Today's Hotness: Captain Polaroid, The Answering Machine

>> [IMAGE CREDIT: VictorianWeb.org] Birmingham, England-based lo-fi stalwart Captain Polaroid Sunday put the finishing touches on his tribute to Mark Linkous, in the form of a cover of Sparklehorse's wonderful, poignant "Ghost Of His Smile." As this is our favorite Sparklehorse song, we jumped at the chance to offer the track, and were pleased when Mr. Polaroid gave his assent. And so we offer below Captain Polaroid's spot-on take on this wonderful track. Mr. Linkous took his own life March 6; he was 47. Read Ben Sisario's memoriam in the New York Times here. Captain Polaroid also recently covered Pavement's "Here" as part of Filthy Little Angels' Pavement tribute compilation we wrote about previously, errr... here.



>> We tweeted this last week but it is worth reiterating: Manchester, England-based guitar pop foursome The Answering Machine have built their own studio, in which the act intends to record a planned sophomore set. Band fronter Martin Colclough will produce. This all according to a blog post from the band you can read here. The Answering Machine has been writing new material, and we hope that -- as in the past -- demos make it online for public consumption. After demoing many tracks with Tony Hoffer a couple years back, a handful were posted to the band's MySpace. Glancing through our ITunes, we see that some demos (both Hoffer and pre-Hoffer) never made it on to the The Answering Machine's superlative first full-length Another City, Another Sorry, including the wonderful "Romantic And Square," "Time" and "The Photographer." We'd really like to see at least the first of those pop up somewhere down the line. The band's debut was one of our favorite albums of 2009, and we reviewed it a year ago right here.