Elizabeth Morris - Optimism

Morris, pied piper figure of the current indiepop scene, is imminently moving to Italy. This doesn't mean Allo Darlin' are splitting, at least not imminently - in fact they've recently been recording their third album for release early next year, which from live outings sounds like the next step onwards, and have a handful of dates over the next couple of months. In the meantime Morris had written some more personal, piano-based songs while at home in Australia and wanting to get them down before leaving London recorded them (and a Wave Pictures cover) just two days ago chiefly on Darren Hayman's famous ship's piano for a four-track EP Optimism only available through Bandcamp. Spare, bruised and teetering on the precipice of emotional surety it's pretty clear these would never be full band songs but they bolster Morris' way with lyrical imagery and understanding what love is all about.

The Superman Revenge Squad Band - A Funny Thing You Said

Longtime readers, if there are any left, will recall our coming over all unnecessary a few years ago about the lyrical greatness of Ben Parker through his two self-distributed albums and one EP as Superman Revenge Squad, a stream of consciousness set of abstractive self-lacerating observations and broadcasts from the slough of despond. After a few years away from that name ploughing a couple of other furrows he's formed a band, which while wrecking the minimal directness of those records does bring quite the colour palette with sax, cello and accordion worked in. Notably the band also includes Adam, Ben's brother and oppo in the still magnificent Nosferatu D2, and that almost relentless dynamism is as much the key as Ben's thoughts on the passage of time. The soon-come album There Is Nothing More Frightening Than The Passing Of Time is out 16th September in limited numbers and preorderable from the mighty Audio Antihero.

Let's Buy Happiness - Run

It's been a noticeably long time - fourteen months, in fact - since we last heard from the shimmering Geordie lovelies. Turns out, thankfully, that the most recent part of that time has been spent recording an album, titled Chants For Friends and out... soon. They've got a tour in October, of which more shortly, so maybe around then. Don't be fooled by the gentle acoustic lilt of the first half of its first taste, as once Sarah Hall's emotive voice starts echoing in and expressing self-doubt it looks set to lift off sooner rather than later, which it does with some trusty tremelo via a meander downstream. Less beauteous than it's letting on.








October dates:



4th & 5th Newcastle Cluny 2

6th Leeds Brudenell

7th London Hoxton Bar & Kitchen

8th Bath Moles

11th Banbury Also Known As (that's what it's called, apparently)

12th Sheffield Bowery

15th Manchester Night & Day

16th Sunderland Pop Recs

18th Aberdeen Tunnels

20th Glasgow Broadcast

21st Inverness Hootananny

23rd Edinburgh Sneaky Pete's

Joanna Gruesome - Sugarcrush

It's looking like a very decent end of year for albums, and one real dark horse is emerging in the form of Joanna Gruesome's Weird Sister, out 9th September on home of the hits Fortuna Pop! We've already heard Secret Surprise; a steroid-enabled reworking of a song originally found on their 2011 self-released EP begins deep in dissonace country, cuts away to sweet vocal melodies while never quite letting go of the frantic rhythmic pace and post-Sonic Youth scrap metal yard blasts of proto-noise guitar, then slides into a coda two and a half minutes or so in that's frankly a right no-wave commotion. An aural cleanser and a statement of serrated intent alright.

The Ten: great performances from The Tube

 All new features that aren't just tracks die an almost immediate death on STN but let's press on with them regardless. Simple enough, The Ten, we'd like to think reflecting the post-Buzzfeed clamour for lists (though not the post-Buzzfeed clamour for facile gifs, those can fuck right off) - irregular collections of ten things, whether it be a guest list or a load of links, like this first one, putting together ten YouTube clips from the most beloved part of Channel 4's 1980s cultural hand.


The Jam - A Town Called Malice, appearing on the first show on one of their last live appearances


Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Relax, the performance with which they get discovered, followed by a somewhat overdressed and outnumbered Jools gaining exact knowledge on their style


The Smiths - Hand In Glove

The Proclaimers - Throw The R Away. It's not in this clip but Paula Yates famously introduced it as "something really weird", though by the looks of her she can talk

The Art Of Noise - Close To The Edit in literal clown outfits with a mass of Fairlights, synths, samplers and a mixing console, Paul Morley adding comments as is his wont. It should however be noted the setup hadn't extended as far as replacing the audience with dummies.

Trouble Funk - Still Smokin' Tyne-side

Dexys Midnight Runners - There There My Dear, the infamous nine minute reworking with a talky bit in the middle and Kevin doing press-ups

The Redskins - Hold On/Keep On Keepin' On with a not totally successful interjection from a striking miner

The Fall - Smile/2x4 chosen and introduced by John Peel

Grandmaster Flash - The Message, performing some of the worst breakdancing ever committed to tape. That's not a real policeman at the end.

And the rest: His Clancyness/Islet/Mammoth Penguins

His Clancyness - Zenith Diamond
Just four and a half years or thereabouts since we first wrote about Jonathan Clancy's solo project he announces an album, Vicious out 7th October. Actually, maybe because it's now officially a trio, it sounds more in the A Classic Education wheelhouse than the drifting lilt of old, a chugging riff and driving motorik-ish rhythm pulling along an occasionally unwilling vocal, darker, psych-ier and punchier than what we'd heard before; that its producer Chris Koltay has worked with Bradford Cox and Liars makes perfect sense.




Islet - Tripping Through The Blue Room (Part II)
You imagine that when it came to recording Released By The Movement, out 14th October, producer Stephen 'Sweet Baboo' Black didn't so much do the intricate instrumentation setting up as scatter a few live mikes, press record and hope for the best. Sounding like it's been partially recorded through a wall, dark ambient washes, distantly obscured psychedelic sounds, tribal rhythms and no legible words at all, suggesting alongside first taster Triangulation Station that this may be an even more elusive record than Illuminated People.




Mammoth Penguins - Propped Up By Affection
Not a name you'll be familiar with but a voice you might, that being of Emma Kupa, most recently one third of Without Feathers but more notably late of Standard Fare and now of, well, a scrappy indie-rock trio, more raw and cocksure but with the questioning heart intact. Just a set of demos for the time being but they sound confident and ready for battle.

Rose Elinor Dougall - Strange Warnings

After a stint as part of the Mark Ronson charabanc and having watched her brother become the famous one with Toy it does seem a while since Dougall has been around but this first taste of a second album we know nothing else about yet is a fine step onwards from Without Why, warmly floaty psych-pop that runs on intricate understatement, laced with aereated synths on nodding terms with Stereolab before nearly disappearing down a technicolour plughole. Rose plays the Shacklewell Arms, London on August 14th.

Sky Larkin - Loom

We've been anticipating a third album for a while now and now we have confirmation - Motto (we've already heard the title track), 16th September, produced as usual by John Goodmanson and preceded by a week by this single, perhaps more immediate than usual but very definitely that quiet explosion of lyrical intrigue - it's about "presence after loss", says Katie - and dynamic wired hooks we've come to expect.





September tour dates? September tour dates, all except Sunderland and Glasgow with the promising much Radstewart supporting:

17th London Lexington
18th Leicester Firebug
19th Sheffield Harley
20th Sunderland Pop Recs Ltd (Frankie & The Heartstrings' gaff, that)
21st Glasgow Nice'n'Sleazy
23rd Leeds Brudenell
24th Southampton Joiners
25th Nottingham Bodega
26th Cardiff 10 Feet Tall
28th Aldershot West End Centre
30th Manchester Deaf Institute

Jetplane Landing - Walls Of Derry

Just when you thought it was safe to go to Derry and openly question general levels of rock commitment, JPL are back and sounding huge with fourth album Don't Try on September 2nd. We've heard the full thing and can report that rather than expand on the funk-laden left turn of the last time we saw them six years ago on Backlash Cop (STN's number nine album of the year, mind) it sounds like 2002 returning, more specifically the Million Dead/Reuben/Hundred Reasons landscape the Els Quatre Gats EP's full frontal post-hardcore assault was launched into - rarely a proper let-up, slamming boxcutter knife-edge melodies into big fuzzy riffs and Andrew Ferris' overwordy howling against the massed ranks. The pits will be unstoppable.



September dates:
2nd Sheffield Corporation
3rd Glasgow Stereo
4th Manchester Soup Kitchen
5th Nottingham Bodega
6th London Lexington
7th Cardiff Clwb Ifor Bach
11th Dublin Workman’s Club
13th Derry Glassworks
14th Belfast Limelight 2

The Magic Theatre - I Got The Answer

Quirky indie found a good few discerning homes around the tail end of the 90s, few more live contenders than Ooberman's take on whimsically personalised melodicism. That band's joint voices Dan Popplewell and Sophia Churney now trade in baroque folk with a curiosity-fuelled twist, and from a debut album due in the autumn is this sweetly lovely positivist countrified lilt that suits this weather pretty well, if occasionally interrupted by the South American percussive jam next door.

The many faces of Alanna McArdle: Joanna Gruesome/Ides

Joanna Gruesome are a band we've written about on here before, Cardiff-based youthful noiseniks who turn from languishing shoegaze to raging post-hardcore on the spin of a dime. That excitable explosiveness has been synthesised into a hopefully cohesive whole by Hookworms' MJ as producer, given the title Weird Sister and set for September 16th UK release via the Fortuna Pop!/Slumberland axis of ace noise-pop. Going on the stumbling, spinning like a top wild-eyed post-riot grrrl/Sonic Youth determination of Secret Surprise they're on their way.




And when she's not doing that singer Alanna McArdle has her own outlet Ides, a home for her minimalist guitar and haunted/bruised vocal telling of despair and feeling lost inside herself. Prisms is coming out as part of Art Is Hard's Postcard Club, which as the name suggests is a limited edition run of specially designed postcodes with unique download code.




Ides plays Brighton Hope on 9th August, Bournemouth 60 Million Postcards on 10th and a house show in Bristol on the 12th, all with King Of Cats. Both entities play together in London twice in the month, on the 6th at Buffalo Bar with that man King Of Cats and the mighty Gindrinker, and on 31st at the Victoria, Dalston for Art Is Hard's third birthday, also shared with Best Friends, The Black Tambourines, Gorgeous Bully, Playlounge, Nai Harvest, Birdskulls and RadStewart (yes, Joanna Gruesome and Radstewart are playing the same bill, leave it now). After that, they will progress to overcome their foes and conquer the world. Possibly.

Adam Stafford - Please

Texturally rugged with a soft shelled beating heart front and centre, Imaginary Walls Collapse (out 15th July) is Glasgow's Stafford's first release for Song, By Toad. Something of Low about this in the precisely chiming and reverberating (but not reverbed) guitar and emotionally bare falsetto, but with hints of classic soul production in its rhythmic pulse and the sort of direct appeal chorus that reaches down and tingles the spine.

Cloud - Mother Sea

The first signing to Audio Antihero in ages, Cloud is a LA-via-NY single man (we think) who going on the first taste of debut album Comfort Songs makes the kind of home-reared unsteadily towering solo constructions and swirling sonics we tend to go for, layering an increasingly dense fog of heatwarped psychedelia - could the pulsing rhythm make the title a reference to Can's Mother Sky at all? Just asking - onto unsteady melodies and a decent amount of self-doubt before heading deep into a freak-folk coda. There might just be something very interesting and wide-ranging going on here. Download it for free below, why not.

Summer Of Blood - Let's Get Lost

Reenie and Dafydd's first properly downloadable (for free) offering throbs with mystique like OMD lost in the haunted woods, swapping spooked chants amid downtuned single note synths and pulses that occasionally turn shortwave radio-like.

A quick catchup

We've been posting a lot of recent new stuff over on our underfollowed* Tumblr. As you're too lazy to read that, here's some of our favourite recent offerings:

- Introducing Telegram: they've played three gigs, already done a Marc Riley session, have been taken under the wing of the Horrors/Toy/Charlie Boyer axis and sound pretty good for it

- Martha - Sycamore

- Pins - Stay True

- Stairs To Korea - The Afternoons

- The Wytches - Beehive Queen

- Trophy Wife - Glue

- Codex Leicester - The Open Arms Of Las Vegas

- Lanterns On The Lake - Another Tale From Another English Town

- Kiran Leonard - Dear Lincoln

- Benin City - Faithless

- Hooded Fang - Ode To Subterrania


* Not quite as underfollowed, however, as our other two ongoing projects, The Shine Years recapping the Britpop compilations track for track and Bottom Of The Top 40, a kind of anti-Popular.

Ghost Outfit - Killuhs

"A British No Age" is far too reductive and pat a phrase but it's what initially comes to mind listening to the controlled noise and post-shoegaze fury of similarly two-piece Mancunians Ghost Outfit, who release debut album I Want You To Destroy Me on June 24th. Swathed in tension with distortion pedal abuse helping the monolithic guitar noise move like an iceberg, where even the breakdown sounds like a migraine, Jacq Hardman's vocals sound like the last appeal of a desperate man.

Nadine Shah - To Be A Young Man

You've got to have confidence in your abilities if you're calling your debut album Love Your Dum And Mad, but what we've heard of Shah so far suggests she has ability far outstripping doubts. The advance single from the album, out a fortnight in advance on 8th July, may sound like it takes her further down the PJ Harvey circa 1995 path but the pained redemption tale against the gothic melodrama is purely artist's own.

Weekends away: spring bank holiday weekend

Weekends away: spring bank holiday weekend The weekly-unless-there's-nothing-decent-happening clashguide to ensure you don't miss the good stuff at next weekend's worthwhile festivals:

Dot To Dot
Fred Perry sponsorship is all around. For some reason the usual Bank Holiday Monday Manchester date has been moved back to Friday which doesn't seem entirely in keeping with the alldayer flavour, but there you go. The headliners and big stage lineups are uniquely underwhelming this year and there aren't any of the usual surprising US visitors - trust us, we've seen Liars, Trail Of Dead and Beach House at D2D in the past - so these are a little more sparse than usual.

FRIDAY 24th - Manchester

15:45 Butcher The Bar (Deaf Institute)
16:05 Heart-Ships (Sound Control Loft)
17:30 Golden Fable (Attic)
18:00 Bipolar Sunshine (Gorilla)
20:30 Nadine Shah (SSR)
21:30 Blackeye (Attic)
21:45 Wolf Alice (Deaf Institute)
23:00 London Grammar (Gorilla)
23:30 Story Books (Joshua Brooks)
00:15 Bo Ningen (Zoo)
01:00 Pins (Sound Control Loft)

SATURDAY 25th - Bristol

13:30 The Lonely Tourist (Fleece)
17:30 Golden Fable (Louisiana)
18:15 London Grammar (Academy 1)
18:30 Pins (Thekla Top Deck)
19:30 Hawk Eyes (Thekla Top Deck)
20:00 Only Real (Thekla)
20:30 Bipolar Sunshine (Louisiana)
21:00 The Ramona Flowers (Exchange Basement)
21:30 Story Books (Birdcage)
22:15 Hysterical Injury (Stag & Hounds)
22:30 Wolf Alice (Louisiana)
23:00 Bo Ningen (Thekla)

SUNDAY 26th - Nottingham

14:00 Bitter Strings (Rock City Main)
14:30 Pins (Rescue Rooms)
16:00 Golden Fable (Red Room)
17:00 Hawk Eyes (Red Room)
18:00 We Three And The Death Rattle (Corner)
19:45 Gallery 47 (Rescue Rooms Bar)
20:00 Blackeye (Red Room)
20:30 Dancing Years (Stealth)
21:30 Bipolar Sunshine (Stealth)
23:15 Chapel Club (Rock City Basement)
23:30 Bo Ningen (Rescue Rooms)


Handmade Festival
Full disclosure, we're involved with the organisation of this festival, which really means sending out a lot of emails every couple of weeks and receiving two back, so you'll excuse the push, but if we weren't involved this new Leicester city festival using often unusual spaces - there's a pop-up cinema in a 15th century guildhall, for one thing - would be very much worth a look. Tickets only £25 for the three days too, an extra tenner if you want to see a Robin Ince-helmed afterparty on the Monday.

FRIDAY
Rolo Tomassi, Maybeshewill, Codex Leicester (People's Photographic Gallery)
Arcane Roots (Firebug)

SATURDAY
Johnny Foreigner, My First Tooth (Firebug)
Sam Duckworth, Grace Petrie (Cookie Jar)
We Were Promised Jetpacks (People's Photographic Gallery)
Her Name Is Calla, Peter Wyeth, Katie Malco (Bishop Street Methodist Church)

SUNDAY
Dutch Uncles, Tall Ships, Sky Larkin, Dark Dark Horse, Silent Devices (Firebug)
The Twilight Sad, We Three And The Death Rattle (Guildhall)
TE Morris (Leicester Castle)


Field Day
Ah, Field Day at Victoria Park. Intended as the hippest of village fetes, usually a throwback to one of those early 70s rock festivals where nobody could hear or eat anything other than mud, except without the natural ditches to relieve themselves into. Enter at your own risk.

12:55 Charlie Boyer & The Voyeurs (Laneway)
13:00 Gabriel Bruce (Eat Your Own Ears)
14:05 James Yorkston (Village Mentality)
14:30 Amateur Best (Red Bull Music Academy)
15:00 Dark Dark Dark (Shacklewell Arms)
16:10 Savages (Laneway)
16:40 Francois & The Atlas Mountains (Shacklewell Arms)
17:55 King Krule (Village Mentality)
18:15 Everything Everything (Eat Your Own Ears)
18:20 Connan Mockasin (Shacklewell Arms)
19:10 Wild Nothing (Shacklewell Arms)
19:30 Bat For Lashes (Eat Your Own Ears) OR Daughter (Laneway)
20:00 Toy (Shacklewell Arms)
20:20 Do Make Say Think (Village Mentality)
20:40 Four Tet (Eat Your Own Ears)
21:50 Animal Collective (Eat Your Own Ears)


Now We Are Weekender
We've been involved in promoting this too insomuch as we picked up about fifty abandoned flyers after they came to our alldayer in March. Based at The Public in West Bromwich and £23 for the two days there's actually two stages but nobody really seems to overlap so we can recommend a few names without fear of awkward clashes.

SATURDAY
15:40 MJ Hibbett and the Validators
17:00 August Actually
17:40 Eat Y'Self Pretty
18:20 Cosines
19:40 Victoria & Jacob
21:00 Ace Bushy Striptease
22:20 Allo Darlin'
23:00 Kid Canaveral

SUNDAY
14:00 MJ Hibbett & Steve present Total Hero Team
19:40 Shana Tova
22:20 Darren Hayman
23:00 Johnny Foreigner

Weekends away: The Great Escape

Brighton's annual takeover by marauding hordes of attention grabbing big names, showcasing Norwegians playing four or five times, major label hopes, mathrock challengers and suchlike. Pretty much everything bar a few standalone gigs is sold out, but just in case you're there next weekend allow us to mark your cards. As usual some of the early selections are made on blurb alone because we aren't mad, and though we've limited it to one slot per artist some of them are playing several times over so watch out.


THURSDAY 16th

12.40 Made In Japan (The Haunt)
13.30 Oyama (Above Audio)
14.30 Honeyblood (Dome Studio)
15.30 Young*Husband (Prince Albert)
18.30 Whirr (Concorde 2)    
19.15 Eaux (Digital)
19.30 Girls Names (Coalition)
19.45 Fist City (The Hope)
20.00 Of Rust & Bone (Metro Hub stage)   
20.30 Cloud Boat (Brighthelm Centre)
21:00 Fear of Men (Latest Music Bar)
21.15 Pinkunoizu (Prince Albert)
21.45 Everything Everything (Dome Concert Hall)
22.00 Beach Fossils (Green Door Store)
22.15 Balthazar (Prince Albert)
22.30 Lord Huron (dome studio)
23.15 Melody's Echo Chamber (Corn Exchange)
23.30 Phosphorescent (dome studio)
00.00 On An On (Coalition)
00.30 Husky Rescue (Brighthelm Centre)   


FRIDAY 17th

12.15 Lawrence Arabia (The Haunt)
12.45 Kid Karate (Audio)
13.45 AA Wallace (Blind Tiger)
14.00 Jacco Gardner (Komedia Studio Bar)
14:15 Katie Malco (Pavilion Tavern)
14.30 Amateur Best (Fitzherberts)
15.00 Skip&Die (Komedia Studio Bar)
15.30 Alarm Bells (dome studio)
16.00 Luke Sital-Singh (Fiddlers Elbow)
17:15 Bear Cavalry (Pavilion Tavern)
18.45 Shuyler Jansen (Unitarian Church)
19.15 Golden Fable (Sticky Mikes Frog Bar)
19.30 Marika Hackman (Unitarian Church)
19.45 Velociraptor (The Haunt)
20.00 Nadine Shah (St Bartholomew's Church)
20:15 My First Tooth (Pavilion Tavern)
20.30 Caitlin Park (Queens Hotel)    
20.45 Marques Toliver (St Bartholomew's Church)
21.15 Spectres (Above Audio)
21.30 Charlie Boyer & The Voyeurs (dome studio)
21:45 Stagecoach (Pavilion Tavern)
22.00 Towns (Above Audio)
22.15 Drenge (The Hope)
23:15 Tellison (Pavilion Tavern)
22.30 Fear Of Men  (The Basement)
23.30 Royal Canoe (Sticky Mikes Frog Bar)    
23.45 The Adelines (Blind Tiger)
00:20 Fight Like Apes (Pavilion Tavern)
01:25 Johnny Foreigner (Pavilion Tavern)
03:15 Her Parents (Pavilion Tavern)


SATURDAY 18th

12.30 Sisters (The Hope)
13.15 Fenster (Komedia Studio Bar)
13.30 Mary Epworth (Komedia)
14.30 WALL (Komedia)
15.30 Za! (Prince Albert)
16:35 Son of Dave (St Ann’s Well Gardens)
16:45 Olympians (Pav Tav)
18:15 Hold Your Horse Is (Pav Tav)
18.30 Parlour (Audio)    
19.00 Eliza and The Bear (St Mary's Church)
19.45 The Penelopes (Queens Hotel)    
20.00 Cheatahs (Coalition)
20.30 The Physics House Band (Concorde 2)
20.45 Eagulls (Coalition)
21.15 Tall Ships (Concorde 2)
21.30 The Veils (St Mary's Church)
21:50 Grace Petrie (Mrs Fitzherberts)
22.00 Parquet Courts (The Haunt) OR Sweet Baboo (Green Door Store)
22:10 The Bobby McGees (Mrs Fitzherberts)
22.15 Big Deal (Blind Tiger)
23:15 We Are the Physics (Pav Tav)
23.30 Woods (dome studio)

Without Feathers - Red Little Heart

Three voices, three largely acoustic guitars. One voice instantly recognisable (or so STN would hope if you've been following our work) as Emma Kupa formerly of Standard Fare, one less instantaneous but earpricking in Nat Johnson, latterly solo and before that of Monkey Swallows The Universe, and one maybe less so in Norwich-originating singer-songwriter Rory McVicar. They've just released their first three demo tracks for name-your-price download, a lead vocal apiece as it should be, from which we've plucked this Johnson-led exquisite brokenness.