SEVEN NOISES

And as I mentioned Austra on my previous post and they're putting a new single out next week, I think it's fair to refer to it as well. Katie's newest project is getting more popular after the media attention her previous single, Beat and the Pulse, got on-line and the fact she's releasing through Domino could have helped as well. But she kept the most dance-oriented and killer track from the album to be the second single, the one coming immediately (one week) before the long debut release. If this song doesn't get played all around we'll just get another proof the world is unfair, as it's destined for mass transmission.

The video, a massive work of surrealism and symbolism, mixes playing cards, fights and fake tan in a way Katie uses to (check her other videos). It probably won't be shown much on MTV but, anyway, MTV doesn't play videos anymore.

Austra is the new creature out from the many talents of Katie Stelmanies, a Toronto singer who's been in many projects and released some stuff under her name as well, like the amazing single Believe Me / Crying I reviewed in here a couple of years ago. This week, her new combo, a more electronic and beat oriented version of her solo stuff but still with the spirituality and drama of her previous releases, came to London to perform some shows and present their first release, a 12 inch with three songs that was previously released on Fucked Up's label One Big Science and now is out through Domino in the UK. You can here the three songs on the Domino Soundcloud space in here or get in in one of the many shops Domino gets to.

It was the beginning of the 90s. I was a teenager and as a teenager you have to have a musical idol, somebody who you admire more than the rest and makes you sometimes overview the fact that they are just musicians. Most of the people at that time had Thurston More, Kurt Cobain, Black Francis, Stephen Malkmus or Morrissey as their idols, to name a few. The closest I have been to have one it would probably be with Lou Barlow, although I also had admiration for many more. I applauded his versatility with different projects or even inside the same one, his productivity releasing numerous records under different names every year, most of them with more than 20 songs and close to fill in all the blank space of the format, and the democracy he applied to the projects he shared with more people. All these things left a mark on me when judging all the stuff I've heard since then. I understood that lo-fi is a way of expression apart from a lack of resources. I also understood that an acoustic ballad can be pretty punk. And that sometimes the magic of an unfinished first take of a song that lasts less than a minute can be left as the final take if you feel that's enough.
From all his projects, which I obviously got into them through Sebadoh, I ended up feeling more comfortable and close with the releases under the Sentridoh name, which is to say, the stuff he used to write and record on his own. And when he released the album Emoh under his own name I was happy to find out that he still was in pretty good shape and, although the album was quite produced, it still contained the magic of his previous albums.
The Right is the first single of his second effort releasing an album under his own name and, after hearing it, I have to say it continues the style of that first album. And in that particular song, you have summarized, not only the spirit of the whole record, but also of all his career. It has the intimacy of Sentridoh, the rhythm of Folk Implossion and the band sound of Sebadoh. And it gives you a pleasant and nice sensation of deja-vu as if you had heard him sing this song before. And I don't mean it in a way as if it sounded too much like any other song he's made but in the way it sounds so naturally his it's hard to believe he didn't come up with this 20 years ago.

Released 28/09/09

Well, I don't think that any presentation is needed when I'm about to talk about The Pastels, one of the most influential bands of the last 25 years although sometimes misunderstood. Some people still only gets the twee part of their sound but I've always thought there's much more to them as they've always tried to combine melody, performance and many times experimentation. It's been a long way since they published the last proper album Illumination back in 1997 if we don't count the mostly instrumental soundtrack The Last Great Wilderness in 2003, so the news of a new album in collaboration with the Japanese band The Tenniscoats was really good news. They've been recording this record in a three years period, basically when Tenniscoats were touring the UK. And last Monday was the release of their first single together, Vivid Youth, a beautiful song that continues the style they developed during their Domino / Geographic years. The fact that there are added members to the project, Teenage Fanclub's Norman apart from the Tenniscoats themselves, doesn't change so much the final sound you would expect from a Pastels song although you can feel the song has more instrumentation than the classic Pastels sound. The B side About You is a cover of JAMC circa Darklands.
Although Stephen has not been completely out of the music business as he's been managing one of the coolest record shops in the world, Glasgow's Monorail, is good to have him back.