The Bilinda Butchers :: "The Lovers' Suicide"

Like a version of the early Two Door Cinema Club demos, the Bilinda Butchers chase a slice of pop, replete with ebullient guitars and gratuitous high-hat drumming. The result, "The Lovers' Suicide," certainly represents something a bit more dreamy, the vocals relentlessly buried in reverb and lo-fi, but nonetheless grounded in the foot-shuffling realities of the dance floor. Even the breaks, the attitudinal adjustments that slow the arrangement momentarily, hold the promise of the galloping guitars and booming tams to come.

Waylayers :: "Magnets"

An enormous introduction, East Londoners Waylayers breach into the pop view finder with latest single, "Magnets." With shades of the chillwave fever - hell, they even say "I feel fields all around me," which is more than enough for Earnest Greene to cry, "Derivation!" - and shades of the angular pop music of Foals and Two Door Cinema Club, "Magnets" is an upbeat and unselfconscious record about connection and connecting. Ostensibly concerning finding "magnets" within and getting in touch with the "fields" all around us, Waylayers stomp their way to the conclusion only after creating a digital layer of the electrons that swirl around us, the invisible vibrations that make the world hum. "Magnets" is an absolute burner, snapping down-beat and spaceship guitars, a single built to pull with a sort of impossible and unseen gravity.

Coastal Cities :: "Think Tank"

Sometimes you need useless comparisons. It's a start, after all, naming those things; you, a pattern recognizing machine built for solid navigation. Beyond the savageries of its alliteration, Coastal Cities' stunning new single, "Think Tank", a precocious and explosive offering, will feel both very new and achingly familiar. The easiest footnotes are early Bloc Party, but somehow more juvenile and charming, and a less electric Two Door Cinema Club (circa the time when they had no drummer and used an iPod). "Think Tank" finds its energy in repetition ("I like you but I really don't love you") and a final movement that kicks at the 2:03-mark and recalls the most soaring moments of the grand tradition of poppy, post-punk. There are elements of The Drums, but somehow a less annoying version, mixed with the youthful embolisms of teenagers who don't care a lick about the proper nouns in this paragraph, the comparisons wholly irrelevant if unmistakeable. This is the cost of comparison, the robbery of emotional aesthetics at the hands of critical analysis. So when someone leans close and says, "Don't these guitars remind you of the mathematical arpeggios of Foals?", you can clearly and confidently say no.

Coastal Cities - Thinktank by CoastalCities

[Elevator] Theme Park :: "Milk" and "A Mountain We Love"

An exciting and very new band out of the UK, Theme Park have only been making their exotic pop since the beginning of this calendar year. However, the first two available songs, "Milk", available for stream and download below and "A Mountain We Love", the video for which you find above and rife with 1990s found footage, represent one of those intensely strong entries that we find ourselves linking back to 18-24 months later. Put as a simple English sentence: Theme Park isn't on anyone's radar right now (a cursory search of blog aggregators reveals that this will be the first post about the band), but they are about to be. The flavor is that miasma of international style that David Byrne (Talking Heads fans will either find this music charming or offensive, always hard to tell) used so successfully, with the same bright guitars and poly-rhythmic impulses with which Two Door Cinema Club more recently architected their rise out of Northern Ireland. The arrangements dilate and weave themselves together like one of those dexterous little girls doing Cat's Cradle over and over and over. You will be hearing a great deal more about Theme Park, popsmiths with a slight eye for the weird and hooks that are only just beginning to take hold.

Listen :: Theme Park - "Milk"

On The List :: Tokyo Police Club and Two Door Cinema Club @ Terminal 5 [1.21.10]

This review runs live and in color with amazing photos (not by us) on Bowery's House List.

The theme music from The Empire Strikes Back echoed out toward the enormous disco ball hanging over what seemed like an especially sold-out Terminal 5. The lights cut out and the house music became applause as Tokyo Police Club took the stage in a stride combining sheepishness and magnanimity. Their introduction was no mistake; owing to a competition with coheadliner Two Door Cinema Club to see which band could have the more bizarre house music played before their set. This particular song was perfect since a different and more ebullient empire, Tokyo Police Club, was making a triumphant return of its own.

The band mixed recent material and older songs with aplomb, revealing how far they’ve come and how little they’ve changed. Tokyo Police Club opened with “Favourite Food,” off 2010’s Champ, followed by the spasmodic “Nature of the Experiment,” from their debut EP. Mixing in material from Elephant Shell, TPC played “Graves,” “In a Cave” and a shuddering version of “Tessellate,” with the crowd clapping in perfect time throughout the verses.

The show was about marking milestones as much as it was about reviewing the jet trail of a band in liftoff. After playing recent single “Breakneck Speed,” featuring the central lyric “It’s good to be back,” frontman Dave Monks looked into the balconies and screamed, “This is for anyone who was at Mercury Lounge in 2006,” before playing the clapping “Citizens of Tomorrow” with its winking reference to the future of “2009.” Monks got it: He and his band were the heirs to some throne and they were now sitting on it. For the encore, they brought Two Door Cinema Club onstage to join them in covering the Strokes’ “Last Nite,” a song without which neither band would have been standing in front of 3,000 rock kids in New York City. It was good to be back. It was good to be here.

On The List :: Two Door Cinema Club @ Bowery Ballroom [5.12.10]

This review appears in radio edit shine (actually, this is the radio edit) on Bowery's Houselist Blog.

Two Door Cinema Club captures that youthful exuberance usually reserved for punk records, freshman year in college and elementary-school recess. As they took the stage at The Bowery Ballroom on Wednesday night, the band reflected little on their second sold-out New York City show on their first United States tour. Instead relying on their lyrics, interspersing tautological wisdom (“It’s too late/ You’ve got another one coming and it’s gonna be the same”) with soft rhetorical questions (“Do you want it all?”). Two Door Cinema Club was the embodiment of the youth they lionize and, fortunately, don’t fully grasp.

In one of those moments that was as genuine as it was planned, Two Door Cinema Club opened their set with “Cigarettes in the Theatre,” the first song off their debut LP, Tourist History. They proceeded to play a series of cuts off that disc before delving into B-sides—“Hands Off My Cash, Monty,” “Kids” and “Costume Party.” With a clear limit on their recorded catalog, the fresh-faced kids relied on the rest of their album, either by choice or necessity.

After a brief respite backstage, the band returned with a two-song encore, culminating with the stomping and furious single “I Can Talk.” The crowd bounced and spun like a decidedly unsymmetrical rubber ball, calling to mind the lyrics of “Hands Off My Cash, Monty”: “I made it to the top to get away.” But for these boys from Northern Ireland, they wouldn’t be escaping from this summit of New York City. In fact, with a winning lack of cynicism, they promised they would be back.

Listen :: Two Door Cinema Club - "I Can Talk" [Radio Edit]
Listen :: Two Door Cinema Club - "Costume Party"

[Preview] Two Door Cinema Club @ Bell House and Bowery Ballroom [5.11-12]

When we wrote about Two Door Cinema Club in the first days of 2009, they had a two demos and were using an iPod as a drummer. We said they were going to break big and, frankly, if they didn't, it would be because everyone was being a fantastic idiot and listening to something awful. Congratulations, you didn't do that and they're finally here, touring stateside and ready to invade New York with shows at Bell House and Bowery Ballroom, both opened by chill-wave stunners MillionYoung. The Two Door Cinema Club record, Tourist History, is one of the best of 2010 and this is all happening like they planned.

Listen :: Two Door Cinema Club - "Something Good Can Work"
Listen :: Two Door Cinema Club - "Costume Party"

Two Door Cinema Club :: "Costume Party"

One year ago, we featured Two Door Cinema Club and predicted they were on their way to something big. First, came the storming, massive single, "I Can Talk," racing all the way to number 11 in our top songs of the year. The band's first official full-length, Tourist History is due the first of March and the band is offering another song, "Costume Party," a b-side not even cracking the top ten tracks they selected for the album. "Costume" proves to be a twitchy, instantly infectious cut that sails along like a pushed person careening on a block of ice down a dry grassy hill side. The downbeat isn't meant to snap but rather to move with delicate guitar plucking and warm synth work. This will stick in your head for days, or at least the five weeks until the album comes out. Then, you can try to handle how good the record is, given "Costume Party" didn't even make the cut.

Listen :: Two Door Cinema Club - "Costume Party"
Bonus :: Phoenix - "Lasso" [TDCC Remix]

Top 50 of 2009 :: 20-11 [You've been acting awful tough lately]

20. Neko Case - "People Got A Lotta Nerve"

Neko Case is to animal metaphors what Siegfried and Roy are to dangerous jungle cats. She manages to compare love to a taming of a wild, completely undomesticated animal. "You know, they call them killer whales," Case elaborates, "but you seem surprised when it pinned you down to the bottom of the tank where you can't turn around?" The supposition is that if you jump in tank with a deadly animal, you might want to table your shock when it is ripping your face off. Case declares herself a "man-eater" in the chorus and we are hardly prepared to judge. After all, we put her songs in our music library, we let her in, and maybe we should just be happy to still be alive.

19. Marina and the Diamonds - "I Am Not A Robot"

In one of my favorite running jokes of 2009, a friend of mine would send me texts every month, simply reading: "Guess what?" Of course, it was a paraphrase of Marina's signature lyric from "I Am Not A Robot." She was baiting me and to lose this game, I needed to send back a genuine, "What?" But for me to win, I would need to reply, "I'm not a robot," correctly completing the phrase. Over time, the question never changed but the answers evolved. Guess what? "I AM a robot." Guess what? "We are all robots." Guess what? This song is a crushing examination of our humanity and how quickly we can become romantic technocrats. Guess what? We aren't robots, no matter how hard we try.

18. Everything Everything - "MY KZ, UR BF"


In an email I sent to one of my A&R friends at Sony, I described Everything Everything as Passion Pit, but from the other side of the pond. Their first single, "Photoshop Handsome" indicated promise, but follow-up "MY KZ, UR BF" (or "My Keys, Your Boyfriend") proved that this band is going to make its money by packing enough hooks that you can't reasonably breathe. With vocals that bounce like an attention-deficit rubber ball and a chorus with elements of a head-nodding epic, "MY KZ, UR BF" is nearly radio-ready. 2010 is going to be a big year for these kids and it starts right now.

17. My Jerusalem - "Sweet Chariot"

My Jerusalem offered up "Sweet Chariot" in 2009, a rich mixture of Wilco, The National, and Beulah. Organ, rich strings, shabby guitars, and 3am-Marlboro-Red vocals collide in a tweaking, shaking chorus. The best moment, however, is the eponymous bridge. "We will not suffer the mistakes of our fathers/Sweet chariot take us away" becomes the repeated edict to go with a tide of building sound. The strings churn from the below and finally, a double-tapped rhythm section as we reach a thrashing catharsis. Just like that, the song fades into nothingness and is gone.

16. Emanuel and the Fear - "The Rain Becomes The Clouds"

There is this moment in "The Rain Becomes The Clouds" somewhere in the final third, right before the final chorus where the singer intones: "As winter ends and spring begins/with summer winds off in the distance/pushing in, they move us." Focus on "move us." The singer's voice tumbles down three or four notes in an eye-blink. The strings are soaring behind him as he continues to insist in the chorus, a metaphor rooted in the water cycle, that "the rain becomes the clouds." Emanuel and the Fear sound like a Rufus Wainwright take on Sufjan Stevens but with something more hopeful, more desperate and more propulsive; something designed specifically to move us.

15. Egyptian Hip Hop - "Rad Pitt"

Egyptian Hip Hop were neither hip-hop nor were they obviously Egyptian in 2009. In the world of indie rock names, this should not surprise us. What was surprising was the explosion of vocals and melody that stumbled out of the headphone jack. The first lyrics, after a shimmering, post-punk intro, give a mighty debt to New Order's "Temptation" chorus of "Up, down, turn around/please don't let me hit the ground." In the world of Egyptian Hip Hop, the melody is almost identical but the lyrics begin "What are we today?" It is a useful question for a band with a non-sequitur for a name.

14. The Joy Formidable - "Cradle"

The Joy Formidable released one of the best records of 2009, A Balloon Called Moaning, gave it away for free through NME and still didn't get enough press. The signature song is "Cradle" a charging, industrial rock joint. A sing-song melody in the verses gives way to a driving, nearly tribal chorus. The lyrics, hard to make out, are a repeating "My vicious tongue/cradles just one." It is violent and sexual and ambiguous. But when "Cradle" finishes, you only have one moment stuck your mind; the first lyrics, "I can see he says what he means," in perfect, alternating hi-fi.

13. Fanfarlo - "Luna"

"Luna" is a story in two-parts. From the jump, Fanfarlo charges out of the gate like an in medias res Arcade Fire. Instead of waiting for the charging second-movement, "Luna" opens at a sprint. This doesn't leave the band much room to grow, making the whole song into a brilliant comedown. By the end, we've slowed to a near waltz, miles from the initial burst. None of this is to say, "Luna" is poorly conceived. Rather, it is a different construction built heavy on the front and light on the back. But each movement, the slamming first two-minutes and the slow-drive final two-and-a-half, has its own narrative and ultimately leaves us feeling complete.

12. Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - "Young Adult Friction"

From the opening snare hits, through the soaring chord progression, "Young Adult Friction" does more than describe what its lurid and, presumably, metaphorical title intimates. Pains Of Being Pure At Heart seem to describe something less intimate and more public. You feel surrounded by people, by movement, by the thing you came here to see. The plea for earnesty gets deeper in the song's final movement, as they repeat, "Don't check me out/don't check me out." By the final, slamming conclusion and its echoing finale, you've experienced a case for intimacy and a case for public interaction - sitting right next to each other, kissing, we presume, in the privacy of a million strangers.

11. Two Door Cinema Club - "I Can Talk"

A vocal loop is the assaulting opener for Two Door Cinema Club's slamming single "I Can Talk." This is the first unveiling. The track then takes off in a speedy direction, calling to mind the high-fret-board moments of Editors, before settling into the twitchy, angular guitar sound that TDCC is deservedly known for. This is something different, returning to find a massive chorus with the title, "I Can Talk" squarely as its centerpiece. The arrangement rises, the vocal loop returns and these little, almost frail, falsetto vocals scream out from the maw. The down-beat might break your neck because it is, quite simply, one of the biggest moments of year.

Two Door Cinema Club :: "I Can Talk"

Back in January '09 we suggested that Two Door Cinema Club would be a good band to check out. We even suggested that this might be "their year." Of course, we were only dealing with demos and a crafty looking video back then. Now 10-months later, they've stormed the palace, taken the guards hostage and terrified the royal family with lead-single "I Can Talk." If commercial success can be viewed as a violent political coup (and yes, yes it can), this is what it would sound like.

"I Can Talk" is overwhelmingly slick on the first listen. A combination of vocal-loops, Editors-styled high-fret-board guitars and a stomping, Saturday-night chorus, the band discovers something larger than its previous angular, if delicate, songs. This isn't some indie rock song you put on your headphones when your brain is waxing existential and your heart all ripped up about something that almost certainly doesn't matter. This is a dance-song to storm your ears when the sun is down and the wolves are out. It's about the powers of speech. It's a little Bloc Party, a little Postal Service - choppy, dance-rock with a back-beat to kick your doors in. You know, if this was a coup or something.

Listen :: Two Door Cinema Club - "I Can Talk"

Two Door Cinema Club :: "Something Good Can Work" and "Undercover Martyn"

If you had to pick a band out of the north of Ireland to make it big this year, it would be Two Door Cinema Club. Well, that's not quite fair. You could replace "north of Ireland" with "European continent" or even "potential signees to XL or Gigantic records." The indie rock world could lay down at their feet. Or it might not. But the fact is, if Two Door Cinema Club doesn't blow up, it won't be because they're not good. That's a triple negative.

The sound is equal parts lighthearted guitar-riffs out of the Paul Simon school and processed beats out of the catalogue of the Postal Service. The attack is two guitarists, a bassist and an iPod. It's the 21st century version of a band. But it works. Take "Undercover Martyn," a song that swings wildly from plaintive strumming to twirling, head-shaking riffs and melody. The guitars drunkenly pitch and wail in a chorus that thrives in the song's blinking, seizure-ready video. This is Vampire Weekend meets Magistrates. This is flinching colors and flashing lights. This is what you should be listening to.

"Undercover Martyn"


As a bonus, we're throwing in the demo for "Something Good Can Work;" a tune, ostensibly about the success of success. It's a little more meditative but that would be like saying caffeine is a slightly more reflective version of amphetamine. It still moves and the chorus sails over the top of everything like an air-mailed cut-off throw. It's rich and it's easy. And if any band out of the north of Ireland should make it this year, it should be this one.

Listen :: Two Door Cinema Club - "Something Good Can Work"