Today's Hotness: Big Deal, Los Campesinos!, New War

>> Regular readers will be familiar with our coverage of London-based indie duo Big Deal. One of the more frustrating things this fall has been our inability to hear the band's new album Lights Out, which was released in the UK Sept. 5. We figured we'd be able to grab the MP3s digitally or stream it on Spotify once it came out, but no dice. Turns out we had completely forgotten that the act comprised of American guy Kacey Underwood and British gal Alice Costelloe had a North American deal in place, which is why there is at present no way to get Lights Out in North America. That will change on Jan. 24, when Mute releases the full-length to our sector of the globe. Lights Out will be preceded Oct. 25 by an eponymous EP that includes one exclusive song, "Mai Joy." The rest of the EP contains the album's main preview track "Chair," which we wrote about here last month, with the Big Star cover "13" from Big Deal's debut 2010 UK single "Homework," as well as the intense brooder "Locked Up," which was an NME-exclusive download a year ago that we wrote about here. If you need more of a Big Deal fix before Oct. 25, stream "Chair" below or watch this live in-store performance of the track, along with the album track "With The World At My Feet," filmed at Rough Trade West last month.

Big Deal - Chair by Big Deal

>> Cardiff-based indie pop titans Los Campesinos! revealed earlier this week that the lead single for its hotly anticipated new album Hello Sadness will be the record's title track; the single will be released Nov. 21. The timing is odd, because singles typically precede an album launch, not trail it, but there you go. The announcement, single art and lyrics were posted here by the band. No information about b-sides was offered, but we expect there'll be at least one, as flat things tend to have two sides. Pre-orders for Hello Sadness close Oct. 14 and the set will be released a month later on Wichita in the UK and Arts & Crafts in North America, as we reported here in August. A preview track "By Your Hand" was pushed out to the Internerds early last month and we wrote about that here.

>> The more we listen to New War's new single, the more we like it; it reminds us of Tones On Tail and Chameleons UK and other goth-tinged '80s musics that captured our attention way back when. The title track is "Ghostwalking," and the original version is wonderfully atmospheric and soporific, with a slow groove that doesn't move so much as it spreads out. Melbourne, Australia-based New War's members include Chris Pugmire and Melissa Lock, formerly of the act Shoplifting, which has released records on Kill Rock Stars. New War has inked to release music with Fast Weapons, a label commissioned by Gossip's Nathan Howdeshell. The band will release a full-length titled Calling From Inside in March 2012, but in the meantime the song "Ghostwalking" is getting the 12" treatment; it was released Sept. 27. Additional music on the platter includes one remix each by Gossip and HTRK. Better still, you can download all three songs at Bandcamp for free. Check them out at the embed below and click through for the sonic goodies. If you want the vinyl, you cany buy that right here, but there apparently aren't too many left so act fast.

YouTube Rodeo: Big Deal's "Homework"

This autumn, millions of teens will fall in love. Let's say 5% of those kids are indie rockers. And let's say 1% are plugged into the newest sounds coming out of London. "Homework" -- which the gorgeous video above was released to the Internerds to hype Monday -- will be their song. Decades from now, they'll hear it, the debut single from rising indie duo Big Deal, and think back on that lost love. "Homework" is a beautiful, yearning, delicate composition that will transport you to the most vulnerable points of your various adolescent love affairs for two minutes and thirty-eight seconds. "Homework" b/w "Thirteen" (yes, the ubiquitously covered Big Star jam) was released yesterday on Records Records Records Records in a hand-titled, hand-numbered edition; buy the single right here. A second single featuring tracks unknown will be released by an as-yet-undecided label early next year, and we imagine a full-length must be coming at some point before 2011 has worn itself out. As we wrote here last month, Big Deal are apparently recording new material with Gordon Raphael, who aging hipsters may recollect was the producer of the early Strokes material. We can't wait to hear it. In the meantime, stream all the currently known Big Deal tracks below.

Big Deal preview by Tim Chester NME

Today's Hotness: Big Deal, Varsity Drag, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart

>> We ignore about as many pitches in a day as breaths we inhale, but there are certain folks whose recommendations are lead-pipe cinches, and we got one of those cinchy pitches a few weeks ago about the fast-rising, London-based indie rock duo Big Deal. The pair, whose MySpace URL is charmingingly MySpace.com/WeAreABigDeal, flew onto the radar of the British rock press after only its second show, and Big Deal's debut single "Homework" b/w a cover of Big Star's "13" doesn't even street until 18 Nov. and is not yet available for pre-order. The single, incidentally, will be issued by London's Records Records Records, who you may recall recently issued the completely terrific Superman Revenge Squad EP Dead Crow Blues. Anyway, Big Deal is songwriters and guitarists Kacey Underwood and Alice Costelloe, and the pair's music sounds a fair amount like another hotly tipped London act, that being Yuck, which means Big Deal sounds like Yo La Tengo, in the best way possible.

"Homework" b/w "13" will be released in a limited vinyl edition with "hand finished" artwork (we don't know what that means, but yeah, awesome?), and both tracks are already streaming at the aforementioned MySpace along with three others. NME recently posted the smouldering strummer "Locked Up" as its track of the day, and we're taking the liberty of re-posting the track below because it is brilliant. Big Deal are apparently recording new material with Gordon Raphael, who aging hipsters may recollect was the producer of the early Strokes material; according to Wikipedia Mr. Raphael now works out of Urchin Studios in London.

Big Deal's "Homework," "13" and "Locked Up"

>> An update on the goings-on of hometown indie punk superheroes Varsity Drag is overdue. Sadly, drummer extraordinaire Josh Pickering has parted with the band. Word is -- well, actually we read it here -- that Mr. Pickering has been succeeded on the stool by a cat named Jonas Meyer, who is currently rehearsing with founding member Ben Deily and trusty bassist Lisa Marie Deily. And from the WTF file: Varsity Drag has been tapped to provide music for a forthcoming production of "Hamlet" being staged by an area theater company in 2011. No word what that music will sound like or whether it will be available for general consumption by non-theater goers. Varsity Drag's most recent release was the digital single "White Cat In A Snowstorm," a song originally written and released by UK punkers Ipanema. The song is slated to appear on a comp being concatenated by the Drag's UK label Boss Tunage, but no release date on the comp has been disclosed. Grab the track here or stream it below.




>> Dream pop phenoms The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart will release a sophomore full-length recording on Slumberland Records in March 2011. The album as yet has no title, but a first single, "Heart In Your Heartbreak," will be issued in November with an exclusive b-side. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart's self-titled debut was released last year, as was the band's Higher Than The Stars EP. The New York-based quartet is on tour through the end of November and you can review all tour dates at the band's Myspace hacienda right here.

Review: Calories | Basic Nature [MP3]

The fact that this record was originally to be titled Habitations and released months ago on an entirely different label doesn't necessarily account for a more-pronounced emotional polarization in Calories' music, but it is an interesting parallel. Heretofore the Birmingham, England-based post-punk threesome was known for power, economy and exuberance. Calories' revelatory 2009 full-length debut Adventuring conveyed a sense of optimism and possibility. By contrast, Basic Nature is more emotionally complex and more texturally varied, and the record carries a weightier sense of reckoning and resignation (indeed, even the album titles connote disparate temperaments). Sure, the manic, fist-banging first single from Basic Nature, "FFWD," as well as the exhilarating, would-be title track "Habitations," hew closely to Calories' familiar, post-punk sound, but the cares and worries that elsewhere populate Basic Nature suggest the optimism of Adventuring has been tempered, that Mssrs. Dixon, Biggs and Whitfield have taken the measure of people and are less than confident with the results. People let you down.

The set pieces that bookend Basic Nature and carry its title underscore the primitive that lurks beneath. The first is a boxy aural assualt of a bass-and-drums vamp, the second a bloopy, loping pastiche that fades into a decaying drum pattern. And then there is "Altitude Sickness," an almost disorientingly sweet acoustic ballad ("there's peace at this altitude"); a second acoustic track "The Offer" is no less affecting. The chorus of "Endlessly In Light" is almost painfully tender (despite the opening and closing lyric "you were wrong, you were all wrong, we were fine"). Of course, as referenced above, there is still plenty of upbeat material. The blistering, quasi-opener "You Could Be Honest" is perhaps the band's most desperate shouter to date, and bassist Pete Dixon's vocal expresses bottomless (and, at the song's climax, literal) regret.

Despite the broader palette of sounds and styles on Basic Nature, we wouldn't say that band has loosened up or settled down. It's more like you turned them into thick panes of glass, laid them out on a table and bludgeoned them with a hammer for a little bit: the shards spread a little. However one characterizes the changes, Calories' music remains tightly focused and the act continues to champion brevity. "Habitations," at 3:44, is the threesome's longest recorded composition to date, eclipsing Adventuring's closer "Forests Of Varg" by an entire second. Tough Love Records releases Basic Nature in the U.K. Monday. Below is a stream of a non-album track to whet your collective aural appetite.

Calories - 'Incredible Visions (Never Amount)'
[pre-order Basic Nature from Tough Love Records right here]

Calories: Internerds | Facebook | YouTube | Flickr

Previous Calories Coverage:
Footage: Calories' "FFWD"
Today's Hotness: Calories
Be Prepared: Calories | Basic Nature | 13 September
Today's Hotness: Calories
Review: Calories | Let's Pretend That We're Older EP [MP3]
YouTube Rodeo: Calories' "Forests of Varg"
Review: Calories | Adventuring
Show Us Yours #10: Calories

Review: Velvets | Big Star | Feelies | Pixies

The Beatles weren’t the only trendsetters whose work reissued in September. Their legacy goes without saying, but there’s an influential underground that musicians and record geeks look to that has been –- until the internet, at least –- a sort of shared secret code. This month, there have been a few reissues of bands that represent the missing links between the Beatles and modern/indie/what-we-used-to-call-college rock.

The Velvet Underground practically pioneered the underground leaping from a springboard of some simpler '50s/'60s early pop song structure and launching themselves forward into the avant garde and sometimes backward into the primitive. “Heroin” came out the same year as Sgt. Pepper, and though it was weirder and less accessible than The Beatles's stuff, it has had an impact just as deep. The Velvets already have a comprehensive box set out there, 1995’s Peel Slowly and See, that contains all of their original albums plus singles, demos and live tracks. It is essential. Still, though, this new Sundazed box of reproduction 7” vinyl singles is awfully tempting.

Big Star were, I guess, what happened when you took '60s pop and gave it bigger amps and distortion pedals, and moved it to Memphis in the early '70s. Which is to say, big rockers and tearjerker ballads, all with amazing harmonies. Criminally under-appreciated in their time and suffering their share of turmoil (though not nearly as much as their British power pop brethren Badfinger), their influence has nonetheless been well-documented; Cheap Trick, REM, The Replacements, etc., etc., yadayada… Anyway, after a recent lackluster reissue of the two-fer of their first two albums (the same shoddy artwork, one non-essential bonus track, no thanks), the new box set Keep Your Eye On The Sky is a long time in coming and is finally a release worthy of their legacy. Rhino is really, really good at this reissue business and this set is packed with demos, alternate mixes, and a live disc, and sounds amazing and is simply a must-have.

The '80s gave us The Feelies, who took elements of all of the above, added a healthy dose of post-'70s druggy New York jitters and made it all uniquely their own. How lucky are we that they have recently reunited (their show at the Roxy last year was a highlight) and are (supposedly) working on new material? Like Big Star and so many other influential bands, The Feelies’ catalog was out of print for a long time surviving mostly in used vinyl racks (scarce in its own right) and through online traders. 1988’s Only Life, their third album, was quietly (and we think un-officially -- ed.) reissued last year on the Water label and is findable, but good luck finding any official online recognition of its existence.

So, finally, the band’s seminal 1980 debut, Crazy Rhythms and its follow-up, The Good Earth have been reissued by Bar None, with bonus tracks and everything. Though they are unlikely to be as scrutinized for their sound as the Beatles reissues, these albums have been re-mastered from “digital sources” as the original master tapes could not be located. I’m not entirely sure what that even means, and I have only heard mp3s (from official sources, deadbeats) so can’t comment on the CDs or the vinyl. They sound good to me -- they seem to have a bit more life than what’s been available. They’ve taken a novel approach to their bonus tracks: they want the albums to stand on their own, so the bonus tracks are not on the CD, but available by download with a provided code. According to the press release, they are only going to add a couple of the bonus tracks to the digital versions, so I’d say go with the physical formats. These cats are old school.

You are definitely advised to make sure you get all of the Crazy Rhythms extras simply to hear the demo of “Moscow Nights,” which is even more propulsive than the album version. The demo for “The Boy With The Perpetual Nervousness” has a bit of a darker vibe, though is no less manic. The original single version of “Fa cé-La” is rawer than on the album, and you can hear that the band have not missed a step with the pair of live tracks from DC's 9:30 Club from earlier this year that round out the set. There’s also a reverse bonus track of sorts: the album originally contained their cover of “Paint It, Black,” but it was added by the label without their consent, so they’ve left it off here.

The Good Earth bonuses include another track from the 9:30, plus the non-album tracks from the 1986 EP No One Knows: their straightforward cover of the Beatles “She Said, She Said,” and their hyper cover of Neil Young’s “Sedan Delivery.”

Tickets are already on sale for The Feelies return to our fair city on November 22nd to open for Sonic Youth at the Wilbur. Hopefully, they’ll try out some new stuff –- singer and lead guitarist Glenn Mercer’s 2007 solo album Wheels In Motion and bassist Brenda Sauter’s 2006 Superbus album with her band Wild Carnation were both great records, so they collectively still have a lot to give.

Not having much more to give, apparently, are the Pixies. At the end of the '80s and into the '90s, the Pixies perfected the soft strum/screaming guitar dynamics (before Nirvana et al merged it with metal) combo with melody and wacko lyrics that influenced another few generations. Look, I LOVE the Pixies and have been a huge fan for a long time, and I was beyond excited to see the first round of reunion shows –- I saw a few of them. But they’re starting to wear out their welcome, aren’t they?

They tour for the money, and have not claimed otherwise, but this latest round of Doolittle shows and, especially this frivolous Minotaur box set is really pushing it. Seriously, guys -- $200 for four and a half albums? Or $500 for the super-duper version? Sure the CDs are gold, and that’s good because, well, I don’t know... Maybe you can recoup the price at Cash4Gold?

I’m happy that they too have been getting the attention and accolades that they richly deserve and were just starting to get when they broke up after touring with U2 in 1992, but if you’re going to keep this going, make a new record already. -- Michael Piantigini

The Feelies: Internerds | MySpace | YouTube | at Bar None Records
Glenn Mercer: MySpace | YouTube | at Pravda Records
Wild Carnation: Internerds | MySpace | YouTube
Big Star: Internerds | MySpace | YouTube | at Rhino
Velvet Underground: Internerds | MySpace | YouTube | at Sundazed
Pixies: Internerds | MySpace | 4AD | Facebook | Minoutaur