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Misanthropic quirkophiles The Wave Pictures return this month with a new 7" single, 'Jonny Helm Sings'.
The three tracks are sung by Pictures' drummer Jonny Helm (the clue's in the title), and showcase a stripped down interpretation of their usual brand of twisted indie-pop. However, seasoned fans will be pleased to know there are still plenty of lyrical bon mots on offer.
The band had also announced a pre-Christmas show at Union Chapel on 22 December, but unfortunately for all those of you us who can't on the guestlist, it's already sold out. Quite how this happened before being announced is anyone's guess.
You can still purchase the 7" through Moshi Moshi, however. Here's a taster, 'Now You Are Pregnant':
TweetBAFTA Award-winning Australian songwriter Emily Barker sings wistful, undulating songs with a endearingly breathy fragility. It's as if she's staring out of a window at rolling hills, her gentle ruminations and lightly strummed guitar later commited to a tape of Red Clay Halo's more than capable accompaniment. At once melancholy and uplifting, minor in key but major in depth, this kicks the crap out of most of the unseemly dribble of contemporary folk seeping out of London. Her record,Almanac, funded with help from Pledge Music, comes out in February. In the meantime, enjoy her last single, the beautiful 'Little Deaths'.
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Re-invigorated by Bad Religion's best record for almost a decade, I've been telling anyone who'll listen for the past month or so that punk-rock is cool again. Here's the proof - in hardcore form - for the uber-trendies who hitherto refused to believe me. They're from Brooklyn (tick it off, uber-trendies) but they're also ethnically diverse, and you won't see them in oversized sweaters and deck shoes. They say things like "you haven’t heard of the New York hardcore scene because we it", they sound like Bad Brains (minus the reggae), and they've already been tagged "Brooklyn's wildest band". If they intend to do themselves justice, they'll last six months. Get in early to say you were there.
TweetBrooklyn noise-pop quartet Asobi Seksu are back, armed with beautiful new track 'Trails' to fill the guitar-pedal shaped hole in your life until their fourth full-lengther, Fluorescence, drops on 14 February 2011.
This one showcases a slightly more 60s-ish vibe than the pitch (im)perfect dreamy shoegaze delivered on their finest effort to date, 2007's Citrus. However, they wear it well, meaning Fluorescence could mark an intriguing semi-reinvention for the band.
Download 'Trails' from Polyvinyl here, or check out the video below for a taster:
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Formerly the songwriter/guitarist in forgotten 90s trash-rockers The Friggs, Palmyra Delran shows she's not averse to staying on trend with new single, 'Shut Out', her first new material to surface since 2008's debut EP She Digs The Ride. Despite half a Hole-ish nod to her 90s roots, on 'Shut Out' Delran still positions herself comfortably amongst this year's noisy, female fronted sunshine-poppers, particularly evoking California's finest Dum Dum Girls and Best Coast.
In a move emulating every warehouse-party-going wear-your-jean-hotpants-and-shades-in-November (and that's just the blokes) Shoreditch resident's wet dream, pre-eminent US surf types Best Coast and Wavves have teamed up to create a Christmas song, 'Got Something For You'.
The winter warmer has been thrown together for Target's Christmas Gig compilation, and stumbles in reeking of mulled wine and dashed dreams, somewhere between Shane McGowan and Mariah Carey.
Go here for a sneak preview of this and the other tracks on the comp, which will be available digitally from 28 November.
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Coming across a bit like punk Caribou - heartier, less clinical and more songful than his stateside contemporary - Leeds troubadour Napoleon IIIrd honed his craft playing the country's toilet-circuit armed with little more than an acoustic guitar and a few laptop loops. With a grand name, and big ideas to boot, new record Christiana (which dropped last Monday) should get him the credit he deserves. Try record opener The Unknown Unknown below.
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Having been picked up by The Drums guitarist Jacob Graham's online music venture, Holiday Records, and been tacked onto the US band's support for their ongoing European tour, medway upstarts Two Wounded Birds are now flying dangerously close to an airspace marked "better than The Drums at their own game". Slightly less obvious and, consequently, slightly more rewarding, single 'Keep Dreaming Baby' gets a 7" vinyl release on December 13. Have a listen below:
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It probably won't have escaped your attention that Pulp have reformed to headline a handful of shows next summer, notably London's Wireless and Barcelona's Primavera Sound festivals.
Whilst their motives might have more to do with large lorries turning up at Jarvis and chums' houses stuffed with pristinely rolled 50 pound notes than personal reconcilliation or 'the music', it's still ruddy good news, especially for those of us unfortunate enough to miss them the first time round.
In honour of their return, here's a totally arbitrary list of the best Pulp songs from their 90s glory years:
Do You Remember the First Time?
Their first charting hit, 'Do You Remember' outlined the blueprint for Cocker'sseedy kitchen-sink romanticism, juxtaposing himself as the forbidden bit on the side against his lover's safer (but far less exciting) beau.
Joyriders
A grim exploration of the going-nowhere lives that Cocker had experienced himself whilst growing up in Sheffield, where the mordib cheap thrills of "smashing up someone's home"or "taking a girl to the reservoir" substituted for adolescent experience.
Common People
Perhaps their finest moment, this one scathingly targeted the 'class-tourism' which had become de rigueur in certain circles in the mid-90s. That it added an implausibly catchy pop hook to Cocker's seething social commentary certainly helped.
Underwear
A personal favourite, this gloriously understated cut gave form to the band's recurring theme of sexual frustrationwith uncharacteristic tenderness. When Cocker sang "I couldn't stop it now", every teenage boy in thecountry took a sharp intake of breath in recognition of their own unrequited desires.
The Fear
When the Britpop cream curdled amidst a mire of cocaine and increasing critical rejection, Pulp turned dark. The opener from This Is Hardcore perfectly articulated the kind of twitching, paranoia-fuelled meltdown that many of the scene's leading lights had experienced by 1997.
TweetOasis (or 'Beady Eye' if we're nitpicking) signalled their Noel-less second coming yesterday by offering up a free track, 'Bring the Light', to whet the appetite for next year's projected full-lengther.
And you know what? It's not bad. Not bad at all. Sure, it goes round in ever-decreasing lyrical circles, and features all the of technical virtuosity of, well, Oasis. But Liam's throaty whine has been tamed into an altogether lighter instrument, allowing the band's choppy approach to a fists-up bar-room rocker to breathe behind him. What's more, there are gospel singers, suggesting baby steps towards musical development which may yet be realised in purposeful strides by the time next year's record drops. Definately, maybe?
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Alt-rock quintet The Duke Spirit have heralded their hotly anticipated return by giving away two brand new tracks, 'Procession' and 'Everybody's Under Your Spell', as a free downloads.
The band, who shaved the UK top-40 with debut record Cuts Across The Land back in 2005, are set to release their third long-player in February.
Check out the widget for 'Procession' below, or head over to The Duke Spirit's website to download 'Everybody's Under Your Spell'.
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Brooklyn trendies The Drums have unveiled a new video for forthcoming single 'Me and the Moon', which hits the stores on December 13.
The track is the fourth single to be released from the band's eponymously titled debut, which peaked at number sixteen on the UK Album Charts back in June. It is also the first to be released since founding guitarist Adam Kessler left back in September.
The video features the band acting as hip as possible, mainly through wearing sunglasses inside and dancing morosely in front of brick walls. Super-awesome dude! Check it out below:
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Scouse rapscallions The Wombats have released a new track, 'Jump Into The Fog', which can be downloaded for free on their website.
The song is taken from their forthcoming record, set to drop on 10February 2011, and was recorded with Bloc Party and Franz Ferdinand co-conspirator Rich Costey.
Those used to the immediate hooks and driving pop-punk rhythms of their debut may be left disappointed - this one instead grapples with New Order-style synths and the chunky march of US power-pop. It never fully masters each, but at least hints at a slightly more cerebral sophomore effort from a band who's debut featured such challenging material as 'Patricia the Stripper' and 'Kill The Director'.
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Die-hard Joy Revisionists White Lies have released details of their forthcoming sophomore record, Ritual, which will drop on 18 January.
Produced by world-renowned mixing-desk man Alan Moulder, the record is the follow-up to the Ealing band's chart-topping debut To Lose My Life.
Having caught the band headlining Shoreditch Town Hall last month, I can reveal that the new tracks sound like Joy Division playing stadium anthems. Or, if you like, Editors. So, exactly like the first record then.
Trailing single 'Bigger Than Us' hits the shops on 22 November. Have a peek at a live performance of the track:
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Two songs recorded by British folk starlet Laura Marling with White Stripes frontman Jack White are to be released on a limited edition run of 7' vinyl next Saturday, 13 November.
The tracks, recorded as part of Third Man Records' 'Blues Series' collection of special one-off releases, will be available on tri-colour vinyl exclusively through Rough Trade East record store on Brick Lane, London.
Only 100 copies have been made, so Marling completists take note. In the meantime, here's one of the tracks - a spine-tingling cover of Neil Young's 'The Needle and the Damage Done':
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One of Britain's most endearing and enduring bands, Belle and Sebastian returned last month with their 8th studio album, Write About Love, recorded with de rigueur chart-indie producer Tony Hoffman. However, the Fratellis this ain't; instead the Scottish 7-piece have created another beautifully conceived mix of quirky guitar-pop and misty-eyed baroque ballads, tied together thematically by words about love (hence the title). Here's one of the jauntier cuts.
TweetInterview with Manchester-based art-rock chart champions Everything Everything. Check out the condensed version over at Spoonfed.co.uk, or the expanded reissue below.
Hype can be a poisoned chalice. The balloon can quickly burst on some poor feted next big thing, whether commercially or critically. Worse still, a band can be left trailing in the triumphant wake of their like-minded peers, labeled as Johnny-come-latelys to a party they might have helped start, or simply engulfed by the hot air cloud surrounding contemporaries and forgotten.
It’s a fate which could have befallen Everything Everything. Labeled part of a spurious ‘Manchester scene’ – although the quartet formed in Manchester, none of their members hail from the musically fertile metropolis – the band had been forced to play third fiddle whilst fellow leading lights Delphic and Hurts saw their stock soar. All three were long-listed for the BBC Sound of 2010 poll, but only Everything Everything failed to make the final shortlist. As 2010 stuttered to life, Delphic hit the top ten with debut album Acolyte, while just a day before the release of Everything Everything’s own debut Hurts scored an unlikely singles chart hit with the icy synthpop of ‘Wonderful Life’. Meanwhile, the band was left fretting over their prospective fortunes as trailing single ‘MY KZ, UR BF’ stalled at a hundred and twenty-one.
They needn’t have worried, as Man Aliveduly gate crashed the UK top twenty, picking up open-mouthed plaudits en route. It was a fitting prize for a record which fizzes with invention, often flitting seamlessly between unconventional time signatures before peaking in a series of beautifully melodic art-pop choruses, all held together with the dexterous falsetto yelp of frontman Jonathan Higgs.
If the music both challenges and rewards, then the band themselves are a far more straightforward proposition. Preparing to perform at a Spotify/3G sponsored show at Shoreditch Town Hall, I find Higgs and drummer Michael Spearman in genial spirits. Articulate and warm, they riff off one another; touching upon in-jokes without ever seeming exclusive, while their answers exhibit a sharp, self-deprecating wit underpinning thoughtful reflections – starting with their reaction to music scenes.
The Popscener is a music, pop culture and sometime web 2.0 blog celebrating anything and everything about modern life that's worthy of your attention.
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