Here’s a real goodie for you!
Three girls from Bergen, Norway, have had quite a success with their acoustic guitars, glockenspiels and xylophones, and of course their marvellous voices. They are called Ephemera and are very popular up here. They run their own label, do their own management and make their own music. A couple of years ago, Ephemera made this little christmas pearl of a song, “Gift”. Here it is for you all.

Ephemera - gift

The Brooklyn based band King of France, one of my new favourites, will be going on tour with several of my other favourites in 2006. Nada Surf and Rogue Wave will be sharing the stage with the King on most of the tour, while Helio Sequence and Say hi to your mom will do one show with The King of France each. The King Of France consists of vocalist Steve Salad and drummer Michael Azerrad, and their recent self-titled debut album has received a well deserved deal of attention. The band play highly melodic pop with quirky riffs and a quite uplifting feeling, - sometimes they sound like an updated version of Talking Heads.

Nada Surf are veterans, 10 years anniversary this year, and still they are active both on the road and in the studio. Their latest album was released this year, “The Weight Is A Gift” on Barsuk/Cityslang. A new acoustic session by them are available now at UGO.COM.
Helio Sequence released their latest album “love and distance” on subpop in 2004, and I liked that one quite good. It would be interesting to see what these guys comes up with next. From their debut in 2001 it took 3 years before they released another one, so I guess we’ll have to wait until 2007 before we get something new from them.
Rogue Wave is my current favourite band, no doubt. They made a wonderful debut with “Out of the Shadows”, and they followed up with their fabulous second album in 2005, “descended like vultures”. My advice is short: Buy everything you can get from Rogue Wave, it’s all extremely good. No less than that…
Say hi to your mom play dreamy, melodic indie pop, - very catchy and nice, and they are making a new album right now.

The tourdates: THE KING OF FRANCE
Thu 1/12/06 Spaceland Los Angeles CA w/Helio Sequence & The Can’t See
Sat 2/4/06 Mercury Lounge New York NY w/Say Hi To Your Mom
Sun 2/5/06 The Khyber Philadelphia PA
Mon 2/6/06 Beachland Ballroom Cleveland OH
Tue 2/7/06 Garfield Artworks Pittsburgh PA
Wed 2/8/06 Eight By Ten Baltimore MD w/Nada Surf & Rogue Wave
Thu 2/9/06 Starr Hill Charlottesville VA w/Nada Surf & Rogue Wave
Fri 2/10/06 Cats Cradle Carrboro NC w/Nada Surf & Rogue Wave
Sat 2/11/06 The Loft Atlanta GA w/Nada Surf & Rogue Wave
Sun 2/12/06 Exit / In Nashville TN w/Nada Surf & Rogue Wave
Tue 2/14/06 Blue Note Columbia MO w/Nada Surf & Rogue Wave
Wed 2/15/06 Granada Lawrence, KS w/Nada Surf & Rogue Wave
Fri 2/17/06 Trees Dallas TX w/Nada Surf & Rogue Wave
Sat 2/18/06 Emo¹s Austin TX w/Nada Surf & Rogue Wave
Mon 2/20/06 Clubhouse Tempe Az w/Nada Surf & Rogue Wave
Tue 2/21/06 House of Blues San Diego Ca w/Nada Surf & Rogue Wave
Wed 2/22/06 Henry Fonda Los Angeles CA w/Nada Surf & Rogue Wave
Thu 2/23/06 Hemlock Tavern San Francisco CA
The songs:
The King of France - white confection
The King of France - mexico (both from betterpropaganda.com)
Nada Surf - do it again (from barsuk.com)
Rogue Wave - 10:1
Rogue Wave - publish my love
Rogue Wave - every moment (all from subpop.com)
Say hi to your mom - Yeah, I’m in love with an android
Say hi to your mom - dimensions and verticals
Say hi to your mom - the forest scares the hell out of me (all from sayhitoyourmom.com)
Helio Sequence - everyone knows everyone (from betterpropaganda)

Kuryakin is a fresh swedish band from Stockholm/Uppsala who play really nice, sweet electronic pop with computers, guitars and vocals. When I listen to their music, I especially think of St Etienne with male vocals or Kings of Convenience and I also get references in my mind to an updated version of twee pop! Kuryakin are Petter Gjöres (vocals, guitar, computers), Johan Norberg (guitar, computers) and Kristina Dahlman (background vocals, computers). Petter and Johan met at the university in Uppsala 2002 and started playing together a year after that. Since Petter now lives in Stockholm while Johan and Kristina live in Uppsala, the music is made “the postal service way” by Johan and Petter who mail samples and ideas to eachother and then play together a few times a month.
Really, really nice music!!!

Here are some tracks:
- kuryakin - onie (Electric prunes cover)
- kuryakin - a parade

and there are more music to download from their website.

While browsing, I found that The Selector has an mp3 of the fabulous Cocteau Twins cover of Frosty the Snowman on their site.
The story about the song is quite funny, at least in the words of Cocteau-member Simon Raymonde (clipped from cocteautwins.com):

Simon explained “Frosty…”: “There’s a Christmas record that comes out on Capitol Records (the Cocteaus’ US label) every few years. And they were trying to get all their bands to do a cover version of a Christmas song. I didn’t think that’s what it was at the time. I thought it would be like sitting next to Frank Sinatra. But in fact it would’ve been, y’know, Skinny Puppy, doing ‘Merry Xmas Everybody.’ Anyway they’d said, Would you do one? And Liz suggested—it must have been for a joke—’Frosty The Snowman.’ Then Robin went, Yeah, good title, people will think it’s a normal Cocteau Twins song with a title like that.”

“Once we’d got the music down, I wrote down the lyrics on a piece of paper and said to Liz, Hey, look at these, and we were laughing away. As we were going through it I was listening to Liz’s reactions and thinking, this is never gonna get done. She was going, ‘He’s a very happy soul’—me sing that?! No way, I could not in a million years… ‘with a broomstick in his ‘—you’ve gotta be fucking kidding!’”

“I just didn’t think she’d do it.” [Volume 5, 1992]

They did the cover, as you can hear below, and “Frosty the Snowman” appeared on the very-limited release, Snow, together with a cover of “Winter Wonderland”. Two christmas classics! Frosty also appeared on one of the Volume-cd-books, if I remember correctly.

Christmas is really the time for gifts. Here are some gifts for you:
Labrador-band South Ambulance has a christmas gift out for all of you. It is an upbeat popsong with jangly guitars and distorted drums, and they call it “Hanging in a tie”. It’s just like a track by South Ambulance should be.
Here it is:
South Ambulance - hanging in a tie

Sofia Talvik has a great christmas single for free on her website, complete with artwork. You can get the song here, but go on and have a look at her beautiful website too.
Sofia Talvik - a second or a year (zip)

AND
Sofia Talvik and Sophie Rimheden has made a dance song together as a christmasgift for you:
X-mas on the dancefloor

Funny to hear the acoustic artist Sofia and the electronic artist Sophie together!