My mates in I Concur have just released their brilliant debut album, Able Archer. I interview Tim and James for the Leeds fanzine Vibrations - physical copies of the mag are out around Leeds now (find it in independent record stores, Hyde Park Picture House, various pubs and choice locations), but if you don't manage to find one, the content is also online. Head straight to the I Concur interview here . Here's the video for the single, Sobotka: [...]

A sort of postscript to Sunday's obit for Bill Bartolin , lead guitarist and songwriter for Ohio powerpop gods Blue Ash : Please enjoy the band's irresistible cover of Bob Dylan 's "Dusty Old Fairgrounds," my second favorite track from their glorious 1973 debut album. DOF was a pretty obscure and at the time unreleased Dylan song when Blue Ash covered it; it derives from the famous bootleg of Bob's 1963 Town Hall Concert. I don't [...]

A few years back, former Quiet Sun / Roxy Music / 801 behind-the-scenes mastermind Gill Manzanera--no relation to guitarist Phil Manzanera (whose real name is Philip Targett-Adams)--offered up a beguiling reminiscence of those heady days to the Swiss fanzine Sombre Reptiles: "What we were trying to do, you see, was harness the future into the present. However, we were severely at odds with technology, a ring modulator on a Fender Rhodes and a bit of funny business through an analog synth being about as far as one could go then. [...]

Daniel Blumin writes: Spring has finally sprung. Phil Spector has gotten his comeuppance. But something's still missing, eh? If that something is "Branches", the exclusive electronics & harp improvisation by To Rococo Rot member Robert Lippok and Italian harpist Beatrice Martini, recorded for Daniel Blumin's WFMU radio program , not to worry. It can be downloaded from the Free Music Archive and also right here: Robert Lippok & Beatrice Martini - "Branches" (mp3) For an email Q & A with Lippok and Martini about the [...]
100 posts since March 2007! Not exactly grafting, clearly, but in between the other stuff we have to do BothBarsOn has brought you a roguish mix of new music and some old rubbish you'd either never heard of or wished you hadn't. We've had a ball and are proud of our nearly 22000 hits - hello Hawaii! - and would like to pass on our secret to anyone who thinks this is tricky: 1, Here's WordPress . Get yourself a blog. 2. Here are the HypeMachine and Elbows . Publicise it to [...]

This is a first. This is the the first song to appear on Swedesplease by someone with no known association to Sweden. I've written about a lot of indie pop over the years here and just thought that if anyone was actually reading this blog on a consistent basis and liking said Swedish indie pop then they'd probably like to hear this as well. The minute I heard the title of Kevin McGrother's the new record and saw that Kevin was an indie popster I was intrigued. Living In An Enid Blyton World sounds [...]

The Popguns formed in Brighton in 1986 and their first release was a track called "Where Do You Go" which was contained on a flexi disk which was given away free with an issue of "How Many Beans Make Five", a Brighton fanzine of the mid to late eighties. Their first proper single "Landslide" was issued the following year through Medium Cool records whose roster also included acts such as The Waltones , The Siddleys and The Corn Dollies. The next two singles were in my opinion the best records the band produced. "Waiting For [...]

Dear Tori Amos : WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU, SON? No, really, I know that you were last seen sporting a trash bag on loan from Missy and signing comic books inspired by what happens when artists listen to ecstasy and take Boys For Pele...or, wait, maybe it's the other way around. anyway, you've been M.I.A. in a way that only she should be, but even maya's been more up in my grill this election year, talking shit about "blop blop" and "pow pow" and probably something about mr plow, also, cause that's his name, that name [...]