Start All Over

Like a bedraggled phoenix struggling from the flames; like a snowdrop waiting to be crushed by a jackboot, Beerandbands rises again ready to hobble into action. To misquote a dour Mancunian "7 months is a long time", and that is truly the case; new bands and music rise and fall, ebb and flow, and vanish before anyone even noticed, and whilst I may have missed out on reporting on stuff over the last however long, it's pleasing to note that there's still a lot going on.

In fact it's a flurry of activity out there at the minute; exciting enough to move me to (relative) action.

Firstly, London Popfest. It was on last night and it's on over the weekend; allday on Saturday and from 1:00pm on Sunday. I believe Saturday is sold out but there's tickets for Friday and Sunday, both of which boast fantastic line-ups. If sadly you can't make it (much like me) then there's at least the brilliant consolation of a free download compilation of this years line-up. Which is more than worth the 5 - 10 minutes of your time it will take to download it.

Details of popfest - tickets, times, etc can be found on their website.
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If London Popfest isn't enough to get you excited then surely the prospect of Indietracks must do. For some waiting for the first announcements of indietracks is a traditional. Bands waiting to be see if they can play, fans with fingerscrossed that their favourite will get a chance. The fact that a band who played the previous year won't usually play the next year, adds a nice spice to the mix. So yes, anyway, Indietracks have already announced there first few acts, and it looks as promising as ever. Go on HAVE A LOOK. It's a nice mix of the big hitter (Allo Darlin', Tender Trap), the new flavours (Colour Me Wednesday, Evans The Death, GoldBears) and the mysterious (Doggy.) I must admit I'm mostly excited about Language Of Flowers, I saw them once supporting Camera Obscura in, oh 2006 I think, and they were wonderful. I had no idea they were going to reform to do this. There are early bird tickets on the indietracks website I linked up there; and it's worth noting that the festival takes place earlier this year, just in case you're on auto pilot and have booked the wrong days off work! Finally the last couple of pages of the indietracks announcements page on anorakforum.com has some videos of the announced bands so far.

One last indiepop festival to mention before I go, and it's a new one. On the 24th Of March there's going to be an indiepop alldayer in Leicester. I like the fact that there are more and more of these 'popfests' popping up all over the country it can only be a very, very good thing. This one has the always entertaining M.J Hibbett and Tender Trap for starters, but the line up is very good indeed.
There's a facebook events page for this one.

(put) Your hands (together)

Hiya. Once again it's a bit of a digest today.

First up, have you heard the first single from 'The New Pornographers' upcoming album? I have. I really like TNP, it's hard not to. Ostensibly a supergroup they make some really great spiky pop tunes. That said, although I liked some of last album 'Challengers' it didn't really resonate with me as much as previous albums like 'Twin Cinema' or 'Mass Romantic' had. That said, both Carl Newman, Dan Bejar and Neko Case have seperately all released brilliant new material recently, so I have high hopes for this new record, so let's go back to the single; it's called 'Your hands (together)' I must admit it didn't quite click with me on first listen, although I think that's partly due to listening to it on a netbook with slightly tinny speakers. Having listened to it since I've come to love it already, I think it's closer to 'Electric Version' or 'Mass Romantic' in sound (particularly with the Neko vocal) and that is a really good thing. If you're a New Pornographers fan, I think you'll love it, and if you're not a fan or have never heard them before, then give it a go eh? It can be heard here:-

http://www.thenewpornographers.com/media.html

In other brief news, there's some freebies out there on the net for you.

Tweefort records (who i've mentioned briefly before) have a compilation series to download for absolutely nothing, which is nothing short of wonderful of them. It's great too.

Oh yes, and the hugely anticipated London Popfest!! (explanation marks bloggers own) have a compilation playlist to listen to. That's available from this link :- http://www.mediafire.com/?v2zqemozllj

I've not listened to it yet, but with the line-up of bands for popfest being as good as it is, that compilation is liable to be nothing short of brilliant.