Lend Them Your Ears – 14/12/2010 - The Wartime Sweethearts

I can’t tell you much fact-wise about Wartime Sweethearts – they’re from New South Wales (that’s in Australia – FACT). They are influenced by moths and consist of 4 members – Louise Nutting, Wyatt Moss-Wellington, Kirsten Nutting and Angus Cornwell. Their website doesn’t work. That’s about it.

Oh, and their debut album Pancake Orion is amazing. A random mix of ideas and instruments, it has a habit of being somewhat disjointed – breaking from sultry female vocals to bring in minimalist electro beep-booping halfway through Sea Ceiling before the sultry vocals slide back in as if nothing ever happened, for example.

A lot of the time the jazz-influenced vocals and instrumentalism balance so precariously against each other that even the slightest alteration would make the whole thing collapse into one big, heaving, twinkly mess. But that just doesn’t happen. Sure, occasional moments jar and it sometimes feels like it’s music made by someone who can’t write fast enough to get all their thoughts out but despite all of this Pancake Orion is truly marvellous, compelling and damn good.

Imagine Sufjan Stevens, Yeasayer, Jeff Buckley and Tunng coming up with an album together and getting Solange Knowles to sing on it and you get a rough idea of what’s going on here. Mad, synth-y jazz-based number Bee Bop is a particular highlight as is the slow, squelching Hungry For Heat and the twinkling, affable Warmest Chord. Lyrics are also as mad as a box of frogs a lot of the time – “Fax me to the future”, “I’ll be your violin if you’ll be my boy” and the quite infuriating “She keeps coming back like a bad boomerang” – Surely boomerangs are meant to come back, that’s the whole point! Surely this woman is a good boomerang!

Mild, pedantic irritations aside this is a fantastic album from a band who I hope to hear a lot more from in the future. Currently their gigging seems to be restricted to Australia. In fact it’s restricted to a single date in Bar ME in Sydney on January 30^th at the moment. But the ambition, ability and creativity of this band can not be doubted, and that makes for fantastic listening. Fact.

Find out more at

www.myspace.com/wartimesweethearts

(that is literally it - no Facebook page, no Bandcamp or Soundcloud account, no videos on Youtube and not a Tweet to be seen. You can buy the album Pancake Orion at www.cdbaby.com though) 

3-4-FREE - 08/12/10

Hi everyone, sorry for the rather disjointed state the blog is in at the moment, this should only be the case for another couple of weeks. In the meantime I shall aim to give you just as much content as ever, just at slightly less regular and predictable intervals...

Transmittens - Marfa Texas
http://www.weepop.net/backcat.php

"What's this?" I hear you cry as you lay eyes on the artwork above and hear the hand-claps, school music lesson percussion and cutesy female vocals "an indie-pop track? How very surprising Chris!". To which I reply "go fuck yourself with a rusty spanner, you sarky prick".
Marfa Texas is an excellent track - lo-fi, catchy and eminently smile-raising. It's the opening track on their album We Disappear which has sold out in physical form but is available digitally on their Bandcamp page - http://transmittens.bandcamp.com/ (Hurrah for Bandcamp by the way!).
It is an excellent showcase of the Seattle duo's sparky energy which is now being put to good effect in their new band Seapony (http://www.myspace.com/seaponyband)

Zircon - Monstrous Turtles
http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR01558/

And now for something not at all similar - a remix of the music played in Map 5 (Forest of Illusion) of Super Mario World entitled Monstrous Turtles. Whilst Zircon (a.k.a. Andrew Aversa) may not exactly look like a rock star his manipulation of the video game soundtrack makes for awesome listening - epic and flowing, the kind of thing you might hear in a Commodore 64's most terrifying nightmare. Zircon also has a number of other remixes under his belt, including a particularly good re-imagining of 'Flying Heaven' from Super Street Fighter Turbo II but Monstrous Turtles stands head and shoulders above everything else



Futuristic Retro Champions - Jenna

Yep, more indie-pop with female vocals - go fuck yourself with a rusty etc. etc. The final track in today's 3-4-FREE comes from The Futuristic Retro Champions - Scottish purveyors of a wonderful electro-indie-pop that they describe as "a magical pop explosion". Jenna is the best track off their brilliant LaChunky EP , which is now available for free on their Bandcamp (www.retrochamps.bandcamp.com), and includes the rather awesomely titled Kitten With A Loaded Gun. Alas, the band are now splitting after 4 years together although, if you're in Scotland, you will have a couple of chances to see them one last time in the New Year. And I urge you to exactly that if you can - having seen them live a couple of time a few years back I can confirm they are one of the most fun bands ever to watch on stage.

So there you go, another 3-4-FREE for your enjoyment. The next one will be up soon but as I've said before things are a bit hectic at the moment. Best thing to do is to follow me on Twitter @cellardoorchris where I always put up notifications of new blog posts. Which is what I'm about to do now. Toodles!