In theory, May is shaping up to be busy, busy:
May 4
Citizens Here and Abroad / Windmill Brixton
'Shoegazing San Franciscans and their infectious indie pop propulsion.. Catchy guitar melodies, rapid drum fire, a few keyboard bleeps and tings of a xylophone' -- for £4? Yep, that'll do nicely...
Citizens Here & Abroad / Appearances mp3

May 9 Arcade Fire / Astoria
May 10 Nina Nastasia / London Bush Hall
May 12 Go! Team (+Dungen & The Research) / Electric Ballroom
and
May 18 Norwich's finest, Bearsuit / London Metro
'Stop-start boy-girl twee-rock cutie-killer six-piece with everything from cinematic waltzes to catchy electro disco and hard punk screaming riot grrl noise...' [See also: Bunky]

'‘What happens when two Athens indie-rockers who love alt-country meet three alt-country Texans who love indie-rock?' Er, The Casting Couch is what happens, apparently. 'One of the most seductive introductions to a band that I've heard in a long time, filled as it is with endlessly engaging songs that have catchy melodies and a friendly demeanor, but also tap into authentic feelings of hurt.' That's Erasing Clouds on their debut EP, 5 songs...
The Casting Couch

Five songs are also all that's on offer so far from Sarah White & the Pearls on their self-release, You're it. And as this sort of thing - midtempo rootsy acoustic alt-pop - goes, it's really just about as much as this blog needs in a year. Luckily, every song here stands up.
The chunky strum of Hopin you're well kicks things off, White coming across as a more convincing Thea Gilmore maybe. With bloke-y backing vocals from, um, the blokes (Jeffrey Grosfeld bass, Steve Ingham drums) it's point is made smartly, in and out in 2mins22. Tidy.
Downhill, with echoes of Liz Phair, follows, the guys chasing the tune out at a gallop. The soft hoarseness of White's voice is attractively exposed in the becalmed mid-section of Fightin' words. Not that it'll mean much to anyone but Lemonpeeler's Michael Hayes comes to mind.
And it gets better. The initial country-folk plunk of Sweetheart turns into a memorable pop chorus sustained by White's double-tracked vocal. And closer Inside a room is the most rounded track of the lot, warm organ suffusing the electric strum and boy/girl singing; it's not quite a corker but it's not far off. So then, Sarah White & the Pearls: great name and a robustly appealing debut from this trio-plus. There's really nothing fancy here - except the tunes...
Sarah White & the Pearls / at CDBaby

Still no new tunes as yet from Haley Bonar.. she's presumably still figuring out "what's going to happen with the new record, which I finished and then aborted at the last minute". But there is a new website, at least...

But in the way of new(-ish) stuff, reallyrather heartily recommends:
Arctic Monkeys / Scummy
-a sharp slice of Sheffield life from these perky a la mode popsters..
Arctic Monkeys / Scummy mp3

and

Boy Omega / The best time of year
-excellent homemade folky-pop from Swedish guy Martin Gustafsson & friends from last year's debut, I name you isolation...
Boy Omega / The best time of year mp3

Catching up with The Shins: 'The band's sophomore effort, Chutes Too Narrow, has sold more than 600,000 copies. Those might not be coke-on-the-private-jet numbers, but they're definitely an amazing feat for an independent band with two albums.' [more]

Super-advance notice on the next release from SF psych-popsters Oranger.. 'twill be called New Comes and Goes and will hit the shelves September 20...
Oranger / eenie meenie records

That Pipettes reshuffle in full: farewell then Julia.. hello Gwenno!...

A is for...

..April already, crikey..

..and..

..Anamude / Pentimento (KEEP Recordings)
Chewy, this one. Names like Cat Power and Polly Harvey have never (until just now) appeared in this column and for the obvious reason. Not that reallyrather is totally averse to moodiness, to 'strident', 'angular', whatever. But optimism, loveliness and a good tune generally win out round here. Not that these qualities are entirely absent from Pentimento but the overarching tone is one of gentle acoustic austerity. Ana Hortillosa's playing seems to be of the intuitive self-taught variety, unpredictable in it's melodic & rhythmic twists and turns. It's not really until track 9 One good dress that a glow of glockenspiel softens the mood. It's a kind of thawing and is immediately followed by The train's here's tantalizing one minute of guitar & organ, then the hypnotic folky droan of Improbable airplane draped in viola and double-tracked vocal. The music and the message is maybe best-served in something like Distance and the flood ('There was no distance I wouldn't dare') while Confetti in the sea edges into (more reallyrather-friendly) Nina Nastasia territory. Generally one to appreciate without necessarily warming to then, comments which have also tended to apply in the past to...

..Archer Prewitt. And, lo, still do. His latest, Wilderness, has been a-hoverin' about the place for a couple of months now without ever becoming an automatic play choice. Twas ever thus with the boy Prewitt but it's likely this one will have a longer shelflife than certainly it's predecessor, Three. Where that one regularly liked to flex it's prog-pop muscles Wilderness brushes by with a mellower acoustic-led shimmer. In fact listening to songs 1 thru 5 and you're starting to think, 'Woo, serious contender'; artfully arranged sophisto-pop typically evolving from langurous beginnings to (almost) handclap-tastic payoffs. Can he keep it up?, you wonder. The answer, sadly but not unexpectedly, is no. The tracks start to get longer and longer as the album goes on and the focus gets lost tho' twang-laced penultimate track Without you with it's string-driven pop climax does briefly gets things back on track. Overall there's remains a problem here - but is it the listener's or is it Archer's? reallyrather goes along with Anthony Carew's acute diagnosis over at Neumu...

...Audible / Sky signal. It's comfortably the least ambitious, most instantly accessible of this trinity of A's and gets - surprise! - the reallyrather thumbs up. Just the one thumb, mind, let's keep things in perspective. A debut effort from this East Coast five-piece based around ex-matt pond PA guitarist Mike Kennedy, it succeeds on it's own limited terms pretty much from start to finish. Audible could be seen as filling the Sunday's Best-shaped hole on Polyvinyl's roster - lightweight, highly melodic indie rock with just enough smarts in the arrangements and chord changes to compensate for modesty of ambition. Yes, there are occasional shades of mpPA; another pointer might be the milder moments on the last Superchunk record, Here's to shutting up. Clipped guitar/synth tunes with high, airy vocals (singing about what? dunno, you don't really notice), standouts include Sunday bell, October song and the ever-so-slightly off-kilter rhythms of Five pirates and Sound makes a circle. OK, the drumming's occasionally a bit meat&potatoes (he seems to have been replaced) and the whole thing has an easy, comfortable familiarity about it but Sky signal is a highly serviceable slice of indie-pop noise. So yeah, Audible deserve a hearing...
Audible / on MySpace / buy

..Arcade Fire, scheduled to be reallyrather's next outing, at the Astoria May 9. Also currently holding for: Bearsuit, The Go! Team, The Be Good Tanyas and Vetiver/M. Ward.. speaking of whom...

..ABC, the arts supplement of the Independent on Sunday excelled itself yesterday with a big M. Ward interview alongside a round-up of other 'off-radar' heroes (Sufjan, Joanna et al).. read it here...

...and if you haven't already, watch last week's KCRW in-studio session featuring Matt Ward playing his songs accompanied by Adam, Rachel and Zak aka Norfolk & Western. Just like Matt's new album Transistor radio, it's an utter, utter joy...

B is for Bunky - got your's yet?

...and might be for...
..British Sea Power even though the words 'widescreen' and 'Shed Seven' have cropped up in the otherwise rapturous reviews of Open season...

..but definitely won't be for any of that ever-expanding legion of skinny power-popping Bens - Ben Kweller, Ben Folds, Ben Lee and yes Brendan Benson you count as well. Streuth, imagine if that lot ever all got together - some kind of three-minute pop nirvana, surely? Er, no...