Good Weather For Airstrikes

Holy shit, it’s Passion Pit. Far and away my most listened to band of 2008, the creators of the best song to grace these ears in fucking forever (that’d be “Sleepyhead”) and the most exciting band to come out of the States in as long as I can remember, Passion Pit are about to fuck shit up for real. The brainchild of frontman/creative force Michael Angelakos, they sound like they’ve taken the best (read: most euphoric) parts of MGMT, Black Kids and The Go! Team, and on the new material they’re currently working on it sounds like Ratatat are very much in danger of being beaten at their own game. We’ve got some seriously exciting news to announce next week regarding the band, but in the meantime take “Sleepyhead” for a spin and don’t forget to pick your jaw up the floor. Yeah, it’s like that.

MP3: “Sleepyhead” - Passion Pit

Give it a week or so and Pitchfork will be shitting themselves.

After over a year’s worth of snowballing hype and critical adoration, shit hot singer-songwriting sensation Florence Welch has officially arrived with “Kiss With A Fist”, her debut single and the latest addition to the vaunted Moshi Moshi Singles Club catalogue (it’s out in the US via IAMSOUND as well). With laudatory features popping up everywhere from Nylon to Q Magazine, the NME declaring her one of the best live acts to see this summer and an opening spot on MGMT’s sold out European tour (not to mention a freshly-inked deal with Virgin), she could release whatever she damn well pleased as her debut and still be doing pretty well for herself. Fortunately she’s chosen to grace us with “Kiss With A Fist”, a perfect display of her left-field pop sensibilities and eccentric style. It’s not her best track (that’d be “Girl With One Eye”) and is a bit of a departure from her typically stripped-down approach, all loud guitars and raucous percussion clocking in at under two minutes, but it’s still an extremely solid (if brief) debut.

The real story here, however, is Florence’s show-stopping cover of “Hospital Beds” on the flipside, easily the most thunderstealing B-side of 2008. She’s at her best when she lets her powerful voice shine over sparse arrangements, and that’s exactly the case here as she drops a jaw-dropping vocal over a rudimentary drums-and-guitar instrumental. The Cold War Kids original is undoubtedly a modern classic and one of the more transcendent tracks of the last few years, but Florence completely makes it her own, taking things to new levels of visceral emotion. Fucking amazing, folks.

STREAM: “Kiss With A Fist” - Florence & The Machine

MP3: “Hospital Beds” - Florence & The Machine

Elsewhere, Imran Ahmed of Abeano Music (the XL Recordings subsidiary responsible for bringing you Vampire Weekend, To My Boy, I Was A Cub Scout and now Magistrates) and PUSH fame has started a blog, and a damn fine one at that. Not only is he offering up Magistrates upcoming debut single “Make It Work” for free download (and in lossless AIFF at that), he’s also got some hot tips as well. Imran’s got a pretty solid track record in the industry having covered music for the NME and The Guardian (so he writes all good-like, you know), hosted a few different radio shows for the BBC, and redefined the indie club night in London with FROG at the Mean Fiddler, the predecessor to the current PUSH night he runs with the lovely Young & Lost Club girls. He also claims to have been the first person to ever play Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” on the radio, but that’s debatable at best. Either way, keep an eye on his space; it’ll be worth your while.

Also, as long as we’re on the topic of UK blogs worth giving a fuck about (of which their are sadly very few), I encourage you to revisit the fine gentlemen over at Transparent Magazine, where they’re consistently pumping out the jams (including another fine Magistrates cut here) and keeping things interesting with all manner of fancy words and pictures. Sahil and Jack Shankly are (quite frankly) two of the best writers in all of blogland (kind of like Said The Gramophone, only with, y’know, actual good music), so do show them some love and drop by their page from time to time.

I’d tack a few more jams of my own onto this post if I could get that motherfucking Miley Cyrus song out of my head, but there’s no hope for that, so check out our UK blog friends in the meantime.

Back from paradise, back down to business. The Adriatic’s nothing but blue skies and sunshine this time of year, so it’s fitting we get back into the swing of things by talking about Wave Machines, whose debut single “I Go I Go I Go” brings summertime in spades and then some. Released next week by our friends at Chess Club (so you already know it’s a winner), “I Go I Go I Go” is all bouncy guitars, glitchy basslines and catchy-as-fuck vocals, all converging to create what’s more or less the perfect summer single. The track sounds like the best song Architecture In Helsinki never recorded, but lest you think Wave Machines are a one-trick pony, hit their MySpace and take likely follow-up single “Punk Spirit” for a walk, which replaces all the buoyant optimism of “I Go” with a darker, more brooding vibe. Like the Chess Club singles for White Lies and Post War Years before it, this limited-to-500 release might not even survive pre-orders, so act fast and get on this shit.

MP3: “I Go I Go I Go” - Wave Machines

NOTE: After six months abroad, I’ve finally left London and am currently cruising around the Adriatic on a charter with some friends. I won’t be back in the states (or in front of a computer) until the 13th of June, so until then I’ve cued up some reposts of older content featuring bands who have gone a bit overlooked but are still fully deserving of your attention.

A year later and the Moths, well, are no longer the Moths. Somehow they found an even more unfortunate name in Me My Head, and have gone back to square one. They’re still at it though, gigging around the UK and building buzz, but sadly they’re definitely no closer to making it now than they were at this time last year.

Their band name may be less than ideal (deal with it, you’ll get over it the second the music starts), but holy shit these kids have talent. The Moths unfuckwithable debut 7″ features a triple threat of near-flawless British guitar-pop gems infused with synths and a drum machine to give it an electro-punk flavor. It’s rare enough that you find a debut single with a B-side good enough to rival its spotlighted counterpart, but to come across a debut with two B-sides every bit as good as the A-side is fucking unheard of. But that’s exactly the case here, with “Wild Birds” and “Valentine” proving to be every bit as good as – if not better than - “Games”, no easy task considering the extremely high quality of the headline track in its own right.

The tricky thing is, there’s nothing of overwhelming academic merit about these songs and the whole affair isn’t all that groundbreaking per se, but at the same time you’d be hard-pressed to find a single band that you could convincingly argue the Moths were ripping off here. Sure, the huge synthy parts in “Games” have a very Killers feel about them and frontman James Fox’s diction recalls that of Interpol’s Paul Banks at times, and yeah, that bouncy synth riff in “Wild Birds” is straight out of Gnarls Barkley’s “Gone Daddy Gone”, but none of these instances give off the impression that the band consciously took notes from any of those bands at any point. Furthermore, you can’t really point to one specific thing the band does truly spectacularly. The lyrics are thoroughly enjoyable most of the time (“a joy and a pleasure to listen to” as Rya might assert), but choruses like “All just a game in my head!” (“Games”) and “I’m never gonna let you go!” (“Wild Birds”) aren’t exactly breaking new ground or anything. The guitarmanship here is pretty routine, ditto for the drums (which are actually programmed on a drum machine), but shit – when everything comes together, the final package just cannot be denied.

The synth work takes the tracks to a whole new level while remaining subtle enough not to steal the show completely, and nowhere is this more evident than on “Games”, the single’s actual A-Side despite some significant thunder-stealing on behalf of “Wild Birds” and “Valentine”. The chorus, while admittedly generic, hits as hard as anything you’ll hear this year and the track is a joyride from start to finish, bursting at the seams with an unflinching vitality. “Wild Birds” is more of the same with a bouncier synth riff (”Gone Daddy Gone” anyone?) thrown into the mix and with Fox’s incredibly endearing lyrics and vocal structures taking center stage, it’s a real grower that will stick around in your head for weeks if you let it. But the real showstopper here is “Valentine”, a shining example of how unbridled optimism, youthful exuberance and clever lyricism can converge to create one of the best tracks of the year.

In fact, the band’s knack for simplistic yet incredibly addictive and endlessly enjoyable guitar-pop, with its youthful vitality and endearing lyricism, recalls the Wombats more than anything else I’ve heard in the last year, even if the two possess marked stylistic differences. So it’s fitting then, that as the Wombats’, the best unsigned band in Britain until they’re recent signing with 14th Floor Recordings, star rises from the obscurity of the realm of the unsigned, the torched is passed on to the only other band in the UK at the moment with the chops to beat them at their own game. Only time will tell, but with three tracks good enough to shine as singles in any other band’s repertoire on the Moths’ first-ever release, it’s safe to say it doesn’t get much more promising than this.

MP3: “Games” - The Moths
MP3: “Wild Birds” - The Moths
MP3: “Valentine” - The Moths

NOTE: After nearly six months abroad, I’ve finally left London and am currently cruising around the Adriatic on a charter with some friends. I won’t be back in the states (or in front of a computer) until the 13th of June, so until then I’ve cued up some reposts of older content featuring bands who have gone a bit overlooked but are still fully deserving of your attention.

Sadly, less than a year after this was originally posted, Snowfight In The City Centre called it quits. The announcement of their break up via their MySpace assured that “various members of the band are currently working on other projects”, so there’s still hope for more brilliance from this bunch, but they will be missed nonetheless. Their initial double A-side single “No Light Left”/”My Saving Grace” remains one of my favorite debuts of all time (it was named our #7 single of 2006 after all), and given their defunct status, I’ve no need to hesitate in sharing both tracks, along with some of the other highlights from the group’s brief career.

Mancunian six-piece Snowfight In The City Centre have released what is easily the most impressive debut single of 2006 with “No Light Left”, an absolutely untouchable piece of pristine, shimmering indie pop. The principle core of Snowfight formed last year under the name Lisa Brown (sometimes referred to as The Lisa Brown), and they were quickly snatched up by up-and-coming Manchester imprint High Voltage Sounds, who put out the double A-side “What’s That Sound”/”Anna” shortly thereafter, though the impressive release went largely unnoticed in the crowded UK indie-rock scene. “What’s That Sound” was a little slice of dance-rock heaven, seemingly plucked straight out of the 80’s with that ridiculously retro “What’s! That! Sound!” refrain, slick production, catchy hooks, and discotheque-ready vibe. As immediate and accessible as anything that Franz Ferdinand or the Killers can lay claim to, the song had me sold a mere twenty seconds in with those four angular guitar jabs that alternate between the right and left channels and the things only get hotter from there. Still, it remained tragically overlooked. The B-side was an acoustic version of this song “Snowfight In The City Centre”, which isn’t really worth mentioning if not for the fact that, after confusing the shit out of new listeners who consistently expected Lisa Brown to be a solo female artist, the band chose to take this song title and take it for their band name. Now they introduce said song as “Lisa Brown” when they play it live, which I think is clever and endearing.

Now playing under the new Snowfight moniker, they unveiled a whole new sound when they released “No Light Left” last July. Gone is the overwhelming 80’s vibe and in its place are skyscraping melodies and soaring choruses, a new sound that’s self-described as “the Arcade Fire only more anthemic”, which - audacious as it may seem - seems fairly accurate here. “No Light Left” serves up a hefty dose of unadulterated indie-pop perfection, seemingly coming out of nowhere to become one of the elite indie-rock singles of 2006. Seriously, I’m not lying when I say this song has the catchiest chorus of the year, hands down. They warm you up with that first “angels and ghosts” chorus before dropping the proverbial bomb on the second time out when the song really takes flight and shoots towards the heavens. Sure, they have the potential to turn into another Coldplay or Keane sound-a-like (just check out “My Saving Grace”, though I won’t front like I don’t love it), but only time will tell. Their follow-up single, “Listen”, hits shelves in the UK on October 16^th, but you can stream it on their MySpace now, along with a few other unreleased tracks that show a good amount of promise as well. Long story short, this is a band to get very, very excited about.

MP3s:
“What’s That Sound” - Lisa Brown
“Anna” - Lisa Brown
“No Light Left” - Snowfight In The City Centre
“My Saving Grace” - Snowfight In The City Centre

NOTE: After six months abroad, I’ve finally left London and am currently cruising around the Adriatic on a charter with some friends. I won’t be back in the states (or in front of a computer) until the 13th of June, so until then I’ve cued up some reposts of older content featuring bands who have gone a bit overlooked but are still fully deserving of your attention.

A year after this went up last June, Sonny Jim has shortened his moniker to Sonny J and signed a deal with EMI (seems I was a bit off with all that “underground classic” nonsense), with his debut album Disastro set to see release June 16th. “Can’t Stop Moving” remains his finest work, though the album version has been considerably edited due to copyright issues. Still an impeccable summer jam and a solid gold hit though.

Sure, “D.A.N.C.E.” is hard to fuck with, but in Sonny Jim’s “Can’t Stop Movin’” we just might have a darkhorse for the jam of the summer. Released on Rough Trade last week just in time for summer to break into full stride, “Can’t Stop Movin’” is an underground classic in waiting. And a truly underground classic it will stay, as the amount of copyrighted material in play here should be enough to make Sonny Jim hope the track never strays too far into the public eye. “A legal minefield”, I believe my boss called it.

Legalities aside, “Can’t Stop Movin’” is a severely amazing pastiche of classic samples featuring vintage strings, the Jackson 5 in spades and awesome 70’s television samples (”Can we play that again?”, “No that song’s too special.”) that has already received considerable radio play from with-it DJ’s across the UK. There isn’t much more to say on the matter, just make sure to file this under ENORMOUSLY FEELGOOD and thank Sonny Jim for making your summer that much better.

MP3: “Can’t Stop Movin’” - Sonny Jim

Iglu & Hartly are just a blog hype explosion waiting to happen. In fact, it’s a bit ridiculous how little coverage (read: no coverage) the LA-based quartet has received around the blogs, considering they had all kinds of people buzzing here after SXSW. So much so, that word on the street has it they’ve locked down a ridiculous contract from a major label here (who will remain unnamed for the time being) that’s fully down to sink a shit-ton of money into the band and currently has them in the studio recording with sound engineer Mark Needham of the Killers and Bloc Party fame. All this for a band whose sound has to be described as extremely polarizing at best. That said, they’ve got a hell of a single in “Violent & Young” and a label determined to make superstars out of them, but hey - this is still only a few degrees of separation (or, uh, no degrees of separation) from rap-rock, and hasn’t Linkin Park pretty much ruined that for everyone by now?

Like MGMT going through a Crazytown phase, there’s no doubt Iglu & Hartly have a unique sound, but there’s also no doubt the whole hip-hop element and nasally hipster flow is off-putting as shit upon the first few listens. Plus, they’re so fucking LA it makes me want to vomit all over my party pix, but god damn these kids know how to write a hook, and if the chorus of “Violent & Young” doesn’t make a believer out of you then you need to get your ears checked. One of the best debut singles of the year? I can’t really believe I’m saying this, but yeah, pretty much.

MP3: “Violent & Young” - Iglu & Hartly

Formed less than ten months ago, it took Team Waterpolo but six weeks to catch the ear of the UK music industry when they threw up a demo of “Letting Go” on their MySpace page. Since then, they’ve earned a spot on NME’s New Noise tour and an opening slot on Black Kids’ upcoming sold-out jaunt across the UK, not to mention extensive praise from industry heads and Radio 1 DJ’s alike, as well as Single of the Week honors from the NME for this here release on Moshi Moshi. To some it’s old news by now, but with the triumphant arrival of summer on these fair shores, “Letting Go” has taken on a new life as a warm weather anthem in waiting. Timeless summery pop at its finest, the track is all jangly guitars and synths as sprightly as the Roy Lichtenstein pop art the band has built their personal brand around. It’s true, Team Waterpolo owe a massive debt to Abba having blatantly aped the vocal melody to “Mama Mia” here, but if you can get your head around that (easier said than done, I know), you’re in for a treat.

MP3: “Letting Go” - Team Waterpolo

“Letting Go” is just one of many excellent cuts off of Moshi Moshi’s recently released singles compilation, which chronicles and celebrates two years of the Moshi Moshi Singles Club. Joining Team Waterpolo are the likes of Lykke Li, Kate Nash, Late of the Pier and Friendly Fires, all of whom have been championed in these pages (some more than others) in that time span. One of the finer, lesser-known tracks comes courtesy of Pacific!, who’ve remained remarkably uncelebrated in the UK despite the undeniable excellence of their debut album, Reveries. “Break Your Social System” was their contribution to the Moshi Moshi Singles Club last summer and is a solid cut of Hot Chip-goes-Beach Boys pop in its own right, but it’s “Sunset Boulevard” that’s the real show-stopper on the album, all ice cold synths, pristine harmonies and 80’s nostalgia. Owing serious debts of their own to pop stars of platinum records past, they’re a perfect fit next to Team Waterpolo on any summertime mix, and “Sunset Boulevard” is enough to brighten even the bleakest London afternoon.

MP3: “Sunset Boulevard” - Pacific!