The Ten: non-anthemic songs about football

You'll have noticed there's a World Cup on the horizon, and with it the usual set of piss-poor 'anthems' called things like Do It For England by the sort of bands who refer to themselves as "real music" and are doubtless veterans of unsigned band national competitions. That sort of endeavour, coupled with the traditional bellowed squad song, has given the football-related record a bad name it doesn't always deserve. These ten include nothing very obvious - so no Three Lions, World In Motion, Back Home or (How Does It Feel to Be) On Top of the World?, except that last one was never getting in - nothing strictly club-specific and nothing remotely chantable. At least under their own terms.

Cornelius - Ball In Kick Off
It's got 'kickoff' in the title, of course it's first. Being Japanese maybe we can let Keigo Oyamada off for misinterpreting the sample of Brian Glover from Kes, though maybe someone could have had a word before he quoted it in the title.

The Fall - Kicker Conspiracy
Marble Millichip. Video partially filmed at Burnley's Turf Moor.

The Hitchers - Strachan
Alright, this is not just a tribute to "the tiny wee Scotsman with the copper-coloured hair" but to a specific Leeds side, but on a broader level it's also about the sitcom image war of the sexes of football against everything else on television. For further details, watch Points Of View during the World Cup.

Half Man Half Biscuit - Friday Night And The Gates Are Low
Any amount of HMHB could have gone in here, and in other lists might have done, but for quite a while this was their only song actually about football rather than referencing a small part of it, named in honour of how their Tranmere Rovers used to play home games on a Friday night.

Tackhead - The Game
Adrian Sherwood would go on to make the link more explicit with Barmy Army, but only one of his identities, the part-American industrial funk collective, got Brian Moore into the studio to do their calling. We'll come back to Sherwood later.

Billy Bragg - God’s Footballer
Bragg, like Sherwood, is a Hammer by favouritism but was fascinated by the story of Peter Knowles, the Wolves striker who was one of the country's most reliable scorers when he suddenly quit the game in September 1969 to devote his life to being a Jehovah's Witness

Los Campesinos! - Every Defeat A Divorce (Three Lions)
Gareth's lyrics have of late taken an deep dive into football symbolism - A Portrait Of The Trequartista As A Young Man, "Bela Guttman of love" - but this is their only song about football. Being late period Los Campesinos!, it's a song about watching England go out of major tournaments after the investment of regular personal belief, allied to depression, heartbreak and everything else their most maudlin songs reference.

Edmundo Ros - Football Football
Calypsoes about sport were common in the early days of the form's influx to Britain, most famously Lord Beginner's cricket odes, but football grabbed the bug too, most famously with Edric Connor's Manchester United Calypso, most infamously with the very white northern Leeds United Calypso, but originally with this from 1953 as the man credited with popularising Latin American music in the UK attempts to settle a pub argument about the nebulous concept of the "best team".

Saint Etienne - The Official Saint Etienne World Cup Theme
Most people are aware of The Official Colourbox World Cup Theme, which apart from the title doesn't actually reference football and was originally intended as a baseball theme, but oddly fewer of the B-side, named in its tribute, of the 12" of Only Love Can Break Your Heart, wherein Stanley and Wiggs conjure jittery synth house around Peter Jones samples.

Primal Scream, Irvine Welsh & On-U Sound - The Big Man And The Scream Team Meet The Barmy Army Uptown
And finally Sherwood returns with some friends for an unofficial Euro 96 anthem where dub, psych, big riffs and Screamadelica rips wend their way around a Welsh monologue of no little brooding sarcasm.

Weekends away 2014 round-up: Dot To Dot, Bushstock, Dinefwr, Camden Crawl

Dot To Dot

WHAT? Venerable multi-venue tri-city shindig now in its tenth year (though doing nothing to celebrate the fact) showcasing big names, major label development deal potential future big names, a few surprising imports and underground bands, and so forth

WHERE? Manchester, Bristol and Nottingham

WHEN? 23rd, 24th and 25th May respectively

HOW? £22 apiece

WHO? Courtney Barnett, Drenge, White Lung, Real Estate, Wolf Alice, Honeyblood, Sivu, We Were Evergreen, Fickle Friends, Superfood, Young Romance, Luke Sital-Singh, The Bohicas, Slaves, Years and Years, Ezra Furman, Horse Thief, Stats, Peace, Indiana, Kyla La Grange, Catfish & The Bottlemen, Jaws, Famy, Drowners, God Damn (Check listings as not all bands play everywhere)




Bushstock

WHAT? Communion's annual get-together

WHERE? St Stephens Church, Bush Hall, Defectors Weld and The Sindercombe Social, Shepherd's Bush

WHEN? 14th June

HOW? £27.50

WHO? Peggy Sue, The Felice Brothers, Farewell JR, Luke Sital-Singh, Honeyblood, Fickle Friends, Chloe Howl, Amber Run, Big Sixes, Blaenavon




Dinefwr

WHAT? A high quality music stage tacked onto a literature festival (among the non-musical end of the bill: Daniel Kitson & Gavin Osborn, Bridget Christie, Viv Albertine, Shaun 'Letters Of Note' Usher, Laura 'Everyday Sexism' Bates, Jeremy Hardy and James Endeacott)

WHERE? Dinefwr Park and Castle, Carmarthenshire

WHEN? 20th-22nd June

HOW? £65 online or from the park, Spillers, Literature Wales in Cardiff, Carmarthen's Tangled Parrot or Ticketline, Cardiff

WHO?
Gruff Rhys, Sweet Baboo, Cate Le Bon, Trwbador, Alexis Taylor, Charlotte Church, Adrian Edmondson & the Bad Shepherds, Richard Dawson




Camden Crawl

WHAT? Loads of bands in and around Chalk Farm Road, A&Rs drawn at dawn

WHERE? 21 venues around the titular area

WHEN? 20th-21st June

HOW? At the moment, just under £50 for the weekend

WHO?Johnny Foreigner, Haiku Salut, of Montreal, Laetitia Sadier, Tall Ships, Au Revoir Simone, Jeffrey Lewis & The Jrams, ABC (!), Steve Mason, Atari Teenage Riot, PINS, Shopping, Girls Names, Novella, Mouse On Mars, Brawlers, PAWS, Nai Harvest, Yuck, Younghusband, Phil Hartnoll, Brontide, Slaves, Alexis Taylor, Woahnows, Big Deal, Mazes, The Crookes, Black Moth, The Field, Dignan Porch, Dry The River, Laurel Halo

Mid-May marvels: Remember Remember, Comet Gain, White Lung, General Sherman

Remember Remember - Magnets

The Glaswegian collective's third album Forgetting The Present, to be released on 30th June through Mogwai's own Rock Action, takes their working the principles of repetition and minimalism into post-post-rock further into tinkling, evolving landscapes, nine and a half minutes that would qualify as almost pastoral were it not for the overhanging loops of hidden doom.




Comet Gain - Long After Tonite's Candles Are Blown

Obligatory mention. Already capital dreamers well enough, their seventh proper studio set Paperback Ghosts, out on July 7th via Fortuna Pop!, is described as being inspired by "the psycho-geography of walks in North London woods and in the forgotten grey hinterland of the city’s back streets", which just sounds like much of what they do anyway. isn't one of their northern soul blowouts but a melancholic, countrified jangle in the romantic line that connects Felt, Trembling Blue Stars and Jack. As ever, David Charlie Feck deploys the lyrical sweep of tenderness and dreams.




White Lung - Face Down

A third video from the still forthcoming Deep Fantasy album still finds them richocheting between their hardcore past and a melodically distorted take on knife-sharp punk-pop, incorporating heroic mini-solos and Mish Way still daring all-comers to take her on. Also features flaming scarecrows. They're playing Dot To Dot over the bank holiday weekend, somehow.




General Sherman - The Stress Vulnerability Model

General Sherman are from Middlesbrough and don't really sound like you're imagining from name alone. Instead theirs is a daydreaming, warm drifting and very English folk built on fingerpicked guitar, swaying violin, occasional woodwind and male-female vocals, the hint of something other going on underneath gradually becoming apparent well before the thing gets rudely upended by bursts of big power chorded guitar. Album Get Down With General Sherman is out 6th June.

This is pop: Tuff Love, Deja Vega, Eugene McGuinness

Tuff Love - Flamingo

The Glaswegian trio, part of the Lost Map family, play three minute fuzzbombs not too far from a more blissed out Spook School, tracks that could have been anthemic had it not wanted to go and wander off amid the bracken for a bit instead. Also the video stars and is co-directed by Josie Long, which counts for quite something.




Deja Vega - Sleep

Bringing the Bunnymen brood to that whole nu-psyche explosion, Cheshire's Deja Vega sound like Kasabian if Kasabian actually sounded like the non-Gallagher bands they always cite as influences, screaming vaguely Middle Eastern guitar lines, driving basslines and not a little backlit goth.




Eugene McGuinness - Godiva

Having teamed up with producer Dan Carey for fourth album Chroma, out July 7th, McGuinness has returned to the twisty, scuffed up melodic guitar pop path of yore, taking a harmonic melody and subjecting it to distorted thrills.

Weekends away 2014: Lunar

WHAT? Leftfield approach to a folk festival in Nick Drake's home town

WHERE? Umberslade Estate, Tanworth-In-Arden, Staffordshire

WHEN? 6th-8th June

WHY? A satellite event of the sainted Moseley Folk Festival, Lunar was established two years ago, took a year off and now gets it together in the country with all manner of extra activities, from mask making to African drumming workshops to Afro-Caribbean traditional storytelling to Northern Soul dance lessons. And on Saturday morning, listen to Nick's own scratched copy of Pink Moon on the Drake family gramophone! Yeah, I know.

HOW? £89 weekend

WHO?
FRIDAY: British Sea Power, Tim Burgess, Toy, Money, Don Letts DJing



SATURDAY: Donovan, Temples, Linda Perhacs, Laura J Martin, Goodnight Lenin, Victories At Sea, Seeland, John Renbourn and Wizz Jones, Andy Votel DJing



SUNDAY: The Polyphonic Spree, Lanterns On The Lake, Misty's Big Adventure, Crazy World Of Arthur Brown, The Magic Band, Pram, Scott Matthews

Friday feelings: Vienna Ditto, Bastard Mountain, Gold-Bears

Vienna Ditto - Feeling Good

This shouldn't have worked on us. The press release claims they're set aside from "pretentious shoegaze, indy-pop smush", which is basically all we post these days, and then compares the duo to Portishead, The Knife and Jack Nitzche, all of which are far wide of the mark. In fairness we did actually write about Vienna Ditto just over a year ago commending their merging of rockabilly twang, rumbling electronics and insistent percussion, and this new single out 9th June... well, much the same description applies in a track that has something of the dirty garage voodoo about it. Bet they're a great live band. Oddly it also reminds us of this forgotten near-hit from 1999, if not so big beat or novelty (or male, or Del tha Funkee Homosapien-referencing. What a strange time 1999 was)




Bastard Mountain - Swam Like Sharks

Another song from the forthcoming Song, By Toad all-stars collaborative album Farewell, Bastard Mountain, out 12th May. This is written by Jill O'Sullivan of Sparrow And The Workshop with lead vocals by Neil Pennycook of Meursault, so of course we're interested, especially in something that sneaks twanging country guitars into an oppressive slowcore background and pained acoustic lament upfront.




Gold-Bears - Yeah, Tonight

Atlanta's Jeremy Underwood is the mainstay of Gold-Bears, irrepressibly hooky power-punk-pop that uses Superchunk and the Wedding Present as touchstones. New guest vocalist to the stars Emma Kupa pops up on the opening track from Dalliance (see, Weddoes in effect), their new album for Slumberland Records, a rushing, sharp pop song with teeth filed into fangs.

Midweek marvellousness: The Hics, Owl & Mouse, Acollective, Laura Groves

The Hics - All We'll Know

These South Londoners were taught music by Dave Okoma of The Invisible, it says here, which accounts for the urgency and the multilayering of this take on post-XX *and* post-Burial downtempo electronics that seem completely filled out despite being carefully sparse underneath, a real 3am rainy vibe with male-female harmony vocals seeming octaves apart. We might be quite late to this particular bandwagon, they're already XOYO size in London (June 24th), have Zane Lowe and Gilles Peterson full support and appear somewhere within Grand Theft Auto's myriad radio stations, but it's still the off-centre slipperiness that intrigues.




Owl & Mouse - Don't Read The Classics

Yes, a ukelele as lead instrument. Sit down. In the couple of years since Hannah Botting's first EP under the name she's formed a band around her but kept her pureish vocal and yearning writing nature intact. This almost too delicately poised self-examination in the face of misplaced trust is from Somewhere To Go EP, out via Fika Recordings on 23rd June.




Acollective - OTM

Almost certainly not what you'd expect from a Tel Aviv baned who sharpened their craft playing in the streets and have just signed to Alcopop! Recordings. In fact, it's hard to pin down exactly what they are, as a Massive Attack-recalling intro explodes into technicolour, frenzied life instead, still based on foreboding beats and sentiments but at the top line unsettled in a different, more Ritalin-based way, making previous Flaming Lips supports more explicable. Second album Pangaea is out July 7th, and if you're off to Truck in July they're opening the main stage on the Friday.




Laura Groves - Friday

After piecemeal released with Nautic and her own EP last year the former Blue Roses has denoted this as a home recorded demo but it sounds in its gorgeous arrangement like it's there already, liquid piano and multitracked airy vocals suggesting Laura Nyro.

Two's good company: Sam Airey, Blessa

Happy ninth birthday, us.

Sam Airey - Station Approach

Leeds' Airey came across our radar with a delicate sound of thunder by the name of The Blackout in 2011. After an EP the following March he went live-only for a while but returns with a new single on 9th June, produced by Whiskas who also adds guitar squalls to Airey's haunted, whisky-soaked vocal and gradual build from folk picking to outright storm, the untutored, unhurried craft of the songwriting remaining intact underneath.




Blessa - Unfurl

Across the Pennines, Blessa were among our Fourteen for '14, their first release of the year being the Love Is An Evol Word mini-album on 23rd July. Produced by MJ, this track seems more indebted to synthpop shapes but still wriggling around the linear patchwork encompassing a chorus that comes on like a standard big radio-friendly refrain and then turns subtly nervous-energy awkward.

New week, new danger: R.Seiliog, Trust Fund, Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam, Manic Street Preachers

R.Seiliog - Peripheral Thermal (Left)

Robin Edwards' electro-Krautrock made it into our tracks of 2013 list thanks to his fascinating mini-album Doppler and our catching a thoroughly engrossing live set last Swn but we've never actually blogged any of his music otherwise. A new track is as good a place to do so as any, applying popping glitches and the power of repetitive minimalism to a complicatedly cross-threaded sawing electronic syncopation loop of good old kosmiche. No word as to where this is heading yet, apart obviously from into the stratosphere.




Trust Fund - If It's Over Me

All we've heard of Ellis Jones before now is cracked, locked in a bedroom at the end of his tether directness. Now he turns out with a scrappy garage band with a central guitar riff and everything, though the lyricism and delivery are much the same sort of thing. This is from Reeks Of Effort's Sick of Hits Vol​.​2, his other contribution to which we've already written about.




Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam - Auto

Featuring Pete Dixon once of much admired rocket-fuelled second city contenders Distophia and Calories Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam are, like Ace Bushy Striptease (new album very soon!), one of those bands that emerged around and about the JoFo social circle diaspora - they share producer Dominique James, for one. This new single puts its head down and charges with a power-pop structure and a fight-pop facial expression.


Manic Street Preachers - Walk Me To The Bridge

Have we ever written about the Manics on here before? Must have, but nothing's coming immediately to mind. Anyway, a different kind of motorik influence on the new track from their twelfth album Futurology, out July 7th and featuring guest appearances by Green Gartside, (ex?-)SFA Cian Ciaran, Georgia Ruth and H Hawkline.

Friday feast: Viscous Liquid, FTSE, White Lung, John J Presley

Viscous Liquid - If I Go

Hard to imagine Viscous Liquid is one person, Rhys Williams of Reading, given its mix of indelible harmony pop melody and reverberating surroundings sounds like Teenage Fanclub in a psychedelia wind tunnel. The whole Songs For Jealous Lovers is very much worth your time.




FTSE - Utopia

From the LOVE UN LTD EP out next week, a stream of consciousness anti-consumerist anger that goes with this darkest of downtempo productions and suggests Sam Manville has picked up a hitherto disguised flow. The label describe it as "a refreshing and brutally honest commentary about how society’s acceptance that everything is fucked needs to be questioned", but it sounds ultimately like Manville wants out first.

White Lung - Snake Jaw

Second track from third album Deep Fantasy, due June 16th, from the Vancouver streamlined hardcore outfit, a treatise on body dysmorphia that takes a jangly melody and speeds it up about fourfold, Mish Way snarling like few genuinely pull off. They play the Great Escape and a Bristol date in the second week of May, go off around Europe for a fortnight, then return to play the 100 Club and that aforementioned Gold Sounds Fest.




John J Presley - Left

Voice of Nick Cave, intro cribbed from the White Stripes, then into electric filthy blues. Not especially groundbreaking but you wouldn't want to get in his gravelly, potentially disturbing way. Plus there's a droning harmonium in the mix.

Plays for today: Trwbador, Flamingods, Shunkan, Free Swim

Trwbador feat. Essa - Breakthrough

The delicately glitchy west Wales duo have been branching out from their delicate folk origins of late, and hiring the veteran London rapper formerly known as Yungun to rhyme over harp loops and pulsing bass. Released digitally on 26th May and on 7" a week later. There's a video too.




Flamingods - Hyperborea

Tip for bands: if you want to get written about on here, "used to be on Art Is Hard, are now signed to Shape" is a very good way to get heard by us. You can see why Shape's Mark Daman Thomas might be into them given their tribal, echoey and speaking in runes percussiveness has shades of his own Islet. Flamingods are more airy and less anchored to actually sounding like a band, though, as things take off into the atmosphere amid strange post-AnCo sounds before re-emerging as campfire voodoo. Second album Hyperborea is out July 21st.




Shunkan - Dust In Your Eyes

All of two weeks ago we wrote Marina Sakimoto, who is Shunkan, "sounds like a lost Crutchfield sister". That impression is heightened by this second track from Honey, Milk And Blood EP, out May 5th on Art Is Hard (see?), but very much not as a whole on a song which flips from sensitive to scuzzy, hammering on the wall to drifting serenly through gauzy soundscapes, at a moment's notice.




Free Swim - Roaring Loudly Whilst Driving On A Good Stretch Of Road

More charging oddity from the Well Done Everyone EP, out May Day. Includes lyrics about taking Marie from Breaking Bad to a country pub in Surrey.

Weekends away 2014: Gold Sounds

WHAT? A Spring Bank Holiday Monday alldayer of noise-pop, high quality largely northern indie and such great things

WHERE? Brudenell Social Club, Leeds

WHEN? 26th May

WHY? "Celebrating the best in fuzzed out, sweet sweet noise". Sounds like us incarnate.

HOW? £12.50 from Crash, Jumbo, the venue and here

WHO?Cloud Nothings, Sky Larkin, Joanna Gruesome, PINS, Radstewart, White Lung, Post War Glamour Girls, Menace Beach, Eugene Quell, PAWS, Blessa, The Spills

Three for Thursday: Bastard Mountain, The Proper Ornaments, Ides

Bastard Mountain - Meadow Ghosts

Bastard Mountain are Neil and Pete from Meursault, Jill from Sparrow & the Workshop, Rob St John, Rory from Broken Records and Reuben of James Yorkston's Athletes. Over a week they congregated to record a partially ad-hoc collaborative album for Song, By Toad, which on this track resembles the Low/Galaxie 500 slowcore playbook in the fog as a ghostly presence. Farewell, Bastard Mountain is out May 12th.




The Proper Ornaments - Summer's Gone

Half of The Proper Ornaments came to London on a one-way ticket from Buenos Aires purloined by Andrew Loog Oldham, leaving behind a family attempting to sent him to a mental hospital. The other is James from Veronica Falls, which isn't quite the same backstory. The music they make together here in just over two minutes evokes the Velvets, Felt, post-feedback J&MC and the Real Estate-led current American brigade of breezily psychedelic underground melodicists. Their debut album Wooden Head is due via Fortuna Pop! on 9th June.




Ides - Giant

Once more Alanna McArdle presses record on the lowest of fi recorders, plugs in and pours her severely cracked heart out. Still no word on whether these few demos released recently are heading anywhere while Joanna Gruesome are heading towards that tricky between-albums stage.

Unsecret sounds: Daphni & Owen, Pictish Trail, Sylvan Esso, Fear Of Men

Daphni & Owen Pallett - Tiberius

Dapnhi is Dan Snaith of Caribou, this instrumental collaboration for a forthcoming double A side piecing together that band's recent charging metronomic electronics, with a much darker, paranoid hue, and Pallett's violin seizures.




The Pictish Trail - Wait Until

Johnny Lynch's ever evolving solo project, from double album Secret Soundz Vol 1 & 2 out 9th June, has something in common with Caribou's catalogue too, juddering synth sounds and flowing beats starting off mildly foreboding before warming up and opening out to the discerning world around Lynch's gentle vocals examining loss and loneliness.




Sylvan Esso - Play It Right

Where Nick and Amelia tear down the gauziness surrouding their previous excursions into electronic pop, pump up the squelching bass sounds and cast the staccato beats into full-on technicolour, while still sounding like a folk vocalist cast adrift in electronically generated space. The album is out June 2nd.




Fear Of Men - Descent

Yet another track from Loom, the proper debut album finally out next week, in which staccato drums and chorus surges completely upset the classically indiepop dreamy chiming.

The Ten: The White Room

It's forgotten these days - partly, it has to be said, by Channel 4 themselves - that you can do a snappy live music show without becoming behoven to commercial sponsors asking why The Vamps aren't on, one which has the range and historical awareness of Jools without the aura of Real Music. The White Room, fronted by Mark Radcliffe, lasted four series between 1994 and 1996, which in its way makes it appropriate for this week's Britpop celebrations, and there's an atmosphere of celebrating and presenting music for its own sake here, as well as the tendency to throw these bands, some of whom were becoming uncommonly successful, at the viewer and seeing what sticks. Here's ten examples.


Course, after all that set-up it has to be acknowledged the one thing everyone remembers from the series is Iggy Pop in transparent trousers, doing Lust For Life about six months before the Trainspotting soundtrack was released but around the time - possibly the same week, actually - of the film launch. And don't that audience just go nuts for him. Note from when Iggy decides to fraternise with one that the show has its own dancers, something nearly all music television fell for in the early 90s. According to the credits Jimi Hendrix was a guest that week, which is some booking.

And if it's not that they recall, it's Ray Davies and Damon Albarn singing Waterloo Sunset together, starting here at about 5:45, though Damon doesn't appear to actually do a lot apart from backing vocals and looking bashful when Ray drops into Parklife at the end.

Here's the pull of their show - Portishead very much didn't just do any telly show that asked in the aftermath of Dummy's success, so when they did turn up you usually got something special like this early version of Over. They followed it with a reworked slo-mo Sour Times

Similarly, you rarely saw Bjork with her full live set-up on TV. They gave her plenty of space to run about in at the end too.

People were obsessed with David Bowie's teeth in the mid-90s, presumably because of his living in America but being from Brixton. He was on to promote Outside but couldn't resist pulling out Boys Keep Swinging with a coruscating Reeves Gabriels solo.

Sparks with guest Bernard Butler, who turned up a few times as guest guitarist on the series just after he'd left Suede. Russell had one of those Jamie Theakston-style wet-look heavily parted haircuts that was big in the mid-90s. Ron looked like Ron.

Nick Cave and Polly Harvey perform an intricate public courtship ritual.

Some of this upload looks like it's been left on a radiator but no denying the power of prime Rocket From The Crypt

Or for that matter Smashing Pumpkins, with dancers on the stage with the band this time, which can't have been Billy's idea.

And it was the mid-90s so Oasis were on, but doing Acquiesce rather than Some Might Say, possibly at Radcliffe's insistence.

All over the place: tUnE-yArDs, Shunkan, Waking Aida, Uncle Luc

tUnE-yArDs - Wait For A Minute

A second track from Nikki Nack, which for now at least trades in the frantic looping and drumming for a retro R&B rhythm and squelchy analogue synth solos. Merrill's vocal follows suit, pushed to the front the better to depict deep reserves of self-doubt that bring a different meaning to it all.




Shunkan - Wash You Away

Another exciting product from the Art Is Hard factory of lo-fi goodness, Shunkan is a young New Zealander who sounds like a lost Crutchfield sister, chugging dark pop hang-gliding on a wave of feedback before a power cut at the end. EP out 5th May on very limited cassette, because this is what we do now.




Waking Aida - How To Build A Space Station

Haven't had much really good new instrumental math-rock on here lately, something that changes with a Southampton band, active and prolific for a few years but only now getting round to an album (Eschaton, June 2nd, recorded by one of Maybeshewill and released on their Robot Needs Home label) that over a full seven and a half minutes of shifting surges masters the capture and release, peaks and troughs of it all, urgent with a technicolour resolvency.




Uncle Luc - I Write

Luke Barham, formerly singer with power-pop nuts Stagecoach, debuts solo with an appealing acoustic shuffle he terms 'baroque and roll' - someone else must have done that line before now, surely - and claims influence from Nick Lowe and the Beach Boys in equal measure.

Tuesday tasters: Archie Bronson Outfit, Free Swim, Jarbird

Archie Bronson Outfit - We Are Floating

A slightly more straightforward, maybe even qualifying as classic rock rumpus than we're used to from ABO, taken from their new album Wild Crush, though there's still that evil guitar tone and it still sounds like a psychedelically painted back porch on fire.




Free Swim - Meal For One

Another track from the sort-of-comeback Well Done Everyone EP, out 5th May, a rambunctious half-spoken barn burner that starts off as an ode to an evening alone and then... well, you'll hear. After Steve Lamacq played it last week someone tweeted that it was "the best tune I've heard for 10 years". Well, wouldn't go that far but...




Jarbird - More Bad Celebrity Poetry

Debut single from a Leeds-based band who seem to have only been around since October but have already got PJ Harvey co-conspirator Rob Ellis producing them and on this evidence escape any particular locale - there's something of the post-XX spacious beats the likes of London Grammar and Woman's Hour are approaching from each end but with aching harmonies and falsetto crescendos taking it to another emotional plane.

Weekends away 2014: Live At Leeds

WHAT? One of the great British live music cities puts bands of all sizes all over the place for May Day

WHERE? Brudenell Social Club, The Cockpit, The Faversham, Holy Trinity Church, Leeds Met, Leeds Uni, Nation Of Shopkeepers, O2 Academy, The Wardrobe, The Cockpit Bar, Town Hall, Oporto, The HiFi Club, Belgrave Music Hall, The Packhorse and Faversham

WHEN? 2nd-5th May

WHY? Eight years old now, LAL attracts some big commercial hitters and heavy new band hitters as much as hugely promising local talent in harmony

HOW? £25 from loads of online and in person outlets

WHO?
FRIDAY: Blood Red Shoes, Melt Yourself Down, plus The Unconference panels, workshops, Q&As etc

SATURDAY: Johnny Flynn, Fair Ohs, Woman's Hour, Eliza and the Bear, The Amazing Snakeheads, We Were Evergreen, Happyness, Pet Moon, Blaenavon, Bat And Ball, Imp, Marika Hackman...



...Bipolar Sunshine, George Ezra, Fuck Buttons, The Hold Steady, Pulled Apart By Horses, I Like Trains, Fat White Family, The Wytches, Superfood, Yuck, Saint Raymond, Sam Airey, Honeyblood, Lanterns On The Lake, Rae Morris, ¡Forward Russia! - no, really, ¡Forward Russia! are back, albeit apparently only for this one occasion...



...Cheatahs, Courtney Barnett, Albert Hammond Jr, Fickle Friends, Royal Blood, Black Moth, Drenge, The Witch Hunt, Teleman, Tennis, Rosie Lowe, Arc Iris, Menace Beach, Ella Eyre, Clean Bandit, Nina Nesbitt, Chloe Howl, Wolf Alice, King Charles, Arthur Beatrice, MT, The Sunshine Underground, The Bohicas, Sivu, Catfish and the Bottlemen, Gambles, Circa Waves, Lola Colt, Lyla Foy, Mausi, A Plastic Rose and Los Campesinos!



SUNDAY: Dum Dum Girls, Neurosis, Kodaline, Crocodiles

Weekends away 2014: Odd Box Weekender

WHAT? Much admired DIY indie label puts on the fifth of its annual weekenders, this time over three days

WHERE? Power Lunches, Dalston on Friday; Macbeth, Hoxton on Saturday; the Lexington Sunday

WHEN? 2nd-4th May

WHY? Trev Odd Box has a good ear for ground level indiepop of all shades, from jangly to noisy, and his label events always tempt a high calibre.

HOW? £27.50 the weekend, plus Saturday/Sunday/both passes

WHO?
FRIDAY: The Manhattan Love Suicides (reformed POBPAH-supported noiseniks), Tyrannosaurus Dead, Sock Puppets, The Wendy Darlings, The Sweet Nothings



SATURDAY: The Spook School, Shopping, Heathers, Fever Dream, The Wharves, T.O.Y.S, Gum, Ravioli Me Away, Moustache of Insanity, Falling & Laughing, Palomica



SUNDAY: Kid Canaveral, One Happy Island, Night Flowers, Chorusgirl

Weekends away 2014: Liverpool Sound City

WHAT? City-wide (largely) new music hullaballoo in its seventh year

WHERE? The city's cultural quarter, including East Village Arts Club, Kazimier Gardens, Leaf Cafe, Liverpool Cathedral, Mello Mello, Parr Street Car Park (!), Tavern on the Green, The Attic, The Brink, The Cavern Club, The Factory, The Garage, The Kazimier, The Shipping Forecast and The Zanzibar

WHEN? 1st-3rd May

WHY? One of the more established multi-day events and a place labels send their hottest properties and unsigned bands get well catered for alongside established crowd pullers. Alongside the music a full series of conferences, panels and speakers discuss "music, football and style", including John Cale, Thurston Moore, Dave Haslam, Andy Votel, Record Store Day founder Spencer Hickman, John Doran of The Quietus, Kevin 'Powder' Sampson, Peter Hooton of The Farm and former Premier League chief executive Rick Parry.

HOW? £120 for a full conference and music pass, £66 for just the music, plus assorted day and two-day tickets from here

WHO?
THURSDAY: Gruff Rhys, Blood Red Shoes, And So I Watch You From Afar, DZ Deathrays, Jon Hopkins, PINS, Marika Hackman, The Wytches, Courtney Barnett, Clean Bandit, Fat White Family, Thumpers, The Bohicas, The Amazing Snakeheads, Jane Weaver, God Damn, Traams, Sivu, Circa Waves, Houdini Dax



FRIDAY: The Hold Steady, Fuck Buttons, Factory Floor, Drenge, Wolf Alice, Woman's Hour, Girls Names, East India Youth, Fair Ohs, Superfood, Fickle Friends, Lanterns On The Lake, Albert Hammond Jr, Chloe Howl, Blessa, Bipolar Sunshine, Pawws, We Were Evergreen, Raleigh Ritchie, Tennis, Royal Blood, Spring King, Saint Raymond, Eliza and the Bear



SATURDAY: 65daysofstatic, Radiophonic Workshop, Public Service Broadcasting, Jungle, Kill It Kid, September Girls, All We Are, Jagwar Ma, Luke Sital-Singh, Jimi Goodwin, Death At Sea, Bridie Jackson and The Arbour, We Have Band, Famy, 35 Summers, Kodaline, The Kooks

And more again: First Aid Kit, Honeyblood, King Post Kitsch, Fickle Friends

First Aid Kit - My Silver Lining

The Söderbergs are turning into proper expansive country storytellers, the influence of producer Mike Mogis and arranger Nate Walcott from the Bright Eyes family giving it the aura of the desert road to the horizon as the ultimate aim, fleshing out the sound in a similar way to how Laura Marling developed, and her accent seems to be creeping in too. Third album Stay Gold is out 9th June.




Honeyblood - Killer Bangs

A rush of two-piece sugarcrush frenzy and shades-in-promo-picture attitude out of Glasgow, a straining at the seams nature lending it a neat Vaselines reflection via Best Coast or the Dum Dum Girls. Single out 12th May, album 14th July, in between a tour supporting Courtney Barnett.




King Post Kitsch - Veronique

Second track from the upcoming Sheep On A Beach album as first mentioned here last week is wiry, agitated and quite the driven shamble.




Fickle Friends - Play

Second song from the much touted Brightonians. Turns out they're the new Summer Camp!

Weekends away 2014: Handmade Festival

WHAT? Like a multi-venue event but more so, putting the outer reaches into intriguing spaces around a major city centre

WHERE? A number of central Leicester venues

WHEN? 2nd-4th May

WHY? With stages supported by 2000 Trees, ArcTanGent, Big Scary Monsters and Alcopop! there's a decent post-hardcore/instrumental/post-rock leaning to the bill, but not without some intriguing deviations. Unlike most city festivals this also exploits non-standard locations, with stages in vintage halls and galleries

HOW? £33 for the weekend

WHO?
FRIDAY: And So I Watch You From Afar, Three Trapped Tigers, Her Name Is Calla, Grace Petrie, FTSE, Peter Wyeth



SATURDAY: Shonen Knife, Haiku Salut, We Three And The Death Rattle, Katie Malco, Sisterland, TE Morris, Weikie, Tellison, Tangled Hair, Woahnows, Brawlers, Feedback Voice



SUNDAY: I LIKE TRAINS, Dry The River, Dark Dark Horse, VerseChorusVerse

The Phantom Band - The Wind That Cried The World

Just as it looked like they'd been quietly left in a corner one of STN's favourite pop-sonic adventurers are back with a third album, Strange Friend, out June 2nd. They call it "the most straight-up set of recordings" yet but that's only on their terms of detuned bloopy electronics, hints of kosmiche and big threatening wordless caws that refuse to let too much light in. There are dates in June that are fully recommended for their limber live assailment: 3rd Glasgow Art School, 4th Hoxton Bar & Grill, 5th Manchester Deaf Institute, 6th Aberdeen The Tunnels.

Weekends away 2014: Focus Wales

WHAT? 150+ live bands, plus assorted interactive sessions, comedy and so forth

WHERE? A number of central Wrexham venues, all within walking distance

WHEN? 23rd-26th April

WHY? STN has always been a sucker for a thoughtfully booked multi-venue festival, and also for festivals in Wales, so... The first of the year's really fascinating expansive bills, smartly put together and not overly willing to make too much of a fuss about itself. Also a range of panels, seminars and speeches involving the likes of Huw Stephens, Alan McGee, John Robb, Will Sergeant, Chris Hawkins and Islet/Shape Records' Mark Daman Thomas.

HOW? £30 for music, £50 for everything, individual gig and day tickets too - all broken down here

WHO?
THURSDAY: Damo Suzuki, John Cooper Clarke, Georgia Ruth, Cian Ciarán, Seazoo, The Gentle Good, All We Are



FRIDAY: Islet, Euros Childs, Mowbird, Golden Fable, Masters In France, Houdini Dax, HMS Morris, Poltergeist



SATURDAY: Gulp, Keys, Chris T-T, We Are Animal, Black Moth

Weekends away 2014: Wales Goes Pop!

Restarting our occasional series of plugs and previews for lesser known festivals and extended events:

WHAT? An all-ages Easter weekend scan of the indiepop high rollers and associates

WHERE? The Gate, Cardiff

WHEN? 18th-20th April

WHY? Smartly booked in an appropriately small-scale grand setting, the first WGP! last year was a joyous occasion, as these things tend to be in the post-Indietracks sphere, and it shows how far those particular stylistic tentacles can reach.

HOW? £40 from Spillers in Cardiff, Diverse Records in Newport or online

WHO? (or at least the best of those playing)
FRIDAY: Helen Love (their first hometown gig in quite some years), September Girls, The Magic Theatre, Flowers, Seazoo, Young Romance



SATURDAY: The Wedding Present, Radstewart, The School, The Proper Ornaments, Steven James Adams



SUNDAY: Withered Hand, Laetitia Sadier, Sweet Baboo, Haiku Salut, Woodpigeon, Owl & Mouse, Rozi Plain

Tuesday's newbies: Slow Club, John MOuse, Cosines, Sylvan Esso

Slow Club - Complete Surrender

Claiming influences from Frankie Valli to Katy Perry - admittedly you could have gleaned that from access to their first two albums and Rebecca's Twitter account - third album Complete Surrender is out July 14th. As the previously released track Tears Of Joy suggested this is a subtle but hefty step sideways, filled out by a rush of electronic beats as it gleefully skips between soul and modern pop depending largely on who's singing, nodding to their mates Summer Camp in doing so. Then big strings come on just to finish it off in a way that hints, surely unintentionally, of My Life Story.




John MOuse - I Was A Goalkeeper

It's the first football suggestive song of World Cup year! Four albums in John MOuse are offbeat Welsh indie of a type you didn't think you really got any more, meaning the blurb's attempt at promoting it as a big crossover terrace anthem are perhaps wide of the mark, not least as it's actually about childhood dreams through the medium of kickabouts in the park. Gareth Campesinos! (who was making noises about his own band contributing to the England cause this summer not long ago) shouts along on the chorus, a big guitar hook drives through the middle like a runaway HGV and it's done in three minutes.




Cosines - Commuter Love

Cosines put out one of our favourite indie debut singles last year in Hey Sailor Boy!, and they return to the ever useful Fika for its 7" follow-up, filching Goldfrapp's electro-glam stomp for a tale of lives lost to the working week. Apparently the unavailable B-side sounds like "Camera Obscura was influenced by Neu! and fronted by Kirsty MacColl". The mind boggles.




Sylvan Esso - Coffee

A Hype Machine #1 more than a month ago! Who says we're slow to trends round here? A collaboration between Mountain Man's Amelia Meath and Megafaun's Nick Sanborn, it explores Au Revoir Simone's territory of twinkling, gauzy electronic pop with extra longing, the video not straying too far from that aesthetic. Their album is out 2nd June and they're doing European dates in May with tUnE-yArDs, which seems an intriguing match.

One more for the week: Cloud Boat, Witching Waves, Firestations, Kim Deal

Cloud Boat - Carmine

The first new material from the duo since last year's Book Of Hours album is bolder than the misty wisps that enveloped much of that work, the beats more frontloaded and the synths more kaleidoscopic in approach as the lyrics explores the world of discovery and the fear of the unknown alike. An intriguing step in all ways.




Witching Waves - Concrete

Scuzzily primal duos that are in no way 'bluesy' can be quite a tricky thing to pull off and make sound separate from those around them. Witching Waves manage it by locating a stripped back essence of longing amid the fulsome snare bashing and distorto-riffage. Lovely clattering false ending too. Soft Power are putting this out on, being the modern retro way, cassingle on April 21st.




Firestations - Forgetful Man

Do you remember American Analog Set? Their melding of chiming guitars and subtle electronics as equal partners is a good indication of what to expect from Firestations, who feature Quickspace alumni and here explore warm, laid back harmonic melodicism. It'd seem much better suited to the next season along, we'd be bound.




Kim Deal and Morgan Nagler - The Root

We've heard a couple of warped, minimalist Deal solo tracks in the last year or so and despite being a collaboration with Whispertown's Nagler this doesn't seem much different, a wire-thin but likeably twisted riff backing a chantable emotional wreck.

Kim Deal and Morgan Nagler - 'The Root' [Official Video] from Kim Deal Music [Official] on Vimeo.

Martha - 1997, Passing In The Hallway

If you studied yesterday's post about this weekend's Leicester Indiepop Alldayer intently, like you should have done, you'll have spotted a prominent position for Pity Me's straight-edge rocket-powered indiepop-punk dynamos Martha. The light was officially lit under them today on the announcement the mighty Fortuna Pop! label will be putting out their debut album Courting Strong at the end of May, bringing with it another entry from the STN Favourite I-Spy list, MJ off of Hookworms producing. The first single is classic harmonic buzzsaw pop, slightly melodically straighter than their 2012 EP, given the teenage kick pop subject of school crushes. And it contains a mention of the double helix in the chorus. Is it too much to hope, after 1978, Smiling Politely and 1848, Yawning Discreetly from that EP, every track on the album is titled like that? And thenceforth every track on every album?

Thursday's children: Farewell JR, King Post Kitsch, Gymnast, Dad Rocks!

Farewell J.R - Skin Pieces

Taken from second proper EP And Still, out April 21st, a song that seems to float under its own steam on rough seas, building on swelling arrangements that culminate in elegaic strings and lucidly broken vocals in finding the moments of realisation in the dark.




King Post Kitsch - The Days Keep Coming

A previous recording by Glasgow's Charlie Ward appeared on one of our compilations, so little hesitation from this end in recommending a track, unsettled in its tightly nervously coiled, attractively rhythmic scrappiness, from his second album Sheep On A Beach, out April 14th.




Gymnast - Geneva

Manchester-based duo play with the delicacy and intrigue in stuttering, atmospheric synths, shuddering and struggling to locate its psychological place like a warmer London Grammar or freeze-dried out-take from Present Tense.




Dad Rocks! - Peers

I see, sending out a track with the lyric "you even embedded a SoundCloud in hope that it helps out with crowds at gigs" for blog embedding. Quixotic Danish-based Icelander Snævar Albertsson's second album in this guise Year Of The Flesh, out in September, deals with weighty issues of ageing and the modern world while sounding like a lo-fi folk equivalent of Yoni Wolf, but starts off with a treatise on the ethics of filesharing. But not with the sort of tone you might imagine.

The Ten: The Spook School's favourite things in music

As those who follow us on Twitter will know, we have our third annual indiepop soiree at Leicester Firebug coming up this Saturday, followed by a warm-down nearer the city centre on Sunday. Details/artwork:



£8 advance tickets are still available (and there'll be plenty enough on the door); full details on the Facebook event.

Even with that engagement getting in the way, this looks like being a big year for Edinburgh's Spook School, whose album of the tail-end of last year Dress Up matchmakes insistent jangly pop-punk with smart lyrics largely about identity and sexuality, with a side order of an acclaimed live show that's known to veer off in all sorts of banter-based directions. As part of the build-up to Saturday, they told us what they like most about what they do:



- When a song's chords spell a word. Like BEG. Or CAB. Or PHILANTHROPY (It's a toughie, you've got to use ALL your fingers. On both hands.)

- When you spend all night on a bus and you don't get any sleep so the next day you experience auditory hallucinations of exciting new backing vocals in all your favourite songs.

- When a guitar goes "ehehryrhheueheheue" which is a rough phonetic translation of a feedbacky guitar.

- When David Bowie does music. Highlights include when he makes music AND films. Like Labyrinth. And he sings that song in it. You know, that song.

- When gigs are indoors so the likelihood of birds attacking the stage is low. And if birds do attack we know our escape routes as the fire exits are helpfully illuminated in most music venues.

- When Niall is able to take his top off in the guise of musically-influenced joy when really his top is two sizes too small and chafing his nipples.

- When you invent a new dance move and everyone thinks you're a genius. In the future everybody will perform the 'Tofu Twist'!

- When your guitar string breaks and it cuts your finger and you bleed all over your guitar and everyone thinks you're really cool. But inside the pain is really bad and you're holding back the urge to call your Mum.

- When you hear a song that seems to perfectly mirror your current emotion. Like that one time when we felt the emotion 'anticipation' and then PJ and Duncan's Let's Get Ready To Rhumble came on and it seemed to capture our feelings perfectly!

- When you pretend a song is your theme tune and when you enter a room you punctuate it with a superhero pose. And even if you don't save the day at least you know you sounded good on entry. Ooooooh yeah!

Official audio: tUnE-yArDs, Lykke Li, Marika Hackman, School Of Language

tUnE-yArDs - Water Fountain

The first release from Merrill's third album Nikki Nack, which like every other album made in the last nine months or so is out May 5th - seriously, labels, talk to each other once in a while - is as usual a whirlwind of whooping, almost speaking-in-tongues chanting and looped percussion, the propulsion and call-and-response structure at least initially sounding like a modernising of those early rock and roll sock hops of a Clapping Song/Iko Iko bent. That's just the sound of it before gradually building up steam, though, with Garbus dropping in plaintively sung snippets alluding to "blood soaked dollar" and "watching us til we're gone". 4AD's video perhaps inevitably doesn't focus on those bits.




Lykke Li - No Rest For The Wicked

Another album out May 5th is I Never Learn, increasingly seeming to be Lykke attempting to reinvent herself as showstopping torch singer. There's a little more to this track than Love Me Like I'm Not Made of Stone, as posted a couple of weeks ago, but it still sounds set in a vast desolate space with Li lost in her rawest of emotional letdowns.




Marika Hackman - Call Off The Dogs

Another pained, spare second emission/escape from a haunted return, this one the Deaf Heat EP out April 14th. Hackman seems haunted by the indefinable, the backing drifts serenely through the woods at night.




School Of Language - Dress Up

David Brewis' continuing investigations into white northern funk lead him into something almost freeze-dried, falsetto and wired to the mains around its edges like Lynx exhumed and given a faulty autopsy. Old Fears is out April 7th.

The Ten: We Three And The Death Rattle's favourite songs and debut albums

Helping bring this feature back after its stalled start last year, WTATDR were one of our tips for 2014, their scuzzy, distorted garage blues (with added theremin) attracting attention from the likes of Josh T Pearson and Craig Finn as touring partners. Their fine debut album came out last month, meaning it's high time we found out what music brought them here.

WTATDR: Album Teaser from WeTheConspirators on Vimeo.

Chain And The Gang - It's A Hard, Hard Job (Keeping Everybody High)
Aesop Rock - 1,000 O'Clock
Charles Bradley - The World Is Going Up In Flames
Dead Moon - I Hate The Blues
Fugazi - Turnover
The Childballads - Cheekbone Hollows
Free Kitten - Call Back
Ol' Dirty Bastard - Shimmy Shimmy Ya
The Amps - Tipp City
Scout Niblett - Gun

And their favourite debut albums:

Dead Moon - In The Graveyard
Ol' Dirty Bastard - Return To The 36 Chambers
Lauryn Hill - The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill
The Make-Up - Destination: Love - Live! At Cold Rice
Fugazi - Repeater
The Breeders - Pod
PJ Harvey - Dry
The Gun Club - Fire Of Love
The Saints - (I'm) Stranded
Beastie Boys - Licensed To Ill

Wrapping up another working week: Broken Records/Trust Fund/Ides

Broken Records - Revival

If the first track we heard from the Toska EP, out 24th March, took them a step closer to more overtly windswept compatriots, this one carries on down its own ambitious path, starting like it wants nothing and nobody to get in its way and building from there. Swelling without having to artlessly become 'epic', its peaks and troughs are just as we found them all those years ago right through the moment the thing bursts wide open and becomes actively celebratory.




Trust Fund - No Surprise

Ellis Jones' soul baring came to our attention not long ago on the Don't Let Them Begin EP, which felt a British south-western kinship with Lou Barlow-like cracked directness. On this new track, which will feature on a Reeks Of Effort split EP, Sick of Hits Vol​.​2, Ellis uses acoustic fragility to cut himself away from his friends before a distorted roar of electric guitar attempts vainly to take over. Trust Fund is playing the Reeks Of Effort Prom on Saturday 15th - that's tomorrow - at the DIG arts space in Lewisham, alongside Playlounge, Saturday's Kids, King Of Cats, Poledo, Lone Omi and...




Ides - Machine

...well, not Ides actually, but Alanna McArdle's other employers Joanna Gruesome. As with that above Ides is a vehicle through which McArdle can fling her rawest thoughts into the ether, though here she's literally and metaphorically keeping her distance from anything too sharply pointed.

And the next one: Free Swim, Fuck Art Let's Dance!, Luke Haines

Free Swim - You Get Out What You Putin

Ooh, topical. Well, not really. Their return EP Well Done Everyone is out May 5th; from it comes some heavy circular riffage and some quixotic rapidfire lyrics.




Fuck Art, Let's Dance! - We're Manicals!

Alongside their love of exclamation marks we'd like to think this band are named after the early Madness slogan, despite being from Hamburg. It's not a hint that follows through to the music, mind, this being halting, darkly warped electronically aided guitar pop of a fairly Everything Everything bent. Their album Atlas is out 28th April.

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Luke Haines - Alan Vega Says

The completion of Haines' squelchy psychedelia/pop cultural nostalgia/high tariff individualism trilogy, NY In The 70s, out May 19th, is "a mythic re-imagining of the New York Rock n Roll scene 1972 - 1979". Well, it would never be a straight retelling, would it?

Today's good stuff: Farewell JR, Fujiya & Miyagi, Juce, Archie Bronson Outfit

Farewell J.R - Slow Breath

Having just been out on Communion's New Faces tour (headlined by Luke Sital-Singh) his/their first material since the Health EP is a delicate thing, reverbed and pensive, a thing of picturesque serenity, like a painting of a misty Scandinavian lake. But with music. And then someone deliberately spills a few gallons of oil into the lake as massed strings and noises slash across the peace, turning the vocals from stillness to loss.




Fujiya & Miyagi - Flaws

The electro-motorik the Brighton outfit have extended across four albums outright transforms into the propulsive pulses of prime Moroder on the opening track from their fourth album Artificial Sweeteners, out May 5th. Less quixotic than some of their previous work but no less enveloping.




Juce - Braindead

Is it too reductive to call the London trio the British female !!!? (What? Oh alright, the British female Chk Chk Chk) Releasing this through Dan Carey's Speedy Wunderground label it's fairly indebted to ESG - especially when they nick the call-outs from Dance towards the end - with an extra bubbly disco groove that nods at their self-definition as a girl group. But with that indelibly fluid punk-funk rhythm section, not that much.




Archie Bronson Outfit - Two Doves On A Lake

They're back! Albeit without bassist Dorian Hobday but with their psychedelic attack mode still fully engaged on this serrated lope that's taken a step back from Cuckoo's cliff edge to roam the undergrowth. Recent collaborator Kristian 'Capitol K' Robinson produces and is presumably responsible for the bubbling synth bass and Duke Garwood popping by with free jazz abandon just to put the tin lid on the deal. Album Wild Crush follows on May 19th.

The Tuesday select: Marika Hackman/Sharon Van Etten/Lykke Li/White Lung

Marika Hackman - Deep Green

The preview from the Deaf Heat EP, out 14th April, is more ghostly than what we've heard before from Hackman, driven by haunting wails, tribal percussion and something in the background that's either detuned strings or prepared piano. That fragile voice is still front and centre, as are her personal neuroses.




Sharon Van Etten - Taking Chances

Having explored the personal, emotionally cracked depths and fights on Tramp, the first taste from Are We There (May 25th) goes off in a separate direction, one where the production is much smoother and Van Etten in a more contented place. The backing nods to R&B production and droning organ sounds, sounding not all that dissimilar from latter day Cat Power's excursions.




Lykke Li - Love Me Like I'm Not Made Of Stone

Lykke claims of I Never Learn, out May 4th, that "every song on the album is a power ballad". That's getting there for this very stripped back track, which takes away the electronic background we're used to in favour of a field recorded acoustic guitar and an emotionally tender vocal. You do fear she's released the mid-album showstopper first rather than an easier way in, but maybe that's the point.




White Lung - Down With The Monster

And now for something completely different. Vancouver hardcore punks White Lung, newly overground on Domino, are one of a tranche of recent new(ish) bands bringing feminist theory and anger to already thunderously noisy indie-rock. Their new 7" is a fine example of getting a pit to centrifugal force speed within just over two minutes.

Three peas in a pod, they are not: Benjamin Shaw/POBPAH/Plantagenet 3

Benjamin Shaw - Goodbye, Kagoul World

Shaw's cracked anti-folk (literally rather than figuratively) drones first came across our radar five years ago, and on this first taste of a second album of the same name, out 21st April through Audio Antihero, it sounds like a highly individual step forward into the void, circling guitar parts getting subsumed in funereal wind instruments, free jazz drop-ins and general oppressiveness before his downcast vocals, exhausted by life, issue likeminded lyrics.




The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - Simple And Sure

It's make your mind up time. Showcasing neither the fuzzbombs of their debut or the sonic bluster of its follow-up POBPAH's third album Days of Abandon, out April 21st, is previewed by big melodic pop shapes and a production that takes them a step nearer wipe-clean classicism. Twenty years ago coming on like this they'd have been Jellyfish. Or Airhead. World Party, possibly.




Plantagenet 3 & A Little Orchestra - Canute (The Irresistible Surf)

Plantagenet 3 are a slowcore spaghetti western instrumental outfit we first wrote about in autumn 2010; A Little Orchestra are the indiepop string section of choice whose work with Haiku Salut, Darren Hayman and Model Village we variously highlighted on here last year. This new 7" out this time next month brings the two together to appropriately dark twangingly cinematic effect.

The journey men: Gruff Rhys/Telegram/FTSE

Gruff Rhys - American Interior

American Interior is a travelogue about John Evans, a young farmhand from Snowdonia who travelled across 18th century America. There'll be a book, documentary film (out the same week as the record - here's the trailer) and app, but primarily for our purposes there's an album out May 5th, the title track of which plays with theme-appropriate ideas of being carried across new worlds and visions while sounding like a wistful, swept across the plains, acid guitar soloing Van Dyke Parks on a budget. Good to have his particular sense of wanderlust back amongst us.




Telegram - Rule Number One

Follow was one of the most exciting debut singles of 2013; for a follow-up the hair-tossing Kraut-glam-psychists continue the bloodied charge to who knows where. That is to say there's wah and distortion pedal abuse, oohing backing vocals, reminders of Eno at his most charged and sounding much like it's falling down an endless technicolour wormhole.




FTSE - Nite Lite

FTSE is Sam Manville, who used to be in post-hardcore oddballs Blakfish* and then thematic garage duo Hymns, and now sounds nothing like either. As FTSE he's developing a reputation for scuffed up bass-heavy production, here melding foreboding early hours beats with artfully crossthreaded vocals from himself and one Femme. The LOVE UN LTD EP is out April 21st.



(* who we once saw supported by Colour, who featured the future second half of AlunaGeorge, whose re-emergence brought out the surprising past favouritism of Discloure. With members of Tubelord and Meet Me In St Louis kicking around in new guises of late as well, clearly the new hotbed of young talent has shifted from the Brit School to Big Scary Monsters' back catalogue. If the next hot anonymous bedroom producer turns out to be a former member of Cats And Cats And Cats we'll become highly suspicious.)

Today's specials: Slow Club, DZ Deathrays, Hamilton Leithauser

Slow Club - Tears Of Joy

There doesn't seem to be an imminent album (although there is a London one-off show in May) but a new track has emerged anyway. There's been a delicate acoustic version of this online since June; the recorded version works in some lovers' R&B influence into a more ornate arrangement than we're used to while still recognisably Charles and Rebecca's brand of positive melancholia.




DZ Deathrays - Gina Works At Hearts

Having stormed out of the southern hemisphere two and a half years ago the duo sounded at first like they didn't know where they were heading next. This track from Black Rat, out 2nd May, succeeds in plotting a route between accessibility - check the handclaps! - and pumped up classic rock riffola. They entirely appropriately tour with Blood Red Shoes in April.




Hamilton Leithauser - Alexandra

So it looks like the Walkmen are done, with singer Leithauser bringing his early warning siren of a voice to a solo album, Black Hours, come May. Featuring and co-penned by Rostam off Vampire Weekend, by comparison to the band's output this feels positively jaunty.

The Lucid Dream - Moonstruck/The Emptiest Place

Hailing from lysergic central, Carlisle, The Lucid Dream have already put out an album and played Jodrell Bank - supporting The Australian Pink Floyd and Hawkwind! - and today they've released a double A side 7" via the Too Pure Singles Club (which, we note, have the mighty Heavy Petting Zoo on their slate). Moonstruck sounds like Suicide racing Hookworms to the edge of Beachy Head, The Emptiest Place like Roky Eriksson staging a hostile takeover of Love, together they make quite the impression.

What we've missed

One of those increasingly common sprints through some recent arrivals, we're afraid.

Bis - Rulers And The States

THIRTYSOMETHING-C NATION! Having played the odd gig over the last few years they're back to their electropunk prime with a cut from a sort-of-new album, a compilation of tracks from their mid-00s Data Panik incarnation and recordings for an aborted fourth album entitled data Panik etcetera.




JUNGLE. - Busy Earnin'

The former Jungle are newly signed to XL and come on jam-ready, leavening their London TVOTR reputation with some of those 80s synth grooves you hear so much about these days. How many of the people in this photo are really in the band, do you reckon?




Papercuts - Still Knocking At The Door

Ornate, insistent hazy psych warmth from Jason Quever's project, which releases new album Life Among The Savages in May.




Mega Emotion - City In Shapes

Dark 8-bit electro-disco by the Norwich trio, caught between retro synthpop and upending same with jagged noisy edges, all from the Fake Feelings EP, out April 15th.




Pastel Colours - She Can't Decide

Another one to file alongside the oncoming hordes of woozy garage-psych travellers, the Falmouth outfit's contribution to Art Is Hard's Pizza Club may be for you if you like Telegram but aren't willing to countenance their supporting Miles Kane on tour.

Round-up II: Elephant, Free Swim, Department M, Radstewart

Elephant - Elusive Youth

If it feels like we've been waiting ages for Elephant to get round to an album... we have, their first single came out two and a half years ago. Sky Swimming is that long player, out 28th April. Elusive Youth was one of the demos that got them attention in the first place, a sighing modernist Brill Building confection that fits snugly between Summer Camp and Cults, neatly enough line-up demographic wise, and just below Camera Obscura, with whom they don't.




Free Swim - Transatlantic Tumnus

After his Android Angel sojourn Paul Coltofeanu is back with the band. They're cagey about where this track is from but it's a roar back to life, a landslide of imagery and a soupcon of satire amid a rush of guitars that sounds a bit to us like the intro to the Specials' Little Bitch, except it then becomes a charging garage rocker.




Department M - Miscellany

Apparently Owen Brinley had an album out at the end of 2013 which we missed, but luckily he's putting this from it out as a single. It seems more redolent of his previous life in Grammatics than what we've heard before of this project, brooding and stewing in its own self-doubt, then turning electronic, bass attack mode tail and ramping up the oppressive atmosphere just to make sure.




Radstewart - Garage Faery

What's already looking like 2014's hardest working support band - Mowbird next month and Johnny Foreigner in March following last year's tour with Sky Larkin, all of which seems as quick and easy a way to become adored by STN as any - have supplied this to a four artist-way split 12" brought into life by the combined efforts of Art Is Hard and Reeks Of Effort, two small labels with better RBIs than most to date. Usual deal: discordant shambling, cynical wordplay around hipsterdom angst, wide knowledge of Slanted And Enchanted, strangely charming for all that.

Johnny Foreigner - Le Sigh

Depending on which reading of their discography you adhere to You Can Do Better, out 10th March on Alcopop!, is either JoFo's fourth, fifth or ninth album. They still sound well on it, anyway. This starts by sounding like it's going to be one of their reflective moments. Then it thinks to hell with that and accelerates in the way only they can. Beyond that, the usual rush of taxi thoughts and strafing guitars, including at least one direct reference to lost kids in Birmingham indie clubs as standard.



Dates! Almost all with Radstewart, who in their incessant touring with bands we like seem to have become 2014's answer to Copy Haho.

13th March Kingston New Slang at McClusky's
14th March Canterbury Penny Theatre
15th March Leicester Firebug
16th March Manchester Gullivers
20th March Wakefield The Hop
21st March Southampton Joiners
22nd March Birmingham Flapper
27th March Nottingham. JT Soar
28th March Cardiff Clwb Ifor Bach (with Totem Terrors too)
29th March Guildford Star Inn
30th March Bath Moles
31st March London Borderline
3rd April Sheffield Harley
5th April Workington Lounge 41

Colourmusic - Horse Race

It's been a couple of years since Oklahoma/Yorkshire's Colourmusic blew in, blew eardrums and blew out again with their noise-psych rabbit holes. May You Marry Rich, out 24th March, sees them pick up where they left off, depositing broken bits of guitar scraped from a stoner-rock anthem into space against a relentless roll of electronic bass. You can tell they're mates with Wayne Coyne alright, but also that there's method in their madness.

Her Name Is Calla - The Roots Run Deep

In the three years since their marvellous second album The Quiet Lamb Her Name Is Calla have shifted membership (bringing in members of Maybeshewill and live Bat For Lashes) and instrumentation, worked on a couple of solo projects and, it says here, gone through "life, death, distance, divorce and everything else in between". The results come out on 21st April under the title Navigator; this track is more digital glitch inclined than you might have expected, perhaps influenced by their running mates Ghosting Season, and even a hint of those 80s pop synths they have now. It still shifts like a monolith and appeals into the darkest recesses.

School Of Language - Between The Suburbs

Miss, David's got his funk elastic out again! With Field Music on one of their regular hiatuses Brewis, D has relaunched his School Of Language identity for an album out 7th April entitled Old Fears, the first single stuttering, tightly wound up and fidgety to unspool, with a neat political undertow.

Liars - Mess On A Mission

Minimal and fleshy at the same time, moving on from their last sound while still identifiably them, inscrutable and direct... yep, it's a new Liars song alright, somewhere between New York no wave disco and a Pong machine imploding. Seventh album Mess is out 24th March.

And we start again

Having expounded the virtues of always writing in detail about new songs, here's a quick whip through the best of the load of new songs that have emerged in just the last few weeks.

Stanley Brinks and The Wave Pictures - I Wanted You

Brinks is André Herman Dune, founder member of, well, Herman Dune; the Wave Pictures are, um, the Wave Pictures. Their second collaborative album Gin is out 3rd March. It is, of course, quite winsome on one side and solo-ey on the other.




Rick Redbeard - Flow Like Unicorms

Having bared his soul to some effect on last year's album No Selfish Heart, Rick Anthony lets go another song from his past, a poignant spoken confessional on ageing.




Gorgeous Bully - Sinking Feeling

This is echoey and soul-baring too, but in a highly contrasting, noisier way. Gorgeous Bully is Thomas Crang, based in Manchester after a Devon and Cornwall existence, crafting lo-fi misery into compact power pop into an EP, Nobody Hates You As Much As You Hate Yourself, out 17th February via the ever reliable Art Is Hard.




Eugene Quell - Weird Purr

Working behind one of those biogs that leads you to assume it's someone relaunching themselves, a misery-flecked bedroom electric strum owing something to Lou Barlow and such increasingly common early 90s slacker reference points, being pulled astray by noises. An EP is name your price here.




Fickle Friends - Swim

You almost don't need to be told about this given it's had 33,000 plays in four days, so on point are the Brighton outfit in finding a mid-point between Friends' rhythmic Tom Tom Club channelling and early Summer Camp-flavoured postmodern 80s revivalism.




Is Tropical & Rose Elinor Dougall - When I'm With You

And finally, the art-electro party ranksters and the doyenne of synth-indie come together on a Sparks cover.