In My Hungover State

...this feels alarmingly appropriate.

It's Over Now from Adam Donen on Vimeo.

Best Song I've Heard In Months

Chet - The Night The Night

Myspace | Buy

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And while I'm at it, this the best (free) album I've heard in months.

Navigator - Bad Children (#16 - click on the album cover to download)

or Myspace

Death's Not Your Friend / Monster Head Room

First of all, apologies for not updating this blog at the moment and for not updating it over the next few weeks but we both at ALE are moving flats this week. It'll take a little while to set up the Internet in our new place and to settle down so we'll be back in a few weeks. In the mean time, here is my recent Record Of The Week and you should all buy the new Ganglians album too. It's brilliant and perfect for the summer. (It'll probably be my next purchase.) I've just lifted the descriptions off the excellent Piccadilly Records website because I don't have time for this. There's packing to be done!

Wooden Shjips - Shrinking Moon For You

This release brings together a collection of long deleted vinyl only sides from San Francisco's Wooden Shjips. The Wooden Shjips' earliest material was released on vinyl, pressed in small quantities that were either free or hard to come by and are now hopelessly out of print. So, The Shjips do the honourable thing and let everyone get their mits on 'the early stuff', and limited singles, for those of you who missed the original vinyl (and that isn't surprising if you did). We are very happy to be able to provide you with the rush of "Shrinking Moon for You", 8 plus minutes of groovy guitar head melt. Followed up by "Death's Not Your Friend" which is a bit looser round the edges, a touch of strung out, fractured, acid soaked psyche. "Space Clothes" is third up, laying down some very oddball spoken word (backwards) over oscillating guitar feedback and ambient weirdness. Onto "Clouds Over Earthquake" the total classic sludge-fest from the 'Dance California 7"'. And after that is what is no doubt their best single, the aforementioned "Dance California" with guitars tuned up and effected to sound like bloody bagpipes, this wall of sonic mind f*ck is relentless in groove and attack. Last up is "Sol 07" which was a limited Holy Mountain release split over two sides, here laid out in all it's wasted funky grooviness, to a nice 11 and a half minutes. Godlike.

Ganglians - Lost Words

Seemingly out of nowhere comes this 'best of year' challenger from Sacramento's Ganglians. Fusing the unhinged avant-outer-ethereal qualities of Panda Bear with the perfect pop of the Beach Boys and a wide-eyed-dreamy surround-sound hi-gloss, this is an astonishing all encompassing album that's gonna amaze everyone that hears it. It's probably been best described by the band themselves, 'this album is pure naive headphone acid pop to drive to, at least that's what was going through our heads.' - Ganglians. Totally recommended!!

Give Me Rain, Fertile Days, Open Skys

After buying an American, Scottish, then French artist’s record, it was about time I turned to the English. Sky Larkin are from Leeds and I’m certain you’ve heard us sing their praise on this very blog before. They’ve certainly come a long way since we first spotted them back in 2006? The album The Golden Spike has been my most played album this year according to iTunes and rightly so.

Sky Larkin - One Of Two

One Of Two is possibly the oldest song on the record. There was a version on the self made Souvenir EP they sold 3 years ago and yet it is still one of the most exciting songs around today. I get goosebumps whenever the bass guitar comes in at the chorus. It’s a rousing moment that I can help thinking that would be ideal played as football teams run out of the tunnel before kick off. Leeds United FC is the team I’m thinking of, rather appropriately. Not that Strings For Yasmin doesn’t do the job well enough.

The only problem is how the words “one of two” will work. The crowd could sing “one to two” to signal a predicted 2-1 victory to Leeds, but that would be interpreted as an away win if anything. Maybe keeping “one of two” it could mean that we have a big squad to cover every position and that the selection of one of two players is taken every game and doesn’t make a difference to the eventual outcome of a Leeds victory. That will scare the opposition. Substituting a few words to get “Four Four Two” works for me. It would be wonderful for the crowd to chant their favourite formation before the game. It’s more football orientated anyway. Yes that’ll do. Four four two, four four two…

The Smith Westerns

Not too much writing this time, I’m going to let the music do the er… singing, which is supplied from Chicago’s The Smith Westerns. A lot people are saying they sound like Marc Bolan, but I wouldn't know about that, so I'll plough on ignorantly.

The Smith Westerns - The Glam Goddess

Musically, they are yet another band producing that lo-fi high distorted sound that seems to be quite popular at the moment and the kind of band that Gorilla vs Bear would get very excited about. Indeed, they featured the band a few days ago. What makes The Smith Westerns different, if not in sound, but in accomplishment is the balance over the whole record. There are those songs with plenty of melody like above and those that are heavy with the noise and feedback like below. It’s this that makes the record succeed where Times New Viking, Wavves, Thee Oh Sees, etc all fail and therefore this could be described as near perfect.

The Smith Westerns - Tonight

Their self titled LP is out now on HaZoc Records.

If You Want To Help, Just Kill Yourself, But I Won't

Let’s Wrestle release their long anticipated debut album at the end of this month and I managed to get, nay stole, a listen to it this week. For those of you that don’t know yet and you really should, Let’s Wrestle are a three piece from London who play scuzzy three minute power pop songs which emphasises attitude rather than style.

I talked in my last post about how much fun Phoenix are. I feel it’s very important to have in your collection plenty of albums that can only be described as fun. They may not be life changing, technically good or even highly regarded, but they should have the power to put a smile on your face at any occasion. I guess in many ways, this is what Radio One plays all day long and it’s the kind of music that the masses lap up and only regard music to invoke this kind of enjoyment, without music being aggressive, brooding, calm, detached… I could go on and I will... ethereal, freakish, gloomy, hypnotic... that’ll do... and whatever else music can reward you with. But this isn’t about music snobbery, it’s about records that are fun and this is where Let’s Wrestle come in.

Let's Wrestle - My Arms Don't Bend That Way, Damn It!

So yeah, this album is a lot of fun. I can’t see this album getting higher than an avergae of 7/10 in the reviews, which I agree with. But it is very enjoyable and could be more favoured ahead of a so called more arty record that would be 9/10 or whatever. My Arms Don’t Bend That Way, Damn It! is the opening song off the album In The Court Of The Wrestling Let’s (a homage to King Crimson) and sums up what to expect on the 16 track album.

Let's Wrestle - Let's Wrestle

It’s a shame that they decided not to include some of their older songs such as Let’s Wrestle, I Wish I Was In Husker Dü, Music Is My Girlfriend and Song For Abba Tribute Band, but we will always have those songs and perhaps their exclusion is favoured since I don’t think the rerecording of I Won’t Lie To You matches the original. So everyone together now, let’s wrestle, let’s fucking wrestle.

So Sentimental, Not Sentimental No

I never really got into French band Phoenix. I knew they had some good reviews and some dedicated fans, but I never put the time into them until their fourth album came out a few weeks ago. And I never expected it to be my next record purchase.

Wolgang Amadeus Phoenix has proved to be my go to album in the last two weeks. By that I mean that whenever I was on the way home from work and I wasn’t sure what to listen to, this would be it. It's just a lot of fun. Similarly if I was listening to something that I wasn’t enjoying, I would always switch to this album again to make sure I am enjoying the music without any risk. I need to be careful that I don’t over play it at the minute, otherwise I could then go months without listening to it again. Its happened with Sky Larkin, Jeff Lewis and Dananananakroyd recently. All albums I love that I've overkilled in the space of a fortnight.

I do think the first half is better than the second, but I have listened to the earlier songs more, which happens on most albums since the majority of my listening is on the move. I will have plenty of time to enjoy side B on my lovely new limited white vinyl though.

Phoenix - 1901

1901 has been on their website for months now, but I didn’t hear it until I listened to the album. As soon as I did, I got the sense that I had heard it before however and it just seemed to clickwith me. It’s such a tune and one which already I could call one of the great pop songs of 2009. You can now hear some remixes of this song on their blog here.

Today Phoenix annouced some dates they are playing here in Britain. They are listed below for your convenience. Now let’s sit and wait patiently until October.

Oct 24 - O2 Academy 2, Birmingham
Oct 25 - Arches, Glasgow
Oct 26 - O2 Academy, Bristol
Oct 27 - Academy 2, Manchester
Oct 28 - O2 Academy, Brixton