Dates for the diary

In the next month or so there are loads of new albums coming out by some awesome artists/bands - here are some of the most exciting ones.

MGMT's sophomore album, the somewhat presumptuously titled, Congratulations is officially out on April 13, but is currently available to stream on their website. The duo announced prior to the release that not only would there be no singles from Congratulations, but that it was considerably less commercial, veering towards the trippy, proggy side of their oeuvre, rather than the poppy stuff. That's right, Oracular Spectacular was TOO POP kids... To be fair, I don't think MGMT were ever the kind of band that expected to get as big as they did, so perhaps it's no surprise they've reacted against it - although on first listen Congratulations doesn't seem quite as fiendishly uncommercial as I expected.

I don't think I've really mentioned quite how excited I am about The National's new album, High Violet... It's out May 11th (10th in Europe!), and they've just released a preview of their new single, Bloodbuzz Ohio, available to download from the album's website.



Jamie Lidell, soul crooner/electronic maestro extraordinaire first came to my notice with his 2008 albun, Jim, a collection of soulful tracks that marked something of a progression from his earlier electronic, experimental stuff. But, judging by new single The Ring (video above), Lidell has merged the two, rather schizophrenic sides of his personality for his new album, Compass. It's out May 18th on Warp records, and features a whole host of guest artists: Beck, Feist, Feist, Grizzly Bear's Chris Taylor, Daniel Rossen, and Chris Bear, Gonzales, Pat Sansome from Wilco... yeah, I know. Incredible right?

LCD Soundsystem release their third album on the same date (in the U.S. anyways - us Brits get a whole day earlier!) The as-yet-untitled L.P. is supposed to be the last from James Murphy, the DFA honcho, under the LCD Soundsystem banner, but hopefully there will be more awesomeness coming from him soon. I'm loving the new single/leak, Drunk Girls, and I have every faith that the L.P. will be as good.

{photo courtesy of babyben on flickr}

Ellie Goul-ding is Explo-ding

Number One album, Critics Choice Brit Award - it's all taking off for Ellie Goulding. Part of the Neon Gold alumni, along with Passion Pit, who is she currently supporting on their UK tour (and I saw her doing just that a couple of weeks ago), her meteoric rise to success has been pretty surprising. I'm coming to the conclusion, however, that while she's a great song-writer, the production isn't really there, in my opinion. I really didn't expect to think that, given that Fin Dow-Smith, better known as Starsmith, has produced all but one of her tracks on the album, and people I really respect have been touting him for big things this year. Yet the slew of awesome remixes really make his stuff for her look light weight.

First up is Jakwob's dubby remix of Starry-Eyed, adding some dirty dub-bass into the mix. Then Penguin Prison and Theophilius London had a shot at Starry-Eyed, making it more up-tempo, adding a bit more punch to the chorus. Probably my favourite of the lot however is Chiddy Bang's take on Under the Sheets. The Philadelphia duo have done awesome remixes of MGMT's Kids, which is currently floating around the UK chart as Opposite of Adults, as well as Sufjan Stevens and a host of other indie-tastic tunes. Their Ellie Goulding remix adds a more traditional hip hop beat into the mix with some brilliantly witty lyrics over the top. So much fun!

Let go

Perfect stuff for a lazy Sunday afternoon. All of these tracks really deserve their own posts, but this'll have to do for now.

jj - Let Go
Chilled out new single from mysterious Swedes.


The xx - VCR (Matthew Dear Remix)
More double letter band names here - Matthew Dear takes the sparse original song and fill it up with goodness

Grizzly Bear - While You Wait For the Others feat. Michael McDonald
Yup - Michael McDonald of Steely Dan doing vocal duties for Grizzly Bear! Apparently they're friends of friends with his daughter.

Cults - Go Outside
Spring is here - I can believe that when I listen to this track

Beach House - Norway
So chilled out it's practically horizontal, and the album, Teen Dream, is awesome too.

[Picture courtesy of Personal Kaleidoscope on flickr]

It takes an ocean not to break

Fever pitch levels of excitement!

New album High Violet out May 10 in the UK/May 11 in the US.

You tried to taste me

The Morning Benders are a four-piece from Berkeley, California (NOW you see why I like them!). Their first song I heard off the new album, Promises, was produced by Chris Taylor from Grizzly Bear, and I think that's immediately obvious, the start of the song sounds so similar to Two Weeks by Grizzly Bear. But Two Weeks was pretty much my favourite song of last year, so that's no bad thing. The second song, Excuses, however, is a different kettle of fish. It's on a much bigger scale, with beautiful lush orchestration mixed with percussive drumming that sounds reminiscent of another Bay Area band, The Dodos.

The Morning Benders have been around for a while though - about a year ago they released an album of covers called, rather delightfully and appropriately, The Bedroom Covers. The choice of songs to cover is revealing - He's a Rebel by the Crystals, I Won't Share You, by the Smiths, and, my favourite, Dreams, by Fleetwood Mac. It literally does sound like the band singing in your bedroom.

The Morning Benders's second album Big Echo was released on Monday on Rough Trade - you can stream a few tracks from on it on their website, and download Excuses for free from there too.

Here's a video of the Morning Benders and a lot of other people playing Excuses - spine-tinglingly good.

My golden heart beats for you

You know when you literally, physically cannot get enough of a song? You'll play it on repeat and hear it echoing around and around your brain when you're not actually listening to it. It coming on the radio produces a sigh of joy or a whoop of excitement, followed by an immediate crank to the volume.

My addiction at the moment is Paper Romance by Groove Armada. It comes from their latest album Black Light, which was released earlier this week. The album's meant to reflect a darker turn for the normally relentlessly upbeat dance band, and if Paper Romance is anything to go by, it should be awesome. Paper Romance combines dark synth stabs, an emoting chorus and a vaguely annoying bell sound like sounds just like my text alert. Its dirty and sexy and angry and joyful all at once.

Having said that, the rate I'm listening to it at the moment means I'll probably be sick of it soon!

The video's pretty sweet too:

I've seen stranger things

Local Natives continue to prove their star pedigree with this fabulous video done by La Blogotheque. I've loved their album Gorilla Manor pretty much ever since it came out - it's full of well-crafted, melodic songs with beautiful harmonies and interesting percussion. This video seems to demonstrate that its not just studio trickery that creates those harmonies either - they're bang in tune for the whole thing. Furthermore, it seems to create this perfect idea of them as some kind of wandering band of minstrels (an idea that their song Camera Talk also backs up). Beautifully shot, it even manages to make the toilets of some skanky bar look artistic. When I wrote about Local Natives before, I was chatting about I think they have a very slick production, that they're very clued up in the best way to market themselves. I think the video definitely confirms that (as a lot of the La Blogotheque ones do) but that it also makes me feel that these guys have the talent to back it up, and that they really deserve success (perhaps demonstrating just how effective their marketing is? Haha, whatever, I don't care!). After seeing Vampire Weekend at Brixton Academy do a disappointing show a couple of weeks ago, it seems a shame if Local Natives, who are possibly more talented than VW, don't make it at least as big as them.