Lonesome Leash :: "Ghosts"

Dropping into an unsettling dystopia, Lonesome Leash's debut single, "Ghosts" is an ambitious minor key offering that checks in somewhere between the French Quarter and the apocalypse. Sharing methodologies with the drone-pop of Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, Lonesome Leash, however, is no bedroom project, rather the outcome of a one-man-band or, as sole-member Walt McClements says, "hands feet and lungs." "Ghosts" breaks into haunted house progressions, moaning through a sort of neo-baroque disaster, the final, insistent lyric, "There are ghosts between us, as we lay." It's the soundtrack to the final movement an independent film that hasn't been made yet. A cathedral of horn and accordion mark the outlines of the blast area, this washed out and unsettling bit of pop music, McClements, tense and alone at the center.



Download :: Lonesome Leash - "Ghosts"
Download :: Lonesome Leash - "Feeding Frenzy"

Eliza and the Bear :: "Upon The North"

One of the most promising acts coming out of Britain today, Eliza and the Bear have released their triumphant new single, "Upon The North." It is in the school of their post-Edward Sharpe pop: big, expansive and Western-inspired Americana mixing with a deep British reverence and elegy. The bridge, a shouting and repeated lyric, "I spent summers away," is filled by organ chords, splashy cymbals and backing vocals, the same formula that makes their debut single, "Brother's Boat" so relentlessly charming. "Upon The North" charges ahead with the same type of exuberance, running without looking down, aimed breathlessly on the horizon in the northern sky, despite the fact that, for the American music consumer, this band's future lies dead west with the setting sun.

Gems :: "All I Ever Wanted"

Sounding like Beach House's Victoria Legrand playing songs from the Sundays' back catalog, DC's Gems launch a beautiful and troubling single, "All I Ever Wanted." Far from triumphant, the cut features male and female vocals in the verses, building toward breezy and brutal chorus. Guitars wash against the shores of a playful bass line in the distance, all a set up for the final movement. "Too much to bear," sings Lindsay Pitts, making clear the implied counterfactuals of the refrain. This is no happy ending, nor is it about getting the one thing you wanted. It does outline the architecture of dusty mornings and moral victories lying somewhere about in the ashes.

Randolph's Leap :: "Hermit"

Randolph's Leap are a Glasgow band overflowing with pop hooks and the kind of blighted brilliance on which Scotland has an effective monopoly. On "Hermit", lead track from their EP of the same name, the band sounds intensely like British stab at the horn-soaked pop that Beulah made deservedly famous in the previous decade. Think Stornoway with a bit more punch and a relentless pursuit of a chorus that twirls under its own melodrama. It is, like so much of this type of pop, about being lost and alone. Belle and Sebastian influences creep in at the corners, especially in the final movement where the band loses control in an exceptionally orderly fashion.

Velveteens :: "Do You Remember?"

To grasp the demos from Velveteens, you need eyes to see the initial "Do You Remember?" not as it is now, but what it could be in a real studio, served up with an extra portion of bombast. This is bedroom pop: Casio-looped drums, bits of ambient noise, conversations at both the beginning and end of the recording. The hooks are buried, red-lining the recording, clipping the top of the mix and breaking into fuzz, but the string arrangement and melody are undeniable. The early Mountain Goats recordings were made on a Fisher-Price tape recorder; roughness can be a virtue. Here it just marks a starting point. "Do You Remember?" will likely be re-recorded later, additions of the decadent and the baroque to replace the bedrooms of your youth.

Challenger :: "Are You Scared Too?"

Challenger, a band who released an incredible debut single, "I Am Switches" over the summer, returned with the release of their full length, self-titled debut this past Tuesday. Second track, "I Am Switches" is movie music with three distinct movements: an opening description of the problem, a down-tempo middle section where things look bleakest, and a rousing and ebullient conclusion. The middle third is dark, unfettered elegy, a vocalist left alone with one long, held chord, before the arrangement takes on a bit of Paul Simon-Graceland bass, and a soaring final sequence of keys and a guitar solo that jerks the telemetry skyward. It requires a bit of patience, certainly, but the rewards are manifold. The next song on the record after "Are You Scared Too?" is the aforementioned and explosive "I Am Switches," a song that erupts with as much force as any this year. Challenger does each of these tricks with equal impact, crushing sadness and relentless hope, often in the same song.

Listen :: Challenger - "Are You Scared Too?"

Shout Out Louds :: "Blue Ice"

The Shout Out Louds return nearly three years after the somewhat underwhelming LP, Work with "Blue Ice," a sweeping bit of widescreen pop. If Work was world-weary and a bit too intentional, the band here sounds committed to something more earnestly down-tempo. Adam Olenius, the mumbling soul of the band's truly excellent Our Ill Wills and Howl Howl Gaff Gaff, the voice who launched a thousand Morrissey and Cure comparisons, is his usual distant and morose self (see "Parents Livingroom") on "Blue Ice" . He braces his vocal against a playful piano riff and a flickering guitar line, as the slow-drive arrangement describes a sort of cold clarity in form and function. The band will have a full length out on Merge early next year, "Blue Ice" only a teaser 7", not possessing half the bombast and grandiosity of whatever will serve as the first single. Expect Olenius, for all his thoughtfulness and pacing here, to again find stirring moral victories - this is, after all, a band who wrote a song entitled "The Comeback" - somewhere up in the sky.