underground moves, with his honeyed presence to the fore. There's a pre-order/manufacturing crowdfunding going on for Upwards Of Summer, out 9th June.
Mr Jukes - Angels/Your Love
Well, this is unexpected as much for being any good as its origins. A brassy soulful, sax-driven cool groove featuring a looping sax sample from jazz fusionist Jorge Lopez Ruiz plus impassioned vocals from one BJ The Chicago Kid, pitching somewhere between a becalmed Avalanches, a jazzier Gorillaz and the Face-friendly first flowerings of British jazz-funk circa 1982, you'd never guess it was the first solo work of Jack Steadman, formerly of Bombay Bicycle Club. Album God First is out June 9th.
The last time Mike Hadreas had something from a new album to share it was Queen, and it blew most of the year away. Like that song this bursts from a tentative opening into technicolour; unlike it this seems more metallic, less keen on outre sashaying than percussion-driven bold statements of individuality, strength through passion's vulnerability. No Shape is out May 5th.
Saint Etienne - Heather
Bob, Pete'n'Sarah's first album in six years, out June 2nd, is called Home Counties, that most London of bands getting round to considering their shared teenage years in Surrey and Berkshire. From just the (19-strong!) tracklisting business appears to be as unusual. There's a track called Sports Report! And Church Pew Furniture Restorer! And one, presumably in tribute to Earl Brutus' Nick Sanderson, called Train Drivers In Eyeliner! And Bob's finally got a track called Popmaster in! The song features an unexpectedly heavy bassline amid some quite restrained pastorial synth floatiness and Cracknell's lyrical muse stuck in suburbia.
Gallops - Crystal Trap
A third advance cut from Bronze Mystic, out 21st April, starts off in ambient waters and then slowly gains its propulsive steady vertical takeoff by means of 8-bit settings, syncopated rhythms and electronic post-rock floating before a mammoth synth sturm und drang moment. It's quite the adventure, yet again.
H Hawkline - My Mine
Huw Evans' In The Pink Of Condition was one of the sleeper hit albums of 2015, and with Cate le Bon co-producing and playing alongside Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa I Romanticize, out 2nd June, might well give him that extra push. The single is certainly classically further along his trail of shaky, skewed take on harmonic psych-pop.
Thurston Moore - Smoke Of Dreams
Neither the folkishness Moore openly loves nor the noise of yore, Moore's new album Rock n Roll Consciousness, out April 28th, was produced by Paul Epworth, which might explain some of the sheen, and features Steve Shelley and MBV's Debbie Googe, which doesn't. It's quite contemplative and thinking retrospectively of youthful hopes and ghosts, in fact, maybe a side effect of his residing in London these days.
Big Walnuts Yonder - Sponge Bath
Reminder that BWY a) is a bad name and b) are Mike Watt, Nels Cline, Deerhoof's Greg Saunier and Tera Melos' Nick Reinhart, and when we first came across the project they were essentially free jazz hardcore. This time around they're up the hypnagogic end of the scale, Reinhart taking vocals on a queasy psych-out lope. There's a track on the self-titled album, out May 5th, called I Got Marty Feldman Eyes.
Ralegh Long - Take Your Mind Back
It's kind of dizzying seeing where Long goes, as he evolved from power pop to orchestral beauty and now into a kind of country rock take on Big Star/Paisley Underground moves, with his honeyed presence to the fore. There's a pre-order/manufacturing crowdfunding going on for Upwards Of Summer, out 9th June.
Mr Jukes - Angels/Your Love
Well, this is unexpected as much for being any good as its origins. A brassy soulful, sax-driven cool groove featuring a looping sax sample from jazz fusionist Jorge Lopez Ruiz plus impassioned vocals from one BJ The Chicago Kid, pitching somewhere between a becalmed Avalanches, a jazzier Gorillaz and the Face-friendly first flowerings of British jazz-funk circa 1982, you'd never guess it was the first solo work of Jack Steadman, formerly of Bombay Bicycle Club. Album God First is out June 9th.
Tuesday, March 21, 2017
Romance and adventure: a salute to Fortuna Pop!
As of this weekend, an enormous crater opens up in the bedroom-insular, open air-spectacular world of indiepop as the Chance the Gardener of indie majordomo of all he surveyed Sean Price winds up his Fortuna Pop! label with a long London weekend entitled Twenty Years Of Tears - maybe slightly telling, as the label's first release came out in 1996 - starring Simon Love, Two White Cranes and a special headliner on Wednesday; Withered Hand, The Ballet, our recent alldayer headliner Pete Astor and the Would-Be-Goods on Thursday; The Butterflies Of Love, Sodastream, Flowers and Darren Hayman on Friday; Comet Gain, The Proper Ornaments, Evans The Death, the latest Loves final gig, Mammoth Penguins, Milky Wimpshake, the actual Bearsuit final gig, September Girls and Tigercats on Saturday; and then a quite spectacular literal and metaphorical (and only date currently sold out) blowout on Sunday with Martha, Joanna Gruesome, The Spook School and Chorusgirl.
Seemingly increasingly so as the years passed, the F-Pop! accroutrement to a release has regularly proved a badge of quality, and as much as the scene seemingly has a relatively good cushion these days the current roster especially being left homeless is going to leave a hell of a deep crater both in impact and having some great bands floating with no as yet obvious place to go.
Never managed to get Sean to come up to Leicester for the Alldayer despite putting the vast majority of his roster on over the years, though. His loss.
As a fond farewell, this is the playlist we threw together back in August upon Price breaking the news, thirty examples from across the years of what his whims and craft were all about:
The Lucksmiths - A Hiccup In Your Happiness
Comet Gain - You Can Hide Your Love Forever
Airport Girl - The Foolishness That We Create Through Love Is The Closest We Come To Greatness
Sodastream - Blinky
Club 8 - Jesus, Walk With Me
The Ladybug Transistor - Always On The Telephone
Allo Darlin' - The Polaroid Song
Milky Wimpshake - I'm Saving Myself For You
Crystal Stilts - Shake The Shackles
Joanna Gruesome - Sugarcrush
The Spook School - I'll Be Honest
Bearsuit - Itsuko Got Married
The Loves - Xs And Os
Tigercats - Junior Champion
Flowers - Pull My Arm
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - Young Adult Friction
Evans The Death - Threads
The Aislers Set - The Red Door
Martha - 1967, I Miss You I'm Lonely
Chorusgirl - No Moon
September Girls - Love No One
Tullycraft - Lost in Light Rotation
Herman Düne - Monument Park
Shrag - Chasing Consummations
Tender Trap - Train From King's Cross Station
Darren Hayman And The Long Parliament - We Are Not Evil
Let's Wrestle - Rain Ruins Revolution
Chain and The Gang - Never Been Properly Loved
Mammoth Penguins - Strength In My Legs
Withered Hand - Heart Heart
Seemingly increasingly so as the years passed, the F-Pop! accroutrement to a release has regularly proved a badge of quality, and as much as the scene seemingly has a relatively good cushion these days the current roster especially being left homeless is going to leave a hell of a deep crater both in impact and having some great bands floating with no as yet obvious place to go.
Never managed to get Sean to come up to Leicester for the Alldayer despite putting the vast majority of his roster on over the years, though. His loss.
As a fond farewell, this is the playlist we threw together back in August upon Price breaking the news, thirty examples from across the years of what his whims and craft were all about:
The Lucksmiths - A Hiccup In Your Happiness
Comet Gain - You Can Hide Your Love Forever
Airport Girl - The Foolishness That We Create Through Love Is The Closest We Come To Greatness
Sodastream - Blinky
Club 8 - Jesus, Walk With Me
The Ladybug Transistor - Always On The Telephone
Allo Darlin' - The Polaroid Song
Milky Wimpshake - I'm Saving Myself For You
Crystal Stilts - Shake The Shackles
Joanna Gruesome - Sugarcrush
The Spook School - I'll Be Honest
Bearsuit - Itsuko Got Married
The Loves - Xs And Os
Tigercats - Junior Champion
Flowers - Pull My Arm
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - Young Adult Friction
Evans The Death - Threads
The Aislers Set - The Red Door
Martha - 1967, I Miss You I'm Lonely
Chorusgirl - No Moon
September Girls - Love No One
Tullycraft - Lost in Light Rotation
Herman Düne - Monument Park
Shrag - Chasing Consummations
Tender Trap - Train From King's Cross Station
Darren Hayman And The Long Parliament - We Are Not Evil
Let's Wrestle - Rain Ruins Revolution
Chain and The Gang - Never Been Properly Loved
Mammoth Penguins - Strength In My Legs
Withered Hand - Heart Heart
Monday, March 20, 2017
STN recommends: 20/3/17
The Orielles - Sugar Tastes Like Salt
People who know things have been talking about the Halifax trio for a while, and now signed to Heavenly they've decided to abandon protocol and just go for it off the bat with an eight and a half minute debut single that swings gladly between reference points - scratchy post-punk, doomy psychedelia, frictionless punk-funk, Tarantino soundtracks, early Factory Records groove, dubby breakdown launching back into a sprint - whilst still seeming of a piece. It's a brave and exhilarating way to open, and it'll grab you before long if you make the commitment to run alongside it.
Feist - Pleasure
The title track from Leslie's first album in six years, out April 28th, is intriguingly low-key and swampy, even more so than the deliberate step away from over commerciality that Metals represented. Its single bluesy guitar with minimal backing and late on devolvement into wild-eyed half-shouted statements of intent recall Rid Of Me-era PJ Harvey, with the upfront brazenness mixed back in favour of the title's suggested hope of something basic and, yes, carnal to cling to.
Furore - Eyelid
Furore is Roxy Brennan, of what seems like hundreds of bands but chiefly by herself Two White Cranes. The guitar has been swapped for synths and a machine handclap setting, but even if it's more constrained by the machine beat the sense of turned inwards emotional rawness remains. An EP will be released on Mat Riviere's label Bleak Spring on April 3rd.
H. Grimace - Call It Out
When we first came across H. Grimace a few weeks back they were coiled springs, but if the second track we've heard from Self Architecht, out April 9th, is more restrained until its collapsing climax it's only through trying to push against where it's going, built on a cyclical insistent riff and the pure nervous energy coursing through the driving bassline and Hannah Gledhill's vocals alike.
Guided By Voices - Dr Feelgood Falls Off The Ocean
Robert Pollard feels like he releases fifty albums a month in various permutations, but GBV's August By Cake - a double! - will actually be his hundredth when released on 7th April. One year fewer than it took Billy Childish to get to that mark, by our reckoning. Apart from being driven by a drum machine, you pretty much know what to expect from this if you know your mid-paced slashing slacker end of the GBV template.
Pronto Mama - Double Speak
The percussion-heavy Glaswegian sextet, who release debut album proper Any Joy on 5th May, matches its urgent post-punk capture and release energy struggling to hold onto itself by considering what it is to think you have the world at your beck and call.
People who know things have been talking about the Halifax trio for a while, and now signed to Heavenly they've decided to abandon protocol and just go for it off the bat with an eight and a half minute debut single that swings gladly between reference points - scratchy post-punk, doomy psychedelia, frictionless punk-funk, Tarantino soundtracks, early Factory Records groove, dubby breakdown launching back into a sprint - whilst still seeming of a piece. It's a brave and exhilarating way to open, and it'll grab you before long if you make the commitment to run alongside it.
Feist - Pleasure
The title track from Leslie's first album in six years, out April 28th, is intriguingly low-key and swampy, even more so than the deliberate step away from over commerciality that Metals represented. Its single bluesy guitar with minimal backing and late on devolvement into wild-eyed half-shouted statements of intent recall Rid Of Me-era PJ Harvey, with the upfront brazenness mixed back in favour of the title's suggested hope of something basic and, yes, carnal to cling to.
Furore - Eyelid
Furore is Roxy Brennan, of what seems like hundreds of bands but chiefly by herself Two White Cranes. The guitar has been swapped for synths and a machine handclap setting, but even if it's more constrained by the machine beat the sense of turned inwards emotional rawness remains. An EP will be released on Mat Riviere's label Bleak Spring on April 3rd.
H. Grimace - Call It Out
When we first came across H. Grimace a few weeks back they were coiled springs, but if the second track we've heard from Self Architecht, out April 9th, is more restrained until its collapsing climax it's only through trying to push against where it's going, built on a cyclical insistent riff and the pure nervous energy coursing through the driving bassline and Hannah Gledhill's vocals alike.
Guided By Voices - Dr Feelgood Falls Off The Ocean
Robert Pollard feels like he releases fifty albums a month in various permutations, but GBV's August By Cake - a double! - will actually be his hundredth when released on 7th April. One year fewer than it took Billy Childish to get to that mark, by our reckoning. Apart from being driven by a drum machine, you pretty much know what to expect from this if you know your mid-paced slashing slacker end of the GBV template.
Pronto Mama - Double Speak
The percussion-heavy Glaswegian sextet, who release debut album proper Any Joy on 5th May, matches its urgent post-punk capture and release energy struggling to hold onto itself by considering what it is to think you have the world at your beck and call.
Monday, March 13, 2017
STN recommends: 13/3/17
Napoleon IIIrd - The Scrape
A quick primer, as there's always latecomers - Napoleon IIIrd is James Mabbett and both of his previous albums made number four in their respective years' STN end of year lists. The Great Lake, out 19th May, comes more than six years after Christiania and is a five track literal change of pace, funereal, experimental and abstract in an ambient/Mark Hollis influenced sense, meditating on grief, transcendence and self-destruction. It'll get under your skin.
Public Service Broadcasting - Progress
No news on the subject matter linking PSB's as yet unannounced third album, but we can make an informed judgement from their new single. Or, y'know, just listen to it. Tracyanne Campbell of Camera Obscura takes the chorus vocal amid the restrained whilst still propulsive motorik and samples of research and development both harking back to their debut record, as always retro and futuristic at once.
Fleet Foxes - Third of May/Ōdaigahara
3rd May 2011 was the release date of Helplessness Blues, the last new material from the once ubiquitous nu-folk trailblazers. The near nine minute, several phase first taste of Crack-Up, released June 16th, considers what's changed in that time via the medium of quiet-loud crescendos, self-examining introspection and a great deal of what got them this far, just now in subtly different, more overtly expansive and cinematic clothing before turning into something more acoustic ambient, not far from what Animal Collective used to do circa Sung Tongs. A fascinating return and proof that there's more than one way out of the pastoral impasse.
Soulwax - Missing Wires
The concept behind the Dewaele brothers' new album From Deewee, released March 24th, is they recorded the whole thing in one take in one recording session. It fits too, the pulsing electronics fitting in around the song seeming impulsive, synths dancing across a rutted landscape and shapeshifting effortlessly.
Darren Hayman - Upper Slaughter
Hayman is onto the second volume (out May 26th) of his Thankful Villages project, visiting the 54 UK villages where every soldier returned alive from WW1 and writing a song inspired by the folklore and landscape of each. For his visit to the titular Cotswolds village, halfway between Cheltenham and Chipping Norton, he invited local resident and Fairport Convention's first singer Judy Dyble, who lends autoharp and clearest of folk vocals to a tale of history flowing like the bisecting River Eye.
Sean Rowe - Newton's Cradle
Another track from Rowe's third album New Lore, out August 7th, it feels somehow wrong to hear his familiarly gruff voice against something quite musically upbeat, more appreciably outright Philly-soulful than he's ever been before in fact. Luckily, it fits nigh-on perfectly.
Pip Hall - James
Preston-based sixteen year old Hall created a groundswell of attention towards the end of 2017 with a lush electronically aided commercially leaning soulfulness, the kind of thing that can and often does dip into MOR Remember The Eighties? wash but keeps its head above water here with subtlety and meaningfulness, the song being about Hall coping with the passing of her father.
Year Of Birds - Western Splits (After Lear)
Teeside now-trio Year Of Birds have been around for a few years but the tremendously titled White Death To Power Alan, out this week on Odd Box, is their first album to be approached and written as a full actual album, if that makes sense. Their ragged lo-fi weird garage nods greatly at the Fall but would more willingly fit into the mid-80s scene John Robb described as Death To Trad Rock, and the more bands we have that sound like they could be filed next to A Witness or Bogshed the better these days.
A quick primer, as there's always latecomers - Napoleon IIIrd is James Mabbett and both of his previous albums made number four in their respective years' STN end of year lists. The Great Lake, out 19th May, comes more than six years after Christiania and is a five track literal change of pace, funereal, experimental and abstract in an ambient/Mark Hollis influenced sense, meditating on grief, transcendence and self-destruction. It'll get under your skin.
Public Service Broadcasting - Progress
No news on the subject matter linking PSB's as yet unannounced third album, but we can make an informed judgement from their new single. Or, y'know, just listen to it. Tracyanne Campbell of Camera Obscura takes the chorus vocal amid the restrained whilst still propulsive motorik and samples of research and development both harking back to their debut record, as always retro and futuristic at once.
Fleet Foxes - Third of May/Ōdaigahara
3rd May 2011 was the release date of Helplessness Blues, the last new material from the once ubiquitous nu-folk trailblazers. The near nine minute, several phase first taste of Crack-Up, released June 16th, considers what's changed in that time via the medium of quiet-loud crescendos, self-examining introspection and a great deal of what got them this far, just now in subtly different, more overtly expansive and cinematic clothing before turning into something more acoustic ambient, not far from what Animal Collective used to do circa Sung Tongs. A fascinating return and proof that there's more than one way out of the pastoral impasse.
Soulwax - Missing Wires
The concept behind the Dewaele brothers' new album From Deewee, released March 24th, is they recorded the whole thing in one take in one recording session. It fits too, the pulsing electronics fitting in around the song seeming impulsive, synths dancing across a rutted landscape and shapeshifting effortlessly.
Darren Hayman - Upper Slaughter
Hayman is onto the second volume (out May 26th) of his Thankful Villages project, visiting the 54 UK villages where every soldier returned alive from WW1 and writing a song inspired by the folklore and landscape of each. For his visit to the titular Cotswolds village, halfway between Cheltenham and Chipping Norton, he invited local resident and Fairport Convention's first singer Judy Dyble, who lends autoharp and clearest of folk vocals to a tale of history flowing like the bisecting River Eye.
Sean Rowe - Newton's Cradle
Another track from Rowe's third album New Lore, out August 7th, it feels somehow wrong to hear his familiarly gruff voice against something quite musically upbeat, more appreciably outright Philly-soulful than he's ever been before in fact. Luckily, it fits nigh-on perfectly.
Pip Hall - James
Preston-based sixteen year old Hall created a groundswell of attention towards the end of 2017 with a lush electronically aided commercially leaning soulfulness, the kind of thing that can and often does dip into MOR Remember The Eighties? wash but keeps its head above water here with subtlety and meaningfulness, the song being about Hall coping with the passing of her father.
Year Of Birds - Western Splits (After Lear)
Teeside now-trio Year Of Birds have been around for a few years but the tremendously titled White Death To Power Alan, out this week on Odd Box, is their first album to be approached and written as a full actual album, if that makes sense. Their ragged lo-fi weird garage nods greatly at the Fall but would more willingly fit into the mid-80s scene John Robb described as Death To Trad Rock, and the more bands we have that sound like they could be filed next to A Witness or Bogshed the better these days.
Monday, March 06, 2017
STN recommends: 6/3/17
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - French Press
Another of that growing band of taut, whipsmart young bands, the kind-of-title track from The French Press EP, out 10th March, is expansively melodic surf-pop with bite that lands somewhere between the Dunedin Sound and the nu-slacker Parquet Courts/Real Estate types in its relentless semi-jangle building to a crescendo of a climax. They call their sound "tough pop/soft punk", which does the job better than we could.
Wire - Diamonds In Cups
The second offcut from that difficult fifteenth album Silver/Lead, out 31st March, is them in restrained mood, which in Wire's world means a glam guitar sound and Colin Newman sounding simultaneously equanimous and threatening in a way you can imagine having equally appeared on Chairs Missing or A Bell Is A Cup Until It Is Struck.
Laura Marling - Nothing, Not Nearly
Again, the way things are going we'll have videos for the whole of Semper Femina before it's released, and yes, we're aware that's the end of this week now. Lots of words, bluesy power chords as eight-bar punctuation and a paen to love's imagery and resilience.
Trust Fund - Splitter
We'd not had anything from Ellis and co in 2017 and it's now March so that had to change sharpish. Taken from Put Ears On Yourself, a 7" series from Sligo-based Art For Blind Records, as usual it sounds like it might fall apart if you prodded it just had enough and deals with the notion of companionship, around the notion of using a headphone socket splitter on a coach journey.
Meilyr Jones - Watchers
To tie in with the last dates to support 2013, a chamber orchestral ballad about a man who goes blind looking out to sea at night after his loved one drowns, with the literary hopelessness and grandiosity that all of the above naturally suggests.
yr friends - i got nothing/Magana - To Be the Same
Two tracks now from the latest of Audio Antihero's compilations, Unpresidented Jams raising money for the Southern Poverty Law Center and National Immigration Law Center - Alexei Berrow you'll know from many, many STN points of exposure before, Jeni Magana continues building on her reputation for semi-broken resilience. Elsewhere there's new Fridge Poetry (Junior JoFo), Jeffrey Lewis, Jack Hayter, Benjamin Shaw, Deerful and Cloud among many others.
Overcoats - Nighttime Hunter
At first the New York-based duo resemble First Aid Kit with a laptop, but with Autre Ne Veut and Nicolas Vernhes (Dirty Projectors, Daughter, Deerhunter) co-producing it's bound to turn into something else, and so it proves as the crystalline harmonies, already dipped in self-doubt and vulnerability, are sent through loops and restrained beats to emerge as R&B-tinged spectrality. Album Young is released 21st April.
Big Walnuts Yonder - Raise The Drawbridges?
There's a name. Quite the background too, as they're a coming together of the great and legendary Mike Watt (Minutemen, fIREHOSE, latter day Stooges), Nels Cline of Wilco and plenty besides, Greg Saunier of Deerhoof and Nick Reinhart of Tera Melos. They have a self-titled album out May 5th, from which the first bolt starts off aiming to filter hardcore through free jazz a la Minutemen themselves, then threatens to turn into Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band instead, before attempting to find common uber-psychedelic ground regardless of sense.
Wavves - Daisy
Hey kids, remember the hazy, crazy days of 2010? Nathan Williams is off a major and on his own Ghost Ramp label for sixth album You're Welcome, due May 19th. That he/they are promoting it by supporting Blink 182 isn't entirely helpful, but the single is the kind of natty, slighty screwy surf-punk cut that made people aware of him in the first place.
Another of that growing band of taut, whipsmart young bands, the kind-of-title track from The French Press EP, out 10th March, is expansively melodic surf-pop with bite that lands somewhere between the Dunedin Sound and the nu-slacker Parquet Courts/Real Estate types in its relentless semi-jangle building to a crescendo of a climax. They call their sound "tough pop/soft punk", which does the job better than we could.
Wire - Diamonds In Cups
The second offcut from that difficult fifteenth album Silver/Lead, out 31st March, is them in restrained mood, which in Wire's world means a glam guitar sound and Colin Newman sounding simultaneously equanimous and threatening in a way you can imagine having equally appeared on Chairs Missing or A Bell Is A Cup Until It Is Struck.
Laura Marling - Nothing, Not Nearly
Again, the way things are going we'll have videos for the whole of Semper Femina before it's released, and yes, we're aware that's the end of this week now. Lots of words, bluesy power chords as eight-bar punctuation and a paen to love's imagery and resilience.
Trust Fund - Splitter
We'd not had anything from Ellis and co in 2017 and it's now March so that had to change sharpish. Taken from Put Ears On Yourself, a 7" series from Sligo-based Art For Blind Records, as usual it sounds like it might fall apart if you prodded it just had enough and deals with the notion of companionship, around the notion of using a headphone socket splitter on a coach journey.
Meilyr Jones - Watchers
To tie in with the last dates to support 2013, a chamber orchestral ballad about a man who goes blind looking out to sea at night after his loved one drowns, with the literary hopelessness and grandiosity that all of the above naturally suggests.
yr friends - i got nothing/Magana - To Be the Same
Two tracks now from the latest of Audio Antihero's compilations, Unpresidented Jams raising money for the Southern Poverty Law Center and National Immigration Law Center - Alexei Berrow you'll know from many, many STN points of exposure before, Jeni Magana continues building on her reputation for semi-broken resilience. Elsewhere there's new Fridge Poetry (Junior JoFo), Jeffrey Lewis, Jack Hayter, Benjamin Shaw, Deerful and Cloud among many others.
Overcoats - Nighttime Hunter
At first the New York-based duo resemble First Aid Kit with a laptop, but with Autre Ne Veut and Nicolas Vernhes (Dirty Projectors, Daughter, Deerhunter) co-producing it's bound to turn into something else, and so it proves as the crystalline harmonies, already dipped in self-doubt and vulnerability, are sent through loops and restrained beats to emerge as R&B-tinged spectrality. Album Young is released 21st April.
Big Walnuts Yonder - Raise The Drawbridges?
There's a name. Quite the background too, as they're a coming together of the great and legendary Mike Watt (Minutemen, fIREHOSE, latter day Stooges), Nels Cline of Wilco and plenty besides, Greg Saunier of Deerhoof and Nick Reinhart of Tera Melos. They have a self-titled album out May 5th, from which the first bolt starts off aiming to filter hardcore through free jazz a la Minutemen themselves, then threatens to turn into Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band instead, before attempting to find common uber-psychedelic ground regardless of sense.
Wavves - Daisy
Hey kids, remember the hazy, crazy days of 2010? Nathan Williams is off a major and on his own Ghost Ramp label for sixth album You're Welcome, due May 19th. That he/they are promoting it by supporting Blink 182 isn't entirely helpful, but the single is the kind of natty, slighty screwy surf-punk cut that made people aware of him in the first place.
Thursday, March 02, 2017
STN recommends... February 2017
As is now our wont, please find enclosed every new song we've posted this month that's on Spotify and great tracks from our favourite new albums of those 28 days.
Monday, February 27, 2017
STN recommends: 27/2/17
At The Drive-In - Incurably Innocent
They're ba-ack! And Cedric's brought a killer coiling riff with him. While the near seventeen year break between albums - in•ter a•li•a is out May 5th - will never be the extraordinary firecracker of a band they were on Relationship Of Command this is a fair bash, firework guitars and immense nervous energy funnelled into a song Omar describes as being about "sexual abuse and being able to finally speak out".
The Mountain Goats - Andrew Eldritch Is Moving Back To Leeds
So, the new Mountain Goats album. It's called Goths, and is out 19th May. Yes, it does sound like another John Darnielle exploration into a subculture through the prism of personal connections, time passing and solidarity to those clinging on as everything else changes, this song sounding like a paen to returning to returning to where you started after a lifetime of dreaming and moving for better things. The album features no guitars, which is quite the change not just in general but the exact opposite of Darnielle's lo-fi approach of the early albums, so there's as much comfort zone breaking there as there is in the ideals of an Eldritch.
Spoon - Can I Sit Next To You
Hot Thoughts, out March 17th, so far sees Spoon carry on just adjacent to where they left off, but the new track sees the usual scratchy rhythm and Britt Daniel's crossword clue lyrics of devotion joined by a slippery, awkward staccato groove that pretty much qualifies, with its synthetic handclaps and filtered synth glissandos, as future funk.
Idles - Mother
It currently seems like every track from Brutalism, out 10th March, will get a uniquely irate video before it comes out, and Joe Talbot in a pastel coloured suit destroying several charity shops' worth of ornaments rates highly on that scale. Musically? Angry, dissonant, socio-politically charged, the usual.
Sondre Lerche - I Know Something That's Gonna Break Your Heart
The Norwegian singer-songwriter has gleefully dabbled across genres, from joyful beat pop to ornate orchestral, over the years. His tenth album, Pleasure, out next week, continues his adventures into how far a melody can be stretched and painted over while remaining intact, a gloriously melanchoic piece of pulsing, sweeping psych-pop with electronic undercurrents that eventually take over.
The New Pornographers - This Is The World Of The Theater
That seems like a title the Pornos were always going to use some time, and the second taste of Whiteout Conditions, out 7th April, matches it to peppy, reliably sunny (on the surface, anyway) overly harmonic power-pop given the lift Neko Case lead vocals usually gives their songs.
Yellow Creatures - Pressing Buttons
Taken from the Newcastle trio's new EP Spectrum, out today, an intro that sounds quite like it might turn into Tortoise evolves into a kind of pastoral post-rock, subtle electronic beats underpinning layers and washes of synth drones and breathy vocals that between themselves ebb and flow into a journey over a fractal landscape.
They're ba-ack! And Cedric's brought a killer coiling riff with him. While the near seventeen year break between albums - in•ter a•li•a is out May 5th - will never be the extraordinary firecracker of a band they were on Relationship Of Command this is a fair bash, firework guitars and immense nervous energy funnelled into a song Omar describes as being about "sexual abuse and being able to finally speak out".
The Mountain Goats - Andrew Eldritch Is Moving Back To Leeds
So, the new Mountain Goats album. It's called Goths, and is out 19th May. Yes, it does sound like another John Darnielle exploration into a subculture through the prism of personal connections, time passing and solidarity to those clinging on as everything else changes, this song sounding like a paen to returning to returning to where you started after a lifetime of dreaming and moving for better things. The album features no guitars, which is quite the change not just in general but the exact opposite of Darnielle's lo-fi approach of the early albums, so there's as much comfort zone breaking there as there is in the ideals of an Eldritch.
Spoon - Can I Sit Next To You
Hot Thoughts, out March 17th, so far sees Spoon carry on just adjacent to where they left off, but the new track sees the usual scratchy rhythm and Britt Daniel's crossword clue lyrics of devotion joined by a slippery, awkward staccato groove that pretty much qualifies, with its synthetic handclaps and filtered synth glissandos, as future funk.
Idles - Mother
It currently seems like every track from Brutalism, out 10th March, will get a uniquely irate video before it comes out, and Joe Talbot in a pastel coloured suit destroying several charity shops' worth of ornaments rates highly on that scale. Musically? Angry, dissonant, socio-politically charged, the usual.
Sondre Lerche - I Know Something That's Gonna Break Your Heart
The Norwegian singer-songwriter has gleefully dabbled across genres, from joyful beat pop to ornate orchestral, over the years. His tenth album, Pleasure, out next week, continues his adventures into how far a melody can be stretched and painted over while remaining intact, a gloriously melanchoic piece of pulsing, sweeping psych-pop with electronic undercurrents that eventually take over.
The New Pornographers - This Is The World Of The Theater
That seems like a title the Pornos were always going to use some time, and the second taste of Whiteout Conditions, out 7th April, matches it to peppy, reliably sunny (on the surface, anyway) overly harmonic power-pop given the lift Neko Case lead vocals usually gives their songs.
Yellow Creatures - Pressing Buttons
Taken from the Newcastle trio's new EP Spectrum, out today, an intro that sounds quite like it might turn into Tortoise evolves into a kind of pastoral post-rock, subtle electronic beats underpinning layers and washes of synth drones and breathy vocals that between themselves ebb and flow into a journey over a fractal landscape.
Monday, February 20, 2017
STN recommends: 20/2/17
Laura Marling - Next Time
Alright, who decided to leave as a footnote that Marling has called her own label More Alarming? Those are the auspices through which Semper Femina is released on March 10th, which is sounding like her most lucid and intimate work in at least a while, this track in both self-directed visual and lyrical thought dealing with self-entrapment.
Gallops - Pale Force
The second single plus video resembling a malfunctioning Spectrum loading screen from album Bronze Mystic, released 21st April, finds a crushing place between undulating glitchy electronic loops, sub-bass and power chords without falling into murky 'dance-rock' waters.
Maybe Don't - Lightbulbs
When we wrote about the Birmingham trio at the start of the year they were building towards an EP in March; they've just augmented that with a pay-what-you-like double A side, this half of which showcases their scrappy but rattlingly determined, surging sanded down punk-pop.
The Immediate - Light Dimensions
Our friend off the radio Adam Walton passed this one on, which is reasonable given he's in them. Reunited after an initial mid-90s spell of localised following (and supporting the Stereophonics at the gig that go them signed), their angular, harmonic power-pop/new wave/vaguely early 80s mod revival trio dynamics actually seem to fit in better these days. Mold EP, named after their home town and a set of considerations of their shared upbringing, is out 3rd March.
Alright, who decided to leave as a footnote that Marling has called her own label More Alarming? Those are the auspices through which Semper Femina is released on March 10th, which is sounding like her most lucid and intimate work in at least a while, this track in both self-directed visual and lyrical thought dealing with self-entrapment.
Gallops - Pale Force
The second single plus video resembling a malfunctioning Spectrum loading screen from album Bronze Mystic, released 21st April, finds a crushing place between undulating glitchy electronic loops, sub-bass and power chords without falling into murky 'dance-rock' waters.
Maybe Don't - Lightbulbs
When we wrote about the Birmingham trio at the start of the year they were building towards an EP in March; they've just augmented that with a pay-what-you-like double A side, this half of which showcases their scrappy but rattlingly determined, surging sanded down punk-pop.
The Immediate - Light Dimensions
Our friend off the radio Adam Walton passed this one on, which is reasonable given he's in them. Reunited after an initial mid-90s spell of localised following (and supporting the Stereophonics at the gig that go them signed), their angular, harmonic power-pop/new wave/vaguely early 80s mod revival trio dynamics actually seem to fit in better these days. Mold EP, named after their home town and a set of considerations of their shared upbringing, is out 3rd March.
Thursday, February 16, 2017
STN recommends: 16/2/17
Los Campesinos! - The Fall Of Home
A graceful twinkling ballad on dislocation and personal progress, the third track we've heard from Sick Scenes, out February 24th, is described as "an elegy to the home towns left behind". Notably, though, the band's description also states "the lyrics for this song were written at 4am on the 24th June, 2016." So that's a song about feeling out of place in the area where you grew up, written while the album was being recorded in Portugal, at about the time the Brexit vote was being confirmed.
FEWS - La Guardia
It's two minutes of pumping dark shoegaze swirl before the vocals start, and they're not around for long either. That's because everything else in FEWS' first new song since last year's debut album is busy racing for the heart of the sun, taking no prisoners in its wake.
PWR BTTM - Big Beautiful Day
We've never written before about the glam exuberance of the New York queer-punk duo before, but the announcement of a new album, Pageant out May 12th, and its scorching introductory message of exuberant empowerment seems as good a place as any to start.
Deep Throat Choir - Hunter
Their debut album is finally out on Friday, so here's a track that's not on it. Based on a Gertrude Stein poem, it features all the mass harmonising and weaving in and out of each other you've hopefully already come to expect.
Sodastream - Saturday's Ash
They're in London on February 24th as part of Fortuna Pop!'s long farewell, Little By Little is out March 3rd, and before both comes a Simon & Garfunkel-like meditation with what sounds like theremin in the background on the aftermath of the Black Saturday bushfires, a series of fires in February 2009 that destroyed large parts of the state of Victoria.
The Physics House Band - Calypso
The Brighton trio's senses-screwing mathcore spiralling has been around for a while now - mini-album Mercury Fountain, out April 21st, is their first release in four years and finds them in classic form, never keeping still, ping-ponging all round an ascending centrepiece to sci-fi rush effect.
Beach Beach - Scrolling Down
Shame it's so cold and bedraggled at the moment, because had the Barcelona-based band waited until the summer months they'd have been all over the place with something this gorgeously sun-dappled, all Teenage Fanclub (who they've played with) interplay and wistful, secretly wracked lyrics.
A graceful twinkling ballad on dislocation and personal progress, the third track we've heard from Sick Scenes, out February 24th, is described as "an elegy to the home towns left behind". Notably, though, the band's description also states "the lyrics for this song were written at 4am on the 24th June, 2016." So that's a song about feeling out of place in the area where you grew up, written while the album was being recorded in Portugal, at about the time the Brexit vote was being confirmed.
FEWS - La Guardia
It's two minutes of pumping dark shoegaze swirl before the vocals start, and they're not around for long either. That's because everything else in FEWS' first new song since last year's debut album is busy racing for the heart of the sun, taking no prisoners in its wake.
PWR BTTM - Big Beautiful Day
We've never written before about the glam exuberance of the New York queer-punk duo before, but the announcement of a new album, Pageant out May 12th, and its scorching introductory message of exuberant empowerment seems as good a place as any to start.
Deep Throat Choir - Hunter
Their debut album is finally out on Friday, so here's a track that's not on it. Based on a Gertrude Stein poem, it features all the mass harmonising and weaving in and out of each other you've hopefully already come to expect.
Sodastream - Saturday's Ash
They're in London on February 24th as part of Fortuna Pop!'s long farewell, Little By Little is out March 3rd, and before both comes a Simon & Garfunkel-like meditation with what sounds like theremin in the background on the aftermath of the Black Saturday bushfires, a series of fires in February 2009 that destroyed large parts of the state of Victoria.
The Physics House Band - Calypso
The Brighton trio's senses-screwing mathcore spiralling has been around for a while now - mini-album Mercury Fountain, out April 21st, is their first release in four years and finds them in classic form, never keeping still, ping-ponging all round an ascending centrepiece to sci-fi rush effect.
Beach Beach - Scrolling Down
Shame it's so cold and bedraggled at the moment, because had the Barcelona-based band waited until the summer months they'd have been all over the place with something this gorgeously sun-dappled, all Teenage Fanclub (who they've played with) interplay and wistful, secretly wracked lyrics.
Sunday, February 12, 2017
STN recommends: 12/2/17
Kiran Leonard - Cracked Globe
Because Leonard has too many songs, he follows up last year's typically ambitious Grapefruit album with a cassette-only mini-album, Monarchs Of The Crescent Pail, out next month. And because Leonard has too many ideas, this track was achieved by "lining four (acoustic guitars) up against a wall and tuning each to a big chord. I played the guitars like a big harp and they were awesome and resonant". Conversely, the heartfelt rawness his vocal and the spareness of the sound might be the most straightforward and accessible he's been.
Waking Aida - Shoal
When the Southampton outfit first crossed our path two or three years ago they were a fascinating arrival in the slow burning post-rock picture; now, with new material produced by Matt Calvert of Three Trapped Tigers, they've taken on intially a more hurried math hue before gracefully devolving into floating layered electronic ambience and... vocals! Sparkling and fascinating, we've no idea if this is leading anywhere of greater volume soon but it's a good signpost if they are.
Bill Botting & The Two Drink Minimums - Treating You Right
Allo Darlin' are no more, having come to a triumphant live climax towards the end of 2016 as both frontwoman Elizabeth Morris and excitable bassist Botting are leaving the country. Before he goes, Botting put together an indiepop all-star band (Darren Hayman, Wave Pictures, Tigercats, Owl & Mouse) and releases Better Friends on 10th March, a country flavoured charmer via the classic sunshine Australian indiepop sound that like his old band is ramshackle in a good way and joyful for the love of music.
Spiral Stairs - Dundee Man
Former guitarist with apparent Fall obsessives releases track called (City In Scotland) Man - the first line is even "going to Edinburgh". The second track from Scott Kannberg's upcoming album Dolly & The Daggers is fairly straightforward guitar pop with an echoey riff and an abnormal underside actually not dissimilar to Stephen Malkmus' earliest solo work.
Wolf Girl - Moody
In about four weeks' time Wolf Girl will be amongst those playing STN's stacked sixth annual Leicester Indiepop Alldayer. After that in May they'll be putting out a 7" via the mighty Odd Box Records, a fizzing fuzzpop confection with an infectious hook and typical lyrical sharpness.
Johnny Flynn - Heart Sunk Hank
A more trad singer-songwriter cut from Flynn's upcoming fourth album Sillion, bluesy warpy crackle delivered authentically by being recorded in a 1940s Voice-o-Graph recording booth when one of the only two in the world visited London last year.
Because Leonard has too many songs, he follows up last year's typically ambitious Grapefruit album with a cassette-only mini-album, Monarchs Of The Crescent Pail, out next month. And because Leonard has too many ideas, this track was achieved by "lining four (acoustic guitars) up against a wall and tuning each to a big chord. I played the guitars like a big harp and they were awesome and resonant". Conversely, the heartfelt rawness his vocal and the spareness of the sound might be the most straightforward and accessible he's been.
Waking Aida - Shoal
When the Southampton outfit first crossed our path two or three years ago they were a fascinating arrival in the slow burning post-rock picture; now, with new material produced by Matt Calvert of Three Trapped Tigers, they've taken on intially a more hurried math hue before gracefully devolving into floating layered electronic ambience and... vocals! Sparkling and fascinating, we've no idea if this is leading anywhere of greater volume soon but it's a good signpost if they are.
Bill Botting & The Two Drink Minimums - Treating You Right
Allo Darlin' are no more, having come to a triumphant live climax towards the end of 2016 as both frontwoman Elizabeth Morris and excitable bassist Botting are leaving the country. Before he goes, Botting put together an indiepop all-star band (Darren Hayman, Wave Pictures, Tigercats, Owl & Mouse) and releases Better Friends on 10th March, a country flavoured charmer via the classic sunshine Australian indiepop sound that like his old band is ramshackle in a good way and joyful for the love of music.
Spiral Stairs - Dundee Man
Former guitarist with apparent Fall obsessives releases track called (City In Scotland) Man - the first line is even "going to Edinburgh". The second track from Scott Kannberg's upcoming album Dolly & The Daggers is fairly straightforward guitar pop with an echoey riff and an abnormal underside actually not dissimilar to Stephen Malkmus' earliest solo work.
Wolf Girl - Moody
In about four weeks' time Wolf Girl will be amongst those playing STN's stacked sixth annual Leicester Indiepop Alldayer. After that in May they'll be putting out a 7" via the mighty Odd Box Records, a fizzing fuzzpop confection with an infectious hook and typical lyrical sharpness.
Johnny Flynn - Heart Sunk Hank
A more trad singer-songwriter cut from Flynn's upcoming fourth album Sillion, bluesy warpy crackle delivered authentically by being recorded in a 1940s Voice-o-Graph recording booth when one of the only two in the world visited London last year.
Wednesday, February 08, 2017
STN recommends: 8/2/17
Amber Arcades - It Changes
Decidedly more straightforwardly melodic, sounding more mid-90s in a very good way, a new standalone track ahead of Grandaddy support dates.
Warm Digits - End Times
Machine tooled nervy Kraut-disco with Field Music's Peter Brewis on vocals from Newcastle duo newly signed to Memphis Industries.
Jens Lekman - Evening Prayer
It's a fun, lightly funky song about making a 3D print of a tumour. Obviously. (Well, not just about that, this being Lekman, but that makes for the better standfirst)
Unqualified Nurse Band - Death Surf A52
Evil sounding guitars always get us. The driving evil of UNB are from Derby, released an album last year and this is next up on the Too Pure Singles Club. The bit where it appears to turn into a John Lennon song is quite a jolt.
Decidedly more straightforwardly melodic, sounding more mid-90s in a very good way, a new standalone track ahead of Grandaddy support dates.
Warm Digits - End Times
Machine tooled nervy Kraut-disco with Field Music's Peter Brewis on vocals from Newcastle duo newly signed to Memphis Industries.
Jens Lekman - Evening Prayer
It's a fun, lightly funky song about making a 3D print of a tumour. Obviously. (Well, not just about that, this being Lekman, but that makes for the better standfirst)
Unqualified Nurse Band - Death Surf A52
Evil sounding guitars always get us. The driving evil of UNB are from Derby, released an album last year and this is next up on the Too Pure Singles Club. The bit where it appears to turn into a John Lennon song is quite a jolt.
Thursday, February 02, 2017
STN recommends: 3/2/17
Post War Glamour Girls - Chipper
Leeds' existential doom merchants are back with a third album, Swan Songs released 21st April, with something that almost seems like it could have post-punk commercial potential were James Smith not intent on bringing everything to account, his backing almost seeming progressively more monolithic in sympathy.
Sean Rowe - Gas Station Rose
We've been supporters over the last few years of the baritone bittersweet singer-songwriter's output, a run that continues with this first taste of new album New Lore, released 7th April. It doesn't need more than spare guitar, odd strident piano chords, late blooming strings and studio atmospherics to bring an emotional heaviness to Rowe's search for connections and hope for destiny.
H. Grimace - Land/Body
Takes a few moments, this, but there's something of the Savages (and not just in the last words being "I am here") about the way it takes post-punk tropes/Siouxsisms and makes them sound urgent, social critique on standardisation against jarring, surging, frankly vital guitar rushes. What can we tell you about the band? They're based in that London, singer Hannah Gledhill is from Melbourne, and they have an album recorded by Rory Attwell, Self Architecht, out in April.
Leeds' existential doom merchants are back with a third album, Swan Songs released 21st April, with something that almost seems like it could have post-punk commercial potential were James Smith not intent on bringing everything to account, his backing almost seeming progressively more monolithic in sympathy.
Sean Rowe - Gas Station Rose
We've been supporters over the last few years of the baritone bittersweet singer-songwriter's output, a run that continues with this first taste of new album New Lore, released 7th April. It doesn't need more than spare guitar, odd strident piano chords, late blooming strings and studio atmospherics to bring an emotional heaviness to Rowe's search for connections and hope for destiny.
H. Grimace - Land/Body
Takes a few moments, this, but there's something of the Savages (and not just in the last words being "I am here") about the way it takes post-punk tropes/Siouxsisms and makes them sound urgent, social critique on standardisation against jarring, surging, frankly vital guitar rushes. What can we tell you about the band? They're based in that London, singer Hannah Gledhill is from Melbourne, and they have an album recorded by Rory Attwell, Self Architecht, out in April.
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
STN recommends... January 2017
One down, eleven to go. Herein find every new song we've posted this month that's on Spotify, representative tracks from our favourite new albums of January not otherwise covered, and maybe the odd stray.
Monday, January 30, 2017
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)