Webcuts Music

Subtle and beautifully and unexpectedly intriguing is “Calgary”, the first single to be lifted from Bon Iver‘s long-awaited (and due any day now) follow-up to For Emma, Forever Ago out June 20 via 4AD. With a little surrendering of your digital details, you can download the track now from www.boniver.org. The physical format will be released on July 4 on 12″. Exclusive to this release will be a cover of Bonnie Raitt’s ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me’. Also confirmed is Bon Iver’s first UK tour dates since 2009. For the shows, Justin Vernon will perform with an 8-piece band that feature many musicians who contributed to the album, including regular Bon Iver contributors Sean Carey (piano), Mike Noyce (guitar) and Matt McCaughan (drums), as well as a well-travelled band of supporting players who’ve done time in Anthony & The Johnsons, Arcade Fire and Sufjan Stevens. The UK tour starts on October 19 at Manchester Apollo, with a show in London at the Hammersmith Apollo on October 24.

A little disappointed that this isn’t an actual Horrors video clip, just the tune with a revolving psychedelic advertisement for their record label XL, but after the critical acclaim (and deserved apologies for years of Webcuts mockery) of Primary Colours, do you really need some preening boys in skinny black jeans to make up your [...]

Infectious Canadian electro-opera outfit Austra released their latest single “Lose It” in the UK last week, and have made this rather bizarre video to accompany it. One of the stand-out tracks played on their recent UK tour, (especially that galloping Kate Bush cat-call chorus…) it’s the second track taken from the Toronto band’s forthcoming debut album, Feel It Break, following the dark dancefloor incantation of “Beat And The Pulse”. I don’t quite get this video clip. Is it some weird bandmates-as-art installation piece or something more? Is there meaning attached to the bloody noses and half-submerged people in the carpet? At least there’s a sub-conscious distancing of the ‘goth’ tag and the nsfw nudity present in their last clip. The single is backed with a “quietly euphoric, surprising reworking” of Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” on 7″, with Austra’s debut album Feel It Break being released this week through Domino Records.

Cold Cave‘s debut album of 2009 Love Comes Close was a unique display of synth-oriented mood disorder, venturing out from the bedroom to the dancefloor, full of tales of veiled seduction and bleak vicissitudes. Songwriter and vocalist Wes Eisold’s spin on the world appeared to share a voice (in both dour baritone and content) with Stephin Merritt if he’d spent his adolescence listening to The Cure and Depeche Mode instead of showtunes. On their second album, band leader Wes Eisold has taken the testing of the waters that was Love Comes Close and turned its successor Cherish The Light Years into his dark dream made manifold. The clip for the album closing, New Order channeling “Villains Of The Moon” showcases the new and improved Cold Cave, Eisold rising out of the gloom like a new goth messiah to lead the fold, all the while enjoying a pleasant afternoon’s Staring At The Sea moment down the beach. Cherish The Light Years is out now through Matador Records and the band are currently on tour in the States with The Kills.

With a ball and chain campaign to release a single every month for year, The Rifle Volunteer have been steadfast in honourably sticking to the plan. Single number 8, “General Drought” was released last week and was given the honour of its own video clip, showing the boys decked out in their regular Edwardian finery, [...]

Let it not go unsaid that The Decemberists not only make great music, but they also go the extra mile to make great video clips too. Who can forget the epic Wes Anderson styled 10-minute “I’m in love with the crime bosses daughter and we’re on the run” death and melodrama of “O Valenica”, or the uh…. Wes Anderson styled Rushmore-borrowing schoolhouse United Nations chicanery and debate of “Sixteen Military Wives”? If you haven’t watched either in a while, go back and do so, they’re a hoot. This time around, the ante has been substantially upped in their apocalyptic teen warrior drama a la Beyond The Thunderdome meets Lord of The Flies in “This Is Why We Fight”. It’s the latest track released from the Portland, Oregonians sixth album, the sterling and in no way related to The Smiths, The King Is Dead, released on Rough Trade Records and available practically everywhere.

On his fourth go-round, Philadelphian Kurt Vile has turned in a seamless collection of songs that rise above the simple singer/songwriter tag. Backed by his band, The Violators, Vile takes an even, melody-driven, lo-fi approach to his songs. That’s what we said a few weeks ago in our review for Smoke Rings For My Halo, and that’s exactly what Kurt does on his latest single, “Jesus Fever”. Losing ourselves in Vile’s care-free stoner-lackadaisia, we frankly can’t get enough of this, him, or his record. Currently on tour with J Mascis in the US, Kurt Vile and his band are scheduled to tour the UK and Europe in May. They will appear as part of the Animal Collective curated All Tomorrow’s Parties and in London at Corsica Studios on May 19 (sold out, kids). Fear not, Kurt is scheduled to play a free lunchtime set at Rough Trade East on the same day. That sounds like a double invitation too good to refuse. Smoke Rings For My Halo is out now through Matador Records.

Thru the flowers go leather jacketed 60′s pop darlings Dum Dum Girls with their first new material since 2010′s I Will Be with this dreamy little 4 track EP entitled He Gets Me High. Produced once again by lead Dum Dum, Dee Dee with Richard Gottehrer, they have also enlisted the help of The Raveonettes’ Sune Rose Wagner (a match made in Ronettes heaven, I’m sure). This time around the Dum Dum Girls have taken a more 80′s UK guitar pop turn, angling towards the jangling guitars and sweeping harmonies of The Primitives and Strawberry Switchblade. The EP features 3 new songs as well as a cover of The Smiths classic “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out”. Always a dangerous move to meddle with a Smiths song, but Dee Dee and the girls pull it off with nary a feather ruffled or a quiff out of place. He Gets Me High is out now through Sub Pop and the band are touring the UK as we speak with a date in London at Dingwalls tonight (Tuesday April 5).

It’s impossible to imagine the 80′s without Duran Duran as they were a defining influence for anyone who came of age in those decadent days. Having struggled to find relevance in their post-80′s heyday, they were dropped from their label in 2008 after the Timbaland-produced Red Carpet Massacre failed to meet expectation. Finding a friend in dj/producer, Mark Ronson, he encouraged them to make the back-to-basics album fans had been calling out for. Released last week (March 21), All You Need Is Now entered the UK charts just shy of the top 10 and showed a renewed confidence in the band, reflected in the new material. Filmed by David Lynch to celebrate the release of the album, Duran Duran performed a special online concert with some surprising guests (Beth Ditto, anyone?) with the clear highlight being a track from All You Need Is Now featuring Kelis, the stirring “The Man Who Stole A Leopard”.

Any band who writes a protest song and uses the word “control” in the title knows they’re entering The Clash territory, so it better be damn good. British Sea Power, I’m looking at you. Perched as the lead track on their Webcuts approved 9/10 album, Valhalla Dancehall, “Who’s In Control?” is a politically charged, apathetically raging anthem that hits like the proverbial brick through a shop-front window, while also appearing to presciently describe the December student tuition fee riots in London. With lyrical asides like “sometimes I wish protesting was sexy on a Saturday night”, the film-makers have contrived to take on the sex and protest angle residing in the lyrics and create something that is akin to watching an episode of Skins. A little bare flesh, partying and placard waving. Just an ordinary day in the life of a student. Released through Rough Trade records, Valhalla Dancehall is out now.