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Mumford and Sons / The Drums / First Aid Kit / The Wave Pictures / Gliss
Singles Round-up
Various Labels
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Article
written by Paul M
Oct 4, 2009.
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| Singles Singles Singles!!! |
Novelty record alert! But in a good way! The Drums from Brooklyn ride the indie pop wave with the highly hummable Let’s Go Surfing which features a shimmering foot to the floor riff and the best bit of whistling since Peter Bjorn and John went all Rolf on us. Don’t Be A Jerk, Johnny on its 7” flipside drops the pace a tad and has some rather nice girly harmonies and handclaps to accompany its neat little keyboard rumba.
Out now on Moshi Moshi. Link: http://www.wearethedrums.com
Every now and again the SoundsXP servers in the latin quarter of Deptford creak under the strain of coping with more than just our mums checking what we’re up to. Well they’ve been glowing like a radioactive radish since we first offered up a free MP3 of Little Lion Man by Mumford and Sons so no big surprise that Island have decided to re-release this hollering hillbilly stomp. Featuring the brilliant throaty vocals of Marcus Mumford and some nifty tempo switching between angst ridden bitter balladry and rollicking banjo driven hoedownery, it really is one of the NAILED ON RECORDS OF THE YEAR. Go buy it, mum.
Link: http://www.myspace.com/mumfordandsons
First Aid Kit are the Soderbergs, a pair of Swedish sisters, but Hard Believer and Waltz for Richard have roots on the other side of the Atlantic with the girls delivering beautiful emotional folk with gorgeous American accented vocals. They claim on the Myspace page that they’re aiming for the hearts not the charts. In a perfect world they’d reach both but for now they’ll have to make do with my clapped out blood pumping organ.
Link: http://www.myspace.com/thisisfirstaidkit
Apparently Gliss are Billy Corgan’s favourite new band. While that may make some folk moist in the pantaloon department, for me it just conjures up a return to drawn out bombastic dirges. And lo, and verily behold, Beauty is a drawn out dirge but with the bombastic element dropped for being too bloody exciting. Even the vocals are androgynous for fear that anything too closely linked with either gender may make the deliverer seem too saucy. If it was a record I’d switch it to 78rpm in a desperate attempt to boot some ooomph into its lifeless corpse but the miserable bastard’s a CD so, bah. Avoid.
Link: http://www.gliss.tv
The promo from the The Bon Bon Club is a rather nice looking effort – a pink striped sweetie bag containing a 3” CD. The band is a Sheffield supergroup of females from the Long Blondes and Slow Down Tallahassee and its trio of light fingered girls pilfer the works of Kings of Leon, Dubstar and Fleetwood Mac here. Covering Sex on Fire is probably ill-conceived; its ubiquitous presence on the nation’s airwaves makes even a frocked and de-cocked version somewhat tiresome. However The Day I See You Again works in an 80s electro torch carrying way and Dreams continues the style but with a tad more glam sleaze. Out on Rare Breed Discs 19/10.
Link: http://www.myspace.com/thebonbonclub
We’ve been pushing the Wave Pictures heartily for some time now but their last album If You Leave It Alone tested our loyalty a tad, lacking an obvious killer tune and being so laid back it almost disappeared down the back of the sofa. The next single off it, Strawberry Cables, is a very simple acoustic ballad, effectively sinking or swimming on the quality of the lyrics. In this case the seemingly random words Tattersall lobs in for quirky effect succeed in charming and irritating the listener in equal measure. It doesn’t quite sink but does lurch around somewhat in a “Are they waving or drowning?” manner. Luckily Three Songs Called Louise on the b-side is a new number and offers hope that there’s still a nugget or two of gold in Tattersall’s mine with its splendid Herman Dune-like cheerful chorus and fuller sound.
Out on Moshi Moshi soon.
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