EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: Fionn Regan - Protection Racket
Don't let the solemn, sorry-for-itself black n' white photo fool you - Fionn Regan is perhaps the chirpiest man alive, "Protection Racket" skipping from one narrative tangent to the next in a bluster of giddy folk and laddish bonhomie. Find it on Fionn's forthcoming new album, the less lonely follow-up to 2007's Mercury-nominated The End Of History.
Sounds Like: Eugene McGuinness, Bob Dylan, Ryan Adams
DOWNLOAD: Gentle Friendly - Clean Breaker
"Ride Symbols", "Ride Around Shining", Ride Slow. London-based pair Gentle Friendly seem preoccupied with riding, regardless of who or why or how. They appear to just want to ride, as if the simple desire for motion is in itself enough. That much is evident in most things they commit to tape, it all being hyperactive and propelled by drums and toy organs resigned long ago to providing joy doses and the same is true of "Clean Breaker", one of the first tracks to emerge from aforementioned new album Ride Slow, riding out through Upset! The Rhythm on October 19.
Sounds Like: the new No Age EP, The Wannadies, Charles Hayward
Gentle Friendly - Clean Breaker
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Gentle Friendly - Ride Symbols
EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: Copy Haho - Pulling Push Ups + The Last Dash
An hour or so ago, Britain's musical landscape seemed a decidely less cheery place. Los Campesinos!, one of the cheeriest bands on earth, were mourning the loss of one of their seven members to the sage pursuit of academia and lovers of chirpy, post-adolescent indie that yearned to once again be adolescent were sobbing into their cardies. But Now! it's Scotland's Copy Haho righting the balance, "Pushing Pull Ups" and "The Last Dash" full-on in their boisterous pursuit of good, clean fun. Hear this summery cheer, taken from new EP Bred For Skills & Magic, out now through Big Scary Monsters.
Sounds Like: Alkaline Trio, The Buzzcocks, Vampire Weekend
DOWNLOAD: The Twilight Sad - Reflection Of The Television
Full of ominous guitar angst and Scotch brood, this new track from The Twilight Sad finds James Graham sounding like the survivor of his own personal war, love's shrapnel flying all about him as the explosions retreat into the distance. Does that sound histrionic? Of couse it does, but it suits this Glaswegian quartet. Not for nothing are the frequent comparisons to The Smiths, whose down-eyed melodrama is similarly affecting and always utterly convincing. Graham always seems like he's grappling with something profound in its weight, but he always seems calm while doing so, jumping not to grand metaphors or delirious screaming - instead, his psychopathic cool while the noise flares all around helps imbue a sentence as innocuous as "there's people downstairs" with ridiculous foreboding. Climb aboard the doom train but don't blame anyone but yourself when it explodes.
Sounds Like: Mogwai, Idlewild, Nirvana
The Twilight Sad - Reflection Of The Television
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DOWNLOAD: Johnny Foreigner - Feels Like Summer
If Johnny Foreigner know anything it's how to get people excited. As in grin-struggling-to-escape-face, covered-in-a-stranger's-sweat excited. Here, the Birmingham three-piece combine that know-how with the onset of summer and things go nuclear - because, let's face it, there is nothing as exciting as being able to walk to the off-licence in just a T-shirt for the first time. Feel the heat in guitars that fizz like beer cans shaken and left in the sun too long and a sudden explosion of delirious gang chants. Johnny Foreigner's as-yet-untitled second album will be released sometime later this year. Let's hope it's in time to catch a tan.
Sounds Like: early At The Drive-In, Los Campesinos, Blink 182
DOWNLOAD: Pit Er Pat - Evacuation Days + STREAM: The Good Morning Song (Lucky Dragons Remix)
You can rely on any reunion between US indie rock and nu-jazz to make for akward listening. It sometimes seems the two are miles apart - indie-rock, with its decades-old codes and rituals, on the one hand; and song-based improv, with its own internal battle between form and formlessness, on the other. Pit Er Pat are a trio who seem to have a knack of finding these disparate components some common ground - last year's High Time full-length, released through Thrill Jockey, cast tracks like "Cairo Shuffle" and "Evacuation Days" out into the ether at the edge of familiar experience, carefully combining Middle-Eastern slank with abstracted punk-funk percussion to build something new and very much their own. Preparing for a May tour of the UK, Pit Er Pat have sought out oddball compadres Lucky Dragons to remix "The Good Morning Song" for a limited edition remix 12", also featuring contributions from Brenmar of These Are Powers and High Places' Rob Barber, appearing on the record in his guise as The Urxed.
Sounds Like: Dirty Projectors, High Places, Gang Gang Dance
Pit Er Pat - The Good Morning Song (Lucky Dragons Remix)
Previously:
HECUBA - Sir (Lucky Dragons Remix)
EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: The Decemberists - Hazards Of Love 1 (The Prettiest Whistles Won't Wrestle The Thistles Undone)
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Portland indie darlings The Decemberists return this week with new album The Hazards of Love. You can always rely on Colin Meloy's troupe to err towards the grandiose and the new record's no different, if anything more preposterously overblown than ever before, its songs tied to a narrative involving illicit love, forest queens and murderous knaves. Courageous story-tellers in a time of meta-narratives, The Decemberists' love of purple prose thrives in the spacious reaches of a rock-prog-blues that kind of sounds like The Who had they for a brief time become obsessed with A Midsummer Night's Dream. Bombastic.
Sounds Like: The Who, Gomez, Rival Schools
The Decemberists - Hazards Of Love 1 (The Prettiest Whistles Won't Wrestle The Thistles Undone)
EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: Real Estate - Suburban Dogs + Fake Blues
It's only when you leave for the city that you realise what the suburbs have to offer. Real Estate's Martin Courtney (songwriter, vocals, guitar), Alex Beeker (bass) and Matthew Mondanile (guitar; also of Ducktails and Predator Vision) all hail from suburban New Jersey and their songs evoke the soft bliss of giving your formative, teenage years enough time to waste and beer upon which to glug. Joined now by suburban Massachusetts' Etienne Duguay on drums, the fact that Real Estate only ever sound like a gaggle of grown-up teenage pals is testament to the ease of carving out your own niche in a town that's the same as countless others across America. I grew up 3,500 miles away but can still recognise an appreciation of provincial stillness the instruments themselves seem to empathise with, guitars flitting in and out of song like the loose gabble of birds, drums moseying along at the rear. "Suburban dogs in love with their chains," Courtney sings - so apt, really. The version of "Fake Blues" here is re-worked for inclusion on a forthcoming full-length Woodsist are releasing, while "Suburban Dogs" is a demo for Real Estate's second record, out in, uh, the future! (through Mexican Summer). Both are fantastic.
Sounds Like: Autolux with a heart, Orange Juice, Galaxie 500
EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: Amazing Baby - Bayonets
Amazing Baby know how to write a pop song. "Bayonets", taken from a debut album forthcoming this summer, is layered with violin-thick builds, firm but fair rhythmic change ups and vocals that sounds like Elvis Costello if he was in the habit of getting laid more. It's also one of the year's best radio songs that will most likely be ignored by mainstream day time radio - so do the decent thing and listen here with us at RCRD LBL.
Sounds Like: INXS, Super Furry Animals, new Mystery Jets
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