Listen Up! No. 90: Glasvegas - The World Is Yours

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Always seemingly teertering on the edge of a precipice of self-destruction - just as their obvious stylistic and musical reference point The Jesus and Mary Chain always did - some wondered if Dalmarnock anti-heroes Glasvegas would ever re-emerge intact to deliver a riposte to their stunning debut. Writer's block, a malcontented drummer and the perils of fame and fortune might have led singer James Allan to go AWOL before 2009's Mercury Prize, but he was made of stern enough stuff to reappear unharmed - physically at least - and commence the task of preapring the 'difficult second album' in a beach house in Santa Monica, California. This month they unveil details of said record, EUPHORIC /// HEARTBREAK \\\  (due on 4 April) whose title could easily act as a pocket summation of their dominant method and theme to date. Those concerned that the California sun might've engendered a sacharrine reinvention needn't worry. 'The World Is Yours', offered as a free download over at their website, largely continues where Glasvegas left off: it's epic, stadium-ready noise-pop, decorated with waves of shoegaze guitars and the famliar rich desperation of Allan's vocal.

Listen Up! No. 89: Cage the Elephant - Shake Me Down

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Bemused as you, me or anyone else - besides whoever is buying the records, ofcourse - may be that this Kentucky quintet's middle-ranking, wholly derivative alternative rock has pierced the upper echelons of the Billboard charts with second album Thank You, Happy Birthday (currently sitting at #2), you can't help but admit their stones. They are to Jay Reatard's earlier output what Tokyo Police Club are to Sunny Day Real Estate: a streamlined model, shorn of the insouciance and character but boosted by instruments you can hear and songs you can sing. Not to mention fans too young to know of or care for the difference. Come to think of it, a bit like Jay Reatard's last album was to Jay Reatard's earlier output. The UK doesn't get the record 'till March 21st, with trailing single 'Shake Me Down' dropping the week before.

Listen Up! No. 88: Wire - Bad Worn Thing

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Watford's avant-garde punk pioneers Wire returned earlier this month with Red Barked Tree, their twelfth studio album and first since 2008. Amidst the familiar mixture of hand-on-heart four-chord calls to arms, nuanced, expertly manufactured textures and intrepid lyrical explorations of pop culture lies a sparkling pop jewel of a song. At once inhabiting new territory and still somehow unmistakebly Wire, 'Bad Worn Thing' decorates a throbbing anti-dance beat with a Brian Ferry art-school snarl and lines like "the future's sold, the chacellor paces". Better yet, the chiming guitar shapes which build to a gripping crescendo make sure it feels as well as thinks. An early frontrunner for the best you'll hear in 2011.

N.B. Turn that bass up where possible.

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

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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. 86: Lykke Li - I Follow Rivers

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Swedish singer Lykke Li may already have earned her stripes as the artist du jour where stark, haunting electro for finger-on-the-pulse indie kids is concerned, but new single 'I Follow Rivers' - taken from upcoming sophomore record Wounded Rhymes - also suggests she has the chart chops to boot. No less gothic than her previous efforts, the track adds a hint of Balearic beat and a Gaga-esque chorus to the usual synth-driven melange.