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 [...]
Folk-rock oddity Jeffrey Lewis releases his umpteenth album A Turn In The Dream-Songs on October 10 via Rough Trade. The album features a host of Jeffrey’s friends feature on the album including members of Dr. Dog, The Vaselines, Au Revoir Simone and The Wave Pictures. Check out his semi-autobiographical ode to the unappreciated “Cult Boyfriend”.
Reissue! Repackage! Warpaint‘s mesmerising debut gets a little dressing up as we wait for album #2.
Warpaint are to release live favourite “Billie Holiday” as their next single on September 19. The track has been mixed by Pulp bassist Steve Mackey and is a complete re-working of the original version from their debut EP Exquisite Corpse, produced by John Frusciante. Warpaint’s record label Rough Trade explained, “It was felt that the single did not get enough ears the first time around, and as it’s always been a band favourite it only seems right to re-release it now that they are a little more well known”. The track will appear on a deluxe reissue of debut album The Fool (also out on Sept. 19) packaged with the EP.
From the label that gave you The Libertines and The Strokes, here’s another young and disaffected indie guitar band.
Is it me or do Warpaint have a thing about water/the ocean/drowning, or perhaps they’re just big fans of The Little Mermaid and just want to live under the sea? In this new video clip for their own self-titled theme song, they manage to do just that, albeit in a world where bassist/vocalist Jenny Lee Lindberg looks like a suicidal fisherman and drummer Stella Mozgawa is a parking inspector, about to shed their shackles. This is what the band had to say about the clip: “We’ve always had the idea to do a video underwater, and were excited when our friend Ted Newsome sent us a treatment, which involved just that. It was an opportunity to create a fantastical world where oxygen, time and style were simply not an issue. Turned out to be far more challenging than we had initially expected, but we pulled through”. “Warpaint” appears on their impressive Rough Trade debut album of 2010 The Fool, and the band are set to appear at the Field Day Festival in London on August 6.
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.
Record Store Day is quickly becoming known as Christmas Day for rabid music fans and vinyl junkies. An enticement for those of you to get up and actually walk into a record store rather than ordering off Amazon or….shudder Itunes, is that these record stores are going to have primo geeko stuff that have been produced ONLY for Record Store Day. So you can either get down there on Saturday April 16 and be a part of the celebration (read: frenzied madness), or cry about it later on Ebay when you’ve just paid through the nose for that Fleet Foxes 12″.
Thumbs down for the skinny ties and tight jeans brigade on their fourth go-round. Surely it can’t be worse than First Impressions Of Earth?
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. Now repeat after me… Om Mani Peme Hung, Om Mani Peme Hung, Om Mani Peme Hung… (subscribe to the Too Pure Singles Club here).
