The Stills are now happier bunch of guys. Gone are the intense, moody songs of their first album (the criminally underrated ‘Logic Will Break Your Heart’). In place are upbeat, alt-country tunes. More Fleetwood Mac than Joy Division. And they totally look the part now, if those new promo pictures are anything to go by. It’s not often you see a band in flannel and tweed these days.
I was worried all these changes would mean that they’ll lose their lush sound, so rich in the first album. But fortunately not, as you can hear in this:
The Stills – Baby Blues (duet with Emily Haines from Metric!)
According to Access online:
“The record’s first single, ‘Destroyer’, a song Hamelin wrote on the road. Starting off with a simple drum beat and poppy piano riffs, the other instruments slowly find their way on to the track alongside Hamelin’s crooning vocals until the song builds into a beautiful, intense, sweeping and melodic epic that sounds a bit like Jellyfish if they had written a ’50s song in the ’70s.”
Happy. Poppy. Much like the song “In The Beginning”, available for download at their Myspace page.
Sam Roberts and Jason Collett (from the band Broken Social Scene) will be featured on the track “Oh Shoplifter”.
The Stills – Still In Love (from ‘Logic Will Break Your Heart’)
‘Without Feathers’ is out in the USA on May 9! Pre-order here
It’s only been a couple of months since their chart-topping debut album was released, but already the Arctic Monkeys are planning their second album. Alex Turner announced in an interview with Nuts Magazine that the band already have ten new songs for their second album.
He said (thanks to Mardy Bum for quotes)::
“The second album will be different I think. We’ve already got more than ten songs, because we’ve been writing for a long time.
The last song that went on the (first) album – ‘You Probably Couldn’t See For The Lights But You Were Looking Straight At Me’ – was written last May.
So there are all the songs that we’ve written since then and they’re all a bit different. I’ll just be excited about getting back into the studio.”
I hope this song makes it on the new album. It’s so good, I think it’s one of the Arctic’s best yet.
Arctic Monkeys – Leaving Before The Lights Come On (Live at The Ambassador Theatre, Dublin 23rd January 2006)
And in other Arctic Monkeys news, the band will finally make their first appearance at this side of the world. According to their official site, they will be touring New Zealand and Australia in July and Auguest.
cross-posting (with additions) from the other blog because I took a very long time to write this post..
Saturday Looks Good To Me
I’ve blogged lovingly about Saturday Looks Good To Me before. With the recent release of ‘Sound On Sound’, a compilation of 30 previously limited and unavailable recordings, I’m further convinced that Fred Thomas is the Phil Spector of the Noughties. What a glorious mix of summery Sixties-inspired pop, with a dash of garage/punk. Although I generally love all their recordings, my favourites tend to be their girl-pop songs. They wouldn’t be out of place in a 60s girl group compilation.
The amazing thing about SLGTM is that the same songs might appear on vinyl and cd-versions of an album, but with different mixes or recordings. Hear the difference here (from album ‘Every Night’).
Saturday Looks Good To Me – Hiding
Saturday Looks Good To Me – Ambulance (from album ‘All Your Summer Songs’)
‘Sound On Sound’ is available at label Redder Records website.
SLGTM’s myspace page.
SLGTM bio on All Music Guide.
An interview with the band, from Sonic Zine.
Paris Motel
Another band with pretty melodies is Paris Motel, except there’s also some country influence in their sound. String chamber music influence too – violas! The most unlikely source, NME, describes them as “a beautiful slice of archaic chamber pop that lifts you somewhere sublime”, while Independent says their music is “like a bolt from the blue.. impossibly lovely”.
I think this song of theirs really is beautiful.
Paris Motel – I lost My Heart/Philippe, Phil
An interview on The Beat Surrender.
Paris Motel’s myspace page.
