Drowned In Sound

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• Watch: Guided By Voices vs. A German Choir
• James Murphy reveals new LCD album deets
• Banhart unveils name for sixth studio record
• Mount Eerie - Wind's Poem
• Richmond Fontaine - We Used To Think The Freeway Sounded Like A River
• Susanna And The Magical Orchestra - 3
• Hello SWNshine: Half-ton of acts added to Welsh festival's bill
• Muse talk to DiS about homecoming gig + win tickets!
• The Horrors announce winter 'UK' tour
• First Listen: Paramore brand new eyes

Watch: Guided By Voices vs. A German Choir Posted: 02 Sep 2009 05:36 AM PDT Choirs and popular music have been a staple of the DiS content over the past year. OK, that's maybe not strictly true but there was the case of the deaf choir signing Joy Division's 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' the other month. This time, the beautiful people at Magnet Magazine have brought this to our attention. It's a German choir from Eschwege, Germany performing Guided By Voices' 'Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory'. Guided By Voices' - 'Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory': Eschwege Choir - 'Goldheart, Mountaintop Queen Directory': Magnet's Edward Fairchild thought the cover was better than the original. Is it? No.

James Murphy reveals new LCD album deets Posted: 02 Sep 2009 03:46 AM PDT James Murphy has revealed some juicy snippets indeed regarding LCD Soundsystem's forthcoming third album, to be released in Spring 2010. Murphy was talking about the as-yet-untitled record to Mojo. The record is quite possibly going to be one of the most hyped and massively anticipated releases of the past few years, and will definitely be one of the first 'massive' records of the new decade which we don't yet have a name for. That's if the past record was anything to go by. Speaking in October's edition of Mojo, Murphy said: "We've been recording in a mansion. It sleeps 10 and there's an amazing pool and it felt pretty amazing. We decided, let's make Los Angeles an imaginary Los Angeles of the soul from 1973. Everyone had to wear white all the time, so it's like some sort of creepy fucking cult and we'd go to parties, 10 people in a mini-van all in white, and we'd have enough of an impact on how Los Angels operated." Plenty of work left to be done on the album - currently all instrumental - but Murphy said he was unafraid to take a punt on this record. "I'm working on a song called 'Why Do You Hate Music?'. Everyone seems to hate music right now, even people who make music. There's a song called 'Love In LA', which has an Eddy Grant, Sly & Robbie feel. I'm doing what I set out to do on Sound of Silver, which is take more chances." The addition of a chef slash runner also seemed to help the band along with the creative process of the new album. She was, according to JM, pretty into the hipster lesbian disco. They also enjoyed her food. A full stomach is a full mind, as they say. I'm opening a book on how long it will take after this records release for people to be saying "if this was released 5 months ago, it would have been the album of the decade...". 3-1 on April 4 2010. If have forgotten just how superb a record Sound of Silver is, you can do the necessary listenin' on Spotify. Then get a bit wet with anticipation.

Banhart unveils name for sixth studio record Posted: 02 Sep 2009 03:07 AM PDT Freak-folkist Devendra Banhart has revealed details of his sixth full-length long player, What Will We Be, which will be released...er, by the end of the year, apparently. As previously reported, we gave you the low down on the album, which was then untitled and is to be his first for Warner, having left his previous label XL. Though a few details have been added this time round, we'll remind you of the basics last time round. The record was co-produced by Banhart and Paul Butler of The Bees and was mostly recorded in Bolinas, California. Banhart was the primary figure in the recording and writing (obviously...) but Greg Rogove played drums, Luckey Remington played bass and Rodrigo Amarante did his biz on guitar and backing vocals. We don't know all of the song titles, but we do know a few of them. Among them are 'Meet Me At Lookout Point' which is said to be an "evanescent ballad", 'Rats' is an "epic riff-rocker", Latin flavours abound in 'Brindo' and there's even a Roxy Music inspired cut in '16th & Valencia, Roxy Music'. We'll keep you posted when Devendra decides to reveal any more interesting details about the grammatically unsound What Will We Be.

Mount Eerie - Wind's Poem Posted: 02 Sep 2009 05:23 AM PDT Over his long career, from the K Records days as auteur outsider with the Microphones to his recent solo-geared output as Mount Eerie, Phil Elverum has developed many contiguous lyrical themes. Chief amongst them is the theme of human's relations with nature, and the boundaries of nature and self. He grew up in the shadow of Mt Erie, surrounded by forests and lakes. You can imagine the young Elvrum somewhat askance from the world, skateboarding alone in a place with no paved ground, making his world in the grasses and the trees. Since then he has not abandoned the wilderness for the lure of the city, living in and around his home town of Anacortes for his adult life. In 2002 he spent a year without proper electricity in a Norwegian shack, in the process gathering material for an album and 144 page book both entitled Dawn. His photographic output is heavy with landscapes. His music is frequently concerned with nature, perhaps most succinctly summed up back in 2002 on the singles compilation Song Islands, when in 'Phil Elvrum's Will' a notional account of his dying wishes he declared "I want wind / I'll trade the traffic for the roaring waves". But with Wind's Poem there is a sense that before this all was merely flirting, and now Mother Nature and Phil are going at it hammer and tongs. The album is on a Romantic mission to sketch the terrible, grotesque beauty of nature, to tap its darkness and majesty. And in the process perhaps to lose the self in some kind of sublime connection. It's part of the album's strangeness that Elverum searches for a dialogue with natural forces. On 'Summons' Elverum implores the wind "Come revealer / come destroyer ... speak to me" in his soft curiosity-inflected voice (his poetry directly recalling Shelley's 'Ode to the West Wind': "Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear!") The dialogue takes on the character of mental illness on 'Lost Wisdom Pt 2.'; "I think the screaming wind says my name / significance found in rocks", as the perennial post-Darwinian difficulty of finding where nature might end and where we ourselves might begin is dramatised in psychological meltdown. And indeed at points Elverum completes the sublime transformation and becomes nature itself. On 'Wind Speaks' he chants "I am the river / I am the torment of tearing flame / I remove bodies / I hold void I have no shape". This hints that ultimately he has no control of the dynamic transformations he exposes himself to, as on 'My Heart is Not at Peace' he softly intones "If my heart were at peace would it be a blossom satisfied / or would it be a stone?" Questions of self bleed into political questions. In Wind's Poem Elverum derives a nationalism from nature, citing the American continent's "wild fresh heritage" as a basis for a love of his country. On 'Through the Trees', (an 11 minute sloW-core anthem built around sustained rough-hewn synths, like a Boards of Canada confined to world-weary Casiotone), he gently croons "I can see / the land of dreams / through the trees". America obscured to an outsider perhaps, but more likely America as home of the natural: a nation redefined in Elverum's own interests. There's darkness here too, which he unveils by hitching the album to David Lynch's cult Nineties supernatural soap-opera Twin Peaks. Angelo Badalamenti's dreamwave electronics, that could convey idyll and cellar-dungeon in the same chord, are looped into a lo-fi grove on 'Through the Trees'. 'Between Two Mysteries', opens with a synth lead lifted straight from the show's 'Laura Palmer's Theme', and lyrically references the series' title. In between the glades, the overpowering oceans and identity-shifting winds there is the seamy rub of human evil that flourishes in disconnected towns and fragile suburban outposts. And the music itself holds an immense darkness. The dense, percussive wall of layered synths and brazenly distorted guitars that usher in 'Wind's Dark Poem' stand as a revisitation of the kind of big sound experimented with on Microphones' Don't Wake Me Up. But they also announce a new tone of ferocity and depth of darkness, an expansive hardness throughout the album. Not only did Elverum succeed in his aim "to make the loudest album yet", but he also succeeded in presenting it delicately. As a photographer, author, poet, musician, comicbook writer and label owner, it is always tempting to posit Elverum as a Renaissance man, but he is not that. The Renaissance man seeks to resolve contradictions in a totality, by bringing the world together in personality. Think Lars Ulrich or Sting. Publicity-shy Elverum is happy to let ironic opposites exist side by side, an artist shorn of the neurotic impulse to make their mark on the world at all costs. The Renaissance man's garden was classical and ordered, his home the rational city. Elverum's garden is vast and untameable, and he is of the American country. The Renaissance man seeks to hold a candle to the darkness. Elverum imagines the darkness, and makes music that is the stuff of darkness itself. Elverum is the long lost heir to Romanticism, creating heavy symphonies of limitations. This is a terrifying, wise album, sung by, in his own words, "the voice of an old boulder".

Richmond Fontaine - We Used To Think The Freeway Sounded Like A River Posted: 02 Sep 2009 05:26 AM PDT Full disclosure: in mid-2005, I spent a reasonably significant period believing that Richmond Fontaine's sixth studio album, The Fitzgerald, was quite possibly the Best Thing That Had Ever Happened. And not merely in music; oh no. Just, y'know, generally. Penning it while holed up for two weeks in Nevada's eponymous Fitzgerald casino, Portland-based author, frontman and acclaimed lyricist Willy Vlautin emerged brandishing an almost debilitatingly elegiac hate-letter to Middle America's motel-loitering underclass of pimps, gamblers, runaways and lot lizards. Recounting such fun family memories as the day young Willy and his father stumbled across the battered corpse of a local teenage debtor in a disused quarry pit, that record was implausibly and relentlessly bleak from its first gingerly plucked string to the dying croaky couplet. Indeed, several of The Fitzgerald's petrifyingly stark, stripped-to-the-bone vignettes were overlaid with faint samples of a chilly midnight wind whipping around the rusting carcass of an abandoned railyard. It was a horrible, hopeless, utterly despairing howl of an album, and I absolutely bloody adored it. Bemusement soon followed, then, when the rest of Richmond Fontaine's back catalogue revealed The Fitzgerald to be something of an anomaly. Better-selling releases like Post To Wire (2004) and Thirteen Cities (2007) are much more prismatic in nature, wrapping elements of brassy pomp and piano-laced lounge jazz around their mid-tempo blues-rock spines. Frankly, selfishly, I was a bit disappointed...but happily, there's hardly anything happy about Vlautin's eighth effort. Grab a bottle of whisky and bucket of Prozac, misery-lovers - we may not quite be heading back to The Fitzgerald just yet, but we're certainly going to be passing through the neighbourhood. We Used To Think The Freeway Sounded Like A River opens with the spirit-sapping title track; a bruised, blurry Polaroid of a spoiled memory that recalls a time when Vlautin found himself living in low-rent paradise with an unnamed lover. Yes, there was an abandoned house next door, with a "broken pool full of shopping carts / A mattress and old car parts," but they were making the best of it. Yes, they were living hand-to-mouth in the shadow of an interstate overpass, but it was ok: they were cosy enough in their bubble to daydream that the constant flow of traffic overhead was a sing-song stream meandering cheerily by, rather than a conveyor belt for a hollow-eyed army of spiritually bankrupt Midwest transients. And then, without warning, the bubble implodes: "We came home one night, our door was open / Most of our things were gone or broken," sighs Vlautin, defeated. "All our clothes were thrown around the rooms / And even our pictures were wrecked too." In this one moment, suddenly the freeway becomes very much a freeway again. And, with the death of the daydream, the very scaffolding of the relationship is beginning to crumble. Cue the forlorn wail of a distant theremin, the rasping vocal drawl already imparting a palpable sense of its owner's heart being crushed to the point of numbness. The album is a minute and a half old, for crying out loud. Are we having fun yet, kids? Such is Vlautin's talent as a storyteller, conveying everything about his disparate cast of punch-drunk, liquor-soused losers with just a handful of sparse adjectives, that moments like this manage to feel genuinely gut-wrenching without ever coming across as remotely emo: he writes harrowing documentaries, not bed-wetting poetry. And, even in the few places where We Used To Think... kicks the shuffling tempo up a notch, there's still enough grit lying around to de-ice Route 66. A perfect example crops up via the raucous, Mariachi-tinged 'The Boyfriends', wherein the narrator desperately struggles to absolve himself ("I ain't like that / Please, I don't wanna be like that...") after boozing his way into a one-night stand during which the woman's hitherto-unmentioned kid appears, cowering in the bedroom doorway. Musically, Richmond Fontaine aren't reinventing any wheels - there's a reason why they're so frequently compared stylistically to the likes of Uncle Tupelo, and in fact Vlautin's fondness for occasional dolorous washes of pedal steel or a bittersweet, chiming vibraphone actually make the resulting ballads feel less impulsive even than that. That said, it'd be unnecessarily dismissive of Richmond Fontaine's other four members - particularly percussionist Sean Oldham, who always manages to remain admirably sensitive to the mood of the piece without necessarily defaulting to syrupy brushwork - to say that the backing isn't crucial to the overall impact of Vlautin's burned-out, bust-up sketches of lives skidding off-radar under those giant Western skies. It absolutely is, and fans of bleary-eyed country blues will detect a reasonable depth of field on this record: the heavy-hearted cello sighing through 'Ruby And Lou', for instance, or the gossamer strands of violin lacing up the fractured narrative of 'The Pull'. However, We Used To Think... is first and foremost an album for devotees of that tarnished, neon-lit, small town Americana of which Vlautin has pretty much established himself as the grizzled poet laureate. If you'll sit spellbound through the pitiful story of a failing amateur boxer - "He'd borrow his sister's car to drive home / Shattered his nose, detached his retina in Fresno / So then they made him quit" - without longing for a moral resolution that clearly isn't going to show up, then you'll love this. Well, whichever parts of you it leaves capable of feeling love, at any rate.

Susanna And The Magical Orchestra - 3 Posted: 02 Sep 2009 12:28 AM PDT "What fresh hell is this?" Dorothy Parker would declare when someone was unwise enough to interrupt her day with something as trivial as a telephone call. Susanna Wallumrød and Morten Qvenild - the only full-time member of the Magical Orchestra - are fans of Parker's, having set her poetry to music on 'Distance Blues and Theory', off their debut List of Lights and Buoys back in 2004. They have barely deigned to trouble us with anything since, trivial or otherwise, releasing only Melody Mountain, a collection of covers, in 2006. It is clear that the intervening period has not been primarily spent mulling over the naming of their third collaboration. There is no Parker this time, but there is a beguiling if inconsistent selection of original material, informed by Susanna's two solo records, as well as a pair of the now almost obligatory covers. List of Lights and Buoys saw them strip back 'Jolene' while 'Melody Mountain' garnered widespread acclaim for their glacial reimaginings of the likes of 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' and 'Don't Think Twice, It's Alright'. Here they turn their attention to Roy Harper's 'Another Day' and Rush's 'Subdivisions' with somewhat mixed results. The gem of the two, indeed the zenith of the whole album, is 'Another Day'. Susanna comes over like Nico wanting "to score", but the story the words can only sketch is really told by the ache in her voice. Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush once dueted on a version of this, and the influence of both seems somehow equally present here. 'Subdivisions' is less successful. Melody Mountain's gorgeous versions of Kiss's 'Crazy Crazy Nights' and AC/DC's 'It's a Long Way To The Top' showed that Susanna and Morten have a real eye for salvaging pearls which had been otherwise thrown to the swine of pomp rock but 'Subdivisions' just doesn't click. It feels instantly dated, but sadly not in a cool, retro way, instead just tired and jaded, a party trick repeated once too often. As for their own material, the pair contribute four songs each. It is a pair of Susanna songs which opens the album and initially draw you in. Opening track 'Recall' is an unsettling meditation on memory and loss, and as she sings "Do you remember? Do you recall?" she could be visiting Eternal Sunshine...'s Lacuna, Inc., watching her memories vanish around her. Her imploring "Where did we go wrong?" is lifted from cliché into a heartfelt examination as Erland Dahlen's drums fill the sparse atmosphere. She follows this with 'Guiding Star', a Björk-tinged float through space-age electronica which brings to mind Lamb's self-titled debut. 'Game' is the first of the Qvenild-penned tracks, and the aura of blissful contentment is augmented by Andreas Mjøs's haunting vibraphone. 'Palpatine´s Dream' is another of his songs and the lead single, but in comparison with what has gone before it seems terribly overwrought. Susanna's voice is always the focus, but on this track it misses its shades of guile and subtlety, instead using sledgehammer force where a delicate hand would have done. But then perhaps I'm being unfair - I confess the Star Wars reference was making me cringe from the outset. It can't just be that, however, as the album continues to tease with promise and then disappoint with missteps, and neither songwriter is blameless. Susanna's husband Helge Sten contributes a shimmering guitar to Qvenild's delicate 'Deer Eyed Lady', but then they stumble awkwardly on the recalcitrant 'Lost'. They are at their best, however, when the music is at its least ostentatious, such as on closing pair 'Come On' and 'Someday', with its plaintive coda "Someday, I hope we will smile again." Susanna and the Magical Orchestra may have thus far received most attention for their reconstructive cover versions - which have drawn the predictable comparisons with both Nouvelle Vague and Cat Power - but there is something in these songs which suggests their true talent may yet turn out to lie in their own material, particularly when they delicately ornament their sparse arrangements with well-placed suggestions of electronica. What they haven't found, at least not yet, is a story-telling voice for themselves as enthralling as the likes of Chan Marshall's, but this album is far from deserving of a Dorothy Parker-esque putdown. It's a record of grace and beauty, and theirs is a musical pool well worth submerging yourself in.

Hello SWNshine: Half-ton of acts added to Welsh festival's bill Posted: 01 Sep 2009 01:14 PM PDT The Huw Stephens (pictured) curated SWN festival is getting better man! As the Gallaghers may or may not be saying any longer. This time over 50 bands (56 in total!) have been added to the already bulging bill with Pulled Apart By Horses, Johnny Foreigner, Catherine AD, Ungdomskulen and Internet Forever among the notables. 50 is quite a lot to list in linear form, so here are some of the most interesting and exciting bands from that list. You can check the full list of bands who have been confirmed for Swn on the official website. Anchorsong, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, Bright Light Bright Light, Catherine AD, Chris TT, Drums Of Death E and E. Ellie Hurricane, Geraint Williams, Gideon Conn, Glass Diamond, Internet Forever, James Tyson, Jonquil, Katell Keineg, Master Shortie, Not Cool, Our Brother The Native, Paper Aeroplanes, Portasound, Pulled Apart By Horses, Rose Elinor Dougall, Slow Club, Soft Toy Emergency, Stornoway, Swanton Bombs, The Death of Her Money, The Irascibles, The Longcut, The Pipettes, The Young Republic, Tom Brosseau, Tubelord, Ungdomskulen, Yndi Halda, Y Promatics, Zimmermans AND Zun Zun Egui. Below is the video for Norway's Ungdomskulen. This one video and song should make you want to either a) become part of Ungdomskulen or b) buy tickets for SWN, so you can watch 'em live. Other bands who were on the line-up already included these rag-tag bunch: Los Campesinos!, Dananananaykroyd, Copy Haho, Sparky Deathcap, Gold Panda, Daedelus, Munch Munch, The Leisure Society, Sweet Baboo, Lucky Soul, Sons of Noel And Adrian, Cymdeithas Yr Hobos Unig, Hail! The Planes, Huw M, Minotaur Shock, Girls, Broken Family Band, Three Trapped Tigers, Strange News From Another Star, John Grindell, The Twilight Sad, Pencadlys, Anchorsong, Nos Sadwrn Bach, Mary Anne Hobbs, Johnny Foreigner, Talons, Mitchell Museum, Threatmantics, Wet Dog, Supertennis, Tim And Sams Band with Tim and Sam, The Victorian English Gentlemens Club, Zissou, Y Pencadlys, Goldheart Assembly, Marina And The Diamonds AND...Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs. SWN takes place across multiple Cardiff city centre venues from October 22-24. Tickets are available from here. Or, if you're in the area (of Wales), you can get wristbands (17 quid for one day, 45 for the weekend) for SWN from these places. Spillers Records / Cardiff (029) 20224905 Diverse Records / Newport (01633) 259661 Kooki Two Bit / Splott / (029) 20489352 Chapter Arts Centre / Cardiff (029) 20311050 Catapult Records / Cardiff (029) 20 The Gate / Cardiff (029) 20483344 Cardiff University Students Union (029) 20781458 Andy's Records – Aberystwyth – 01970624581 Cob Records – Bangor – 01248353020

Muse talk to DiS about homecoming gig + win tickets! Posted: 02 Sep 2009 05:39 AM PDT DiS caught up with Muse to discuss their special comeback show in their hometown of Teignmouth, which takes place this coming Friday and Saturday (see below for details of how to WIN tickets to this sold out gig!). "Playing in Teignmouth is going to be amazing, we're all really looking forward to it," beams Muse drummer Dominic Howard and he explains why they're all looking forward to it so much: "It's honestly something we've always wanted to do since the day that I met Matt at The Den (pictured above). It's not a park, it's just like a big piece of grass. That's where I met Matt [Bellamy] for the first time. I remember even in those early days talking to Matt and saying things like 'wouldn't be great to play a proper gig on here with shitloads of people!' It's certainly something we've thought about and talked about over the years. We looked into doing it before but not as hard as we did this time. I guess we were more motivated this time, partly because it's the 10 year anniversary from when the first album (Showbiz) came out. I don't think we've played in Teignmouth for nearly 12 years. There's not really any venues there but back then we just played at a shit pub which has since been knocked down and turned into an old people's home, unfortunately. I moved to London about 12 years ago but I go back from time to time as I have family down there and Chris still lives there. When we were there the other night we went down the pub and saw a bunch of old faces we hadn't seen for about sixteen years. There will be lots of people there we know or used to know, lots of friends and family. We probably won't get time to see everyone but we'll be looking for them in the crowd. It's going to be great. 10,000 people a night, which in Teignmouth is like the whole town coming down the seafront for one night. They're shutting all the roads and it's going to be a complete Muse lock-down, which for us is quite funny. All our family are laughing about it as Chris has been on the cover of the local paper and he's been getting involved in the council meeting that had to take place to approve the gig. I think it's going to be really emotional, it's going to really mean a lot. I mean, it's a lovely little town and I think we'll spend a lot of time reflecting, taking stock, thinking about growing up and all the places we've been and here we are now, so it's going to be nostalgic. We haven't played in Devon for a very long time, so we're really excited. We're really in to causing a scene down there and for us to play in our hometown it's really important that it has an impact. There are two Teignmouth bands down supporting us which Chris is quite friendly with called Hey Molly and The Quails. I don't really know much about them but Chris likes them. We're going to get two more local bands too, so it'll be four local acts opening for us in total." While Dom paused for breath, we asked him some questions about the live show (here he revealed to DiS that Muse have floating cube-related craziness planned) and about the forthcoming album, the answers to which you can read on DiS nearer to the record's release. So, if haven't got a ticket to the above show, we suspect you now want to go more than ever? Well, DiS has procured a pair of tickets to give away and all you need to do is tell us in the comments section below the name of Muse's forthcoming album and why you should win the tickets. Points will be awarded for originality and we'll pick our favourite before the close on business on Wednesday 2nd September 2009.

The Horrors announce winter 'UK' tour Posted: 01 Sep 2009 02:43 PM PDT Band of the decade and possibly century so far The Horrors have just announced a tour around England and some of Scotland in December. Calling it a UK tour is perhaps a little misleading, as it features none of Wales or Northern Ireland. They released their second record, Primary Colours, earlier this year to great acclaim and success, including a 9/10 on this very website. And why not, there's not a bad note on the whole thing... Here are those dates, with a mid-section of dates supporting Placebo: December: 3 - Nottingham, Rescue Rooms 4 - Oxford, O2 Academy 2 6 - Bristol, O2 Academy 2 8 - Birmingham, LG Arena $ 9 - London, O2 Arena $ 11 - Bridlington, Spa $ 12 - Manchester, Central $ 13 - Liverpool O2 Academy 2 $ 14 - Glasgow, SECC 16 - Sheffield, O2 Academy 2 17 - Portsmouth, Wedgewood Rooms 18 - Brighton, Concorde 2 20 - London, HMV Forum $ = support for Placebo Tickets for the tour go on sale on September 4, which is this Friday, and are available from See Tickets.

First Listen: Paramore brand new eyes Posted: 02 Sep 2009 03:31 AM PDT brand new eyes (yes, all in lower case!) is the forthcoming follow up to the 2-million selling Riot! from the female-fronted emo/rock band Paramore. DiS was very excited to get a first listen to it and the following text is what DiS Editor Sean Adams made of the record based on one listen at their UK record label offices. Careful The album opens with a chuggier bass than anything on the previous record, wrestling with lots of surprisingly complex math-rock time changes - almost like Mars Volta at full-on melodic crescendo but with Hayley doing those big rising AFI-like vocals. The breakdowns give light relief before gigantic drum rolls. The lyrics are all about pushing you away, with the phrase "don't come any closer!" repeated quite a bit. Ignorance Lolita-ish Stefani-esque vocals over what could be No Doubt at their most brash or Alkaline Trio at full (pop) tilt. So far so much more intense in both an ornate and chaotically complex way, than the previous album. The big lyrical statements are still present, with lines like "ignorance is your new best friend!" This track is the first single from the album and the 'Ignorance' video is on their website here. Playing God And then it drops off to a solo rhythm guitar line and in come some much more adroit drums and a big blink-182/Get Up Kids chorus. Lots of melodically stuttered "br-break-break it off" repetition makes this one sound like a live favourite in waiting. Brick by Boring Brick Hayley declares "bury the castle" and then there's a "buh-buh-buh-nuh-nuh" that Lostprophets and Panic at the Disco would be really proud of. The press release says the album is "breathless", I guess that could also be read as unrelenting because so far the drums on this record are a little more like a barrage of noize crashing down on you (we're called drowned in sound, so this is a good thing!). There are acoustic versions of this track on the web from an MTV session they did but it sounds ten times bigger and better than that on the album! Turn It Off Hayley is sounding cutesy as a big ball of riff builds and builds, then falls away [insert huge first verse here]. This one sounds like the credits to a college rock movie, as the camera pans on zooming cars whilst monster trucks rain from the sky. Exceptional Acoustic guitar o'clock! This is a lush burst-hearted ballad. Hayley maybe has a little bit of the Avril Lavignes about her on this one but THIS IS NO BAD THING. "You are the only exception...." she coos before the band bring in the drums and strings. Feeling Sorry A jetstream splicing riff lurches from the calm and the bass dur-nurr-nurrs like My Vitriol at their most emo. Lots more F-U-right-back lyrics on this one, with lots of lines like "I feel no sympathy" flittering around this tamed beast of a track. Looking Up 'Looking Up' is a little more like Paramore's trademark epic-rock-pop bigness with moshpit-pausing breaks but the song carried by the vocal (or if you wanna get technical, the top-line melody). Throw in some "wuh-woah-oh-oh!'" and you have a Sunny D addictive 'Misery Business'-like feel good melodramatic popular song. Where The Lines Overlap An inaudibly quiet guitar line and then THWACK! - we're whacked with more racing rock joy. Break. "Oh-oh" and THACK. Pause. And they bring that riff back twice the size, like a worm you've chopped in half. This is an 'in love' song with lines like "no one is as lucky as I seem." In essence, this one sounds like an obvious call and return for their huge live crowds but also a spikey attack at the echo-chamber of the media, as the lyric continues "...I've got a feeling if I sing this loud enough, you will sing it back to me!" In essence, this is probably what would happen if Refused wrote pop songs for Kelly Clarkson. Misguided Ghosts Things fall away to a slight and quite special acoustic moment. It's genuinely really-really lovely with a tiny bit of kick drum toward the end. Lyrically it wanders around dragging its feet in diary-angst but that's part of the reason why they mean so much to their younger fans and why they're such a special guilty pleasure - "we just go in circles, pain is just a simple compromise... A broke heart, a twisted mind." All I Wanted This is the big Evanescence falling down a black hole album crescendo. Big bass, with lots of space to let everything breathe before a capella bits and then huge tumbling drums and face-shaking riffs. And then insert feedback 'til fade. The album also features a bonus track which is 'Decode' taken from the Twilight soundtrack which sounds exactly like this: Paramore - Decode from Paprika Christian on Vimeo. First Listen Summary: This is quite a brave step in an explorative direction from a band who could have delivered a much more accessible, instantly-gratifying record with 10 guilty-pleasure tracks like 'CrushCrushCrush'. Instead, this is a record that sounds like every listen will be more and more rewarding: 8/10. brand new eyes is released in the UK on September 28th (a day later stateside) via Fuelled by Ramen. For the brand new eyes tracklisting and more info click here.

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