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Evans the Death – Threads
011 months ago
in Videos
Well this is really bloody excellent. Evans the Death have been floating around the indiepop scene for a little while now, building themselves a great reputation in the process. I finally managed to catch them at the Odd Box Weekender last month, where they were one of the highlights of the weekend. Newly signed to Fortuna POP!, their debut single Threads is loud, fast, and messy, and really, what more could you want from a band? So good.
Threads will be released on July 4 via the mighty Fortuna POP!
Tigercats – Banned at the Troxy
0
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.
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.
Website / Bandcamp / Myspace / Twitter / Soundcloud
Herman Düne – Tell Me Something I Don’t Know
01 year ago
in Videos
It’s only in the last few months that I’ve got properly into Herman Düne, despite being a fan of one or two of their songs for a few years now. But I’m delighted to have discovered them just as a new album is on the way. In advance of that, we have this wonderful little video for first single Tell Me Something I Don’t Know. It’s one of those videos that could easily take away from the song, given you’ve got the band competing with both a cute blue monster and man of the moment Jon Hamm for attention. The song remains the centre here though, and with a bit of luck, this kind of video will bring a fair bit more attention to the band.
The new Herman Düne album is entitled Strange Moosic, and will be released on June 6 via Fortuna POP!. By some random crazy happenstance, the band will also play XOYO on that day. And if it’s not exactly like the gig portrayed in the video above, I’m going to be sorely disappointed.
Fishboy – Classic Creeps
0I’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)
Art Brut – Lost Weekend
01 year ago
in Videos
Have we finally reached the Art Brut song that might actually let me down, as alluded to the last time I covered them on here? Lost Weekend may actually be my least favourite thing that they have put out, but is it particularly terrible? Not in the slightest. In fact, the past week has seen it grow on me a hell of a lot, so I’ll probably be singing the praises of it in a month.
It’s just so jarring from everything the band has put out previously that it’s difficult to know exactly how to take it. Art Brut as a band pretty much lives and dies on Eddie Argos. He is the centre of everything, and his vocals are what makes the band what it is. So a song that replaces his regular vocals with a subdued, almost whispered version is a bit of a shock. The more I listen to it, the more I start to appreciate the gentleness of lines like “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you by saying something stupid like ‘I love you’”, so I should probably be commending the band for at least trying to do something a bit different four albums in.
Lost Weekend will be released as a single on May 16. The album, Brilliant! Tragic! will follow a week later on May 23 via Cooking VInyl.
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – Heart In Your Heartbreak
01 year ago
in Videos
The new Pains album came out this week, and I for one am absolutely loving it. The first album took a while to grow on me, but this one seems infinitely more immediate. Which probably means I’ll end up hating it six months from now, but no matter.
The one thing that the Pains have always been great at are their videos. Each one fit the style of the band perfectly, be it the Super 8 loveliness of Young Adult Friction or Everything With You through to the slightly more whimsical Higher Than The Stars and Say No To Love.
This though, I don’t really like at all. Which is a shame as the song is probably my favourite form the album. The video is far too mid-90s MTV2 for my liking though. Don’t get me wrong, I associate a lot of bands I love with that era, but The Pains of Being Pure at Heart absolutely aren’t one that I’d put into that category. Maybe I’m just being a snob and I’ll come round on it over time, but it seems like something of a misstep to me.
Belong is out now on PIAS (apparently) and the band will be visiting London to play the Electric Ballroom on June 8. Where they are now a £14 a ticket band. Wow.
Standard Fare – Suitcase
01 year ago
in Videos
Standard Fare are one of those bands that seem to blur the lines of indiepop greatly. They certainly aren’t a band I would slot in alongside most of the genre in terms of music. If anything, I’d position them much closer to rather more mainstream indie rock bands, full of big melodies and a propensity to rock the fuck out. Sure, there’s an argument to made for the emotional vulnerability in the words to bring us back toward indiepop, but that doesn’t seem like enough in itself. Of course, none of this matters at all. They’ve become a staple in the indiepop scene, in part because they are so damn good at what they do. And if they need to claw some twee points back somewhere, the video above should certainly help do the trick.
Suitcase is out now on Melodic. Of course, it’s vinyl only, but at least the download, video and badge set is only £2.50. Not bad at all.
Acid House Kings – Would You Say Stop?
0Would 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.
mylittlepony – Stories About Love
11 year ago
in Videos
Norway’s mylittlepony used to be known as My Little Pony, but I guess that was a little too close to the bone for the Hasbro copyright police. The band recently released their second album, and from the bits of it that I’ve been able to hear, it’s got some great little songs on it. One of them is Stories About Love, which the band have made the lovely video above for. I’m constantly fascinated by things like this, as the video is seemingly shot entirely in one take, jumping from each part of the band as they have their little moment before flying back round again. I know this kind of thing has been done to far greater extremes (hell, entire films have been shot this way), but it’s always interesting to me.
Making Marks, the second album from mylittlepony, was released in January in Norway via Spoon Train. And I have absolutely no idea how to buy it.
Hold Your Horse Is – Forgive and Forget
0Fuck twee, let’s rock. Obviously I’m only kidding, but the mood of the moment requires things that are heavy, fast, and very, very loud. So it’s great to get some new material from Hold Your Horse Is, a band name that I still can’t decide is good or bad eighteen months on from first hearing them. Forgive and Forget is, whisper it, a little cleaner than some of their previous work, and possibly even a little more mainstream, but it’s no less enjoyable for it.
Bonus points for the video too, which features cameos from seemingly every band or artist from southern England in it, from Stagecoach to Frank Turner.
The band will soon to be getting to work on their first proper album. Their previous release, the Rammin’ It Home EP is out now on Big Scary Monsters. The band finish a tour of the UK today, proving just how timely I am in putting these pieces together.
