Tracklist: Bright Spark Destroyer - The Shortest Distance

Quick one today, partly because this has been out since the start of the month. That kind of yearning voice with bouncy, hi-hat friendly chiming guitar pop is the default setting of a million go-nowhere local support bands so it takes quite a bit to produce something interesting out of it. The lyrics reference the physics of the titular concept of the shortest distance between two points as love metaphor and there's something intangibly fresh about the way it's all put together.

Bright Spark Destroyer - The Shortest Distance by Bright Spark Destroyer

Ten things we learnt from Dot To Dot Nottingham at the weekend

1. Walking across the town hall square in Nottingham to get to the Bodega on a Bank Holiday Sunday after 9pm is taking fate into your own hands
Not strictly for the famed violence, but oh, the depravity.

2. However flabby, bloated and 'experimental' their albums get, live And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead are a noisy riot
Cherrypicking from a decent sized back catalogue there was little flab and plenty of roaring borderline controlled insanity. As if the one-two shouty punch of Fake Fake Eyes and A Perfect Teenhood wasn't enough, they then had to go and play the biggest release of energy on and off stage that is Mistakes And Regrets.

3. Fixers have it going on
A set that in its opening two songs takes on West Coast harmonies, tribal digital beats and positive vibe psych-sci-fi gang appeals is quite something. Many tried to dance.

4. Paul Carlin smacks the hell out of a bass drum
Someone eventually had to find a slab of concrete, or so it appeared, to hold the kit in place when a bass amp proved insufficient. They may be down to just the one tub-thumper, John Baillie Jnr now taking on Blood Brothers-style co-vocal duties, but Dananananaykroyd are forging ahead into a new realm of positive post-hardcore with their usual boundless energy and love of crowd invading - The Greater Than Symbol And The Hash culminated in a dual scream-off encircled by baffled audience members - and hugging. No Wall Of Cuddles, but both started by embracing everyone on the barrier in turn. Shame the vocal mix was often too low.

5. Stagecoach are the most fun
We like to think the woman who got saddled with an unexpected mandolin at the end of the set is still trying to work out what to do with it.

6. Colourmusic believe in noise
And it was only a small area too. Lots of head nodding and general seratonin excitement by the closing Yes!

7. Hot Horizons are better live than on record
So far, at least. More spaciousness and wooziness, some parts edging towards an analogue keys Grizzly Bear.

8. You can be a lo-fi bedroom surf-pop auteur and be any good live
All Dom had to do, it turns out, is rub away the fuzz and the desire to be MGMT. He's got the hooks, the razor-tipped summer pop and the sense of humour.

9. Despite what Simon Reynolds is telling you, maybe taking retrospective leads isn't always a bad thing
Spotlight Kid, as discussed on here before, are very much an attempt to make three minute pop songs from the My Bloody Valentine raw materials - two songs in their set have mini-holocaust sections - but they make something of it with plenty to go at. At an opposing end of the spectrum Ronika could easily be taken for a Little Boots/Ellie Goulding faux-real synthpop type except, prodding away at a Macbook, her reference points are more based in New York's disco-not-disco scene, more Cristina than Baby D.

10. ...but far from always
You know something, you bands taking up big anthemic choruses, Killers synths, landfill solos and general "influences: Radiohead, Jeff Buckley, Sigur Ros" fare? You won't get signed.

Tracklist: Knifeworld - Pilot Her

It's easy to believe Knifeworld founder Kavus Torabi, who launched this as a solo project before bringing five colleagues on board for their forthcoming second album, used to be guitarist in the Cardiacs. That band's spirit of psychedelic vaudeville driving post-prog-punk attitude into a ditch couldn't be better served in the wake of Tim Smith's sad health circumstances. Careering with a sense of purpose through richocheting, galloping organ and vocal harmony fragments before crashing into a shouty chorus-lite, from where a crunchy guitar sound rockets through several layers of stratosphere while trying to keep its melody earthed somehow. Then there's a carousel-like bassoon and sax breakdown. Obviously. This leads the Dear Lord, No Deal EP, out 4th July.

Knifeworld - Pilot Her by abadgeoffriendship

Tracklist: The Bookhouse Boys - With You

On their 2008 debut the Bookhouse Boys were a Sergio Leone house band, overstaffed Lynchian surf twanging menace and dual vocal battles. On June's second album Tales To Be Told it's been reined in a little but still sounds like the theme to an unmade dustbowl western noir. Paul Van Oestren and Catherine Turner wrap themselves around each other, spaghetti western brass warms up deep in the background and widescreen production do the grand dramatics proud. Someone get John Hillcoat onto it.

Tracklist: Best Friends - Surf Bitches

Straight outta surf city Sheffield, are Best Friends a British answer to the lo-fi surf-pop influx from America? There doesn't appear to be any mention of weed or cats, which is a very good start. There may be a few others ploughing this twangy distorted furrow, but these have the ooh-ee-ooh backing vocals, rolling drums and half-hidden carefree echoey vocals right down. Scuzziness allows too many bands to get away with too much shit in the way of lo-fi, but if Spectrals can make a proper breakthrough go of it there's no reason why this lot can't expand from these promisingly fuzzy beginnings.

Tracklist: Beaty Heart - 2 Good

That all four of Peckham audio-visual collective - god, aren't they all these days - are credited with samplers and all but the vocalist with drums might be all that needs to be said in this bit, but then we'd have shortchanged you. What they do with it is career all over the shop before settling somewhere adjacent to a tropical pop bumpy path where marimba and steel drums are pitched against multitracked vocals. There's quite a bit of Animal Collective's last couple of albums (or at least when Panda Bear seizes control) in here, inevitably when you put yearning sounding and not always bound by language vocals against hallucinatory soundscaped loaded high with arrythmic percussion. They call it 'psychedelic drum pop', which is disappointingly bland self-precising for something quite so abstract.

Beaty Heart -  2 Good by i-D

Tracklist: Faster Than Robots - Only Romance

If sounds and styles could be copyrighted, Thurston and Kim would be getting on the phone to this Lowestoft trio right about now enquiring about the dissonant noise breakdowns in the middle of insistent US mid-80s underground line this follows. Sugar Kane, 100%, all those. But then Yuck have made great strides out of Anglo-Xeroxing the late 80s SST roster and Faster Than Robots, going on their Answers On A Postcard EP, don't have time for the too-cool-for-school longeurs that blight Yuck's album. Moreover this is a hell of a ride, coasting on a churning art-pop riff amidst the outbreaks of pedal abuse. It seems an album is already virtually ready. Keep an eye out.

01 Only Romance by fasterthanrobots

A grand day out: Long Division

Spread over six locations in Wakefield, Long Division is the brainchild of ambitious promoters and fanzineists Rhubarb Bomb, whose raison d'etre is simple enough - get a load of bands they love, set up in a few gig spaces (including the cathedral) and set up a day's worth of discerning entertainment on a low-key basis so the place doesn't get flooded with day trippers. It looks like the best of the year's newcomers, and as they've tempted us up north with the power of the bill alone all credit to them.

Los Campesinos!
You know, off the advert. And so phase four of the LC! experience is underway, the band having spent last month with reliable old John Goodmanson in Catalunya recording a new album, their first in the octet line-up, as well as working further on their snail's pace but excellent Heat Rash project. Says Gareth of his new set of lyrics "I’ve been in a fairly ‘dark place’ of late... It’s great to have this new album to channel ‘my shit’ into, but in turn it’s also often difficult to want to address these things when really they’re the sort of things you’d rather move on from and deal with." Business as usual, then. Here's one of the new songs played live, just muffled enough to keep its subtleties secret for now.



The Wedding Present
As seen on Gareth's T-shirt occasionally. No new material as known about yet from David Gedge and this year's colleagues, but it marks a summer of decently busy touring after last year's 21st anniversary tours for Bizarro. Whatever, a Wedding Present gig is still a buzzing affair as large men bash into each other in front of a man who still recognises the power of a jangly guitar and a sardonic lyric.

The Wave Pictures
There's on the surface very little bother about a Wave Pictures gig - the three of them get up on stage, dip liberally into David Tattersall's ever growing back catalogue and enjoy themselves bruising everyone's hearts. Except, of course, what would be a post-Hefner literate bedsit band are lifted into something else whenever a solo settles in, particularly some of Tattersall's coruscating Neil Young-like extemporising. Also on the bill are longtime friends, recording partners and sometime backing band actors Stanley Brinks and Freschard, so they're going to have a day as busy as the 100 capacity room they're playing in. Maybe if we're fortunate they'll get Jonny to sing one.



Emmy The Great
Generally Emmy The Great gigs progress thus: a clutch of fine, astute songs, a moan about the quality of her guitar, the odd cover version, some mocking of some member of her backing band and a lot of little girl lost in her emotions. With her second album Virtue out two days later this is a good time to be catching up with an understated talent.

The Lovely Eggs
Who knows what goes on in Holly Ross and David Blackwell's collective minds. This year's second album Cob Dominos is as wide-eyed and wayward as they come, finding its metier in the conflicting areas of distorted guitar screes, twee DIY accroutrements, celebrating the mundane, swearing and a whole new dimension of quiet-loud. Imaginative, individual and completely ridiculous.



ALSO: We'd put Napoleon IIIrd among the top five without any hesitation too, except we covered him when we previewed Brainlove Festival. Darwin Deez plays, but there's plenty of good stuff. Having said that, Kate Jackson's demos so far have hovered around the ropey end, but this will be her third solo gig so we should get a better idea of whether working with Bernard Butler has turned her individual style completely to mush. Emma Pollock made a good go of going solo, maybe tips could be shared. Other picks: the now plainly named I Like Trains, The Birthday Kiss's first gig, The Wind Up Birds' satirical ire, Spectrals' surf noir, Fonda 500's oddness, noisy new wave locals Runaround Kids and toured indiepop Leodensians Just Handshakes (We're British).

Calendar: 11th June, though there are events on the 10th (free gig at The Hop headlined by Shrag) and 12th (free local bands across town)
Tickets: £12 - see website

EDIT: Quasi-review here

Tracklist: Chad Valley - Now That I'm Real (How Does It Feel)

If Blessing Force being the space-indie commune of choice these days, Hugo Manuel is its star commander. With Jonquil somehow ending up as his sideline, Manuel's solo side sets the controls for the heart of the solar system. Some may pin this to the sound of early 2010 chillwave but it's far more than that, the beachfront haze playfulness is a mere starting point for waves of subtle synth, mysterious vocal echo and insistent digital percussion including bits of steel drums before in pops Rose Dagul off Rhosyn as a counterpoint. Call it hipster electro if you really feel like it, but there's a heart beating under the machine's carapace.

Now That I'm Real (How Does It Feel) ft. Rose Dagul by chadvalley

Tracklist: Ace Bushy Striptease - Bitte Orca

Not a Dirty Projectors cover, though almost certainly named as if it were one. Birmingham's most succinct collapsible indiepoppers release fourth album The Words That You Said Are Still Wet In My Head soon, replete with some corking track titles. It sounds like every band Los Campesinos! have ever toured with played all at once and then compressed into 94 seconds of crashing and rushing. Oh yeah, and they're supporting Help Stamp Out Loneliness at one of our nights in late July.

A grand day out: Dot To Dot

The annual spring bank holiday touring show is back on the road this year, stopping off across Bristol, Nottingham and Manchester to deposit six or seven venues' worth of new, exciting or both artists. And all for £30. While there's nothing to match the no-really-what?-ness booking of Liars and Beach House together last year there's more than enough of greater interest to justify schlepping round a city centre of a valuable bank holiday day in the name of music, and here's five prime examples:

And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead
(Bristol 9.45pm Anson Rooms, Nottingham 9.30pm Trent Uni, Manchester not at all)
Oh yes. You forget how much they were tipped to be enormous around 2000-2001, Source Tags And Codes earning a perfect 10.0 off Pitchfork, and as much as their recent albums have become bogged down in 'experimental' longeurs Texan roughnecks AYWKUBTTOD remain a vital live band. They can hardly do otherwise, in truth, with two drumkits and up to three guitars at once rubbing up against smart prog-space-hardcore that at its most direct and thrilling could blow the top of your head off. Wonder if they can still afford to wreck the stage.

Dananananaykroyd
(Bristol 6.45pm Anson Rooms, Nottingham 7pm Trent Uni, Manchester 7.30pm Academy 2)
It's two and a half years since this corner of the blogosphere has seen the fight-pop emissaries live, a frankly unacceptable state of affairs. With Ross Robinson-produced second album There Is A Way on its way on 13th June the second drumkit has been ditched, good news for the band's personal space while in their Transit but potentially leaving a big gap where the pummelling used to be. No matter, with John Baillie Jnr upgraded to co-singer the extraordinary ADHD energy, fun and level of ideas, both musically and what to do during the gaps, they exert will remain at high levels. DO A WALL OF CUDDLES.



Colourmusic
(Bristol 5.30pm Cooler, Nottingham 7.30pm Trent Uni Pulse, Manchester 8.45pm Deaf Institute)
Now this could be something. Last year in that Trent Uni bar alcove we saw Islet blow many away with a unique staging, and this year's odd undercard show could come from the Oklahoma psych-fuzz outfit whose album My ____ Is Pink - no, that's what it's called - is one of our unsung records of the year so far. Reports of the live show involve matching boiler suits, streamers, interactivity, volume and some tremendous facial hair.



Fixers
(Bristol 6.15pm Academy 2, Nottingham 11pm Bodega, Manchester 7.30pm Academy 3)
We think we've described both of the Oxford not-members-of-Blessing Force-any-more-thank-you-very-much collective's first two singles as Brian Wilson meets Animal Collective. You get the idea, anyway - sunshine harmonies, tornado stacks of psychedelic noise with dreamlike electronics and pop melodies both going on underneath. They can carry it off live without dropping off either.

Cults
(Bristol Louisiana 10.15pm, Nottingham midnight Bodega, Manchester 8pm Club Academy)
And here's your wild card. Still pretty much an unknown live quantity, such was the pace of their blog frenzy, Madeline and Brian plus friends are by some early accounts still working towards a unified method of transposing their giving a kick up the backside to 60s flowery pop to the stage. Mind you, they played ten times at SXSW so if they haven't got it together by now...




ALSO: Well, loads, so quickly through the top and best of the rest. De facto headliners are Hurts, bringing the poker faced Go West synths to a party also crashed by laff-riot power popists We Are Scientists, sunshine indie-pop irritant Darwin Deez (Manchester only) and the hopefully still far freer and more inventive live than on increasingly dragging record Guillemots. Also in prime positions The Joy Formidable bring the surprisingly loud and wayward in a good way live show, as exemplified by their performance on Conan O'Brien's show last week, in particular the noise-out ending:



Some other featured artists, quickly: Blessing Force math-disco brainiacs Trophy Wife, bank robber-masked synth-pop freewheelers Is Tropical, tightly strung power-folk-grungers Stagecoach, beatific nightmare pop fuel Braids, intriguing folkie Benjamin Francis Leftwich, blog-goth witchery Niki & the Dove, Bella Union-signed spectral slowcore duo Lanterns On The Lake (Nottingham and Manchester only), gently futuristic psych-pop Hot Horizons and nu-shoegaze far better than most Spotlight Kid (Nottingham only).

Calendar: Bristol 28th May, Nottingham 29th May, Manchester 30th May
Tickets: £30 through alt-tickets

Tracklist: Diagrams - Antelope

Diagrams, for in this case it is a he (and this used to say who he was, as it did in the original press release, but apparently now it's an enigma) definitely sounds a lot like someone specifically. Jona Lewie, maybe, but that's not exactly right. Anyway, his command of sunshine pop being driven down a private road at night while tied up and blindfolded in the boot is sumptuous, not too far from Gruff Rhys or Sean O'Hagan's explorations into tropicalia flavoured pastorialisms. There's quite a bit of this acute psychedelic pop going round Britain at the moment, and the more of it that's this standard the better.

Diagrams 'Antelope' by diagrams

Tracklist: Shy And The Fight - All That We See Or Seem

Another example of what a band did next after having a track on the STN compilation. Actually, technically it's what they did before, as Chester's positive folk collective have put out a free five track download of songs they didn't have anything else to do with. This track, which has as far as we can tell mutated into a song called Dream Within A Dream which is in their current set, comes across as a junior Leisure Society (whose new album is well worth the effort, by the way), a classic acoustic pop melody with little need of adding to lest it spoil the mood, but they do anyway and when a sunrise is evoked amid much darker intentions with the help of massed backing vocals and spare glockenspiel it seems entirely fitting the mood.

Tracklist: Maybeshewill - Red Paper Lanterns

What we like about Maybeshewill, and what has led us to highlight a track from their forthcoming third album (I Was Here For A Moment, Then I Was Gone, out May 30th), is they don't overcomplicate things with twiddliness. Instead they'll dig out a full series of riffs that reach out for the sky while everything around the guitars, chiefly aereated synth noises, drives on their jackhammer nature, as much indebted to math as the ever present in such instrumental rock Explosions In The Sky elements. That they manage all that here, ending on looped fucked up beats and processed feedback, with the aid of twinkly glockenspiel too is quite something. Pretty and damaging at the same time.

Tracklist: Pris - The Better You Look The More You See

A nearly all-girl outfit who like a trashy, pouty three minute guitar-pop glam racket, marinade themselves in eyeliner, mascara, vodka and fag smoke, fire off pithy critiques of other bands with caps lock on and quote Bret Easton Ellis in a song title. Yes, Nicky Wire is a fan, why do you ask? No word on whether they favour the feather boa, but we haven't had a band like this for a long time. More Waitresses than Shampoo, they know what they're doing and have the nous to know the smartness behind playing quasi-dumb, smuggling smartly expressed feelings behind the snottiness and the "yeah yeah yeah!"s. They're the first band we've ever seen to cite Birdland as an influence. This will be their first single out some time soon and they have some London dates impending (1st June Buffalo Bar, 17th June Garage, 6th July Dublin Castle, 21st July Water Rats, 26th July Monarch). Best get on it.

Pris - The Better You Look The More You See. by Somethingfortheweekend

Tracklist: King Post Kitsch - Don't You Touch My Fucking Honeytone

That lyric doesn't actually turn up in the song, excellently. As yesterday this is new material from someone who appears on We Make Our Own Mythologies, a new name to the Song, By Toad marque of quality and distinction. Out this week on coloured 7", it utilises a scrappy amp in the name of a West Coast garage rock'n'roll riff, an earworm of a melody and a whole lot of obliquely personal words.

King Post Kitsch - Don't You Touch My Fucking Honeytone by Song, by Toad

Tracklist: Under Alien Skies - Cedar

We donated the first lump sum, £170, accrued from our compilation We Make Our Own Mythologies the other day - a huge thank you to everyone who's bought the album so far. That of course is still very much available, 20 STN favourites for at least £3, all proceeds to Macmillan Cancer Support. One of those represented, Under Alien Skies, have unveiled a new track from their currently WIP third EP and it's the usual stew of post-AnCo unsettled dreaminess. This time things seeming a little clearer, if you can say that about all the ideas the duo clearly continue to harbour, as alternately skylarking and grumbling synths give way to hazed out, hypnotic majestic skimming across a landscape of broken beats, chilled out nearly shoegaze layers and an underpinning folkish sensibility. The usual, then.

cedar by underalienskies

Tracklist: Bastardgeist - COPS

What a great uncouth name. This latest addition to the Brainlove travelling carney show is Joel Midden of Chicago, whose work throws together samples, odd polyrhythmic percussion, processed vocals and, as his primary weapon of choice, kalimba. On this cut from an album released here on the 30th the African thumb piano is pressed into tinkly, starry, musical box-type loops as above it things go not unlike TV On The Radio in the barber shop harmonies at multiple octaves over undulating carefully outlain atmospheric obliqueness. Midden is in the country from Sunday, where he's at the Norwich Playhouse Bar, before moving on to Cardiff on Monday 23rd (with Chris T-T and Pagan Wanderer Lu, which sounds like a fine night out), Oxford Wednesday, Newcastle Thursday, Leeds Friday and that BRNLV Festival we mentioned yesterday on Saturday.

Bastardgeist - COPS (Brainlove Records) by brainlove

A grand day out: Brainlove Festival

So to the first in an occasional series this spring not quite summer. We know some people don't have the staying power or will to sleep on soil (and that's just those booked into Travelodges, ho ho) to do festivals, and we're aware that a lot of people don't find multi-venue city roustelays of the Camden Crawl/Great Escape type agreeing with them as they can only get normal wristbands and hence get crowded out of all venues below O2 size by A&Rs. Instead, let us recommend festivals that take place in one or two days and have full knowledge of onions when it comes to booking policy.

Over the six years we've been doing this you may just have become aware of our pervading love of 90% of the output of Brainlove Records, home to electronic effects box-toting DIY waifs and strays and marshalled by the keen ears of man of strength and beard John Brainlove. His annual general meeting is Brainlove Festival, every spring bank holiday weekend at the Brixton Windmill, and this year's crop provides particularly fine fare. Some choice cuts...

Meursault
This year's headliners have had a lineup rejig of late and the demo we've heard suggests something if not thrashier then certainly a greater barrage of sound, somewhere more straight-up anguished. That stated All Creatures Will Make Merry wasn't our number three album of 2010 out of mere loyalty to Song, By Toad's consistently great output and that album's sense of space and time, not to mention extravagantly gifted songwriting and Neil Pennycook's hoarse bellow, carried through to their live work.



Napoleon IIIrd
From 2010's number three to 2010's number four. More directly this time, as James Mabbett and his recently acquired band will be playing the whole of Christiania with ace video/animation wrangler Broxen Pixel VJing behind him.



Pagan Wanderer Lu
We thought Andy Regan, ten years in, had gone on hiatus at the end of last year - in fact there were murmurings that he was considering giving up the PWL handle. In fact it turns out he's been quietly making a new album and he'll be playing chunks of it for the first time (including, if we're reading this correctly, debuting the songs to his own label boss) as well as whatever you fancy from his intelligently cracked back catalogue.

Mat Rivere
When we put on the Brainlove tour in October Riviere spent the whole set on his knees fiddling with various effects and noise boxes and took up the rest of the time watching The Room. That combined about sums his approach up, and here he'll be collaborating with cellist Oliver Barrett of Bleeding Heart Narrative.

Bear Driver
The Leeds outfit have been there or thereabouts for two or three years now but it's only in the second half of 2010 that they began really showing what they're capable of. What that is is a sound influenced by the underground US all-stars (Broken Social Scene, Pavement, Grandaddy, NMH) but with their own exuberance and way with a warped melody.




ALSO: Chicago kalimba viruoso and drone-psych exponent Bastargeist, of whom more tomorrow; industrial Dadaist but largely unclassifiable septet Kreatiivmootor; fellow Estonian lo-fi loop guru Multiphonic Rodent; electronic post-punks Patterns; Norwich duo about whom we can tell you nothing else Octagon Court; intimate Song, By Toad folkie Rob St John; Tom Milsom, Snorri Helgason, Tawny Owl and an as yet unnamed outdoor headliner TBA on the 21st. Plus DJ sets from acclaimed Italo-odd remixer to the micro-stars Dreamtrak, Matthew off Song By Toad and Brainlove himself.

Calendar: 28th-29th May, Brixton Windmill
Tickets: A tenner through Musicglue or Gigantic

Tracklist: Tall Ships - Hit The Floor

So angular it's actively impressionistic math-pop is the universal currency, it seems. Now Falmouth has a fine exponent of its own, one Big Scary Monsters are looking after at that. Fed through with the sort of guitars that deviate just when you think you've got the mark of them, they're as frantic and hyper as they are technically gifted after a Dananananaykroyd style with the fightiness thoroughly cut up and uncarefully rearranged. The ever spiralling and crescendoing tightly coiled riffs that pile on top of what most bands would call a middle eight and continuing into the conclusive rush as if they were the most natural motif sounds like tossing off what would be the life's work of many a lesser band.

Hit The Floor by Tall Ships