Webcuts Music

Another week, another round of Australian tour news. Lucky us. Tickets for the third Sunset Sounds festival which takes over the Riverstage and Botanic gardens over two days – January 4th and 5th 2011 – are now on sale. We have a sneak peek at seven of the acts and also give you dates for The Drones Gareth Liddiard’s solo tour (in support of his debut solo album Strange Tourist and also details of Birmingham’s Stereolab-lite act Broadcast December visit, their first ever to our shores.

“Take my hand and pray with me”, and how we’ve prayed, patiently awaiting the arrival of Deerhunter’s 4th album Halcyon Digest. For the dimly remembering, the monumental Microcastle was Webcuts album of the year for 2008, and expections have already been set. “Helicopter” is the second track to be previewed from the album and it’s a loop-based, plink-plonk synth-led Deerhunter meets The Littlest Mermaid undersea adventure with Bradford Cox revisiting his usual themes of isolation and escapism, and well you know the rest, drugs and paranoia. Unlike those ‘slacker’ bands out there like Wavves and Best Coast who talk about getting stoned and making music, Deerhunter is the real fuck-with-your-head deal. The collage of visuals for the clip (Deerhunter’s first ever video) is unsurprising for them, but there’s something about “Helicopter” that feels like it will have its greatest effect while being paranoid, trapped, and on drugs.

It’s shows like this which give birth to the very nature of rock and roll. The hip-swaying sounds of a band as they rock back and forth, eyes closed, mouths pressed against the microphone with their feet marking the beat. It’s an undeniably sexual thing. This isn’t news. It’s why they tried to ban Elvis in the 50’s. He turned young girls on, and it wasn’t so much the man, but the music, the stage, the sweat, the motion — the rock and roll of it all. Wedged together in this barely ventilated Old Street basement, Los Angeles’ Warpaint are presiding over something that had this been the 50′s, would’ve gotten them banned too.

Send out the search parties — Missing in action on the latest album from M.I.A. — “melody, listenability, and some semblance of a point”.

We didn’t review Ted Leo & The Pharmacists recent album The Brutalist Bricks, because frankly, the music speaks for itself. Trying to find 450-odd words to adequately sell Mr. Leo’s blood, sweat, and tears would be doing the man and his music an enormous injustice. You won’t see his music used on commercials, you won’t see him selling his soul on a magazine cover for a few more units sold. A punk rocker with a pure heart, Leo and The Pharmacists have always done it (for better or worse) their way, and you have to respect that… and buy their records. Man’s gotta eat, y’dig (read more about that here — http://www.tedleo.com/2010/07/07/regarding-the-rumors-of-retirement/). “Bottled In Cork”, one of the finer moments on The Brutalist Bricks, shows Leo throwing out enough hooks to make Cheap Trick envious and indulging in a little old fashioned fun, theatre style. I swear if he brought that show to London, I’d go see it.

The end of winter and the onset of spring then summer in the Southern Hemisphere means one thing. Well it means warmer temperatures obviously but it also means more international tours for us antipodeans starved of name acts over the winter months (excepting Splendour and its sideshows of course). A number of big names have been announced in the past week including The Manic Street Preachers, The Charlatans, Concrete Blonde, The National, Interpol, The Morning Benders and Joan Jett!

Ornate and dreamlike New York trio Blonde Redhead return with Penny Sparkle, the follow-up to 2007′s 23, due out September 14 on 4ad. Details on the album are still somewhat scarce, but frontwoman Kazu Mazion recently released this vague soporific statement (edited for space here). “I can’t say what Penny Sparkle is about just yet.

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An hour in the company of The Big Pink is a sensory distorting experiment, and one that also questions your sexuality. It’s not a glam/gay thing, but there is a certain amount of homoeroticism about The Big Pink. The obvious sexual nature of the band name notwithstanding, and their record sleeves are all chicks and tits, but I think that’s to throw off the thinly veiled man-love shared between guitarist/vocalist Robbie Furze and bassist Milo Cordell.

An album that has sat with us for a few weeks being lovingly digested and adored has been Together, the fifth album from Canadians The New Pornographers. Notoriously reviled in certain Webcuts quarters for their “lacking of bringing it” on their last album Challengers, A.C. Newman and Co. have considerately made amends giving us one of their finest albums to date, with a little bit of everything to appease even the hardest to please ‘Porno fan. “Crash Years” is The New Pornographers standing united with the flame-haired Neko Case leading the power pop charge. Welcome back, eh? Together is out now on Matador. Expect to see it in our end of year lists…

An album that makes us love them more, but not enough to wear their t-shirts. The New Pornographers get it Together.