"Isaac Brock (Modest Mouse) gives you Mimicking Birds " proclaimed the promo email. If I hadn't been paying much attention, I could have easily read that as news of a Brock side project. If I'd played the song, I'd likely have reached the same conclusion too. I even had to double check that Brock wasn't actually involved anywhere on the recording itself, such is the similarity. It's not just the vocals that are similar either. Even the gentle yet detailed arrangements of the music has the feel of certain areas of the Modest Mouse discography. The harsh part of [...]
New stuff Eardrums Music have a new video from the recently featured Spaghetti Anywhere , entitled Incredible Hulk. Video of MJ Hibbett covering Allo, Darlin' on the Indietracks blog . This had better be a new trend in the run up to the festival, or better yet, during it. A new Born Ruffians song at You Ain't No Picasso . Not a big fan of the new sound to be honest. Reviews She & [...]
Well this is slightly embarrassing. I was venturing through all of the SXSW mp3s picking out songs by artists I already somewhat like. Given the number of songs available, it's rather hellish listening to everything, so it's a way of being more selective. Anyway, evidently it's time for an eye test as I clicked play on Electric Skeleton expecting to hear a new Darren Hayman song. Which of course it wasn't. Luckily for me though, it still turned out to be something rather good. Darren Hanlon is one of those names I've always been aware of [...]
I'm not sure what it is, but there's something about The Big Big Bucks ' Futurecar that reminds me of Saves the Day. I know to a lot of people that could be seen as an insult, but given I'm one of the few who will admit to loving that band, I can assure you that it isn't. The song is loud, it's fast and it's covered in distortion, and yet it retains a sense of structure to it all. There's more to The Big Big Bucks than that though, as little else on the [...]
An odd thing about indie pop is that wherever in the world it originates from, it all shares the same kind of sound. Not necessarily just on a purely musical level, but even in terms of the words or even the vocal tones. It's pretty difficult to separate British indiepop from American indiepop or even Swedish indiepop. Just to mix things up, today we have Summer Cats who are from Melbourne in Australia, not that you could tell. If I had to point to a similar sounding band, my first thought would be Pants Yell!, and Boston is [...]
I never really had time to get to know Elle S'appelle very well as a band. Within mere weeks of me discovering them (and declaring them a Great British Hope no less) they decided to call it a day. It was certainly a shame as there was a lot of talent there, but it didn't overly bother me given the time frame involved. Of course, the inevitable question now is exactly how all of this connects to today's band, Liverpool's Hallo... I Love You!. Well it's actually just that one of the members of this band was in that band. [...]
Hey kids, it's another Scottish indie pop band! I could tell you that I'm trying to mix things up by finding brand new things, but I'm not. I'm evidently listening to a lot of Scottish indie pop at the moment, so that is what ends up here. Maple Leaves are from Glasgow, just like the majority of the good stuff, and without descending too far into stereotypes, vocalist Anna features on Stuart Murdoch's God Help the Girl project. Maple Leaves make nice little pop songs that add to the growing trend of folk influence into indie [...]
The Scottish invasion continues with Kid Canaveral , a band I found purely by luck while wandering around the brilliant Bandcamp. Excellent site that's a million times better than Myspace for both bands and consumers. I predict pretty much every indie band in the world will be using it within a year. Anyways, Good Morning is taken from Kid Canaveral 's debut album that is due out around now I think. Good, upbeat power-pop that by rights should be regarded as the next big thing to come out of Scotland. Myspace . [...]
Bush Hall seems to be something of an oddity in terms of London gig venues. That's even after one takes aside the fact it's a fairly large ballroom (with chandeliers!) that dates back over 100 years. It's location was what took me most by surprise. Nearly every venue I've been to in London tended to be in the northeast of the city. Shoreditch and Highbury tend to be where it's at on the north of the river, Brixton on the south. Bush Hall sits a fair way out to the west, across raised roads and ridiculously large [...]
There must be something in the water up in Leeds as the city seems to keep churning out excellent band after excellent band. The ABC Club are the latest of these bands, and there is something special here. Riding on a kind of nostalgia for the early part of the last decade, we have a sound that is closer to The Strokes than anything, and that's just fine. There's nothing groundbreakingly new, but that will probably do them well. This is the kind of thing I can certainly see being "the next big thing" assuming everything goes right [...]
It seems fitting that new videos from both Allo Darlin' and The School should appear on the same day. Both have been indiepop darlings of the recent past, both have new albums coming out around the same time, and both bands have been touring around the UK together. Their final dates together are in the next few days, including a special Bush Hall show this Saturday that I'm looking forward to immensely. First up is the video for Allo Darlin's single Dreaming , which will be out on Monday. The song features the guest vocals [...]
The story behind A B & the Sea is almost a bit too much. Friends jumping in a van and moving from small-town Wisconsin and heading out to California to "make it". Blah blah blah. I'd probably find it all rather silly if I didn't rather like the songs that came out of it. California has obviously had an effect on the band given their music comes across as something akin to The Beach Boys crossed with Fountains of Wayne. Yes, I know the latter are actually from New York, but they always seemed to have that sunny [...]
Well it was never going to be anyone else, was it? If you've been following any of the vigorous debate over on Anorak about possible headliners and exactly what makes an "Indietracks band", one name kept coming up again and again: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart . Since the release of their first full-length album on a year ago the band have been absolutely everywhere. Critical acclaim has poured in from just about every music publication in the world. Even Pitchfork felt it appropriate to award it a "Best New Music" badge, which [...]
Well this is just lovely. What is it about a gentle Scottish voice having the ability to make any song instantly better? Only recently I realised that a disproportionate amount of my favourite bands tend to have Scottish vocalists. Could be coincidence I suppose, but there's something reassuring about a Scottish voice even when the words are utterly depressing. Spaghetti Anywhere aren't really that bleak. Sure, there's negativity, but it's done in such a wry way ("Why do I always go for girls with boyfriends? / Why can't I just try and sleep with her friend?") that it [...]
Holy shit. This is either irritating as hell or absolutely brilliant. It's loud, aggressive and incredibly shouty. The repeated cries of "man-moth" (god knows) is pushing it a bit, but there's something in the majority of it that recalls something along the lines of The Young Knives before they went all dull. Whether or not that's a good thing is obviously down to your own taste, but as someone who enjoyed that bands early stuff quite a bit, this is a nice little throwback. Far from perfect, but there's certainly enough here that I'd be curious to hear some more. [...]
It's no secret that The Light Footwork were one of the bands that caused me to start this blog in the first place. I discovered them back in 2005 when their debut One State Two State came out, and spent a lot of time bemoaning why bands like them weren't more recognised. There was a list of about ten or so bands at the time that I wanted to push onto people. I've largely forgotten about or drifted away from most of them at this point, but I've continued to enjoy One State Two State in [...]
It's no secret that The Light Footwork were one of the bands that caused me to start this blog in the first place. I discovered them back in 2005 when their debut One State Two State came out, and spent a lot of time bemoaning why bands like them weren't more recognised. There was a list of about ten or so bands at the time that I wanted to push onto people. I've largely forgotten about or drifted away from most of them at this point, but I've continued to enjoy One State Two State in [...]
This isn't what I expect to sound a band from Finland to sound like. That said, I don't really know what I would expect Finnish music to sound like. Cats on Fire don't really fit the perception either, but at least they sound somewhat foreign in the vocals. This could be any band from the American mid-south. Well, not quite any band as most wouldn't end up sounding as good as this. This is good, rollicking rock 'n' roll. So good it even gets away with being four and a half minutes, which is usually about a minute and a [...]
This isn't what I expect to sound a band from Finland to sound like. That said, I don't really know what I would expect Finnish music to sound like. Cats on Fire don't really fit the perception either, but at least they sound somewhat foreign in the vocals. This could be any band from the American mid-south. Well, not quite any band as most wouldn't end up sounding as good as this. This is good, rollicking rock 'n' roll. So good it even gets away with being four and a half minutes, which is usually about a minute and a [...]
I really don't like instrumental songs by and large. I have nothing in particular against them, but they just don't tend to be my cup of tea. To me, 90% of my music enjoyment comes from the words, both lyrically and vocally. So to take that out is to take out the most interesting part of the song to me. Songs without words feel kind of sparse if I'm being kind, dull if I'm not. I can appreciate the musicianship and all that, but an instrumental isn't usually going to make it onto my iPod. So now, just to be [...]
Another Form of Relief
Azealia Banks - '1991' [Listen]
Metric Debuts Album via Synthetica Hide+Seek, Tickets On Sale Now For Fall Tour
THE MASTERSONS — BIRDS FLY SOUTH
