My New Discoveries 3- Slow Animal

Slow Animal

I'm not a musician but I've always really had the ambition to be in a two-piece band with my best buddy, touring for months at a time in a car across the jagged highways of North America, now this will probably never happen or if it did, I'd give us two weeks before one of us ended up in a ditch somewhere, but the dream is still there. The point is I love two-piece bands and Slow Animal are no exception, from New Jersey they could be the perfect soundtrack to your hot summer nights in that car with your best friend (before you kill each other) as there is something strangely intoxicating about their simple but sinister garage rock sound if your head was recently melted by Beach Fossils or Wild Nothing or simply you wish for some more fun rock and roll times Slow Animal may be the band for you!

check them out on www.myspace.com/slowanimal or download their ep for free from slowanimal.bandcamp.com

My New Discoveries 2- Tennis

Tennis

Both Tennis and Magic Kids say something more about me then I'm willing to let on, but like Magic Kids, Tennis hark back to a more innocent sound and go a way to bridging a gap between Sixties girl groups and She & Him (let's forget the Pipettes or Wilson Phillips ever existed) This two piece from Denver Colorado, combine one-two dream beats and a vocal track seemingly picked from a dusty 78, but it really works... They are a married couple who worked hard and saved a lot of money and bought a sailboat and sailed for eight months and thus Tennis was born. You wont regret this walk down memory lane with Tennis who's haunting summer memories score the perfect soundtrack to sixteen year old self ungracefully falling in love for the first time/fumbling to undo bras and pants, of course this is if you are now nearly 60 and lived in 1960's America.

A True Delight to any cynical ears desperate to live a romantic life again (but that's me entirely)

Check them out:

www.myspace.com/tennisinc

My New Discoveries 1- Magic Kids

Magic Kids

Memphis, TN Magic Kids bring doo woop lo-fi back to the masses with their new 7" single Hey Boy released this week! Imagine a ASDA version of The Beach Boys trying the best to imagine California in the sixties but come on would you still pay any money what so ever to see that third rate muppet Brian Wilson continue to shit and piss on his own legacy. No, didn't think so...

Magic Kids bring a 2010 revival of the sights, sounds, harmonies and melodies that the Beach Boys did back then before gravity played it's inevitable part. They capture the twee, teenage innocent sound with extraordinary ease "Hey Boy" opens with a doo-woop chorus before launching into a great harmony, backed by a synced female choir. Magic Kids seldomly hinted at some summer sadness with their twinkling piano and string section but touches upon the American dream a la Grease and The Seekers before Civil Rights and Vietnam and the whole post wax/flower power dream and oh wife killing!

The debut album is due to be released on Matador on August 24, until then www.myspace.com/magickids

New Album Releases- W/B 28/06/2010

OH DEAR OH DEAR OH JESUS CHRIST! WHAT A TERRIBLE WEEK FOR NEW RELEASES FROM THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE REALLY FUCKING BAD!

Scissor Sisters- Nightwork (Polydor)



I will try not to "mince" my words here because I fucking hate the Scissor Sisters more than I hate kids who collect snails just to line them up and tread on them! Their innane pop slash disco slash camp party is about as appealing to me as a ancupunture with a bag of nails. I'm sure the press release reads something along the lines of "great return to form by everyones disco faves Scissor Sisters produced by yadda yadda (who has probably worked with at least one of these five, madonna, elton john, american singer you've never heard of..., american singer you thought might be dead, the village people/milli vanilli) who have really recapatured what made you love them in the first place or some misinformed bollocks like "jake shears and ana matronic trade innuendos, before exploding into huge disco- fuelled choruses! a whole lot of fun" when in actually fact, Nightwork is somewhere closer to the "nightwork" of some $ 2 dollar hooker who blows five guys an hour and has the face of a wet mop, the brain of a turnip and the breath of a dung beetle. Most of the tracks will penetrate your brain like a bear trap or your average Scissors Sisters fan at a sex party in Whitehawk going three or four at a time! Nightwork isn't new/original/return to form/sexy etc etc, it's a sleazy piece of garbage destined to be remixed for revenge/played to death on Radio 2/played by your mum cause she thinks its cool... Please just fuck off and die! p.s. who chose that cover?!? 0/10



Spectrals- 7th Date 7" (Slumberland)
It Follows that Spectrals were the tour support for Girls early this year and they both seem to share the same sonic goal, Sixties melancholy based around a echoey vocal, distorted guitars and a plain drum beat. Like Girls, the melancholy hints at something much deeper but unlike Girls and other contemporaries Christmas Island and Beach Fossils etc, the dark sound never really reveals itself in anything apart from the context of the song rather than the subtle underbellies that emerge in their peers blacker instrumental freakouts! However it is a tad harsh to judge a band based on this short burst and only time will tell if they are capable of something bigger and blacker. 5/10

BICYCLE VOICE

Bicycle Voice

Randomly found talent from Salt Lake City, UT, Bicycle Voice aka Meg Webb has an incredible raw talent that is just due some more attention. A multi talented musician switching between piano, violin and ukulele, her debut EP available from her my space http://www.myspace.com/bicyclevoice flirts between singer songwriter, shoegaze and twee with a wistful honesty rare in a lot of this genre (which switches between songs). Not really sure of any other information about her, other that I've fallen in complete love with the nine songs currently available on her myspace.

At times not out of place in anti-folk convention, other times the perfect summer soundtrack to some hipster rom-com (in fact I want to make one just so that I can get Bicycle Voice to soundtrack the film) Bicycle Voice is currently on repeat on my stereo and I wait patiently to hear more from this rich talent. Highly Recommended

http://www.myspace.com/bicyclevoice

ALOHA

I am personally going through a rediscovery of mad love for indie pop and particularly the polyvinyl label who seem to just ooze talented bands they never recieve the credibility and mass appeal they so deserve. I discovered ALOHA several years ago in one of my not-ill-advised sixth form (12th/13th grade) amazon spending sprees (I'd find a label and buy like ten albums from that label, unaware of what most of the bands sounded like) one of them was "Here Comes Everyone" and then the following album "Some Echoes" Aloha are capable of pulsating indie pop and energetic ambience.

"Some Echoes" contains no one track that sounds alike, opener "Brace Your Face" floats in a Film School/Notwist/Early Modest Mouse plod before erupting into a noise off, while "Your Eyes" features marimbas, synths and percussion now served by the likes of Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear and other bigger known heroes. Their most recent "Home Acres" (2010) is new on Polyvinyl and still leaves Aloha a sadly undiscovered gem of a band.

New Album Releases- W/B 21/06/2010

Perfume Genius- Perfume Genius (Organs)
An album that contrasts its season of release, as Perfume Genius is the antithesis of anti-summer, an album of songs so bleak and intense that they would sit perfectly in a feature film about a guy who wants to end his own life, indifferent at first, but gradually finding more and more in the world to push himself over the edge of the building. As with the album's most poppy track "Mr Peterson" told from the point of the view of the albums protagonist, close (possibly homosexually) to a teacher who rewards him with tapes of Joy Divison and a place to smoke drugs but killing himself mid song because he feels that something is missing.

Perfume Genius main narrative drive (and these songs are mostly broken stories) are cold as ice... there is no real sympathy here but just a surrender to how bitter and cruel the world is and hope is naive and wistfully hopefully (and by turns unrealistic) In "Mr Peterson" the narrative is so deadpan that the only hope is that he may find "there's room above or down below" while "Lookout Lookout" is basically a warning of how horrible things happen around around with it's repeated refrain (Chorus) of "lookout lookout there are murders about."

A comparison to early Bright Eyes is a fair place to start but will not necessarily let anyone know what to expect during the ten track debut, but Mike's real triumph is there potential for future greatness (much like Conor before fever and mirrors), the self titled debut sparringly uses accompaniment (piano, organ and faded vocal harmonies) which slips it into an almost surrealistic/Lynchian world but the excitement for how PG will grow when he opens up the songs to a wider dimension but with songs brutalized by industrial hurt and a internalized pain and regret that is original and fucked up cold as a Gregg Araki teen. At the end of the film, there is only one solution to the protagonists problem... a long fall! 9/10

Sleigh Bells- Treats (mop+pop music)

Sleigh Bells come from the heavily blogged about/hype machine vibe of a band that have not released anything and then are suddenly under a massive amount of pressure to release a 10/10 debut. I mention all of this because "Treats" certainly plays like an album created in spite of all of this, that and the rumour the album was ghost-written by M.I.A.

Positives- Sleigh Bells manage to combine the styles of former Poison The Well Guitarist Derek E. Miller and the almost schizo vocal styles (and obviously live/recorded) talent of Alexis Krauss with relative ease and the call back style of M.I.A. flows throughout. No one can doubt the talent this group has "Rill Rill," "Crown on The Ground" and opener "Tell Em" have sing a long potential. Live is where Sleigh Bells shine, shrugging off any comparison points for Krauss with her geninue "i dont not give a shit" attitude and her obvious skills as an MC mixed with her yelps and piercing screams.

Negatives- Often Treats cannot make it's stylistic differences work, and often they just clash, "Rill Rill" in particular a relief from the aural inaccurcies that exist between Miller's balls out guitar lines, the percussion and the cuter side of Krauss' vocals. Treats in it's first half often crosses the line from noisy dance pop to just illogical and irritating noise. The second half (after Rill Rill) makes it work a lot better than its previous half and the album is certainly a grower rather than a shower, but it cannot be ignored that the album is more of a response to the hype rather than a mission statement for a band who are more than talented enough to create some memorable and intense moments. But in our current climate, it often follows that you have one shot and that's it. Treats simply takes too long to live up to its name and demostrate what makes sleigh bells stand out from the rest of this generation of new york artists. 6.5/10

Kele- The Boxer (Wichita)

Towards the end (for now) of Bloc Party, it always felt that Kele's spirit was urging even closer to abandoning the roots of Silent Alarm for dance and modern r&b but his debut solo album still takes bold steps in abandoning Bloc Party complete in favour of UK Dance music, and in particular nu-garage, and fluid (of course poppy) dubstep/drum and bass.

As much as it would be easy to dismiss the Boxer as a poor subsitute for Kele's dayjob and of course his inspiration, much of The Boxer actually works for the most part and comes across as passionate and pardon me a daring listen. If anything though, The Boxer simply does not have the hooks that Bloc Party are capable of... but the album also falters under being associated as a debut album, and while The Boxer would not get anywhere near the amount of attention it recieved if it were another singer, it is a bold album and at least an exciting step for Kele's career and the possible fourth BP album. 6/10

Lissie- Catching a Tiger (Columbia)

In a story as predictable as England crashing and burning out of the world cup, this is a story of a major label who sign a massively talented singer/songwriter with a voice capable of melting the heart of Sarah Palin, whose debut EP (and you should listen) was hopeful, bittersweet and intimate, due in most part to the simple production structure and goosebumpingly raw sweetness of Lissie's voice. "So where to start???? let's ignore why people were interested in the first place." So Lissie's songs are now part-written by a selection of collaborators and beefed up to fit perfectly between Norah Jones/Katie Melua on Radio 2 friendly drivetime show. The production is so big that any ounce of creativity is shackled by the string/brass/orchestra and Lissie's voice is confined as such, as if to melt Lissie into a mode when any selection of half arsed cliched filled country piano pop may work for the mass market. It was always inevitable but ultimately still as insulting as a lump of shit to the face. 2/10

Pulled Apart By Horses-Pulled Apart By Horses

So Rare is it to find an English band to excited about, equally rare is it to take an essentially American Hardcore sound and add to the style to make it seem so their very own. PABH have already destroyed every venue/festival in this country with their radically dangerous live show perfectly and effortlessly captured in their debut album, that you cannot help but to imagine a hundred sweaty bodies flying everywhere for the duration. Encouraged by their influences rather than merely pointing to them, Pulled Apart By Horses unbury the corpses of US Hardcore legends Black Flag (and very much the Chapel Hill, NC Scene), Refused & ATDI to create a fun punk package which could so effortlessly capture teenage angst conversely with being a cool soundtrack to a jock party. 8/10