Eighteen Nightmares at the Lux

More garagey punk today, this time courtesy of Eighteen Nightmares at the Lux, a louche quartet of young Londoners who apparently specialise in changing their name.   Less lo-fi and chaotic than the aforementioned Speak & The Spells, this chameleonic quartet’s melodies are immediately appealing via the worldly brogue of their singer.  Around him come careering guitars and tumultous drums, plus a dash of rockabilly and flashes of burlesque-style weirdness.  All in all, we’re talking a high-falutin racket that’ll have you doing a silly dance without taxing your Penny Lane too much.

MySpace | Website | Buy
MP3: Eighteen Nightmares at the Lux – Ketchup Stains  (very kindly provided by the band)

Offset tickets now on sale

Tickets for the late-summer / early-autumn Offset Festival (4-5 September) in Hainault Forest are now on sale.  There’s no sniff of a line-up yet but Offset’s can always be trusted for a quirky carnival of alternative, mostly emerging acts.  Visitors to North London last year included The xx, Wild Beasts and Metronomy.  Weekend tickets in 2010 start at £45, or £55 with camping.

Punk spunk – Speak & The Spells

Like raucous, pedal-happy punk?  Then lend an air to Speak & The Spells, a new West London threepiece with a lo-fi sound drenched in reverb and intense drum beats.  It’s the stuff of bloody noses, and smashed guitars at the end of every show. Psychedelic debut single She’s Dead tells a garish tale of a girlfriend gone to the grave, and her screwed-up boyfriend’s B&E into the cemetery she ends up in.  Brianna is another a classic anthem - raucous, nihilistic and dirty – but with some really nice guitar work thrown in for good measure.  Caleb Pink and Bee offer more considered instrumental melodies and a tinge of 70s surf rock.

If you want to see Speak & The Spells live and let loose, there’s a single launch party for She’s Dead at the Stag’s Head on Wednesday 3 March.  Also, make sure you read super ace‘s blog about the band.

MySpace | Buy (Robot Elephant Records) 
MP3: Speak & The Spells – Brianna

Hot New Music – 22 February 2010

Time for Monday’s weekly delivery of five songs that are newly making me bounce my behind…

We Are Standard – The First Girl Who Got A Kiss Without A Please
When you hear that We Are Standard are from Northern Spain, thoughts of Latin jams and ay-yay-yays come to mind.  Incorrectly as it turns out: quickly building a reputation in the blogosphere, WAS actually produce a rhythmic and punkish dance-rock.  With a debut album produced by Gang of Four’s Andy Gill soon to arrive, this is the first single, featuring a pared-down sound and some beat-your-thigh guitar work.

Or, The Whale – Toxic
Regular readers will know SOIWT! is darn fussy when it comes to covers, insisting they do something quite different with a song.  Or, The Whale definitely does that; were it not for the incredibly recognisable central chorus of Britney’s original, this shoegazey cover would be quite unrecognisable.  Where Brit was sassy and assertive, San Fran sevenpiece Or, The Whale are forlorn and subdued.  Not since a busker outside the Tate Modern sang a blues version of Here Comes The Sun has one song sounded quite so different.

Gorillaz – Stylo
Dear Damon Albarn: SOIWT! does likes the new Gorillaz song – a trance-like blur of jaggy electro beats, with a particularly nice contradiction between your own candy-sweet vocals, Mos Def’s dark mutters and typically passionate soul from Bobby Womack – but neverthless wonders if a) this doesn’t all seems a bit too, well, easy, and b) whether your album will just be a dancey-trancey blur arrogantly underpinned by cool names you’ve recruited?  Please write back soon and confirm, yours sincerely, SOIWT!.

Mr. Beasley – Wrong
Mr. Beasley is Hull duo Sarah Johns and Bobby Beasley.  After a three year gap since first record Neon, they’re back with more blissful, shimmery chill-out just screaming out for electro trickery on the decks.  Sarah sounds a bit like Lykke Li and the overall vibe has echoes of Massive Attack and Portishead, only not quite so intense and a bit more ghostly, a la Four Tet’s slow stuff.  This one’s so ephemeral and fragile that once it finishes, you’re not entirely sure it played in the first place.

Kid Cudi – Highs N Lows
You gotta love Kid Cudi – while everyone else in hip-hop is either dissing fellow MCs or singing with cool synth-pop bands, he’s putting out a previously unreleased song where he sings over a Bob Dylan jam.  Never mind that the original was perfectly good, or that this is a summery song release in coldest winter; let’s just celebrate Cudi’s sheer awesomeness, and how neatly his smooth delivery combines with those blissful Dylan melodies.  (Thanks to Audio Drums for this one.)

MP3s available via the song titles.

The Rural Alberta Advantage coming to London

One of SOIWT!’s absolute favouritest bands, The Rural Alberta Advantage are happily coming to London.  Hailing from deepest Canada, as their name might suggest, and signed to the cool Saddle Creek label, this is a trio offering a beautifully burnished indie sound, lined with a healthy dose of sorrow but also many hands-out-of-the-window, driving-with-the-top-down moments.  Frank, AB is especially giddy – actually a very sad tale, yet told euphorically, fist-pumpingly and beautifully.  It must be great to hear live.

We’ll be able to find on Tuesday 11 May as the RAA play the excellent Lexington on Pentonville Road (tickets).  It’s a way off, but well worth putting in the diary.

MySpace | Website | Buy
MP3: The Rural Alberta Advantage – Frank, AB

Cinnamon Chasers

Cinnamon Chasers is a London dance act getting belated* kudos from various quarters.  I’m no electronica expert, but CC’s music sounds to me more suited to a post-pill plateau or rainy, reflective bus ride home at 3am than the night’s intense peak hours earlier. It’s Balearic chill-out, I believe.  The act turns out to be Russ Davies, nephew of The Kinks’ Ray and Dave Davies, and formerly with the pseudonym of Abakus.  Now called Cinnamon Chasers, Luv Deluxe is his current main song; a particularly seductive blur, with nice  male/female vocals as the sound fades…

MySpace | Website | Buy
MP3: Cinnamon Chasers – Luv Deluxe
For lots more free MP3s, check out Tracasseur’s excellent blog on Cinnamon Chasers

Hot New Music – 15 February 2010

Here’s this week hand-out of five great songs freshly installed on my iTunes player:

Tunng – Don’t Look Down Or Back
Chiara, the girl I’m crazy about, watches a lot of VH1 and listens to a lot of the Smiths… but she also knows a great current band when she hears them, hence her telling me about London’s Tunng.  Foremost folktronica specialists, this is the first taste of their fourth album: a whimsical tune about a tragic-sounding woman, complete with echoey boy-girl vocals, a rousing and offbeat chorus, horns and typically powerful string work.  It’s majestic.

Seabear – Lion Face Boy
A shy and slowly seductive pop treat, peaceful and poignant in equal measure.  Each wave-crest comes with a brassy polish, and the sound and intensity gradually increases before a jaunty conclusion.  A sevenpiece hailing from Iceland, Seabear’s MySpace page is packed with videos of fans covering their songs. 

the morning benders – Promises
Something of a guilty pleasure, this: Promises has a simple structure plus bouncy and none-too-original chords, and yet somehow it manages to be swirlingly wonderful, with a stirring chorus you can’t resist ‘whoaaaa’-ing along to.  That singalong-ness hints at the touch of Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor, who co-produced, and also explains why Rough Trade has just signed the morning benders up.

Joanna Newsom – Kingfisher
The girl who made harps cool, Joanna Newsom‘s back with the follow-up to her much-acclaimed Ys album.  So far, it seems she’s gone for a subtler, more subdued sound, with less of the occasionally irritating lyrics and more of an instrumental focus.  Kingfisher is a nine-minute odyssey, packed with lovely refrains and moonshine moments.  Irresistible.

White Hinterland – Icarus
As winter rumbles relentlessly on and things seem less and less manageable, you need dreams to escape to – and you need a soundtrack for you. Her band’s sound newly minimal, Casey Dienel’s ice-pure voice, soft keyboard beats and ghostly backing male vocals are all it takes White Hinterland to conjure up the gentlest, most fragile melody I’ve heard in some time.  Play with the lights down low.

All download links are in the titles.

Together Club returns – at the Coronet

After an absence of two years, the Together Club is returning in March, in a new home - Elephant & Castle’s Coronet theatre – but with the same delicious old array of electronic and alternative live acts to get excited about.

First though, some history… Together dates back to New Year’s Eve 2001, when the night launched at the infamous Chainstore in East London, with The Chemical Brothers headlining.  Four consecutive NYE parties at Turnmills followed before a monthly night was initiated in 2006.  Everyone from Klaxons  to Mylo played; a Bestival tie-up followed;  Together became legendary.  It was hugely influential: many of the staple gimmicks in today’s nightlife scene - face painting, retro console games, clothes-swapping, free haircuts – were first seen at Together.  But Turnmills’ closure, after a final Together show featuring Fatboy Slim, in March 2008 meant the fun had to sadly end. 

Until now.  Back for 16 consecutive Fridays from 12 March with a slightly new moniker, Together Season One is set to once again be the place to see banging electro and hip indiesters, and marks the best new night south of the river in quite some time. 

As you’ll see, the line-up for the first night includes a returning Mylo, while Crystal Fighters play in the main room along with Rory Phillips.  The rather classy pop-rock of New Cross fivepiece My Tiger My Timing features in room 3.  Early Bird Tickets are priced from £10 (here), and there’s free Together membership for all those who attend the launch party on 12 March, which means a queue-jump for future events and other more dubious treats.

Looking further ahead, Hervé and Kissy Sell Out play the second week, while Daisy Dares You (26 March), Roni Size and Kano (9 April), Othello Woolf and Wild Palms (16 April), and Fenech Soler and Primary 1 (23 April) are on the cards in coming weeks.  The full line-up for the first eight weeks is here.

MP3: My Tiger My Timing – I Am The Sound

Alessi’s Ark

Alessi’s Ark was tipped by many as an artist-to-watch in 2009, but the acclaim never came.  Still, given that Mumford & Sons were also tipped and they’ve only now cracked this fame thing, perhaps 19-year-old Alessi Laurent-Marke’s time is still imminent.  The signs are good; the Londoner has just signed to Bella Union to release her new EP, Soul Proprietor on 5 April.  Not sure if that means she’s no longer with Virgin, but I sorta hope not in a all-big-labels-are-bad way.

Will this change Alessi’s sound?  Time will tell; at the moment that sound is a sleepy folk-fairytale, her babyish farm-girl voice -  á la Joanna Newsom – interwoven with various instrumental flourishes, from muttering strings to brassy elegance.  At times she upgrades to a more coquettish pop (eg Over The Hill), but on the whole this is music to close your eyes and drift along with, a readymake audio escape from the occasional drudgery of London life.

Also just announced is a gig on Fri 26 February supporting Rachael Dadd at Cafe Oto in Dalston (tickets), a late-night den filled with worldly sounds and the coolest of cats, and one the night before supporting Broadcast 2000 at Kilburn’s Luminaire (tickets), blessed with famously good sounds.  I’ve also heard wind of a show at Notting Hill Arts Club on Sun 28 February, but no confirmation of that one yet.  Later in the year Alessi’s supporting her fellow wide-eyed warbler, Laura Marling, on a UK tour, and also doing a couple of dates with Tallest Man On Earth at Bush Hall. 

MySpace | Website | Buy
MP3: Alessi’s Ark – Simple Man (Lynyrd Skynyrd cover)

RATM announce thank-you gig

To thank fans for unexpectedly propelling them to the Christmas Number 1 slot, Rage Against The Machine have announced a special free performance at Finsbury Park on Saturday 6 June.  Tickets are to be allocated much like at Glastonbury; you must register (here) by midnight this Sunday, 14 February (yes, Valentine’s Day) with a photo, and then try your luck at See Tickets this Wednesday, 17 February, from 9am.  A day to be at work on time.  There are 40,000 up for grabs and it’s a lottery system.  If you want to go, you’d better do what I just told you.