Webcuts Music

During their recent visit to Australia for Splendour in the Grass we caught up with LCD Soundsystem’s main man James Murphy who gave us reason to put away the hankies for LCD’s much reported demise – “It’s not necessarily the last record. I would make another record. It’s more the end of this part – three records that go together, an arc. We became a bigger band than I ever expected. Something needs to stop, for me, for us all to be happy.” He also waxes lyrical about making the record in the LA of his imagination, growing up and wanting kids, his Greenburg soundtrack experience and his many and varied future projects.

For The Morning Benders, a big echo doesn’t necessarily mean a big noise, but the latter is certainly what these Californian boys encountered following the release of their sophomore album Big Echo earlier this year, easily giving Webcuts one of our favourite albums of 2010. Perfectly formed and lavishly constructed, Big Echo stretched its influences across the decades, from the lush ’60s doo-wop harmonies of “Excuses”, the ’70s Californian pop-rock of “All Day Day Light” to the peer rivaling, stark echoes (which the album lives up to its name) of “Hand Me Downs”.

Villagers is the nom de plume of one Conor O’Brien, the young Irish gent with the piercing blue eyes positioned above these words. Having released his debut album Becoming A Jackal on Domino Records last month to widespread acclaim (surely topping the album charts in Ireland is nothing to be sneered at), O’Brien has been steadfast in moving his Villagers around the country like a pack of wayward Irish gypsies.

Spoon‘s latest album, Transference, seemed to show the band finding new ways to tie their own shoelaces, searching out their own “Mystery Zone” or what Britt Daniel will later say in the interview “we gotta try to please ourselves first”. Notable for being our first interview where the band asks us the questions, Spoon have perhaps realised there’s more to making music than pleasing yourself. You’ve still got to please your Mom too…

With their fourth album My Maudlin Career Glasgow’s Camera Obscura shifted further away from their indie pop origins to create their own take on Bacharachian orchestral pop and ’60s soul contrasted against sparse country melancholy. Keyboardist and backing vocalist Carey Lander talks about joining the band, meeting Lloyd Cole, the orchestral and country elements in their sound and how they came to cover the Boss.

New York has definitely handed over its crown as being home to earthshaking epicentre of what’s hot, hip, and happening. These days all eyes are firmly focused on the eclectic sounds of the West Coast — as it seems that every single band we talk right now calls the place home. With Katy Perry (of all people) singing the praises of California Girls, just like the Beach Boys did in the 60′s, so are we with Los Angeles’ Dum Dum Girls.

We hunt down Ed Droste from Brooklyn’s Grizzly Bear and get our claws into their move from a studio to live band, how they keep songs fresh, and how they came to record with Yacht rock legend Michael McDonald: “Michael McDonald is one of the coolest Yacht rockers around. We let him know we were fans and he ended up coming to a show and we really liked him and approached him with the idea and he was totally excited to do it.”

Finding unexpected notoriety through their collaboration with electronic arsonists Crystal Castles, Los Angeles Noise Rock quartet HEALTH have been a prominent musical force in the LA scene over the past couple of years. With their second album Get Colour released late last year, the band have evolved beyond being nihilistic noise makers into an act that is pushing the textural accessibility switch.

The Dead Weather are a band that more than live up to their name. Dark and bluesy, malevolent and loud. Given the rock credentials brought by each of the musicians attached, you expect nothing less. A multi-headed musical beast comprised of Alison Mosshart, the chain-smoking siren from The Kills, Jack White, leader of the status: in hiatus White Stripes, Dean Fertita of Queens of The Stone Age and Jack Lawrence of The Raconteurs. With a new album Sea of Cowards about to be released, we speak to Alison, Jack, and Dean.

We chew the fat with The Horrors on their recent Australian tour about last year’s remarkable second album Primary Colours, and their thoughts on cover versions: “I think it’s a funny idea that this is a conversation you’re more likely to have now than at any other time in the history of rock ’n’ roll, considering most bands really started playing cover versions, being The Beatles or The Stones or even the Sex Pistols. It was something that was just kind of part and parcel of being in a group and part of a live repertoire.”