Just short of a year on from their debut offering, Telegram's second single sees Tom and Joshua from current tourmates the Horrors manning the studio desk for the already signature glam take on that charging psych sound - spiky guitars diving and throwing up internalised mini-riffs, rhythmically kosmiche, racing towards the finish line. Also Matt Saunders' vocals appear to be slowly turning into Steve Harley's.
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Black Rivers - Voyager 1
A band name you won't recognise but personnel you might, being Andy and Jez Williams of the currently "resting" Doves. There's a certain through-line from some of that band's more exploratory moments to this in the tumbling layered guitars, insistent arpeggiating glitterfalls of synths and kosmiche rhythm, all of which keeps holding back and running free when required.
Monday, September 29, 2014
Two White Cranes - Walls
Two White Cranes is Bristol-based Roxy Brennan, who is also one third of Grubs and one quarter of the current live Trust Fund. Seriously, we're going to need digrams before long to keep track of everyone's band-sharing. Her pay-what-you-like album, vocals and guitar either alone or forefronted, is a thing of quiet beauty and joy in the detail and of love in cold climates.
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Chrissy Barnacle, HUGH, Allo Darlin', Boxed In
Chrissy Barnacle - Fawn Heart
Barnacle is a fingerpicking folkie from Glasgow who doesn't tend to play the usual fingerpicking folkie outlets - she's just recently been touring with Martha, for one example. From a pay-what-you-like EP of fleshed out earlier songs, Barnacle's impure crystalline voice almost but not quite belies her underlying personal panic and self-discovery.
HUGH - One Of These Days
They may claim to have formed over mutual appreciation of Beach House and Grizzly Bear but it's the spirit of Dan The Automator's misleadingly laidback productions which pervades through the rubbery bassline and jittering synths over which Izzy Brooks and Benin City's Joshua Idehen make like lovelorn backpacker rhymers.
Allo Darlin' - Bright Eyes
In which Elizabeth steps aside for a bit and allows Paul Rains to take co-lead vocals on a sub-dappled melody the lyrics of which might better fit the title of the other track we've heard from third album We Come From The Same Place, Romance And Adventure. Then again, much of the time that's pretty much Allo Darlin' in microcosm.
Boxed In - Foot Of The Hill
Oli Bayston's second single, following his first by a couple of weeks more than a year, is based on that motorik rhythm that the kids love these days, over which is laid an urban-leaning flow with touches of Jamie T without the braggadocio.
Barnacle is a fingerpicking folkie from Glasgow who doesn't tend to play the usual fingerpicking folkie outlets - she's just recently been touring with Martha, for one example. From a pay-what-you-like EP of fleshed out earlier songs, Barnacle's impure crystalline voice almost but not quite belies her underlying personal panic and self-discovery.
HUGH - One Of These Days
They may claim to have formed over mutual appreciation of Beach House and Grizzly Bear but it's the spirit of Dan The Automator's misleadingly laidback productions which pervades through the rubbery bassline and jittering synths over which Izzy Brooks and Benin City's Joshua Idehen make like lovelorn backpacker rhymers.
Allo Darlin' - Bright Eyes
In which Elizabeth steps aside for a bit and allows Paul Rains to take co-lead vocals on a sub-dappled melody the lyrics of which might better fit the title of the other track we've heard from third album We Come From The Same Place, Romance And Adventure. Then again, much of the time that's pretty much Allo Darlin' in microcosm.
Boxed In - Foot Of The Hill
Oli Bayston's second single, following his first by a couple of weeks more than a year, is based on that motorik rhythm that the kids love these days, over which is laid an urban-leaning flow with touches of Jamie T without the braggadocio.
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Hookworms, H O R S E S, Slow Skies, Anguish Sandwich
Hookworms - On Leaving
Could we almost call the second track from The Him - still what feels from the excitement around these first two tastes like an age away at November 10th - poppy? You can hear what MJ's actually singing, the production is spacious enough for the usual panicked drones to take a back seat and the Monks/psych/Nuggets influences are more readily apparent so that when the gradually building rush appears about halfway through and turns the whole thing on its jet-powered, almost Suicidey head and ends up like Crime and Neu! simultaneously.
H O R S E S - Kephyläu
More motorik. Excellent. H O R S E S - yeah, I know - claim to have invented 'Gloom Wave', though the phrase gives 4,320 results on Google. Whatever, the duo form another notch on the burgeoning electronic kosmiche influence on the Welsh underground in the wake of the likes of R.Seiliog (whose first EP and this eponymous one out next week share the Peski label in common), shifting Glass-patterned patterns and metronomic beats beating an austere semi-groove.
Slow Skies - Bodies
Another taster of the upcoming EP Keepsake, out 29th in the UK, finds a delicate but unsteady point between the atmospheric iciness of a Daughter and the desire to crash deliberately against the rocks as a way out. The ending certainly sounds storm-tossed enough.
Anguish Sandwich - Carol
The shouty-slacker no-fi smartarse Northamptonites have finally got round to an album, which they've called An Actual Thing and is out November 9th. This track contains a reference to shoplifting spray paint from Wilkinson's and is thus top notch.
Could we almost call the second track from The Him - still what feels from the excitement around these first two tastes like an age away at November 10th - poppy? You can hear what MJ's actually singing, the production is spacious enough for the usual panicked drones to take a back seat and the Monks/psych/Nuggets influences are more readily apparent so that when the gradually building rush appears about halfway through and turns the whole thing on its jet-powered, almost Suicidey head and ends up like Crime and Neu! simultaneously.
H O R S E S - Kephyläu
More motorik. Excellent. H O R S E S - yeah, I know - claim to have invented 'Gloom Wave', though the phrase gives 4,320 results on Google. Whatever, the duo form another notch on the burgeoning electronic kosmiche influence on the Welsh underground in the wake of the likes of R.Seiliog (whose first EP and this eponymous one out next week share the Peski label in common), shifting Glass-patterned patterns and metronomic beats beating an austere semi-groove.
Slow Skies - Bodies
Another taster of the upcoming EP Keepsake, out 29th in the UK, finds a delicate but unsteady point between the atmospheric iciness of a Daughter and the desire to crash deliberately against the rocks as a way out. The ending certainly sounds storm-tossed enough.
Anguish Sandwich - Carol
The shouty-slacker no-fi smartarse Northamptonites have finally got round to an album, which they've called An Actual Thing and is out November 9th. This track contains a reference to shoplifting spray paint from Wilkinson's and is thus top notch.
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
SOAK, Mega Emotion, Girlpool
SOAK - B a noBody
The already highly touted SOAK has signed to Rough Trade, as good a developmental home as any for the 18 year old Derryite whose up close and personal soul-scraping entreaties against textured backings recalls a less icy Daughter, a more grounded Cat Power or a British Isles Emiliana Torrini. There's certainly the feeling that maturity is both sneaking up on and becoming her as she works out what her life is about.
Mega Emotion - Uncomfortable
Norwich's synth-post-punk trio make a raid on the early 80s box for their new demo, patterns recalling early OMD popping around wiry basslines, half-hidden hooks and crossthreaded vocals. Retro-futuristic in the best way.
Girlpool - Jane
Girlpool are a teenage female LA duo who on this first release through Wichita exhibit twangy guitars and nothing else really showy musically, but it's all in the vocals - harmonied, proudly new-wave-feminist empowered, taking and demanding pride in your opinions sounding like breaking forcefully out of vulnerability, punctuated with proper screams, like if a Kathleen Hanna-backed K Records Smoke Fairies. A highly intriguing start.
The already highly touted SOAK has signed to Rough Trade, as good a developmental home as any for the 18 year old Derryite whose up close and personal soul-scraping entreaties against textured backings recalls a less icy Daughter, a more grounded Cat Power or a British Isles Emiliana Torrini. There's certainly the feeling that maturity is both sneaking up on and becoming her as she works out what her life is about.
Mega Emotion - Uncomfortable
Norwich's synth-post-punk trio make a raid on the early 80s box for their new demo, patterns recalling early OMD popping around wiry basslines, half-hidden hooks and crossthreaded vocals. Retro-futuristic in the best way.
Girlpool - Jane
Girlpool are a teenage female LA duo who on this first release through Wichita exhibit twangy guitars and nothing else really showy musically, but it's all in the vocals - harmonied, proudly new-wave-feminist empowered, taking and demanding pride in your opinions sounding like breaking forcefully out of vulnerability, punctuated with proper screams, like if a Kathleen Hanna-backed K Records Smoke Fairies. A highly intriguing start.
Sunday, September 07, 2014
Bears, bees and cats: Grawlix, She Keeps Bees, King Of Cats
Grawlix - Atlas Bear
This has been out since May but Haiku Salut tweeted about it the other day (and Louise is on the B-side), which is as fitting as any of being introduced to the delicate to the touch ambient soundscapes of Derby's James Machin, who may place voice and acoustic guitar front and centre but with the kind of emotional connection and backed by the kind of subtly reverberated and shifted atmospherics that those who have invested in Farewell J.R's couple of releases would get along fine with. There's an impending album entitled Good Grief, and he's supporting ver Salut at one of their semi-legendary lamp shows (of which they're playing a few around this date) at The Space @ Nottingham Contemporary on October 8th.
She Keeps Bees - Radiance
This has been around for a week and a half or so now, but slow and steady wins the race or whatever it is 'they' say. We've briefly covered She Keeps Bees before on here but this track from new album Eight Houses, out next week, sees Jessica Larrabee's smoky, aching vocal put against a delicately minimal backing that still shades in the gaps in a way Sharon Van Etten, who guests on the album, would approve of.
King Of Cats - Dead Lamb
Max Levy's distinctively tremulous take on lo-fi can take some getting into but this track from debut album Working Out, released 17th November on the Art Is Hard/Reeks Of Effort bastard child Art Reeks, has some heart behind it on a song he describes as being about "doing loads of exercise as a distraction, kids doing horrible things and preparing for a big fight".
This has been out since May but Haiku Salut tweeted about it the other day (and Louise is on the B-side), which is as fitting as any of being introduced to the delicate to the touch ambient soundscapes of Derby's James Machin, who may place voice and acoustic guitar front and centre but with the kind of emotional connection and backed by the kind of subtly reverberated and shifted atmospherics that those who have invested in Farewell J.R's couple of releases would get along fine with. There's an impending album entitled Good Grief, and he's supporting ver Salut at one of their semi-legendary lamp shows (of which they're playing a few around this date) at The Space @ Nottingham Contemporary on October 8th.
She Keeps Bees - Radiance
This has been around for a week and a half or so now, but slow and steady wins the race or whatever it is 'they' say. We've briefly covered She Keeps Bees before on here but this track from new album Eight Houses, out next week, sees Jessica Larrabee's smoky, aching vocal put against a delicately minimal backing that still shades in the gaps in a way Sharon Van Etten, who guests on the album, would approve of.
King Of Cats - Dead Lamb
Max Levy's distinctively tremulous take on lo-fi can take some getting into but this track from debut album Working Out, released 17th November on the Art Is Hard/Reeks Of Effort bastard child Art Reeks, has some heart behind it on a song he describes as being about "doing loads of exercise as a distraction, kids doing horrible things and preparing for a big fight".
Tuesday, September 02, 2014
Hilary Woods, Slow Skies, Primetime, Hallie & The Annies
Hilary Woods - Flames
Last year Woods was trading as The River Cry and made a tremendous but overlooked album; back trading under her proper name with Night EP, out September 18th, the sound has been fleshed out from that very atmospheric, minimal sound a little, bringing in an undulating rhythm while retaining the need to give everything space to breathe, all while still introspective and reverberating within its intimacy.
Slow Skies - Ice Field
From one icy Dubliner voice to another, and funnily enough we were just wondering the other day what had become of the duo since their last EP came out last May. The answer seems to be that they were making a new one, Keepsake, out at the end of the month, from which this delicate wander across audial floes comes, placing Karen Sheridan's fragile vocal at the centre of a shimmering waking dreamscape.
Primetime - Tied Down
Right, that's more than enough glaciality. Primetime are from the Raincoats/Kleenex school of all-female post-punk effort-over-technique angularity, a sound and approach we're starting to hear spread again of late (Ravioli Me Away, No Ditching, Colour Me Wednesday) so much so that it'll officially become a scene soon. From a self-titled 7" EP that came out in July comes a scratchy, unrepentantly direct strut with hidden hooks to spare.
Hallie & The Annies - Anytime
H&tA's, as nobody will ever call them, is a name that's been bandied about in indiepop circles over the summer months still with some confusion about who's actually in them. Ellis who is Trust Fund is one, it turns out, appropriate as the Bristol-based outfit's latest recording is as on the verge of falling apart as much of his work, a soft shoe shimmering jangle that in its luscious twang and dark-hued harmonies betrays an influence from the Dunedin Sound.
Last year Woods was trading as The River Cry and made a tremendous but overlooked album; back trading under her proper name with Night EP, out September 18th, the sound has been fleshed out from that very atmospheric, minimal sound a little, bringing in an undulating rhythm while retaining the need to give everything space to breathe, all while still introspective and reverberating within its intimacy.
Slow Skies - Ice Field
From one icy Dubliner voice to another, and funnily enough we were just wondering the other day what had become of the duo since their last EP came out last May. The answer seems to be that they were making a new one, Keepsake, out at the end of the month, from which this delicate wander across audial floes comes, placing Karen Sheridan's fragile vocal at the centre of a shimmering waking dreamscape.
Primetime - Tied Down
Right, that's more than enough glaciality. Primetime are from the Raincoats/Kleenex school of all-female post-punk effort-over-technique angularity, a sound and approach we're starting to hear spread again of late (Ravioli Me Away, No Ditching, Colour Me Wednesday) so much so that it'll officially become a scene soon. From a self-titled 7" EP that came out in July comes a scratchy, unrepentantly direct strut with hidden hooks to spare.
Hallie & The Annies - Anytime
H&tA's, as nobody will ever call them, is a name that's been bandied about in indiepop circles over the summer months still with some confusion about who's actually in them. Ellis who is Trust Fund is one, it turns out, appropriate as the Bristol-based outfit's latest recording is as on the verge of falling apart as much of his work, a soft shoe shimmering jangle that in its luscious twang and dark-hued harmonies betrays an influence from the Dunedin Sound.
Monday, September 01, 2014
Tigercats, Golden Fable, Ex Comets, yr friends
Tigercats - Junior Champion
First confirmed release for 2015! East London's infectious dreamers have signed to home of the hits Fortuna Pop! and will have second record Mysteries out in January. Well ahead of that, notice is served that they've grown up a bit, recruiting Paul Rains of Allo Darlin' as extra guitarist and bringing in a flute melody and triumphant sax parts from Terry Edwards (bringing his number of guest collaborations further into the low thousands) on a sophisticated shuffle that's still identifiably them, namechecking Bobby Fischer en route.
Golden Fable - Armour
A second album that will be out this year is Ancient Blue, out 10th November, which on this evidence sees the north Walians develop a bit of muscle behind Rebecca Palin's familiarly, enchantingly sprite-like vocals, electronics dialled back in favour of uneasily vibrating guitars, flirting in the process with darkwave or Low at their most jagged.
Ex Comets - Old Cool Red
Remember We Three And The Death Rattle? Among our tips for the year this January, they've already put that identity aside, doubled their numbers, claimed to be from Groom Lake (Area 51 to you) and emerged with a debut single, out on the 22nd, that reminds us of lost mid-00s art-rock conceptualists The Be Be See. In terms that other people might understand that means sci-fi synths, surf guitars, harmonies and underlying menace and dreaminess alike.
yr friends - Malibu
Yep, Alexei Berrow's got rent arrears/an overdraft/a council tax bill/all of the above and more* so he's got a new solo EP out. And yep, it's a Linkousesque Hole cover. Of course.
* based on previous assertions
First confirmed release for 2015! East London's infectious dreamers have signed to home of the hits Fortuna Pop! and will have second record Mysteries out in January. Well ahead of that, notice is served that they've grown up a bit, recruiting Paul Rains of Allo Darlin' as extra guitarist and bringing in a flute melody and triumphant sax parts from Terry Edwards (bringing his number of guest collaborations further into the low thousands) on a sophisticated shuffle that's still identifiably them, namechecking Bobby Fischer en route.
Golden Fable - Armour
A second album that will be out this year is Ancient Blue, out 10th November, which on this evidence sees the north Walians develop a bit of muscle behind Rebecca Palin's familiarly, enchantingly sprite-like vocals, electronics dialled back in favour of uneasily vibrating guitars, flirting in the process with darkwave or Low at their most jagged.
Ex Comets - Old Cool Red
Remember We Three And The Death Rattle? Among our tips for the year this January, they've already put that identity aside, doubled their numbers, claimed to be from Groom Lake (Area 51 to you) and emerged with a debut single, out on the 22nd, that reminds us of lost mid-00s art-rock conceptualists The Be Be See. In terms that other people might understand that means sci-fi synths, surf guitars, harmonies and underlying menace and dreaminess alike.
yr friends - Malibu
Yep, Alexei Berrow's got rent arrears/an overdraft/a council tax bill/all of the above and more* so he's got a new solo EP out. And yep, it's a Linkousesque Hole cover. Of course.
* based on previous assertions
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