Filed under: news, trouser press, video, where's the gigs | Tags: 2008, alan pedder, dead disco, heartbreak, kid british, little boots, marina and the diamonds, music, news, victoria hesketh, wonky pop
Split 7″ with Heartbreak available at November shows only
After wowing audiences at her CMJ shows last week in New York, Victoria Hesketh (aka Little Boots) is gearing up for a pretty huge November. The former Dead Disco frontwoman hits the road for a brief UK tour with Italo disco revivalists Heartbreak on the 20th, just two days after her debut US release, the Arecibo EP, hits both digital download and conventional stores.
Famous for constantly posting new material up on her Myspace for fans to get a taste of, as well as her often brilliant Tenori-On YouTube covers, it’s sometimes easy to forget that she’s actually only released one single to date. But that’s about to change, with a limited edition split 7″ vinyl to be sold exclusively from the merch desk on the upcoming live dates, dubbed the Automatic Lovers Tour. One one side of the split will be Hesketh’s ‘Magical’, produced by Heartbreak, and on the other side, Heartbreak’s ‘Don’t Lose My Time’, not produced by Hesketh.
Filed under: news, where's the gigs | Tags: 2008, alan pedder, all tomorrow's parties, kelley deal, kim deal, kristin hersh, music, news, the breeders, throwing muses
Throwing Muses also confirmed for the event
Massively influential queens of alternative rock The Breeders will curate the second weekend in next year’s All Tomorrow’s Parties at Butlins, Minehead, and with only the first five of 40+ acts confirmed as yet it already looks exciting. Gracing the stage along with Kim and Kelley Deal will be Kristin Hersh’s equally legendary Throwing Muses, a prospect that has us foaming at the mouth with rabid anticipation. Recent Breeders album Mountain Battles (review) may have been a little disappointing but the force of their live show remains a wonder to behold. In short, this is not to be missed.
The event runs from May 15th–17th and tickets are now on sale in all the usual places (here is best). But if all those monies are a little stretch for you pre-Christmas, ATP are graciously offering a limited deposit scheme where you can pay £50–£60 per person up front and pay the rest in January; the deposit guarantees you an apartment and entry to the event.
Filed under: free music friday, mp3, review, video | Tags: 2008, alan pedder, larkin grimm, music
Larkin Grimm
‘Dominican Rum’
Inspired by “the imaginational galaxy where orgasms come from, formed out of dreams of leggy, surgically enhanced blondes,” the new album from fiercely talented radical environmentalist Larkin Grimm is, even by her own standards, a pretty stellar collection of atmospheric, magical songs that consolidates the promising noise experiments of her previous albums. No fears of jumping the shark here, Parplar is the best thing Larkin’s done to date. It’s also “a bit of a lesbian feminist album” that explores various themes of violence, sex and spirituality and takes some of its inspiration from the likes of Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Amy Winehouse. “Becoming one with the human race is difficult,” writes Larkin on her blog, “but fortunately I’ve been inspired by the struggles of a lot of other women from my generation.”
Parplar is the 26 year old itinerant’s first release on Michael Gira’s hallowed Young God Records – home of Wears The Trousers heroine Lisa Germano – and was trimmed down from a potential 50 songs written during “a near-manic tidal wave of creative energy”. ‘Dominican Rum’ is a disturbing portrait of a beautiful, wrathful woman literally coming apart in “the ugly world of men”. Over a frenzied piano, tambourine and banjo rhythm Larkin delivers a bizarre tirade of potent, incredible poetry – sample lyric: “The microcosmic spiralled eggs inside my uterus are sparkling and bursting with the greenest yellow pus / the milk that feeds my baby from my breast is flowing black / it looks like oil and smells like death and I can’t hold it back.” Highly recommended.
Filed under: free music friday, mp3, review, video | Tags: 2008, alan pedder, jessica grace, music
Jessica Grace
‘What Is It In You?’
“It’s about accepting my own circumstances and daily life, instead of trying to escape them by thinking it would be better if I was someone else, or with someone else,” says London-based singer-songwriter Jessica Grace when I ask her about ‘What Is It In You?’, one of the standout tracks on her 2007 debut Insert Quirky Title Here…. “It’s about being addicted to a person’s personality for whatever reason. Normally it’s because that aspect of them is in us, it’s just that we either can’t see it or are too scared to reveal it. Though by the end of the song I’m still pleading for him to come back to me, but of course insulting him at the same time. Poor guy.”
Jessica has been writing songs since the age of 14, when a smalltown childhood and her musical lineage conspired with the emotional hit of Joni Mitchell and Tori Amos, the temperament of The Pixies and the ’80s kitsch of goth-rockers The Sisters Of Mercy to produce an artist of surprising philosophical depth and lyrical brilliance, switching between extremes of melodrama and slapstick humour. After filming the video for ‘What Is It In You?’, which involved lots of running around the London Underground in a pink satin nightie (well it was midsummer) and many painstaking hours of animation, she’s currently hard at work in the studio on the follow-up to Quirky, due next summer. A new EP all about the vagaries of love is also in the works. MP3 and video after the jump.
Filed under: free music friday, mp3, review, video | Tags: 2008, alan pedder, ann vriend, halloween, music
Ann Vriend
‘Hallowe’en’
“Needing is tricky when you’re not used to treats,” sings Ann Vriend on this seasonally relevant tune from her third album When We Were Spies, released back in March in her native Canada. More a reflection on the hyper-commercialism of the ‘holiday’ and feeling empty than a spooky evocation of ghosts and ghoulies to scare your socks off, it’s certainly an alternative to the usual silly season fare. But it’s not entirely serious. As with Spies as a whole, there’s a lot going on in the lyrics. One moment she’s mourning a lost relationship, the next observing how the socioeconomic landscape of North America has changed, and another moment later having a subtle dig at hypocritical anti-homosexual religious zealots – all sung in her beautifully expressive, unusual voice.
Written while on tour in Australia, where Hallowe’en barely even registers on the social calendar, the song started out as an almost stream-of-consciousness listing of vaguely associated seasonal paraphernalia and Ann seems quite content to leave it up to us to derive our own meanings from it. When she sings “I crave the warmth of your body / I want you here beside me more than I want peace and equality / oh the Witch of the West hasn’t saved me,” it could be a simple reference to ‘The Wizard Of Oz’ or a veiled political attack on Condoleezza Rice. Dig out your magnifying glasses, good sleuths, for she’s not telling. MP3 and video after the jump.
Filed under: free music friday, mp3, review, video | Tags: 2008, alan pedder, music, on!air!library!, school of seven bells, secret machines
School Of Seven Bells
‘Connjur’
Named after a (possibly folkloric) South American academy of pickpockets, it’s no use being less than fully prepared for School Of Seven Bells to steal away with your heart once you’ve heard their blissful debut album Alpinisms, out November 17th through Full Time Hobby. Fresh off the boat from Brooklyn having only just made their UK live debut this week, the band arose from the ashes of ambient post-rock outfit On!Air!Library! who disbanded in 2005. Twin sisters Alejandra and Claudia Deheza struck up a creative partnership with Benjamin Curtis, then guitarist for David Bowie favourites Secret Machines, after meeting him while touring with Interpol, and in early 2007 the band became the main focus of all three members.
Alpinisms is a sort of concept album, 11 songs conceived as a sequence of secret letters that moved between the seven pickpockets that made up the School, but the music is anything but sequestered. ‘Connjur’ is a gently pulsing, airy track that transports you high above the clouds, gliding over glacial ice fields and breathtaking views of snow-capped mountains. Only Curtis’s guitar rhythms keep you from vanishing into the ether, buoyed by the uplift of the Deheza twins’ breathy, ethereal vocal thermals. It’s dizzyingly lovely. MP3 and video after the jump.
wears the trousers magazine 