Heaven

Heartbreaker

We Can’t Be Beat

The first of them, ‘Heaven’, has this little beauty as its b-side. A slow-burning ballad, it showcases Hamilton Leithauser’s wonderful vocal. With less fuzz put onto his voice you get to hear him really sing.

It’s rather good.

We have no idea whether this will be on the forthcoming album. We don’t even have any official word that there is a forthcoming album.

All we know is that ‘Henrietta’ was recently shipped to those on the bands’ mailing list.

It’s a pretty icy pop song, cold slabs of synth and chilled melodies sit alongside beats. It’s very good to have them back.

Unsuprisingly, they are releasing it as a single.

The video for the song was directed by Phil Sansom and features the London skyline as the band’s background.

It’s gorgeous.

See our review of Given To The Wild.

“We believe that in a time when everyone can find out everything about anyone, due to social networking and the internet ruling all, a little mystery can be a good thing.”

It’s a good job then that the first tune they’ve given to the world is an absolute blinder. A surging nu-wave anthem, ‘Perfect Pain’ mixes the excitable rush of Arcade Fire with the melacholic ache of The Cure.

You can download the track for the small price of a Like of their Facebook page.

Watch this space.

Their new single, ‘April Again’, which is to be part of their second effort due for release later this year, steps things up a notch.

A fantastically scuzzy guitar melody sits beneath a dreamy vocal that is surrounding by vibey, 60′s harmonies.

It’s the sound of a band making a big leap forward. We’ll keep you posted on news about the record. It’s one we’re excited about.

Download ‘April Again’ below.

Beach House | Bloom

It was Beach House’s third album, 2010’s Teen Dream, that put the Baltimore duo firmly on the alternative musical map. Its detached, slower-paced soundscapes were thrown against sweet, hummable melodies to produce what many called a rather delightful dream-pop record.

What becomes clear fairly soon when pressing play on Bloom, a collection of songs written in hotel rooms, during soundchecks and when enjoying minimal downtime, is that this is an album that attempts to consolidate this upward trajectory rather than pack up their modus operandi and go searching for a new sound. Once again we have here a Beach House album that mashes pop melodies and neverland production. And once again, we have one that does it brilliantly.

‘Myth’ kicks things off on the straight and narrow – a relative term for a group whose best-selling album reached 78 in the UK charts – with a sweeping keyboard motif and woosy, reverb-drenched vocals courtesy of Alex Scally before bursting into life on the two minute mark with a chorus dripping with wide-eyed wonder and joyous naivety.

Previous single ‘Lazuli’ takes the foundations of their previous albums and builds something far more solid than they’ve ever released. With vocals handled this time by Victoria Legrand, it’s a shiny swell of lush production and meticulous hooks. Like much of Bloom, it sounds like most of your favourite records slowed down 800%.

With most songs here running between four and six minutes anyone expecting razor sharp arrangements and instant gratification will be rather peeved. Bloom, much like the process it takes its name from, is in it for the long haul. Melodies bury themselves away in the nooks and crannies of your brain rather than leap to the forefront to be sung from the rafters. The chorus of ‘Other People’, for example, is a genuine beauty; a walk-in-the-rain of song, it drips with melancholia. That it’s no more catchy than the songs verses highlights that Beach House never have, and perhaps never will turn away from what makes them such an interesting proposition.

Of course, with such a precise sound about them the duo do lack one ingredient that can often make records such a thrilling listen: the possibility of surprise. Beach House have their plan A and when it works, boy does it, but their lack of a plan B means that there is no interesting change of instrumentation or pace that would give Bloom a little more variety. Of it’s second half, only ‘Wishes’, an dream-pop nursery rhyme, seems to be plucked from the top drawer, meaning that this is a record that rather fizzles out.

There is plenty to be enjoyed on Bloom, make no mistake about that. It’s an album that is more than likely to keep the group’s momentum going – the two singles released so far have pricked more than a few ears already. You can’t help but feel however that after four records, if this duo are to ever truly bloom, they may have to do some additional watering of their sound.

“Another delightful effort centered on failed relationships and longing for the beaches of California…”

Best Coast | The Only Place

Best Coast’s 2010 debut album, Crazy for You, was the type of record that made a person feel like going to the beach to dance at a luau under a palm tree. Their breezy tunes, indebted equally to the melodies of The Beach Boys and the guitar fuzz of lo-fi indie , provided the listener with fun hooks and served as a very effective summer soundtrack. Their new album, The Only Place, hasn’t strayed far from that sound. The sophomore album has the same 60’s surf pop vibe and lyrics centered on failed relationships and longing for the beaches of California.

In general terms the album can be broken into three categories: relationships, being homesick, and the slightly more personal ones such as ‘Better Girl’, ‘How They Want Me to Be’, and ‘Dreaming My Life Away’.

‘Dreaming My Life Away’, as the title suggests is a slow-burn and miles away from the scuzz of their debut, possising dreamlike melodies that singer Bethany Cosentino lengthens to serve as the glue that holds the sleepy, airy tone together. She still finds inspiration in the little things too, “I tried to call you, but you were sleeping” she sings, as though its a crushing realisation.

Two songs – ‘The Only Place’ and ‘Let’s Go Home’ – talk about their home in Los Angeles and the desire to return because it is “The only place” for them . On the later of the two songs Cosentino pines, “When will I go home? I’ve seen all the mountains, yes I’ve seen all the trees, I’ve seen all the water, but nowhere compares to home.” In ‘The Only Place’, Cosentino belts out another lyrical love song to the sunny West Coast.

Thats not to say that its all an ode to LA. The rest of the songs are comprised of airy surf pop tunes about relationships. In the song ‘No One Like You’, Cosentino sings, “Been around this crazy world, but I still wanna be your girl cause there’s no one like you.” The song, with its light electric guitar strums and the sound of the hi-hat cymbal every 5-7 counts, sounds like 60’s slow dance music that could be heard on the Grease soundtrack. That Cosentino asks “can I still be the queen to your king?” hammers home a belter of a prom-scene pop song.

On ‘Last Year’ however, things aren’t quite as pretty. Serving as one of the harder songs on the album it contrasts the light hearted melodies we’re used to and for once speaks of the pitfalls of the LA lifestyle: “when I go out I don’t feel anything, I just keep spending my money, one day it will be gone” before playfully adding “and then i’ll have to write another song.” It’s perfect summation of what Best Coast are about: a hint of darkness smothered in unrelenting sunshine.

The lovely band from LA have not let its fans down. All of the songs on this album are still perfect for heading to the coast and do well to prove that the West Coast may just be the Best Coast for this thoroughly delightful surf-pop.

“For a group that have waited so long for their moment, this is an album of incredible confidence…”

Zulu Winter | Language

Zulu Winter are nothing if not patient. Language, the Oxford five-piece’s debut album comes an astonishing 12 years after the group first practiced together as pre-uni school pals and well over 18 months since their name was first banded around as serious contenders to make the step up beyond the toilet circuit into the dizzy heights of magazine covers and moderately clever-named music blogs the world over.

While on the surface the time taken for Language to see the light of day would suggest  a tale of opportunities not taken or horrid bad luck – or both – but dig a little deeper and the optimist inside you could argue that there has never been a better time for a band like Zulu Winter to release an album. And what would a band like Zulu Winter be we hear you ask? A group that look very much like a guitar band, but aren’t. With their throbbing bass lines, fluid synthesiser and tighter-than-a-camal’s-ass-in-a-sandstorm rhythms, Zulu Winter are most certainly a pop group.

This fact is best highlighted by the groups two singles to date, which both feature on Language. ‘Silver Tongue’, with its drums and bass verse launching into an undeniably gold-plated chorus, showcases the fact that there is no studied cool or skin-deep posturing present here. Debut single ‘We Should Be Swimming’ uses similar colours to paint an equally dreamy picture and reinforces the fact that they are a group happy to go for the unashamed, hands-in-the-air jugular, and possess a shrewd ability to hit their mark the vast majority of the time.

The bubbling, hip-shaking opener ‘Key To My Heart’ proves that they can do ‘epic’ pretty well, with its opening 90 seconds –and indeed, beyond – sounding like you’d imagine U2 would if they’d stopped going to church and spent their formative years dancing their little socks off and drinking too much fizzy pop. It could well be the best thing here, its finger-snapping taughtness too carefree to resist.

Across Language the instrumentation is flawless. A note is never wasted, or added without genuine necessity. Less is always more. ‘Let’s Move Back To The Front’, an ethereal, atmospheric beauty underpinned by a clipped disco beat hangs back in the wings for much of its five minutes, before bursting into life with a fuzzy guitar solo. For a group that have waited so long for their moment, this is an album of incredible confidence. They never seem overly desperate, or try too hard and for that they must be applauded. As the gorgeous closer ‘People That You Must Remember’ drifts off on a cloud of rolling, looped synth and guitar echo you’d be forgiven for forgetting that what you’ve just heard is a debut album. They seem incredibly comfortable.

Language is every bit a polite an album as you’d expect from five chaps from Oxfordshire to be; there are no rough edges or political agendas in sight. You don’t however need 20/20 to see that this is a collection of quite terrific songs. They say that patience is a virtue. Zulu Winter then, are virtuosos.

This week he stopped by BBC Radio 1′s Live Lounge and delivered a harrowing version of Carly Rae Jespen’s ‘Call Me Maybe’.

You can watch and download it below.

Howard was also recently part of the Cummunion love-in during SXSW, during which the label mates recorded a beautiful version of John Martyn’s ‘Over The Hill’.

Download – Ben Howard – Call Me Maybe (Carly Rae Jepsen Cover)