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.

I Felt So Stupid...

The Drums hail from New York, and specialise in a sort of wonky pop/rock that walks the light between heartbreak and light-heartedness. Let's Go Surfing combines driving guitar rhythms and jaunty whistles to come off like a modern Beach Boys (although, really, what do Brooklyn boys know about surfing?) while I Felt Stupid is a little bit more emoting. It kind of sounds to me like what a John Hughes film would sound like if it was a song - awkward, upset, funny, splattering emotions about everywhere, but in a teenage way. They'll pick themselves back up again. And I love the end of the song, with the kids playing and laughing. I do sort of get the impression, mainly from their website and the video for I Felt Stupid, that the Drums take themselves a little bit more seriously than summer teen pop songs though...

Also, it's horribly appropriate to me right now as I VERY stupidly broke my toe yesterday. Hurts like a bitch.

[Photo courtesy of Lili Vieira de Carvalho on flickr]

Waiting for that feeling to come

Last week I went to go see the new Blur documentary 'No Distance Left to Run' at Pure Groove record store, in Smithfields. It tells the story of Blur, ending with their triumphant reunion gigs at Glastonbury and Hyde Park in the Summer 2009. Blur are the sort of the band that I've always been dimly aware of - Song 2, Parklife, Country House etc. are indeed, faintly inescapable -but I've never truly loved them. I guess I was just always that little bit too young for them - I was 5 when their classic album Modern Life is Rubbish was released in 1993 - and I never really had someone leading me to them, in the same way that my Dad managed to do with the Rolling Stones, and a lot of 60s/70s music. But, I'd heard the documentary was good, I'd been meaning to check out Pure Groove, and my flatmate is a huge Blur fan, so I ended up heading down.

I have to say, to say I was pleasantly surprised would be an understatement. The film, in and of itself, first of all, is really fantastic. It uses unseen footage of interviews, gigs, everything, spliced together with their reunion tour, and contemporary interviews with the band. It's really well filmed too, the quality of the pictures are really great, with the whole film really having a tactile, smooth feel to it. But more than looking good, it's funny, clever, passionate and poignant.


Obviously, the soundtrack's good. First of all, I realised what a huge influence Blur have been on contemporary British music especially, but really just music in general. Secondly, I realised just how many Blur songs I knew without even trying - I mean, they're soundtracking the latest British Gas advert for crying out loud. They really are ubiquitous - in a good way, not in a Lady Gaga/Florence & the Machine/pop flavour of the moment way. The songs have stood the test of time, perhaps even matured over time. Furthermore, the gig footage demonstrates that live, Blur are also still relevant, engaging and entertaining (shame they have no further plans to play together!) - the spell-binding, shiver-inducing version of Tender at the end proves that if nothing else does.

Watch the trailer for 'No Distance Left to Run' here and a clip of them playing in Hyde Park here (I would embed them but you NEED to watch these in HD, full screen!!) The DVD is out to buy now.

Ich bin ein Berliner

Apologies for disappearing and failing to keep my New Year's Resolution... but I had a good reason. I've been doing a bit of travelling, seeing some friends and between that and all my studying (and study breaks) it all got a manic.

BERLIN




'Saturday night in East Berlin
We took the U-Bahn to the East Side Gallery'

Bloc Party - Kreuzberg