'Jealousy will get you nowhere' *

Read just about any review of the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah debut in the UK print media and you'll come across the same line. This, from Friday's London Evening Standard, is fairly typical: 'In the midst of all the hysteria, remember that online hype is still hype and..[not] entirely to be believed'. That is, once again - and it just keeps on happening these days - we've been beaten to the punch and are having to disguise the fact that we're playing catch-up by suggesting some loftier, more cool-headed critiquing is being brought to bear. More specifically, the print music media seem to be in a collective state of denial about the effect Pitchfork can have in breaking new music. The sales (and word-of-mouth) of CYHSY, like Arcade Fire and Sufjan Stevens before them, really took off after scoring a 9 points-plus review on that site, a fact which goes curiously unmentioned in the print reviews...

Other things you're not being told about..by anyone, so far as this blog can see:

There's more jaundiced jangle on the way from those LA surfer dudes & dudesses The Tyde! Third album Three's Co. comes out here on Rough Trade March 6 and there's a taster track, Brock Landers, available here...

...and while you're over in MySpace land, check out My Sad Captains, a British band with a sound not a million miles away from The Tyde's, especially the vinegary lead vocals of Ed Wallis. reallyrather hopes to catch them at the Dublin Castle on Feb 21 when they're on a bill with...

...Tilly and the Wall! [site/sounds] Over to play their first UK shows, these tap-dancin' indie-poppers first caught this blog's attention back in Jan 04 around the time they were opening shows for Rilo Kiley in the US. Those dates:
Feb 14 Freebutt, Brighton
Feb 15 Old Blue Last, Shoreditch
Feb 16 Windmill, Brixton
Feb 19 Buffalo bar, Islington (with Emmy the Great)
Feb 21 Dublin Castle, Camden

Feb 14 sees Shelley Short follow up her sweetly spartan Oh say little dogies, why?, a lo-fi limited edition on Keep Recordings which scored big around here back in '04. Captain Wild Horse (Rides The Heart Of Tomorrow) will this time come out via Hush Records...

...but Chad King, another Keep winner that year, sticks with the Tuscon label for his second solo release. Well, hell is due in March [site&sounds] and if it's anything like his first expect more atmospheric, softly-hewn alt-folk-rock stuff, a description which also broadly fits...

...another debut from '04, Boy Omega's I name you isolation. Essentially Swedish guy Martin Gustafsson, Boy Omega's follow-up Black tango fills out the sound with a few more players and gets a UK release via Stereo Test Kit sometime in March...
[boy omega][explode mp3]

And Centro-matic's new release, Fort Recovery, will be released March 7th...

*from Brock Landers by The Tyde (see above)

In praise of purple bears...

Over the course of this blog's existence probably no release has scored a higher
length of record : length of review ratio than the 26mins of Happiness discussed here back in Feb 04. This was debut music from The Weepies, a singer-songwriter combo of Deb Talan and Steve Tannen [go]. They've since been signed to Nettwerk in North America and the follow-up to Happiness, called Say I am you, will drop March 9. And look there's no escaping the fact, 'they're nice people who write terrific songs and seem to really like each other,' [InsideBayArea interview Jan 13]. But will you like them?, that's the question. Well, here's the new album's cover art which is characteristically lovely and here is Steve last week describing for SFGate readers where they're coming from musically: 'A song is like a picture in a child's coloring book. The outline is there, and probably the bear is going to be brown, but he could be purple.' So now you know. Actually, Say I am you is available for download right now if you like tho' reallyrather is content to wait, spread the goodies out a bit, why not? Especially since January see's the...

...Rilo Kiley-related double whammy of The Elected's Sun, sun, sun and Rabbit fur coat by Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins. Rather brilliantly Ms Lewis is gracing just about every music mag out there at the moment including a double page feature in UK's The Word. The Independent yesterday echoed Uncut in pinning a maximum 5 stars [!!!] on the record but Mojo could muster only two, dismissing RFC as mere dilettantism. Hmmm, this from the same mag that declares Richard Hawley's superficially seductive period stylings to be 'genius'! Meanwhile, 'masterpiece!' is Magnet magazine's verdict on Blake Sennett's side project The Elected's second effort. Which probably means its very nice.. for the most part.. we shall see. Anyway, here's a plan: zip over to this blog's favourite online retailer CDUniverse where you can pre-order both releases (out Jan 24) for a total of £15.50 in p&p and with you likely inside a week. Un-beatle-able, really...

'I'll speculate that Holy Fuck might cause people to utter their name in a live setting, as they're a remarkably tight unit chock-full of rhythm,' says someone at Pitchfork this week and this blog is happy to confirm the accuracy of his musing. This Canadian quartet rivetted a crowded Camden Barfly last month when they opened for Wolf Parade with their hard-nosed anthemic dance noise and wacko industrial machinery. However, the review [of their s/t debut album] ultimately concludes that 'they may want to consider some rehearsal before their next recording date...'

So what else is coming? Well, there's the M. Ward-curated I am the Resurrection: A Tribute to John Fahey on Vanguard in Feb. This features Sufjan Stevens, Fruit Bats, Devendra and Matt himself among a host of indie-folk luminaries. Some sample tracks and background info on the project available over here...

...and then there's Breaking up, the overdue debut from twinkly lo-fi trio The Research. 'To fully enjoy it the listener would have to be a sugar-crazed fruit loop with the behaviour, attention span, and learning ability of a four year old chocolate junkie,' says Disorder. If this is you, you can get your fix on Feb 27...

...further down the line there'll probably be The Pipettes' debut and overdue second releases from Haley Bonar (Lure the fox) [go] and maybe even The Good Ship (listen to the langurous chamber-folk of The Eggleston Guide from their debut and hear what you missed back in '03) [go]. Finally,...

...and most surprisingly, enigmatically of all...

...there's this: Everyday i said a prayer for kathy and made a one inch square. Woo, not too say, hoo!