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]

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.