Los Campesinos! - Straight In at 101

Since arriving with a bang onto the music scene back in 2008 with their debut album Now Hold On Youngster, Los Campesinos have wasted little time in recording a follow up and even a third album. Such prolific songwriting can sometimes diminish the quality of the work. The opposite is true of these guys.

There third long player 'Romance Is Boring' takes the best elements from their first two albums and amalgamates them into the my favourite record of the year thus far. I could have picked any pretty much any song to blog off the new album and after some deliberation I settled on Straight In at 101.

The song reminds me of various ex-girlfriends. Where things hadn't been going so well and we had laid in bed together bemoaning how our lives were, instead of making love. With neither of us being comfortable in the relationship or our own skins and how frustrating our constant psychoanalysis of each other was.

Its these feelings that the band capture to magnificent effect on this track. Each line feels like a snippet of conversations or actions that i've had in my various failed relationships over the last 8 years. The depressing thing from a personal point of view is that whilst i've cared for all of them, I know i haven't really been in love with any of them.

You can buy Romance is Boring from 7digital

Straight In At 101.mp3

Zola Jesus - I Can't Stand

I've been reading a lot about Zola Jesus in the last few months. Everywhere in the music press keeps telling that they are gonna be 'great' which is fine, except everytime i've heard one of their tracks i've been left feeling underwhelmed.

So I was especially surprised to find this song last week, which I absolutely love. I put it on in the afternoons after i return home from work and let it wash over me whilst I catch up on personal e-mails.

It feels like Nika Rosa Danilova is singing directly at me, helping to release all my anxieties about about being single, about work and what the future holds, you know the things you think about when your bored and browsing the net at work.

She sings "It's not easy to fall in love, but if your lucky you just might someone" and "it's not easy to let it all go, but once in a while its good for your soul" And when she states me "so don't let it get you down" that "In the end your only one" I start to feel better.

And by the time she finishes the song by repeating "It's gonna be alright" I feel ready to believe her.

I Can't Stand.mp3

Jim Lockey - Atlases

Jim Lockey is one splendid fellow indeed. I had the great pleasure of getting drunk with him for an entire week last summer and to use one of his phrases it was a 'Safe' week.

Between now and then i have constantly listened to and recommended his brand of punk folk music to as many people as would listen. To be honest its not a hard sell when someone sounds as good as this.

This version of Atlases is taken from his Album of the same name. If you think its sounds  familiar its because Jim released an acoustic recording of this track last summer on broken tail records split EP exclamation at asterisk hash. In its new guise its lost none of its lustre. Jim's voice is as emotive and tuneful as it ever was and the growl in the line "And suits that fight like lions" is as good as it is live.

The song has benefited from the addition of a full band arrangement and i can safely say this is one my favourite tracks of the year thus far.

Atlases by Jim Lockey and the Solemn Sun is out on the 5th of June.

Atlases.mp3

Ami-Beth Phipps - Eat Out Of The Cans

Last year I went on a whistle stop tour of the UK to watch my good pal Ben Marwood promote his split EP with Jim Lockey and Oxygen Thief. It was one of the best weeks off work I’ve had in years and although my liver wouldn’t agree I would to do it all again at some point in the future.

Anyway along the travels of last year we rocked up to the Mothers Ruin in Bristol where an all day music event had been organized. During the course of the day a young lady by the name of Ami-Beth Phipps took to the stage. Outside of the guys I was following she was easily the best new act I discovered that week.

I snaffled an MP3 of her hauntingly amazing song ‘Eat Out of the Cans’ as soon as I returned home and have been eagerly waiting for more recordings ever since. Until then I thought I’d share this rare treat with y’all as it has been one of my favorite tracks of the last 12 months.

If you’d like to hear a bit more of Ami then head over to our sibling site at www.editradio.org and play podcast 22, which is hosted by a drunken Ami and her friend Pete.

Eat Out Of Cans.mp3

Liars - Scarecrows On A Killer Slant

Over the last couple of days my mind has been preoccupied by worry of what a newly elected Conservative government (albeit with as a coalition) might mean for our country. The thought of this political party in charge has me fearful, especially when I look back at their sustained record of social inequity and intolerance.

Those two issues are at the forefront of Liars “Scarecrows on a Killer Slant”. Taken from the bands new album Sisterworld the track is powered by its creepy tone and metronomic rhetoric that makes this listener feel ill at ease.

The song leads off with the band asking “Why’d you pass the bum on the street?” and “Why’d shoot the man with the gun?” The answers to both are returned as an emphatic “Cos he bothered you” it’s disconcerting and uncomfortable to think that more parts our society could digress into this territory.

Then the band strikes with the songs Coup de grâce. Starting as a whisper and ending as a scream they utter “We should take the creeps out at night, Drag them incomplete by their ears, We should nail their thoughts to the wall, Stand them in the street with a gun, AND THEN KILL THEM ALL!” like the inner mantra of a government who’d like nothing more than for everyone to agree with their views.

The song then begins to tick along to its conclusion, but not before it musters one last question that I'm sure rattles around the heads of those now in government.

“How can they be saved from the way they live every day?”

Maybe those with the power in Westminster should ask it of themselves.

Scarecrows on a Killer Slant.mp3

Joanna Newsom - Cosmia

Last night at the Royal Festival Hall in London’s Southbank I was part of especially lucky group of people that got to see Joanna Newsom perform. I’ve seen her play once before at the Royal Albert Hall and both times she and her cohorts have been incredible.

For the uninitiated Joanna Newsom music forms the culmination of some very unfashionable components that make a whole quite unlike any other artist that I know of. To start she plays a rather unwieldy (but elegant) harp, which is the focal instrument on most of her songs. These songs are often massive in length, the title track from her new album “Have One On Me” clocks in at huge 11 minutes long. Then throw in that her voice sounds a bit Lisa Simpsonish, but with more tone and depth. Then you can understand why she isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

But for those of us who “get” her music she is almost without peer. Her songs whilst long never drag and leave you wishing you could see the world with the same beauty and myth as her lyrics describe.

I’ve decided to link my favorite of Joanna’s songs “Cosmia” taken from her second album Ys. I’ve been listening to this regularly since its release in 2006 and I still can’t get enough. If that’s not a mark of a truly great song, I don’t know what is.

Cosmia.mp3

Frank Turner - Thatcher F**ked The Kids

As people across the nation are currently voting on which idiot should be allowed to govern us, I thought I’d take the opportunity to tie my anti Tory colours to the mast. You’ve probably heard the spoof common people track doing the rounds on You Tube, but this effort from the always amazing Frank Turner beats them all hands down.

Thatcher F**ked the kids was probably the first Frank Turner song that I fell in love with. Once I had heard this sung in unison in an overfull tent at the Reading festival I was completely hooked.

Frank is currently on tour at various places around the world and I would whole heartily recommend you go to see him play if you get the chance

Thatcher F**ked The Kids.mp3