Battles-indebted quartet delivers an enticing EP

The elephant isn’t so much as in the room as sitting on your lap, turning your feet blue: Gallops sound a lot like Battles. It’s mainly the guitars, which dance with an undeniable rigidity. But there are further echoes: the way that the drums come on like steam engine pistons, the wriggly nature of the bass beneath the sharp surface angles; the electronics, which squelch and splat rather than fizz and crackle. But none of this is a bad thing.

Taps into Gram Parsons and Neil Young on a smooth debut LP

I've been listening to this record a while now, trying to figure out why I hate it so.

There's nothing wrong with it, per se. It's immaculate, sound-wise. Beautifully polished, smoothed to perfection. You can't fault the singer's pedigree – he’s the son of a Muscle Shoals session musician, and would hang out with legends like Spooner Oldham at the age of 11. He learnt to 'pick' a guitar a few years before that. His voice is wistful and crooning, with a slight lisp and hiccup, like a beautiful 20-year-old Louisiana version of Townes Van Zandt, or perhaps the less glamorous part of the She & Him equation, M. Ward.

NO AGE -Glitter - download here

Discernible vocals on a NO AGE song! Dudes are finally going hi-fi for the new one, huh? Well, sort of. “Glitter” is still rapturously messy in parts—guitars spewing glorious noise, samples coloring your brain, drums pummeling to be heard underneath—but the vocal presence is indeed notable. And welcome. We can finally SING ALONG.

Reporter - Click Shaw (Runaway Remix) - download here

Reporter’s skronky robo-disco sounds pretty low-budget. Which is totally not a bad thing! Who can hate on kitchen appliance beats and overloading Casios when they are played with such endorphinated abandon, and the band seem proud of the aesthetic—their press bio frames them as an integral part of Portland’s “vibrant DIY dance scene,” which really does sound fun and refreshingly cheap. “Click Shaw” gets a pass here from Jacques Renault and Marcos Cabral, sometimes also known as Runaway, themselves no strangers to hastily thrown together loft/basement blowouts. Their version is only a tad slicker. It’s also three times as long.

Unremarkable debut that simply imitates the innovators

The latest in the crop of electro-tinged indie pop groups that New York seems to pump out with an industrial intensity, Queens-based five-piece Freelance Whales have enjoyed a smooth ride into the mainstream. Having formed in late 2008, the band spent the next year or so turning heads at the South by Southwest festival, signing to indie super-label Frenchkiss and touring with the likes of Cymbals Eat Guitars, Shout Out Louds and Mumford & Sons.

A beguiling portrait of an artist unbound

Pop music comes in many and varied forms, but sometimes it’s just whatever makes you crackle. Such is the lesson Rose Elinor Dougall took from her split with The Pipettes, the all-female Brighton troupe with which the 24-year-old songstress made her name. The group made polka-dotted 50s pastiche their stock-in-trade, adhering to a strict pop formula which made them fun for a while but a kitsch-laden drag in the long run.

Eoin Smith and Russell Thom, both 19, founders of local music blog Hercules Moments, and Dave Lovie, 23, have embarked on a grand scheme to bring Aberdeen’s music to the masses by offering fans the chance to download the best in local talent, free of charge.

‘Hercules Moments: Vol. 1’, the imaginatively titled sampler, can be downloaded here (or here if busy) and boasts the cream of the Aberdeen music community featuring:

The Horrors have remixed the Charlatans new single Love is Ending and you can listen and/or download it for free

The Charlatans - LoveIsEnding Horrors Remix by WorkItMedia

Warrants celebration given the bruising time they’ve endured

Strange Weather, Isn't It? could have been more like a wake than an album. The deflated members of !!! sat on sofa-arms, feet shuffling, politely nibbling sausage rolls. It had good reason to be.

The punk-funk flotilla, led by lynchpin Nic Offer, have endured a bruising time since the release of 2007's Myth Takes. First there was the acrimonious departure of founder member John Pugh during recording, and then at the tail end of 2009 the death of touring drummer Jerry Fuchs. The 34-year-old fell down a lift-shaft whilst attending a warehouse party in Brooklyn.

Displays an intuitive feel for psychedelia’s insurgent streak

Ours is an age of fleeting connections, a mad proliferation of voices issuing forth from speakers unknown. With the chorus line of the digital era swiftly becoming a cacophony, there’s much to be said for locating one’s innerspeaker, a term Tame Impala frontman Kevin Parker uses to explain the feeling he gets when he’s at his most inspired.

The Candle Thieves release Happiness Blues EP on September 13th and to celebrate the Peterborough duo of Scott McEwan and Glockenshiels are giving a way a track from their debut LP called Sharks and Bears.

Sharks And Bears by WorkItMedia

Download Grinderman, Nick Cave's side project, track Heathen Child here (needs mailing list sign-up)

Sure to crumble the cynics with their sci-fi-themed third LP

If there’s one thing guaranteed to tick off the worldwide heavy metal community, it’s bands who don’t pay their dues. There is an expectation that before you attain success and recognition, you put out a few demo and independent releases; tour like dogs for no money; and generally behave in a way conducive to the metal underground.

A remarkable achievement from the metal titans

As metal moments go, they don’t get much bigger than the arrival of a new Iron Maiden album. Expectations are always huge even if they’re not always met. But then there are almost as many visions of a perfect Iron Maiden album as there are Maiden fans, and the band have never, ever sought to please anyone other than themselves. It’s the secret of their success, and their 15th studio album offers a wild ride for those willing to get on board.

Leaves you mentally exhausted

One of massive marijuana intake’s side effects – short-term memory loss – has helped ensure that stoner rock has latterly come to resemble something of a played-out genre, outside a few notable exceptions not rehashing past glories. Nobody told perma-touring Illinois brothers Tweak Bird, though, whose self-titled debut full-length sticks hipster spectacles on the whole decibel-kissed shebang and takes it for a serotonin-stimulating joyride.

Lissie -In Sleep (Live) - download here

And with that, previously understated Americana songstress Lissie officially traverses into enigmatic-like-Stevie-Nicks territory. Seriously though, this is live? It sounds like she’s summoning the wrath of Zeus upon whichever doofus left her heartbroken. That voice is a force of nature. Her debut album, Catching A Tiger, came out recently. This song is on it, but this version is only available here.

Apache Beat -Another Day (Blood Diamonds Remix) - download here

Post-wave clouds disperse in this radiant rerub of Apache Beat’s “Another Day,” as the palm-blown riffs and sunfish hooks swim in. Drink in the sonic summer vacation and sit tight. More tropical daydreams with a punkish kick will surface on the band’s excellent debut, Last Chants, come October.