CHVRCHES debut album The Bones Of What You Believe has been anticipated worldwide for the good part of a year and now we can finally rejoice as Faster Louder has begun streaming the album ahead of its supposed release tomorrow.
Exciting stuff. Check it out through the link below.
http://www.fasterlouder.com.au/news/36939/First-listen-CHVRCHES-The-Bones-Of-What-You-Believe
I love these guys. Even if it is mainly because they remind me a lot of my time living in Canada. But of course, also because they’re pretty epic. The Naked & Famous, in case you’ve recently been in a freak super-modified-shovel-racing accident (yes it’s a thing) and found yourself trapped in a coma from early 2008 until this specific moment, are a brilliant (apparently) post-punk revival outfit from Auckland, New Zealand.
Their debut album, Passive Me, Aggressive You, was a thing of beauty, rearing instant festival classics like Punching in a Dream, Young Blood and an amazing electro-ballad that turned out to be my personal favourite, No Way. The album reached a height of #25 on both the UK and Australian charts while peaking all the way to #1 in NZ.
Just yesterday, exciting happenings happened when the band debuted their latest track, Hearts Like Ours, across various social platforms. The single is in line with a lot of their previous stuff. The sound is equally as huge as their previous summer anthems and just as enjoyable, with brilliant melodies and harmonies spanning the chorus enforced by grunge-toned guitar and passionately paced keyboard.
The new album, entitled In Rolling Waves, is set for a September 16th release.
A couple of years ago, they also released a really awesome remix of Austere by the similar sounding Canadian favourites, The Joy Formidable.
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| Matt Pond PA – The Lives Inside The Lines In Your Hand |
Matt Pond has admittedly been around for a while. With a collective 16 records under his belt spanning a career of a decade and a half with his band Matt Pond PA, of which he is the only consistent member. Don’t let the age fool you though, he’s no classic, with his newest release proving to be just as hip and with it as anything you could find at your local hipster hang-out. The album, entitled The Lives Inside the Lines in your Hand, came out on February 5th of this year, and is not yet downloadable on Australian iTunes. That’s a problem I seem to continue to face with these bands that aren’t so big over here. Nevertheless I’ve managed to pinch a listen from various blogs and determined that this is an album a long time coming in this genre.
Liken to Aussie artist Josh Pyke, and possibly even City & Colour, with this kind of country style acoustic-pop, I haven’t heard something completely brilliant from start to finish in many years. Matt Pond PA are good at what they do and rightfully so after playing for that long. Their lead track from the album, Love to Get Used, is absolutely stunning. From the get go it hooks you in with a fluttering lick on the lead guitar to compliment the fast paced rhythm and bass alongside lyrics that come across as excitedly blue as weird as that description may sound.
Like I said, we can’t get the rest of the album yet, so I suggest you go and check out as much as you can on YouTube. For now, I present via the video below, Love To Get Used by Matt Pond PA.
I hate the long wait for new albums. They always seem to announce all the good stuff months before they’re due to be released and make everyone just sit on their excitement, twiddling their ears (I don’t know if that makes sense but seems like the more likely body part to be affected in this instance). Gold Fields released Dark Again back in October with the album due to be released in March. Foals new record, Holy Fire still has two days before it pops. Don’t even get me started on Northeast Party House. They promised a full length album back in October sometime and I haven’t even seen a preview yet.
My excitement grows as Gold Fields debut album Black Sun approaches, due to be released in Australia on March 8th. They’ve literally just released previews of their second single “Happy Boy”, only at selected links. It’s reportedly the bands favourite track off the record and those of you who were excited enough to check out the trailer for Black Sun that I included in my “5 Albums To Look For in 2013″ post, may have heard it jiving away in the background.
Personally, although I love the song, I feel it’s a strange choice for the second single considering the pace they were growing at in the US with their enjoyable take on frenzied dance-pop. With that in mind, “Happy Boy” brings to them a dark side, and from hearing previews from the new album like “Ice”, they seem to take a leaf out of the revolutionary mixture of sombre and ultra-pop that The Cure did in the 80’s, without even remotely sounding like a rip-off 80’s revival. Gold Fields are legendary in their own right, and Black Sun, for me, is the single most highly anticipated album of 2013.
Yes. Just Yes. I literally just checked this one now and found that Future Screens finally have uploaded the song they promised us all. Mind you it’s only one song; and it’s a cover. Although it’s a friggen awesome cover, I’m not sure whether to be pleased or disappointed by this. I kind of expected more.
What are your thoughts? One Summer, Good enough?
Inspired by my complete lack of energy and the fact that I in all honesty shouldn’t have the time to post regularly on this blog, I noticed an absolutely great outlet on Instagram by the name of @goodindiemusic (also on facebook here). This guy (or guys/girls) posts one or two songs a day from just whatever they are listening to or think is sounding tops at that particular point in time.
Got me thinking that this phenomenon takes all the effort out of writing about music and songs. It’s perfect for this blog given that all I do anyway is post YouTube clips about which songs I like at the moment. So if you read my posts and like getting some new tunes to check out for breakfast, lunch and dinner…
Add me on Instagram @theindierocksummit
In December 2012, the world was supposed to end. God had planned on a rapture the likes of which had only been seen once before. Who by you ask? By Noah of course. The legendary bearded gentleman that built that fine wooden arc we’ve all heard about countless times throughout our youth. He and his family were chosen out of everybody in the world to carry on the human race because of their devotion to awesomeness.
Well this time around God chose a band named Everything Everything to build an Arc that would outlast the end of the world. But when December 21st, 2012 came around, to his surprise (and absolutely no one else’s) he was foiled by science. When the end of the world had been avoided, God said to the band, “Fuck. Sorry boys, I really thought that would work. But as long as you made that Arc we might as well do something good with it”. So in two fell swoops, God uncapped his magic marker, gently sniffed the tip of it, and turned their Arc into what will be one of the most impressive albums to come out in 2013.
So there you have it. Everything Everything’s new album, Arc. Engineered by God. Powered by divine intervention.
But seriously, this is only the tip of exciting news in releases to hit stores of all sorts this year but holy hell is it a fantastic start. When Everything Everything released their debut album Man Alive, it was interesting to say the least. Their attempt at mixing a kind of prog or art rock-esque styling with smooth pop didn’t seem too polished except for a few stand out tracks that became singles such as MY KZ, UR BF. It seems like they’ve well and truly crossed their T’s and dotted their lower case j’s in this second release.
The reviews for Arc are just beginning to come in from the major outlets and so far the sentiment is that it’s the work of a band at the top of their game. Described by most of the top reviewers as a more “honest” album than their first (whatever that means), the first single, Cough Cough, is being flogged like crazy here in Australia on Triple J and I believe it is one of the top 100 most played songs of the year on that particular channel. It’s fresher tracks like Kemosabe, Duet and Torso Of The Week that have me giddy like a twelve year old girl about this record. Showcasing all the best elements of the band including the most original use of falsetto in all the perfect places combined with hallmark Everything Everything harmonies and that static, creepy-crawly style guitar with soothing electronics. I know that description sounds like a whole lot of different noises and flows crashing around, but believe me it is such a perfectly melodic mess from beginning to end.
Everything Everything’s, Arc is available on iTunes as of right now. You can like their facebook page HERE.
Back for the first Issue of the new year with some pretty unreal stuff. The next few Issues are sure to be crazy exciting with albums coming out all over the place (including Everything Everything’s newbie coming out this month that I forgot to put into the 5 Albums to Look for). It turns out that I’m so keen to chuck out the first top ten of the year that I coincidentally haven’t got much to say about it. I’m sure it speaks for itself.
10. A B & The Sea – In The Sunshine
A B & The Sea. Even just by the name you can tell that these guys could be the poster boys of pop and that they are. In The Sunshine is just your typical catchy pop song that has the possibility of becoming annoying if heard one too many times. That being said, it has had it’s moment in the sun for a long while on my iPod and this spot in the top ten is well deserved, although there is much more pressing matters to attend to. For lovers of HAL (anyone remember them?), or I guess even people that liked fun. before they got terribly repetitive and boring.
Gold Fields – Black Sun (March)
My favourite new Australian band are set to release their debut album “Black Sun” this coming March and I couldn’t be more excited. They’ve been very slow to release any information or early tracks which is only helping to build the excitement world wide. The first single off the album “Dark Again (Lights Out)” is already on the Triple J hit list as well as getting smashed out daily on Channel V and has previously received a number one spot on this blog.
Black Sun is the product of a journey that began in the summer of 2011, when the band decamped to Los Angeles to spend six weeks working with producer Mickey Petralia (Ladytron, Peaches) and then retreated to a remote Australian farm manor to continue writing songs, which they later recorded with Scott Horscroft (The Presets, Sleepy Jackson, Silverchair) as co-producer/engineer. After learning a lot from both Horscroft and Petralia, Gold Fields decided to re-record and produce the whole album themselves in leader singer Mark Fuller’s parents garage in Ballarat.
Phoenix – TBA (April)
Word on the street is that Phoenix have done some recordings for the new album, presumably titled TPC, and describe it as very experimental. In an interview with Pedestrian.tv at Sydney’s Good Vibrations Festival, Thomas Mars and Deck D’Arcy revealed that the new recordings might be a departure from the ‘hooky pop’ of their last album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix.
In the interview they mentioned a lot of drum machines and percussions will be influencing the new tracks as well as some orchestral parts but an interesting comment was made about recording with percussionists in Byron Bay. Although I do dig experimental Phoenix, I’m really hoping the album isn’t traditional Byron Bay style a.k.a bongo’s over a homeless guy that can barely play two chords on a rusty guitar. I’m actually anticipating something more to the degree of their effort two albums ago in United. This band seems to skip styles every two albums, with It’s Never Been Like That sounding closer to 2009’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix and United being reminiscent of Alphabetical.
Foals – Holy Fire (February)
Foals have taken nearly three years to deliver the sequel to Total Life Forever and let’s be honest, it had to be a good one. February in 2013 marks their third studio album, which is highly anticipated after the guys went quiet for quite some time.
Speaking to NME about the new album, frontman Yannis Philippakis recently said, “There are some heavier moments and some dirtier moments. It’s swampy, some of the grooves are quite stinky. There’s a track called ‘My Number’ that had a Curtis Mayfield groove which was pretty unashamedly funk, for want of a better word”.
I’m also heavily jealous of friends who are travelling the UK in the next few months as they also plan to tour pretty fiendishly following the release of this record, and with tracks like My Number and Inhaler already showcased it’s safe to say their shows will have gotten a shit tonne more enjoyable than the cargo loads of fun it already was.
Fenech-Soler – TBA (March-May)
Cult-status electronic rockers Fenech-Soler premiered the video for their single “All I know” back in October, 2012. As it was their first new original material in 2 years I was understandably excited for what is to come while the band finishes up their second album, slated for a Spring 2013 release. While no other songs have yet been heard, the first single has all the same anthemic quality that Demons had from their first album with big massive buildups carried by singer Ben Duffy’s voice crashing into pulsating four-to-the-floor drops.
If this upcoming release is anything at all like their first studio album, fans and soon-to-be fans are going to be in for an absolute treat. These guys remind me of a UK version of something like The Presets. Not as specific as sounding like them, but in the way that they have that uncanny ability to take electro-rock music into the most unbelievably catchy domain it could ever possibly go into. Between Duffy’s amazing voice and form and the beat of tracks like Golden Sun and Stone Bridge, it only takes a few listens to start kicking yourself and wondering why you didn’t hear this stuff years ago.
Future Screens – TBA (January)
Never heard of Future Screens? Not many people have. It’s hard to understand the logistics behind a band of this calibre only obtaining a measly 1,000 likes on Facebook once you’ve heard their releases so far. Songs like Don’t Stop (which was heavily favoured on the sterling BIRP! July playlist) and Sidewalk Chalk were two of my favourite releases from 2012 and it was not even a difficult decision to sideline my hate for junk mail from random pointless websites and sign up for Future Screens band camp newsletters.
It was only the other day I received an email informing me of this future release and although nothing has yet appeared on the internet, iTunes or even Band Camp (I’m assuming due to the bands humble status and lack of music label), I can only assume based on every single thing they’ve done so far that when this new album is ejected unto the world it will be one of the best things to grace your ears in 2013.
