This season, I have mostly been listening to... (January Edition)

This is the second time I've done one of these, I think I may make it a regular feature. If nothing else, it lets me talk about anything else I couldn't squeeze in anywhere else. Anyways, January 2008, a time of frantic revision (ha!) and exam worries for some, as well as a recovery from the festive time past. For me, however, catching up on those great albums from last year that I somehow overlooked or ignored completely was first on the agenda.

The Shins - Wincing the Night Away
From the beginning of "Sleeping Lessons" you can instantly recognise the changes that James Mercer and co. have made from their, well, lazy, 2003 effort Chutes Too Narrow. What follows is possibly their most consistent album to date, also featuring the brilliant "Australia".

Myspace

Burial - Untrue
I was put onto this by a good friend of mine, but it seems that was first after ignoring perhaps every end of year album poll that featured this anonymous dubstep musician somewhere in the top 20. To be honest, dubstep is a genre I've never really understood, let alone really sat down and had a listen, but was genuinely pleased and impressed with what I heard on this, Burial's second LP.

Myspace

Four Tet - Pause
Pause was Four Tet(AKA Kieran Hebden)'s first album for Domino, released in 2001. It was (according to Wikipedia) one of the first albums to be dubbed "folktronica" based on the albums sparse acoustic guitar sound based around computer typing effects and simple drum loops. Of all Four Tet's albums, this is the one that most appeals to me as being the most complete listen. More together than Dialogue, and less polished than Rounds and Everything Ecstatic, it is the perfect example of a slightly bored post-rock band member waiting for his bandmates to finish college.

Myspace

Metronomy - Pip Paine, Pay Back the £5000 You Owe
This album is one that definately grows on you. At first, the production seems both lazy and clumsy, but a few listens later and this album is a classic. My personal favourite tracks being "You Could Easily Have Me" and "Trick or Treatz". Their new album is out soon and if latest single "Radio Ladio" is to be believed, is will be at least as good as their first.

Myspace

The next "....." pt.3

On most people's musical journeys of discovery, or mine at least, it comes to a point where you get bored of whats being thrown out into the British Indie scene, naked under their Libertines T-Shirts, with perhaps only a vague nod towards anything before Up The Bracket.

So then you look further afield than dear old blighty and have a little glimpse at the much less derivative and generally healthier US Indie scene. Usually discovering Modest Mouse somewhere along the way. But on the whole, worshipping whichever is the "next big thing from America". Remember The Spinto Band? Clap Your Hands Say Yeah? Cold War Kids?

Of course you do. And the next band to fall firmly into that category are Vampire Weekend.

Mixing the chilled out genius of The Shins (who they supported) with a traditional Afrobeat percussion, its easy to see why a band like Vampire Weekend wouldn't survive on a UK diet alone. They are one of those bands that, if they existed in just the suffocating London or Manchester scenes, would still, unfortunately, be doing their day jobs. But thanks to the massive appetite of your average American music fan, the sheer size of the place, and the US's uncanny ability to have bands sell a million albums and still be unknown, these have manged to scrape enough of a living in America to take on the world. They are not the first band to do so, and will not be the last, and it seems a shame that British msuic can't be the same. It seems as if there are proportionally fewer small bands who stick with independent labels and actually have enough fledgling success to tour Europe or the World.

The best example of their strange juxtaposition of styles is on "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa", where the traditional African beat is behind lyrics about Peter Gabriel. Although the prospective album highlight will still be former single "Walcott", ironically their most American-sounding song, but the one I can't stop listening to.

Signed to XL, they release their debut album Vampire Weekend on January 29th, 2008.

Official Site
Myspace