some of it was true!

Having heroically overcome crippling internet problems all weekend, SOIWT! is back in the nick of time for this weekly digest of tunes rocking this blogger’s world:

Band Of Skulls – Honest
The TV show Skins continues to be one of SOIWT!’s most reliable musical dealers, and the most recent episode (Freddie & Effy) provided a particularly good fix.  This song played over the preview for next week’s show.  It’s a slow, slightly-emo track, with a lights-down-low sound, swirling female vocals, an itinerant structure and a likeable hint of madness in the lyrics.  Band Of Skulls are a UK trio very popular in the US, where they’ve toured with Metric and even made the dreaded Twilight soundtrack.  This is from a stripped-down Lounge Act session with Woxy.

Pretty Lights – I Can See Your Face
Pretty Lights is Derek Vincent Smith, a Coloradan who crafts his songs by fusing together loads of other songs.  Stupid?  Impossible?  Pointless? Uninventive?  In fact it’s none of these things – it’s stonkingly, thrillingly brilliant.  Witness this seven-minute belter, a murderous, funky-as-hell musical cocktail bursting with familiar whines, bass, some more bass and too many genres to name.  Three EPs will follow in 2010, with a drip-drip release schedule on PL’s website. File under ’shouldn’t work but does’. 

Os Mercúrios - Rimbaud de Bicicletta
As winter blows and blusters its last, festival line-ups filter out and H&M introduces new t-shirt ranges, so thoughts turn irresistibly to that most wonderful of times: summer.  Here’s a little early taste of it, courtesy of Brazilian trio Os Mercúrios.  Telling the tale of a cyclist they thought eerily resembled poet Arthur Rimbaud and a greeting he (possibly*) gave to them, this is a pysched-out lo-fi slice of Latin American pie, complete with insatiable ballroom bounce, tinkling drums, guitars and the most melodious of organ sounds. 
*The band members disagree on this point!

Bear in Heaven – Lovesick Teenagers
If you’re into richly-crafted, dense guitar songs with loads of layers and myriad compsition, with nostalgic lyrics and high-pitched vocals, and with syrupy bass-playing, then you’re a fussy bastard.  But you’re also in luck, as that’s just what Bear in Heaven provide here.  Look out for the rarefied feedback (which SOIWT! thinks sounds like drunken owls), be ready for the abrupt and criminally premature ending and look out for Brooklyn-based BIH’s forthcoming London live dates at The Lexington and The Windmill.

Not Squares – Asylum
A rollicking rock song from Belfast punk-dance (punce?) trio Not Squares, driven along by a taut bass, featuring cowbells and all manner of shouts and screams.  This is simple, old-fashioned fun, building up the pace and offering a pleasing amount of chaos mixed in with neat rhythms.  It’s like a particularly effervescent friend – when they’ve gone, or the song’s finished, the silence is sudden and stark – and most definitely what SOIWT! would call a going-out song.

Downloads via song titles.