The Power of the Gods

Hercules and Love Affair came through the post yesterday and it's simply amazing. Like thirty years of dance music mashed together into ten wonderful tracks that have heart, soul and a great groove! As I said when I half-reviewed Blind, I'm not the biggest Anthony Hegarty fan but this project gives him more dynamism and brings out the diva inside of him. Other contributions come from R&B singer Nomi. My favourite tracks on the album are Blind (uh, not going to explain again - see the original post somewhere below), Time Will (slow out of the starting blocks, but it picks up the pace and builds up immensely over the space of a few minutes) and Athene (Kim Ann gives a great vocal performance here I think - almost emotionally detached but bewitching as well. She goes through a great range over the verses and it's all to the tune of an amazing beat). I won't be able to stop listening to this for a while to come. Oh, well until Siouxsie and the Banshees arrives (Tinderbox - has my favourite Siouxsie song on it).

Neon Lights Up My Day

Neon Neon - partly made up of Super Furry Animal Gruff Rhys. Now, I Lust You is really a typical song for him, because it's sort of happy and light-hearted with lots of little electronic blips and blops here and there and has just the right level of weirdness for it to be fairly commercial but also a bit indie and out there. I love it. I really love it. Especially the bit where all these drums and beats come in towards the end and everything just gets that little bit more intense. It's a lovely little bit of electro-pop that sends you into a blissful state... like it's just done to me right now.... Ahhh.....

A Little Bit of Trivia...

For your entertaining pleasure, it may or may not interest you to learn that Elbow are now the only band to ever get four successive 9/10 ratings for their albums in the NME.

Their new release The Seldom Seen Kid means that they have set a record - the NME calls them the most consistently good indie band in the world. Well, I guess this record proves it.

They Didn't Let Me Down

No, they didn't! They weren't like the Editors were last year (er, sort of) and I'm well and truly delighted with Midnight Boom! The Kills have not disappointed me. I wasn't sure whether or not I would find any song better than Cheap and Cheerful but there are lots of gems on the entire album. Personal favourites of mine are Tape Song (brilliant build up into punk explosion), Last Day of Magic (oddly melancholic, in its fiery way) and What New York Used to Be (like an atom bomb being dropped to unleash a mushroom cloud of rock over the city).

Ooh, a very early contender for album of the year, methinks....

Herculean?

Yes, I have heard the new song by Hercules and Love Affair - those disco-infused NY mixers. Well, I actually really like Blind. I'm not really an Anthony Hegarty fan but this gives him another dimension. The backing track is quite cool too - I'm quite captivated really. Something about it really hit me when I heard it at about ten to seven this morning. The only thing is, I think the brass section between verses could have been a bit more spectacular. I'll have to check them out more...

P.S. Just got Midnight Boom by the Kills through the post. So far so spectacular. Will keep you posted.

Definitely Spectacular

I'm motivated to write - twice in one day is, as you know, rare for me. However, I have felt the need to write about this band for a while now and have only just come around to it, considering I've just heard their single. Again.

I have a fear to like MGMT in case they become massive but a part of me thinks that they won't because, despite the fact that they're upbeat and led quite strongly by drums (something I hadn't really noticed until I'd heard Time to Pretend for the thousandth time and realised that the drums came out very clearly) they are actually quite psychedelic in their strange, modern way. They talk about drugs too much to become well loved anyway. They went down quite well on Later with Jools Holland though, and every band that has generally becomes popular. Unfortunately. Anyway, the album Oracular Spectacular is out in the very near future, so give it a go. It might just send you to a distant planet.

Tense... Too Tense

Here's a progression worth shouting about: anyone who has seen, heard or known of The Kills' recent work will surely realise that they are making some wonderfully dark and sexy rock music. I can safely say that their last two singles (the slightly stripped down U.R.A. Fever and the explosively catchy Cheap and Cheerful) are a magnificent triumph that has me ready to pounce at their new album Midnight Boom.

I was gripped by Hot Chip's new effort before, but this is something else. Bearing in mind the rave review I gave to Made in the Dark I will probably be bouncing off the walls to Midnight Boom - and I don't really do that very often. Of course, I'll have to see. Last year I loved the singles that Editors released from An End Has A Start (of which The Racing Rats was probably the best) but was a bit disappointed with the content of the rest of the album - it wasn't that it wasn't good but it didn't live up to my expectations. I knew they were apparently going to be dark and menacing, tackling tricky subjects and moaning about the most depressing of subjects but they could have at least made an album that had the quality of The Back Room (by which I mean that any track could have been a single).

Anyway, I realise I've gone off the subject a bit - back to The Kills. I hope NOT to be sorely disappointed with the album, which is released fairly soon (exact date? No idea!) But, I don't think I will be. I'll have to wait and see. So, as for why I've called this post Tense... Too Tense, it's because I'm anxious about this. Seriously (but you probably gathered that already).

No Growing Pains

So, I said before that the new album by Sons and Daughters was going to be good, didn't I? Well... It is! It's not as dark or dangerous compared to their last album, The Repulsion Box, but This Gift still has some really good tunes! Maybe this departure from the dark and seedy is just what the Glaswegians need. In my opinion, they're much better than counterparts Glasvegas, can write better tunes and sing better, less long-winded lyrics.

So Darling is, predictably, the best song on the album. But you could put everything else at a close second - they're all wonderful. Chains, for example, is a short song that blasts through like a stampede and lead vocalist Adele is on top form. Well, I can't really single out any particular song for praise because I pretty much love them all. Gilt Complex and Split Lips are probably two of my other favourites. But again, it's hard to believe that they're still a fairly unknown band and are being left in the dark by the likes of Glasvegas and Franz Ferdinand. However, if they keep on going like this they may just show that there's more to the Scottish indie scene if you just scratch the surface.