Florence & The Machine w/The XX @ Bournemouth o2 Academy 18/09/09 LIVE REVIEW

Florence Welch and the Machine haven't failed to amaze any of the crowds which i've been amongst this year (at Glastonbury in June the incessant and unforgivable screams led her to proclaim "We haven't got any more songs! Wait until the next album!") and Bournemouth was no different, despite the crowd starting the night off somewhat subdued. When it came down to it, i heard once again, one of the loudest crowds i've ever heard in my life - and it's not even as if the makeup was mainly screaming 15 year olds, it turned out an even spread of male and female, young and old.

There's just something about Welch's innocence and naiveity as well as her flamboyant fashion sense that just cement a soft spot into so many of her adoring fans - this, of course, coupled with an amazing and incredibly mature singing voice, a solid selection of songs and set of ecletic musicians (harpist!) and the fact that she's come from the honest beginnings of discovery singing motown covers in a London nightclub toilet.

This time, she had to follow much hyped support band The XX (live review) - i'm sure you know how much i love this band), who's downbeat mix of post-punk/RnB and trip-hop left the Bournemouth audience a bit bemused and a bit confused. They nevertheless gave a great, unassuming performance to a totally motionless crowd.

Welch and her band however were given a rapturous reception - there was no acoustic set as there was at Reading Festival for her this time, she gave her all to every song and was note and performance perfect in every sense - her trademark festival move of climbing up the set during opener Kiss With A Fist didn't happen this time, most probably down to the fact the former Bournemouth Opera House didn't actually have much for her to climb on to. The set was small and intimate, and as well as having one of the nicest interiors of any venue in the area - it perfectly matched up to Florence's floral stage decoration and flowing black and gold dress.

It is hard to see where she's really going to go from here in terms of a follow up. Under Island Records Welch has written an album not far from perfect, and with her personality, humour ("this song is a new one - it's called drumming song because... there's a lot of drums at the beginning") and fantastic songwriting, she has (at the risk of sounding cliche) taken the UK music scene absolutely by storm. After one album she gained Mercury Prize, BRIT award and MTV Music Award nominations and scooped the Critics choice, all whilst gaining a number 2 position in the UK album chart and 225,000 nationwide sales.

Florence & The Machine - Hospital Beds (live at London Calling) (MP3)

Florence & The Machine - 'Lungs' OUT NOW (amazon)

New Frightened Rabbit - Swim Until You Can't See Land + UK Tour

Depressive Scottish folk rock band Frightened Rabbit have announced details of a new full length UK tour in November in support of their untitled album due out in Spring 2010. The details of the follow up to 2008's critically acclaimed 'Midnight Organ Fight' is still shrouded in mystery - but single 'Swim Until You Can't See Land' is out later this year on 7" vinyl. Until then, you're stuck with my live mp3, and a lovely little solo acoustic video the band posted on Youtube some time ago.



The tour is extensive and nationwide, and includes several support dates with British veterans Gomez as well as dates in December with American college rock band Modest Mouse. Despite Frightened Rabbit's well-documented habit of failing to fill pubs in the UK but selling out huge venues across the pond, Frightened Rabbit are widely reported to be stunning live, and every bit capable of living up the record on stage - you only need to take a couple of minutes to listen to live album Liver! Lung! FR! to confirm that.

Frightened Rabbit - Swim Until You Can't See Land (live) (MP3) (taken from the new album)

*in support of Gomez.

November
07 Aldershot West End Centre
09 Oxford Academy 2
10 York Duchess of York
11 Nottingham Bodega
12 Liverpool Academy 2
14 Coventry Kasbah*
15 Northampton Roadmenders*
16 Brighton Corn Exchange*
17 Southampton University*
19 Exeter Lemon Grove*
20 London Troxy*
21 Tunbridge Wells Forum
22 Cambridge Soul Tree
24 Sheffield Plug*
25 Whitehave Civic Hall*

And supporting Modest Mouse in December:
07 Dublin Academy
08 Dublin Academy
09 Belfast Spring & Airbrake
13 Manchester Ritz
14 London Shepherds Bush Empire

Menomena's Danny Seim announces Lackthereof Greatest Hits

The quite remarkable Danny Seim has for eleven years been recording tapes (and later CDs) for his solo project Lackthereof - who originally began in 1998 - 2 years before his now-main project Menomena. Now, whilst the latter linger on their third album, Seim and Lackthereof have completed full length album number 9, 2008s Your Anchor (review); to be followed by A Lackthereof Retrospective 1998-2008 or A Christian Emo Twentysomething, his 10th full length release via FILMGuerrero.

The album will be available via selected digital retailers and on CD and will contain 20 new illustrations from the prolific part-time Menomena drummer, whose dark yet upbeat mix of post-punk, art rock and dreary indie experimentalism has been confusing Menomena fans for years.

Read early posts of Menomena - Friend & Foe or Lackthereof - Your Anchor, and pick up a sample mp3 from below, check the MYSPACE and watch this Amazon based space for a pre-order of the new album, out on October 13th.

Lackthereof - Safely In Jail (MP3) (taken from Lackthereof Retrospective 1998-2008)
Lackthereof - Locked Upstairs (MP3) (taken from Your Anchor)

Wild Beasts - Two Dancers ALBUM REVIEW

Hayden Thorpe's sonically unorthodox arrangement of Kendal based musicians branded under the pseudonym of Wild Beasts have been making music for 8 years now, and after 8 years and two albums of writing and perfecting, they've finally struck gold with Septembers 2009's Two Dancers. Last years' Domino release 'Limbo, Panto' was patchy at best, despite gaining the band recognition via support slots with Foals and a generally good critical reception.

Wild Beasts make music which appears not just independent from a record label, but also musically quite distinct from anything else on the market. Whilst shops, reviewers and magazines may have reluctantly lumped them into the British indie rock/experimental genres, their new album is diverse enough to be relatively unclassifiable by anyones' standards. It would certainly be a shock to us all if the name Wild Beasts didn't in fact come from the literal french of Les Fauves - an influential group of boundary pushing French painters, taking fully into consideration the life and musical motto of 'whatever you do will be understood in time' which Wild Beasts inform us they hold so close.

I could take you through this album in any number of ways; track by track, mood by mood or even arrangement by arrangement, but instead of this i'm going to do it with an attempt at some sort of reference to the style of each section of the album. Wild Beasts are certainly not a band like Friendly Fires - who while consistently churning out top quality material, fall into the trap of releasing deja-vu dancefloor fillers, even though for most they would slot conveniently next to each other on a genre defining record store shelf. Instead Wild Beasts are a band which pushes boundaries of what is expected with a fairly standard indie rock band arrangement.

First track All The Kings Men opens the album by showing off Thorpes' screeching falsetto. A rough rallying cry rattles over the calypso beats of the drums and the reverb draped strum progressions. Another musical highlight, in fact perhaps the album highlight is lead single 'Hooting & Howling' , which whilst starting off with an aimless howl and direction-lacking bassline, comes together with a 'kick-yourself' simple riff and airy piano, to execute one of the finest pieces of music this year.



Their songs often verge on semi-ambient, and synthesized expanses make frequent appearances behind sharper sounding guitar and piano lines. Hayden Thorpe howls are similarly well-frequented, unpredictable enough in structure to warrant comparisons to the Dirty Projectors' Dave Longstreth, despite obvious differences in tonality. This Is Our Lot, the bands 'rock' is their fall back track and its time signatures, dominant percussion and semi-orchestral backing come together beautifully and unconventionally. It is the tracks around this where a clear Foals influence in the synthesizers shines through.

The band are touring the nation to support this fantatic album through October, before jetting off around Europe for some far more exciting shows abroad in November.

Buy Two Dancers (Amazon)

Wild Beasts - Hooting & Howling (MP3) (taken from Two Dancers)
Wild Beasts - The Funpowder Plot (MP3) (taken from Two Dancers)

Come On Gang!

Come On Gang! are a Scottish 3 piece band formed at Edinburgh Art College in 2007. They make punchy pop music with punky guitars, easy melodies and the Marling-esque vocals of drummer Sarah Tanat Jones. Her shaken but strong voice elaborates over the quirky post-punk melody lines, fast-paced riffs and 3-part chants - Come on Gang! sound like Laura Marling singing on a Maccabees demo, with one give-away strand of pure garage rock shining through on occasion. As the myspace self-classification of Pop/Lyrical/Post-Punk suggests, this consistently upbeat pop band have a distinctly guitar pop edge, which in no way detracts from their lyrical and compositional maturity.

They formed in June 2007 and have already played a series of festivals and dates around Scotland and London. They played Reading & Leeds festival's BBC Introducing.. Stage, as well as SXSW in Texas, The Great Escape & Hinterland. They have two singles out, Start The Sound and Wheels, but no news of an album or any release date. Catching them live or buying their music whilst they remain album-less might be difficult, but is definitely worth it - but even if you find yourself restricted to their MP3s, it will brighten up your morning and stick in your mind.



(I was at this performance - you will see the Laura Marling vocal comparison loud and clear)

Come On Gang! - Wheels (MP3) (taken from the Wheels single)

Buy the music through the MYSPACE.

Introducing.. Years Of Rice & Salt

Years of Rice & Salt are a dark ambient post-rock/folk band from London who formed in Summer 2008. The band take their name from a Buddhist/Islamic alternative history science fiction novel, and have just released their Service Bell EP remastered concept album on the futurerecordings label. The mini-album, weighing in at 32 minutes and four tracks, revolves conceptually around a shipwreck. The recordings possess everything post-rock music should, plus some stunning and totally appropriate vocals.



The Years of Rice & Salt drummer Milo Marsei has just completed his scratchy visual interpretation of Flashes of Warmth to accompany the totally free album. The 4 track release makes a very firm and strong statement about what this band are capable of arranging in what, in context, is clearly a very short period of time.

The music they put together is bleak but instrumentally complex, their sound is electrified in places and intensifies as the 32 minute EP progresses. Parts are very upbeat and almost danceable - particularly around the second minute of Splendid Isolation, not something you'd expect from a track with such name. It is the positive parts of the EP where their folky influences really shine through and these parts, and the downbeat sections which usually follow, are some of the EP's highlights. The Years of Rice and Salt are a very encouraging addition to the current roster of British post-rock bands, and with no quoted influences, a myspace self-description as 'nu post rock' and an excellent free EP on the internet, things can only get better for The Years of Rice & Salt.

You can buy the Service Bell EP on CD from futurerecordings HERE, visit the MYSPACE, download Occasional Flashes of Warmth below, or watch that track's video above via Youtube.

Years of Rice & Salt - Occasional Flashes of Warmth (MP3) (from the Service Bell EP)

Introducing.. The Swing Movement

The Swing Movement is a Leeds based indie rock band, with sound somewhere between that of first album Arctic Monkeys and darker northern indie rock bands such as Kubichek! and Forward Russia! Their more downbeat sections sound not unlike an early Oasis, frequented by chaotic garage rock aggression the former always lacked. The Swing Movement's influences are fairly clear, they make no secret of the British indie rock scene they slide right in to, but their rough vocal swagger and 'music to be played loud' overdriven progressions are enough to make anyones absent-minded gig-going head nod.

They recorded their debut album in November 2008 with Jay Reynolds and Richard Formby (Wild Beasts producer) and have already played slots at Leeds festival 2007, and support slots with the impressive roster of Esser, Yeasayer, Dinosaur Pile-Up, Team Waterpolo, Sons & Daughters and Screaming Lights amongst others. They quote their influences as Nina Simone, Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Nick Cave, and The Velvet Underground and to an extent this is evident, but the Swing Movement definitely put their own unique 2008 stamp on every note they hit. Streaming lead lines and crunching guitars back up perfectly the widely reported stage presence of singer/guitarist Ben Walker.

In terms of tours, they have intermittent tour dates through to Christmas around Sheffield, London and Bradford, and currently there is no news on a new album. However, from a band with such consistent material under their belts, there is surely more to come. The Swing Movement are surely destined for a good level of success.

For a taster, you can either listen to the music on their Myspace or download the fantastic 'Jigsaw' below.

The Swing Movement - Jigsaw (Mp3) (from Freak Show Circus)

I would include a buy link in this post, if only i could find one!

Introducing.. It May Never End

It May Never End is the solo post-rock project of Australian Neil Spicer. His music takes the form of atmospheric and uplifting post-rock in the vein of This Will Destroy You and Explosions In The Sky, and i'm not simply pulling these out as examples of well known post-rock bands. Spicer pulls off their sound almost perfectly. He is currently unsigned and has been making music under the It May Never End name since last November.

The 12-minute masterpiece Last Light could quite easily be mistaken for the next This Will Destroy You release - as could any of his tracks. What 4 members create in a studio is quite comfortably equalled by the lone part time Australian musician. His music is euphoric and awe-inspiring, the tearing outros unpredictable from the intermittent guitar plucks of the intros. What emerges from the flattened and ambient intros is a selection of disorientating and brightened melodies, awash with reverbial and heavily delayed instrumentals. Last Light as a track takes a darkened turn towards the latter part of the song, Sigur Ros style semi-ambient organs enter on cue for a loud and thrilling ambient thrash outro. It May Never End truly wears its influences on its sleeve, but Neil Spicer has come out with a free EP of very solid music (minus a few minor mixing misjudgements), which is well worth a listen.

You can visit the Myspace here, where the link to the full (and 100% free) album appears to be dead - or the facebook, where as far as i can see its still live.

Alternatively, pick up the fantastic Last Light from below (via mediafire).

It May Never End - Last Light (MP3) (taken from Such Is Life)