Norwegian songstress Ane Brun has unveiled a rather remarkable cover from her forthcoming retrospective album.

Brun has turned the high drama of Nina Simone‘s classic hymn to new happiness ‘Feeling Good’ into a folky, understated delight – and while we’re quite a fan of the original, we like this quirky interpretation too. Listen to Brun’s version of ‘Feeling Good’ below:

The cover is taken from her upcoming collection Songs: 2003-2013, which celebrates her ten years in the biz by bringing together tunes from all points of her career, along with new and rare material. It comes out on June 10 through Brun’s own Balloon Ranger label.

Amy Bell

North-East dark pop priestess Nadine Shah will be releasing a new single in July.

Hot on the heels of her EPs Aching Bones and Dreary Town, which has seen a legion fall in lust with her tightly-packed, tuneful melodramatic vignettes, Shah has given us all a taster of her forthcoming album, which is intriguingly titled Love Your Dum And Mad, in the shape of ‘To Be A Young Man’. Check it out below:

Shah describes the inspiration for the track like so: “I wrote this after chatting to a guy in a pub. The pub where I wrote most of the songs on this album. He was probably in his late 60s, I never got his name. We were both sat by ourselves at the bar and just started speaking.

“I remember he said during our conversation, ‘Sometimes I forget that I’m not a young man, then I catch my reflection.’ I can’t emphasise enough that he was NOT a dirty old man chatting up a young girl. He just told me stories of his glory days, the freedom he felt in youth. After many an anecdote he paused, looked back at me and said, ‘Oh, to be a young man again!’”

We think that’s rather sweet, don’t you? ‘To Be A Young Man’ is out through R&S/Apollo Records on July 8, with Love Your Dum And Mad following on July 22.

Amy Bell

Alt-pop songstress VV Brown has revealed the video for her new single ‘Samson’.

Fans of the London-based lass will notice a stark change in her sound – gone is the catchy, R&B-inflected indie-pop, to be replaced by rather towering, stately and almost industrial electronica. It might provoke a few grumbles, but, if we’re honest, we’re kinda liking the evolution…

What we’re also digging is the clip for the song, which sees a stark, monochrome renactment of the Biblical Samson and Delilah fable – with the ominous inclusion at the end of ‘To Be Continued…’ Check it out below:

‘Samson’ is released on July 14, followed by Brown’s new record Samson & Delilah, scheduled to come out in September through YOY Records.

Amy Bell

 

Houses, A Quiet Darkness, V2

This second album from the California-based duo of Dexter Tortoriello and Megan Messina is a superficially gentle affair. It’s built around loops and waves of mostly synthetic-seeming sound. It’s often hypnotically beautiful, despite the prevailing melancholic mood.

Tortoriello is the main singer, yet never demands attention. Instead he’s hushed, subdued, sounding weary and beaten. Messina’s sweeter tones sometimes offer soothing support for a time, then disappear. Nothing loud or urgent happens. Delicate, tinkling, yearning tunes drift serenely by.

If you listen closely, however, the depth of the darkness that goes with the quiet becomes plainly apparent. You start to notice some unusual percussive noises: curious clicks, creaks and scraping scuffing the sonic smoothness. Tune into the words that Tortoriello and Messina are slipping into these subtle soundscapes and you discover that A Quiet Darkness is a concept album based on the bleakest of stories.

Tortoriello takes the role of a stricken survivor wandering through the wreckage after a nuclear holocaust; his will to live sustained only by the hope of finding the woman he loves. It’s not clear whether or not she’s still alive. The intermittent appearance of Messina’s voice suggests that the lost love might be found again, but she’s merely echoing his words, so she might be just a memory. Those mysterious percussive noises are the result of location recordings that the duo made in abandoned buildings they found on their travels: found sounds of desolation.

The qualities that make A Quiet Darkness effective as ambient mood music, make it less effective as a narrative. Houses’ music is too serene to convey the horror of the scorched-earth scenario hinted at by the lyrics; their sound suggests depression rather than desperation. Although the album is clearly meant to be listened to as a continuous song cycle, it’s easier to take in smaller doses.

‘The Beauty Surrounds’, for instance, opens with some particularly intriguing strange noises and then becomes something quite lovely, with the voices blending sweetly on a song set somewhere between horror and hope. ‘The Bloom’ is a very effective minimalist instrumental that floats by like gorgeous grey clouds.  Prolong your exposure and the weariness in this music can become infectious, but I confidently expect to hear excerpts from A Quiet Darkness on the soundtracks of moody independent movies for years to come.

Dave Jennings

Experimental Brooklynite Julianna Barwick has announced details of her forthcoming second album proper.

Although she’s been busy over the last two years, releasing not just acclaimed debut album The Magic Place but collaborations with Ikue Mori and Helado Negro, Barwick ain’t letting up, as her new record Nepenthe will hit physical and digital stores on August 20 through Dead Oceans.

And, because she’s nice, she’s let us have a taste of what’s in store through an album trailer featuring the entrancing track ‘Forever’ below:

Pretty stunning, right? If you fancy seeing Barwick live too, you’re in luck, as she’ll be playing a show at Yoko Ono’s Meltdown Festival at the Southbank Centre in London on June 18, and will also be putting in an appearance at the End of the Road Festival in Dorset on September 1.

Amy Bell

Electro-rock Omaha natives Icky Blossoms have made a taster track from their upcoming self-titled debut.

‘Deep In The Throes’ is a cool, smart slice of glitchy electronica that tells of a wavering relationship – and it’s the most danceable piece of dysfunction we’ve heard in a very long time. If all of the tracks on their LP are as good as this, then we anticipate it being clutched to our collective bosom for a good while – or at least shoved on repeat on our respective music devices for a bit…. Listen to ‘Deep In The Throes’ below:

The track is taken from the Dave Sitek-produced Icky Blossoms, out on June 3 through Saddle Creek.

Amy Bell

Toronto troupe DIANA have revealed the video for their new single.

‘Born Again’ is a rather hazy, lovely piece of chillwave, drifting along on lead singer Carmen Elle’s vocals and intercepted by little synth refrains that pretty much float our boat. The video itself is a bit of a psychotropic stonker, like an acid trip distilled and put on film. Or something approximating it, we’re told…. Check out the clip for ‘Born Again’ below:

‘Born Again’ is out now as a download – it comes from DIANA’s self-titled debut album, which is due for release on August 19 through Jagjaguwar.

Amy Bell

London indie-garage crew Love L.U.V. have unveiled the video for their brand new single ‘In My Daydreams’.

Like the track itself, the clip was recorded in the band’s rehearsal space in the east of the capital – and, believe it or not, they haven’t glammed it up for the filming, as it already came with those rather fetching glittery streamer-adorned walls. If we were in a band, we’d probably head there too, given our penchant for all things sparkly…. See the quartet in their swish surroundings below:

‘In My Daydreams’ can be downloaded on a pay-what-you-like basis at Love L.U.V’s Bandcamp page.

Amy Bell

CocoRosie, Tales of a GrassWidow, City Slang

Tales of a GrassWidow is a further rumination on the direction the world is hell bent on from the Casady sisters, CocoRosie. Their preceding album, 2010’s Grey Oceans, took an oblique look at the pollution of our seas and was awash with alienation. This album is a hurdy gurdy of a gently delivered polemic pondering on abuse of children and the Earth. “Do you have love for humankind?” they ask, and delicately demand that we “stop the slaughter of our daughters;/ poisoning the waters” in ‘Tears for Animals’.

The call and response of the sisters is as bewitching as it has ever been, not least on ‘Gravedigress’ which casts Bianca as a child and Sierra as a gothic old woman, both cast outs from society. If this is your first listen to a CocoRosie record you will be enchanted: transported to a world of waving ‘grasswidows’ both bittersweet and haunting. Sierra is a multi-instrumentalist opera singer whose wispish contributions winds through doll-voiced Bianca’s more hip hop approach to storytelling.

They sing about the ‘End of Time’. They sample crows calling. They tell small narratives that reflect a world going off its rails. This is their calling card, weird as it is. It is impossible not to recognise their sound. It is not mistakable for another band. This quirk is something that ensnares them. How can they break their own unique mould?

Tales of a GrassWidow is a beautiful record but it’s difficult to see how it adds anything new to the CocoRosie canon. Bizzare it is, but in the same way as their other bizarre productions. It takes you on a journey that no one else could guide you through – but it’s a journey the sisters have trampled a path through already. This is a small complaint for such a textured, pretty, piercing record, but the sisters do seem to want to create something with contemporary relevance. At this they are not quite successful, failing only because they have been so successful in the past.

Tales of a GrassWidow is gorgeous and contributions from collaborators including Anthony Hegarty (‘Tales of Animals’). The record’s only fault is that it doesn’t reach as far as the sisters’ reputation for taking risks ought to take it.

Also, the bonus track is quite good. If you are prepared to wait a retro ten minutes or so.

Arike Oke

CocoRosie are touring later this year and appear at the Latitude festival in July.

Super-talented Scottish folk Camera Obscura have revealed yet another track from their forthcoming new album.

Following up the possibly rather saucy ‘Do It Again’ (we say that, because it could just be our dirty minds…), ‘Fifth In Line To The Throne’ is a rather gorgeous ballad that comes complete with backing vocals by none other than Ms Neko Case. Bit of a coup, we think…. Have a listen to it below:

The band’s Tracyanne Campbell says that despite the track’s name, there’s no royal undercurrent – at least, not one that she’s admitting: “‘Fifth In Line To The Throne’ is a song about someone in a seemingly perfect relationship but there is a dark underside to it. We wanted to sound menacing and give folks the creeps. I believe Princess Beatrice is fifth in line by the way.”

‘Fifth In Line To The Throne’ is taken from Camera Obscura’s fifth studio album Desire Lines, out on June 3 through 4AD. They’ll also be embarking on a UK tour around the time of the LP’s release – see where they’ll be going here.

Amy Bell