SEVEN NOISES

And yes we are already reviewing the first of the coming releases prepared for Record Store Day 2011, and even that it's become one of the most important days of the year (music related speaking) in just three editions (this year's, on April 16th, will be the forth). And the first release I'll talk about is actually a reissue of one of the most stupidly forgotten and overlooked bands that really should need more recognition. The Scottish band The Wake who started by the edge of post-punk meets new pop could be put under the same entourage as The Associates, Orange Juice or Josef K and other Postcard bands (or later The Pastels) because of sharing, not only a Geographic but also a sound in common (if we obvious the highly Joy Division influenced first Factory LP), but also commonly compared to New Order through their mid 80s records. And Captured Tracks are proud to announced they will re-release their first single (and only pre-Factory release) and their last 80's single (and also their first post-Factory record, which was actually released on the also mythical Sarah Records label and helped to design and define what would be the very recognizable sound of the label.

But that's not the only good news coming from Captured Tracks regarding their Record Store Day releases. To celebrate these two records, they'll also put out a single with two of their most emblematic bands, Wild Nothing and Beach Fossils, covering two tracks from The Wake, called Gruesome Flowers (as they will cover Plastic Flowers and Gruesome Castle, both from the 1987 Something That No One Else Could Bring EP).

I can't be more excited about these news.

I posted this song long ago when I introduced Wild Nothing to some of you, the back then still-to-release-any-record project of Jack Tatum. Since then, he signed to Captured Tracks, released the beautiful first single Summer Holiday and last week, as an advance of what will be his first album Gemini to be out in May as well in Captured Tracks, comes this Kate Bush cover, Cloudbusting, that has been shared and commented online for a long time now.
The single, with a cover that reminds a lot Kate Bush's aesthetics, comes with the new B side Promise and will probably be included as well in the album that, if it's as good as all the advances we've heard so far, we have a strong candidate to be in all of the end of the year best records' lists.

Back in November I made a generic post about Wild Nothing before they released anything on record and talked about this then future single in Captured Tracks that is finally here. Summer Holiday is an original song by Jack Tatum's Wild Nothing that will make every single reviewer compare them to the Pains of Being Pure at Heart if they are less than 20 years old or don't have long term memory or name C86 and British bands from the change of century 80s / 90s if their background is richer. Anyway, we were expecting a bunch of bands with this sound to appear this year, was it for analogy or just because it had to happen, and we expect them to be as good as Wild Nothing that, if the album to be out soon on Captured Tracks as well is up to the expectations, we have here a band that is going to make it in all "best of 2010" end of year lists. Both songs here, Summer Holiday and Vultures Like Lovers, have the sound of a full band playing and although it's supposedly a one-man project, he's preparing with a full band to tour live his songs and have plans of coming to Europe.

Lately I've been trying to avoid to write about anything Captured Tracks have or are going to release as this blog could soon become a tribute site to the label. So well, all my efforts keep on being frustrated as every time I find out about a new exciting band or record, then I realise that Mr. Blank Dogs' label is guilty of being involved. They've destroyed the myth of the equation "quantity differs quality", putting non-stop a great record after another out on the market and getting the notoriety and the attention other labels will to reach in years. So well, after saying all this I ask you to forget that Wild Nothing's first release, Summer Holiday, is going to be out soon through them. If you thought that more or less every single record on this label could be categorised by a similar tag you are going to be quite surprised when you hear the Wild Nothing's tunes. His songs are mostly quiet, melancholic, nostalgic and peaceful: shoegaze-inspired harmonies closer to the first Creation records or the 4AD bands back to the frontier of the change of decade from the 80s to the 90s. He even makes a fantastic cover of Kate Bush's Cloudbusting that sounds even more ethereal and dreamy than the original. Check this tune here and some other originals on their Myspace site: