Today sees releases from two of our favourite bands at Brighton Music Blog. We’ve featured videos from both releases on the blog before, but these have appeared online so far before the release date that it’s worth reminding people about these again now that you can go and actually buy them.
The first is The New Union EP, by The New Union, on Two Sisters Records. The EP features four tracks – Staying Friends, Rushing Thoughts, Where Do You Think You’re Going Wrong and Forget Again – and is out now on iTunes, or on 12″ from the likes of Resident Records. The band are holding the single launch at the Book Club in London on Thursday for this release, but you’ll be able to catch them in Brighton again soon supporting IYES on 24th July at The Hope. Get your tickets early for this gig, because with a line up like that, it WILL sell out. Hopefully we’ll have an interview with the band to share with you before then.
Today’s other release is Hairstyles by Milk & Biscuits. Hairstyles is released on Big Salad Records, and is download only, available through iTunes (and probably some other places, although when this was written details weren’t confirmed). Milk & Biscuits play next Brighton gig is on 22nd June at the West Hill Centre.
It’s not out for another six and a half weeks, but Milk and Biscuits today released the video for their new single Hairstyles. The video is filmed around the streets, shops and parks of Brighton, so chances are you’ll spot somewhere you know.
Hairstyles isn’t a million miles away from last year’s epic single White Noise, although it’s a bit more radio friendly clocking in around three and a half minutes. It’s a very British pop song, not dissimilar to Belle & Sebastian, breezy, carefree and homespun. The single precedes the upcoming album Spirit Nap.
Had the video been up at the weekend, I could have told you about the band’s support slots on tour with British Sea Power this week, but they’re playing their last joint date tonight in Norwich. Tomorrow night Rachel and Eleanor play the Brunswick with their own band Do You Feel What I Feel Deer? supporting Crayola Lectern who’s launching his album.
Normally our weekly post about which gigs we think you should go to to see some of our favourite local acts starts on a Thursday. Thursday has long replaced Friday as the start of the weekend in the Brighton Music Blog calendar. This week though, we’re starting things even earlier on Wednesday, because there’s two cracking gigs on tonight which we feel deserve a bit of a mention.
Tonight Milk & Biscuits play at the Blind Tiger. We loved last year’s epic White Noise single, and this is a great chance to see them playing their new material for their follow up to 2011’s Balcony Time’s mini-LP. Over at the Green Door Store, Danger De Mort are holding their third event. Their first night had Nordic Giants headlining, and we were gutted to miss last month’s event which had IYES and Us Baby Bear Bones supporting. This month’s local support are Curxes, who have promised to play the new tracks they they’ll be releasing later this year. I don’t know a great deal about the rest of the bill, headlined by a band called Cymbals, but we reckon it’ll be great just on the strength of their previous line ups.
Onto Thursday night, where we normally kick off our weekend. One Inch Badge are putting Doldrums at the Prince Albert. Doldrums are from Toronto, but the supports – Us Baby Bear Bones and Luo are two of our favourite local bands.
On Friday night we’ve spotted four gigs we like the look of. Written in Waters, IYES and Calico are playing at Brighton Electric, Speak Galactic and Cloud are supporting Antibang at the Prince Albert, Catherine Ireton is supporting Stu Larsen at Sticky Mike’s and Anneka is playing at live set at the Traumfrau night at the Haunt. We’re spoiled for choice!
Then on Saturday Professor Elemental is launching his new single at the Marlborough. The single’s called This is My Horse (Show Me Yours), and we’ll be writing a separate post about it sometime next week.
Merry Christmas! We’ve gone overboard today, hit the sherry too hard too soon, and crammed Nine bands into our final advent calendar post. The truth is, you can’t talk about one of of these bands without inevitably mentioning some of the others.
Let’s start with Thomas White, who released Yalla back in March. It was originally just a bunch of tunes he recorded for himself when he was bored and restless on holiday, which he was persuaded to release after he shared them with some of his friends, and is one of the finest collections of tunes that we’ve heard all year. Album closer The English Sargasso is a soporific masterpiece. We didn’t do an end of year list in 2011 because the blog had only been running a matter of weeks but to make make up for it we’ll make a mention of the Electric Soft Parade‘s “A Quick One” EP now. Lead track Lily is the kind of melodic guitar pop that most indie bands would sell their grandmother to be able to write. 2012 marked the tenth anniversary of Electric Soft Parade’s debut Holes in the Wall and the White brothers celebrated by playing the album start to finish at The Haunt, and returning to the studio to start work on their first album for five years.
Thomas White was also listed as a member of Restlesslist in the sleeve notes to their fantastic album Coral Island Girl, although he’s no longer part of their live setup. Before this year I’d heard the name but not the music so was quite looking forward to their performance at Sea Monsters. I wasn’t prepared to see so many people onstage. I wasn’t prepared for so many genres crammed into so many songs. I wasn’t expecting it to be narrated, or for that matter for the narrator to be wearing an eye patch. Most of all, I didn’t expect to enjoy it nearly as much as I did. Musically it was fantastic, but it wasn’t taking itself seriously at all. Where Thomas White earns his prime place in our Advent Calendar by doing things so much better and more effortlessly than anyone else, Restlesslist earn their place by being completely peerless.
While Thomas’ other band Brakes were taking a bit of an, erm, break in 2012, Eamon Hamilton made a return to his old band British Sea Power at one of their Krankenhaus concerts at The Haunt. Krankenhaus was more than just a concert though – The bands on the bill were more varied than you would expect, and played for longer. There were DJs inbetween the bands making for non stop entertainment. There was non-musical entertainment in the form of a ping pong table upstairs. At the one I attended, there was a stage invasion by a giant bear and a choc ice give-away! As well as their Krankenhaus gigs, British Sea Power also played at the Duke of York’s, providing a live soundtrack to a film made up of old archive footage called From The Sea To The Land Beyond.
Milk & Biscuits share a number of their members with Restlesslist, and have rightly had praised heaped upon them for their single White Noise, and their mini-LP Balcony times, which came out at the end of 2011, is worth a listen. It features the vocal talents of Jennifer Left (who we wrote about back on 14th), and Kayla Bell of Foxes! who also released an eponymous album of top indie pop earlier this year. Eleanor Whittle and Rachel Dey – who provide vocals in Restlesslist and Milk & Biscuits and have sung backing vocals for Thomas White at some of his Yalla gigs – make up Do you Feel What I Feel Deer?, and have given us a taste of their wonky folk with their lush Save My Heart single. Adam Kidd has also sung backing vocals for Thomas White and his own band Fragile Creatures put out a grower of a track called Dear Michael. The tables were turned a week ago when Thomas White provided support at their Christmas gig at the Prince Albert. The final mention goes to Clowns, a band that Thomas White played bass with for a while before admitting that he was too busy. Every time we’ve seen them live this year (at a couple of Bleeding Hearts Clubs – did we mention that it was Bleeding Hearts who put Yalla out? – and more recently at December’s Source New Music night) they’ve got better and better.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there was dozen other related bands. Here’s to finding out all about them in 2013!
A new song and accompanying video by Milk & Biscuits has turned up on Vimeo (via Brakes Facebook page). It’s lovely stuff – it starts off as lovely pastoral pop before rocking out for the second half. The video is rather beautiful too:
So when I joked last week about the Juice Christmas Party being one last gig before Christmas, I honestly thought that would be my last gig before Christmas. But I ended up going to another. Friday Night was the Big Salad Christmas Party, headlined by Foxes!, who you’ll probably hear a lot more of next year – their debut album is out on the 16th January.
First up were a band whose name I didn’t catch, but whose tunes sounded like nobody had told them Britpop finished over ten years ago, and who spent more time tuning up between songs than they spent playing songs. Nice Christmas outfits though.
Milk & Biscuits were up next. They’re a bit of a Brighton supergroup – the core of the band is Matthew Davies and Max Earle of Restlesslist, but their mini-LP also features Tom White (Brakes, Electric Soft Parade, and dozens of other Brighton Bands), Jennifer Left, and Kayla Bell from Foxes! (at this stage I should note that I wasn’t making a point of exclamation about the members of Milk & Biscuits, but that Foxes! have an exclamation mark at the end of their name). Mlik & Biscuits started off with a two minute wall of white noise which then broke down to some lovely lilting kraut-pop, built around Matthew and Max’s keyboards and vocals, but augmented with backing vocals, guitars, bass and occasionally flute. Some songs tended more towards Velvet Underground, some were more Stereolab-esque. It was all rather good – good enough for me to buy the mini LP at the end of the gig. Balcony Times was a limited release which came out last October on Big Salad Records and includes a lot of what they played. Resident still have some in stock and it comes recommended.
After just enough time to get to the bar and back, Foxes! took to the stage. Foxes! and Milk & Biscuits are about as different as two indie bands could be – while Milk & Biscuits are all about layers and textures and soporific atmospherics, Foxes! are all about the three minute indie pop song, the lyrics and vitality. At the centre of the band is Kayla Bell, who takes care of vocal and drumming duty. If I had one complaint about the gig, it would be that the drums were placed where a normal band would place their drums – where the drummer is also the lead vocalist, that isn’t so appropriate. But you can’t really complain when the songs are so catchy and so well performed. They rattled through their repertoire with barely a breath inbetween each track. In Foxes! world, short is sweet. Their lyrics are a break from the norm too – I’m sure I won’t hear any other lyrics any time soon about peoples dogs getting anal cancer. Towards the end of the set, they played their track Christmas Songs – it’s quite a measure of Foxes vim that where most band’s Christmas songs are their at the upbeat end of their catalogue, Foxes Christmas track was one of the least upbeat. When they left the stage, they didn’t come back for an encore – In true lo-fi indie style they were off to man the merchandise stall.
Foxes! debut album is should be out in a few weeks time, so we’ll be reviewing that closer to the date. In the meantime, here’s Big Salad Records website and here are Foxes! on Facebook.
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