Listen Up! No. 87: Austra - Beat and Pulse

Tweet

The latest signing to Domino Records, Canadian bedroom-beat artiste Austra (or Katie Stelmanis) takes the label's usual ear for fresh, saleable young talent and reroutes it into a leftfield world of metronomic menace and dark entrancement on debut single 'Beat and Pulse'. The Knife might be a glaringly immediate reference point, but the motorik chug high in the mix gives an inescapable Krautrock slant to Stelmanis' beguiling vocal, equal parts vulnerable and downright frightening. The single drops on 21st February. Turn off the lights and have a listen below.

  Austra - Beat & The Pulse by DominoRecordCo

Listen Up! No.85: Alex Winston - Don't Care About Anything

Tweet

Much-fawned over Detroit siren Alex Winston shows she has the handle on the twiddly stuff as well as chart-friendly pop-crossovers and advertisement soundtracks with a new song, gleaned from forthcoming mini-album Sister Wife. With production duties split between Florence and the Machine co-conspirator Charlie Hugall and Rihanna right-hand men The Knocks, you'll  know roughly what to expect when the record drops in March. In the meantime, enjoy this stripped down version of 'Don't Care About Anything', which proves she can write, play and sing. May even have what the kids call 'attitood' - that's 'depth' to you and me - too. 

Listen Up! No. 68: Belle and Sebastian - Come On Sister

Tweet

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.

Listen Up! No. 65: The Walkmen - Blue As Your Blood

Tweet

The New York quintet prove two things with new record Lisbon - firstly, there is life after 'The Rat', it's just taken them six years to come to terms with it. Secondly, 'singer' Hamilton Leithauser can, er, 'sing', which adds an agreeably tender slant to the band's lived-in approach to melody. Things are looking up then.

Here's one of the best cuts from Lisbon, 'Blue as Your Blood':

New Video: Kate Nash - Later On

Tweet

Kate Nash has released the video for her latest single, 'Later On', which is due to drop this Monday, 18 October.

The track is a slight departure from her usual mockney piano-pop formula, featuring twinkling electronic peeps 'n' whirs and framed by fuzzy atmospherics. Just don't waste your time with the lyric sheet.

Listen Up! No. 57: Timbre Timbre - Until The Night Is Over

Tweet

Late night listening for xx fans who like think lo-fi is a dish best served spooky.

Listen Up! No. 55: Zowie - Broken Machine

Tweet

Despite every atom of my critical grey matter being desperate to hate this sickly New Zealand synth-popper - not least because of the excrucitating PR gambit "Zowie is a futuristic cheerleader from the planet Wow!" - sometimes a track's so catchy you've no chioce but to smile serenly and say 'beam me up, Zowie'.Take me to the mothership!

Listen Up! No. 48: Sky Larkin - Still Windmills

Tweet

Guitar chops manlier than, well, Brian Molko for one. But not as manly as Sleater-Kinney.

Listen Up! No. 40: Plants and Animals - The Mama Papa

Tweet

When nouveau-hippies take a shower, then play up the French connection.


The Mama Papa by Plants and Animals from Secret City Records on Vimeo.

Listen Up! No. 33: Wolf Parade - Oh You, Old Thing

Tweet

Synth you been gone...

Listen Up! No. 30: I Blame Coco - Self-machine

Tweet

Every little thing she does is magic? More like ghosts in the machine...

Listen Up! No. 27 - Os Mutantes - A Minha Menina

Tweet

An oldie, granted, but this one slips through the 'new music' net for being the showpeice track off the sublime Tropicalia: A Brasilian Revolution In Sound - a very worthy introduction to an under-appreciated genre - which is (re-packaged and re-)released on Monday. The more astute amongst you will note that the merging of words, in this case 'tropical' and 'psychedelia', was the preserve of musical genres, not celebrity couples, back in the late 60s. Brangelina always sounded more like a flavour of Gino Ginelli than an acid-rhumba fusion to me...

Listen Up! No. 25: The Antlers - Sylvia

Tweet

The dribs and drabs nature of promotion for the Antlers' ghostly Hospice did it as little justice as me plucking a 'single' from it share with the world. Still, here goes: enjoy this, then immerse yourself in the morbid glory of the record in it's entirety (a concept album revolving around a child's fight with leukimia, no less).

Listen Up! No. 24: We Are Scientists - Nice Guys

Tweet

We Are Scientists doing their sorta-earnest, sorta-subversive, always catchy thing; Andy Burrows (yup, that one) doing his drumming thing (doesn't miss a beat); and a goofy video inwhich weedy indie-rockers do their thing on scooters (i.e. fall off). It's as good as they'll ever be (or ever were), which constitutes a compliment, but not an endorsement.

Listen Up! No. 21: Stagecoach - Map to the Freezer

Tweet

I'm not entirely sure whether the video is a send-up or a tribute to laughably unrealistic 90s explosion advert Speed, but either way I'm charmed - this Surrey lot have crafted an excellent slice of breathless, punky indie with just enough trigger-happy melody to hold it together. Like a ballsier (and thus far less irritating) incarnation of Los Campesinos.

"I had a dream I shot you with mace and I... hope you're not okay", they say. Food for thought for the critics...





Flip to about 1.20 for the music, or revel in the majesty of Keanu's adrenalin-addled performance. Hmmm.

Listen Up No.18: Besnard Lakes - Albatross

Tweet

Slightly belated as lead-off singles go (the album dropped in March), for those who haven't picked up the excellent The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night, here's a gentle reminder of why you should. Think skyscraping guitars, peaked only by the soaring melodies. As far as the vid goes... it's some kind of faux-espionage intrigue that's gone way over my head but still retains my interest. Oooo, deep.

Listen Up! No.17: Kele - Tenderoni

Tweet

Bloc Party's increasingly frowning frontman releases his debut solo effort - 'The Boxer' - this week, and he's only gone and the done the whole electro/dance thing hasn't he! Who saw that coming (erm...)? Anyway, to save you the trouble of listening to the whole thing (which is fairly mediocre), here's the only track you desperately need. It's essentially a gentleman's update of Wiley's 'Wearing My Rolex', but by Jove, it's a belter.

Listen Up! No. 15: Black Francis - Cinema Star

Tweet

Missed this? Missed out. Something Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV doesn't seem to be doing much of, judging by the lyrics.

Listen Up! No 14: LCD Soundsystem - Drunk Girls

Tweet

Yes, I know - last month called and wants its new songs back - but regardless, this track still warrants mention for perfectly distilling the oft-barmy hedonism of boozing, all in a flurry of sharp one-liners and David Byrne vocals. If there was any justice this would've been number 1, not 190 (eek!).

Listen Up! No. 13: Thomas Tantrum - The Last Kiss

Tweet

This is the best I've heard in a while of the shiny new tracks PRs occasionally feed into my inbox to break up the monotonous stream of penis enlargement and Nigerian banking emails. Yes I wish my penis were bigger, no I don't want to invest $12000 in Dr. Ernest Dadanu's 'Freebank of Lagos', nor divulge my bank account details.

This unsigned Southampton quartet mix the trigger happy guitar-smarts of Good Shoes with a more palatable take on The Long Blondes' Pulp-apeing debut.

The Last Kiss by Thomas Tantrum

Kate @ WorkItMedia made this all possible - ta.