Send Concretes your summer snaps

I like this idea. The Concretes are urging you to send in your best summer snaps. They will pick a favorite and post it on this blog each month: http://wywh.co/

Brilliant in its simplicity. Just like their music.

Warpaint

I've been a bit slow, I admit. But let's think about Warpaint for a moment. The name is brilliant. And by my tail, it does sound like their music is, too.

Let Me In

It sounded like a stupid idea - but now it's here, it actually doesn't look so bad at all: The American version of Let The Right One In. So they've skipped the Morrissey reference in the title, and hired the director of Cloverfield to do the remake. Here's the trailer.

Playing with food

Coffee and cake

 Yum.

Paul Smith - Margins

Paul Smith, frontman of Maxïmo Park, has gone solo, at least for the time being. By doing so he joins ranks with the likes of Fran Healy from Travis, Brandon Flowers from The Killers and Kele from Bloc Party, all frontmen who recently released their first solo albums. 

Mr Smith recently announced that the release of a book of pictures will coincide with the album release. “Thinking in Pictures” will consist of pictures taken on tour with Maximo Park.

Released on his own small label Billingham records, Margins is a very sympathetic story, hard to dislike in its earnestness. It’s also easy get just a bit irritated by the same earnestness. When it’s good, it is very good. But sometimes it becomes a bit too earnest and sincere, falling into the already overcrowded jar of cliches labelled “young man with guitar and an effects pedal”- like the very stripped down Pinball.
But that is the exception. What will stand out the most on the album are the unpolished Northern little pop gems you will find in songs like North Atlantic Drift and Strange Fiction.

By a coincidence, I was reading David Nicholls’ Starter for Ten when listening to this album, and it became a perfect soundtrack to the searching young man in the book, struggling to find wisdom, struggling to get the girl and dreaming of drinking red wine at big wooden tables and kicking piles of fallen autumn leaves on long walks. Since most people have a period of their life that they want to spend doing those very things, the album is bound to find its listeners, someting that the already sold out tour could be proof of.



First published on Music-News.com: http://www.music-news.com/showreview.asp?H=Paul-Smith&nReviewID=6390

Pillars & Greek Cats

A Summer Wedding

Morcheeba - Blood Like Lemonade

Reunited with vocalist Skye Edwards, Morcheeba has gotten the groove that made them famous back.


The single Blood Like Lemonade is a great example of the older sound, lost and now found. Recently featured in the season finale of HBO:s vampire series True Blood, it is in Paul Godfrey of the band’s own words, a song about “an ex-priest vampire bounty hunter, who goes around seeking revenge on bad guys…whose blood he drinks like lemonade.“ Of course.
Seems it’s now mandatory to make a contribution to the vampire themed pop culture if you want to play with the cool (and pale) kids. But if it gets a new generation to open their eyes and ears for the classic trip hop of Morcheeba, so be it.

When you think about it - the dramatic theme would make the lyrics a great fit in a heavy metal song. Although I personally prefer Morcheebas dreamlike sound and whispering vocals, it would be a treat (or interesting at least) to hear someone like Nightwish make a bombastic cover of it.

On Morcheebas own site, Paul Godfrey says ’this is the record we should have made after Big Calm” – and he’s right. This is what Morcheeba always should have sounded like.

Published on Music-News.com:
http://www.music-news.com/showreview.asp?H=Morcheeba&nReviewID=6362