“Fools”, to put it simply, is incredible. Channeling the tribal energy of Animal Collective and a Midlake-esque vocal delivery, “Fools” boasts a huge sound that seems impossible for a band of only two members. The union of vocalist/guitarist Meric Long’s emotive, personal verses and drummer Logan Kroeber’s frantic backing shouts and percussion yields one of the best American singles of the year, like maybe the best thing since Midlake unleashed “Roscoe” in early ‘06. The duo’s unique, bluegrass-leaning folk-pop sound is showcased beautifully across sophomore album, Visiter, which is sure to bring them some serious attention when it drops next year.

Also worth noting is their art direction. Earlier this year they performed for special needs students at LA’s Dorsey High School, prompting the kids to thank them with illustrated responses to the band’s music and performance. From these drawings the band culled most of the artwork for their website and the album packaging for Visiter, and aside from being a really interesting idea, the result actually works surprisingly well with their sound. I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing them live yet, but I’ve heard they’re really amazing and they’ll be opening for Les Savy Fav in LA this coming Saturday, so I’ll be flying out to see them and I couldn’t be more excited. “Fools” is all I’m at liberty to share at this juncture, but it should be more than enough to get you super pumped about the Dodos in 2008. Oh and the file’s hosted on our server at Frenchkiss, so no need for an alternate download link this time around. Rejoice.

MP3: “Fools” – The Dodos ((highly recommended))

And in the interest of full disclosure, yes I do work for Frenchkiss and yes it’s my step-brother who owns the label, but listen to “Fools” and just try to tell me it’s a personal bias and not the quality of the song that’s inspiring me to sing its praises.

Schoolmate and collaborator with the likes of Cajun and Bombay Bicycle Club, frYars (née Ben Garrett) is another young London upstart carrying the torch for the new wave of brilliant teenage talent coming out of the UK right now. But where his peers stick to the more familiar ground of conventional guitar-centric Britpop, frYars explores the less charted territory of experimentally-leaning electro-pop. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve championed Cajun Dance Party and the like in these pages extensively and expressed a sufficient amount of awe at their ability to produce such impressive tracks at such a young age, but frYars is perhaps the most impressive of them all. Crafting brilliant electronic pop compositions equally challenging and accessible, the 18 year-old has is establishing a unique niche for himself in an European electronic music climate heavily saturated with acts overly-fixated on dancefloor accessibility in the stead of creative songcraft and artistic merit.

On frYars remarkable debut EP, The Ides, the reference points are endless: the bouncy pop of Royksopp jostles for position alongside the keyboard sounds of Hot Chip, Maps and the Postal Service, even veering into the glitchy territory of Ed Banger house and 8-bit electro at times. Over it all, there’s Garrett’s astoundingly mature British croon recalling the likes of Alex Kapranos and Morrissey, singing lyrics rooted in a dream-like state of consciousness occupying a space somewhere between thought and expression. Nearly every song references death and despair to some extent, but the morbidity of it all is largely obscured by jaunty pop melodies and a youthful bounce. In discussing his lyrics, Garrett invokes the philosophy of his favorite thinker: “Nietzsche is presented or misinterpreted often as a negative force, despite being probably one of the more positive thinkers. He is tantamount to nihilism, yet nihilism is where we embrace life. We should think for ourselves, as far as we are able… this is probably Nietzsche’s greatest concern. At the same time, his writing is entertaining and full of art. This is what frYars is about, not doom and gloom.”

“Ides” is the single and title track, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a weak moment on the release thanks to Garrett’s beyond-his-years songwriting ability and former Clor frontman Luke Smith’s immaculate production on the record. Lyrics and basic melodies aside, Garrett and Smith experiment with a broad sound palette that takes the tracks to new heights of excellence. Production flourishes weave and wind throughout the mix, with the duo dropping all manner of synthetic sound effects and always with impeccable timing. “Madeleine” is perhaps the best example of this, all squiggling synths in the chorus and quirky booms and bips throughout. “HappY” is the true show-stealer on the record though, jangly guitars and hand-claps filling out the mix alongside his familiar keyboard sounds and politically-minded lyrics, all leading up to an immense chorus that takes to the skies without warning and hits hard as one of the year’s best. “HappY” is up for download below and I’d love to share more, but this shit’s really worth your dollar no matter how hard-earned it is. Plus, it’s available DRM-free in high quality on iTunes, so you really have no excuse this time. Or better yet, help out his label and buy the actual 7″ (A-side: “Ides”, B-side: “HappY”) and then sell when it’s worth mad money in a year or two. Long story short though, frYars rules.

MP3: “Circle Square Triangle” – Test Icicles

Staying close to home and working once again with Domino Records, he put out his debut single, “Galaxy of the Lost”, through the label last summer. Featuring the amazing “Waiting Game” stealing mad thunder on the B-side, it was one of the best debuts of the summer and established Hynes as one of the most promising talents in London’s burgeoning folk scene. Among Lightspeed Champion’s biggest fans is one Conor Oberst, who personally invited Hynes (who is originally from Houston) to his Omaha, Nebraska studio to record his debut album with Saddle Creek resident producer Mike Mogis. That record, titled Falling Off The Lavender Bridge, is due for an early 2008 release in the UK with a US release to follow shortly thereafter. Only two singles have been culled from it so far (the other being the four-act, 10+ minute epic “Midnight Surprise”), but their excellence – combined with the remarkable quality of their B-sides – suggests Lavender Bridge could be one of the best alt-country records since Bright Eyes’ own I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning in 2005. In fact, Hynes’ best track to date just might be the aforementioned B-side, “Waiting Game”, and that’s not even a lock to make the final cut for the record.

MP3: “Waiting Game” – Lightspeed Champion ((highly recommended))

There has been shit talked about how Lightspeed’s tracks are made on the female backing vocals often found on his recordings, but such accusations are clearly unjust when one considers the brilliance of “Waiting Game” and “No Surprise” (on which backing vocals are noticeably absent), easily two of his best tracks to date. That said, such doubts are somewhat understandable considering the incredible vocal talent Hynes surrounds himself with – Emmy The Great and Florence (of Florence and the Machine) are frequent collaborators – but its still Hynes emotive vocal stylings and impressive guitar work that have gotten him where he is today.

With the “Galaxy of the Lost” and “Midnight Surprise” singles already having earned him notoriety in the UK scene, Dev is set to make his American debut next week with the Galaxy of the Lost EP. The five-track EP culls the stand-out B-sides from his two single releases (”Waiting Game” and an acoustic version of “No Surprise”), alongside the title track and two cover songs – a brilliant rendition of “The Flesh Failures” from the musical Hair and a decent take on former ELO frontman Jeff Lynne’s “Xanadu”. Emmy The Great shows why she’s one of the most coveted backing vocalists in the London folk scene (even if her own material can’t quite stack up to that of her collaborators quite yet) on “Flesh Failures” and “Galaxy of the Lost”, but it’s Florence who really took the tracks to a whole new level when she supported Dev in his recent live session for BBC 6Music. In fact, the 6Music rendition of “Galaxy of the Lost” actually surpasses the brilliance of the original for me.

Lightspeed Champion, Live @ BBC 6Music
1. “Galaxy of the Lost” (ft. Florence) – Lightspeed Champion
2. “No Surprise” (ft. Florence) – Lightspeed Champion
3. “Mr. Fisk” (ft. Florence) – Lightspeed Champion

British audiences have had plenty of chances to catch Lightspeed throughout the UK over the last 18 months, but US audiences will have to wait to 2008 to see Hynes live. That is, unless you live in our fair city of New York, where Dev will be making his American live debut at Soundfix (N 11th and Bedford in Williamsburg) this Halloween Wednesday. It’s his only US show of the year, so definitely make it out if you can – I can assure you it’ll be worth your time. Check out the flyer for more info here.

Finally, while I won’t be offering the MP3 for download (though the song is quite good), definitely make sure to check out/download this high-ass resolution copy of the “Galaxy of the Lost” video. It’s totally fucked up (think Little Shop of Horrors gone plush), but it’s kind of awesome too. As it’s a large file and those download issues still aren’t totally resolved, I’m hosting it on Megaupload for y’all to download and enjoy over and over again. Check it:

Video: “Galaxy of the Lost”
Artist: Lightspeed Champion
Director: Ferry Gouw
Watch: [YouTube]
Download: [AVI • 67 MB] [follow link]

In other news, I saw Anton Corbijn’s Control (that Ian Curtis biopic) over the weekend and it was totally amazing. Go see it, assuming it’s out in your city. I know its run in NYC (at the Film Forum on W Houston between 6th and 7th) ends Thursday so you might have to act fast, but it’s worth it.
Oh and one final thing: M3 Volume 15 drops Halloween (hollerrr). See you then

As the story goes, one who folds 1,000 paper cranes will be granted one wish, for whatever they desire. It’s from this Japanese legend that the band take their name and draw the inspiration for “I’ll Love You Until My Veins Explode”, a pounding piano-based track featuring a haunting, almost hollowed-out production approach that emphasizes the dark desperation of the lyrics perfectly. The track draws heavily from the styles of the Cure and the Arcade Fire to an almost egregious point, but the brilliant songwriting is enough for me to look past that without a second thought. Invoking the paper cranes story to illustrate his desperation (”One thousand paper cranes for you, you cut my paper heart in two”), vocalist Ryan McCullagh’s emotive lyrics are some of the best of the year. I’m especially taken by his brilliant allusions to the Trojan War (”You’ve got wooden bones, you trojan horse/I’ll let your soldiers in my fort”) and Christian Saints (”Like Saint Sebastian on a tree/I’ve got your arrows stuck in me/It hurts too much to pull them out/So I’ll cut holes into my coat”) to represent his emotional strife, and you really can’t ask for more here from a songwriting perspective.

While the Arcade Fire/Cure comparisons are clearly justified on “Veins”, it’s primarily a vocal similarity, but on “Milkrun” the Cure’s influence holds dominion over the entire song. From the vocal structure, to the keys and guitars and especially that chorus, a lot of people will hate on the Cranes for such blatant aping of an established sound. To be honest, it just sounds like a really great Cure song, and I can’t really have a problem with that. Besides, Robert Smith and company have inspired FAR shittier bands in recent years, so I’m not really complaining.

Built around the creative force and husband-wife duo of Ryan McCullagh (vox/guitar) and Miranda Roach-McCullagh (keys) with a rotating cast of musicians and friends pitching in to make up the rhythm section, the Paper Cranes are the flagship artist on up-and-coming Candian imprint Unfamilar Records and a band to get very excited about in the coming months. In “Veins” and “Milkrun” alone you’ve got massive pop songs just waiting to break into the limelight, but too much polish would rob the tracks of the desperate atmosphere in which they flourish. Thus, one can only hope the songs don’t fall victim to overproduction and the charm of the originals holds over from the EP to their upcoming album. Said album is Halcyon Days, which was originally meant to be released in August, but has been since postponed while Unfamiliar looks to secure a legitimate distribution deal. Regardless of when it comes out though, it’s destined to be hotly anticipated by anyone with even the slightest exposure to the tracks below and will likely turn a lot of people onto the Paper Cranes’ cause. Acquaint yourself with the band below and don’t be surprised when you see “Veins” on my Top Tracks list at the end of the year.

Featuring four able-bodied vocalists including frontman/guitarist Gerard O’Connell and singer-pianist Dan Armstrong, the Rushes aren’t doing anything terribly new, they’re just doing it really fucking well. O’Connell knows how to use his impassioned, ivory-backed vocals to elicit a significant emotional connection from the listener and said connection is only heightened by Armstrong’s wistful keys work. Basically, this is ideal music for brooding 15 year-olds who omg-just-got-totally-dumped to sneak into their backyards and smoke cigarettes to at night to. That said, these are fucking great pop songs.

“Ripping It Down” is the obvious single and most immediate track of the bunch because, simply put: it’s catchy as shit. Assuming you can get past that incredibly (incredibly) lame 24-second intro, you’re in for a treat: a hyper-addictive chorus, wonderful piano-driven melodies and percussion far superior to that normally found on tracks by bands of their ilk (just wait for that closing drum freak-out at the end). “Will You Won’t You” narrowly edges out “What You Waiting For” as the next best thing here, though both are every bit as good as the A-side (though not as catchy), if not better. All three B-sides come to a distinct emotional climax in which a particularly emotive (and typically fairly cliche) lyric rises above the rest of the verses in an impassioned vocal outburst that generally sums up the entire idea of the song in what appears to have become the Rushes’ signature “moment”, if you will. For example, “Will You Won’t You” revolves around that classic night-out dilemma (Will our protagonist be able to seal the deal with his new love interest?) and the song’s essential climax comes when the instrumentation drops out and all the energy of the track comes to a head with a desperate, “Is it gonna happen?!”. It’s one of the individual highlights of an EP that’s excellent all the way through, with the weakest track – if you can even call it that – coming in the form of “Get The Feeling”, a song that’s nothing to sneeze at in its own right.

Sure, the Rushes will probably go the way of Ghosts and Air Traffic before them after teaming up with a big-shot producer and realizing they could easily access Coldplay-esque stratospheres of fame, but between their debut EP and the tracks on their MySpace (I’m particular, er, taken by “Easily Taken”), there’s more than enough reason to get excited about the Rushes in the meantime.

MP3: “Hunting For Witches” (Villains’ Electro-Banger Remix) – Bloc Party

All that said, their “Witches” remix is only the tip of the iceberg. Already churning out solid original productions, Villains are proving themselves to be viable contenders in the electro scene even at this early stage. Anyone not sold by that Bloc remix will be believers as soon as the needle drops on “Thrilla”, the duo’s electro-fucked rework of the Michael Jackson classic. Closer to an original production than a remix, as it only samples a very minimal portion of the vocals and a few other instrumental flourishes, “Thrilla” is the stuff dreams are made of. Considering the original’s status as one of the greatest dance singles of all time, you’d think there’d be all kinds of hot remixes of the track floating around the internet, especially given the flourishing remix culture catalyzed by the electro explosion of the last few years. But as far as I’m concerned, Villains are the first to step up and really hit it out of the park. That part when the vocal sample crescendos to the breaking point, and you’re all ready for the “Thrillaaaaaa!”, but then they switch it up and drop their own chorus of glitchy synth beats and chopped up vocal excerpts… I mean good god. This is dangerous stuff, folks.

MP3: “Thrilla” – Villains ((highly recommended))

As if that weren’t enough to get you totally pumped for the Villains takeover, they just threw up a brand new remix onto their ‘Space yesterday. This time they take on another essential classic in “Around The World”, and once again they do it up right. I’m starting to think they can do no wrong, but only time will tell. Don’t sleep on this.

Moving on though, there’s plenty more electro-heat to go around in this one. Below we’ve got two songs originally engineered by European production maestros and released in 2005, only to be reworked into viable chart-toppers with the help of female vocalists in 2007. First up is Christopher and Raphael Just’s “Popper”, which dropped in 2005 before getting the Kistune remix treatment and seeing a re-release in 2006. The highlight of said re-release was Shinichi Osawa’s Distortion Mix, which totally killed it on the second Kitsune Maison compilation that year. Taking the original and completely reinventing it on a monumental scale the Shinichi Osawa mix ups the tempo and tricks it out in cowbells and immense production effects, all the while making the most of the original’s essential element: that endlessly addictive, super-poppy synth lick that weaves and in out of the mix from start to finish. It was Euro-house gold, and there’s a reason it melted dancefloors across the continent in 2006.

MP3: “Popper” (Shinichi Osawa Distortion Mix) – Chistopher & Raphael Just

Now Christopher’s taken the defining element of “Popper”, that aforementioned cascading synth line, and applied it to a brand new track he’s produced for Austrian pop vocalist Mel Merio. Not only that, he’s also built the track around the “Around The World” guitars from Nicky Van She and Dangerous Dave’s “Around The World Again”. So yeah, there’s a shit-ton of appropriation going on here, but you can’t argue with the results. I’m actually not all that into Mel Merio’s vocal, but I can’t really complain when the instrumental context is so incredibly bangin’. Keep an ear out for the totally 80’s, Beverly Hill Cop-esque synth freak-out around the three and a half minute mark.

MP3: “Domino Dancing” (Extended Mix) – Mel Merio ((highly recommended))

In 2005, Dutch electronic mastermind Mason crafted a house monster in “Exceeder”, which eventually saw release in the UK in 2006. But it wasn’t until he teamed up with Princess Superstar that the track truly blew up. Pairing the vocal from Princess Superstar’s “Perfect” with the “Exceeder” instrumental proved to be a match made in heaven, and the track shot to #1 on the UK dance charts. Princess Superstar’s verses are her typical vapid, self-aggrandizing fare, but it works in perfect harmony with Mason’s original track. Somehow all of this went down unbeknown to me, as I only just now copped this when my man Stephen (the Bangalter to my Guy-Manuel, if you will) sent it my way this weekend. And yeah, there isn’t much more to say on the matter; this shit kills.

MP3s:
“Exceeder” (Original Edit) – Mason
“Perfect (Exceeder)” – Princess Superstar vs Mason ((highly recommended))

I guess it would have been ideal to have had the opportunity to grab these before the weekend, but things don’t always go as plan. So just throw these on your ‘Pod and rock them all week long, that way you can have your moves down in time to hit the dancefloor next weekend and look extra baller. Enjoy.

ALTERNATE LINKS (via zShare)
• “Hunting For Witches” (Villains Electro-Banger Remix) – Bloc Party
• “Thrilla” – Villains
• “Popper” (Shinichi Osawa Distortion Edit) – Christopher & Raphael Just
• “Domino Dancing” (Extended Club Mix) – Mel Merio
• “Exceeder” (Original Edit) – Mason
• “Perfect (Exceeder)” – Princess Superstar vs Mason