On Directing, the new Tegan and Sara video
Via Teen.com, here’s Tegan and Sara’s brand-new boppy video for On Directing. Definitely a pop-out-loud tune sans their tendency to be a bit self-regarding.
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Music
Arcade Fire Madison Square Garden Youtube Show
The Arcade Fire will play Madison Square Gardens on Thursday, August 5th and the whole show will be broadcast live by Youtube. Check out the concert teaser featuring a snippet of new song Rococo. NYOM!
Untitled from Arcade Fire on Vimeo.
Listen to The Way Out by The Books
Not out in Ireland or the UK for a couple of weeks, you have a couple of hours left to check out The Way Out by The Books being streamed on NPR. Go, check it out the surreal electronica loveliness of it We’ll be reviewing it in a few weeks time.
/ \ / \ / \ Y / \ by M.I.A.
Sometimes you to come to albums as they are. And sometimes they precede themselves in a cloak of publicity one way or the other that it can’t but colour your first listen of them. Unfortunately the latter is true for M.I.A.’s third full-length offering, / \ / \ / \ Y / \.
To call this album anything other than a disjointed, sketchy collection of odd noises, bangs and beats would be would unfair.
One thing M.I.A. she was a decent each-way bet on somehow pulling earbug pop out of experiment beats. In / \ / \ / \ Y / \, one feels like she’s hellbent on raising ire and dares us to hate her on a whistlestop tour of her neurosis That’s just how the album feels. It’s like having your ears bitten off in a rollercoaster by chainsaw-totting maniac. He’s doing it just for kicks.
While a little Fuck You attitude is not necessarily a bad thing, the ideas that underpin the piece are never fully formed. Like sandcastles made at twilight, they are no sooner built, than they are destroyed and replaced by another fancy. We don’t know who M.I.A. is pissed at but it prevailing mood of the album is stifling and difficult to shake.
When M.I.A slows it down with Space, we’re faintly reminded of her early work. It’s bouncy and a twinkly Summer anthem. It’s a blast of what / \ / \ / \ Y / \ could have been.
Derivative themes played out way too fast in a defiant storm of sounds. Hoping this exercise in alienation is all about the big comeback for the next album.
Earworm: Space
Label: XL
Rating: 
Beat This Silhouette
Spotted outside HMV Grafton St this afternoon.
Butterfly House by The Coral
The Coral’s fifth album, Butterfly House just fluttered onto the ITM stereo.
The Coral have had a strange journey. Formed at the end of the Brit Pop and with a clutch of well-received EPs and their self-titled debut disk at the turn of the naughties, The Coral were vaunted as the saviours of guitar bands. We all know Dreaming of You, yea?
Since then, they’ve charted all of their albums successively at home – UK Top 10s across the board. While they’ve not epitomised the Britishness in British music abroad (looking at you Florence and the Machine and you, Lily Allen), The Coral have obviously kept their home fans happy. So, what of Butterfly House?
The Brit group remains loyal to their 1960′s guitar-driver, folksy style in Butterfly House. The opening tracks of the album are foot-tappingly sweet. We’re treated to fluid melodies like Rovin’ Jewel or Sandhills. However as the album progresses, it descends into a lull of forgettable tunes. Green is The Colour, I’ve marked your card. Butterfly House struggles to regain momentum through the final tracks, with the haunting melody of Coney Island and deep bass riffs of North Parade.
The problem with Butterfly House is that its not particularly revolutionary. We’ve read this book before, heard the album and digested the lunch. While it does manage to pick itself up again with before it finishes, one can’t leave the album without wondering what could have been. Butterfly House has a couple of decent tracks, otherwise it’s nothing remarkable. As a bonus, there’s a limited edition version available with an extra disc of five extra tracks.
For hardcore Coral fans only!
Earworms: Coney Island/North Parade
Label: Deltasonic Records
Rating:
The Coral Butterfly House
Children of the Times by Solar Bear
A little breath of fresh air. The video for Children of the Times from Irish band Solar Bear off their album She Was Coloured in. Very Air inspired.
Label: Planet Mu
Sky At Night by I Am Kloot
When I was a boy, I looked out to sea,
Thought I saw you and me in the waves, on the breeze
I still do, I still do, I still do
I Still Do by I Am Kloot
Over-milked tea. Cheeky pinch. It’s Northern Soul. John Bramnell has in spades. The gruff sort of soul, like acid on silk. Bramnell is the frontman and singer-songwriter with I Am Kloot, Manch’s best kept secret for years now. Luvies of John Peel and Elbow, I Am Kloot have hovered in the wings for ages. If their third album Sky At Night doesn’t make them mega-stars, I don’t know what will.
The opener, Northern Skies is a sweet acoustic affairs with sprinkles of down-home charm that sets the scene. A dark Nova Scotia pub sing-a-long affair with delicate violins on the close. The confessional I Still Do ups the ante and adds a hand of wistful reflections to Northern Skies. The Moon is a Blind Eye is head-dress of cobwebs and cymbals.
Produced by Elbow’s Guy Garvey, Sky At Night is a triumph of chunky, home-knit scarf of lofiness. There are flashes of Elbow brilliance in the album. The sublime orchestration of Radiation is right off of Cast of Thousands. I’ve looped Radiation for days now and it only gets better. Bramnell is undeniably Garvey’s silver-voiced alter-ego, I hope to see more Kloot/Elbow crossovers in the future.
Earworm tracks: The Moon is a Blind Eye/Radiation
Label: Shepherd Moon/EMI
Rating:
Short documentary on the making of Sky At Night
New Video from She & Him ‘Thieves’
Hullo, vintagey She and Him goodness. Hot off the video presses comes She and Him’s fuzzy, black and white video for their new single ‘Thieves’. ‘Thieves’ is She and Him’s second single off their current album, ‘Volume Two’.
Unconfirmed reports suggest that the fuzziness of a thousand rabbits was loaned to oomph up the vintage shoot.
‘Thieves’ is out on release on Double Six Records.
Oh Little Fire by Sarah Harmer
Sometimes I think it’s difficult for a Canadian songstress avec guitar. There’s such a big ladder climb – Joni, Feist, Melissa Auf De Maur and Avril Lavinge (ahem!). In ‘Oh Little Fire’, Sarah Harmer makes a decent stab at the climbing that latter.
It’s been four and a half years since Harmer released her acclaimed fourth album ‘I’m a Mountain’. Her career already draped in platinum and gold at home, Harmer’s latest poises her on the precipice of county-folk leaning toward popdom. If you’re not gurl’n'guitar-friendy, best walk on by.
‘Oh Little Fire’ is a grower of the album. Harmer is our girl next door, a careful heroine who waits while life happens to her on the opening of the record. She wistfully opens the album with ‘New Thief’ singing ‘A new wind will blow through everything // Through everything I know’.
Call it a concept-album-like, by record’s end, Harmer is stronger. Her wins come in the POW! of a pair of out-and-out earworms. Harmer shines when she’s dishing out the pop hooks on the catchy ‘Captive’ or sweetly dueting with Neko Case in the country-worn ‘Silverado’.
Ironically, this highlights the fundamental weakness – genre respect. It’s when Harmer concentrates on being country or poppy, she’s on form. Straddling the styles in ‘Washington’ or ‘The City’, one gets the feeling she’s trying to spin too many dishes and ultimately fails to completely convince us. Where Harmer fails to dazzle us, she tunefully dabbles and they are always fluffy and fun in a sing-in-the-car on a spin to Spar kind-of-way.
Earworm tracks: ‘Captive’/‘Silverado’
Label: Rounder
Rating:
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