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

A few Dirty Pretty Things tracks from their upcoming debut album “Waterloo To Anywhere” have been leaked over the past few weeks. I wonder, could this be a concerted band/label attempt at Internet marketing, re: Arctic Monkeys?

Dirty Pretty Things – Gin And Milk

I love, love, love Larrikin Love. Listen to this track from their blistering debut EP, and watch the video for their upcoming single, ‘Edwould’ (out in the UK, April 3), and you’ll understand why.

Larrikin Love – Six Queens
Watch ‘Edwould’ the video, here.

They sound folksy but with a slight punk edge. I read in an interview with Room Thirteen that the band hates being compared to The Libertines. That’s understandable since every band probably wants to be recognised for it’s own efforts rather than being compared to so and so. But I feel all the Pete Doherty comparisons are perfectly reasonable though. Maybe it’s their whole dandyism, romantic vibe.

I have a new obsession, and it is called Elle Milano. Young, brash art-rock/punkers from the UK, their sound has been described as “like a tempestuous marriage between Blur and Robert Smith”. What initially hits you is the loud angry vocals and splintering guitar riffs. It’s almost like hardcore punk! Took me a while to get used to them, but beneath all the noise, Elle Milano has smart lyrics that speak to the modern listener, and their songs are really quite catchy!

I also like songs with nice titles. Like so:

Elle Milano – Believe Your Own Hype Always (demo)
Elle Milano – Ringtone Advertising Director (demo)

More demos available here.

Visit the band’s Myspace.
A very comprehensive fan site, with lyrics, 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.

The Strokes use to rule my world back in 2001. Raw, edgy guitar sound that I had never heard before. And they looked so totally utterly cool. No one sounded or looked like them.

Now of course, it’s different. After The Strokes came a whole slew of guitar-heavy bands. Even bands that didn’t come from New York (like Phantom Planet, the California poster boys) started to copy The Strokes in look and sound. Unfortunately for The Strokes, they started to pale in comparison to the copycats. Because they never reinvented themselves album after album; and worse, their albums never could capture the raw spontaneity of their original EP, the one that blasted them to fame.

If you want to hear what The Strokes should sound like, take a listen to The Harlem Shakes. Lo-fi garage rock that sets your feet (and heart) thumping! The rawness is all there, and they sound genuine rather than manufactured. They’ve actually been around for at least 2-3 years, but are still unsigned. But there’s starting to be a buzz about them in various music blogs, so hopefully things will change for them.

The Harlem Shakes – Disco 5000
The Harlem Shakes – Eighteen

The Harlem Shakes official site.
An interview with the band at Gothamist.

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.

Seeing as how I stole Pete Yorn’s album title for this blog, I suppose I’d better make Pete Yorn the subject of one of my early posts.

If I have to be totally straight and honest, his album ‘musicfromthemorningafter’ is in my list of top ten albums of ALL TIME. I’m not a die-hard devotee of Pete Yorn, and I don’t think his second album was up to standard at all. I don’t even think he’s cute. But I am a fan of his debut album. I bought it right when it was first released, in 2001, having heard of Pete Yorn through being a Phantom Planet fan then (I think he shared the same manager as them or something). Even today, it’s one of the rare cds that I can listen to without skipping tracks in between.

What makes this album so special? I don’t know. Maybe it’s the mix of guitar-rock with a dash of folk. Maybe it’s the sadness that resonates through the lyrics in spite of the upbeat melodies. Like somehow you get the feeling that Pete Yorn is forever the stranger, aloof in a crowd, but he’s comfortable being alone.

This was an album brimming with possibilities. I’m not aware if Pete Yorn released anymore cds after his second (disastrous) one, but I hope that he hasn’t lost that spark, and one day will release another stunning album like ‘musicforthemorningafter’.

Watch his video for ‘Strange Condition’, from ‘musicforthemorningafter’.