There’s a great C86 crossed with 90s US alternative running through this, which is about the most perfect combination for me.  Not quite sure why I overlooked them before – the fact they are on Happy Happy Birthday To Me is a sign of quality in itself – but I’ve now got a bit of catching up to do.

Sourpatch

The band will be touring the UK with Wheatus and MC Lars in May and June.  It’s a bit of an odd combination, but it also kind of makes sense too.  Must resist the urge to book them for somewhere down here.

Math the Band

1.    Los Campesinos! – By Your Hand
2.    The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – Heart In Your Heartbreak
3.    Veronica Falls – Come On Over
4.    Help Stamp Out Loneliness – Record Shop
5.    Girls Names – Black Saturday
6.    Comet Gain – Love Without Lies
7.    Tunabunny – Locusts
8.    Shrag – Rabbit Kids
9.    This Many Boyfriends – Diaries
10.    Standard Fare – Call Me Up
11.    Tigercats – Harper Lee
12.    Kid Canaveral – You Only Went Out To Get Drunk Last Night
13.    Allo Darlin’ – Capricornia
14.    Summer Camp – Better Off Without You
15.    Belle & Sebastian – Seeing Other People
16.    The Magnetic Fields – The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side
17.    Withered Hand – New Dawn
18.    The Mountain Goats – No Children
19.    Evans the Death – Threads
20.    Voxtrot – The Start of Something
21.    Joy Zipper – Christmas Song
22.    The Wave Pictures – Strange Fruit For David
23.    Art Brut – Good Weekend
24.    Let’s Wrestle – I Won’t Lie To You
25.    Cats on Fire – Higher Grounds
26.    The Lovely Eggs – Don’t Look At Me (I Don’t Like It)
27.    Colour Me Wednesday – Purge Your Inner Tory
28.    Jens Lekman – Black Cab
29.    Sourpatch – Cynthia Ann
30.    The National – Mr. November
31.    Arab Strap – The Shy Retirer
32.    The Postal Service – Such Great Heights

Discovered a fair bit of new music in the past few months though, so plenty to get around to.  I also bought a turntable at last, joining the 1970s like the rest of you cool kids seem to be doing now.

Most of London Popfest back in February disappeared into a blur, but if anything stands out, it was the spectacular set that Tunabunny played on the Friday.  Here’s the video for their latest single.  Compared to their live performance, it’s very restrained.  Just imagine this with six times the energy and you’re getting toward them live.

FuckyeahTunabunny.

Attached to Tunabunny at the hip were the ever excellent Shrag.  They played Popfest together, they played the country together, and they released a split 7″ single together.  Here’s the Shrag contribution to that record:

You can buy the 7″ from the same place you get half of your records from: Fortuna Pop!

Shrag // Tunabunny

I promise to be better at this blogging thing this year.

It only seems fitting to start the year with Allo Darlin’, without a doubt my favourite band of the last couple of years.  Watching them come up from tiny indiepop shows to headlining a packed out Scala has been a lovely thing to watch.

The band will release their second album, Europe, in May of this year, and above you’ll find one of the songs from it.  Tallulah is a reasonably old song, previously released on a Hangover Lounge EP, but this is a new recording of it.  I’ve listened to the original so many times that this one is a little jarring, but it’s still a beautiful song.  “I’m wondering if I’ve already met all the people that will mean something” breaks my heart every damn time.

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This is something of an odd choice for me to post today of all days.  I’m someone who has found myself increasingly drifting to the right economically and has watched today’s strikes with bemusement more than sympathy.  Perhaps more shockingly for someone in the indiepop scene, I don’t find Conservatives to be fundamentally reprehensible.  So a song actually called Purge Your Inner Tory probably isn’t the most politically appropriate song for me today.

I really like it though.  It’s everything that I want my indiepop to sound like, and while this won’t necessarily work for everyone, it’s ramshackle and jangly enough for me play on repeat for quite a period at a time.  As for the politics, I’ll certainly take a band that has a position, even if it’s one I find slightly silly, over one that doesn’t have one at all.  Still, looking forward to what they come up with next, and if they aren’t one of the indiepop staple bands of 2012, I’ll be rather surprised.

You can get a sampler CD from the band, featuring four demos in it’s own unique, handmade packaging for a mere £1 from their BigCartel store.

MP3 Colour Me Wednesday – Purge Your Inner Tory

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1. This Many Boyfriends – #1
2. Herman Dune – Lay Your Head On My Chest
3. Hefner – Painting and Kissing
4. Tigercats – Banned at the Troxy
5. The Hidden Cameras – Death of a Tune
6. The Magnetic Fields – The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side
7. Comet Gain – You Can Hide Your Love Forever
8. The Voluntary Butler Scheme – Trading Things In
9. Airport Girl – The Foolishness That We Create Through Love Is The Closest We Come To Greatness
10. Allo Darlin’ – The Polaroid Song
11. Los Campesinos! – By Your Hand
12. Pavement – Gold Soundz
13. Standard Fare – Fifteen

14. The Wave Pictures – Strange Fruit For David
15. Withered Hand – New Dawn
16. Help She Can’t Swim – Fermez La Bouche
17. Johnny Foreigner – Salt, Peppa and Spinderella
18. Math the Band – Why Didn’t You Get a Haircut?
19. The Wendy Darlings – Enormous Pop
20. Jens Lekman – An Argument With Myself
21. The Mountain Goats – No Children
22. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – Belong
23. Veronica Falls – Come On Over

24. Lets Wrestle – In The Suburbs
25. LCD Soundsystem – North American Scum
26. The Go! Team – Ladyflash
27. Arab Strap – The Shy Retirer
28. This Many Boyfriends – Young Lovers Go Pop!
29. Art Brut – Good Weekend
30. Kid Canaveral – Smash Hits
31. Summer Camp – Better Off Without You

32. Acid House Kings – Are We Lovers Or Are We Friends?
33. Cats on Fire – Higher Grounds
34. Hello Saferide – Highschool Stalker
35. Voxtrot – The Start of Something
36. Help Stamp Out Loneliness – Record Shop
37. Talulah Gosh – I Can’t Get No Satisfaction (Thank God)
38. Camera Obscura – French Navy
39. Allo Darlin’ – Darren
40. Belle and Sebastian – Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying
41. Comet Gain – Love Without Lies
42. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – Heart In Your Heartbreak

Few bands are as committed to maintaining their image as Summer Camp.  After managing to keep their identities secret for the best part of a year, Jeremy Warmsley and Elizabeth Sankey are proving that there’s more legs in their project than the original one note idea seemed to suggest.  Summer Camp aren’t really a band that is focused on the present.  California of the 70s and 80s seems to be far more interesting to them, and this style dominates their songs, videos and even their live shows.  There’s absolutely no reason why any of this should work beyond the initial novelty value, but it does, and somehow they are managing to get better.  Better Off Without You is a spectacularly crafted pop song that in the right world would be a massive hit.  It’s just a shame that that world passed by three decades ago.

Welcome to Condale will be released on October 31 via the band’s own Apricot Recording Company and Moshi Moshi Records.  The band will play a string of UK dates in November, including a Kent one at the Farmhouse in Canterbury.

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If Los Campesinos! were ever going to live up the Nosferatu D2 mantra of every band you love letting you down eventually, it seemed as if now would be that point.  After three spectacular albums, the band has undergone a fundamental shift in it’s lineup for fourth album Hello Sadness, with three of the seven members of the band departing and being replaced.  As such, I’ve been a little bit wary about the direction the band would take from this point, so I’m greatly relieved by just how good first single By Your Hand has turned out to be.

Continuing the path into more personal territory that stood out on the last record, the band describe Hello Sadness as “ten songs of love, loss and heartbreak nail-gunned to a back-drop of broken, tangled bodies, creeping, dead-eyed animals, suffocating, looming shadows and World Cup exits. It is an honest, bare bones documentation of breaking up and trying not to break up in the process.”  By Your Hand is the opener, and given that by the time we reached the end of the first verse we’re already hearing about girls vomiting on Gareth’s rental tux, I suspect this is just the tip of a rather painful iceberg.

Hello Sadness will be released on November 14.  The band are offering an advance bundle including the album, a demo CD, a DVD and a t-shirt for £25, or £20 if you’ve got Heat Rash.  Pretty good deal I’d say.  You can get it through their web store.  This was taken rather badly by Avalanche Records.

MP3 Los Campesinos! – By Your Hand

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