Italian duo reveals a downbeat electro debut of some heart

Say what you like about The xx ("Cheer up miseryguts, it might never happen!" is my preferred suggestion), but in dressing old Morcheeba  songs up in the neighborhood Goth’s hand-me-downs, they’ve done a sterling job in repopularising the sort of adult-orientated easy listening the lawyers in This Life used to have sex on the sofa to circa 1996.

Download a fantastic remix of Vampire Weekend's 'White Sky' that Basement Jaxx made here

The Treehouse are an alternative/indie folk band from Lincoln. Fronted by singer Anna Bennett and guitarist Markus Coulson they have just released their first EP ‘Ore’ which is now available for download.

The Band also features Beth Palumbo on keyboards and vocals, Kevin Ashworth on bass and vocals and Josh Baggaley on drums.

The Treehouse recorded ‘Ore’ a five track collection of their first songs with Producer Maurice Mulligan at BrickBeat studios in May 2010.

Free Gigs Week Commencing 6th September

Rough Trade East In-store - details

SMOKE FAIRIES - Monday 6th September, 7pm
ZOLA JESUS - Tuesday 7th September, 8pm
CAITLIN ROSE - Thursday 9th September, 7pm
DYLAN LEBLANC - Friday 10th September, 7pm

Debut album from disturbingly youthful London quintet

Pull in Emergency are a London five-piece who formed at school in north London and have been getting some acclaim of late, and not just because the members are still only in their mid-to-late teens. Their self-titled debut album, produced by Gordon Raphael, has the angular momentum of The Strokes and the chiming guitars and melodic indie classicism of The Smiths. Singer Faith Barker’s dulcet tones have the lilting cadence of a Morrissey, which makes the lyrics seem more arch than they probably are – these are pretty straight examinations of early-adult anxiety, full of questions (from the specific "What happened last night?" on 15 Years to the more existential "Where do we go from here?" on Hold Still) about love and life but few of the tart inflections of their illustrious forebears.

Blues-rock renegades rip the genre a new orifice

The noble art of the 12-bar boogie has gradually been devalued over the years.

Fifty years ago, it was one of the most vital, life-affirming forms of musical expression known to mankind, but it has since been watered down by a million rubbish bar bands playing ‘good time rock’n’roll’ with neither the energy to rock nor the sensibilities to roll.

Muse are offering a free download track from the support bands on their current tour. It includes

Back To The Fuck Yeah (Pulled Apart By Horses)
Bubbles (Biffy Clyro)
Eat Raw Meat = Blood Drool 1 (Editors)
I Know What I Am (BandOfSkulls)
Nun (IAmArrows)
Percussion Gun (White Rabbits)
The Price Of Love (White Lies)
Velvet (The Big Pink)

Download it here

Band’s third LP shifts moods with stirring regularity

First, the Manchester four had to pick an unwieldy band name. Then they go and choose something baffling for their third album. At least 2007’s Businessmen & Ghosts had a much more manageable handle. But that was a double CD, with well over 100 minutes of music. Not content with overloading an unsuspecting public, Jojo Burger Tempest is yet another double, though it’s a trifling 88 minutes. Are they a bit insane?

Beats breathe exciting freshness into global bass culture

Juke, with its dance-oriented subgenre footwork, is the latest ghetto bass culture to begin spreading the globe. A descendent of Chicago house, it’s fast becoming the latest sound to satisfy the UK bass underground’s constant hunger for new influences. UK labels Hum & Buzz, SWAMP‘81, and Night Slugs have both promoted and hybridised the sound and exciting things can be expected from them in the near future. While the output from their artists (like Addison Groove, Ikonika and Girl Unit) shows symptoms of footwork infection, Mike Paradinas’ seminal label Planet Mu has also signed a handful of Chicago born and bred Juke artists, and this is the first resulting LP.

Abe Vigoda - Throwing Shade (Max Tundra Remix) - download here

Steve Bug - A Night Like This (An Edit Like That) - download here

Tim Kasher - Cold Love - download here

First Aid Kit - Hard Believer - download here

Style Of Eye & Slagsmålsklubben - Homeless (Canblaster Remix) - download here

The Gay Blades - Try To Understand - download here

PVT - Window (Dorian Concept Remix) - download here

David Sitek’s latest project is never bland

Maximum Balloon is exactly what you might expect from a David Andrew Sitek side project. Since emerging with Brooklyn’s too-cool-for-school TV on the Radio and going on to produce debut albums by Scarlett Johansson and Foals, Sitek has operated in that enviable space where one’s name becomes a byword for hipness while no-one really knows what you look like. His ability to shape dark yet entirely accessible soundscapes that touch on electro, soul and black pop while retaining the otherness of art-rock make him the perfect person to present a multi-vocalist set that occupies a dinner party-friendly middle-ground between Gorillaz and Mark Ronson.

A welcome return

It’s difficult to talk about Scottish fuzz-poppers The Vaselines without mentioning the ‘C’ word, so let’s get it out of the way. It’s certainly fair to say that they’re best known for Kurt Cobain’s patronage – Nirvana  covered three of their songs (Son of a Gun, Molly’s Lips and Jesus Doesn’t Want Me for a Sunbeam), and he even named his daughter Frances Bean after vocalist/guitarist Frances McKee – but that shouldn’t be allowed to obscure the rest of this intriguing story.

Check out the official video for the new Pendulum single ‘THE ISLAND’ - out on September 19th

An unexpectedly poignant turn from the indie veterans

Manchester’s James have always been an anomalous pop phenomenon. Initially too idiosyncratic and uncompromising to fit even on as libertarian an imprint as Factory Records, for whom they made their debut in 1983, and always too insular and awkward to give hometown contemporaries The Smiths  sleepless nights, when they did eventually hit chart pay dirt, at the turn of the 90s, it was with their distinctive t-shirt range as much as a line in empathetic, route one anthems.

Cave and co exhibit a bigger, fuller sound on their second LP

Just as you thought you’d worked out Nick Cave’s twisted version of songwriterly sophistication, along came 2007 and Grinderman. A strange kind of side-project starring Bad Seeds  stalwarts Martyn Casey, Warren Ellis and Jim Sclavunos, Grinderman dumped the usual modus operandi by insisting "No God, no love, no piano", based themselves around Cave’s rudimentary guitar skills and deep love of the nasty side of the blues, and made a self-titled debut that made you laugh out loud at its rumbling aggression and hilarious takes on mid-life crisis and being an unapologetic dirty old man.