New York female trio Au Revoir Simone come from broadly the same musical world as artists like Stereolab and Broadcast – a world of analogue synths, programmed drumbeats and Krautrock-inflected pop music. On The Bird of Music, their second album, they do nothing to distance themselves from this world, with eleven tracks of sweet-natured electronic harmony, rich synthesised melody and impassive, slightly detached vocals.

The relaxed opening track ‘The Lucky One’ sets the tone well. “A dream of togetherness / Turned into a brighter mess” are fine opening lines, speaking of confused romance and hopeful dreams. The music takes its time, with a simple muted beat plodding underneath a sparse keyboard line. It dissolves into the repeated line “So let the sun shine” before fading away. As the album continues, it skips between a couple of styles: firstly, Broadcast-like repetitive and layered sounds behind angelic, sweet vocals, and secondly more upbeat ‘dinky-donk’ tunes that are as much electronic indie-pop as they are brooding introspection.

A couple of times the synthetic backing is limiting. Moments like the cutesy videogame keyboard line on ‘Sad Song’, the mid-90s indie-pop demo drumbeat of ‘Dark Halls’, and the line “You make me want to measure stars in the backyard, with a calculator and a ruler, baby” on ‘Stars’ are almost unbearably twee, and are in danger of disappearing into fluffy nothingness. But such moments are separated by songs like ‘Lark’ and ‘Don’t See The Sorrow’, which really benefit from this warm, electronic style of music in their chilly simplicity and heartfelt closeness. The standout track is the short, intimate ‘I Couldn’t Sleep’, with ever-so-hurt vocals dreaming over layered arpeggios of keyboards and delicate beats, the total effect recalling very early Human League or the darker moments of the aforementioned Broadcast.

This album is very pleasant listening. My worry is that Au Revoir Simone get too happy, and let their slightly bland perkiness overtake the rich seams of emotion and poise that they often seem to hit upon. It’s sometimes difficult for a band with purely electronic instrumentation not to fall into such a quirky or bland trap: let’s hope that this band doesn’t.

Au Revoir Simone
Moshi Moshi Records

Like Art Brut’s horny baby brother, Armrug have burst onto the Preston gig scene. This Mancunian band are named after the singer Jamie’s hairy upper limb, and dub themselves indie-punk-disco-sex-rockers.

Now here’s the shocker: the currently unsigned trio have two guitarists and no bassist. You’d never know it; they make up for it with powerful riffs and frenetic drumming. The first track here ‘I Love You, Can I Go Down On You?’ revolves around the title’s repeated refrain. The owner of the armrug sounds like Graham Coxon as he performs his singalong terrace chant. “Hey you, come on it’s summer!” he rationalizes. What better chat up line could a girl ask for?

It’s a stabbing guitar that provides the foundation for ‘Meeting Up With Girls’. The chorus is all over the place, clapping, chanting and percussion that sounds like they got their mates round banging on dustbins and pans with wooden spoons. “Waiting for a girl, standing outside Boots, everyone around are rushing buying suits” is the short sharp shock lyricism you’d expect from The Rakes. Like Eddie Argos, Mr Armrug boasts “My voice is the greatest sound in the world, listen to it, I’ll sing it to you girl”. Orgasmic howls are backed with sharp guitar work that Wire wouldn’t have turned their noses up at.

The next track ‘Girls That Melt In Your Mouth’ mixes amusing phrasing like “why do hot girls seem to act so surly? Said this to her face maybe too early,” with the annoying “What a body what a body” refrain. Strangely, we are then treated to a rap section, somewhere between Parklife-Phil Daniels and John Cooper Clarke.

In the last track they rant “I guess I look good on the dance floor, ‘coz I sure cant play guitar”, mocking the haircut generation. You feel like you’ve been catapulted back Life on Mars-style to the ’70s. The laddish sexism does get a bit much after a while – you can literally feel the hormones racing through every song. Having said that, it exudes an erudite honesty by way of crisp clear vocals. Just don’t play it for your mum!

Armrug

Acid casualties, expelled from school, squatting and constantly dodging trouble: not the best recipe for success, you’d think. Move to a farmhouse in the countryside, form a band and channel that energy into constant gigging and you have a different prospect.

This wayward trio of schoolfriends are now Gary Crowley favourites and recently headlined the Isle of Wight Festival’s New Bands Stage. Hot on the heels of their infectious first single ‘Fire, Fire’, Rotating Leslie release double A-side ‘Radio’/’Stop’. Take The Rakes and set them to electro-pop, and you are beginning to get the picture. ‘Radio’ expounds sardonic art pop wit about being forced to “Talk for hours about pictures of flowers.” Gritty Buzzcocks-style pop song craftsmanship mixed with punk energy, there are hints of 80s metal in their hotchpotch of musical ingredients too. In ‘Stop’ it’s all jerky riffs, rapid-fire stops and starts, with wailing Larrikin Love junior vocals.

Britpopsters for the Skins generation, they have already supported The Paddingtons, Dogs, Queens of Noize and Goldie Lookin Chain. It’s a well trodden path, but one that seems to go down well. When they sing “playing our song on the radio, I hear it too much now,” you get a premonition of things to come.

Rotating Leslie

Formed in 1998, underrated Connecticut rock/pop outfit Butterflies of Love continue the American singer-songwriter tradition with their hand firmly on the legacy of Pavement and The Silver Jews. Having suffered from difficult second album syndrome, this is their first single in three years.

Double A-side single ‘Orbit Around You’/’In A Blizzard In A Lighthouse’ is released on Fortuna Pop and is from their forthcoming collection of songs Famous Problems. ‘Orbit Around You’ features husky harmonies that stop just short of Tom Waits’ bourbon-soaked tones. They are buttressed with melodic backing vocals. Think Lou Reed intoning over pacy drivetime lo-fi guitar pop. ‘In A Blizzard In A Lighthouse’ possesses woozy swirling keyboards, giving it a more psychedelic, melancholic feel. The Velvet Underground meets Wilco. It’s introspective indie-rock that at times veers towards alt-country.

Personally and professionally, the songwriting team of Jeff and Daniel Green seem to be looking at the world through a more sardonic eye these days. The more you listen to these timeless tracks, the better they seem. Their laid-back charm ensures that they creep over you like a persistent ivy.

The Butterflies Of Love
Fortuna Pop! Records

Someone told me last summer that this band were going to be as big as the Arctic Monkeys, just after I’d missed them at Cohesion Festival. Not much to live up to there then! Obviously I have taken an interest in the progress of the Manchester based trio ever since.

The Answering Machine are three ex students playing infectious pop songs that they wrote in their bedrooms. Formed just over a year ago, they now release their debut single ‘Oklahoma’/’The Hold Up’. ‘Oklahoma’ rattles along like a runaway train with bouncy basslines that interlace with catchy riffs. Their drum machine – nicknamed Mustapha Beat – gives the song a sharp dance edge. Fans of both bands, they succeed in sounding like a mini Strokes with the art-pop energy of the Shout Out Louds. When they sing “Oklahoma, she wont be your friend, she waits at the disco for her song to end,” it puts me in mind of The Sultans of Ping FC’s ‘Where’s me Jumper?’ “I keep on trying not to go harder, trying not to be smarter” is the catchy refrain.

In ‘The Hold Up’ they sound like a more upbeat version of The Longcut. Martin’s voice wails through Gemma’s insistent bass. It stops and starts, then ends abruptly. These succinct catchy little song tasters leave you wanting more. They mix up the appealing energy of The Wombats with the art-pop of Yeah Yeah Yeahs or The Long Blondes. An endearing, edgy debut from the Fallowfield freshers.

The Answering Machine
High Voltage Sounds

One of the beauties of this job (well, it’s not a job really) is that you get sent stuff that in now way in hell you’d get your hands on normally. And it’s a joy.

The Japanese hardcore/jazz four piece, Z is a great example. Their 2006 album, ‘Mikabe’ is blessed with a palpable nervous energy, stricken with stress lines and angst. As with most interesting music, Z are terrifically difficult to pigeonhole – a most indirect reference would be Shellac panic attack or an At the Drive In that chooses to avoid the contrived structures, aiming for a still cerebral yet masterly flowing whole. Fu-manchu’d frontman Jun Nemoto yields an outrageous sax, eschewing the novelty of it all squealing with a unique abrasiveness, a fraught edge augmenting the wholly original Z sound. Jun’s vocals are strikingly edgy whilst singing and magnificently spluttering whilst shrieking. I like the fact I don’t know what he’s so desperately screaming about – the element of the unknown is a thing to revel in.

You’ve got to listen to ‘Mikabe’ just for the third track, ‘Zushiki Man’. After a minute-long blustering sax solo, an unexpected blast ensues, and the band follow a steadfast and sublimely grinding motif. It’s addictive.

I’ve listened to this album many, many times, and the sound never gets dull by being familiar or even recognisable. Perhaps this is because there is no definite tonal key or easy-to-pinpoint melodies – just chunks of slow-paced riffs and piercing saxophone squirls. Add a bit of Japan to your record collection, you Anglophile fool.

Pascal Ansell

Over the seven or eight years that have passed since Explosions In The Sky released their first album, the notion of post-rock as a genre has been developed, twisted and extended into new areas. On All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone, the band’s sixth long player, it’d be hard to argue that they’re dramatically changing or reinventing themselves here; rather meditating on and refining their style.

So on the first couple of listens, this album is pretty much as you’d expect. Instrumental, guitar-based, lengthy songs grow from quiet arpeggios of twinkling sound into dense, layered noise. A mid-tempo pace rarely lets up as songs fall into caverns of repetition and looped ideas. As the tunes seem to be becoming so light of touch that they might fade away, all of a sudden a rich blast of sound shakes things up with a dramatic change of tone.

Opening track ‘The Birth And Death Of The Day’ is a microcosm of Explosions In The Sky’s recorded output so far, dramatically exploding into the album with a head-filling texture, before settling down into a glittering, subtle interplay of guitar lines over a quietly insistent rhythm. It swells and subsides before boldly turning a corner with a swooping riff that leads into the powering heart of the song, before dying slowly away towards the final seventh minute of the tune.

Following this, subsequent tracks more or less revisit this pattern, albeit with different notes and structural orders. It’s hard not to feel at times that the band is endlessly searching for their perfect single song; the mood rarely sways from dark and introspective, and the pace and sound rarely deviate from a lush, we’ll-get-there-in-our-own-time sense of confidence and seriousness. I’ve listened to this album many times so far, however, and it’s yet to get boring: a good indicator that as much as they may not be setting music on fire with exciting new developments, Explosions In The Sky still have a knack for burrowing into my heart and making me feel warm and sleepy.

Bands like Mogwai, Youthmovie Soundtrack Strategies, Godspeed! You Black Emperor and Souvaris have all taken a similar post-rock template to Explosions In The Sky, and gone their on way with it. Post-rock is no longer what it was in 2000, but EITS are sticking to their guns. I have a feeling that they might be right to do so, if they can continue to do it this well.

Explosions In The Sky
Bella Union

On We All Belong, the third album from Philadelphia’s Dr. Dog, and the first of theirs I’ve heard, spirits of joyousness and positivity emanate from the speakers throughout. Not in any kind of lame-ass lightweight hippy pop way, but in a dark-edged way: the band are piano-led and certainly possessed of a jauntiness and high-scale-reaching tenderness; but they counteract one-dimensionality with strange stabs of guitar, lingering background noises and lysergic weirdness that are as much Country Joe And The Fish as they are Polyphonic Spree.

The clearest reference point here seems to be Flaming Lips around the time of Clouds Taste Metallic and Transmissions From The Satellite Heart: essentially simple songs, drenched in lush arrangements and strident changes of pace and tone. So, ‘Don’t Pretend’ and ‘Alaska’ share vocal similarities with Wayne Coyne’s slightly-broken singing style; and ‘The Girl’ is driven by a hefty four-note riff which frequently breaks down into a wailing vocal bridge.

At times Dr. Dog seem to be too reverential and obvious followers of the Flaming Lips; but they manage to just about strike out with their own individuality and unique touch. ‘Worst Trip’ opens like a ’60s Motown number, then morphs into a Divine Comedy-esque operatic pop tune, before exploding into a fantastic, uplifting guitar break. ‘We All Belong’ references John Lennon’s solo, mid-paced work, before crossing over into a Beach Boys-style chanted ode to joy.

I get the impression from this album that Dr. Dog are more a product of similar influences to Flaming Lips, than simple followers of that band. We All Belong takes in aspects of the aforementioned bands, along with Crosby, Stills & Nash, The Band, David Bowie and The Beatles’ ‘I Am The Walrus’. It’s downright bizarre, but endlessly enjoyable, entertaining and life-affirming. Cynics among the world won’t find much to maintain their pessimism here, but at this time of year, as the winter fades away, this is perfect listening.

Dr. Dog
Park The Van

I’ve not even finished listening to the marvellous Manicured Noise retrospective that I reviewed a little while ago and what should drop through my door but a retrospective of fellow early 80’s Mancunians, The Diagram Brothers.
I have to admit I know very little about them other than the fact that Andy Diagram is now one of David Thomas’ Two Pale Boys.
I also know their records were released by Richard Boon’s legendary New Hormones label.

Get past some of the humorous titles – “Ron! The Morris Minor’s Gone”, “I Didn’t Get Where I Am Today By Being A Right Git” – and what you have is a really exciting new wave art rock band that owe as much to the No Wave of the Contortions as they do to the UK punk scene and the art rock of Pere Ubu.

The guitars are all stainless steel clean, tones you could cut your finger on.
There’s some beautiful percussion, hints of both Devo and The Slits in the time changing and call and response chants, and bass playing that could be a forerunner to the avant noodling of Stump’s Kev Hopper.

The only downside is the ocassional low of some of the lyric writing. It can sometimes be a little too cleverly naive.
But then what would you expect from a group of young men making music where and when they did?

“Postal Bargains” is my current favourite – It’s all fighting guitars, driving rhythm and get-in-your-head annoying singing.

Don’t worry if you, like me, don’t know a great deal about The Diagram Brothers.
Regardless of whether or not you’re interested in experimental english pop of the late 70’s and early 80’s, if you like your pop music guitar driven, interesting, thought provoking, hummable and catchy then you’ll dig this to pieces.

GRRRR!!!!!
That’s not really enough is it?
I don’t really know how to describe The Scaramanga Six in a way that is both truthful and won’t put you off.
I’ll just go for the truth – S6 are a hard-rocking, indie-tuning, Meatloaf-operetta-singing, tongue-in-cheek-progging, murderous gang of thugs.

I’ve been a fan since I was given a copy of “Strike! Up The Band” album way back in 2003.
That’s 4 years of listening to deftly written pop tunes augmented by huge stadium filling riffage.

This, the new album, sees the band refining their sound even further.
There’s a timeless quality to some of the song writing – “Helvetica” being a case in point, building from a grimy little signature into a full scale indie-prog dream, all soaring vocals, sudden key changes (showing off their Cardiacs fandom) and BIG guitars.

The final, seven minute mini epic, “The Towering Inferno” is worth the price of admission alone, opening as it does with what can only be described as a Bastard Son Of Jim Steinman hook – you know, augmented pianos swooshing under chandeliers in a heavy storm before the songs explodes into the biggest chorus you think you’ve ever heard.

Buy this album NOW.