The Cold Cut

I'm not going to post this one (it's red-hot- if you had synesthesia, this song would have 'cease and desist' written all over it), but you should hop over to Myspace for an exclusive first listen to Kings Of Leon's single, 'Sex On Fire'. Instead, enjoy an early song from the 'Holy Roller Novocaine' EP. 'Sex On Fire' is another brilliant addition to the new album, some people will be happy to hear that this is a fully fledged song with a chorus and verses, rather than 'a groove' (as certain individuals have described 'Crawl', although this doesn't bother me personally). Oh, and as a side note, Caleb must have one of the best voices in rock? Right?

Kings Of Leon- Wicker Chair

NME have also just announced the official tracklisting for 'Only By The Night', released on September 22:

'Closer'
'Crawl'
'Sex On Fire'
'Use Somebody'
'Manhattan'
'Revelry'
'Seventeen'
'Notion'
'I Want You'
'Be Somebody'
'Cold Desert'

Kirsten Price- Magic Tree (Link 2) (Link 3)

I'll be honest- I'm not a singer-songwriter guy by any stretch of the imagination. You could stretch Sufjan Stevens into that category, but his music is extremely inventive and massively expansive. Lightspeed Champion is too honest, relevant and depressed to be cornered. Scouring my library, Paolo Nutini is about as much as I can stand in short stints. So basically it's not really my thing.

I am, however, open to those who want to change my opinion. And Kirsten Price really has. So, I recieved an email (all of which I love to read and listen to), visit the Myspace, as per usual.

The first thing that surprised me was how familiar her sound was. Not in a 'I am totally unoriginal' way, in a 'I've just blended all the things you love into one package' way. Which is a perfect start. So, who does she sound like? Well, to me at least, a potent vocal mix of KT Tunstall, Kelly Clarkson and Joss Stone, with added songwriting skills. On 'Magic Tree', she executes a 'Mrs Independant' vocal performance. It's an equally brilliant pop tune, and the inventiveness of this radio-friendly song has been transported across all the songs I have heard.

In many ways, Kirsten has already won the war- she's shared the stage with a host of A-list artists including Wyclef Jean, Sly and the Family Stone and the grammy-nominated Groove Collective, has some strong press under her belt and a huge host of fans. All that remains is a little airtime. I suggest you fight her corner, starting now or soon... This girl is going places, with or without us.

'Guts And Garbage', her debut album, was released on July 1st, as a re-release on Kirsten's own label. Run over to Kirsten's Myspace for the summer touring schedule and more information on the album.

The Rest- The Close Western (Link 2)

If you read a selection of the more prominent blogs- my own core selection includes PMA, Hypeful, Gorrilla Vs. Bear and Stereogum- you generally get a comprehensive list (but by no means complete) of stuff that you're probably either listening to, or should be. Sometimes we miss stuff once or twice, but another blog will happily fill you in. And very, very occasionally, the collective blogosphere misses something altogether.

One of the few bands that full under this category (in my short time blogging) are The Rest. They emailed me a couple of weeks ago, bringing themselves and their debut album 'Atlantis, Oh Our Saviour' to my attention, even including a quote which addresses the above situation:

"…a seemingly seasoned performance which may be one of the biggest indie rock sleepers from the past couple of years…considering the band's apparently overlooked status in the blogging community."- Joe Tacopino- PopMatters.com

I try to take most submissions as they come, and not get over excited. I did the opposite, after being really impressed by one of the three songs on their Myspace: 'The Close Western'. The only thing I can really compare it to is the Arcade Fire, 'Funeral' era. The vocals from Adam Bentley are truly outstanding, and actually bring on chills; they're really reminiscent of Alec Ounsworth from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah mixed with Win Butler, and the 7 piece band's sound is complex, building from the smallest of openings into a full blown instrumental accompaniment.

The band have just released their sophomore album, 'Everyone All At Once', whilst debut 'Atlantis, Oh My Saviour' can be downloaded for free on the band's Myspace (although I suggest you pay for it!). I can't recommend them enough- great band's get overlooked, but I feel as if this time around, we're in a privileged position to change that. Lend a hand.

Lily Allen- Who'd Of Known (Link 2) (Link 3)

'Smile' was the song that alerted us all to Lily Allen's presence. At first a sickly sweet relationship tale, it morphed over a summer of domination into the song that we all loved to hate, as most radio friendly single's do. Next came 'LDN', which also metamorphosed, but not to such an extent. And finally: 'Alright, Still' a great debut album, full of wit, energy and originality. It is, however, an impressive debut album which is about to be eclipsed by her follow up, allegedly titled 'Stuck On The Naughty Step'.

We cannot underestimate the quality of the four demos that Lily has uploaded onto her Myspace. We had the emotional double whammy of 'I Could Say' and 'I Don't Know', followed by 'Guess Who Batman', an attack on politics. Lily has taken this album into her own hands, recording the demos with Garage band, on her own.

In this, the latest, wrongly titled 'Who'd Of Known' (grammar's not her strong point?), we have a simple song with a nice back-story:

"I have put up a song that wont make it on the album. I ripped off the chorus from take that and I can't be bothered with the paperwork, so here ya go."

Visit Lily's Myspace for updates on her album progress.

Bloc Party- Mercury (Telemitry Mix) (Link 2) (Link 3)

Telemitry, take a long, exaggerated bow. For you are the true master. Where have you been for the last few weeks?

Since the Telemitry remix of 'Viva La Vida' -which turned it into a sure-fire dance floor hit- I have been waiting for a similar challenge to come along. 'Mercury' is it, and this version of the song is easily superior to the Bloc Party version. Telemitry basically had the balls to do what Kele imagined. This is the definitve remix of 'Mercury- there's no need to look elsewhere. They might as well re-release the single with this as a B-Side. All I can say is, 'well done'.

Visit Telemitry's Myspace.

With remixes, I'm easily impressed. Attach a sufficiently huge bass-line, chop and change the song format, affix some other random sounds and we can have a long lasting relationship.

I was destined, therefore, to love Crookers. They've got a simple formula, which delivers, over and over again: take a song no-one else has touched, glue a grungy bassline to it and then present it as musical gold.

Crookers are an Italian duo: DJ PHRA and Bot, with a stash of remixes to their name. Given the nature of their music (solely remixes) the prospect of a Crookers album is confusing. Which direction will they take? Will they produce original material? Or will they continue to remix tracks?

Anyway, check out the ACDC remix below (great for sport, trust me) and a nice new version of Trash by The Whip.

AC/DC- Thunderstruck (Crookers Remix) (Link 2)
The Whip- Trash (Crookers Remix) (Link 2)

For a peek at their tour dates and some more tracks, head over to their MySpace

The Joy Formidable- Austere
The Joy Formidable- Cradle

Update: I (and the band) are overwhelmed by the reaction the tracks have had. On their last few hours, they occupied the number 1 and 2 spots on the hype machine popular list. If just goes to show you- great music knows no boundaries. This band are destined for huge things, and they really deserve it. Expect to see them in the near future.

Update: Holy shit. This post has gone 'mega', for use of a better word. The two tracks I posted have literally been stuck on the front page of the Hype Machine for the whole day- also, both tracks are within the top 20 most popular, and they only got indexed 20 hours ago. Impressive! I love to see a band such as The Joy Formidable benefitting from the publicity. Listen to the tracks, spread the word, and get it to number 1.

I am very occasionally impressed by a MySpace submission. Never before, however, have I been blown away. Sure, I do an inbox round-up every now and then, and the bands I feature are generally talented. The Joy Formidable, however, impressed me so much that now is their time to take centre stage...

Hailing from London, this three piece is the kind of band which maintains my belief in British music. A year ago, the band didn't even exist, but over the last few months they have crafted a distinctive sound that excuses their 'Other/Other/Other' genre choices on MySpace. Ritzy, Rhydian (who emailed me) and Justin have yet to release anything, but are already tipped by Steve Lamacq and Tom Robinson (radio DJ) as the next big thing for their 'dream pop', the missing link between mainstream rock and indie. I was instantly hooked when they cracked out that bassline on 'Austere'- I didn't even know those kind of sounds existed anymore, and the song was recently used in an advert for Skins. Even after a year together they are already beginning to sound like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, with their penchant for distortion and falsetto backing.

The most confusing aspect is their lack of a record deal- I have a strong sense that this is down to the band rather than labels, who must be falling over themselves to get their hands on such quality.

Check out their Myspace, and make keep your eye on this band. They are destined for huge things...

Crystal Castles- Vanished
Crystal Castles- Courtship Date

Ubiquity- something that is present, appears, and is found everywhere. A quality that one might apply to Crystal Castles of late. When not remixing every song within reach, this duo have been busy releasing an endless flow of original music- 4 releases in the last two years, and counting. And on March 18, their self titled debut CD (a re-introduction, if you like, and first actual CD), will be released. The world's a stage.

Who are they? Multi-instrumentalist Ethan Kath and vocalist Alice Glass. Their sound? A warped, twisted mix of enhanced synths and vocal chords. Oh, and don't forget the beats. And they have an awesome creation story. Their first release, 'Alice Practice', is exactly that. Alice, the vocalist, was messing around, whilst Kath recorded, unbeknownst to her. He posted the resultant song on MySpace, the record labels came running, ba-da-bing, they have a deal.

This album has the collective music blog's holding their breath. Whilst their live offerings have thus far lest many people undercooked, the perfect nature of songs like 'Black Panther' and 'Vanished' is enough for me to forgive them. Lets face it, how many other bands use an Atari computer chip/keyboard to produce their music? That silence? That's the sound of a band making it big.

The album cannot be pre-ordered yet, but make sure you cop it...

In the age of iTunes and MySpace, I think it's easy to lose appreciation of what buying music is all really about. My iTunes library currently stands at a paltry 17.69 GB, something which I am not proud of and am trying to fix at the moment (my iPod died a few weeks ago, along with all the music contained on it)... However, if you were to convert that 17.69 Gigabytes of music into CDs, you might be shocked at how much tuneage that actually is. Going on the assumption that each CD is 12 tracks, and on average each track on a CD is 3 megabytes, I would own approximately 500 CDs. That's a lot of CDs, and yet 15 GB is a normal amount of music to own nowadays... is that good? Or bad? My opinion falls to the former- that's not to say I haven't noticed that more and more purists are complaining about mp3s, stating they can't compare to CDs or vinyls. Although this is essentially an mp3 blog, to a certain extent they are correct.

I can see certain things about mp3's that don't match up to CDs: you don't get sleeve notes, a CD case or the anticipation of going out to buy a new release. However, the positives for mp3's more than outweigh the negatives. First and foremost, they are cheaper- £7.99 for an album is way cheaper than in the stores, and this is applied across the board on iTunes, regardless of album length. On top of this, buying an mp3 is incredibly easy: just search, click and download. Also, on most online music stores you can see interactive charts and reviews, which give you an idea of what's good and what's bad. Another great thing is that mp3s can be bought individually- if you like one song from an album you don't have to buy the whole thing to get it. Finally, for the space conscious of you, the only thing mp3s take up is your computer's hard drive. Of course, this also applies to the machine's which play them- when I see my old CD player in my cupboard I can't help but laugh- imagine carrying around 500 CDs with you every time you go out for a run! An mp3 player? Small and pocketable, solely because mp3s are infinitesimally small (aka non-existent)...

And there you go- because mp3s are non-existent in the sense of the word, you don't get any feeling of their size or quantity. For this exact reason, I want 30 gigabytes of music when my current 17 is enough to fill up a sizeable space in the real world. But does this bother me? Nah, not really- long live the mp3! The cheaper, better sounding, more efficient way of listening to music... and just for the unconvinced of you, some tracks from my iTunes library:

Basement Jaxx- Good Luck
Cold War Kids- Hang Me Up To Dry
Guillemots- We're Here
Justice Vs. Simian- We Are Your Friends
Mark Ronson- Oh My God
Our Lady Peace- Somewhere Out There
Rilo Kiley- It's A Hit
The Rakes- Suspicious Eyes

I don't want to take credit for the content of this post: upon recommendation from my friend Mike, I had a quick listen to Scouting For Girls... I was fairly surprised by what I heard, and felt compelled to write something brief about them. I can't quite understand why this band aren't already huge: they've been around since 2005, crafting numerous pop gems, three of which are available for download at the bottom of this post. Having just released their debut three track EP- It's Not About You- to commercial success (at it's highest point it was #31 in the charts), it seems a full length album is on the way: their catchy songs ensure that they stay in people's minds even after they've forgotten the bands name (which I think is prety damn cool: a play on words of Girl Scouts?). I- and Mike- would recommend you listen to the stand-out track on their EP, It's Not About You: I can't remember any other pop-rock song which uses harmonies so memorably. In fact, now that I think about it, this band is pretty memorable in general; they have a catchy name, some great tunes and a sound which appears to be fully mature, even when they haven't released an album yet. This full sound could be the band's selling point: there is no variety in terms of their song-quality: all three I have heard so far have been of the same calibre, whilst being different in both style and sound.

Unless something goes seriously wrong, I'm sure you will be hearing much more about this band over the next few years: given the fashion in which people bought their 10 minute long EP, a feature length album will no doubt sell well. You can download all the tracks from this project, or by clicking the links below individually. Let me use this opportunity to ask if anyone out there has been lucky enough to see this band live? Were they any good?

Scouting For Girls- It's Not About You
Scouting For Girls- Keep On Walking
Scouting For Girls- Mountains Of Navaho

Check out the band's myspace page for updates on tour dates and their latest releases...

Myspace is dying.... come on, admit it. How many of you out there actually use it any more? Gone are the days when you weren't a succesful band unless you had a myspace page with more than a million plays. Sure, some bands still use it, but as a social networking tool, it is inferior. Many people use facebook, bebo, hi5. My personal favourite is facebook: the happiness i had from finding friends who i haven't thought about in years was amazing. And it was all so easy.

Facebook is superior because of all the wierd groups you can join, and the photo tagging feature. Anyway.... follow this link to join: www.facebook.com

One last question: who uses myspace, and who uses facebook. I want to hear your views if your with me or against me.....