This Month I Will Mostly Be Listening To….

Vol. 16 May 2007

Instructions: Dôwnloäd, unzip file using Winrar, burn to CD, place in car stereo, listen.

1 Bjork - Earth Intruders
2 White Stripes - Icky Thump
3 Groove Armada - Get Down
4 Editors - Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors
5 Manic Street Preachers - Send Away the Tigers
6 Chemical Brothers - Do It Again (feat. Ali Love)
7 We Are The Physics - Less Than Three
8 Pull Tiger Tail - Secret Says
9 Motocade - Bomb Squad
10 Simian Mobile Disco - Hustler
11 Air Traffic - I Like That
12 Interpol - The Heinrich Maneuver
13 Arctic Monkeys - Temptation Greets You Like Your Naughty Friend
14 Kid Harpoon - Riverside
15 MSTRKRFT - Work On You
16 Tokyo Police Club - Box
17 Ra Ra Riot - Can You Tell
18 Art Brut - Pump Up the Volume
19 Zapped By a Million Volts - What's the Miles Per Gallon Alan?
20 Shout Out Louds - Tonight I Have to Leave It
21 Klaxons - Magick (Simian Mobile Disco Mix)

Insert obligatory sheep joke here

Well it's been a while since I highlighted a new band on here, basically because there hasn't been that much new stuff that has pushed my buttons. So when finally something came along that did just that, it really made me sit up and notice. And it was doubly surprising when it turned out the band comes from New Zealand, not exactly known as a hotbed of cutting edge rock.

Motocade are that band, and their new EP Into the Fall has been on heavy rotation here for the last couple of weeks. And I mean heavy rotation. I know some people think it's really lazy just comparing one band with others to give you an idea of what they sound like, so I won't. But it's no coincidence that their top MySpace friends include Tokyo Police Club :D . Seriously though, if you like TPC you are certain to love this, so have a listen.

Visit their MySpace page to hear four songs, or alternatively download two of them as band-approved high-quality MP3s here:
Bomb Squad
My Friends

and here's the video for Bomb Squad:

This Month I Will Mostly Be Listening To….

Vol. 15, April 2007

1 Arctic Monkeys - Brianstorm
2 Mark Ronson - Stop Me (If You've Heard This One Before)
3 The Enemy - 40 Days and 40 Nights
4 The Pigeon Detectives - Romantic Type
5 Good Shoes - Things to Make and Do
6 CSS - Off The Hook
7 The Ripps - Loco
8 I Was a Cub Scout - I Hate Nightclubs
9 Manic Street Preachers - Your Love Alone is Not Enough
10 Shitdisco - 72 Virgins
11 The View - The Don
12 Peel - Oxford
13 We are the PHYSICS - This Is Vanity
14 Frank London's Klezmer Brass Allstars - A Time of Desire
15 The National - Fake Empire
16 Foal - Hummer
17 Modest Mouse - Fire It Up
18 The Bravery - Time Won't Let Me Go
19 Fury of the Headteachers - Not What It Used to Be
20 Simian Mobile Disco - It's The Beat
21 Polytechnic - Won't You Come Around
22 Art Brut - Direct Hit
23 Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip - Thou Shalt Always Kill

London Calling 30 & 31 March 2007

Last weekend was my long awaited first taste of the twice annual festival of up-and-coming British (and British influenced) bands, London Calling in Paradiso, Amsterdam.

Friday:
I started out on the balcony, in a perfect position, 2 metres in front of the bar, directly in front of the stage. And when bands played on the second stage they rolled down a screen and showed the live feed from the cameras there. So when it was a band we weren't that bothered about, or the small stage was packed out, we could sit back and enjoy our beers with a great view of the action.

Our Lunar Activities started off proceedings, without leaving any great impression on me. Then came The Wombats, one of the bands I was most looking forward to. Unfortunately they were programmed a bit too early in the proceedings, the hall was less than half full as people were still arriving, which didn't help the acoustics there, which are dodgy at the best of times. The band then proceeded to play a set made up mainly of new songs and only a few off their brilliant debut album Girls, Boys and Marsupials. No Metro Song! No Party in a Forest! No Derail & Crash! Boo! The crowd (including me) responded in a predictably muted manner.

The Wombats

Kate Nash then came on the small stage, and again I watched on the screen. She did a nice acoustic version of Caroline's a Victim, but otherwise after about four songs they all started to sound the same to me. The Twang were up next on the main stage, and they came on with an impressive swagger. They made a decent effort, but the songs weren't quite strong enough to win over the crowd or me.

The Twang

My Luminaries on the second stage were not my cup of tea at all - big washes of sound with a very earnest singer. The Long Blondes followed on the main stage. It was good to hear their songs live, but their sound was another victim of the main hall's poor acoustics, and possibly the fact that bassist and female guitarist looked as if they would rather be anywhere than there.

The Long Blondes

At this point (after my third pint of Kalimocho) I decided I had to get my feet moving and went off to the small stage to watch a band I felt were going to be the surprise hit of the festival. Isn't it lovely when you're right? we are the PHYSICS were exactly what the crowd had been waiting for - wonky, punky, stop-start pop, a great, tongue-in-cheek theatrical stage presence, geeky clothes and none of them over 21. Boom. The place went bonkers, moshing like idiots, stage invasion, stage diving, you name it, with yours truly the oldest mosher in town right in the thick of it.

we are the PHYSICS (with stage diver Joep)

After that, the Pigeon Detectives came on the main stage. They were headlining and were a little bit full of themselves, but they also put on a great show and got the crowd going. The singer stage dived twice, which is always a good way of getting the crowd on your side, and he treated the equipment with a healthy disrespect, trashing or disconnecting at least 3 mics during the show. Once again I got myself right down the front - in my book you either watch at a safe distance, like on the balcony, or you get right up into the moshpit. Halfway back is nowhere.

Pigeon Detectives (love the top photo!)

The last three gigs were billed as the afterparty, but they were more like an afterthought in my book. I stayed virtually till the end but regretted doing so. Maybe I was just too tired...

Saturday:
Moke kicked things off on the main stage. I'd seen their Noel Gallagher lookalike singer when he was with Supersub, many years ago, and he is still peddling the same sub-(hah)-Weller crap as he was then. Meuk more like (Dutch joke, sorry).

The Victorian English Gentlemen's Club were first up on the small stage, and they were excellent, but were on a bit too early to get the hungover crowd dancing.

The Victorian English Gentlemen's Club

The next acts came and went without making much impression on me. Good Books had one good song (the one I knew of course) and the rest blended into a Keane with guitars stew. The Strange Death of Liberal England held my attention for a while, but their shoegazing meanderings felt out of place at London Calling. Air Traffic were then the other extreme, riffs and hooks honed to perfection and poised to unleash themselves on the charts. I did enjoy some bits of The Kissaway Trail, and certainly wouldn't write them off as emo as some other reviewers have done. They reminded me more of a band like Aberdeen City, very widescreen and a touch ethereal.

The Enemy did a very good job of filling the main stage, even though there were only 3 of them. They had the sound and the confidence to dominate the big stage, and mostly the tunes to match, although none of them particularly lodged in my consciousness.

The Enemy

Ox.Eagle.Lion.Man were the leftfield hit of the evening. Some super tunes and an off-the-wall front man to sing them. They pushed all the right buttons and were almost as big a hit as We are the PHYSICS in the same slot the night before.

Finally the moment I'd been waiting for all evening, when Switches took to the main stage stage. I'd seen them on telly recently and they'd looked horribly full of themselves, so I feared the worst, but I was pleasantly surprised. They got the crowd going, played a tight set and, for me, were the hit of the evening.

Switches

Screendump from film on OOR.nl :P

I missed the afterparty this time in order to catch the last train home and thus be able to get up in time to order a ticket to Glastonbury the next morning. Which I did! :)

Jimmy Three Gigs

I got a bit carried away buying concert tickets recently. I'd been disappointed by the lack of good gigs in Holland in the autumn of last year, so when some interesting bands came along I went a bit mad buying up tickets. It was only when I wrote them on the calendar that it became clear that the week just gone was going to be a busy one - Kasabian on Monday, Goose on Thursday and Klaxons on Saturday (all sold-out, incidentally). And as two of these were in Amsterdam and I already had enough other things going on, I decided to try to sell either the Goose or the Klaxons ticket.

Suffice to say I didn't manage to get rid of either, and eventually decided to go to all 3 concerts. And in retrospect I'm mighty glad I did. All three were great in their own way.

Kasabian - great music, crowd less so. Adidas clad Brits on stag trips for the most part.
Goose - Brilliant, squelchy Belgian indie dance. Apart from the singer, all apparently aged 14 and able to effortlessly switch instruments at the drop of a hat.
Klaxons - one of the best gigs I've seen, ever. And only 40 minutes long. The crowd were mental, flinging glowsticks all over the place, singing their lungs out, moshing, stage invading, crowd surfing and stage diving like idiots. Utter mayhem. Gramps here was glad he could find a quiet corner on the balcony! And the band were awesome. They managed to make even the sweet harmonies on numbers like Golden Skans sound punky and ominous, and the twee faux-shanty Isle of Her became a thundering beast from the deep.

At a guess I'd say this is the first time I've been to 3 separate gigs in a week since Intro Week at Sheffield Poly, *cough* years ago. Arctic Monkeys in the Melkweg next Saturday. Bring 'em on!

This Month I Will Mostly Be Listening To….

Vol. 14 March 2007

1 Klaxons - Two Receivers
2 The Fratellis - Baby Fratelli
3 Kings of Leon - On Call
4 Dartz! - St. Petersburg
5 The Rakes - We Danced Together
6 Bloc Party - Secrets
7 The KBC - Pride Before the Fall
8 Goose - Bring it On
9 The Wombats - Kill The Director
10 Fields - Song for the Fields
11 Deerhoof - Believe E.S.P.
12 Tokyo Police Club - Citizens of Tomorrow
13 Kate Nash - Caroline's a Victim
14 The Harrisons - Monday's Arms
15 Malcolm Middleton & Alan Bisset - The Rebel on His Own Tonight
16 Bloc Party - Cain Said to Abel
17 Arcade Fire - Keep the Car Running
18 Pull Tiger Tail - Let's Lightning
19 Charlotte Hatherley - I Want You to Know
20 Air Traffic - Charlotte
21 Hot Gossip - Real Mess
22 Klaxons - It's Not Over Yet

Who's hot and who's not?

Funny how band names seem to go through trends of containing the same words. How many bands have there been with 'stereo' or 'super' somewhere in the name? Answers on a postcard to the usual address... 'Superstereo' - good name for a band that.

Current favourites seem to be 'Good' (Shoes, Books) and of course 'Hot' - apart from veterans Hot Hot Heat and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, we've now got Hot Chip, Hot Gossip (who disappointingly do not feature any lycra-clad dancing girls - showing my age here) and of course Hot Club de Paris, my favourite new band of the past twelve months (official - see my Last.fm page).

They make brilliantly skewed pop, with tight barber-shop harmonies, crazy time signatures and lashings of chiming guitar, and their awesome debut album Drop It Til It Pops is currently available with a bonus CD of b-sides and the videos for their 3 singles. Bargain!

Alternatively you can watch the videos here:

This Month I Will Mostly Be Listening To….

Vol. 13 February 2007

1 Klaxons - Golden Skans
2 Charlotte Hatherley - Behave
3 The Maccabees - About Your Dress
4 Bloc Party - I Still Remember
5 The Wombats - Lost in the Post
6 Lo-Fi-Fnk - Steppin Out
7 Arcade Fire - Intervention
8 Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Love Song No. 7
9 Dartz! - Once, Twice, Again
10 Tokyo Police Club - Cheer It On
11 Beck - Think I'm in Love
12 Klaxons - Totem on the Timeline
13 Bloc Party - Sunday
14 Kubichek - Taxi!
15 The Wombats - Party in a Forest (Where's Laura)
16 The Fratellis - Got Ma Nuts from a Hippy
17 Kasabian - Me Plus One
18 Goodbooks - Walk With Me
19 Enter Shikari - Sorry, You're Not a Winner
20 Kaiser Chiefs - Ruby
21 The Good, The Bad & The Queen - Northern Whale
22 Frank Turner - Thatcher Fucked the Kids

This Month I Will Mostly Be Listening To….

Vol. 12 January 2007

1 The Wombats - Moving to New York
2 The Fratellis - 3 Skinny Girls
3 Bloc Party - Hunting for Witches
4 The Good, The Bad and the Queen - Kingdom of Doom
5 Pull Tiger Tail - Mr 100 Percent
6 Tokyo Police Club - Shoulders & Arms
7 LCD Soundsystem - North American Scum
8 The Wombats - Backfire @ The Disco
9 Cold War Kids - Hang Me Up to Dry
10 The Rapture - Wooh! Alright! Yeah!.…Uh Huh
11 GoodShoes - The Photos on My Wall
12 The Hours - Ali in the Jungle
13 Switches - Drama Queen
14 Bloc Party - Uniform
15 The Wombats - My First Wedding
16 Chikinki - Assassinator 13 - old, but new to me
17 Tokyo Police Club - Be Good
18 Battle - Tendency
19 Jamie T - Salvador
20 Fear of Music - Sixteen
21 Modest Mouse - Dashboard
22 Luxembourg - We Only Stayed Together for the Kids

Tip for 2007: Black Gold 360

Veering away slightly from my usual preference for all things indie, one album from a totally different ballpark has been pushing my buttons recently. Blending together such diverse influences as Squarepusher, Miles Davis, Abba, John Coltrane and The Orb, Black Gold 360 creates an electronic soundscape where jazz and electronic/dance vibes meld together perfectly.

The album is the creation of Simon Sixsmith - label boss of Beluga Recordings, sometime member of Electric Puha and in-demand DJ.

The album has been impressing reviewers around the world, here are some quotes:

"An excellent forte into free form electronic jazz ... nothing can fully describe the complexity of its clever and eclectic mix.
BARCODE Magazine, USA

"Excellent fusion of jazz meets electronics, in a beautiful package, as we have come to expect from the beluga crew."
Auke Ferwerda - 365 MAG, USA (www.365mag.com)

"The Album crosses boundaries in a way that makes you smile and wonder.
A miracle has happened: Black Gold 360 has got me liking jazz! A must-have for Four Tet-fans."
Dj Marcelle - ANOTHER NICE MESS, NL (www.anothernicemess.com )

"Quite simply one of the best and most accomplished free internet releases ... Truly excellent."
Marvin Suicide, RESONANCE FM, UK

If you enjoy jazz or electronic music from the likes of Squarepusher, Four Tet or Nightmares on Max, give it a listen. And the best news is, you can download the entire album here for free!

Tip for 2007: The Wombats

There haven't been that many albums this year which have blown me away on the first listen. Particularly among the post-Monkeys bands, who have blended choppy/spiky guitar riffs with slice-of-life lyrics. From Bromheads Jacket to Milburn to Little Man Tate their albums have pretty much all more or less failed to live up to the promise of their early singles.

Then along came the Wombats. The name alone was enough to put me off initially, but eventually I decided to give them a try, and downloaded their new album 'Girls, Boys and Marsupials'. I put it on at a low volume in the background, but by the second track I was pricking up my ears, bumping up the volume and getting hooked. By track 3 the windows were shaking and I was bopping round the room. And it's been playing ever since.

And I still can't work out why. Is it the occasional doo-wop harmonies, at times reminiscent of my other current favourite Liverpool band, Hot Club de Paris? Or is it the killer riffs and hooks, which embed themselves in your subconscious and refuse to leave? Could be a combination of those two I guess!

Lead track 'Moving to New York' features the line 'Looks like Christmas came early for me' in the chorus. Too f***ing right it did! What an album!

In any event, I strongly recommend you have a listen for yourself. You can hear four of their tracks on their MySpace page, and six others on their band site. And if you want to download some MP3s, Bill at Sound Bites has a couple for you.

This Month I Will Mostly Be Listening To….

Vol. 11 December 2006
1 Bloc Party - Song for Clay (Disappear Here)
2 Guillemots - Made Up Love Song #43
3 Ripchord - Lock Up Your Daughters (And Throw Away the Key) - tip for 2007
4 The Noisettes - Scratch Your Name
5 Muse - Knights of Cydonia
6 Pigeon Detectives - I Found Out - tip for 2007
7 Switches - Message from Yuz
8 Polytechnic - Man Overboard - verses, a chorus and a melody, who'd a thunk it?! Could even be a hit.
9 Babyshambles - The Blinding - long-awaited return to form of Tabloid Pete
10 The Veils - Jesus for the Jugular - caught the tail-end of their show in The Hague last month. Awesome
11 Hot Club de Paris - Clockwork Toy
12 The Maccabees - First Love - tip for 2007
13 Bloc Party - The Prayer - lead single off the new album, sounding better than ever. Tickets for their gig in Utrecht in April 07 already purchased
14 Howling Bells - Setting Sun
15 Union of Knives - Operated On
16 Pigeon Detectives - I'm Not Sorry
17 Band of Horses - Funeral
18 New Young Pony Club - Get Lucky
19 Larrikin Love - Happy as Annie
20 The Horror The Horror - Ipanema
21 The Veils - Not Yet

Year-end mixtape

Here's the tracklist of my year-end double CD mixtape.

This Year I Have Mostly Been Listening To….

2006

CD1

1 Akira the Don - Thanks for All the AIDS
2 Archie Bronson Outfit - Dart For My Sweetheart
3 Arctic Monkeys - A Certain Romance
4 The Beatles - Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
5 Bloc Party - Song for Clay (Disappear Here)
6 Boy Kill Boy - Suzie
7 Easy Star All*Stars - Airbag
8 Franz Ferdinand - The Fallen
9 Fratellis - Chelsea Dagger
10 Graham Coxon - Standing on My Own Again
11 Hot Chip - Over and Over
12 Hot Club de Paris - Everyeveryeverything
13 Howling Bells - Blessed Night
14 Infadels - Can't Get Enough
15 Jim Noir - My Patch
16 Justice v Simian - We Are Your Friends (Edison remix)
17 The Killers - When You Were Young
18 Klaxons - Atlantis to Interzone
19 The Knife - We Share Our Mother's Health
20 Kooks - Naive

CD2
1 Hess is More - The Magic Invention of T.D.P.R.C.
2 Lily Allen - LDN
3 The Longcut - A Tried and Tested Method
4 Lovely Feathers - Wrong Choice
5 Morrissey - You Have Killed Me
6 Mystery Jets - The Boy Who Ran Away
7 Paolo Nuttini - Jenny Don't be Hasty
8 Peter, Bjorn & John - Young Folks
9 Portishead - Requiem for Anna (Un jour comme un autre - Anna)
10 Pretty Girls Make Graves - Parade
11 Pull Tiger Tail - Animator
12 Raconteurs - Steady as She Goes
13 The Rakes - All Too Human
14 The Rapture - Get Myself Into It
15 Roots Manuva - No Love
16 Switches - Message from Yuz
17 Teddybears - Cobrastyle
18 Thom Yorke - Harrowdown Hill
19 TV On the Radio - Province
20 The Victorian English Gentlemen's Club - Ban the Gin
21 Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Gold Lion
22 The Young Knives - She's Attracted To

Second-album syndrome

I'll be interested to see if the class of '04 can come up with the goods this year - Razorlight, Kasabian, Interpol, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Futureheads, the Bravery, the Zutons, the Caesars.... Franz Ferdinand have raised the bar for second albums, let's see who can step up and match them.

I wrote this in my first post on this blog, on 5 January of this year. Well the second albums have come and gone (please can we stop using that horrible word 'sophomore'? It means a second-year American student, FFS) some (Kasabian, Killers, YYYs) acceptably decent, others (Razorlight, Futureheads) a pale shadow of the potential shown on the first albums, but all of them missing that spark that makes you shout YESSS!

One of the names missing from my original list is Bloc Party. Their second album, Weekend In The City, is not due out until February 2007, so it doesn't count as an '06 release anyway - or does it? An early mix of the album has been leaked online in the past few days and I've been lucky enough to get my hands on a copy. To say that it has the wow factor missing from the second albums mentioned above is putting it lightly - very lightly. This album is making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I even just caught myself headbanging at my desk.

So be excited. Be very excited!

You can download live versions of various tracks off the album from my fellow bloggers at Good Weather for Airstrikes blog here, and read the official track-by-track guide published in this week's NME here.

And here's a video of them performing track 2, Hunting for Witches:

This Month I Will Mostly Be Listening To….

1 Pull Tiger Tail - Animator
2 Ali Love - K Hole
3 Cansei de Ser Sexy - Alala
4 The Fratellis - Whistle for the Choir
5 Babyshambles & friends - Janie Jones
6 Green Day & U2 - The Saints are Coming
7 The Horrors - Count in Fives
8 Switches - Testify
9 The Legion of Doom - Crazy As She Goes
10 The Maccabees - Lego
11 Graham Coxon - What You Gonna Do Now?
12 IV Thieves - You Can't Love What You Can't Understand
13 Radio 4 - Packing Things Up on the Scene
14 The Knife - Like a Pen
15 Hot Club de Paris - Your Face Looks All Wrong
16 The Automatic - Rats
17 65daysofstatic - Radio Protector
18 Klaxons - Hall of Records
19 The Good, The Bad & The Queen - Herculean
20 The Victorian English Gentlemen's Club - Ban the Gin
21 Tokyo Police Club - Nature of the Experiment
22 The Holloways - Two Left Feet
23 Snakes Say Hisss! - Love is a Heart Attack

Album of the Month

The best album to be released in the past month also has the huge advantage of being absolutely free - well, when you buy a copy of this week's NME that is. For a mere £1.95 you get the World's Greatest Music Weekly and Dancefloor Distortion, a compilation put together by Simian Mobile Disco, who were responsible for indie dancefloor smash We Are Your Friends, featuring wonderfully distorted (yes) and squelchy remixes of the likes of Franz Ferdinand, Klaxons, The Gossip and Hot Chip.

This Month I Will Mostly Be Listening To….

Vol. 8 September 2006

1	Jim Noir - Eanie Meany
2	The Rapture - Get Myself Into It
3	Little Man Tate - House Party at Boothy's
4	Larrikin Love - Downing St. Kindling
5	The Young Knives - She's Attracted To
6	Mission of Burma - Donna Sumeria
7	Heartless Bastards - Brazen
8	Easy Star All-Stars & Horace Andy - Airbag
9	Professor Murder - Champion
10	Archive - Sane
11	Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Cheated Hearts
12	The Fratellis - Chelsea Dagger
13	Señor Coconut - Smoke on the Water
14	Pigeon Detectives - You Know I Love You
15	Los Campesinos - You! Me! Dancing!
16	The Rifles - She's Got Standards
17	Cut Chemist - The Garden
18	Jarvis Cocker - (C***s are Still) Running the World

Blogged to death but I don't care

Jared and the boys from Bel Auburn have been blitzing us bloggers with links to the band's new album, Lullabies in A & C. Coz of course, as you are probably aware, there have been quite a few bands who've leaped from obscurity to major (indie) success after being championed by blogs, message boards, podcasters and the various other new media outlets which have sprung up on the internet in the past few years. And who knows, with a bit of luck your band could be the next Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!, Tapes 'n Tapes or (gasp) Arctic Monkeys to ride a tidal wave of blog hype to relative megastardom.

Unfortunately there's one very important thing a lot of the bands sending round MP3 links and begging for your kind attention are lacking, and which thankfully Bel Auburn have got in bucketloads. And that's the tunes, maaan. Yes, it's a piece of piss to put together a shimmering 24-track demo in your bedroom these days, but if it doesn't grab the listener's ear nobody's going to hear it, beyond say the first track.

So yes, Bel Auburn are a ray of light in amongst all the bands currently shlepping their music around the blogs. It's indie rock which is widescreen without veering over the top like so many of the bands around at the moment. And it's got an indefinable spark - you know, when a track gives you 'butterflies'. Can I call it the butterfly effect? Could be apt, really - a handful of emails sent in America create major ripples the other side of the world...

Anyway, please have a listen to the tracks below, then go on over to the band's site and find some more downloads, photos and stuff, buy a t-shirt, buy the album for a friend, go and see them on tour - tell them Jim sent you:
Bel Auburn - Metropolitan (Watercolor)
Bel Auburn - Blind Ward
Bel Auburn - Just Love

This Month I Will Mostly Be Listening To...

Vol. 7 Aug 2006

1 Polytechnic - PEP - awesome new band from Manchester. My tip for mega indie stardom in the near future.
2 Boy Kill Boy - Civil Sin
3 Paolo Nutini - Jenny Don't Be Hasty
4 Thom Yorke - Harrowdown Hill
5 Arctic Monkeys - Leave Before the Lights Come On
6 Justice vs. Simian - We Are Your Friends (Edison remix)
7 The Young Knives - Weekends and Bleak Days
8 Kasabian - Empire
9 Killers - When You Were Young
10 Hot Club de Paris - Sometimesitsbetter…
11 Polytechnic - Turn Around (Live) - love this band
12 Metric - Monster Hospital
13 Peter, Bjorn and John - Young Folks
14 The View - Wasted Little DJs
15 Joan as Police Woman - Eternal Flame
16 Mumm-Ra - Song B
17 The Dykeenies - New Ideas
18 Union of Knives - Taste for Harmony
19 Polytechnic - Penguin - getting the message yet?
20 The Dears - Ticket to Immorality

More magic from Manchester

Two in a row from Manchester - is this a sign that we are on the verge of a new period of creativity from the city that gave us Joy Division, The Smiths, The Happy Mondays and Madchester? The latest export from the north-west to impress me is Polytechnic, a five-piece whose new single Pep is out on Monday on hip label du jour Transgressive. I got my hands on a six-track demo, which along with first single Won't You Come Around / Let Me Down has been on repeat play here non-stop for the past 2 days.

Their sound is being described in many quarters as Manchester's answer to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!, which while a lazy comparison will give you some idea of what to expect. The vocals in particular have an element of the CYHSY / Wolf Parade / Modest Mouse fragility. Meanwhile the songwriting is as good as any of the above.

Download 3 tracks off their MySpace site and watch and listen to various videos and tracks on their band site.

Some press quotes culled from their website:
'My favourite thing at the moment? POLYTECHNIC, a new band from Manchester... I'm desperate to see them live because their demo is absolutely brilliant - one of the best I've ever had, really'
Steve Lamacq, NME

'This hand-clapping, sugar-rushing off-kilter classic-in-waiting hasn't left the stereo since we discovered them at Manchester's In The City last month'
pep on NME's what's on the stereo?

'The hottest new band in Manchester…'
bbc gmr

'There is hope for guitar music yet... They aren’t comparable, over the course of a live set or an EP, to anyone else. 5/5'
drownedinsound

This Month I Will Mostly Be Listening To….

Vol. 6 June 2006
Round-up of the best albums of the first half of 2006*

1 Infadels - Love Like Semtex
2 Love is All - Felt Tip
3 Hot Chip - Over & Over
4 Tapes 'n Tapes - Ten Gallon Ascot
5 Graham Coxon - I Can't Look At Your Skin
6 Seth Lakeman - The Charmer
7 Klaxons - Atlantis to Interzone
8 Serena Maneesh - Drain Cosmetics
9 Archie Bronson Outfit - Jab Jab
10 Arctic Monkeys - Mardy Bum
11 TV On the Radio - I Was a Lover
12 Morningwood - Nth Degree
13 Morrissey - The Youngest Was the Most Loved
14 Akira the Don - Thanks for all the AIDS
15 The Knife - We Share Our Mother's Health
16 Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Turn Into
17 Longcut - A Quiet Life
18 Mission of Burma - 2wice
19 I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness - According to Plan
20 Hess is More - Yes Boss

* some of which were released in 2005 but I only heard them for the first
time this year.

A new contender

The Thom Yorke solo album ("it's not a solo album") has leaked online, and it's a cracker, but there's something else I want to draw your attention to. An album I knew after one listen was going to be in my top 5 of the year, alongside TV On the Radio and Archie Bronson Outfit. I'm talking about A Call and Response, by Manchester's The Longcut. An album that manages to evoke the spirit of Manchester's past, with influences ranging from Joy Division to the Happy Mondays to the Fall, while taking off in a totally different direction to the likes of Kasabian, Interpol or Editors.

You can sign up for signed copies on their website (well you can once they fix the link!), which sounds like the deal of the year to me. You can also download various live and demo tracks there, as well as a track off the album, just click on the Download link on the home page (I can't link directly to the downloads, unfortunately). Well worth a visit!

There's also a 40-minute gig available in streaming video on the XFM website.

Have a listen and let me know what you think - leave a comment below.

This Month I Will Mostly Be Listening To….

Vol. 5, May 2006

1 Akira the Don - Boom
2 The Automatic - Monster
3 Editors - Orange Crush - best REM cover ever?
4 Lily Allen - LDN
5 The Kooks - Naive
6 Princess Superstar - My Machine
7 Life Without Buildings - Young Offenders - from forgotten 2000 masterpiece album Any Other City
8 Katzenjammers - Cars - from Rough Trade compilation Counter Culture 05
9 Fratellis - Creeping Up the Backstairs
10 Muse - Supermassive Black Hole - first single off long-awaited new album
11 Hope of the States - Sing it Out
12 The Black Keys - Work Me - from the awesome Chulahoma mini album
13 TV On the Radio - Dry Drunk Emperor - about a certain president's 'response' to Hurricane Katrina
14 The Feeling - Fill My Little World
15 Hot Chip - Boy From School
16 Archie Bronson Outfit - Cherry Lips
17 Akira the Don - Bankers - put your fingers in the corner of your mouth, say…
18 Howling Bells - Blessed Night
19 The Longcut - Vitamin C - from A Call and Response, my album of the month
20 Paul Simon - How Can You Live in the Northeast - Brian Eno has done for Simon what his former acolyte Daniel Lanois did for Dylan

Capo di tutti capi

Partly thanks to his lablemates Kid Casanova (see below) I have been encountering the music of Akira the Don a lot recently. He is not unfamiliar to the world of blog - not least because he himself is a fervent blogger and vocal supporter of filesharing, who makes huge chunks of his output freely available to the world.

His mixtapes are legendary - ATD12 has just been released - and most of my exposure has been to these free downloads up to now, so I was very pleasantly surprised to hear more original tracks by him on the recent Something in Construction sampler and the Camden Crawl compilation.

And what stands out is the contrast between his genial rapping style and the brutal, intelligent to-the-pointness of his lyrics, most of which are wry dagger blows aimed at the heart of the global economic system and the political status quo that goes hand in hand with it. Unsurprisingly, the record business does not get off lightly.

So I was pleased to see Something in Construction have put the entire sampler online to download here, including two fabulous Akira tracks:
Bankers (mp3)
"Put your fingers in the corners of your mouth, say Bankers"
and
Jerusalem (mp3) (with Bravecaptain)

Don't miss the rest of the sampler though, it's class from start to finish.

Like a kid with a new toy

John Peel famously received 400 demo tapes / CDs a week on average, and struggled with feelings of guilt when he was physically unable to listen to all of them. These days bloggers and podcasters are taking over the role of new music promoters from radio DJs to a certain extent, but the format of the demo has also changed - more often than not we are sent links to MP3 downloads (mostly at a measly 128 kbps, as well....). So imagine my childlike pleasure at receiving my first ever real promo CDs in the mail this week ;-)

From Kid Casanova, to be precise, a four-piece from New York who play catchy indie pop songs which reward repeated listenings. Sparkly jangle on the surface but with a darker, Bowie-tinged undertow. Their debut album is due out in July on Something In Construction (in the UK). But, I hear you ask, are they any good, or are you simply plugging them out of a pathetic gratitude for your meaningless freebies? Well to be honest they didn't grab me straight away, but I'm glad I persevered - the songs definitely reveal additional layers after the 3rd or 4th listen.

So head on over to Kid Casanova's website at www.kidcasanova.com, and download these four tracks in glorious MP3:

Hey Johnny
Like We Did Last Year
By & By
Rec Center (the Kids in This Town)

I'm not sure how I'd cope with Peel-like levels of demos, but I'm happy for now.