As every year, the Indietracks Festival compilation features plenty of pop thrills, and at £4 for 45 tracks and all proceeds to the Midland Railway Trust you'd be a fool not to take on its delights. For one, there's The Office Worker from the new Mammoth Penguins album John Doe, a concept record featuring Sophie from Haiku Salut, presumably on the electronics. We know little about the record thus far but more should be revealed when they play our night at Leicester Firebug on Wednesday 26th July supporting Chorusgirl, with awkward noisepoppers Jesuscarfish opening. Also sneaking back with their swooning jangle present and correct, if slightly beefier and feedback-y, come fellow STN Presents alumni The Understudies with the lovelorn Is There Gonna Be Dancing? Oh, while we're on Emma Kupa, her immediate release concern is The Heyman Kupa Band's long promised album out on the 21st, Over's Now Overdue bittersweet summer pop finding its meter in this weather.
It's six years since we've heard from Emil Svanängen's awkward pop noir as Loney Dear, his self-titled seventh album released via Peter Gabriel's Real World Records on 22nd September and previewed by Sum, built on bruised confessionals and apreggiating synths like a low budget Bon Iver. Similarly melancholic in an expansive field of modernity is Lost Horizons, newly signed to Bella Union for album Ojalá out November 3rd, which is reasonable given it's Simon Raymonde's own project with Cocteaus-associated 4AD band Dif Juz's Richie Thomas and a selection of guest singers, here the Innocence Mission's Karen Peris swooning in widescreen and making the album a fascinating prospect. The unexpected about-face of Wolf Alice continues - breathy, hazy, built on layers of synths and shoegaze dynamics that devolve into open road dreaminess and sounding nothing like Yuk Foo, it bodes fascinatingly for Visions Of A Life, out 29th September. Ghostpoet's Dark Days & Canapés... well, it has a terrible title, but the album out August 18th promises to be uneasily brooding in an adjacent way to his previous work, very reminiscent of Massive Attack's incoporation of darkly menacing post-punk into their dynamic on Mezzanine.
Hey, time for white indie boy to write about grime, and Dizzee Rascal's back amongst us! No superstar producer, no big name guest slots and definitely no shouting James Corden, Wot U Gonna Do? is self-critical dark drama, Boy In Da Corner grown up and paranoid for what he did with all those years. Skepta, two years Dizzee's senior but who took the long way round to a comparable level of fame, goes in - and not just on the traditional HATERZ - on surprise new track Hypocrisy.
Monday, July 10, 2017
Monday, July 03, 2017
The story so far: STN's top 40 albums of the first half of 2017
So now we've covered the best tracks of the year so far on a month by month basis, let's move on to the longform stuff. Feel free to remind us of these come the end of the year when something else from these six months overtakes the lot.
Algiers - The Underside Of Power
At The Drive-In - in•ter a•li•a
Big Thief - Capacity
Celebration - Wounded Healer
Christian Fitness - slap bass hunks
Cloud Nothings - Life Without Sound
Craig Finn - We All Want The Same
Fazerdaze - Morningside
Fleet Foxes - Crack-Up
Gallops - Bronze Mystic
Grandaddy - Last Place
H. Grimace - Self-Architect
H Hawkline - I Romanticize
Hurray For The Riff Raff - The Navigator
Idles - Brutalism
Jane Weaver - Modern Kosmology
Jens Lekman - Life Will See You Now
Laura Marling - Semper Femina
Los Campesinos! - Sick Scenes
Meursault - I Will Kill Again
Milo's Planes - Individual Development Plan
The Mountain Goats - Goths
Napoleon IIIrd - The Great Lake
Novella - Change Of State
Perfume Genius - No Shape
Piano Magic - Closure
Post War Glamour Girls - Swan Songs
Priests - Nothing Feels Natural
Ralegh Long - Upwards Of Summer
Rose Elinor Dougall - Stellular
Run The Jewels - Run The Jewels 3
Saint Etienne - Home Counties
Sean Rowe - In Darkened Rooms
Spiral Stairs - Doris and the Daggers
Spoon - Hot Thoughts
Sufjan Stevens, Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner, James McAlister - Planetarium
Storm The Palace - Snow, Stars And Public Transport
Sweet Baboo - Wild Imagination
Why? - Moh Lhean
Wire - Silver/Lead
Algiers - The Underside Of Power
At The Drive-In - in•ter a•li•a
Big Thief - Capacity
Celebration - Wounded Healer
Christian Fitness - slap bass hunks
Cloud Nothings - Life Without Sound
Craig Finn - We All Want The Same
Fazerdaze - Morningside
Fleet Foxes - Crack-Up
Gallops - Bronze Mystic
Grandaddy - Last Place
H. Grimace - Self-Architect
H Hawkline - I Romanticize
Hurray For The Riff Raff - The Navigator
Idles - Brutalism
Jane Weaver - Modern Kosmology
Jens Lekman - Life Will See You Now
Laura Marling - Semper Femina
Los Campesinos! - Sick Scenes
Meursault - I Will Kill Again
Milo's Planes - Individual Development Plan
The Mountain Goats - Goths
Napoleon IIIrd - The Great Lake
Novella - Change Of State
Perfume Genius - No Shape
Piano Magic - Closure
Post War Glamour Girls - Swan Songs
Priests - Nothing Feels Natural
Ralegh Long - Upwards Of Summer
Rose Elinor Dougall - Stellular
Run The Jewels - Run The Jewels 3
Saint Etienne - Home Counties
Sean Rowe - In Darkened Rooms
Spiral Stairs - Doris and the Daggers
Spoon - Hot Thoughts
Sufjan Stevens, Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner, James McAlister - Planetarium
Storm The Palace - Snow, Stars And Public Transport
Sweet Baboo - Wild Imagination
Why? - Moh Lhean
Wire - Silver/Lead
Sunday, July 02, 2017
STN recommends... June 2017
Sorry about the lack of recent posts, but everything we've really liked in the last fortnight or so that's on Spotify is included regardless in the sixth monthly roundup of what we've loved lately:
Things that aren't on Spotify that we've liked since the last post: Warm Digits' electrifying glam-kosmiche stomp promising ever more for album Wireless World out 4th August;the bewitching twisted psych-indie of The Graphites; Parenthetical Girls' Zac Pennington going solo with left of centre string-soaked bruised romance as Comedienne; longserving Birmingham scene noisepopniks Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam; the effervescent harmonic jangle of Charmpit; charmingly offhand lo-fi pop from Jetstream Pony (featuring sometime members of the Wedding Present, Trembling Blue Stars and the Fireworks); the (supposedly) unaffected sunshine pop of Baby!; Floreana's MJ-recorded charging punk-pop shapes (self-titled debut out now); and the return of The Indelicates, and the only logical response to finding that Simon and Julia have written a glam racket about Jimmy Savile is "what took them so long?" The album Juniverbrecher (usual array of magnificent crowdfunding options therein) also features a track called The Bins.
Things that aren't on Spotify that we've liked since the last post: Warm Digits' electrifying glam-kosmiche stomp promising ever more for album Wireless World out 4th August;the bewitching twisted psych-indie of The Graphites; Parenthetical Girls' Zac Pennington going solo with left of centre string-soaked bruised romance as Comedienne; longserving Birmingham scene noisepopniks Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam; the effervescent harmonic jangle of Charmpit; charmingly offhand lo-fi pop from Jetstream Pony (featuring sometime members of the Wedding Present, Trembling Blue Stars and the Fireworks); the (supposedly) unaffected sunshine pop of Baby!; Floreana's MJ-recorded charging punk-pop shapes (self-titled debut out now); and the return of The Indelicates, and the only logical response to finding that Simon and Julia have written a glam racket about Jimmy Savile is "what took them so long?" The album Juniverbrecher (usual array of magnificent crowdfunding options therein) also features a track called The Bins.
Saturday, June 17, 2017
STN recommends: 17/6/17
Right then, let's start with some premium STN content, Trust Fund feat. Gareth Campesinos. Their contribution to Art Is Hard's Postcard Club sees Gareth fulfil his Heaton fantasies with a version of the Beautiful South's I'll Sail This Ship Alone that transforms it from tender ballad to muscular fuzzpop. Also new on Art Is Hard, through more conventional means, are the established psych-popper Oliver Wilde and Lucky Shivers' Nicholas Stevenson (who we're pretty sure was a promising solo artist himself at one point) by their powers combined Oro Swimming Hour, Martial Arts Washing Cars being just over two minutes of a more restrained version of campfire Animal Collective, all harmonies and odd sounds. Album Penrose Winoa is out 28th July.
Hey, Everything Everything are actually now back after what seems like months of something being "impending"! You wouldn't really confuse Can't Do, from A Fever Dream out August 18th, for anyone else with the jittery elastic beats, tricksy guitar interruption and semi-cryptic lyrics in nasal, occasionally strained falsetto vocals, but it's evolution rather than revolution and ties in better with their debut than what's come since. A band who've been away for rather a lot longer, Ride, have slightly underwhelmed with their track choices thus far, but Lannoy Point, the opener to Weather Diaries, does the trick, classic floaty shoegaze to a fault with a fluid motorik undertow and Andy Bell set to 'chime'.
Here's a band we've never written about before - Wolf Alice. It's surprising given they pretty much have the kind of bases and influences we generally thrive off, but it just hasn't happened for us. Turns out all they needed to do on Yuk Foo (and maybe Visions Of A Life, out 29th September) is turn away from their radio friendly destiny and instead become Bratmobile. While we're on two minute ire and dynamism, Charmpit are two Californians based in London who deal in harmonic sparkly lo-fi garage pop, this Free The Burbs (a song they're on record as wanting Peaness to cover) from Jelly EP out 14th July. Across the self-sufficient way, part of that ever fluent Leeds DIY scene that we've featured plenty of bands from in the past, "post-punk pop party pack" Crumbs are a jittery, danceable, form that recalls the Au Pairs. Their debut album Mind Yr Manners is out July 28th. Are The Popguns spiritual parents of the scene? So Long, from the just released second post-reformation album Sugar Kisses, suggests their emotionally damaged janglepop has barely aged at all. From a slightly different place Superglu's songs aren't much longer, through a more restrained but still vital melodic indie-punk template with joy forefront on Communion Singles Club offering Welcome Home.
And now for something completely different, the post-apocalyptic industrial soul of Algiers. Inspired by the killing of Tamir Rice and the concept of injustice, Cleveland sees Franklin James Fisher deliver his best righteous fire-eyed preacher delivery over looped gospel samples and a surprising Detroit techno passage. The Underside Of Power is out Friday and might even top their stellar debut, our third best album of 2015. Meanwhile The Horrors have gone industrial on Machine, churning Cabaret Voltaire-style warped beats and synths replacing the shoegaze synths and pedals prowling around in the shadows looking for something to take on in a way their forthcoming tourmates Depeche Mode would recognise from circa 1983. Perhaps surprisingly, Paul Epworth is the man at the controls.
The Surfing Magazines are Dave and Franic of the Wave Pictures, Charles Slow Club and... a drummer, and they have an album out on 1st September. Even though Charles takes lead on Lines And Shadows the Wave Pictures influence is pervasive, at least in their laidback soulful variant and definitely sounding like that hallmark of sounding like they're casually tossing a melodic marvel off just because they can. Yes, of course there's an abrasive Tattersall solo. It's not difficult to imagine many of the records lying around in their studio are also in the collection of Ralegh Long, whose Sleeping On My Dreams commands power-pop and 1970s US radio rock for a homebrew English version of classic rock, if classic rock tended to last only 2:19. That kind of track length seems to have become this week's accidental theme.
Hey, Everything Everything are actually now back after what seems like months of something being "impending"! You wouldn't really confuse Can't Do, from A Fever Dream out August 18th, for anyone else with the jittery elastic beats, tricksy guitar interruption and semi-cryptic lyrics in nasal, occasionally strained falsetto vocals, but it's evolution rather than revolution and ties in better with their debut than what's come since. A band who've been away for rather a lot longer, Ride, have slightly underwhelmed with their track choices thus far, but Lannoy Point, the opener to Weather Diaries, does the trick, classic floaty shoegaze to a fault with a fluid motorik undertow and Andy Bell set to 'chime'.
Here's a band we've never written about before - Wolf Alice. It's surprising given they pretty much have the kind of bases and influences we generally thrive off, but it just hasn't happened for us. Turns out all they needed to do on Yuk Foo (and maybe Visions Of A Life, out 29th September) is turn away from their radio friendly destiny and instead become Bratmobile. While we're on two minute ire and dynamism, Charmpit are two Californians based in London who deal in harmonic sparkly lo-fi garage pop, this Free The Burbs (a song they're on record as wanting Peaness to cover) from Jelly EP out 14th July. Across the self-sufficient way, part of that ever fluent Leeds DIY scene that we've featured plenty of bands from in the past, "post-punk pop party pack" Crumbs are a jittery, danceable, form that recalls the Au Pairs. Their debut album Mind Yr Manners is out July 28th. Are The Popguns spiritual parents of the scene? So Long, from the just released second post-reformation album Sugar Kisses, suggests their emotionally damaged janglepop has barely aged at all. From a slightly different place Superglu's songs aren't much longer, through a more restrained but still vital melodic indie-punk template with joy forefront on Communion Singles Club offering Welcome Home.
And now for something completely different, the post-apocalyptic industrial soul of Algiers. Inspired by the killing of Tamir Rice and the concept of injustice, Cleveland sees Franklin James Fisher deliver his best righteous fire-eyed preacher delivery over looped gospel samples and a surprising Detroit techno passage. The Underside Of Power is out Friday and might even top their stellar debut, our third best album of 2015. Meanwhile The Horrors have gone industrial on Machine, churning Cabaret Voltaire-style warped beats and synths replacing the shoegaze synths and pedals prowling around in the shadows looking for something to take on in a way their forthcoming tourmates Depeche Mode would recognise from circa 1983. Perhaps surprisingly, Paul Epworth is the man at the controls.
The Surfing Magazines are Dave and Franic of the Wave Pictures, Charles Slow Club and... a drummer, and they have an album out on 1st September. Even though Charles takes lead on Lines And Shadows the Wave Pictures influence is pervasive, at least in their laidback soulful variant and definitely sounding like that hallmark of sounding like they're casually tossing a melodic marvel off just because they can. Yes, of course there's an abrasive Tattersall solo. It's not difficult to imagine many of the records lying around in their studio are also in the collection of Ralegh Long, whose Sleeping On My Dreams commands power-pop and 1970s US radio rock for a homebrew English version of classic rock, if classic rock tended to last only 2:19. That kind of track length seems to have become this week's accidental theme.
Thursday, June 08, 2017
STN recommends: 8/6/17
Quicker one today. The Camp extends PJ Harvey's new line in songwriter journalism, a collaboration with Ramy Essam based on the displaced refugee children of Lebanon's Bekaa Valley - all proceeds go to Lebanese non-governmental organisation Beyond Association - a deceptively straightforward strum given weight by the words and the conviction of Essam, an Egyptian dubbed the voice of the country's 2011 revolution. Nadine Shah's own politicised turn, unveiled in full on Holiday Destination come August 25th, continues on the brooding Yes Men, adopting her emotive keening to desperation at the ruling classes with low-key approaching menace.
Katie Crutchfield's second album as Waxahatchee, Out In The Storm, is approaching on July 14th, and opener Never Been Wrong bodes well in terms of upping the ante on the focused anger of someone wanting their say too much to unravel and associated laser pointed single-guitar attack, breaking free of a pop son structure in the process. You almost don't need to be told B-Boys are from New York, such is the recognisable cool quotient spikiness of their debut single Discipline, from debut album Dada out on the 16th, twisting art-rock shapes originating somewhere between Fugazi and Parquet Courts around each other uncomfortably. Finally, "a bit like Radiohead" is both an overdone description and usually an invitation to head for the hills, but it's a decent back of the hand description for Looks by Brazen Head, a hesitant, twisted piece of slow building tension in the way of OK Computer without the electronics or guitar heroics but with a piano part designed to pull the melody in a different direction from everything else. Suspiciously little made public about a band who sound so accomplished from the off, but this is more than a fascinating start.
Katie Crutchfield's second album as Waxahatchee, Out In The Storm, is approaching on July 14th, and opener Never Been Wrong bodes well in terms of upping the ante on the focused anger of someone wanting their say too much to unravel and associated laser pointed single-guitar attack, breaking free of a pop son structure in the process. You almost don't need to be told B-Boys are from New York, such is the recognisable cool quotient spikiness of their debut single Discipline, from debut album Dada out on the 16th, twisting art-rock shapes originating somewhere between Fugazi and Parquet Courts around each other uncomfortably. Finally, "a bit like Radiohead" is both an overdone description and usually an invitation to head for the hills, but it's a decent back of the hand description for Looks by Brazen Head, a hesitant, twisted piece of slow building tension in the way of OK Computer without the electronics or guitar heroics but with a piano part designed to pull the melody in a different direction from everything else. Suspiciously little made public about a band who sound so accomplished from the off, but this is more than a fascinating start.
Friday, June 02, 2017
STN recommends: 2/6/17
It's only been a week and again EVERYONE has decided to release new material for us to pick carefully through and highlight the peaks rather than foothills of.
May as well start with Arcade Fire, whose Everything Now - title track of album out July 28th, as you know - extends the synth and disco elements they grazed towards on Reflektor into a sweeping, Abba and Bowie-nodding chant of a chorus and replacement of the traditional run to the crescendo sun with a steady insistent progression to a big coda that turns out not to be the coda. And a synthesised pan pipe break, but y'know.
We next find Sweet Baboo on unusually funky mood on Pink Rainbow, from the album Wild Imagination out today. "Arthur Russell meets Robert Wyatt" says the press release, and with Stephen's delivery and the warm synth against clipped funk guitar for once it's not all that wrong, though the none more glittery rainbow-wigged model in silhouette in the window of a Rewind club solo takes some getting used to. Apparently the lyrical inspirations were Rainbow Connection and the Lovely Eggs' son explaining the Flying Scotsman to him. Another album out today is Peach, by Emma Winston's 8-bit DIY pop under the guise of Deerful. Conceptual Art traces its own path again, wistful Game Boy half-speed minimalist wistfulness. "Not everything's confessional" Winston claims towards the end having just made that sound like a lie.
Featuring members of Johnny Foreigner (which isn't mentioned in the press release so it literally is just us now), God Damn and Viv Albertine's band, Mutes might just lap all o... at least one of them with debut album No Desire, the title track of which is a magnificently sprawling juggernaut touching on noise-pop, Krautrock insistency, bludgeon riffola and cresting avant-indie, the kind of compact while stretched out thing that ultimately demands your attention. That album is out now too.
Doing things by halves has never been part of Kiran Leonard's agenda, which is why Derevaun Seraun, out 15th September, is a "piece in five movements for voice, piano and string trio" with each part inspired by a work of literature, led by seven and a half minute Living With Your Ailments inspired by Albert Camus' The Myth Of Sisyphus. (Given Leonard's previous hugely ambitious arrangements and autodidactic work we'd like to think he played all the string parts too, but that seems unlikely) It's dramatic, literate and as singular as you'd expect from him.
Karen Sheridan's Slow Skies project seems to be a lot more upbeat than it once was these days, not entirely giving itself to abandonment given the melancholia at the heart of Sheridan's voice, but Dancing is about forgetting everything in the joyous moment driven by handclaps and developing with the aid of subtly triumphant horns into warm exuberance of a kind. Brooklyn's Big Thief are a guitar band by definition, signed to Saddle Creek for Capacity out June 9th, but Mary is a stark piano ballad engineered for what seems to be maximum emotional sparsity, Adrianne Lenker's vocal closeness matched by the run of personally charged memories and imagery, pain and empathy.
We've been waiting for the spectral Nordic pop of Anna Of The North to make it to album stage for a while, and that finally lands on 8th September. Title track Lovers shows a lot of those route-one post-XX/London Grammar electropop types that show up on the weekly Spotify playlists where they're going wrong, utilising drum pads and glacial synths much as they all do but coming at it from a direction that's both more assured and icier, maybe emotionally emptied out.
And finally, forwarding the Australian indie resurgence, Melbourne's School Damage are exemplars of the kind of falling apart DIY bubblegum punk-pop that traces its lineage through those 1978 7"s via Swell Maps through the more ragged end of the Scottish and Australian celebrated early 80s scenes, running on charm and effort. Plus the song is called The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down, so full marks there too.
May as well start with Arcade Fire, whose Everything Now - title track of album out July 28th, as you know - extends the synth and disco elements they grazed towards on Reflektor into a sweeping, Abba and Bowie-nodding chant of a chorus and replacement of the traditional run to the crescendo sun with a steady insistent progression to a big coda that turns out not to be the coda. And a synthesised pan pipe break, but y'know.
We next find Sweet Baboo on unusually funky mood on Pink Rainbow, from the album Wild Imagination out today. "Arthur Russell meets Robert Wyatt" says the press release, and with Stephen's delivery and the warm synth against clipped funk guitar for once it's not all that wrong, though the none more glittery rainbow-wigged model in silhouette in the window of a Rewind club solo takes some getting used to. Apparently the lyrical inspirations were Rainbow Connection and the Lovely Eggs' son explaining the Flying Scotsman to him. Another album out today is Peach, by Emma Winston's 8-bit DIY pop under the guise of Deerful. Conceptual Art traces its own path again, wistful Game Boy half-speed minimalist wistfulness. "Not everything's confessional" Winston claims towards the end having just made that sound like a lie.
Featuring members of Johnny Foreigner (which isn't mentioned in the press release so it literally is just us now), God Damn and Viv Albertine's band, Mutes might just lap all o... at least one of them with debut album No Desire, the title track of which is a magnificently sprawling juggernaut touching on noise-pop, Krautrock insistency, bludgeon riffola and cresting avant-indie, the kind of compact while stretched out thing that ultimately demands your attention. That album is out now too.
Doing things by halves has never been part of Kiran Leonard's agenda, which is why Derevaun Seraun, out 15th September, is a "piece in five movements for voice, piano and string trio" with each part inspired by a work of literature, led by seven and a half minute Living With Your Ailments inspired by Albert Camus' The Myth Of Sisyphus. (Given Leonard's previous hugely ambitious arrangements and autodidactic work we'd like to think he played all the string parts too, but that seems unlikely) It's dramatic, literate and as singular as you'd expect from him.
Karen Sheridan's Slow Skies project seems to be a lot more upbeat than it once was these days, not entirely giving itself to abandonment given the melancholia at the heart of Sheridan's voice, but Dancing is about forgetting everything in the joyous moment driven by handclaps and developing with the aid of subtly triumphant horns into warm exuberance of a kind. Brooklyn's Big Thief are a guitar band by definition, signed to Saddle Creek for Capacity out June 9th, but Mary is a stark piano ballad engineered for what seems to be maximum emotional sparsity, Adrianne Lenker's vocal closeness matched by the run of personally charged memories and imagery, pain and empathy.
We've been waiting for the spectral Nordic pop of Anna Of The North to make it to album stage for a while, and that finally lands on 8th September. Title track Lovers shows a lot of those route-one post-XX/London Grammar electropop types that show up on the weekly Spotify playlists where they're going wrong, utilising drum pads and glacial synths much as they all do but coming at it from a direction that's both more assured and icier, maybe emotionally emptied out.
And finally, forwarding the Australian indie resurgence, Melbourne's School Damage are exemplars of the kind of falling apart DIY bubblegum punk-pop that traces its lineage through those 1978 7"s via Swell Maps through the more ragged end of the Scottish and Australian celebrated early 80s scenes, running on charm and effort. Plus the song is called The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down, so full marks there too.
Wednesday, May 31, 2017
Monday, May 22, 2017
STN recommends: a massive May catchup
Right then. Buckle up.
We ended up taking blog downtime at the same time as EVERY BAND IN THE WORLD announced a return. First cab off that rank is the mighty Grizzly Bear, up til now perhaps America's most consistently fascinating band. Painted Ruins, out August 18th, brings us two tracks: Three Rings and Mourning Sound both start like a well oiled machine with drum loop and buzzing deep bassline before the multitude of layers come in. In the former wordless chorales and delicately interlocked pieces floating across uneven paths and firing off in all directions before coalescing and resolving around a mini-guitar solo striking and cresting at the heart of Ed Droste's emotional angst; Mourning Sound, boasting a good variety of retro synth sounds, is maybe more direct and radio friendly single-worthy standout than they've ever produced.
Next down the aisle come The National, whose Sleep Well Beast, out September 8th, brings us The System Only Dreams In Total Darkness, a slightly adjusted take on their slow burn dark poise, electrified bursts of guitar rudely interrupting the paranoid elegance that in what passes for a chorus sees Matt Berninger attempt to reach the highest parts of his vocal range reaching for a peak everything else doesn't feel like playing along with. While we're talking bands who've gone two decades finding new paths through inbuilt build-and-release tension, Mogwai release Every Country's Sun on 1st September, their ninth album proper, from which comes Coolverine, tingling and graceful with an undercurrent of anxiety that slowly builds as the drums enter into a spectacular panorama. This year's Brilliant Mogwai Track Title: Don't Believe The Fife. And then there's the multi-faced, multi-faceted Broken Social Scene, Hug of Thunder out 7th July as their first album in seven years, with an understated. skittering Feist-led title track locked into a steady if tense coast until the machines finally attempt to take over at the end.
Onto albums we already knew and have written about, starting with one practically made for us as Public Service Broadcasting, who release south Wales coal mining-themed Every Valley on 7th July, consider the social and political strides of women involved in and around the industry and the miner's strike on They Gave Me A Lamp, and our old showbiz pals Haiku Salut help out (and co-billed) on a track where interview samples are brought into a Haiku-esque series of exquisite interwoven loops eventually joined by a triumphant brass section. Napoleon IIIrd's The Great Lake came out on Friday - there's a full presentation of the album as part of Holmfirth Film Festival on Wednesday - and we'll talk about its late Talk Talk/slowcore with a sax-recalling treatises on dealing with loss in time, save to guide you towards So It Goes, its hymnal closing song of hope and recovery. Fleet Foxes' Crack-Up, out 16th June, has on whole attracted a little more attention, the purposefully striding Fool's Errand expanding the solitude chamber folk approach to take in the Technicolor influence of 1960s sunshine pop. And then there's Sparks. There's always Sparks, and there's always a Sparks song in the form of a conversation involving a laissez-faire God. What The Hell Is It This Time?, from 8th September-due Hippopotamus, is of their latter day goofy-orchestral bent in which the Almighty finally cracks under the pressure of constant prayers and entreaties for good.
And now a brief diversion into Bands You And We Both Like Who Have Released New Stuff Without An Album Seemingly On The Horizon. (Got to think of a catchier title than that.) LCD Soundsystem's fourth album will according to James Murphy be ready when the physical versions are ready, which seems almost self-parodic. In the meantime come two tracks, Call The Police a first cousin of All My Friends' propulsion with a greater ambition that leaves it sounding almost too much like a Brian Eno stadium-aiming production, while American Dream is for the morning after, a woozy fried ultra-introspective to the point of self-loathing self-examination to the backing of cheap waltz time drum machine and crystal synths. Courtney Barnett's How To Boil An Egg is for Split Singles Club, a 7" series the joint work of her own Milk! Records and Melbourne-based Bedroom Sucks, and a track she refers to as "a songwriting experiment", a brain-emptying treatise on loneliness and lack of achievement that stems from her open mic days and on which she plays every instrument in an appeallingly rockabilly fashion. Danger Mouse's track for Edgar Wright heist comedy Baby Driver is built around the intro riff from Jon Spencer Blues Explosion's Bellbottoms, which would be more than enough grimy funk for us without the flow weight of Run The Jewels and Big Boi added. The blues remains number one. Beach House meanwhile are releasing B-sides And Rarities, a self-defined stopgap, on June 30th, featuring the hitherto unreleased Chariot from the Depression Cherry/Thank Your Lucky Stars double session. There's no good apparent reason why its cinematic sway was left off, unless they thought it chiming airiness was too atypical of their sound.
Let's return to the transcendently dreamy melancholia of Amber Arcades' Cannonball EP for Wouldn't Even Know, featuring a Lee Hazlewood pitch-level cameo from Bill Ryder-Jones which gives it extra self-querying brooding. Electro-folkie Mary Epworth feels like she's been around for some time but is only just getting around to her second album five years after the debut, Elytral out 1st September; from it, Me Swimming glides and throbs entrancingly for more than six minutes, as aqueous and submergent as its title suggests. Michael Nau has been making detailed folk-rock as Cotton Jones, and under his own name on I Root he traces a path from there to classic soul, especially in its laidback shimmering production - album Some Twist is out June 16th.
Emma Winston as Deerful has drawn our attention before, and from debut album Peach out 2nd June comes the minimal synth introspection of Cloudwatching. Another we've written about a good few times in the past, Seazoo are finally approaching their debut as yet unconfirmed album with the aid of Roy's World, a sprightly piece of typically Welsh scene-scented warped insta-pop with an ineffable hook and wobbly psychedelic synths. Not quite as many of the latter as inside Flamingods' percussive psychotropia, which achieves a kind of divergent form with the tripped out shamanistic sound (and video) of Mixed Blessings, from EP Kewali out on Friday. Hey, Zola Blood, there's another name we've blogged before, and their album Infinite Games is out on Friday. The Only Thing has definite soaring ambitions of not being held down into another electropop act but not in that obvious radio-demanding way, instead attaching its ineffable melody to an appeallingly insistent misshapen beat.
Next, to Glasgow. Atlas Cedar is Chris Syme, whose In Hollywood quotes inspiration from Supertramp in the song information but comes across like a more Americana-friendly take on that Quiet Is The New Loud thing from around the start of the century, a hazy, well layered electro-acoustic shuffle with sonic nods to a late 60s aesthetic, unshowy but keen to imprint itself. Meanwhile the city's DIY/punk scene is as fertile as ever, Breakfast Muff's R U A Feminist, half of a double A-side ahead of an album due in July, full of piss and vinegar, Eilidh McMillan spitting out the words against an increasingly ragged and increasingly angry backing. From ragged punx to ragged lo-fi, What's In Your Bag? from Dublin's Silverbacks' Sink The Fat Moon EP, which came out on Friday, is built on the rickety foundations of laconic lo-fi.
Newly signed to Big Scary Monsters over here, Canadians Single Mothers are an incendiary proposition on Long Distance, essentially Japandroids to the power of Dischord. Second album Our Pleasure is out 16th June. Compass by Leeds' Esper Scout surges like the pop-accessible end of Sonic Youth, which isn't a bad thing when it's shaped into a subtly insistent charge of their own and around smart lyrical consideration of homeliness and displacement; the sometime Cribs support are going to be worth watching as they promise an album next year.
Here's a name you likely never expected to see again - Montreal's The Dears were almost a big deal around the mid-00s for their Smiths-inspired expansiveness. Now down to a duo, Times Infinity Volume Two is either their seventh or six-and-a-halfth depending on how you read it and returns them to the might and internal heft of their peak, 1998 a misleadingly upbeat gallop that eventually finds its sense of place and release in its closing quarter. And, perhaps very much finally, Cardiff's My Name Is Ian - go on, guess how many of them are called Ian - are about to go sixteen albums in seven years to the good with Cincinnati Cola via the ever reliable Bubblewrap Collective, the spectacularly titled Fight, Drink And Watch People Die On TV a pure garage indie-rock thrill.
We ended up taking blog downtime at the same time as EVERY BAND IN THE WORLD announced a return. First cab off that rank is the mighty Grizzly Bear, up til now perhaps America's most consistently fascinating band. Painted Ruins, out August 18th, brings us two tracks: Three Rings and Mourning Sound both start like a well oiled machine with drum loop and buzzing deep bassline before the multitude of layers come in. In the former wordless chorales and delicately interlocked pieces floating across uneven paths and firing off in all directions before coalescing and resolving around a mini-guitar solo striking and cresting at the heart of Ed Droste's emotional angst; Mourning Sound, boasting a good variety of retro synth sounds, is maybe more direct and radio friendly single-worthy standout than they've ever produced.
Next down the aisle come The National, whose Sleep Well Beast, out September 8th, brings us The System Only Dreams In Total Darkness, a slightly adjusted take on their slow burn dark poise, electrified bursts of guitar rudely interrupting the paranoid elegance that in what passes for a chorus sees Matt Berninger attempt to reach the highest parts of his vocal range reaching for a peak everything else doesn't feel like playing along with. While we're talking bands who've gone two decades finding new paths through inbuilt build-and-release tension, Mogwai release Every Country's Sun on 1st September, their ninth album proper, from which comes Coolverine, tingling and graceful with an undercurrent of anxiety that slowly builds as the drums enter into a spectacular panorama. This year's Brilliant Mogwai Track Title: Don't Believe The Fife. And then there's the multi-faced, multi-faceted Broken Social Scene, Hug of Thunder out 7th July as their first album in seven years, with an understated. skittering Feist-led title track locked into a steady if tense coast until the machines finally attempt to take over at the end.
Onto albums we already knew and have written about, starting with one practically made for us as Public Service Broadcasting, who release south Wales coal mining-themed Every Valley on 7th July, consider the social and political strides of women involved in and around the industry and the miner's strike on They Gave Me A Lamp, and our old showbiz pals Haiku Salut help out (and co-billed) on a track where interview samples are brought into a Haiku-esque series of exquisite interwoven loops eventually joined by a triumphant brass section. Napoleon IIIrd's The Great Lake came out on Friday - there's a full presentation of the album as part of Holmfirth Film Festival on Wednesday - and we'll talk about its late Talk Talk/slowcore with a sax-recalling treatises on dealing with loss in time, save to guide you towards So It Goes, its hymnal closing song of hope and recovery. Fleet Foxes' Crack-Up, out 16th June, has on whole attracted a little more attention, the purposefully striding Fool's Errand expanding the solitude chamber folk approach to take in the Technicolor influence of 1960s sunshine pop. And then there's Sparks. There's always Sparks, and there's always a Sparks song in the form of a conversation involving a laissez-faire God. What The Hell Is It This Time?, from 8th September-due Hippopotamus, is of their latter day goofy-orchestral bent in which the Almighty finally cracks under the pressure of constant prayers and entreaties for good.
And now a brief diversion into Bands You And We Both Like Who Have Released New Stuff Without An Album Seemingly On The Horizon. (Got to think of a catchier title than that.) LCD Soundsystem's fourth album will according to James Murphy be ready when the physical versions are ready, which seems almost self-parodic. In the meantime come two tracks, Call The Police a first cousin of All My Friends' propulsion with a greater ambition that leaves it sounding almost too much like a Brian Eno stadium-aiming production, while American Dream is for the morning after, a woozy fried ultra-introspective to the point of self-loathing self-examination to the backing of cheap waltz time drum machine and crystal synths. Courtney Barnett's How To Boil An Egg is for Split Singles Club, a 7" series the joint work of her own Milk! Records and Melbourne-based Bedroom Sucks, and a track she refers to as "a songwriting experiment", a brain-emptying treatise on loneliness and lack of achievement that stems from her open mic days and on which she plays every instrument in an appeallingly rockabilly fashion. Danger Mouse's track for Edgar Wright heist comedy Baby Driver is built around the intro riff from Jon Spencer Blues Explosion's Bellbottoms, which would be more than enough grimy funk for us without the flow weight of Run The Jewels and Big Boi added. The blues remains number one. Beach House meanwhile are releasing B-sides And Rarities, a self-defined stopgap, on June 30th, featuring the hitherto unreleased Chariot from the Depression Cherry/Thank Your Lucky Stars double session. There's no good apparent reason why its cinematic sway was left off, unless they thought it chiming airiness was too atypical of their sound.
Let's return to the transcendently dreamy melancholia of Amber Arcades' Cannonball EP for Wouldn't Even Know, featuring a Lee Hazlewood pitch-level cameo from Bill Ryder-Jones which gives it extra self-querying brooding. Electro-folkie Mary Epworth feels like she's been around for some time but is only just getting around to her second album five years after the debut, Elytral out 1st September; from it, Me Swimming glides and throbs entrancingly for more than six minutes, as aqueous and submergent as its title suggests. Michael Nau has been making detailed folk-rock as Cotton Jones, and under his own name on I Root he traces a path from there to classic soul, especially in its laidback shimmering production - album Some Twist is out June 16th.
Emma Winston as Deerful has drawn our attention before, and from debut album Peach out 2nd June comes the minimal synth introspection of Cloudwatching. Another we've written about a good few times in the past, Seazoo are finally approaching their debut as yet unconfirmed album with the aid of Roy's World, a sprightly piece of typically Welsh scene-scented warped insta-pop with an ineffable hook and wobbly psychedelic synths. Not quite as many of the latter as inside Flamingods' percussive psychotropia, which achieves a kind of divergent form with the tripped out shamanistic sound (and video) of Mixed Blessings, from EP Kewali out on Friday. Hey, Zola Blood, there's another name we've blogged before, and their album Infinite Games is out on Friday. The Only Thing has definite soaring ambitions of not being held down into another electropop act but not in that obvious radio-demanding way, instead attaching its ineffable melody to an appeallingly insistent misshapen beat.
Next, to Glasgow. Atlas Cedar is Chris Syme, whose In Hollywood quotes inspiration from Supertramp in the song information but comes across like a more Americana-friendly take on that Quiet Is The New Loud thing from around the start of the century, a hazy, well layered electro-acoustic shuffle with sonic nods to a late 60s aesthetic, unshowy but keen to imprint itself. Meanwhile the city's DIY/punk scene is as fertile as ever, Breakfast Muff's R U A Feminist, half of a double A-side ahead of an album due in July, full of piss and vinegar, Eilidh McMillan spitting out the words against an increasingly ragged and increasingly angry backing. From ragged punx to ragged lo-fi, What's In Your Bag? from Dublin's Silverbacks' Sink The Fat Moon EP, which came out on Friday, is built on the rickety foundations of laconic lo-fi.
Newly signed to Big Scary Monsters over here, Canadians Single Mothers are an incendiary proposition on Long Distance, essentially Japandroids to the power of Dischord. Second album Our Pleasure is out 16th June. Compass by Leeds' Esper Scout surges like the pop-accessible end of Sonic Youth, which isn't a bad thing when it's shaped into a subtly insistent charge of their own and around smart lyrical consideration of homeliness and displacement; the sometime Cribs support are going to be worth watching as they promise an album next year.
Here's a name you likely never expected to see again - Montreal's The Dears were almost a big deal around the mid-00s for their Smiths-inspired expansiveness. Now down to a duo, Times Infinity Volume Two is either their seventh or six-and-a-halfth depending on how you read it and returns them to the might and internal heft of their peak, 1998 a misleadingly upbeat gallop that eventually finds its sense of place and release in its closing quarter. And, perhaps very much finally, Cardiff's My Name Is Ian - go on, guess how many of them are called Ian - are about to go sixteen albums in seven years to the good with Cincinnati Cola via the ever reliable Bubblewrap Collective, the spectacularly titled Fight, Drink And Watch People Die On TV a pure garage indie-rock thrill.
Sunday, May 21, 2017
STN recommends... April 2017
Finally, very belatedly, the best new songs of the fourth month of the year.
Wednesday, May 03, 2017
STN recommends: 3/5/17
First things first, we realised we didn't get time to write a Recommends at the end of last week and then spent just as long putting the songs we wanted to write about on Twitter instead, so who's the real winner here?
Drahla - Faux Text
From Leeds, a Too Pure Singles Club release, recorded by MJ at Suburban Home Studios - some people have worked out the express route to getting onto STN. And luckily it's a great single too, a menacing meeting of almost-spoken intrigue with surging art-noise guitars and skronking sax in the Sonic Youth lineage but none the worse in ideas and ominousness for that.
Soeur - Just Yet
There's been a few bands recently reaching back to the great gritty grunge sound of 1992, and not a lot of them are very good. Bristol via Worcester's Soeur, who we first came across just this weekend at Handmade festival, have the charm and nous to pull it off on their What Separates Us EP, knowing all about the key to it all being the capture and release, allied to the raw, sleazy dual female vocals. And check that riff bringing down buildings in its wake.
Orchards - Darling
Another Handmade discovery, Brightonians and recent PWR BTTM support Orchards are tricky to grab hold of, switching seamlessly from Foals-style slightly straightened angular hi-life influenced shapes to big showy synth-driven choruses to exuberant shiny poppiness, bursting with hooks throughout. Fans of Fickle Friends will find plenty to like here.
The Hayman Kupa Band album has been having an extra slow rollout, but it's finally promised for July 21st. https://t.co/ccMLDd1qeH
— Sweeping The Nation (@sweepingnation) April 27, 2017
Sam Airey's album is finally out at the end of May, and charging indie rock wasn't what we expected. https://t.co/nyjjuv5K04
— Sweeping The Nation (@sweepingnation) April 27, 2017
Sufjan, Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner (National) and James McAlister are Planetarium, delicately textured and coiled. https://t.co/F24GI9UAAy
— Sweeping The Nation (@sweepingnation) April 27, 2017
Probably could have written a post the time it's taking to get through these, but no matter now. Yr Poetry video: https://t.co/CjXye1zRfZ
— Sweeping The Nation (@sweepingnation) April 27, 2017
Too obvious to say Lana Del Rey vibes about Katiya Falcone, but "dramatic Nancy Sinatra" kind of nails it. https://t.co/QBRXCzpKMQ
— Sweeping The Nation (@sweepingnation) April 27, 2017
Rostam off Vampire Weekend has gone solo and brought some sawing strings with him. https://t.co/Y6bchmTQYA
— Sweeping The Nation (@sweepingnation) April 27, 2017
First track from the new Algiers album, out June 23rd, is the expectedly great politicised hard-hitting soul power. https://t.co/gvJURJq3m6
— Sweeping The Nation (@sweepingnation) April 27, 2017
Last one for now - new band of Craig from Ice Sea Dead People and two of Kill Kenada. Hey, we're excited. Dancehall: https://t.co/5NogVi0kpI
— Sweeping The Nation (@sweepingnation) April 27, 2017
Drahla - Faux Text
From Leeds, a Too Pure Singles Club release, recorded by MJ at Suburban Home Studios - some people have worked out the express route to getting onto STN. And luckily it's a great single too, a menacing meeting of almost-spoken intrigue with surging art-noise guitars and skronking sax in the Sonic Youth lineage but none the worse in ideas and ominousness for that.
Soeur - Just Yet
There's been a few bands recently reaching back to the great gritty grunge sound of 1992, and not a lot of them are very good. Bristol via Worcester's Soeur, who we first came across just this weekend at Handmade festival, have the charm and nous to pull it off on their What Separates Us EP, knowing all about the key to it all being the capture and release, allied to the raw, sleazy dual female vocals. And check that riff bringing down buildings in its wake.
Orchards - Darling
Another Handmade discovery, Brightonians and recent PWR BTTM support Orchards are tricky to grab hold of, switching seamlessly from Foals-style slightly straightened angular hi-life influenced shapes to big showy synth-driven choruses to exuberant shiny poppiness, bursting with hooks throughout. Fans of Fickle Friends will find plenty to like here.
Wednesday, April 19, 2017
STN recommends: 19/4/17
Because remember: NEW MUSIC DOES NOT STOP.
christian fitness - slap bass hunks
Please refer to yesterday's post.
Waxahatchee - Silver
Katie Crutchfield returns with a meaningful guitar crunch that harkens back to the days when we called this kind of thing 'college rock' and Tanya Donelly roamed the land. Big old hooks, self-questioning approach, streamlined for maximum emotional effect. Out In The Storm is out 14th July.
Slow Skies - Shut Your Eyes
It's been a while since we've heard anything new from Dublin's Karen Sheridan, whose 2014 EP intrigued us with its glacial shimmer and yaw. There's very little information about what this is for or from but, if slightly more approachable, it remains a delicate floating confection of Sheridan's honeyed vocal and a number of interesting textures gliding below the surface.
Two White Cranes - Miso
We last saw Roxy Brennan exploring her electronic urges as Furore; back to the guitar for a while she's almost lilting as she tackles the mental delocation of moving away. No definite news of a full release but there's some dates coming up
christian fitness - slap bass hunks
Please refer to yesterday's post.
Waxahatchee - Silver
Katie Crutchfield returns with a meaningful guitar crunch that harkens back to the days when we called this kind of thing 'college rock' and Tanya Donelly roamed the land. Big old hooks, self-questioning approach, streamlined for maximum emotional effect. Out In The Storm is out 14th July.
Slow Skies - Shut Your Eyes
It's been a while since we've heard anything new from Dublin's Karen Sheridan, whose 2014 EP intrigued us with its glacial shimmer and yaw. There's very little information about what this is for or from but, if slightly more approachable, it remains a delicate floating confection of Sheridan's honeyed vocal and a number of interesting textures gliding below the surface.
Two White Cranes - Miso
We last saw Roxy Brennan exploring her electronic urges as Furore; back to the guitar for a while she's almost lilting as she tackles the mental delocation of moving away. No definite news of a full release but there's some dates coming up
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
STN recommends: 18/4/17
Christian Fitness - Bees Mode
Reminder of STN policy: you don't write about Christian Fitness songs, you let them happen. Seems the next album's going to be called Slap Bass Hunks.
Girlpool - It Gets More Blue
When we first met Cleo and Harmony they were skeletal and direct; with maturity comes personal consideration and a filling out of a lot if not all of the gaps - listen! Drums! - which gives the music a tinge of Pavement lo-fi broken melody against the softly downcast harmonies without sacrificing that off the top of the head emotional intimacy.
Saint Etienne - Magpie Eyes
It's back to the club-ready machines, whirring dreamy synths and sequencers for the second taste of Home Counties, out 2nd June, inspired partially by the Creation Records tome but mostly by a sense of loss and missing out on the world.
Kamikaze Girls - Berlin
The Leeds duo - yeah, one of those again, we're afraid, but bear in mind what it takes for us to endorse a guitar/drums duo these days - are newly signed to Big Scary Monsters and roar out of the blocks with rough-hewn juggernaut riffs and powerhouse drums driven by focused fury. Album Seafoam is out June 9th.
Sweet Baboo - Wild Imagination
The title track from Stephen's latest album, released 2nd June, is a dreamy, one man Beach Boys on a budget concoction that like much of his best work is sweetly uplifting very much in his own world that's just a slightly more sepia printed version of ours.
Post War Glamour Girls - Pollyanna Cowgirl
For a moment there they sounded like they'd gone *cough* anthemic. From third album Swan Songs, out April 21st, serpentine guitars and James' familiar doomy vocal fighting back against the wall of indifference.
Deerful - Subjects Of Our Love
Emma Winston has done time in Darren Hayman's band and Owl & Mouse amongst others; in her solo guise - album Peach out June 9th - she takes up Gameboy and assorted slightly worn synths to create racing 8-bit electropop of a personal affirmation hue.
BEAK> - Sex Music
Geoff Barrow's other band, as you might recall, go for the motorik, vintage organ sound and turn out surprisingly slinky, if unsurprisingly dark in doing so.
The St Pierre Snake Invasion - Dick E Mozart
76 seconds of death-or-glory-but-the-former-if-at-all-possible crashing hardcore, part of the Too Pure Singles Club, from a Bristol band whose singer did the auxiliary vocals when Mclusky played their semi-reformation shows, which follows with his band's angry crash dynamics.
Her's - I'll Try
Swooningly, nimbly romantic playing itself off against Norwegian vocalist Audun Laading's distracted slacker slur, the Liverpool-based duo have turned a few heads for their somnambulent bedroom pop, all of which is collected on story-so-far compilation Songs Of Her's, out 12th May.
Reminder of STN policy: you don't write about Christian Fitness songs, you let them happen. Seems the next album's going to be called Slap Bass Hunks.
Girlpool - It Gets More Blue
When we first met Cleo and Harmony they were skeletal and direct; with maturity comes personal consideration and a filling out of a lot if not all of the gaps - listen! Drums! - which gives the music a tinge of Pavement lo-fi broken melody against the softly downcast harmonies without sacrificing that off the top of the head emotional intimacy.
Saint Etienne - Magpie Eyes
It's back to the club-ready machines, whirring dreamy synths and sequencers for the second taste of Home Counties, out 2nd June, inspired partially by the Creation Records tome but mostly by a sense of loss and missing out on the world.
Kamikaze Girls - Berlin
The Leeds duo - yeah, one of those again, we're afraid, but bear in mind what it takes for us to endorse a guitar/drums duo these days - are newly signed to Big Scary Monsters and roar out of the blocks with rough-hewn juggernaut riffs and powerhouse drums driven by focused fury. Album Seafoam is out June 9th.
Sweet Baboo - Wild Imagination
The title track from Stephen's latest album, released 2nd June, is a dreamy, one man Beach Boys on a budget concoction that like much of his best work is sweetly uplifting very much in his own world that's just a slightly more sepia printed version of ours.
Post War Glamour Girls - Pollyanna Cowgirl
For a moment there they sounded like they'd gone *cough* anthemic. From third album Swan Songs, out April 21st, serpentine guitars and James' familiar doomy vocal fighting back against the wall of indifference.
Deerful - Subjects Of Our Love
Emma Winston has done time in Darren Hayman's band and Owl & Mouse amongst others; in her solo guise - album Peach out June 9th - she takes up Gameboy and assorted slightly worn synths to create racing 8-bit electropop of a personal affirmation hue.
BEAK> - Sex Music
Geoff Barrow's other band, as you might recall, go for the motorik, vintage organ sound and turn out surprisingly slinky, if unsurprisingly dark in doing so.
The St Pierre Snake Invasion - Dick E Mozart
76 seconds of death-or-glory-but-the-former-if-at-all-possible crashing hardcore, part of the Too Pure Singles Club, from a Bristol band whose singer did the auxiliary vocals when Mclusky played their semi-reformation shows, which follows with his band's angry crash dynamics.
Her's - I'll Try
Swooningly, nimbly romantic playing itself off against Norwegian vocalist Audun Laading's distracted slacker slur, the Liverpool-based duo have turned a few heads for their somnambulent bedroom pop, all of which is collected on story-so-far compilation Songs Of Her's, out 12th May.
Monday, April 10, 2017
STN recommends: 10/4/17
Feist - Century
Leslie Feist has described Pleasure, released on the 28th, as an attempt at a more raw, guileless recording session. You can well believe that on the evidence of this, tightly wound and meaningfully sparse. With martial drums and uncluttered directness PJ Harvey will come instantly to mind, at least up until everything stops and turns into a keyboard-led coda for Jarvis Cocker to do his breathy spoken word Jarvis Cocker things over. And then it suddenly stops.
H. Hawkline - Engineers
Hot off the presses, a third taste of I Romanticize, out 2nd June, representing another subtle shift into jangling summer pop with an acidic kick all wrapped around that familiar Welsh psych-confusion template.
Chemtrails - Headless Pin Up Girl
There's quite a bit of that sunlit harmonic surf guitar sound gone ragged and exposed around the edges around at the moment. More ragged and cut to the bone than most, and notably slower if not much less spiky than their usual garage rush, London's Chemtrails release their second EP of the same title on May 12th, inspired via singer Mia Lust's pre-transgender transition keeping of secrets by feelings on not being true to one's true role and place in things.
Milo's Planes - Fidget In Paralysis
The Bristol band's Delivering Business Success was one of last year's sleeper hits, which is a weird thing to approach a record whose stock in trade is direct, Fugazi/SST-inspired post-hardcore. The first track from third album Individual Development Plan, out 12th May, compresses things even further into 81 seconds of jagged riffs, molten gang shouts and general thrusting relentlessness reminiscent of Husker Du just as they were moving away from their warp speed hardcore origins.
Marlon Brando Island - True Heroes
Pitched as a post-hardcore Walkmen, if without the organ, the power trio ratchet up the emotional intensity on this half of a debut double A side, like the National of yore coursing and careering into a razor-tipped dynamic shift that takes everyone over the edge. The kind of band you may need to keep an eye on if only for their own security.
DBFC - Sinner
The Paris-based duo float unserenely on the techno-indie dividing line, aiding psychedelia tropes with beats and layers of unstable synths. The press release makes a Primal Scream comparison, which would be apposite of the blissed out attitude of Screamadelica was added to the Kraut-dub ambience of Vanishing Point, though more accurate touchstones would be the ambient end of peak Chemical Brothers, or maybe the club-psych likes of Delakota and Regular Fries right at the end of the 90s. Album Jenks is out 2nd June.
Lush Purr - (I Admit It) I'm A Gardener
Concise, noisy, inscrutable lo-fi psych-fuzz a-go-go, Lush Purr are signed to Song, By Toad, they're playing some dates with Meursault next month and their drummer was in Copy Haho, which is as solid a start as any. Album Cuckoo Waltz is out 5th May.
Fizzy Blood - Pawn
Fizzy Blood are from Leeds, as are Pulled Apart By Horses, with whom they share a yen for heavy rock shapes undercut with their own particular worldview, pummelling HGV-size riffs against walls and careering into fists-aloft choruses.
Leslie Feist has described Pleasure, released on the 28th, as an attempt at a more raw, guileless recording session. You can well believe that on the evidence of this, tightly wound and meaningfully sparse. With martial drums and uncluttered directness PJ Harvey will come instantly to mind, at least up until everything stops and turns into a keyboard-led coda for Jarvis Cocker to do his breathy spoken word Jarvis Cocker things over. And then it suddenly stops.
H. Hawkline - Engineers
Hot off the presses, a third taste of I Romanticize, out 2nd June, representing another subtle shift into jangling summer pop with an acidic kick all wrapped around that familiar Welsh psych-confusion template.
Chemtrails - Headless Pin Up Girl
There's quite a bit of that sunlit harmonic surf guitar sound gone ragged and exposed around the edges around at the moment. More ragged and cut to the bone than most, and notably slower if not much less spiky than their usual garage rush, London's Chemtrails release their second EP of the same title on May 12th, inspired via singer Mia Lust's pre-transgender transition keeping of secrets by feelings on not being true to one's true role and place in things.
Milo's Planes - Fidget In Paralysis
The Bristol band's Delivering Business Success was one of last year's sleeper hits, which is a weird thing to approach a record whose stock in trade is direct, Fugazi/SST-inspired post-hardcore. The first track from third album Individual Development Plan, out 12th May, compresses things even further into 81 seconds of jagged riffs, molten gang shouts and general thrusting relentlessness reminiscent of Husker Du just as they were moving away from their warp speed hardcore origins.
Marlon Brando Island - True Heroes
Pitched as a post-hardcore Walkmen, if without the organ, the power trio ratchet up the emotional intensity on this half of a debut double A side, like the National of yore coursing and careering into a razor-tipped dynamic shift that takes everyone over the edge. The kind of band you may need to keep an eye on if only for their own security.
DBFC - Sinner
The Paris-based duo float unserenely on the techno-indie dividing line, aiding psychedelia tropes with beats and layers of unstable synths. The press release makes a Primal Scream comparison, which would be apposite of the blissed out attitude of Screamadelica was added to the Kraut-dub ambience of Vanishing Point, though more accurate touchstones would be the ambient end of peak Chemical Brothers, or maybe the club-psych likes of Delakota and Regular Fries right at the end of the 90s. Album Jenks is out 2nd June.
Lush Purr - (I Admit It) I'm A Gardener
Concise, noisy, inscrutable lo-fi psych-fuzz a-go-go, Lush Purr are signed to Song, By Toad, they're playing some dates with Meursault next month and their drummer was in Copy Haho, which is as solid a start as any. Album Cuckoo Waltz is out 5th May.
Fizzy Blood - Pawn
Fizzy Blood are from Leeds, as are Pulled Apart By Horses, with whom they share a yen for heavy rock shapes undercut with their own particular worldview, pummelling HGV-size riffs against walls and careering into fists-aloft choruses.
Wednesday, April 05, 2017
STN recommends: 5/4/17
Yr Poetry - These Are Not The Days Of Our Lives
For the course of 2017 sometime side project Yr Poetry is what Alexei and Junior of Johnny Foreigner are concentrating on. One Night Alive, is the first of three EPs promised this year, pay what you want but with a subscription service where for £20 a year you'll get a CD compilation of said releases, exclusive song downloads, money off any merch and whatever all concerned do from 2018 onwards. None of this would be worth typing that out without the songs, less full-band like (evidently), more electronic (indubitably, it's Junior), otherwise still explosive, still laser focused, still fixated on bad Birmingham indie/rock club nights and worse mornings after.
Christian Fitness - Bruce Hated Puppies
Talking of things done while the regular band are on a break, Falco... Falco.
Melody's Echo Chamber - Cross My Heart
Although a single came out under the radar in 2014 we've heard very little of Melody Prochet since 2012's debut album. We still don't have a release date for follow-up Bon Voyage but we do have a seven minute track that can best - no, pretty much only - be described as an odyssey, based in classically lush Gallic pop tropes but diverting itself as and when it fancies into psychedelia, prog hints, floating dreaminess, glitchy interruptions and at one stage a spot of beatboxing. It's a remarkable thing, pastoral and busy almost simultaneously, and worth your extended while.
Amber Arcades - Can't Say That We Tried
Annelotte De Graaf has a new EP under her spectral empathy guise, and this track from it builds the spire of the sonic cathedral by doing away with beats entirely, built on organ drone, guitar twang and pure emotion about either loss or never getting to know in the first place.
Fazerdaze - Take It Slow
We just wrote about Fazerdaze last week and this isn't that broadly dissimilar, but alright... New Zealander Amelia Murray, recording for Flying Nun, album Morningside out 5th May, dealing in heat-haze languidly melancholic surf-pop. She and they are in the UK from spring bank holiday weekend for about three weeks.
H. Grimace - Lipsyncer
A third track from Self Architect, out on Friday, this one less built on energy rush, more streamlined and considered. Good. It's still built on nervous tension and a coiled spring anger at societal demands into an intriguingly tangled coda, generally in no mood to become the anthem it might well easily have slipped into.
For the course of 2017 sometime side project Yr Poetry is what Alexei and Junior of Johnny Foreigner are concentrating on. One Night Alive, is the first of three EPs promised this year, pay what you want but with a subscription service where for £20 a year you'll get a CD compilation of said releases, exclusive song downloads, money off any merch and whatever all concerned do from 2018 onwards. None of this would be worth typing that out without the songs, less full-band like (evidently), more electronic (indubitably, it's Junior), otherwise still explosive, still laser focused, still fixated on bad Birmingham indie/rock club nights and worse mornings after.
Christian Fitness - Bruce Hated Puppies
Talking of things done while the regular band are on a break, Falco... Falco.
Melody's Echo Chamber - Cross My Heart
Although a single came out under the radar in 2014 we've heard very little of Melody Prochet since 2012's debut album. We still don't have a release date for follow-up Bon Voyage but we do have a seven minute track that can best - no, pretty much only - be described as an odyssey, based in classically lush Gallic pop tropes but diverting itself as and when it fancies into psychedelia, prog hints, floating dreaminess, glitchy interruptions and at one stage a spot of beatboxing. It's a remarkable thing, pastoral and busy almost simultaneously, and worth your extended while.
Amber Arcades - Can't Say That We Tried
Annelotte De Graaf has a new EP under her spectral empathy guise, and this track from it builds the spire of the sonic cathedral by doing away with beats entirely, built on organ drone, guitar twang and pure emotion about either loss or never getting to know in the first place.
Fazerdaze - Take It Slow
We just wrote about Fazerdaze last week and this isn't that broadly dissimilar, but alright... New Zealander Amelia Murray, recording for Flying Nun, album Morningside out 5th May, dealing in heat-haze languidly melancholic surf-pop. She and they are in the UK from spring bank holiday weekend for about three weeks.
H. Grimace - Lipsyncer
A third track from Self Architect, out on Friday, this one less built on energy rush, more streamlined and considered. Good. It's still built on nervous tension and a coiled spring anger at societal demands into an intriguingly tangled coda, generally in no mood to become the anthem it might well easily have slipped into.
Saturday, April 01, 2017
STN recommends... March 2017
Back once again to round off a calendar month with a compilation of the stuff we've given a push on here and the best of the month's album tracks, as well as a handful that have emerged this week that we haven't had space to write about, including Broken Social Scene, Sparks and Slowdive.
Monday, March 27, 2017
STN recommends: 27/3/17
W H Lung - Inspiration!/Nothing Is
Here is the sum total of what we can pass on about W H Lung - they're a trio based in Manchester, they release both these songs on a double A side on May 12th via Melodic, and despite no real proof of having played live yet they're already booked to play End Of The Road, Blue Dot Festival at Jodrell Bank, Sea Change and Liverpool International Festival Of Psychedelia. So there's clearly something going on here - we have our suspicions - and while we await further instruction we have the music to go on, two tracks that together reach just short of sixteen minutes, and luckily it's great in all the right psychedelic/motorik ways, replete with lack-of-air-in-lungs yelp, using that length to shapeshift and evolve through cosmic instrumental breakdown/build-up sections and intense climaxes without falling into shoegaze territory. On Nothing Is some darting, pulsing synths come into play, shifting from Philip Glass repetition into a driving, malleable shape for purpose.
Sam Airey - Lacuna
Finally after what certainly seems like far too long, the darkly intricate craft of Leeds-based Airey has been formed into album shape, In Darkened Rooms out 26th May. Inspired by Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, here his cracked, emotionally spent falsetto is close miked amid a spaciously minimalist setting recalling a less wintry For Emma, Forever Ago.
Sneaks - Hair Slick Back
Slicks is Washington DC's Eva Moolchan, signed to Merge who release It’s a Myth the end of this week. She's/it's an intriguing proposition - taut bass and drum-machine led, delivery based on repetition and how language sounds, like ESG having first heard Le Tigre, with the recording of Mary Timony and her Ex Hex bandmate Jonah Takagi drawing strength from minimalism, which is what you can draw strength from if your album is ten tracks in eighteen minutes.
Alimony Hustle - Miss GB
It's been a little while since we've heard something new from the self-examining to a fault duo, who re-emerge with spacious, smartly vaulting guitar pop without succumbing to the usual bluesy/overdriven faults duos land in. Plus it's about Zara Holland, the titular beauty queen winner who was stripped of her title after going on Love Island. More particularly, "sexism, regret, the death of dreams and, ultimately, doing what you want in the face of all of that".
Gorillaz - Andromeda
The best, we reckon, of the four 80s revival bandwagon-flirting tracks revealed at the end of last week from fourth album Humanz, released 28th April, which seems to be a (quite uneven) club record for a darkened world. Indeed this is virtually old-skool house with its spaciousness, synth flashes and twinkles plus basic insistent beat, Damon in soulful, contemplative mood with rapper D.R.A.M. content to fill in the gaps.
BABY! - Home Sweet Home
BABY! is the nom du jangle of Orlando's Kaley Honeycutt, whose offering from forthcoming EP Pick Me is a sub-two minute joyous coast of surf guitar hooks and energetic warmth, invoking personal catharsis through sunny positivity like a lost Crutchfield sister.
Fazerdaze - Lucky Girl
A track that's been around for a few weeks but we only caught up with this week, and another typically swooning eternal summer kind of offering from the revived Flying Nun Records, New Zealander Amelia Murray similarly deals in bedroom-spawned hazy sunlight-dappled pop of breathy, reverbed for extra nostalgic quality vocal and contrasting emotions, the kind that sees joy and melancholy as part of the same package deal. Her album Morninside is due in May.
Caroline Lazar – Trigger
The young Atlantan was originally parsed as one of the latest country singer-songwriter wave, but this from her new Nevermine EP is a lot more, raw and brooding in minimalism even before it starts to slowly bloom, Lazar's huge voice pushing increasingly forward, before bursting into a emotively cathartic, intense coda involving seemingly all the electric instruments available.
Here is the sum total of what we can pass on about W H Lung - they're a trio based in Manchester, they release both these songs on a double A side on May 12th via Melodic, and despite no real proof of having played live yet they're already booked to play End Of The Road, Blue Dot Festival at Jodrell Bank, Sea Change and Liverpool International Festival Of Psychedelia. So there's clearly something going on here - we have our suspicions - and while we await further instruction we have the music to go on, two tracks that together reach just short of sixteen minutes, and luckily it's great in all the right psychedelic/motorik ways, replete with lack-of-air-in-lungs yelp, using that length to shapeshift and evolve through cosmic instrumental breakdown/build-up sections and intense climaxes without falling into shoegaze territory. On Nothing Is some darting, pulsing synths come into play, shifting from Philip Glass repetition into a driving, malleable shape for purpose.
Sam Airey - Lacuna
Finally after what certainly seems like far too long, the darkly intricate craft of Leeds-based Airey has been formed into album shape, In Darkened Rooms out 26th May. Inspired by Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, here his cracked, emotionally spent falsetto is close miked amid a spaciously minimalist setting recalling a less wintry For Emma, Forever Ago.
Sneaks - Hair Slick Back
Slicks is Washington DC's Eva Moolchan, signed to Merge who release It’s a Myth the end of this week. She's/it's an intriguing proposition - taut bass and drum-machine led, delivery based on repetition and how language sounds, like ESG having first heard Le Tigre, with the recording of Mary Timony and her Ex Hex bandmate Jonah Takagi drawing strength from minimalism, which is what you can draw strength from if your album is ten tracks in eighteen minutes.
Alimony Hustle - Miss GB
It's been a little while since we've heard something new from the self-examining to a fault duo, who re-emerge with spacious, smartly vaulting guitar pop without succumbing to the usual bluesy/overdriven faults duos land in. Plus it's about Zara Holland, the titular beauty queen winner who was stripped of her title after going on Love Island. More particularly, "sexism, regret, the death of dreams and, ultimately, doing what you want in the face of all of that".
Gorillaz - Andromeda
The best, we reckon, of the four 80s revival bandwagon-flirting tracks revealed at the end of last week from fourth album Humanz, released 28th April, which seems to be a (quite uneven) club record for a darkened world. Indeed this is virtually old-skool house with its spaciousness, synth flashes and twinkles plus basic insistent beat, Damon in soulful, contemplative mood with rapper D.R.A.M. content to fill in the gaps.
BABY! - Home Sweet Home
BABY! is the nom du jangle of Orlando's Kaley Honeycutt, whose offering from forthcoming EP Pick Me is a sub-two minute joyous coast of surf guitar hooks and energetic warmth, invoking personal catharsis through sunny positivity like a lost Crutchfield sister.
Fazerdaze - Lucky Girl
A track that's been around for a few weeks but we only caught up with this week, and another typically swooning eternal summer kind of offering from the revived Flying Nun Records, New Zealander Amelia Murray similarly deals in bedroom-spawned hazy sunlight-dappled pop of breathy, reverbed for extra nostalgic quality vocal and contrasting emotions, the kind that sees joy and melancholy as part of the same package deal. Her album Morninside is due in May.
Caroline Lazar – Trigger
The young Atlantan was originally parsed as one of the latest country singer-songwriter wave, but this from her new Nevermine EP is a lot more, raw and brooding in minimalism even before it starts to slowly bloom, Lazar's huge voice pushing increasingly forward, before bursting into a emotively cathartic, intense coda involving seemingly all the electric instruments available.
Thursday, March 23, 2017
STN recommends: 23/3/17
Perfume Genius - Slip Away
The last time Mike Hadreas had something from a new album to share it was Queen, and it blew most of the year away. Like that song this bursts from a tentative opening into technicolour; unlike it this seems more metallic, less keen on outre sashaying than percussion-driven bold statements of individuality, strength through passion's vulnerability. No Shape is out May 5th.
Saint Etienne - Heather
Bob, Pete'n'Sarah's first album in six years, out June 2nd, is called Home Counties, that most London of bands getting round to considering their shared teenage years in Surrey and Berkshire. From just the (19-strong!) tracklisting business appears to be as unusual. There's a track called Sports Report! And Church Pew Furniture Restorer! And one, presumably in tribute to Earl Brutus' Nick Sanderson, called Train Drivers In Eyeliner! And Bob's finally got a track called Popmaster in! The song features an unexpectedly heavy bassline amid some quite restrained pastorial synth floatiness and Cracknell's lyrical muse stuck in suburbia.
Gallops - Crystal Trap
A third advance cut from Bronze Mystic, out 21st April, starts off in ambient waters and then slowly gains its propulsive steady vertical takeoff by means of 8-bit settings, syncopated rhythms and electronic post-rock floating before a mammoth synth sturm und drang moment. It's quite the adventure, yet again.
H Hawkline - My Mine
Huw Evans' In The Pink Of Condition was one of the sleeper hit albums of 2015, and with Cate le Bon co-producing and playing alongside Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa I Romanticize, out 2nd June, might well give him that extra push. The single is certainly classically further along his trail of shaky, skewed take on harmonic psych-pop.
Thurston Moore - Smoke Of Dreams
Neither the folkishness Moore openly loves nor the noise of yore, Moore's new album Rock n Roll Consciousness, out April 28th, was produced by Paul Epworth, which might explain some of the sheen, and features Steve Shelley and MBV's Debbie Googe, which doesn't. It's quite contemplative and thinking retrospectively of youthful hopes and ghosts, in fact, maybe a side effect of his residing in London these days.
Big Walnuts Yonder - Sponge Bath
Reminder that BWY a) is a bad name and b) are Mike Watt, Nels Cline, Deerhoof's Greg Saunier and Tera Melos' Nick Reinhart, and when we first came across the project they were essentially free jazz hardcore. This time around they're up the hypnagogic end of the scale, Reinhart taking vocals on a queasy psych-out lope. There's a track on the self-titled album, out May 5th, called I Got Marty Feldman Eyes.
Ralegh Long - Take Your Mind Back
It's kind of dizzying seeing where Long goes, as he evolved from power pop to orchestral beauty and now into a kind of country rock take on Big Star/Paisley Underground moves, with his honeyed presence to the fore. There's a pre-order/manufacturing crowdfunding going on for Upwards Of Summer, out 9th June.
Mr Jukes - Angels/Your Love
Well, this is unexpected as much for being any good as its origins. A brassy soulful, sax-driven cool groove featuring a looping sax sample from jazz fusionist Jorge Lopez Ruiz plus impassioned vocals from one BJ The Chicago Kid, pitching somewhere between a becalmed Avalanches, a jazzier Gorillaz and the Face-friendly first flowerings of British jazz-funk circa 1982, you'd never guess it was the first solo work of Jack Steadman, formerly of Bombay Bicycle Club. Album God First is out June 9th.
The last time Mike Hadreas had something from a new album to share it was Queen, and it blew most of the year away. Like that song this bursts from a tentative opening into technicolour; unlike it this seems more metallic, less keen on outre sashaying than percussion-driven bold statements of individuality, strength through passion's vulnerability. No Shape is out May 5th.
Saint Etienne - Heather
Bob, Pete'n'Sarah's first album in six years, out June 2nd, is called Home Counties, that most London of bands getting round to considering their shared teenage years in Surrey and Berkshire. From just the (19-strong!) tracklisting business appears to be as unusual. There's a track called Sports Report! And Church Pew Furniture Restorer! And one, presumably in tribute to Earl Brutus' Nick Sanderson, called Train Drivers In Eyeliner! And Bob's finally got a track called Popmaster in! The song features an unexpectedly heavy bassline amid some quite restrained pastorial synth floatiness and Cracknell's lyrical muse stuck in suburbia.
Gallops - Crystal Trap
A third advance cut from Bronze Mystic, out 21st April, starts off in ambient waters and then slowly gains its propulsive steady vertical takeoff by means of 8-bit settings, syncopated rhythms and electronic post-rock floating before a mammoth synth sturm und drang moment. It's quite the adventure, yet again.
H Hawkline - My Mine
Huw Evans' In The Pink Of Condition was one of the sleeper hit albums of 2015, and with Cate le Bon co-producing and playing alongside Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa I Romanticize, out 2nd June, might well give him that extra push. The single is certainly classically further along his trail of shaky, skewed take on harmonic psych-pop.
Thurston Moore - Smoke Of Dreams
Neither the folkishness Moore openly loves nor the noise of yore, Moore's new album Rock n Roll Consciousness, out April 28th, was produced by Paul Epworth, which might explain some of the sheen, and features Steve Shelley and MBV's Debbie Googe, which doesn't. It's quite contemplative and thinking retrospectively of youthful hopes and ghosts, in fact, maybe a side effect of his residing in London these days.
Big Walnuts Yonder - Sponge Bath
Reminder that BWY a) is a bad name and b) are Mike Watt, Nels Cline, Deerhoof's Greg Saunier and Tera Melos' Nick Reinhart, and when we first came across the project they were essentially free jazz hardcore. This time around they're up the hypnagogic end of the scale, Reinhart taking vocals on a queasy psych-out lope. There's a track on the self-titled album, out May 5th, called I Got Marty Feldman Eyes.
Ralegh Long - Take Your Mind Back
It's kind of dizzying seeing where Long goes, as he evolved from power pop to orchestral beauty and now into a kind of country rock take on Big Star/Paisley Underground moves, with his honeyed presence to the fore. There's a pre-order/manufacturing crowdfunding going on for Upwards Of Summer, out 9th June.
Mr Jukes - Angels/Your Love
Well, this is unexpected as much for being any good as its origins. A brassy soulful, sax-driven cool groove featuring a looping sax sample from jazz fusionist Jorge Lopez Ruiz plus impassioned vocals from one BJ The Chicago Kid, pitching somewhere between a becalmed Avalanches, a jazzier Gorillaz and the Face-friendly first flowerings of British jazz-funk circa 1982, you'd never guess it was the first solo work of Jack Steadman, formerly of Bombay Bicycle Club. Album God First is out June 9th.
Tuesday, March 21, 2017
Romance and adventure: a salute to Fortuna Pop!
As of this weekend, an enormous crater opens up in the bedroom-insular, open air-spectacular world of indiepop as the Chance the Gardener of indie majordomo of all he surveyed Sean Price winds up his Fortuna Pop! label with a long London weekend entitled Twenty Years Of Tears - maybe slightly telling, as the label's first release came out in 1996 - starring Simon Love, Two White Cranes and a special headliner on Wednesday; Withered Hand, The Ballet, our recent alldayer headliner Pete Astor and the Would-Be-Goods on Thursday; The Butterflies Of Love, Sodastream, Flowers and Darren Hayman on Friday; Comet Gain, The Proper Ornaments, Evans The Death, the latest Loves final gig, Mammoth Penguins, Milky Wimpshake, the actual Bearsuit final gig, September Girls and Tigercats on Saturday; and then a quite spectacular literal and metaphorical (and only date currently sold out) blowout on Sunday with Martha, Joanna Gruesome, The Spook School and Chorusgirl.
Seemingly increasingly so as the years passed, the F-Pop! accroutrement to a release has regularly proved a badge of quality, and as much as the scene seemingly has a relatively good cushion these days the current roster especially being left homeless is going to leave a hell of a deep crater both in impact and having some great bands floating with no as yet obvious place to go.
Never managed to get Sean to come up to Leicester for the Alldayer despite putting the vast majority of his roster on over the years, though. His loss.
As a fond farewell, this is the playlist we threw together back in August upon Price breaking the news, thirty examples from across the years of what his whims and craft were all about:
The Lucksmiths - A Hiccup In Your Happiness
Comet Gain - You Can Hide Your Love Forever
Airport Girl - The Foolishness That We Create Through Love Is The Closest We Come To Greatness
Sodastream - Blinky
Club 8 - Jesus, Walk With Me
The Ladybug Transistor - Always On The Telephone
Allo Darlin' - The Polaroid Song
Milky Wimpshake - I'm Saving Myself For You
Crystal Stilts - Shake The Shackles
Joanna Gruesome - Sugarcrush
The Spook School - I'll Be Honest
Bearsuit - Itsuko Got Married
The Loves - Xs And Os
Tigercats - Junior Champion
Flowers - Pull My Arm
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - Young Adult Friction
Evans The Death - Threads
The Aislers Set - The Red Door
Martha - 1967, I Miss You I'm Lonely
Chorusgirl - No Moon
September Girls - Love No One
Tullycraft - Lost in Light Rotation
Herman Düne - Monument Park
Shrag - Chasing Consummations
Tender Trap - Train From King's Cross Station
Darren Hayman And The Long Parliament - We Are Not Evil
Let's Wrestle - Rain Ruins Revolution
Chain and The Gang - Never Been Properly Loved
Mammoth Penguins - Strength In My Legs
Withered Hand - Heart Heart
Seemingly increasingly so as the years passed, the F-Pop! accroutrement to a release has regularly proved a badge of quality, and as much as the scene seemingly has a relatively good cushion these days the current roster especially being left homeless is going to leave a hell of a deep crater both in impact and having some great bands floating with no as yet obvious place to go.
Never managed to get Sean to come up to Leicester for the Alldayer despite putting the vast majority of his roster on over the years, though. His loss.
As a fond farewell, this is the playlist we threw together back in August upon Price breaking the news, thirty examples from across the years of what his whims and craft were all about:
The Lucksmiths - A Hiccup In Your Happiness
Comet Gain - You Can Hide Your Love Forever
Airport Girl - The Foolishness That We Create Through Love Is The Closest We Come To Greatness
Sodastream - Blinky
Club 8 - Jesus, Walk With Me
The Ladybug Transistor - Always On The Telephone
Allo Darlin' - The Polaroid Song
Milky Wimpshake - I'm Saving Myself For You
Crystal Stilts - Shake The Shackles
Joanna Gruesome - Sugarcrush
The Spook School - I'll Be Honest
Bearsuit - Itsuko Got Married
The Loves - Xs And Os
Tigercats - Junior Champion
Flowers - Pull My Arm
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - Young Adult Friction
Evans The Death - Threads
The Aislers Set - The Red Door
Martha - 1967, I Miss You I'm Lonely
Chorusgirl - No Moon
September Girls - Love No One
Tullycraft - Lost in Light Rotation
Herman Düne - Monument Park
Shrag - Chasing Consummations
Tender Trap - Train From King's Cross Station
Darren Hayman And The Long Parliament - We Are Not Evil
Let's Wrestle - Rain Ruins Revolution
Chain and The Gang - Never Been Properly Loved
Mammoth Penguins - Strength In My Legs
Withered Hand - Heart Heart
Monday, March 20, 2017
STN recommends: 20/3/17
The Orielles - Sugar Tastes Like Salt
People who know things have been talking about the Halifax trio for a while, and now signed to Heavenly they've decided to abandon protocol and just go for it off the bat with an eight and a half minute debut single that swings gladly between reference points - scratchy post-punk, doomy psychedelia, frictionless punk-funk, Tarantino soundtracks, early Factory Records groove, dubby breakdown launching back into a sprint - whilst still seeming of a piece. It's a brave and exhilarating way to open, and it'll grab you before long if you make the commitment to run alongside it.
Feist - Pleasure
The title track from Leslie's first album in six years, out April 28th, is intriguingly low-key and swampy, even more so than the deliberate step away from over commerciality that Metals represented. Its single bluesy guitar with minimal backing and late on devolvement into wild-eyed half-shouted statements of intent recall Rid Of Me-era PJ Harvey, with the upfront brazenness mixed back in favour of the title's suggested hope of something basic and, yes, carnal to cling to.
Furore - Eyelid
Furore is Roxy Brennan, of what seems like hundreds of bands but chiefly by herself Two White Cranes. The guitar has been swapped for synths and a machine handclap setting, but even if it's more constrained by the machine beat the sense of turned inwards emotional rawness remains. An EP will be released on Mat Riviere's label Bleak Spring on April 3rd.
H. Grimace - Call It Out
When we first came across H. Grimace a few weeks back they were coiled springs, but if the second track we've heard from Self Architecht, out April 9th, is more restrained until its collapsing climax it's only through trying to push against where it's going, built on a cyclical insistent riff and the pure nervous energy coursing through the driving bassline and Hannah Gledhill's vocals alike.
Guided By Voices - Dr Feelgood Falls Off The Ocean
Robert Pollard feels like he releases fifty albums a month in various permutations, but GBV's August By Cake - a double! - will actually be his hundredth when released on 7th April. One year fewer than it took Billy Childish to get to that mark, by our reckoning. Apart from being driven by a drum machine, you pretty much know what to expect from this if you know your mid-paced slashing slacker end of the GBV template.
Pronto Mama - Double Speak
The percussion-heavy Glaswegian sextet, who release debut album proper Any Joy on 5th May, matches its urgent post-punk capture and release energy struggling to hold onto itself by considering what it is to think you have the world at your beck and call.
People who know things have been talking about the Halifax trio for a while, and now signed to Heavenly they've decided to abandon protocol and just go for it off the bat with an eight and a half minute debut single that swings gladly between reference points - scratchy post-punk, doomy psychedelia, frictionless punk-funk, Tarantino soundtracks, early Factory Records groove, dubby breakdown launching back into a sprint - whilst still seeming of a piece. It's a brave and exhilarating way to open, and it'll grab you before long if you make the commitment to run alongside it.
Feist - Pleasure
The title track from Leslie's first album in six years, out April 28th, is intriguingly low-key and swampy, even more so than the deliberate step away from over commerciality that Metals represented. Its single bluesy guitar with minimal backing and late on devolvement into wild-eyed half-shouted statements of intent recall Rid Of Me-era PJ Harvey, with the upfront brazenness mixed back in favour of the title's suggested hope of something basic and, yes, carnal to cling to.
Furore - Eyelid
Furore is Roxy Brennan, of what seems like hundreds of bands but chiefly by herself Two White Cranes. The guitar has been swapped for synths and a machine handclap setting, but even if it's more constrained by the machine beat the sense of turned inwards emotional rawness remains. An EP will be released on Mat Riviere's label Bleak Spring on April 3rd.
H. Grimace - Call It Out
When we first came across H. Grimace a few weeks back they were coiled springs, but if the second track we've heard from Self Architecht, out April 9th, is more restrained until its collapsing climax it's only through trying to push against where it's going, built on a cyclical insistent riff and the pure nervous energy coursing through the driving bassline and Hannah Gledhill's vocals alike.
Guided By Voices - Dr Feelgood Falls Off The Ocean
Robert Pollard feels like he releases fifty albums a month in various permutations, but GBV's August By Cake - a double! - will actually be his hundredth when released on 7th April. One year fewer than it took Billy Childish to get to that mark, by our reckoning. Apart from being driven by a drum machine, you pretty much know what to expect from this if you know your mid-paced slashing slacker end of the GBV template.
Pronto Mama - Double Speak
The percussion-heavy Glaswegian sextet, who release debut album proper Any Joy on 5th May, matches its urgent post-punk capture and release energy struggling to hold onto itself by considering what it is to think you have the world at your beck and call.
Monday, March 13, 2017
STN recommends: 13/3/17
Napoleon IIIrd - The Scrape
A quick primer, as there's always latecomers - Napoleon IIIrd is James Mabbett and both of his previous albums made number four in their respective years' STN end of year lists. The Great Lake, out 19th May, comes more than six years after Christiania and is a five track literal change of pace, funereal, experimental and abstract in an ambient/Mark Hollis influenced sense, meditating on grief, transcendence and self-destruction. It'll get under your skin.
Public Service Broadcasting - Progress
No news on the subject matter linking PSB's as yet unannounced third album, but we can make an informed judgement from their new single. Or, y'know, just listen to it. Tracyanne Campbell of Camera Obscura takes the chorus vocal amid the restrained whilst still propulsive motorik and samples of research and development both harking back to their debut record, as always retro and futuristic at once.
Fleet Foxes - Third of May/Ōdaigahara
3rd May 2011 was the release date of Helplessness Blues, the last new material from the once ubiquitous nu-folk trailblazers. The near nine minute, several phase first taste of Crack-Up, released June 16th, considers what's changed in that time via the medium of quiet-loud crescendos, self-examining introspection and a great deal of what got them this far, just now in subtly different, more overtly expansive and cinematic clothing before turning into something more acoustic ambient, not far from what Animal Collective used to do circa Sung Tongs. A fascinating return and proof that there's more than one way out of the pastoral impasse.
Soulwax - Missing Wires
The concept behind the Dewaele brothers' new album From Deewee, released March 24th, is they recorded the whole thing in one take in one recording session. It fits too, the pulsing electronics fitting in around the song seeming impulsive, synths dancing across a rutted landscape and shapeshifting effortlessly.
Darren Hayman - Upper Slaughter
Hayman is onto the second volume (out May 26th) of his Thankful Villages project, visiting the 54 UK villages where every soldier returned alive from WW1 and writing a song inspired by the folklore and landscape of each. For his visit to the titular Cotswolds village, halfway between Cheltenham and Chipping Norton, he invited local resident and Fairport Convention's first singer Judy Dyble, who lends autoharp and clearest of folk vocals to a tale of history flowing like the bisecting River Eye.
Sean Rowe - Newton's Cradle
Another track from Rowe's third album New Lore, out August 7th, it feels somehow wrong to hear his familiarly gruff voice against something quite musically upbeat, more appreciably outright Philly-soulful than he's ever been before in fact. Luckily, it fits nigh-on perfectly.
Pip Hall - James
Preston-based sixteen year old Hall created a groundswell of attention towards the end of 2017 with a lush electronically aided commercially leaning soulfulness, the kind of thing that can and often does dip into MOR Remember The Eighties? wash but keeps its head above water here with subtlety and meaningfulness, the song being about Hall coping with the passing of her father.
Year Of Birds - Western Splits (After Lear)
Teeside now-trio Year Of Birds have been around for a few years but the tremendously titled White Death To Power Alan, out this week on Odd Box, is their first album to be approached and written as a full actual album, if that makes sense. Their ragged lo-fi weird garage nods greatly at the Fall but would more willingly fit into the mid-80s scene John Robb described as Death To Trad Rock, and the more bands we have that sound like they could be filed next to A Witness or Bogshed the better these days.
A quick primer, as there's always latecomers - Napoleon IIIrd is James Mabbett and both of his previous albums made number four in their respective years' STN end of year lists. The Great Lake, out 19th May, comes more than six years after Christiania and is a five track literal change of pace, funereal, experimental and abstract in an ambient/Mark Hollis influenced sense, meditating on grief, transcendence and self-destruction. It'll get under your skin.
Public Service Broadcasting - Progress
No news on the subject matter linking PSB's as yet unannounced third album, but we can make an informed judgement from their new single. Or, y'know, just listen to it. Tracyanne Campbell of Camera Obscura takes the chorus vocal amid the restrained whilst still propulsive motorik and samples of research and development both harking back to their debut record, as always retro and futuristic at once.
Fleet Foxes - Third of May/Ōdaigahara
3rd May 2011 was the release date of Helplessness Blues, the last new material from the once ubiquitous nu-folk trailblazers. The near nine minute, several phase first taste of Crack-Up, released June 16th, considers what's changed in that time via the medium of quiet-loud crescendos, self-examining introspection and a great deal of what got them this far, just now in subtly different, more overtly expansive and cinematic clothing before turning into something more acoustic ambient, not far from what Animal Collective used to do circa Sung Tongs. A fascinating return and proof that there's more than one way out of the pastoral impasse.
Soulwax - Missing Wires
The concept behind the Dewaele brothers' new album From Deewee, released March 24th, is they recorded the whole thing in one take in one recording session. It fits too, the pulsing electronics fitting in around the song seeming impulsive, synths dancing across a rutted landscape and shapeshifting effortlessly.
Darren Hayman - Upper Slaughter
Hayman is onto the second volume (out May 26th) of his Thankful Villages project, visiting the 54 UK villages where every soldier returned alive from WW1 and writing a song inspired by the folklore and landscape of each. For his visit to the titular Cotswolds village, halfway between Cheltenham and Chipping Norton, he invited local resident and Fairport Convention's first singer Judy Dyble, who lends autoharp and clearest of folk vocals to a tale of history flowing like the bisecting River Eye.
Sean Rowe - Newton's Cradle
Another track from Rowe's third album New Lore, out August 7th, it feels somehow wrong to hear his familiarly gruff voice against something quite musically upbeat, more appreciably outright Philly-soulful than he's ever been before in fact. Luckily, it fits nigh-on perfectly.
Pip Hall - James
Preston-based sixteen year old Hall created a groundswell of attention towards the end of 2017 with a lush electronically aided commercially leaning soulfulness, the kind of thing that can and often does dip into MOR Remember The Eighties? wash but keeps its head above water here with subtlety and meaningfulness, the song being about Hall coping with the passing of her father.
Year Of Birds - Western Splits (After Lear)
Teeside now-trio Year Of Birds have been around for a few years but the tremendously titled White Death To Power Alan, out this week on Odd Box, is their first album to be approached and written as a full actual album, if that makes sense. Their ragged lo-fi weird garage nods greatly at the Fall but would more willingly fit into the mid-80s scene John Robb described as Death To Trad Rock, and the more bands we have that sound like they could be filed next to A Witness or Bogshed the better these days.
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