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’

photo:Tina Tyrell

In September of this year, St. Vincent took a giant leap forward with the release of third album, Strange Mercy. This time out Annie Clark was to combine her long-celebrated musical virtuosity with ambitious songwriting that ran a gamut of emotional cadences, all the while underpinned by a colourful sense of melody. Recording these songs live for the first time, St. Vincent has performed four tracks from Strange Mercy for the tenth visual instalment in the 4AD Session series.

Shot at Shangri-La Studios in the heart of the Brooklyn film and photography district in Greenpoint, the session was recorded with Annie’s new band, Daniel Mintseris (keys), Toko Yasuda (moog) and Matthew Johnson (drums). Given St. Vincent’s transgression from the underground to the pop spotlight over the course of three studio albums, it’s somewhat fitting that Shangri-La host the session having initially earned its name as a secret spot known only through word of mouth.

Electro-rockers The Big Pink follow up their 2009 debut, A Brief History of Love, with a new single “Stay Gold” taken from the forthcoming album Future This, due out November 7 with the album to follow in January on 4AD. You can download both the track and a remix by AraabMUZIK for free right here. The band will be touring England throughout November with tour dates posted at musicfromthebigpink

Electro-rockers The Big Pink follow up their 2009 debut, A Brief History of Love, with the new single “Stay Gold” taken from the forthcoming album Future This, due out November 7 on 4AD. You can check out the clip for “Stay Gold” below as well as download both the track and a remix by AraabMUZIK. Look out for Future This to drop some time in January next year.

The band will be touring England throughout November, culminating in a show at Brixton Academy in London on November 24. Full tour dates have been posted at http://www.musicfromthebigpink.com/

Over the past few years 4AD have been posting specially recorded studio performances from artists in their roster. They’re now releasing a compilation of those sessions, featuring tracks by Deerhunter, Twin Shadow and Ariel Pink, in a limited vinyl release. Download a free digital version here and possibly win a copy on vinyl.

Having reeled us in with the provocative teaser track “Surgeon”, we’ve now been given “Cruel” the first proper single taken from Strange Mercy, Annie Clark aka St. Vincent‘s third studio album due out September 12 on 4AD. Directed and produced by long-time collaborator Terri Timely, the video provides the perfect visual accompaniment to the sinister lyrical themes that cut through the song. Seeing Annie Clark situated in various stages of domestic anguish, the video evokes the off-kilter suburban ennui of The Stepford Wives, and is proof positive that Strange Mercy will be St. Vincent’s most memorable work yet. She’ll be touring the UK with a full band this autumn, starting November 10 at Queen Elizabeth Hall, London and finishing up on the 16th at Brudenell Social Club in Leeds.

It’s become tradition for Deerhunter fans to expect a new Atlas Sound album to follow a Deerhunter album. Given the success of Deerhunter’s Halcyon Days who could begrudge Bradford Cox not wanting to strike while the muse is still hot and prep an entirely new (ie: non-blog leaked) release? Due out on 4AD on November 8 will be the third Atlas Sound album entitled Parallax, the follow-up to 2009′s Logos. No word as yet if this is Cox alone or with special guests. The website for Parallax offers scant details, bar a scrolling landscape and genre-defining the album as ‘Science Fiction’. Well, alright then.

The album sleeve (see below) taken by famed photographer Mick Rock has Cox in torch song singer repose, looking straight out of David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet”. If this is any indication of what to expect, things are definitely about to get interesting. For a taste of what to expect, 4AD have offered up a preview from Parallax in form of the 6 minute acoustic track “Terra Incognita” which takes things in a drifting Red House Painters-like direction. How this holds up for the rest of the album, November 8 is the date to remember. Download “Terra Incognita” here.

01. The Shakes
02. Amplifiers
03. Te Amo
04. Parallax
05. Modern Aquatic Nightsongs
06. Mona Lisa
07. Praying Man
08. Doldrums
09. My Angel Is Broken
10. Terra Incognita
11. Flagstaff
12. Nightworks

With a brand new Throwing Muses album waiting in the wings, the 25th anniversary of Throwing Muses debut has arrived, with 4AD issuing the first ever compilation of the band’s work, simply entitled Anthology, on September 5. Founded by half-sisters Kristin Hersh and Tanya Donelly and featuring the unconventional drumming of David Narcizo, Throwing Muses have consistently created challenging music and continue to do so.

Compiled by the band, the first American act to sign to 4AD, the twenty-one track selection eschews most of the singles in favour of personal favourites, and enjoys a non-chronological sequence which makes for interesting juxtapositions and encourages a reassessment of the music. The initial limited release comes in a hardback book with a bonus twenty-two track CD of B-sides and rarities.

In light of the release of Anthology, Kristin Hersh had this to say:

”It’s beautiful and substantial, thanks to awesome David Narcizo / Lakuna Design – a chunky, 28 page hardcover booklet and two CDs – one CD consisting of a hand-selected retrospective track-list by Kristin, David and Bernard, and on the other the collected B-sides, including the original Lonely is an Eyesore version of “Fish”, the long-lost “Hillbilly” and the original version of “Back Road (Matter of Degrees)”. And yes, the release will be supported by Throwing Muses live dates.”

Tracklisting

Disc One:
1. Garoux Des Larmes
2. Finished
3. A Feeling
4. Marriage Tree
5. Fish
6. Hate My Way
7. No Way In Hell
8. Colder
9. Tar Kissers
10. Mr. Bones
11. Limbo
12. Summer St.
13. Furious
14. Bright Yellow Gun
15. Pretty or Not
16. Flying
17. You Cage
18. Two Step
19. Vicky’s Box
20. Mania
21. Cry Baby Cry

Disc Two
1. Hillbilly
2. Same Sun
3. Amazing Grace
4. Cottonmouth
5. Cry Baby Cry
6. Manic Depression
7. Snailhead
8. City of the Dead
9. Jak
10. Ride Into The Sun
11. Handsome Woman
12. Like A Dog
13. Crayon Sun
14. Red Eyes
15. Tar Moochers
16. Serene Swing
17. Limbobo
18. If
19. Heel Toe
20. Take (Live)
21. Finished (Live)
22. Back Road (Matter of Degrees)

It’s usually the quiet ones that you have to watch out for. Bon Iver – that Francophonic play on words for ‘good winter’ explore lush, warmer climes on this eponymous follow-up to the lauded debut For Emma, Forever Ago. The sparser sound of that acclaimed debut has given way to a more grandiose affair. Songwriter Justin Vernon has broken the ice. Opening track “Perth” builds majestically with some military style drumming and a late blast of brass promising a warmer season for the son of Wisconsin.

Some of that earlier camp-fire intimacy does survive. “Holocene” mesmerises with a gentle beauty that rouses more seamlessly than almost everything else here. “Michicant” could be equally enticing but the funereal breaks designed perhaps for atmosphere seem only to disjoint the mood whilst the ambient soulfulness of “Hinnom, TX” threatens to mutate into a disco glitterball attack but merely peters out with some bleeps and twinkles

This may be the epitome of a ‘difficult second album’. Elsewhere the minimalism of “Lisbon, Oh” goes nowhere and just juxtaposes the rather too shiny production elsewhere on Bon Iver. This move away from stripped down isolation to a fuller aural assault works best on “Minnesota, WI” with Vernon’s haunting refrain of “never gonna break, never gonna break”. If that’s the zenith then “Beth/Rest” really is the nadir for Bon Iver. Recalling the awful MOR radio-friendly fare pumped out by Chicago way back when big hair and vocoders seemed like a good idea it’s insipid and a world away from anything on For Emma, Forever Ago.

Bon Iver may be a somnambulist’s delight or perhaps simply an acquired taste. In this age of immediacy it’s an album that will wash over you as insignificantly as your daily shower. More lush it may be but lovelier it isn’t because greater beauty lies in Vernon’s more isolated work. Rediscover the art of listening though and Bon Iver may still engage you for long enough to see through the newly applied gloss.