Well, I suppose something like this was inevitable following the complete lack of raptors on Saturday.
Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’s next single “There is No God” is being released on June 21 (released with “God is Love” for the other side), with all profits going to Save Our Gulf and the Turtle Hospital. Awwwwwww! Turtles!
“There Is No God” b/w “God Is Love” is the new single from Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and features the musical talents of Emmett Kelly, Ben Hall, Pete Cummings, Peter Townsend, Billy Contreras, Cassie Berman and Rachel Korine. The songs were recorded by Mark Nevers and mastered by Paul Oldham.
It’s a terrific song, and it’s all pretty win-win if you like BPB and you like Turtles.
Out to support second LP Pala, St Albans group Friendly Fires have released this new video performance of first single “Blue Cassette”.
As well as being a great performance of the song, something I really like about this video is the slightly stunned look on lead singer Ed Macfarlane’s face, like he’s just been thrust into this strangely lit room with all the crazy disco lighting and told to sing a song or face the consequences. The moment where the focus is lost just adds to the sense that he’s a bit punch-drunk, even. Quality stuff.
After a “wild, fast” tour of the UK in a “little tiny roller skate thing” of a car, Sea of Bees have made it home in time for this video and super-short interview with BreakThru Radio. I shall continue to bang my head on my desk and regret that I missed seeing the show in Cambridge. While watching this video, which is tip-top.
Hitting* the internets to support the release of their fourth LP Eye Contact is this session from Gang Gang Dance, recorded in sleepy Englandshire in a 20ft mirrored room. Wait what?
After poking its head into yesterday’s Music Monday, Bill Wells and Aidan Moffat’s “The Copper Top” now has a video available for your viewing pleasure. It’s funereal in pretty much a literal sense, but with a lot of charm and not a small amount of wit – as you’d expect from Moffat. The Funeral You’ve Worked Your Whole Life For, indeed; and the pair have been waiting a while to get this together. Since Wells provided music for Arab Strap’s Monday at the Hug and Pint, in fact. Well, after all these years the collaboration is finally due: “The Copper Top” is taken from forthcoming LP Everything’s Getting Older, which is out on 10th May.
Well, it’s certainly a bit of a way from “Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants”, that’s true enough. “Albatross” is the latest from the Wild Beasts (and first video from upcoming third LP Smother). The song takes a definite turn for the melancholic, while the video is laden with symbolism that’s as muted in colour as the song is sombre in tone.
On the day that we discovered that, quelle surprise, a Stone Roses reunion isn’t going to happen (Mani: “Two old friends meeting up after 15 years to pay their respects to my mother does not constitute the reformation of the Stone Roses. Please fuck off and leave it alone. It isn’t true and isn’t happening”), here’s something from the very bottom of the John Squire cabinet of curiosities: 1997 The Seahorses single, “Love me and Leave Me”.
I, like everyone else I knew, loved the Stone Roses. Even to the point of actively enjoying The Second Coming. Yes, yes, I know, bloated claptrap and whatever, but “I’m gonna break right into heaven” and all that. I always had a soft spot for John Squire and his incessant noodly guitar stylings. It was the mid-90′s and that was cool.
Coming early next month will be a collection of La Roux’s b-sides, remixes and acoustic songs and a whole bunch of other stuff.
I loved the eponymous debut, and this will surely fill a gap before the second record. Hurrah! &c.
In addition to things like a version of “In for the Kill” featuring Kanye West, the download-only release will feature video, photographs, and artwork (click through for the tracklisting).
I don’t think I have very much of a clue at all what is going on in this video. The song is incessant, but the video is definitely on that whole weird/disturbing spectrum. I mean, it’s good, though: it’s unpredictable, wild, and involves some crazy bus-based shenanigans.
“Birdman” is the 3rd single from The Brute Chorus’s second LP How the Caged Bird Sings and came out on January 16th. From the 22nd the group will be heading off on tour around the UK (click through for dates)
A derelict chapel off the Old Kent Road seems to be an appropriate venue for this sixth 4AD session, featuring perennial TMS favourites Broken Records. As you’d expect, the video, directed by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, is all moody atmosphere, dark shades picked out with flashes of brightness (including the church’s stained glass windows), and it matches the prevailing tone of the group’s second record. Watch the recording of “You Know You’re Not Dead” below, and find a link to the full session below.
The session is also being offered as a tie in to the 11th January US release of Broken Records’ 2nd LP Let Me Come Home (which has been out here in Europe since, gosh, ages ago. I think it just took that long for the ship to sail across the Atlantic).
