Saturday, September 08, 2012

From the inbox pt 4: Lone Wolf/The Hundredth Anniversary/Jo Mango/I Am In Love

Lone Wolf - Good Life
Paul Marshall's second album The Lovers, out November 12th, is, he says, a concept record: "each song is a different conflict between two or more different personalities within the same head, so the album becomes like a huge lovers tiff". There's definitely something of the emotionally shaken man cradled in the corner rocking back and forth about this single, betraying something of the influence of Talk Talk whose recent tribute album Marshall contributed to as Laura 'Blue Roses' Groves' lead vocal on the chorus (and, by the way, she's well overdue new music, surely?) offsets the clicking non-standard percussion, subtle synth layers and mental space meander through very dark passages.




Jo Mango - Cordelia
Collaborating with David Byrne, Vashti Bunyan, Devendra Banhart, CocoRosie, Vetiver and Admiral Fallow... well, it might leave you feeling quite confused. In Glaswegian Mango's case it's produced a tender, gorgeously airy while not quite straight chamber folk sound and a pure voice dealing in detailed vivid imagery like a more realist Felix or less strict to type Nina Nastasia. Her second album, the tremendously titled Murmuration, produced by Adem, is out 5th November.




The Hundredth Anniversary - Slip
We were only introduced to Brighton's The Hundredth Anniversary three weeks or so ago and already they're deviating on a slightly different path with their first proper single. Tentatively chiming, creating vast landscapes with atmospheric guitar sounds, it betrays their post-rock influences while remaining vageuly accessible as three minutes of slow burning intrigue.




I Am In Love - Palm
And something completely different to those three. Leicestershire's I Am In Love have had a couple of synthpop singles out and had Radio 1 attention but this is a new frontier, one that marries nearly played out 80s electro-disco tropes to M83's earthmoving shoegaze synth washes plus desperate chants and creates something which mines the darker side of the genre - the industrial clank of Heaven 17, say - before comprehensively running it over.

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