HotSpotMusic.

Now seems to be the appropriate time to be sharing this record, given its title.  The echo of the summer is heard louder than the echo of Sin Fang’s last album, Clangour, a delightfully scatty collection of ideas.  This one is more focused, more of an album and more folky.   

Part of the 2011 winter clearout - albums not reviewed when they came out but still worth sharing before the end of year lists hit.

Original release date: 21 March 2011

Landing right at the beginning of this year, HotSpotMusic missed out on Anna Calvi.  Despite having the unfortunate albatross of one of the BBC’s Sound of 2011 acts hanging round her neck (although this was perhaps offset by Brian Eno referring to her as the best thing since Patti Smith), her tightly composed debut is a grand work.  There are definite elements of PJ Harvey but it is the dark, dense power of this album that makes songs like Desire and The Devil stand out amongst other contemporary female performers such as Florence & The Machine or EMA.  This has only spun a few times but it may well get a few more… and if that’s not enough, she’s covered Wolf Like Me too.

Part of the 2011 winter clearout - albums not reviewed when they came out but still worth sharing before the end of year lists hit.

Original release date: 17 Januaruy 2011

Trust Bjork to release her latest album not as a traditional record but as an ever unfolding series within an iPad app.  Always at the forefront of music and innovation, Bjork’s album was beautiful and somewhat revolutionary.  The music in it was less pioneering than the format perhaps, but that’s only because we set such high expectations on her.  Sumptuously constructed and genre hopping, Biophilia is an experiment in what sound represents in the third millennia and it delivers strongly.

Part of the 2011 winter clearout - albums not reviewed when they came out but still worth sharing before the end of year lists hit.

Original release date: 11 October 2011

Six years after Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!’s definitive, eponymous debut and four years after the disappointing, loud and nonsensical followup, Some Loud Thunder, came Hysterical.  A marvellous collection of quirky indie pop that returns to the lighter side of CYHSY! whilst bringing a more well-rounded maturity to the track list.  

Part of the 2011 winter clearout - albums not reviewed when they came out but still worth sharing before the end of year lists hit.

Original release date: 

Wild Beasts are one of those bands who have very slowly progressed into being silently quite brilliant with each album.  The British band’s sound has evolved from simple pop songs to rather complex and thoughtful compositions still backed up by the marvellous (and impressively replicable in a live setting) Jeff Buckley-style warble of lead singer Hayden Thorpe, only now with more nuance and subtlety in its delivery.

Part of the 2011 winter clearout - albums not reviewed when they came out but still worth sharing before the end of year lists hit.

Original release date: 10 May 2011

Still Corners have taken the concept of pillow talk to another level - listening to Creatures of an Hour (and we can only assume that that hour is the Twilight Hour) is like being transported to the top of a mountain, shrouded in the clouds with lead singer Tessa Murray whispering delicately in your ear.  The atmospheric paradox the band creates from behind the covers is a simultaneous equation of lightness equaling murkiness, of the diaphanous suddenly seeming as weighty as the mountain itself.  

You Are All I See.  It taps into everything that’s cool about 2011.  Heavenly yet ghostly vocals (like a zombie archangel doing celestial karaoke) mixed with ethereal, spacious sounding electronica, slightly off-tempo beats, R&B undertones and even the knowing lyrics.  It has something fairly unique in its use of the harp to decorate the album in a way that is a more refined, shiny production than Pat Grossi managed on last year’s Curtis Lane EP (which was more Animal Collective than Washed Out).  

Jeffrey Lewis is more like licorice than he is like Marmite - I don’t think you can be brought up to like him… you either do or don’t.  And if you’re already a fan, then this will be like Marmite to your ears.  Gritty, witty and pithy, A Turn In The Dream-Songs is at its best on tracks like Cult Boyfriend or When You’re By Yourself which tells the unwinding tale of a man who simply tries to use the bathroom but is forced to explain why he’s alone (listen to it in full) - humorous but sad, self-knowing and yet self-loathing.  Those are the tightropes that Jeffrey Lewis continues to tread and he does it as uniquely as anyone else.

Mixed gender duets (especially over limited instrumentation) can generally go one of two ways: either charming (Slow Club) or trying (Ting Tings).  Luckily, London-based Big Deal fall into the earlier category.  Led by 18-year old Alice Costelloe and assisted by Kacey Underwood, the pair play opposing guitars while their singing complements each other as they yearn for something fulfilling out of life.  Whatever the backdrop, there’s a tender, emotional side to the songwriting that manages to never feel fake.  Indeed, it’s that sincerity that is probably Lights Out’s most endearing quality.  A charming debut that rips at the heart.

On the Merge website for the long awaited debut album from WILD FLAG (which finally hits the virtual, floating shelves today) you’ll find the following description of the band: 

What is the sound of an avalanche taking out a dolphin? What do you get when you cross a hamburger with a hot dog? The answer is: WILD FLAG.

Now I’m no expert on any of those things but this sounds more like a large metallic ladder (mostly used in large construction projects) falling on top of a bouncy castle.  Why? Don’t ask why.  The Portland supergroup of former Sleater-Kinney, Quasi, Jicks, The Minders (+ many more) members form a raucous crew and on Wild Flag (no shouting on the title) there are some pretty wild jams & psychedelic moments… it is definitely the product of a 70s punk muse.  Whilst all of them have been making music for a while, the record sounds fresh and lively, indeed Endless Talk sounds like the empassioned and youthful yelping of The Long Blondes, not the more distinguished pedigree of Wild Flag whilst Glass Tambourine is the ever-shifting striking single.  A most enjoyable album.

It may only be a 5-track EP but it’s been 4 years coming so we’ll take anything we can get from Mr Lekman, the mercurial and elusive Swede that he is.  Musically this sounds pretty similar to his last record, Night Falls Over Kortedala: a wide-ranging set of instrumentation garnishing simple and charming pop songs.  There are some iffy moments, New Directions so very nearly manages to make the unlikely fusion of Beatles-style trumpets with samba drumming an effective backdrop to a song about optimal route-planning whilst So This Guy At My Office is a bit too light, even for Lekman’s take.  But that’s all a side issue compared to the first couple of tracks (and in particular, Waiting for Kirsten, an odd ode to Kirsten Dunst and her visit to Stockholm) which are the most amusing he’s ever recorded.  For anyone else that might not be a good thing… for Jens Lekman, the master of the wry, comical story told in a charming and melodic way, it’s a great thing.

Steven Malkmus and his assorted Jicks returned recently for album number five, Minor Traffic.  Written as he was reuniting Pavement and exciting indie rock nerds the world over last year, they then hit the studio with none other than Mr Beck Hansen whose producer credits are beginning to appear rather distinguished.  Beck’s touches make Minor Traffic a more accessible affair as Malkmus’s licks and rasping tongue are contained within a more cerebral cage than the wandering, rock-out sessions that produced Real Emotional Trash.  That’s not to say this is not a fine album, indeed it contains a healthy serving of his signature style, but it is a grower as it takes several listens to unfurl all the packaging.  

Slave Ambient is a powerhouse of a record. Anyone who has heard preceding single Baby Missiles could expect that already. That song itself is the perfect road trip track - literally a driving track, you’ll find yourself accidentally up at 120mph without even noticing (imagine now the wise traffic cops cunningly using Shazam). It, and the rest of the album, manage to soak up American rock music from the 80s like Huey Lewis and the more obvious touchstone, Bruce Springsteen, and by splicing that with a foreground of shimmering guitars it sounds fresh. But what it sounds most like is: anthemic. And managing to achieve that despite the lack of significant singalongs or Arcade Fire-style vehemence, it is perhaps something of a micro-manifesto for rock in this decade; cultivated and powerful but with nothing to direct it at.

Blood Orange is the latest incarnation of Dev Hynes, the man formerly behind Test Icicles and Lightspeed Champion. With each shedding of his musical skin, Hynes’s act is part snake and part chameleon, changing his act to blend in with the prevailing trends - not to get lost in the background but to be heard and to be current. On Coastal Grooves he keeps the whimsy of Lightspeed Champion whilst dropping the tweeness and drops the chaos of Test Icicles whilst retaining the ability to find the right riff for the right song. As such, this album should feel like a mutation, a twisted, contrived image of ‘freshness’.  It’s to Hynes’s credit that it doesn’t. It feels like it’s own piece of work; unique and interesting, sampling the guitar work of 50s rock and roll but still modern sounding. And certainly befitting it’s own title.