Super Furry Animals has announced that their new album (so far without a title, but with a tracklist) will be available for sale in a digital version on their own website on 16th March and the physical release will be on 13th April on Rough Trade. The US release will be on 21st April.

On their myspace, they say:

"Musically it’s based around riffs and grooves we’ve been playing around with over the last few years. We have enough now for a whole album so even though it’s still very melodic we thought we could leave off the acoustic ballads for the time being."

"It’s recognisable as a melodic SFA record, but is very focused musically as a cohesive album. And no country rock as Daf has developed a pedal steel phobia. Which has confined the great Nashvillian instrument along with the Saxophone to the banned instrument directive of the SFA board. there’s only one slow number which isn’t slow at all."

Working Title Tracklisting

  1.’The very best of Neil Diamond’
  2. White socks/Flip Flops.
  3. Inaugural Trams.
  4. Sounds Familiar.
  5. Cardiff in the sun.
  6. Where do you wanna go?
  7. LLiwiau LLachar.
  8. Mountain.
  9. Moped eyes.
  10. Inconvenience.
  11. Crazy Naked Girls.
  12. Earth.
  13. Prick.

I made this Spotify playlist of some of my SFA favourites just now, to celebrate the happy news!

http://open.spotify.com/user/eardrums/playlist/6igF3R9UCegKcHUN1eFaOs (and it’s a collaborative playlist, so please add your favourite SFA tracks!)

“Reservoir”, Fanfarlo’s upcoming debut, is an album I have great expectations for, and listening to the first song off the album, “I’m A Pilot” does not lower my expectations at all. It’s a wonderful track, beautifully arranged and with an interesting rhythm section that sounds like both drums, hands, feet and probably something else too making noise. The band has just shared this song, “I’m a pilot”, and I love it!

Fanfarlo – I’m A Pilot

Fanfarlo is one of those bands who frequently update their website and their myspace with interesting stuff, – stories, videos and music. I’m not sure of the release date for their new album, but they say on their site that it can be bought on the concerts on their upcoming tour.

You can find their tour dates here: http://fanfarlo.com/live

I hate to call myself a fan of something, but I think I’ll have to admit that I am a Fanfarlo-fan…
Are there more like me out there??

Momus is an artist I have enjoyed a lot, and although many of his recent albums are very good, my favourites are still among his older albums. I already knew that Momus has a quite unusual way of thinking about spreading his music, since he has given away full “uncooked” demo-versions for the entire Oskar Tennis Champion-album prior to the release earlier. Now, he gives away 6 full albums from the Creation period 1987-1993, “The Poison Boyfriend”, “Tender Pervert”, “Don’t stop the night”, “Hippopoptamomus”, “Voyager” and “Timelord”. On the page where you can get these, he also tells the detailed stories about each song and how he rates these songs now. Interesting to read and interesting to listen.

He explains why he do this:
"Okay, this is quite a big decision, but I’ve taken it. Six Momus albums — the ones I recorded for Alan McGee’s Creation label between 1987 and 1993 — are out of print. Creation doesn’t exist any more, and in theory Sony owns the rights to these albums, but isn’t doing anything with them and probably never will. In the meantime, only Russian pirates are profiting, charging punters for illegal downloads.” … and… “If you’re the sort of person who likes to donate to the artist when you download, do it here. But it’s not really necessary; these albums paid for themselves long ago.” 

You can find all these albums on Momus’ UbuWeb profile, but there are some of the links that are incorrect. They’re just misprinted, and easy to get to work. This is the link to Tender Pervert, where you just have to change the filename in the web-address from momus_pervert.html to momus_tender.html. On Voyager, you get to Hippopoptamomus when you click. Change the address from momus_hippo.html to momus_voyager.html.

So, head over to Momus’ UbuWeb, download, listen and enjoy. His website at imomus.com is also full of interesting stuff to read, look at and download.

Here’s one of my favourite Momus-songs (..but I’ve got so many favourites that it could as well be another…):

Momus – The Homosexual (from Tender Pervert, 1988)

Samtidigt Som is a debuting quartet from Gothenburg/Sweden who play some of the absolute best energy-pop I have heard in years. They play it simple and straight forward, and singer Francisco Ramirez Franzén sings his heart out on every song. He sings in a way that makes me believe in every word he says, raw and honest. 

All of Samtidigt Som’s songs have super-catchy melody-lines, and although they sing in Swedish, I’m sure it’s easy for anyone to FEEL and like the music of Samtidigt Som. The band have just released their debut album “Flykt, kärlek och broderskap” on the small label Luxury, a label who’s given us wonderful bands like Skansros, Almedal, Boat Club and My Darling YOU!.

The members of Samtidigt Som (Francisco Ramirez Franzén, Erik Weimann, Lars-Erik Grahn and Göran Agnetun.) have been friends since their childhood days, and you can almost hear that they know eachother well. They are so tight and precise in their playing.

The label has freed two songs that you can listen to or download, and here they are:

Samtidigt Som – Constant in motion

Samtidigt Som – Vid min sida

If you like it, go to klkicktrack.com and buy their music.

My old hero Lloyd Cole has a free download on tapete records, to (as they say) “celebrate the release of the 4 CD Box Set ‘Cleaning Out The Ashtrays’, featuring 59 – count ‘em – nuggets from the Cole vaults, four CDs bursting with alternate versions, rare b-sides, cover sessions (Lou Reed, Marc Bolan and Leonard Cohen songs among them)”.

Lloyd Cole is a great musician, and one I’ve got great respect for. He is also very much present on the web, and together with his family, he runs his own self-built website, lloydcole.com, where he also probably will answer if you ask him something. The site is really interesting if you’ve got some kind of relation to his music, since it features Cole’s own writings and memories from songs, album-recordings and releases. For instance, he comments his work together with Stephin Merritt/The 6ths like this: “This was recorded at Stephin Merritt’s flat in the East Village. He had a dog up his jumper the whole time.” The “Ask Lloyd” section is also an interesting read, – good, long and often funny answers to a lot of questions.

In addition to this 4 cd-thing, he also will release a series of acoustic live recordings called “The Folk Singer Series”. These will be available both from Lloyd Cole’s website and from Tapete records.

Listen: Lloyd Cole – Coattails