Monday, July 27, 2015

Chorusgirl - No Moon

Emerging as one of the breakout stars of this weekend just gone's Indietracks (much as Indietracks can truly have a breakout band, but you know what we mean), Chorusgirl take up the female-fronted fuzzbomb art-pop baton that the Darling Buds, Lush and the Long Blondes help patent - jangling guitars carrying along a bucketful of big hooks, Silvi Wersing's strident, cool-as vocals, joy camouflaging the pain. Their contribution to Odd Box Records' 100 Club series (already sold out on vinyl) sounds radio ready, if radio was ever interested in radio-ready guitar pop any more.

Post War Glamour Girls - Felonious Punk

Great title. No idea what's going on with this new track, either in intentions - introduced with no content it's possibly a track from a new album or EP - or in sound, as the brooding dam bursts into something ultra-distorted and actually not too far in noisy riffola scope and undercurrents of electronics from Muse. Sorry, guys. On top of all that James Smith's dark fury at everything else remains thankfully undiminished.

Friday, July 24, 2015

Gun Outfit - Gotta Wanna

We've written about Olympia, Washington's Gun Outfit on and off over the years, usually commending their lo-fi streamlined attack in the ballpark of Sebadoh and No Age. Yeah, well, forget all that for the first single from their fourth album Dream All Over, out 16th October, as they've moved to LA and gone all Nancy and Lee, set out in the dust-swept canyons and night-time creep of an imaginary outlaw western as singer-guitarists Carrie Keith and Dylan Sharp twang, shuffle and sort of harmonise after berating each other's fortunes.

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

DRINKS - Laying Down Rock

A quick one as we need to catch up - the second single from Cate Le Bon and Tim Presley of White Fence's collaboration, a purposefully awkward jigsaw piece of riff repetition-based west coast psychedelia.

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Grandbrothers - Arctica

Grandbrothers are two men from Germany, one a jazz pianist, the other involved in synth construction who found a way to control every part of a grand piano, metal, wood and strings inclusive, via especially constructed electromechanical hammers controlled via laptop and associated gizmos to manipulate those sounds on debut album Dilation. It's much more interesting than it sounds, here like a Philip Glass suite looped and glitched in intriguing ways.

Monday, July 06, 2015

The School - Do I Love You?

Frank Wilson's Northern Soul stomper is famous for its rarity in original pressing form (obviously it's all over compilations these days), which makes the prospect of an female perspective answer song an intriguing one. The Cardiff multi-handed retro-pop classicists who headlined our Indiepop Alldayer back in March go for it in much the same timeless talc-on-the-Casino-floor style on the single from their third album Wasting Away And Wondering, due in September.



Sunday, July 05, 2015

Twenty years of recommended listening

For no special reason, we decided to extend the 20-track year-specific Spotify playlists we put together to celebrate STN's tenth anniversary in April back another ten years. So, with those original compilations appended, presenting two decades of STN-approved music:

1995
1996 part one
1996 part two
1997
1998
1999
2000 part one
2000 part two
2001
2002
2003
2004

Ten Years Of STN (no artist replicated over these lists)

2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014

Friday, July 03, 2015

Christian Fitness - The Harder It Hits

Christian Fitness, remember, is what Andrew Falkous does by himself (drums aside) between Future Of The Left albums. A second album, he says, is due within the next couple of weeks; in the meantime a song a subtle distance away from FOTL's usual load, featuring nasal falsetto vocals, shredded delay pedal guitars, disco percussion handclaps and a hook that you'd almost call commercial. Plus obtuse ire-filled lyrics, obviously.

Thursday, July 02, 2015

Trust Fund - Dreams

A MJ-produced standalone single ahead of a prospective second album this year from Ellis and co, a slightly more streamlined and early-Weezer-in-a-cellar indebted sound sees Alanna McArdle sharing the vocal duties on a fun-sized charging summery pop belter laced with requisite undercurrent of self-doubt.

Haiku Salut - Hearts Not Parts

Derbyshire's rustic instrumental exploratory unit's second album Etch And Etch Deep, out 31st July, sounds like it's expanding their palette into more pastoral, mistier territory while still sounding like a runaway folk junkshop on wheels crashed into an electronics display. Setting off at a fair accordion-led lick it eventually settles into minimalist Mum-like territory where the interesting things going on around the edges make up for the airiness in the middle, before a refuelled charge that the press release fairly accurately describes as "drum'n'bass being played on an army of glockenspiels". There's even vocals, albeit ghostly background wails. The album's London launch, at the Lexington on 9th August with support from Owl & Mouse and Two White Cranes, seems like a bill and a half.

Wednesday, July 01, 2015

Recommended listening: 2000-2004

It's halfway through 2015, a time when other blogs are slinging together lists of the best stuff they've heard so far this year. So quickly, here's a non-comprehensive selection of artists whose albums of the last six months we've really enjoyed and admired. Girlpool, Grawl!x, Ralegh Long, Panda Bear, Lone Wolf, Trust Fund, Landshapes, Algiers, the Mountain Goats, Courtney Barnett, Marika Hackman, Summer Camp, SOAK, Lonelady, Nadine Shah, Tigercats.

That's that done. Now, do you remember back in April we celebrated STN's tenth anniversary with ten year-by-year 20-track Spotify playlists? Well, we enjoyed doing those, so we decided to carry on right back to the start of the century. So here for the half-year hell of it are selections for 2000-2004, two separate collections for 2000 as we couldn't bare to lose more than forty tracks from what was a bountiful year for such goodness. And yes, doubtless we'll do more of these for 20th century years in time. We're like that.

2000 part one
2000 part two
2001
2002
2003
2004