A hazy weave of organic instrumentation and slide guitar

Ray LaMontagne is blessed with a voice that emits weary melancholy with the best of them. More than this, his husky pipes retain the power to soothe even when they speak in terms of heartache, resulting in a highly unlikely success story: a Billboard-bothering singer so reluctant to be in the spotlight that he rarely grants interviews and refuses to make videos for his songs.

Tim & Sam’s Tim & The Sam Band With Tim & Sam have announced a string of UK tour dates in the company of Cherry Ghost for September and October to follow their debut album ‘Life Streams’, released in May of this year (see review) . Buy your tickets here

SEPTEMBER
Friday 24th             Brighton, Komedia
Sunday 26th             Exeter, Cavern
Monday 27th             Hatfield, The Attic
Tuesday 28th            Cardiff, The Globe
Thursday 30th            Gloucester, Guildhall

Solo debut takes several stylistic cues from his day job

For many, the solo album means experimentation, indulging in music that fellow band members would very probably chuck their instruments at. But not for Brandon Flowers. When he and the other Killers  decided to take a year off, the group’s flamboyant frontman had already started writing their fourth album proper and, instead of pushing it to the back of a drawer while he unleashed his inner jazzman or rapper (god forbid), he carried on writing, with only himself to please. Then he enlisted Stuart Price, who worked on The Killers’ last record, 2008’s Day & Age, to co-produce; invited their drummer Ronnie Vannucci to play on a couple of tracks; and finally, named the album, like the Springsteen-saluting Sam’s Town, after a place in the band’s native Las Vegas. (Disappointingly, the title isn’t a stunningly self-aware allusion to a strutting, preposterously plumed creature. Shame.)

Zombie Disco Squad - Hobo - download here

Affable house connoisseur Jesse Rose already oversees two labels—Made To Play and Front Room—so why add another to the mix? Well, the new endeavor, Play It Down, is shaping up to be pretty low key—they’re doing minimal promotion, opting instead to let the music sell itself. This is presumably pretty easy when you have closely watched Rose scions Zombie Disco Squad dropping their new King Kong EP as part of the launch. Their lively, woodwind-assisted “Hobo” didn’t quite make that release, but the label’s letting it go through us because, again, it’s a casual thing.

Small Black - Photojournalist - download here

Having progressed from dirty to stretchy, Small Black’s preview of their debut is more nu-age weirdness than lo-fi smear. And yet, “Photojournalist”” still sounds like it was recorded in a bathtub. This is a good thing! More clarified psych-pop to come, when Jagjaguwar unleashes New Chain on October 26.

Pre-sale tickets are available from 9am on Wednesday Sept 1 and on general release, Friday September 3.

NOVEMBER
11 Manchester Academy
12 Norwich UEA
13 Bournemouth O2 Academy
14 Nottingham Rock City
16 London HMV Forum
20 Birmingham HMV Institute
21Glasgow Barrowlands
22 Leeds 02 Academy
23  Dublin Tripod

Klaxons will be headlining the NME/Radio 1 Stage at Leeds (Saturday) & Reading (Sunday) this weekend, onstage at 10:15pm, so make sure you catch them if you’re heading to either festival.

Watch the video to Echoes

We Are The Ocean are set to re-release their epic debut album 'Cutting Our Teeth' on October 4th as a special 2 disc reissue.

Disc 1 is the full album 'Cutting Our Teeth' exactly as it was first time around, while disc 2 is four brand new recorded songs (with Jason Wilcock at Stakeout Studios), 2 b-sides and the 7 tracks featured on the much loved debut EP, which sold out in a day upon its 2008 (self) release.

The fan pre-sale starts at 9am on Wednesday 1st September here. The remaining tickets go on general sale from 9am on Friday 3rd September.

Saturday Dec 4 - Leicester, O2 Academy
Sunday Dec 5 - Glasgow, Barrowland
Tuesday Dec 7 - London, HMV Forum
Wednesday Dec 8 - Leeds, O2 Academy
Friday Dec 10 - Manchester, MEN Arena

Support at all of the shows comes from Miles Kane, while Mercury Prize nominated I Am Kloot are also special guests in Manchester.

A delicately recorded and deliberately shambling debut

Summer Camp arrived shrouded in mystery in late 2009, members’ identities cloaked in the blithe guise of Swedish teenagers who’d met at summer camp. The shroud disintegrated soon enough, the band revealed to be multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Warmsley and journalist Elizabeth Sankey. But this wasn’t met by some dramatic splintering of intrigue, more the sharpening of anticipation and the feeling of something even greater to come.

Lupe Fiasco - Go To Sleep - download here

When Lupe Fiasco came kick-push-coasting his way out of Chicago, he had the kind of unprecedented momentum hip-hop fans wouldn't see again until...well, Drake. Lupe looked poised to pop like so much champagne. Fast forward four years and fans are getting antsy awaiting his daily delayed third album, Lazers, and it looks like they'll have to wait a little longer on that—he just announced his latest single, "Go To Sleep," is actually from an LP entitled Food & Liquor 2: The Great American Rap Album. Confused? Yeah, us too.

Diego Garcia -You Were Never There - download here

With a flickering, old school Iglesias touch, Diego Garcia’s Latin croon is one for the bedroom. “You Were Never There” is today’s aural aphrodisiac—a gentle flush of guitars and strings, yelping hooks, and love-worn lyrics.

The Like will be live tonight at The Flowerpot - 147 Kentish Town Road, London, United Kingdom, NW1 8PB - Free Admission!!

The super sexy female three piece do a very special intimate show to warm themselves up for this years Reading / Leeds festival. A real treat indeed.

Tomorrow - Thursday 26th August- Graveyard Train

Australian Horror Country band, a genre that they have invented themselves. With murder ballads and ghost stories played out on banjos and harmonicas, completely original and extremely exciting

1990s leftfield rock updated for the 21st century

It’s not so long ago that bands like Ten Kens were classified by the media as “math rock”, their complex rhythmic interplay, angular song structures and insistence that music fans still have brains apparently consigning them to the nerd’s corner of the musical playground. But while this Toronto four-piece employ many of the same tricks that the likes of Slint and Chavez  exploited in the early 90s, they’ve fortunately messed with the formulae, throwing in healthy doses of hardcore, post-punk and even goth. This ensures that, even though at times they’re in danger of sounding dated, they still remain excitingly challenging.

The Ting Tings - Hands (Low Sunday Remix) - download here

DIY-popcore outfit The Ting Tings have had a busy two years—touring endlessly, tearing up soundtracks, and stacking accolades for their multi-million-selling debut. For mere humans, this would warrant a break. For The Ting Tings, this means holing up in a fairy-lit Berlin studio until they found a new sound. “Hands” is the first taste of their record to come, and Low Sunday’s rinse is a sugary club-slayer—monstrously danceable, churning and swishing around the refrain, “Clap your hands if you’re working too hard!” No rest for the wicked here.

Broken Social Scene - All To All (Skeet Skeet Remix) - download here

For the past few weeks, revered Canadian indie army Broken Social Scene has been unloading free versions of their new single, “All To All,” and this airily voiced, sharp beated pass from LA DJ Skeet Skeet is the next in line. Grab the previous two—from Sebastien Graniger and djmomjeans aka Danny Masterson—and the still to come rest right here. BSS’s Forgiveness Rock Record is out now via Arts&Crafts.

Melds the approaches of Hercules and Love Affair and Fever Ray

The commercial success of Lady Gaga  hasn’t so much as put a dent in electronic pop’s 21st century cool quotient, as young wannabes continue to hanker for a rose-tinted 1980-82, when guitars were dismissed as “rockist”, every local disco wanted to be Studio 54 or The Blitz, and Bowie and Roxy Music fans in heavy make-up and glamour threads stood motionless behind keyboards, being vampy, campy and elegantly existential.

Tickets for the Autumn Arena tour from Faithless are released on Friday but you can buy them here now.

30th Nov 2010 Bournemouth BIC
1st Dec 2010 Cardiff CIA
3rd Dec 2010 Nottingham Arena
4th Dec 2010 Manchester MEN
6th Dec 2010 Newcastle Metroradio Arena
7th Dec 2010 Glasgow SECC
8th Dec 2010 Sheffield Motorpoint Arena
10th Dec 2010 Birmingham NIA
11th Dec 2010 London O2 Arena

A more playful, relaxed listen than its predecessor

On Eels’ ninth album, Mark ‘E’ Oliver Everett explores many of the themes that have long cropped up throughout his oeuvre, from loneliness through the idea of what it is to be happy – a loving relationship? Artistry? – to his lyrical staple of birds. Album highlight and first song proper here is entitled I’m a Hummingbird, and comes over like a loose cousin of his last record’s Little Bird, except that where Everett was formerly dejected and alone, here he casts himself the bird, “beautiful and free.” Over arcing strings he considers “all the seconds and the minutes… The years of my life,” declaring that “It was all worth it, to be here now”.