This is something of an odd choice for me to post today of all days.  I’m someone who has found myself increasingly drifting to the right economically and has watched today’s strikes with bemusement more than sympathy.  Perhaps more shockingly for someone in the indiepop scene, I don’t find Conservatives to be fundamentally reprehensible.  So a song actually called Purge Your Inner Tory probably isn’t the most politically appropriate song for me today.

I really like it though.  It’s everything that I want my indiepop to sound like, and while this won’t necessarily work for everyone, it’s ramshackle and jangly enough for me play on repeat for quite a period at a time.  As for the politics, I’ll certainly take a band that has a position, even if it’s one I find slightly silly, over one that doesn’t have one at all.  Still, looking forward to what they come up with next, and if they aren’t one of the indiepop staple bands of 2012, I’ll be rather surprised.

You can get a sampler CD from the band, featuring four demos in it’s own unique, handmade packaging for a mere £1 from their BigCartel store.

MP3 Colour Me Wednesday – Purge Your Inner Tory

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If Los Campesinos! were ever going to live up the Nosferatu D2 mantra of every band you love letting you down eventually, it seemed as if now would be that point.  After three spectacular albums, the band has undergone a fundamental shift in it’s lineup for fourth album Hello Sadness, with three of the seven members of the band departing and being replaced.  As such, I’ve been a little bit wary about the direction the band would take from this point, so I’m greatly relieved by just how good first single By Your Hand has turned out to be.

Continuing the path into more personal territory that stood out on the last record, the band describe Hello Sadness as “ten songs of love, loss and heartbreak nail-gunned to a back-drop of broken, tangled bodies, creeping, dead-eyed animals, suffocating, looming shadows and World Cup exits. It is an honest, bare bones documentation of breaking up and trying not to break up in the process.”  By Your Hand is the opener, and given that by the time we reached the end of the first verse we’re already hearing about girls vomiting on Gareth’s rental tux, I suspect this is just the tip of a rather painful iceberg.

Hello Sadness will be released on November 14.  The band are offering an advance bundle including the album, a demo CD, a DVD and a t-shirt for £25, or £20 if you’ve got Heat Rash.  Pretty good deal I’d say.  You can get it through their web store.  This was taken rather badly by Avalanche Records.

MP3 Los Campesinos! – By Your Hand

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There’s several reasons to be wary about Raymond & Maria.  Usually if I receive a press release about a platinum-selling, number one record, I’ll tend to recoil in horror.  Granted this is in their native land of Sweden, but it still suggests music perhaps a little too mainstream for an apparent snob such as myself.  I also don’t really like remakes, so recording your Swedish songs into English seems a little silly to me, even if I understand the commercial reasons behind doing so.  Then again, I’ve never heard Raymond & Maria in their Swedish form, so I have no point of comparison here.

So taken on it’s own merits, No One Notices Your Brand New T-Shirt is absolutely fine.  In fact, it sounds like a hundred other indiepop bands that haven’t had the level of success that Raymond & Maria seem to have had.  It’s upbeat, it’s handclap happy, and of course has the inevitable slightly sweet but also gently accented vocals.  It’s all rather lightweight and straightforward, but then it doesn’t seem to be aspiring to be anything more than what it is, and that’s certainly no bad thing.

The debut English language album from Raymond & Maria, Jobs Where They Don’t Know Our Names, is currently being shopped around for a label.  So you’ll probably be waiting a while to actually hear it.

MP3 Raymond & Maria – No One Notices Your Brand New T-Shirt

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You ain’t seen nothing yet

We’re gonna get bigger than national debt

So proclaim Tigercats toward the end of their sprawling new single, Banned at the Troxy, and it may just be true.  The evolution of Tigercats has been an odd one.  Forming from the ashes of the mighty Esiotrot, the band has quickly risen through the London indiepop ranks from go-to support band to a band capable of selling out gigs as headliners in their own right.  Their earlier releases were focused more around three minute pop songs, but Banned ups the ante to cross the five minute barrier, and doesn’t even come close to outstaying it’s welcome.  It builds, jangles, builds some more and ends in a controlled chaos of noise, all without ever losing it’s sense of fun.  Which is demonstrated by the wonderfully whimsical video below:

B-side Skydiving (below) is just as interesting in itself.  A much more downtrodden, sullen affair, it manages to run on for nearly four minutes with only two lyrics throughout.  From most bands, I’d find this to be a rather frightful prospect, particularly given how trite those lyrics could have ended up sounding: “Where do you go when you fall apart / Into my arms and into my heart”.  Yet four minutes of this somehow works and ends up being the most mature thing the band have recorded thus far.

MP3 Tigercats – Skydiving

The Banned at the Troxy 7″ picture disc is out now on the lovely WeePOP! Records.  If, like me, vinyl isn’t your thing, it’s also out on download places that aren’t iTunes.  If, like me, that isn’t your bag either, you’re just too damn fussy I suppose.

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You know those times where you judge a band incorrectly, rigidly stick with that initial impression for ages and then end up eating humble pie about them?  That’s my experience with Help Stamp Out Loneliness.  The first time I encountered them was at Indietracks 2009, when they were on immediately before Art Brut and, assuming my memory is correct, I actually found them a bit boring.  That opinion has stuck ever since, without any attempts to give them another chance.  Over the past few months, buzz has been building for their debut album, and people whose opinions I trust have gone on and on about it.  Did I listen though?  Nope.

Then I heard Record Shop.  Which is bloody fantastic.  I can’t tell you what has really changed since my first opinion, but this is just superb.  It builds and drops back at the right times, jangles appropriately, and good lord, the vocals are spectacular.  Which is ironic as they were one of the things that put me off the first time around.  But the depth and tone here are just completely wonderful.  This deserves to be a big hit, and if anything else on the album is half as good as this one, it’s going to be one of my favourites of the year.  So, so good.

The debut, self-titled album from Help Stamp Out Loneliness was released yesterday by the ever fine Where It’s At Is Where You Are.  You’ll be able to see the band at Indietracks, which takes place July 29-31.

MP3 Help Stamp Out Loneliness – Record Shop

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If you’re a band or label faced with declining physical sales, exactly how do you buck that trend?  Some will argue vinyl is answer, but those people are completely wrong about everything.  Alcopop, never a label to do things by the book, have decided to release the new Johnny Foreigner EP in frisbee form.  Yes, a frisbee.  If this isn’t the greatest evolution among physical releases of music in, well, forever, I don’t know what is.

As for the EP itself, if you’re already a fan of Johnny Foreigner, you know exactly what to expect.  If not, first of all: What the hell is wrong with you?  Secondly, if you haven’t been won over so far, this isn’t going to change that.  The songs bridge the gap between older JoFo, the loud, fast and shouter one, and the newer version that seems to be rather more downbeat and introspective.  While I personally sway toward the older one, the newer one is bloody good too.  Bring on album three.

Certain Songs are cursed will be released on May 18 via the ever brilliant Alcopop Records.  The frisbee managed to sell out within 24 hours, so you’re just left with mp3s I’m afraid.

MP3 Johnny Foreigner – Twin Sisterzz

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I’ve always had a soft spot for the particularly type of whimsy put out by Texas indiepop band Fishboy.  They’ve always gone down the hyper-literate route in their lyrics, making songs that are closer to full blown short stories than simple pop songs.  Their latest album Classic Creeps takes this to it’s logical evolution.  The record is a concept album, with each song telling the story of a particular character, from Aaron the Afterthought Astronaut to Archibald Aspen to Autumn the Owl.  Each song introduces the next character on the album, all of which are in alphabetical order (despite all beginning with A).  Beyond the concept though, it’s just a really fun record, full of the typical Fishboy charm made up of upbeat sounding numbers that can actually be pretty grim if you look under the surface.  The best part of all this?  Classic Creeps is just the first in a series of such records.

Classic Creeps will be released on May 10 via Happy Happy Birthday To Me Records.

MP3 Fishboy – Autumn the Owl (Mistakes the Feelings of Being In Love with the Feelings of Being an Owl)

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Let’s Whisper is made up of Colin Clary and Dana Kaplan, who most of you will know from their regular band The Smittens.  That band is one of the enduring bastions of the indiepop scene, but Let’s Whisper shouldn’t be written off as a mere side project.

Indeed, Clary and Kaplan have been making music in the guise of Let’s Whisper for the best part of ten years now, even if this is their first proper full-length album.  The formula isn’t all that different from more established band though.  Gentle pop songs are what they know, and that is what they bring us here.  It’s perhaps not as utterly sweet as Smittens records can come across as, and whether or not that’s a bad thing is something I’ll leave up to you.  Certainly works for me though.

The Shortest Days will be released in early April via WeePOP! Records.

MP3 Let’s Whisper – California Girls

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Would You Say Stop? is the second song to be pushed from the upcoming Acid House Kings album Music Sounds Better With You, and despite my initial reservations, it’s completely lovely.  My first impression of it was that it was perhaps a but too sickly sweet, but that feeling quickly went away as I was taken in by just how catchy it is.  So when putting together a video for a song like this, what do you come up with that still suits the song?  For the Acid House Kings, that answer is easy.  And may or may not involve them dressing up as penguins.

Music Sounds Better With You, the first new Acid House Kings record in six years, is released this coming Tuesday (March 22) via Labrador Records.

MP3 Acid House Kings – Would You Say Stop?

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It’s a new Dananananaykroyd song.  What do you expect?

There Is A Way will be released on June 13 via the band’s own label, the wonderfully named Pizza College.

MP3 Dananananaykroyd – E Numbers

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