It's Time For You To Lose Your Excitement!

THE POLYPHONIC SPREE


The Fragile Army today began their march towards their LP release in June, with this seamless (I thought everything started at the seam?) teaser of each song on the record.

The "video" for the album's title track is as bizarre, original and brilliant as the song itself (which is an ode to soldiers dying on a battlefield, sung over a dynamic interplay of sorrowful ballad and celebratory theatrical pop song). It actually features no video footage, instead weaving together 2,341 photographs of the band performing live, hanging around backstage and posing for their album cover and press shots.

The Ides of April.

frYars


This time last week, it would have been silly to refer to frYars as "the new Patrick Wolf", as the old model was still in perfect working condition and came supplied with all mod cons. But now it seems fitting. As the hi-fi pop inclinations of The Magic Position LP lead to soul-destroying promotional duties, one wandering antique Englishman falls as another begins to rise. With laptop beats and imaginative countryside lyrics, the soft-singing 17-year old Ben directly evokes the sauntering spirit of Lycanthropy or Wind in the Wires.

And In the Depths of the Scilly Isles, I heard you reside,
And in the depths of my mind, I can still see your eyes.

Over a barrage of enough tinkling piano, swirling synths and electronic drums to make Didier Dambrin a very proud man, The Ides' verses sprint along in harmony with the singer headlong into a killer chorus and a rousing group chant. In Chocolate, swooning vocals tell a tale of a girl who wants to be a boy and a boy who wants to be a girl over the kind of music you'd expect to soundtrack your completion of a Pokémon game. It is, of course, impossible to "complete" a Pokémon game.

The Ides
Chocolate (Demo)

His myspace

Emergency.

PATRICK WOLF SPLITS UP AND THEN REFORMS


Today, 23-year old multi-instrumentalist and songwriting virtuoso Patrick Wolf fortunately unretired, although making little sense about why he announced his demise in the first place!

Whilst touring his brilliant third album The Magic Position, he made his way over to Dublin's Olympia Theatre in support of The Arcade Fire and Today FM persuaded him to perform a stripped-down and slowed-down acoustic session.

The Magic Position
Pigeon Song
Enchanted

Lend Me Your Apes.

FIGHT LIKE APES


Female fans of Fight Like Apes everywhere have long been commending lead singer May Kay for her lyrics, which they believe are powerfully feminist. If you're on the lookout for your gender's new icon, it's obvious that the phrase "I'm gonna cut you with glass" is loaded with far more Girl Power than "gold lion's gonna tell me where the light is". The only problem with this is that the band's (male) synthist Pockets actually writes most of the group's lyrics, creating an altogether more confusing situation regarding the identity of the speaker and the intended recipient, as well as giving some of the songs a somewhat more sinister aura.

The majority of the band's influences are wonderful guitar-based pop groups such as Deerhoof and Apples in Stereo (who they will support on the Apples' first Dublin outing on May 17th) but because they omit the inclusion of a six-string friend, what is produced is an entirely original - yet instantly familiar - mash of exciting synth lines, loud tribal drums and insistent vocal melodies.

Faces will be lent and KFC may or may not be tasted when their debut EP 'How Am I Supposed To Kill You If You Have All The Guns?' is released on May 18th.

Lend Me Your Face
Lend Me Your Face video

Their myspace

Taps N Taps.

TAP TAP


The musical side-project of a band's frontman is rarely better than what is made during the dayjob. Albums by the likes of Sunset Rubdown and Handsome Furs may be brilliant, but it's evident that each of them could only benefit from the contribution of the other. As the chief decision-maker in a band called Pete and the Pirates, it makes little sense for Tom Sanders to branch out and release a solo album under the suitably more indie-sounding moniker 'Tap Tap'. But be glad that Mr. Sanders did bring a separate set of songs to the world, when late last year he assembled a collection of wondrous scuzzy gems onto an LP called 'Lanzafame'.

The album opens with the great unwashed 100,000 Thoughts, which could easily be the joyous and climactic sound of I'm From Barcelona marching and clapping along en route to a picnic in outer space. But there's a darkness to these perfect tunes which is brought on by the Mangum-ated acoustic guitar sound, coupled with the lush Beach Boys' harmonies of the likes of To Our Continuing Friendship.

With the Isaac Brockish accordion-led blast of Way To Go, Boy and The Reason I'm Here's euphoric and intimidating guitar riff, there is more vitality, jauntiness and timelessness crammed into Sanders' bedroom than there is amongst the rest of today's English bands combined. It feels unjust to refer to Tap Tap as a "side project" - given the implications of this tag - so perhaps it is time for his swashbuckling cohorts to join in on his party and lend a hand on deck. Anything could happen.

The Reason I'm Here
100,000 Thoughts

Buy Lanzafame
His myspace

What Happens In Newbridge Stays In Newbridge.

SCHARPLING AND WURSTER


Every Tuesday night, Tom Scharpling hosts his perfectly-titled The Best Show on New Jersey's brilliant radio station WFMU. It's a music/entertainment show loved by everybody who's anybody (Ted Leo, Conan O'Brien, Ben Gibbard, Danielson Famile, Zach Galifianakis, Henry Owings, Paul F. Tompkins). But as a call-in phone show, it unavoidably attracts some extremely weird characters who have questionable morals and exciting - yet insane - plans which they often insist on Mr. Scharpling involving himself in.

The Art of the Slap is the forthcoming fifth release of hilariously bizarre conversations being put out on Scharpling and Wurster's Stereolaffs record label.

The Hero's Call (from Fluxblog)

Go to the Stereolaffs website to hear clips and pre-order your copy.

Subscribe to the podcast and listen to the archives.

Become a Friend of Tom.

Bird Flu.

ANDREW BIRD


Andrew Bird's best record Armchair Apocrypha has just been released and I finally got to see him live last week. Oddly - but wonderfully - for an Irish concert, a bootleg recording of the show has surfaced on the Internet Archive. Despite suffering from flu, his music was twice (or even more!) as brilliant live as it is on record, combining his own amalgamation of M. Ward's old-timey electric guitar pickings and Owen Pallett's 21st century violin virtuosity with Martin Dosh's futuristic drum beats and samples. He may have been clad in a countless number of jumpers and scarves to fight the fever, but he even managed to play more layers than he was wearing.

Plasticities (live in Dublin)
Live in Crawdaddy, Dublin on March 21st 2007. (entire show, zip file)

His myspace