Ahead of the release of their second album, Future This, The Big Pink have recorded a set of five songs as part of the 4AD Sessions series. Bringing to life the anthemic qualities of the new album, the session is a showcase of the unabashed step towards stadium dynamics the band have made on Future This, while also displaying the often-curveball influences that continue to underpin their best work.

Filmed in 3 Mills Studios, the location was to have a coincidental resonance with the music. Based on Three Mill Island in Bromley-by-Bow, the island is London’s oldest surviving industrial centre with evidence to suggest that the mills it houses were listed in the Domesday Book. The grand historical associations and JG Ballard-esque setting appears fitting of the darkened, industrial undertones that course through even the most pop moments of The Big Pink’s music. Channeling the epic, immersive and otherworldy feel of the new album, the stark backdrop of the warehouse-like space was coupled with lasers used in a structural way to frame the band and change the physical surroundings.

Playing several tracks from Future This, alongside spiritual cousin “Velvet”, taken from the first album, the session captures what makes The Big Pink such an intriguing band. Effortlessly moving between the outre sounds of the underground and their love for shameless pop hooks, the band display the full scale of their creative ambitions.

Tracklisting

1. ‘Stay Gold’
2. ‘Hit The Ground (Superman)’
3. ‘Velvet’
4. ‘Rubbernecking’
5. ‘Give It Up’

The Too Pure Singles Club returns in 2012 with a bang (or is that a rattle) with the sound of Icelandic mantra magicians Dead Skeletons. For the uninitiated, Dead Skeletons came into existence in 2008 when band member Jon Saamunder needed music for an art installation in the Reykjavik Art Museum. Enlisting the help of friends Henrik Bjornsson and Ryan Carlson Van Kriedt the trio penned the songs which would eventually become the Dead Magick album, a 72 minute, 12 song journey through space and time, life and death. “Om Mani Peme Hung” is the sound of Neu! on a meditation retreat engaging in a spiritual hypno-chant. I wouldn’t advise watching this clip under the influence as the apocalyptic dudes holding swastika shields may freak you out. Now repeat after me… Om Mani Peme Hung, Om Mani Peme Hung, Om Mani Peme Hung… Check out the Too Pure Singles Club website for more details on how to subscribe and pick up this 7″ single.

Out of the Fiery Furnace and into the solo arena, Eleanor Friedberger released her debut solo record Last Summer last year to positive reviews (I’m pretty sure we liked it too). Currently enjoying an Australian summer playing a few shows and watching the tennis, Eleanor also found time to put together a video for her song “Heaven” which you can watch here, and a four track live EP which you can download above. It’s like an endless summer of Eleanor. Dig it.

Recent Rough Trade signings Howler stake their claim as a band to watch in 2012 (while coming across like a Midwest Strokes) with a brand new track “Back of Your Neck” taken from their forthcoming debut album America Give Up due out January 16. Download the song for free above and catch the band touring the UK early next year.

From her isolated upbringing in rural Wisconsin, combined with a passion for opera, philosophy and industrial music, Nika Rosa Danilova aka Zola Jesus has created a name for herself as being a successor to the great Diamanda Galas and Lisa Gerrard with her haunting, otherworldly vocal style.

Over the past three years Danilova has reached the point in her career where she is no longer an experimental, teenage noise-maker but an internationally celebrated electro-pop artist. Her third album Conatus is her most accomplished work to date, pushing beyond the dark melodrama of Stridulum II toward something that is emotionally breathtaking.

From Conatus alone, it’s clear that Danilova confidence to follow her instincts her paid off, but in conversation she remains tight-lipped, holding her cards close to her chest, as Static’s Chris “Man of 1000 questions” Berkley would quickly find out.

It’s only been 12 months since Stridulum, you’ve put out EPs and toured a lot. Do you sleep?

Um, not much. No. (laughs)

Have you found yourself out on the road these past 12 months especially?

Yes, I’ve been touring a lot this past year.

How do you find time to fit in tours with making records? You seem to cram a lot in.

Well, I just make it work. There are a lot of hours in the day. Not enough, but there are enough (laughs).

Have you always been this way? Were you a prodigious child?

I don’t know. I’ve always felt like there’s so much to do and there’s so much to get done and you gotta do it, you know? Now or never.

How did you discover that you wanted to be a singer?

It was very natural. I just loved to sing and would always be singing. As long as I remember I’ve always wanted to do this.

As a child were you having those ‘Sound of Music’ moments where you’re walking around the hillside singing to yourself?

Maybe (laughs).

You seem to be drawn towards opera or classical singing as a kid, rather than rock n’ roll, right? Was that your first love?

Well, just singing was my first love. I just wanted to be a better singer and I wanted to be able to do things with my voice that you needed training for, so that was just the natural course.

What point did you become aware of the power of vocals, or being a singer?

I don’t know. Like I said, ever since I was born I would just be singing. It’s not even something that I remember the impetus. Music has always been something very innate to me, like an impulse.

Were you shy of jumping up on stage and doing Zola Jesus stuff when you first began as well?

Oh yeah, I was terrified at the beginning. I mean, I’m still terrified really. It felt like if I wasn’t going to do it then I’m never going to do it and I need to get over that fear if I ever want to do this. So I just had to do it.

At the same time, your early recordings as Zola Jesus were obscured by murkiness or programmed noise. Was that your way of hiding behind a veil?

In a way, yes.

How much did you learn to program at the same time as learning to sing?

Well, programming and producing came a little later on when I felt like I needed to make songs and do everything myself. I didn’t have anyone around me to make music so I just did it for myself. I just had to learn the skills.

Did you have some bands that were touchstones then, that you were kinda discovering or looking to, to make the sound of Zola Jesus?

No, not really.

So when people have compared you to other bands have you been pleasantly surprised by what they’ve said?

It just confuses me. I don’t think about my music in that way.

Did embarking on some of those big tours last year then impact on how you wanted Conatus to sound? It seems like this album is definitely borne out of live shows?

I actually thought it was going to be a lot more poppier and a lot straighter. When I started making it, it became much more introspective and atmospheric and exploratory in a way. It wasn’t as much of an immediate pop record as I had envisioned it to be in the beginning.

So in the first place this was going to be a feel-good happy-go-lucky Zola Jesus album and something went wrong?

Not necessarily, but I thought it was going to have much more of an immediate impact as far as the songwriting went, but as I started working on music I felt like whatever came out, came out. For some songs it was that, but it wasn’t that completely. It feels a lot more subtle and introspective.

A couple of those big tours that you’ve done were with Fever Ray and The XX. Both of them have powerful female vocals and sparse instrumentation, did you find inspiration touring with a couple of artists who might be kindred spirits?

Not really. I was inspired by their work ethic and their conviction in what they believe in and everything but musically not so much.

You’ve certainly cut back the programming on Conatus. To use a lofty word it sounds more ’earthy’ than anything you’ve done before, there’s strings and pianos, did you find yourself enjoying some of those earthier tones on this record?

Well, actually I feel like this record is much more programmed because the beats are much more intricate and sophisticated in a way, but at the same time I wanted to bring in a lot of acoustic and organic elements and balance it out instead of it being a completely electronic record. But it feels more electronic to me than Stridulum. I don’t know, it’s kind of a strange dichotomy.

Some of the songs seem to have that breathing space where you can just hear piano and strings which might’ve been obscured in previous years on your records.

Yeah, I wanted there to be a lot of space on the record. I tend to write and put everything in the song and then weed it out and bring out the space in the songs just to allow them to be more breathing room, I guess.

A song like “Skin” is a total torch song. Some kid is gonna cover that on American Idol, I’m sure.

Oh god.

Does it feel like that? Does it feel like your power ballad?

It kinda felt like my point of no return in a way.

Why is that? Because it’s such a naked song?

Yeah, so stark and for me, very cathartic. When I wrote it, I felt very low.

Was it one of those five minute songs that came very quickly? It seems like such a great impulsive or spur of the moment song…

Yeah. It came very quickly.

Another way that you’re going to be infiltrating teenage bedrooms this year is the M83 collaboration ‘cos you’ve turned up on Anthony’s record. Was it a thrill to be able to team up with him?

It was wonderful. I’ve always been a fan of his work and I guess he’s been a fan of mine too, so getting to work with him was very exciting.

Was this one of those horrible 21st century things where you weren’t in the same room together, or did you spend time with him to make that song?

We went into the studio together and we worked on the vocals and did it together. It was a lot of fun.

Interview broadcast on Static on 10/11/11. Static can be heard on Sydney’s 2SER (107.3 FM) and via the Internet (www.2ser.com) every Thursday evening (AEST).

For those of you who resided in Sydney, Australia in the Summer of 1992/93, Evan Dando’s presence was a ubiquitous one. Whether playing sold out shows with The Lemonheads or drums with local supergroup Godstar, you literally couldn’t walk into a bar without tripping over him. It was good times all round.

While all of this (and more) was going on, Dando recorded a set of songs in his Bondi hotel room featuring tracks that would later appear on Come On Feel The Lemonheads, along with covers of Love Positions and Smudge songs. Having recently unearthed the cassette, Dando deemed it worthy of release and the album, Hotel Sessions, is due out on January 9, 2012.

Dando explains…

“I’ve always wanted to make an “Album” for 53 dollars – Walkman 50, tape 3 bucks – Oh to record live to cassette, master it and put it out … I have finally done it! I recorded this here biscuit in and around either December ’92, or Feb ’93. I remember it was a Sunday night in Bondi – the night the ‘car enthusiasts’ come out. I had just returned to Australia – my home away from home – from our first Japanese tour. Life was good. I made this tape for our Aussie agent of that time, Stephen Pavlovic. I am forever grateful to this man for introducing me to Australia and a grand gang of Australians!”

“This LP documents a lovely lull in the action. A Sunday night into morning, to collect myself and my songs. The songs that would be on our next album, some of these never made it, and the “Into Your Arms” I did here is better than the one on the album (I like it anyway). So sit back, snort some NoDoz and listen for the tunes, the sea, the tape hiss (ahhh), the cars, the birds the trucks, and the killer motorcycle at the end of ‘Being Around’! Wherever you live, I’ll be back there soon, Inshallah!! Until then, let’s all make the most of the tail end of sex with furniture. Yours ever faithfully.”

The Lemonheads will be touring the UK through late November/December playing It’s A Shame About Ray in full (and hopefully a whole load of other songs as that album is only 29 minutes long!!). Full tour dates below and a tracklisting of Hotel Sessions appears below that.

November
30 Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms

December
1 Nottingham Rescue Rooms
2 Leeds Cockpit
4 Newcastle Cluny
5 Glasgow Oran Mor
6 Manchester Ritz
7 Liverpool Academy 2
8 Sheffield Plug
10 Birmingham Academy 2
11 Cambridge The Junction
12 London Shepherds Bush Empire
13 Brighton Concorde 2

Hotel Sessions tracklisting:

“Big Gay Heart”
“Great Big No”
“Paid To Smile”
“It’s About Time”
“Style”
“I’ll Do It Anyway”
“Rest Assured”
“You Can Take It With You (pt.2)”
“Down About It”
“Into Your Arms”
“Superhero”
“And So The Story Goes”
“Being Around”
“You Can Take It With You (pt.1)”

As the year slowly winds down we get reminded, we being Webcuts, of the albums we just didn’t get around to reviewing. Either because our plate was too full or because well… yawn, where does the time go? So, look, we’d like to apologise to Scottish indie-pop quartet Zoey Van Goey who released their second album Propeller Versus Wings way back in February for not expressly recommending it’s quirky brilliance and tender moods (walking the same halls as Camera Obscura and early Belle & Sebastian). “You Told The Drunks I Knew Karate” is more of the former, an adorably perfect tale of a night out gone awry now made complete with its own karate-themed video. The track is being released as a single through Chemikal Underground on November 21. A digital single that is. Not something small, plastic, and awesome. Sigh.

To call Layabouts chest-beating/car-loving/girl-banging rock n’ roll as being derivative is to say rock n’ roll is derivative of rock n’ roll. If you stay true to the message, the music you make is un-fuck-with-able.

Spain’s Layabouts make the kind of music that only Europeans are capable of — the totally irony-free in-your-face verse/chorus punch that you get from decades worth of worshipping/emulating the bones of The Ramones, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC et al. In Spain they would be worshipped as heroes. In Spain they probably are worshipped as heroes, with all the groupies and excesses imaginable to four guys rocking hard in leather jackets and tight jeans.

Nothing about Layabouts is half-assed or lacking spirit. They just happened to miss the last rock n’ roll train back into fashion which The Datsuns (remember them?) and The Hives and the like clambered on almost a decade ago. The stadium rock frenzy of “It‘s All Dead“ and Queens Of The Stone-Age homage “Numbers/Figures” prove that Layabouts can walk the walk and incite small riots, but when your opening gambit is a track called “Rock‘s Dead“, it‘s best not to get all rock lyric critic on their English-as-a-second-language asses.

If you like your music brain-searing loud but without a cerebral core, or if you‘re a Spaniard with a raging rock boner needing release, Savage Behaviour is calling your name.

They released one of 2011′s finest albums with their 20th anniversary celebrating The Double Cross and now my own personal rock n’ roll heroes Sloan are to release their first live bootleg LP. Titled Is That All I Get? and recorded on guitarist Patrick Pentland’s birthday on September 20, 1993 in Winnepeg, Manitoba, the album documents the band ‘rough and ready’ style (via fan-recorded cassette) after a year of touring their debut album Smeared and features nascent versions of tracks which would later appear on Twice Removed. Released in a limited edition of 300 hand-numbered copies and pressed on green marble vinyl, the album will be available for purchase on Monday November 14 via their online store — sloanmusic.com.

This is what guitarist Jay Ferguson had to say about it:

“See, I’ve always been a big fan of the live bootleg LPs that began to appear in hip underground record stores in the 1970’s and into the 1980’s. So, here’s our very own (legal) tribute to that tradition. Packaged in a heavy duty white jacket, it comes with hand numbered, risographed wrap around outer sleeve, photocopied insert and pressed onto luminous green marbled vinyl!

To further continue with the bootleg custom, the original recording was captured via cassette by a fan in the audience back in Winnipeg, 1993. The results are a bit rough at the edges for sure, but kind of exciting and also finds our band at a point in our career where we were finishing a year or more of touring behind our first LP, Smeared, yet beginning to road test some songs that would wind up on Twice Removed. Early versions of Shame Shame and Worried Now appear with different musical bridges that would not be ironed out until a few months later. We even began the show with an Eric’s Trip cover! I found it to be an interesting time capsule (Patrick turns 24!) and hope you all think so too.”