"Summer" Here Kids!

That’s a Grandaddy reference, yeah? More importantly, we’ve been green-lighted with a handful of other blogs to offer you an MP3 of the much-discussed-here forthcoming single “Feels Like Summer.” So have at it! [UPDATE: Or don't! The band's UK label would prefer you download this elsewhere] [Re-UPDATE: Everything is sorted! All is right with the world again! Gimme Indie Rock!].

Johnny Foreigner -- "Feels Like Summer" -- Album Number Two

Johnny Foreigner's Dynamite "Feels Like Summer" Now Streaming

So yeh, remember the planned first single from Johnny Foreigner's as-yet-untitled album numero dos? The one called "Feels Like Summer?" The one what we don't know any additional details about (wink wink wink, winkety winkety wink)? Well, it is now streaming at the Birmingham, England-based noise pop superlatives' MySpace dojo right here, and it is mammoth. The brief track of stray slack is boisterous, sloppy, glorious and poignant all at once. Compositionally not terribly different from the live bootlegs we've got kicking around, but the gang chant "Some Summers!" and the lone vocal from bassist Kelly Southern at the close are compelling embellishments to the arrangement. Sure, releasing a song titled "Feels Like Summer" at the close of the academic year and with the eponymous season upon us seems a bit calculated, but what, did you think the band would issue a Christmas single now? Puh-leeeze. Initial word was that the "Feels Like Summer" single would be out sometime this month, but as there appears to be no online retailer that will let you pre-order the platter, we're guessing it could be next month before you get your anxious paws on this. In case you either a) live under a rock or b) do not live in the UK, you should know that Johnny Foreigner commences 17 days of tour dates this very evening in Sheffield, England with Tubelord supporting. Peruse the full tour dates here.

More On Morr's Kiwi Homage Comp Not Given Lightly

Speaking of blog items that mysteriously go missing at :: clicky clicky :: (wait... what?), voracious readers may recall we briefly posted an item a month ago that addressed in turn a new Rumble Strips song ("London," a real snappy one, that) and a planned Morr Music compilation featuring covers of the best in classic '80s and '90s New Zealand indie rock. Well, we now have more information about the latter, which appears to be available to order now. According to an email just in from Morr, the 34-track set is titled Not Given Lightly (A Tribute To The Golden Giant Book Of New Zealand's Alternative Music Scene). The storied New Zealand scene, of course, built its reputation on such notable acts as The Chills, The 3-Ds, The Bats, The Clean and so forth, whose music influenced -- among others -- American indie legends Yo La Tengo and Pavement and countless others.

Like Morr's excellent 2002 Slowdive tribute collection Blue Skied An' Clear [review here], a second disc of Not Given Lightly will contain new and exclusive material from Morr luminaries Lali Puna ("I Like Rain"), B.Fleischmann ("Not Given Lightly"), ISAN ("Harmonic Deluxe") and others. Not Given Lightly is available on 3 LPs or 2 CDs priced at 20 and 18 Euros respectively. Want to hear samples from the comp right now? Snippets can be streamed at the A Number Of Small Things page for the collection right here. We haven't an MP3 to share from Not Given Lightly, but here is a video of It's A Musical's wonderful cover of Tall Dwarves' "All My Hollowness To You." And what the hell, here is Future 3's version of Slowdive's "Alison" from Blue Skied An' Clear.

Future 3 -- "Alison" -- Blue Skied An' Clear
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[buy Blue Skied An' Clear and Not Given Lightly from Morr/ANOST here]

A Weather Recording Follow-Up To 2008 Standout Cove

[A note to readers: with our new family commitments we will institute some changes here. One of these is the shelving of the Today's Hotness feature, which collected newsworthy items into an amalgamated post. Instead we will run more shorter items as we are able to churn them out. Here is the first. -- Ed.]

Portland, OR-based slowcore stars A Weather have spent recent weeks recording a new set that may see release before year-end. The quintet has laid down tracks in its home town at the studio Type Foundry, and as recently as Friday fronter Aaron Gerber tweeted that he was working on vocals for the planned set. There are few details to be had about the new set at this point, but it will include the track "Lay Me Down," according to another tweet. We can only hope this is a cover of Grateful Dead's "To Lay Me Down." Come to think of it, we recall Cowboy Junkies doing a very good cover of that track for the Deadicated comp in the '90s. We'll have to track that down again. The new A Weather set is unlikely to be ready for public consumption before fall or winter, so in the meantime continue to play the excellent Cove to death. That record, in case you don't recall, was one of our favorites of 2008. Read our review here.

Something we've had on our list of things to write about for months and months is three A Weather demos submitted to and made available to the Interwebs by Fat Cat Records. The tracks, which we believe were recorded by Mr. Gerber whilst he was still at Hampshire College in Western Massachusetts, include two versions of "Still Talk" -- one digitally sliced, diced and Animal Collective-ized and the other acoustic -- and "Tonight I Am Letting You Drive." The tracks are memorable, but the digitally tweaked version of the former is sufficiently different from the material on Cove to imbue it with distinctive intrigue. The three tunes are alternately attributed to A. Sweater and Sweater Weather, monikers that are certainly early ruminations on the name that ultimately framed the quintet. Here's "Tonight I Am Letting You Drive."

A. Sweater -- "Tonight I Am Letting You Drive" -- Music For Six Twilights
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[buy A Weather music from the band here]

06/27 -- The Doug Fir -- Portland, OR
07/12 -- The Backstage Lounge -- Vancouver, BC

Fergus Lawrie On Album Of The Year Contender Yoyodyne

[PHOTO CREDIT: Alex Woodward/Crimson Glow Photography] We've raved about Projekt A-ko's towering debut Yoyodyne so much already that a review at this point would be superfluous. Instead, we've asked band fronter Fergus Lawrie for a track-by-track breakdown of the record, whose official release date is Monday in the U.K. Mr. Lawrie was kind enough to oblige, but first we do have these remarks: if there is anything disappointing about Projekt A-ko's full-length debut it is that, at least for the time being, the band is solely a recording unit, and no touring to tout the record is planned. This is a shame, as we believe Yoyodyne is the best record released in 2009 to date. Lawrie, et al.'s potent amalgamation of early (read: good) Mercury Rev, Teenage Fanclub and mid-period Dinosaur Jr. would certainly win fans were the band to snag a slot on a hot tour supporting, say, Dinosaur, or Johnny Foreigner, or... well, it doesn't really matter. There's no tour to look forward to for now. There's also no distribution, no press agents (beyond some help from Darren Walker of Filthy Little Angels, who initially hipped us to the record), no advertising -- Yoyodyne is wholly DIY, released on Projekt A-ko's own Milk Pie imprint, only available by Internet order and in select shops in Glasgow. The good thing is there are more recordings in the offing, including what promises to be a shattering cover of Drop Nineteens' "Winona," which is one of Lowrie's all-time favorite tracks (and one of ours, as well). So we've that to look forward to. Now let's see what Lawrie has to say about the songs on Yoyodyne.

Track One: Hey Palooka!

"How’s it feel to be surreal, how’s it feel to be corporeal?" The oldest song on the album written (as a development from Urusei Yatsura songs "Plastic Ashtray" and "Majesty") as part of an ongoing effort to get to grips with "Winona" by Drop Nineteens, an all time favourite song of mine -- we’re working on recording a cover version just now. The long intro to "Hey Palooka" is kind of meant to be intentionally frustrating to people who expect bands to put the obvious "hit" song at the front of the album. The tracklisting was devised by my friend Captain Polaroid as I felt too close to the songs. I think he did a great job of creating a flow and making the album a real grower. Also includes the phrase "pyroclastic flow" (thanks to Kenny!).

Track Two: Nothing Works Twice

"A unique confluence of movement and time -- or not." Sardonic attempt to acknowledge the futility of being in a band coupled with a warning to stop being in a band whilst still being in a band, doh! At one point we actually literally rip off Pixies as opposed to being "heavily influenced" by them or whatever...

Track Three: Supertriste Duxelle

"A gown of Martian spores." Possibly a Stereolab song with the drone surgically removed. Lyrically seeking synthesis of retro / sci-fi / historical / hardboiled / personal / microbiological inspirations. I tried to be fearless with words for these songs even if it meant overdoing it a bit sometimes.

Track Four: Here Comes New Challenger!

"Hey Keiko, give a little milk!", "I tried, but my tears were wine." A light-hearted romp through mortality and the human condition. All post-modern pop is self-aware and in this case the last verse serves as a critique of the song itself [This is totally our favorite part, too -- Ed.].

Track Five: Xavier

"Wish I had a luminous left arm!" An historical epic. A long time was spent structuring this song and I guess it just about hangs together. References include 1) a saint who lived in a cave in Fife and copied the Bible by the light of his glowing right arm and 2) The Bangles. The guitars actually sounded even more foul and brutal until Steven Ward -- who did an incredible job producing and engineering the album -- ditched a couple of Fender Twins we’d used in the recording from the mix. I love Elaine’s vox on this song, especially at the end. It's been great having her start to sing and I hope she’ll be doing a lot more.

Track Six: Molten Hearts

"Eyes like atomic decay, hearts melt like snow bouquets." Finally, the secret truth about Dr. Phibes and Vulnavia! This was the last song written for the album and a lot of fun to record and play; I’d love to play it live. The drums and some of the guitars + vox for this and "Ichiro," "Scintilla" and "Black Empire" were recorded at CaVa studios in Glasgow by Geoff Allan.

Track Seven: Scintilla

"Jars of State moonshine." Drunken Cosmonaut fires death ray at random, or thinks he does. We had a "2001: A Space Odyssey"-type arrangement for the middle drone, but it made the section too exciting so we dropped it in order to save all the extra instrumentation until the end of the album. The Tommy Cooper-style guitar solo was completely unrehearsed and done in one take -- I’m not sure whether to be proud of that or not...

Track Eight: Ichiro on 3rd

"The mind democratic, the heart is a fascist." Ichiro Suzuki [outfielder for the Seattle Mariners, according to Wikipedia -- Ed.] trapped in the jaws of America. He fantasises about a past lover before hitting a home run. He runs towards Japan. Too late, he’s already dead!

Track Nine: Otaku Blue

"Kevlar Superstar do your vinyl best." Underground Celebrity-obsessed geek thinks he's a robot. The alternative stars sing to him from the chorus to try and make him see sense. Nearly all the vox for this album were done in one take (yeah, I know, it shows!) apart from the little scream before the final verse which I had to do about 12 times before it sounded remotely convincing. That was in The Diving Bell with Marcus Mackay, who recorded some of the guitars and vox [he also recorded Frightened Rabbit's Sing The Greys, or at least parts of it -- Ed.]. My voice is knackered from belting out "Kewpies like Watermelon."

Track Ten: Utopia

"Anatomise thy foppery, just don’t fake on me now." Yes, the chorus is a Swirlies reference! It's possible the album breaks out in a fit of optimism at this point before collapsing into noise. We used a lot of effect boxes in a feedback loop to create the sonic squiggles at the end.

Track Eleven: Black Empire

"No man is an island but I am an isthmus." Some nice crisp drum fills from Ian. The distorted vocals were created using a baby monitor.

Track Twelve: Yoyodyne (Scintilla II)

"You only really exist in the days you fight." These last two songs were arranged by my friend Richard Spiller, an amazing musician who does a lot of music for TV shows. "It is nice party after all" is a line from a Bollywood film I was watching one night, "Angelica of despair" from an online poetry generator. Oedipa Maas from "The Crying of Lot 49" makes a brief appearance. I particularly like the arpeggio which decays into nothing at the end of the song, inspired by a visit to Glasgow’s premier minimal art/sound/noise festival Instal. Entropy in action.

Track Thirteen: Don’t Listen To This Song

"I made you love me then I let you down." I wrote the lyrics for this on the train to the recording so they’re kind of scratchy and unfinished, but it suits the song. This song is a spell. Don’t listen to it -- it can only work if you do, like using the video in "The Ring" or the disk in "Pulse" or the phone no. in "Cell."

Finale: The End of WeLeftYouSleepingAndGoneNow

And so we finally address the remaining two tracks from WeLeftYouSleepingAndGoneNow, Johnny Foreigner's obscure first long-player which was released in a hyper-limited edition of 40 handmade copies in 2005. But you know all that, yeah, 'cos you've been following along as we dissected the album over the last two months [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. As we've already discussed the first eight and the final tracks, we're left with track nine and ten to assess. Coincidentally, these are also two of the more singular cuts from the collection. Not bad by any (any!) stretch, but fairly unusual and we can see them being sequenced toward the end not only because there is a sense of finality to them, but also it might have been hard to wedge them in anywhere else.

"My Interest In Saving You Is More Than Idle Curiosity" opens with a percolating, uptempo rhythm, blasts through a short crescendo and drops into a tidy verse. Guitars call and respond across the stereo field, there is a delicate interlude just before the two-minute mark, and then a gradual build drags us into sonic tumult, overlayed by band fronter Alexei Berrow ranting with an accusatory tone. Feedback plumes point toward a breakdown led by airy synths and punctuated by crash cymbals, and then cascading radio noise ushers in what must be the end of the album, a sad cataclysm through the end of the fourth minute that gives way and decomposes into the stereo field. But of course, it is not the end of the album.

Track 10 is the brief, atmospheric elegy "A Light In Every Home/Lights Are Dancing." As one who has been verily intoxicated on over-the-counter allergy medicine for about a week, we can tell you this transient pastiche of acoustic guitar, synth swells, chimes, snare, loops and noise has been constantly reinventing itself in our head. It is a very curious piece of music, but it is also poignant and wistful. It conveys loss, powerfully and bluntly, but not all at once or in individual moments, but rather as a dreadful accumulation of regret. It is difficult to believe that the record doesn't end here as well, but of course we already know that WeLeftYouSleepingAndGoneNow closes with "A Slow Song For The End," and its heartbreaking clarinet solo. So really, the problem of the three final tracks of Johnny Foreigner's collection is that they are all equally brilliant final words on the matter, all devastating break-up mix-tape fodder. All deliver a sense of an ending. And here we are.

Johnny Foreigner -- "My Interest In Saving You Is More Than Idle Curiosity" -- WeLeftYouSleepingAndGoneNow
Johnny Foreigner -- "A Light In Every Home/Lights Are Dancing" -- WeLeftYouSleepingAndGoneNow
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[buy in-print Johnny Foreigner records here and here]

Today's Hotness: Line Drawings, Saint Solitude, AC/DC

>> We like what we hear from Line Drawings, an Australian indie rock quartet whose recently released, self-titled EP has been getting a lot of play here at headquarters. No surprise, really, as Sydney-based Line Drawings' first two Top Friends at MySpace -- :: clicky clicky :: favorites Polvo and Seam -- indicate that we're likely as pre-conditioned to be a fan of these Australians as anyone. Although, if we had to pick our own RIYL to slap on a sticker meant to entice college radio play, we might go with Swervedriver first, as Line Drawings is neither as technical as Polvo nor as seething and disappointed as Seam. That said, there are very pleasing curtains of electric guitar and mildly plaintive vocals, a sturdy recipe (along with well-constructed melodies, also present here) for successful indie rock. Line Drawings has been together since 2007, and prior to that certain of the cohort played together in the act Ides Of Space. The band's self-titled EP contains six moody tracks and opens auspiciously with the urgent guitar anthem "Atmosphere Flies," which is certainly Line Drawings' strongest calling card, and which you can download below. Victoria-based Bell Sounds Digital issued Line Drawings March 28.

Line Drawings -- "Atmosphere Flies" -- Line Drawings EP
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[buy Line Drawings from the band right here]

>> We're inclined to be skeptical of one-man bands, who nowadays often ply their trade with loop machine and/or laptop, because the live spectacle can lack the sort of passion that really drives our fandom. There are exceptions, of course, as we think you'll agree -- if you've seen him -- that Dosh can work some hypnotic business on stage (granted, he performed with a colleague when we saw him). All that said, it really comes down to songwriting, and so we were favorably impressed with Asheville, N.C.-based and Maine-bred solo effort Saint Solitude. The band is a fellow named Dup Crosson, and Mr. Crosson writes very catchy indie pop numbers that -- at least as recorded -- bear none of the undesirable hallmarks of the solitary musician. The piano-anchored toe-tapper "Tosabesatoch" touts a light touch and an arresting melody. The rocker "Soft Contact" sounds like something Ben Gibbard might sing if he were in good mood and was backed by a sunshiney outfit; the guitar-and-voice ballad "Stay In Touch" is obvious enough sentiment-wise but is eminently listenable. "Tosabesatoch" is on the split EP He Is Contrary To Him out this month and available at shows, and Crosson is already at work on a full-length he hopes will be ready for public consumption come summer. Saint Solitude embarks on a three-week tour of the mid-Atlantic and Northeastern U.S. Thursday, and the act touches down at P.A.'s Lounge in Somerville, Mass. April 25, with Midriff Records' Scuba supporting. Full tour dates are at the Saint Solitude MySpace casa right here. Crosson was kind enough to allow us to post "Tosabesatoch" below, so do check it out.

Saint Solitude -- "Tosabesatoch" -- Split EP
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[buy Saint Solitude music from Crosson here]

>> Let us be the first to suggest that in the inevitable TV movie that will re-tell the heroics of the past weekend (remember that whole hostage/pirate/sniper thing?), the climax should be dealt with as a montage soundtracked by AC/DC's "For Those About To Rock, We Salute You." The events leading up to the snipers' dispatching the three Somali pirates should unfold in real time, and the decisive gunshots should be unleashed as Brian Johnson shouts "FIRE!" Just sayin.'