You Look Nice Today (podcast)
Are you familiar with the simultaneously glorious and dismaying feeling that results in the sudden realisation that you are just never going to be as talented as someone you admire, but, goddamn it, you are going to love them all the same? A dissonance compounded by a distinct lack of social graces, attractiveness or general hygiene on the part of the admired figure? Woody Allen should be a pretty good point of reference.
Self-taught Magic from a Book, Je Suis Animal
Je Suis Animal took all the interesting subjects of their arts degree and spun them into an album. It's the cinema geek in-jokes told through the strings, wind and melodica-esque cameos that turn this happily Norwegian pop into something suited to a silent film score.
Self-taught Magic from a Book is Lost and Lonesome's fiftieth release and has the right balance of lyrical storytelling and dance-around-your-room juice.
Fleet Foxes
It's been worth the wait for the Fleet Foxes' well-crafted debut to rear its head; folk, country, and bluegrass mixed together to rather more dreamy effect than their recent EP. Now, although the dynamics of the songs don't change all that much; drums roll at the bottom, acoustic guitars and keys chime in the middle, the lead guitar has its nose just in front, and the lush group vocals play on top, the use of clever musical arrangements makes it warmly captivating.
M83, Saturdays=Youth
M83's Anthony Gonzalez pulls back the blinds a little on his new album, Saturdays=Youth by lightening his characteristic, night-drenched synthesizer peals with a new summer-death-pop sensibility. Veering weirdly between Beverley Hills 90210 type bathos - complete with masochistic school-girl diary readings - and heavier, 12"-length instrumental moody bits.
Youth Novels, Lykke Li
Early last year a new wave of Swedish artists began to receive mainstream attention. A year on from ‘The Whistle Song' and the Scandinavian invasion is no transient novelty genre. The latest artist set to bust out of her home land is 22-year-old Lykke Li, whose could-it-be love song ‘Little Bit' has laid its hat in head.
Good Bad Not Evil
Atlanta, Georgia might be famous to most as the southern fried incubator of hip hop innovators Outkast, but that’s all about to change.
The newest and dirtiest stars to come out swinging from this talent lodestone, Black Lips, have certainly been skulking around the underground for ages. But with this, their fifth effort, the caterwauling cacophonists have finally delivered the slingshot full of scuzzy garage rock to get the wider music scene’s mouths gaping.
There The Open Spaces
In this instance, the singer is songwriter Markland Starkie. Known as Sleeping States to you and I, Markland has produced an earnest charm of an album, minimal in volume but not in effect. Opening compositions gently overlap into a hushed blur of soft electric guitar work and delicate vocals that float between delightful and haunting.
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