Fortuna POP!

Some five years after their debut album Honey, I'm An Artist had the indie kids swooning in jangle-pop ecstasy, Airport Girl return with a radically altered sound, a glistening downbeat country-pop hybrid that is sure to win them at least as many new admirers as it will alienate existing fans. A brave move then, but one that's more than justified by the rich seam of quality songwriting mined here and the luxuriant arrangements that set off singer-songwriter Rob Price's sonorous, throaty vocals.

Here is a band finding a new level of maturity, growing and changing, the music reflecting the uncertainties and troubles of adult life.From the world-weary plea of the piano-led Hold Me Through The Night to the heartbreaking country sigh of I've Seen Mexico a sense of regret pervades the album, none more so than on the desperate, hurt-racked How Long Can This Go On?. More upbeat are the jazz-tinged Don't Let Me Down Again and The Weather Song, its Sketches Of Spain intro belying its true nostalgic nature, while Show Me The Way, as pure a declaration of love as one could wish for, could have come straight from the Go-Betweens' masterpiece 16 Lovers Lane.

Throughout there is judicious use of violin, cello, trumpet, harmonica and melodica to subtly create moods and textures within the songs, along with a willingness to experiment, as the intro to Ode To The City and the sea shanty of Twice Around The Bay bear out, that lifts the album far beyond standard indie fare.The kids at the club may be momentarily fazed by Airport Girl's new direction, but ultimately any listener will be rewarded by an album of great musical and emotional depth.

Tracklisting:
1. There's A Crisis In Your Past 
2. Hold Me Through The Night 
3. Don't Let Me Down Again 
4. Ode To The City 
5. I've Seen Mexico 
6. The Weather Song 
7. Twice Around The Bay 
8. How Long Can This Go On? 
9. Show Me The Way 
10. Low Coin (Lullaby) 
11. Bullfighting 

Initial copies of the LP ship with a limited edition Risograph art print and bookmark designed by Allo Darlin' guitarist Paul Rains.

The 3RD full-length recording from the much loved Anglo-Australian four-piece is made up of smart, beautiful pop music, with lyrics that resonate with experience and melodies that chime, echo and soar.

The album combines the eagerness, urgency and immediacy of their 2010 debut with the contemplation, sophistication and ambition of their 2012 follow-up Europe, and yet it goes beyond either both sonically and in song. It was written at a time of considerable change for songwriter Elizabeth Morris, a time during which she fell in love, moved to Italy and got married - not that that seems to have hindered the songwriting process. They then returned to their spiritual home of Soup Studios.

The intention was to capture a more instinctive and fluid live studio sound and to play as well as possible while the red button was on, a different approach to the more piecemeal recording of their previous two albums. Or as Paul Rains put it, We've used three years of touring to try and get some of that sweat and grime and togetherness and sweetness and anxiety onto a record. One of the themes of the new record is new beginnings and things drawing to a close. Nothing feels the way it did before and I am grateful for that, sings Elizabeth on "Crickets in the Rain", a song written after her move to Italy and which she describes as anti-nostalgia. Built along the same lines is the gorgeous History Lessons, of which Elizabeth says, I guess at some point I became a bit tired of everything seeming better in the past, from music to relationships to buildings to societies. We're a bit obsessed with it and it can become overwhelming.

We don't live in the present. This song is trying to express that frustration. Among the highlights of the album is Bright Eyes, a duet with guitarist Paul Rains. Elizabeth again, I wanted to write another duet, but the only problem with doing that is that when you play live it's very rare that the person you recorded it with can be there. So I thought it would be great to write a song with Paul singing the other part.  Another standout is the Twin Peaks-referencing Half-Heart Necklace, based on a true story from Elizabeth's hometown. There had been some murders, and this girl who was my age was missing and presumed killed. It turned out she had been hiding for years in her boyfriend's cupboard, and she was charged for wasting police time.

Other notable tracks include the rollicking Kings and Queens, inspired by a show they played in the USA with their friends and kindred spirits The Wave Pictures, and Romance and Adventure, originally earmarked for a film soundtrack and written in response to a challenge from Paul to write a pop song in a minor key. Allo Darlin' were formed by Elizabeth Morris, fellow  Australian Bill Botting (bass), Paul Rains (guitar), and Michael Collins (drums).  

Their debut album was named No. 2 record of the year by eMusic. Their second album 'Europe' scored 8.1 on Pitchfork, was made USA Today's Album Of The Week, and garnered praise from Uncut, Q, NME, The Quietus and The Guardian. It was named Rough Trade Shop's Album Of The Month and was their biggest selling album of the year. The band have been playlisted at BBC 6Music and have recorded many sessions for 6 Music & XFM, as well being Steve Lamacq's personal pick for BBC Introducing. Allo Darlin' have produced a wonderful record - thoughtful and exciting and exquisitely played ' that will please their existing army of fans and newcomers alike.

"Breezy rom-pop brilliance." 8/10, NME

Classic indie pop... doesn't rewrite the formula for wistful bedsit charm as much as show that it can still be carried out masterfully. Pitchfork

A masterclass of modern cult pop. The Guardian

Dancepunk five-piece Bearsuit's album The Phantom Forest heralds a fierce new sound for the band, who have swapped violins, flutes and horns for dirty synths, urgent guitars and infectious beats in the light of a dramatic line-up change.

With a sprinkling of sonic dust from big-time producer Gareth Parton (The Go Team, Breeders, Foals) the band have created a perfectly off-the-wall pop masterpiece.The Phantom Forest is laden with dance-floor fillers, killer beats and brazen melodies.

It will keep you dancing until all the booze is drunk, with a birdsong finale to serenade your dawn-walk home. But lurking beneath, a more sinister and melancholy thread weaves the 12 tracks together.

Tracklisting:
1. Princess, You're A Test 
2. Please Don't Take Him Back 
3. A Train Wreck 
4. When Will I Be Queen? 
5. Albino Tiger Rescue Squad 
6. Jim Henson's Creature Workshop 
7. Cut Loose 
8. Ghosts Of The Black Hole 
9. Tentacles 
10. Giant Archaeopteryx 
11. Kwaa-Kwaa 
12. Dawn Of The Golden Oriole

For Fans Of: The Concretes, The Cardigans, Peter, Bjorn and John, Swedish Pop

With the current vogue in music for all things Swedish it was perhaps surprising that one of the best and most important Swedish bands of recent years, the exquisitely melancholic yet danceable Club 8, had seemingly vanished from the scene.

Of course founder member Johan Angergård had been busy both in his role as chief of the hugely influential Swedish label Labrador and with his other bands The Legends and the Acid House Kings, but still, three years had passed without so much as a note.

Finally, in May of this year, Club 8 returned to have a massive blog hit with the amazing Tropicalia-influenced Whatever You Want. Now, with their long-awaited sixth album The Boy Who Couldn't Stop Dreaming, Club 8 are set to take their rightful place at the top table of Swedish pop.

Initially inspired by a love of The Smiths and Sarah Records Karolina Komstedt (vocals) and Johan Angergård (all instruments) released their debut album as Club 8, Nouvelle, on Spanish label Siesta.

However, it was with their more dance-orientated next album The Friend I Once Had and its beguiling mix of bossa nova, glittery guitars and shiny pop melodies that they took their first big step forward, the single Missing You becoming a club and radio hit in Spain and a college radio favourite in North America.

Constantly changing, the self-titled follow-up was both darker and slower, labelled as both trip-hop and chill-out, before the band diversified again with the semi-electronic, slightly experimental but intensely emotional Spring Came, Rain Fell (2002) and the more guitar-based Strangely Beautiful (2004).

During this time the band's reputation spread, with live shows across Europe, USA and South East Asia where they are at least partly responsible for the thriving Indonesian music scene.

With The Boy Who Couldn't Stop Dreaming Club 8 have evolved yet again and made a truly different and very special album that packs a heavy personal emotional punch.

The sweet transience of life and the closeness of death come wrapped in the shape of twelve perfect pop songs in a summer dress, the mix of sunshine and melancholia as unique as it is profoundly moving. A glorious return to say the least.

Exquisite¦ lovely vocals¦ indie pop bliss (Pitchfork).

Tracklisting:
1. Jesus, Walk With Me
2. Whatever You Want
3. Football Kids
4. Hope And Dreams
5. Everything Goes
6. Heaven
7. When I Come Around
8. Leave The North
9. In The Morning
10. Sometimes
11. Where Birds Don't Fly
12. The Boy Who Couldn't Stop Dreaming

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

Recorded at Soup Studios with producer Simon Trought at the helm, and inspired by the psycho-geography of walks in North London woods and in the forgotten grey hinterland of the city's back streets, Comet Gain's seventh album Paperback Ghosts comes soaked in autumn melancholy. Tender-hearted but not miserable, defiant but not angry, it maintains the delicate balance that has always been Comet Gain's strength.

Converging in the quiet of South Florida, Brad Hargett and JB Townsend dreamt a perfect pop group and then set about recreating the dream. Along the way to New York, they collected members, record labels, a cultish fanbase, raves from the likes of Dean Wareham and Stephen Pastel, and (from across the seas, at least) the kind of mystique even the 'know-everything' glaze of the modern 'net-age couldn't debase.

I still listen to their records and wonder about the people behind the songs - and this does not happen very often nowadays. Their record covers are mysterious two-tone ciphers. They know the importance of a good font. In short, they sound and look like a group you want to be in.

Tracklisting:
1. Sycamore Tree 
2. Through the Floor 
3. Silver Sun 
4. Alien Rivers 
5. Half a Moon 
6. Flying Into The Sun 
7. Shake the Shackles 
8. Precarious Stair 
9. Invisible City 
10. Blood Barons 
11. Prometheus At Large

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 

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

Essex Arms is the new album by Darren Hayman And The Secondary Modern. Darren, of course, is best known as the singer-songwriter of the phenomenally successful and much-loved Hefner, although it's worth noting that he has now made six albums to Hefner's four.

In the latest incarnation of the constantly morphing Secondary Modern he has gathered together a set of musicians with the chops to do justice to his increasingly complex and mature songs; a tight, tough, but soulful folk-rock orchestra reminiscent of a more urban Incredible String Band or an Anglicized Lambchop.

Tracklisting:
1. Be Lonely 
2. Calling Out Your Name Again  
3. Two Tree Island 
4. Winter Makes You Want Me More 
5. Super Kings 
6. Cocoa Butter 
7. Dagenham Ford 
8. I'll Be Your Alibi 
9. Spiderman Beats Ironman 
10. Drive Too Fast 
11. Plastic And Steel 
12. Nothing You Can Do About It