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.

The most beautiful colours chase the sun

Local Natives are officially the next big thing. Compared by some to Vampire Weekend, Arcade Fire and Fleet Foxes with good reason, they combine the interesting African drum rhythms of Vampire Weekend, the folky harmonies of Fleet Foxes and the overarching heart-aching melodies of Arcade Fire to powerful and infectious effect. Airplanes, the first song I heard by Local Natives, didn't immediately blow me away I have to admit; it sounded too much like a dozen other indie bands. But the plaintive refrain of the chorus (I love it all/So much I call/I want you back) stayed with me, and when I heard Sun Hands, a slightly darker, more percussive track, I knew that Local Natives were ones to watch. The five guys are clearly intelligent and passionate about what they do - you can see evidence of this in their blog - but you also get the impression that this is a band driven to achieve success and recognition, especially after checking out their slick myspace. This isn't necessarily a bad thing because the songs are worthy of success and recognition, but get ready for them to be name-checked a thousand times in the next year!

Local Natives are currently on the NME Radar tour along with Golden Silvers, Marina & the Diamonds and Yes Giantess - a pretty stellar line up! Debut album, Gorilla Manor is released on the 2nd November.

Check out their awesome cover of Simon & Garfunkel's Cecilia below:

You know it's real

This track is so incredible that I'm literally writing this post as I listen to it for the first time - it's that good. Regular readers may remember me raving about Florence and the Machine's cover of You've Got the Love - now hotly buzzed about London band the xx have done their own cover/remix of it. The xx's trademark sparse sound is in full force - in fact, only the harps and a looped vocal remain from Florence's original. The result is spell binding. I'd been reluctant to jump on the xx bandwagon, but having had their track Islands stuck in my head for about a week I have just bought the album, and I'm being won over. The tracks are all of a fairly similar melancholic, late-night vibe, but I like it - it's chilled out, it's urban and it's very modern.

Florence and the Machine - You've Got the Love (The xx remix)

The xx - Islands

{Artwork courtesy of ethoss on flickr}

Cover Me in Roses

So it's not the most original idea for a post, but I was listening to my iPod on shuffle the other day, and I realised just how many cover versions of songs I have. On my old radio show we used to do a feature where we would get the listeners to vote between two versions of the same song, and I always used to struggle to think of cover versions. However, now I'm not doing the radio show, I can, of course, think of many.

This may become a regular post on Tricks, but I'm reluctant to post cover versions unless they're something really special. A good cover can totally transform a song, taking it in a new direction, exposing something different about the song. It's pretty standard indie fare to cover a well known song in an acoustic fashion, highlighting the 'meaning' behind a pop song, singing it in a conciously detached, ironic sense. While the best of these can be great, others remind you that, actually, production can make a track.



One of my favourite covers of the moment is the Flaming Lips' version of Borderline, originally by Madonna. The zany Lips take what was a decent 80s pop tune and turn it into an indie epic, with fuzzy bass lines, organs, and a soaring, pulsing guitar solo. along with an underlying sense of dread. It was for the Covered: A Revolution in Sound compliation that Warner Bros have put together to celebrate 50 years in the business. I have a feeling that the Michelle Branch version of A Case of You, also on the record, won't be making this post, however, if the compliation proves to be as good as this Flaming Lips cover, then I shall eat my words. You can watch the psychedelic video here, and listen to the track on hypem here.

[Artwork courtesy of Papa Goiba on flickr.]