Recently Added Vinyl
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Visit product page →180gLP audiophile pressing includes art poster + dl.
CD in gatefold paperboard jacket.
Marks the 15th anniversary of the band, founded and led by Efrim Menuck of Godspeed You! Black Emperor. First new SMZ full length since GYBE's return to action in 2011. Recorded in Quebec by Greg Norman (Electrical Audio). Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra (SMZ) has traced a barbed-wire arc of genre-defying protest music since its inception in 1999.
Formed by Efrim Menuck, with Thierry Amar and Sophie Trudeau, the initial iteration of the band was a predominantly instrumental trio that forged a more intimate and ragged chamber-punk than Godspeed You! Black Emperor, in which group all three founding SMZ members also played (and continue to play).
Through seven albums from 2000-2010, SMZ expanded its line-up and shifted towards an increasing use of lead and group vocals, with Menuck penning politically-charged lyrics to anchor long-form multi-movement compositions that juxtaposed electrified guitars against a 4-piece string section of violins, cello and contrabass.
Most recently, SMZ has pared back to five players, with Menuck's massive spectrumspanning electric guitar sound emerging as the spine around which two violins, bass (now more often electric than acoustic) and drums are deployed.
SMZ have managed a handful of short tours in the past couple of years (in the gaps between GYBE commitments) and as anyone who has seen the band in its recent incarnation can attest, their current sound is more honed, laser-guided and bone-rattling than ever, melding hardcore, blues, garage and dark metal influences that have nothing to do with anything so quaint as post-rock (a tag the group has always and rightly rejected).
Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything is the first definitive document of the band's newfound sound and style as a quintet. It's also their first single LP-length work since the band's debut record as a trio almost 15 years ago, and features roadtested pummeling rock-outs Fuck Off Get Free (For The Island Of Montréal), Take Away These Early Grave Blues and What We Loved Was Not Enough alongside the previously unheard lullabyes/minuets Little Ones Run and Rains Thru The Roof At Thee Grande Ballroom (For Capital Steeze) and the album centerpiece Austerity Blues with its closing lyric Lord let my son live long enough to see that mountain torn down sung in varying incarnations throughout the second half of this 14-minute epic.
This lyric in many ways encapsulates Menuck's unflinching take on a world replete with shabbiness, greed and injustice, seen through the lens of parenthood, mortality, endurance and defiance. There are few other musicians who deliver social critique with the courage and honesty of lines like All our cities gonna burn / All our bridges gonna snap / All our pennies gonna rot / Lightning roll across our tracks / All our children gonna die.
Feel-good music this is not; but neither can it reductively be tagged apocalyptic or world-weary.
Fuck Off Get Free rages with scorn and with hope, utterly passionate but pointedly unromantic. Thee Silver Mt. Zion once again demonstrates, like few other bands working today, that there is much to fight for and against, and plenty more fight songs to sing.
Tracklisting:
1. Fuck Off Get Free (For The Island Of Montreal)
2. Austerity Blues
3. Take Away These Early Grave Blues
4. Little Ones Run
5. What We Loved Was Not Enough
6. Rains Thru The Roof At The Grande Ballroom -
Visit product page →Second vinyl-only release from Godspeed contains two long songs, and sets the bar for the sprawling compositions that would characterise the group in the years to follow.
Tracklisting:
Side A:
1. MoyaSide B:
2. BBF3 -
On saleVisit product page →U.X.O. is unexploded ordnance is landmines is cluster bombs. Yanqui is post-colonial imperialism is international police state is multinational corporate oligarchy. Godspeed You! Black Emperor is complicit is guilty is resisting.
The new album is just raw, angry, dissonant, epic instrumental rock. Recorded by Steve Albini at Electrical Audio in Chicago and mixed by Howard Bilerman and Godspeed You! Black Emperor at the original Hotel2Tango in Montreal.
Side A:
1. 09-15-00Side B:
1. Rockets Fall On Rocket Falls.Side C:
1. Motherfucker = RedeemerSide D:
1. Motherfucker = Redeemer
2. Untitled
3. UntitledX -
Visit product page →After two years of constant touring and near-unanimous critical acclaim, Godspeed You Black Emperor! assembled a collection of new recordings that charted the creative evolution of the band as well as its literal physical movement on the road, criss-crossing North America and Europe.
Five expansive full-band compositions are framed by various field recordings, tape manipulations and ensemble pieces in a return to the narrative sonic collage techniques that marked their 1997 debut (F#A#ˆž).
Storm
1. Lift Yr. Skinny Fists, Like Antennas To Heaven...
2. Gathering Storm / Il Pleut Ãmourir [+Clatters Like Worry]
3. "Welcome To Barco AM/PM..." [L.A.X.; 5/14/00]
4. Cancer Towers On Holy Road Hi-WayStatic
1. Terrible Canyons Of Static
2. Atomic Clock.
3. Chart #3
4. World Police And Friendly Fire
5. [...+The Buildings They Are Sleeping Now]Sleep
1. Murray Ostril: "...They Don't Sleep Anymore On The Beach..."
2. Monheim
3. Broken Windows, Locks Of Love Pt. III. / 3rd PartAntennas To Heaven...
1. Moya Sings "Baby-O"...
2. Edgyswingsetacid
3. [Glockenspiel Duet Recorded On A Campsite In Rhinebeck, N.Y.]
4. "Attention...Mon Ami...Fa-Lala-Lala-La-La..." [55-St.Laurent]
5. She Dreamt She Was A Bulldozer, She Dreamt She Was Alone In An Empty Field
6. Deathkamp Drone
7. [Antennas To Heaven...] -
On saleVisit product page →LP is pressed on 180 gram virgin vinyl at Optimal (Germany) and comes in a tipped-on heavyweight gatefold jacket printed in full-colour process plus a spot metallic ink and spot matte varnish. LP dust sleeve is also 4-colour print.
Package includes a 7 inch in printed dust sleeve (same audio appears in a different sequence on the CD) and a 12"x 48" pull-out poster (printed full colour on both sides) featuring a collage of film stills specially-photographed and captured from the GYBE live 16mm projections.
A decade has passed since the release of Yanqui U.X.O., the last album by Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Never a band to pay heed to industry wisdom, Yanqui was released shortly before xmas 2002 with little publicity, no press availability, no marketing plans, cross-promotions or brand synergies, adorned with now infamous back cover artwork diagramming the links between major record labels and the military-industrial complex. Like all GYBE albums, this one did just fine and 'found it's audience': a passionate and committed fanbase galvanized by the group's sonic vision and its dedication to unmediated, unsullied musical communication.
That such simple principles and goals have become harder to maintain and enact a decade later is an understatement. For all the contents and discontents ' for all the content' of our present cultural moment, the idea of circumventing the glare of exposure or side-stepping the careful plotting of media cycles and identity management seems profoundly illadvised, if not futile. But Godspeed is looking to try all the same.
The band wants people to encounter and care about this new album, without telling people they should. They seek to preserve the thrill of anonymous and uncalculated transmission, knowing full well that these days, anti-strategy risks being tagged as a strategy, non-marketing framed as its opposite, and deeply held principles they consider fundamental to health as likely to be interpreted as just another form of stealth.
The band has been carving its own path again since 2010, regrouping as the same self-managed collective entity it has been from the outset, making appearances at a tiny clutch of music festivals, and otherwise just touring its own shows. It's been a disorienting time to resurface, but it has felt overwhelmingly right, honest and good.
We think Godspeed has made a new record that maintains if not exceeds the standards of their previous work ' a high bar, many would agree. GYBE picked up right where they left off, and after almost two years of practicing, playing and touring, 'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! Delivers two mighty sides of music (bookended by two new drones) that the band had been working up prior to their 2003 hiatus, which they have now shaped into something definitively stunning, immersive and utterly true to their legacy.
The future looks dark indeed, but on the evidence of this new recording, Godspeed appears wholly committed to staring it down, channeling it, and fighting for some rays of sound (and flickers of light) that feel righteous, unflinching, hopeful and pure.
Tracklisting:
1. Mladic
2. We Drift Like Worried Fire
3. Their Helicopters' Sing
4. Strung Like Lights At Thee Printemps Erable -
Visit product page →To celebrate 150 releases we have put together a selection of tracks showing where we are now, some label mainstays, personal favourites, hidden treasures and to round it off; a beautiful exclusive from Arve Henriksen.
No expenses have been spared to make this a sublime and highly desirable collection: 4 x 10 inch records - a format loved by collectors - different coloured vinyl for each record, a big two sided poster and a long, unedited and frank interview with label founder Rune Kristoffersen and house designer Kim Hiorthøy by UK music writer Rob Young. And all beautifully designed by Kim and individually numbered by hand in a strictly one-off edition of only 500 copies.
The title is borrowed from William Butler Yeats' meditation on art and immortality and follows in the tradition of previous compilations where we have borrowed from song lyrics and poems; Love Comes Shining Over The Mountains (Jimi Hendrix), Until Human Voices Wake Us And We Drown (T.S. Eliot) and Twenty Centuries Of Stony Sleep (W.B. Yeats).
Tracks:
Hedvig Mollestad Trio ' Sing, Goddess
Bushman's Revenge ' As We Used To Sing (Live)
Scorch Trio ' Kjøle Høle
Motorpsycho ' Year Zero (A Damage Report)
FIRE! ' Your Silhouette On Each (Without Noticing)
Elephant9 ' Hardcore Orientale
Phaedra ' Honeydewed Autumn
Jenny Hval ' Blood Flight
The Last Hurrah!! ' The Lonely Whistle Call
Hilde Marie Kjersem ' That Day In The Shower
Tove Nilsen ' Jordan
Sidsel Endresen & Stian Westerhus - Drawing An Arc
Maja Ratkje - IntroAlog ' Baklandet
Espen Eriksen Trio ' In The Woods
Nils Økland ' Blond Blå
Arve Henriksen ' Silver Box -
Visit product page →The Pipettes second album, 'Earth Vs The Pipettes', produced by the legendary Martin Rushent, the semi-retired producer of The Stranglers, Shirley Bassey, Altered Images, The Buzzcocks, and, most famously, the Human League's 'Dare', was written with the idea of imagining what a disco in space would sound like, an exploration of what might happen if all the genres and styles that have set the dance floor going for the last fifty years were loaded onto a rocket and fired into the stars.
What would Motown's transition as Marvin Gaye and Diana Ross started to veer into Philly Soul and the emerging compositions of Larry Levan sound like if that development had happened on Mars? (Answers: 'I Vibe U'; 'I Always Planned To Stay'; and 'Our Love Was Saved By Spacemen').
What would the disco divas and social misfits of the Seventies be listening to if Studio 54 existed on a giant space station orbiting Saturn? (Answers: 'From Today'; 'Stop The Music'). How would the motorik Euro pop of the Eighties such as The Human League and Stock, Aitken and Waterman translate into the bedrooms of the children of the Eighties if they lived on some cool planet we'd never heard of? (Answers: 'Call Me', 'Thank You').
A pure pop album, leaving behind the realm of the three female harmony girl-group for the unison girl pop of Abba and the Pointer Sisters, moving towards the sounds of Chic-inspired seventies disco and eighties chart music, "Earth Vs The Pipettes" is chockfull of classic influences and killer pop songs, the kind of album that major labels struggle to make with teams of producers and writers.
Tracklisting:
1. Call Me
2. Ain't No Talking
3. Thank You
4. I Need A Little Time
5. History
6. I Always Planned To Stay
7. Stop The Music
8. I Vibe U
9. Our Love Was Saved By Spacemen
10. Finding My Way
11. Captain Rhythm
12. From Today -
Visit product page →Tender Trap are now a proper girl-group! In contrast with earlier Tender Trap, which had a more electronic bent, the newly revitalized 'Trap has stronger links to the pop lineage of its founder members; Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey were in influential indiepop originals and John Peel favorites Talulah Gosh and Heavenly, who released records on such indiepop labels as Sarah Records, K and Stephen Pastel's 53rd and 3rd.
Neither Talulah Gosh nor Heavenly (Amelia's previous bands) had this much vocal harmony going on. With two extra girl voices (from new guitarist Elizabeth Morris of Allo Darlin' and new drummer Katrina Dixon) the band now combines the harmonies, oohs, ahs and sha-la-las of classic girl-pop with the stripped down beats and dirty guitars of the Shop Assistants and The Vaselines.Following their albums Film Molecules (2002) and 6 Billion People (2006), we're very excited to bring you Dansette Dansette, the band's excellent third album. Bristling with crunchy guitars and effortlessly catchy tunes, Dansette Dansette is ample proof of why Amelia and Rob's bands have been such a huge influence on today's generation of pop bands.
Revered by today's revitalized indie-pop scene, their records are floor-fillers at indie dance clubs and their influence can be heard in bands such as Los Campesinos! (who namecheck Fletcher in their song "International Tweexcore Underground"), The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Dum Dum Girls. Even US rockers The Hold Steady reference Heavenly in the title track of their new album Heaven is Whenever."Dansette Dansette" kicks of the record in fine fashion, morse feedback bleeps leading into a melodic ode to the bedroom record player.
Being the first single from the album, "Do You Want A Boyfriend?" is a perfect chunk of pop, but it's not as innocent as it seems - it celebrates the girl-pop phenomenon, but deconstructs it too. "Girls With Guns" and "2 To The N" are more punk-inspired, hearkening back to Amelia's Talulah Gosh roots. Slower tunes like "Suddenly" and "Counting The Hours" give plenty of room for Amelia's vocal interplay with Elizabeth and Katrina, and "Capital L" wraps up the album in epic fashion, a tambourine-driven slow-dance which builds to a glorious crescendo.
1. Dansette Dansette
2. Fireworks
3. Do You Want A Boyfriend?
4. Suddenly
5. Girls With Guns
6. Danger Overboard
7. 2 To The N
8. Counting The Hours
9. Grand National
10. Capital L -
Visit product page →Vinyl LP (Limited to 500).
Second album from Cocoanut Groove.. Fronted by Olov Antonsson, it's their first as a full band, the debut album Madeleine Street (2008) having essentially been a solo project. Hailing from the North of Sweden, Antonsson wears his1960s baroque pop influences on his sleeve, along with traces of latter day guitar pop like The Smiths and The Clientele, and folk acts like Vashti Bunyan and Nick Drake.
The songs for How to Build a Maze were written and recorded over quite a long period of time. Bleaker and less naive than their debut it's still no great departure, with Olov continuing to strive for 60s pop perfection, attempting to write something as beautiful as "Beechwood Park" by The Zombies or "World Of You" by The Aerovons. As well, there are quite a few traditional Swedish folk melodies hidden on the album, like the ones you find on the album "Jazz på svenska" by Swedish pianist Jan Johansson.
Recorded in various places around Olov's hometown Umeå, with no professional recording studios involved whatsoever, the album is about getting lost in different ways ' losing your way in city streets, losing friends and watching summers pass. The theme can be summed up by this simple definition from Wikipedia: "A maze is a tour puzzle in the form of a complex branching passage through which the solver must find a route." Having taken their name from a Lovin' Spoonful/Roger Nichols song, Cocoanut Groove formed in 2007 with Olov writing and recording the song "The End Of The Summer On Bookbinder Road", which became their debut single.
Olov writes all the songs and plays guitar, as well as bass, piano and whatever else is needed. Over the years (and on this record) he has been joined by Calle Thoor, Anton Runesson and William Andersson (drums), Josef Ringqvist (bass), Mattias Malm (guitar, keys, vocals, arrangements, percussion and whatnot), Ivar and Gunnar Lantz (strings) and Frida Danielsson (trumpet).
Cocoanut Groove follow in a grand tradition of Swedish indiepop, with a focus on melody and beauty, tinged with melancholy. From the long, dark winters to the respite of the dreamy summers, the songs talk of escaping the city and pining for the countryside, about unemployment and having nothing to do but drink coffee and watch the birds fly.
Tracklisting:
1. Prelude
2. How To Build A Maze
3. On A Monday Morning
4. The High Coast
5. Fair-Weather Friend
6. Colours
7. North Country Summer
8. Afternoon
9. A Secret Tune
10. Night Walk
11. Seven Flowers -
Visit product page →The LP is on 180g black vinyl with a download code. Cursing The Sea, the debut album from Ireland's September Girls, is a dark kaleidoscope of echoey drums, buzzsaw bass, angular guitars and reverb-drenched vocals that blends garage rock and post-punk to extraordinary effect.
Named after a Big Star song via The Bangles, September Girls are comprised of Paula (Bass/Vocals), Caoimhe (Guitar/Vocals), Lauren (Keys/Vocals), Jessie (Guitar/Vocals) and Sarah (Drums). Drawing inspiration from the likes of Phil Spector, The Velvet Underground, The Cure, My Bloody Valentine and The Jesus And Mary Chain, the five-piece play reverb-soaked noise-pop of the finest order, with distant layered harmonies, swirling organ and distorted guitars once described as "sounds from a transistor radio abandoned in a rural cinema."
Formed in Dublin in 2011, the band quickly recorded some demos and began booking gigs in Ireland and the UK, before releasing a handful of well-received limited edition singles on various cassette and 7 labels around the world, most recently on the Haus of PINS cassette label run by their kindred spirits PINS, with whom the band have also toured.
This release, for the song Ships, gave the band their biggest press to date, with a glowing review on Pitchfork. With four different songwriters and singers, each song begins with a secret life of its own, only to be unified by the distortion-drenched harmonies and hazy pop stylings of the band, songs that often seem to be of a sunny disposition taking on a darker, more sinister edge.
First single proper Heartbeats is a tale of unrequited love and betrayal, awash with fuzzy guitars, ethereal female vocals and entrancing melodies and underpinned by a hurt that catches the back of your throat, while the remarkable pop song that is Green Eyed has the protagonist trapped in a relationship with someone untrustworthy. Elsewhere Sister deals with the thorny subject of rape and victim-blaming in society over an insistent, urgent backing.
Title track Cursing the Sea is an ode to long distance heartache and an apt title for the album, with many of the songs dealing with distance, insecurity and inner turmoil, and alluding to an overall sense of being adrift. In keeping with this, the band chose the setting of a beach at night for the artwork, hoping to capture that same unsettled feeling.
Whirling around in a tornado of fuzz, dazzling harmonies, disarming lyrics and dizzying excitement, Cursing the Sea is awash with enough attitude and great songs to see September Girls safely to shore.
"Ships" takes their fuzzy garage pop and colors it several shades darker, resulting in an ominous amphetamine-fueled dirge full of screeching guitars, metronomic basslines, and cooly detached vocals. The Girls' pare down their sound to its steely core on "Ships", using angular guitar work to sharpen their sunniest melodies to a bleeding point, making this the most thrilling music they've released in their short existence. (Pitchfork) .
Tracklisting:
1. Cursing The Sea
2. Another Love Song
3. Left Behind
4. Heartbeats
5. Green Eyed
6. Ships
7. Talking
8. Daylight
9. Money
10. Someone New
11. Secret Lovers
12. Sister -
Visit product page →180g Heavyweight Vinyl LP (Limited to 500)¦.
I Blame Society is the third album from New York trio The Ballet and their first for new label Fortuna POP! Unashamedly sissy and explicitly queer, The Ballet marry the DIY queer ethos of the Hidden Cameras with the wry poeticism of The Magnetic Fields to create literate, infectious pop gems.
I Blame Society is a continuation of the lyrical themes and songwriting style found in the band's two previous self-released albums (Mattachine! [2006] and Bear Life! [2009]), though with slightly pared down arrangements and a nuanced production, which highlights songwriter Greg Goldberg's strengths. Inspired by Stephin Merritt's body of work, Goldberg draws from an array of pop artists and periods, from 60's bubblegum to 80's synthpop and 90's indiepop, fusing these in sophisticated and novel ways which rewards repeat listening.
Avoiding autobiographical or confessional modes, Goldberg nonetheless mines his own psychological constitution and intellectual interests to craft songs whose overt musical prettiness is often contrasted by a dark and complex subtext. I Blame Society addresses a number of queer themes, offering a nuanced and refreshing perspective on contemporary queer issues, subtly balancing queer melancholy with self-deprecating humour and stubborn utopianism.
While some queer musicians shy away from articulating a connection between their sexuality and musicianship, The Ballet have often contended the opposite: that they are a bunch of queers who just happen to be in a band. Formed in 2005 by Greg Goldberg and Craig Willse (who are both professors and met whilst at graduate school) with Marina Miranda (who they met at a party), The Ballet are still going strong after eight years of pop magic, retaining their original line-up.
That's not to say they haven't gone through some line-up changes over the years. Acquired bandmates Ginger Brooks Takahashi and Michael O'Neill left in 2007 to join JD Sampson in MEN. Indiepop luminaries such as Linton from The Aislers Set and Ramesh from Voxtrot have also made guest appearances on previous albums, as have Kaki King and Scott Matthew.
"Recalling Holiday-era Magnetic Fields, these songs bop with heady buoyancy, yet are underpinned by complicated but universal themes: self-deception, infidelity without shame, war fatigue and finding love in a world of online hookups." Time Out New YorkTracklisting:
1. Alright
2. Cruel Path
3. Difficult Situations
4. Feelings
5. Meaningless
6. Too Much Time
7. Is Anybody Out There?
8. Turn You
9. Sorry
10. All The Way -
Visit product page →The debut album from Edinburgh quartet The Spook School brings together 13 (mostly) very noisy guitar pop songs, the culmination of four people making a lot of noise about gender and about identity.
Inspired by the post-punk-pop of The Buzzcocks, Lou Reed's 'Transformer' and the films of Buster Keaton, with a dash of 60s pop for good measure, The Spook School are Nye Todd on guitar with Adam Todd also on guitar and Anna Cory on bass, not forgetting Niall McCamley who plays drums, tells jokes and takes his clothes off.
They all sing and shout and write the music together. There is no leader and no 'frontperson'. They're a band.
1. Are You Who You Think You Are?
2. I'll Be Honest
3. You Make It Sound So Easy
4. I Don't Know
5. The Cameraman
6. Something
7. Can You Ever Trust A Man Who Think Matt Damon's Really Cool?
8. What A Pity
9. Devil of Mine
10. That's When I Ran Away
11. You Don't Know
12. History
13. Who Ya Gonna Call? Goat Buster! -
Visit product page →Gatefold CD With Booklet / Heavyweight 2LP Vinyl with Poster & MP3 Download.
Over the past four years, ex-Hefner man Darren Hayman has been releasing records about lidos, dogging and Russian space dogs. He has played gigs in libraries, observatories and remote Hebridean Islands. In all that time, however, Hayman's real focus has been on this, a 20-song, double LP chronicling the 17th century Essex Witch Trials during the English Civil Wars. The record constitutes the third part of Darren's Essex trilogy, the previous two albums, Pram Town and Essex Arms, dealing with the new towns and suburbs and the lawless countryside. I have been drawn to my birthplace because it is both familiar and alien to me, says Hayman.
Essex is so close to London yet so remote from it in many ways. I want to be both brutal and tender about the place in my songs. It's easy to become trapped by your own tropes. I write easily about modernity and pepper my lyrics with slang, brand names and colloquialisms. I wanted to write about something in Essex's past that spoke of its strangeness and also forced me to write in a language suitable for another period. Between 1644 and 1646, approximately 300 women were executed for witchcraft in the eastern counties of Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk.
Matthew Hopkins was the self appointed Witch Finder General who travelled East Anglia and helped small communities to rid themselves of these lonely, widowed women. The album deals with fear and isolation, the way we use our own terror in times of trouble to lash out at the weak, and how societies persecute otherness and outsiders.
The album also concerns itself with the wider context of the English Civil Wars. Hayman sings about King Charles I's doomed love for his French bride; Parliamentarian spies; Puritan ideals and the comfort of animals. The album is epic in both concept and sound. The landscape of the Dedham Vale is bought alive by beautiful intricate woodwind scores, trembling strings and destroyed church organs.
The Violence is an outstanding creative achievement, a truly unique and unprecedented album. It's about how violence frightens us and how fear just leads to greater violence, says Hayman.
Tracklisting:
1. The Violence
2. Impossible Times
3. How Long Have You Been Frightened For?
4. We Are Not Evil
5. The She-Cavaliers
6. Elizabeth Clarke
7. Vinegar Tom
8. Parliament Joan
9. The Word And The Word Alone
10. I Will Hide Away
11. When The King Enjoys His Own Again
12. Henrietta Maria
13. A Dogge Called Boye
14. Outsiders
15. Arthur Wilson's Reverie
16. Rebecca West
17. Desire Lines
18. Kill The King
19. A Coffin For King Charles, A Crown For Cromwell And A Pit For The People
20. The Laughing Tree -
Visit product page →500 only LP.
Nearly 20 years since releasing their first cassette album, Milky Wimpshake unveil their fifth 'proper' album Heart And Soul In The Milky Way, due out on Fortuna POP! in February 2013. Recorded in a single day, it consists of 15 more songs from the pop/punk chocolate assortment box which the band have raided for so many years: love songs, silly songs, songs about obsolete items of stationary and such like, all set to a basic guitar buzz and kick drum combo.
The album bristles with spontaneous excitement due to the success of the live recording with no overdubs, giving Heart And Soul In The Milky Way a much rawer, yet fresher feel than their previous albums, with the likes of "Worthless Person" veering towards Billy Childish garage rock territory.
Milky Wimpshake have produced the strongest set of songs of their career from the subterranean homesick opener 'Chemical Spray', with its arbitrary rhymes and taking-the-piss guitar break, the innuendo-laden 'On Top', full of maudlin indie-pop melodicism and the closing duet 'Without You' which covers the same theme as six million other songs and yet still manages to raise a smile.
While the majority of the album features compositions by frontman Pete Dale (also head of the legendary indie label Slampt), there are two covers, including a punked-up version of 'Lah-Di-Dah', a song by Jake Thackray, a singer-songwriter who had some success in the 1960s and 70s with often-lewd lyrics which he used to croon with wonderfully tired eyes.
There is also a version of 'Omnia Mea Mecum Porto' by North East underground group Les Cox (Sportifs). The song's title means 'everything I own goes where I go' and contains hilarious lyrics about the anxiety of an impending day's work. Milky Wimpshake isn't the kind of band which expects to sell out big venues, top the charts or get chased by screaming fans: it's simple music, with simple sentiments for folk smart enough to see that sometimes simplicity works like a charm.
Tracklisting:
1. Chemical Spray
2. On Top
3. You Are The Bomb
4. Activated
5. La Di Da
6. (I'll Be Your) Subject/Object
7. Motormouth
8. Uncool Jerk
9. Omnia Mea Mecum Porto
10. The Mirror Stage
11. (I'm A) Worthless Person
12. Letraset Angle
13. Without You -
Clear Vinyl 7" Ltd to 150 copies.Visit product page →
Is Anybody Out There? is taken from New York trio The Ballet's critically acclaimed third album I Blame Society, their first for new label Fortuna POP! and is backed by a new track "Time Machine" exclusive to this format.
The single is part of Fortuna POP!'s Jukebox 45s Singles Club and is press on clear vinyl with a jukebox hole, with only 150 copies available to non-subscribers. Unashamedly sissy and explicitly queer, The Ballet marry the DIY queer ethos of the Hidden Cameras with the wry poeticism of The Magnetic Fields to create literate, infectious pop gems. The band recently played the Indietracks Festival, followed by a UK tour culminating with two London shows.
I Blame Society is a continuation of the lyrical themes and songwriting style found in the band's two previous self-released albums (Mattachine! [2006] and Bear Life! [2009]), though with slightly pared down arrangements and a nuanced production, which highlights songwriter Greg Goldberg's strengths. Inspired by Stephin Merritt's body of work, Goldberg draws from an array of pop artists and periods, from 60's bubblegum to 80's synthpop and 90's indiepop, fusing these in sophisticated and novel ways which rewards repeat listening.
Avoiding autobiographical or confessional modes, Goldberg nonetheless mines his own psychological constitution and intellectual interests to craft songs whose overt musical prettiness is often contrasted by a dark and complex subtext.
I Blame Society addresses a number of queer themes, offering a nuanced and refreshing perspective on contemporary queer issues, subtly balancing queer melancholy with self-deprecating humour and stubborn utopianism. While some queer musicians shy away from articulating a connection between their sexuality and musicianship, The Ballet have often contended the opposite: that they are a bunch of queers who just happen to be in a band.
Formed in 2005 by Greg Goldberg and Craig Willse (who are both professors and met whilst at graduate school), acquired bandmates Ginger Brooks Takahashi and Michael O'Neill left in 2007 to join JD Sampson in MEN. Indiepop luminaries such as Linton from The Aislers Set and Ramesh from Voxtrot have also made guest appearances on previous albums, as have Kaki King and Scott Matthew.
"Recalling Holiday-era Magnetic Fields, these songs bop with heady buoyancy, yet are underpinned by complicated but universal themes: self-deception, infidelity without shame, war fatigue and finding love in a world of online hookups." Time Out New York
Tracklisting:
Side A:
Is There Anybody Out There?
Side B:
Time Machine -
Visit product page →Tender Trap is lead by indie legend and feminist icon Amelia Fletcher (formerly of Talulah Gosh and Heavenly), the band now also includes Emily Bennett from Betty and the Werewolves, replacing Elizabeth Morris from Allo Darlin'.
Emily brings another dimension to the band with her ebullient rock guitar playing, fantastic singing, and endless enthusiasm, joining existing members drummer and vocalist Katrina Dixon, John Stanley on guitar and original Heavenly bass player, Robert Pursey.
Ten Songs About Girls is Amelia & Co's most complete-sounding effort yet, filled to the brim with resounding backing vocals and glorious fuzz.
The album's artwork comes in green, purple and white ¬' the suffragette colours, sharing the original feminists' concern for aesthetics as well as politics. With three strong female voices on the record, sometimes harmonizing, sometimes calling and responding, sometimes singing alone, Tender Trap draw on the dynamics of the original girl group songs, but aim to show what happens when those girls aren't in thrall to the male Svengali.
Tracklisting:
1. King's Cross Station
2. MBV
3. Could This Be The Last Time?
4. Leaving Christmas Day
5. Step One
6. Memorabilia
7. Mayday
8. Ode
9. Broken Doll
10. Love Is Hard Enough -
Visit product page →Limited Edition Vinyl 10 EP (500 copies) with free MP3 download.
Best known as the singer-songwriter of the phenomenally successful and much-loved Hefner, Darren Hayman is now six albums into an increasingly idiosyncratic and remarkably productive solo career. Following massive critical acclaim for last year's Essex Arms album Hayman followed up with his January Songs project, writing a song a day for the entire month.
There's been no let up since either with Hayman just releasing a brand new solo album of subtle, drifting piano ballads called The Ship's Piano, written following a fractured skull left him wanting to make quieter, more peaceful music. The album has already received rave reviews from the BBC uniquely intimate and very satisfying to Q It's galling that Hayman can churn out such high quality so often and Mojo Hayman has hit a creative purple patch¦ a treat.
'I Taught You How To Dance' is the stand out track from The Ship's Piano, a beautiful, sweet and non-ironic love song. Darren describes it as his cruise ship song, a song suitable for weddings and 1980s teenage discos, like 'Red, Red Wine.' Expertly embellished by Steve Pretty's mournful trumpet, the song sounds even better when played with a glitter ball in the room. The ten inch EP also contains covers of 'Come Dancing' by the Kinks, 'I Don't Wanna Dance' by Eddy Grant and 'Dance Away' by Roxy Music.
Asked why he chose these particular songs Darren replied, These are the tunes that would drift over my school playground from the 6th formers' social club. It's hard to imagine how cool and exotic these songs sounded to me as a 13 year old. 'Come Dancing' in particular is a much sadder intelligent song than it appears on first inspection. The truth is that songs that are good to dance to, don't have the word 'dance' in the title. Songs that have the word 'dance' in the title are usually heartbreakers. Listen out for Nik Vestberg of Moustache Of Insanity playing Gameboy on Come Dancing!Darren Hayman and the Secondary Modern play on November the 3rd at the Scala London, as part of Fortuna POP!'s 15th birthday celebrations. London's laureate of sexual dysfunction, discomfort, and dog-eared under-achievement... the match of Ray Davies, or any of the quintessentially English masters. (The Guardian).
Tracklisting:
1. I Taught You How To Dance
2. Dance Away
3. I Don't Wanna Dance
4. Come Dancing -
Visit product page →The new album by US indiepop legends Tullycraft, 'Lost in Light Rotation', is their record since 2007's 'Every Scene Needs A Center'.
Produced by the band themselves and engineered by Pete Remine, it also holds the distinction of being mixed by Phil Ek (The Shins, Band of Horses, Built to Spill, The Halo Benders, The Shout Out Louds, Fleet Foxes, The Walkmen).
The album benefits from Ek's experience ironing out the quirks to create a wonderfully polished, yet still as punk as ever, sheen on the 11 delightfully upbeat, smart, indiepop anthems.
Tracklisting:
1. Agincourt
2. Queenie Co.
3. Lost In Light Rotation
4. Westchester Turnabouts
5. From Wichita With Love
6. Elks Lodge Riot
7. No Tic, All Tac
8. Dig Up The Graves
9. Wake Up, Wake Up
10. We Knew Your Name Until Your Heart Stopped
11. Anacortes
