(photo: doves.net)

It’s been a long time since 2005’s Some Cities, but the wait is almost over for fans of Doves, as the Manchester band has announced that Kingdom of Rust will be out on April 7th (just in time for my birthday).  Details about what to expect on the album are sketchy, but judging by the teaser track they’ve made available from their website, it’s not too far from what made Doves such a fantastic band in the first place.  “Jetstream” continues in the epic tradition of tracks like “There Goes The Fear”and finds Jimi Goodwin, Jez Williams, and Andy Williams exploring some of the dance sounds from their previous incarnation as Sub Sub.  It’s a hypnotic, propulsive track (listed as the album’s opener) that sets expectations and anticipation high for what the rest of  the 10 songs on the album will sound like.

The tracklisting for Kingdom of Rust is as follows:

“Jetstream”
“Kingdom of Rust”
“The Outsiders”
“Winter Hill”
“10.03″
“The Greatest Denier”
“Birds Flew Backwards”
“Spellbound”
“Compulsion”
“House of Mirrors”
“Lifelines”

The band have also announced a handfull of otur dates in the UK prior to the album’s release, with a promise of more global dates in the Spring.

MP3: Doves “Jetstream”
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It’s the end of the week and about time Ruby Isle got up to some more cover song shenanigans.  This week:  Animal Collective.

MP3: Ruby Isle “My Girls” (Animal Collective cover)

Peter, Bjorn and John are teasing us with some video in anticpation of Living Thing out on March 31st.

Video: Peter, Bjorn and John Living Thing teaser video

Calling all Cure fans:  you can stream the 16-song tribute CD, Just Like Heaven now and hear teh likes of Tanya Donnelly, The Submarines, Elk City and The Wedding present covering your favourite Cure songs.  Nobody coverd my favourite, “Fascination Street” but I’m interested to hear what Dean & Britta have done with “Friday I’m In Love”.

Stream: Various Artists Just Like Heaven: A Tribute to The Cure

(photo: Sara Arnald)

There was a short-lived sitcom in the 80s featuring Judd Hirsch (post-Taxi) called Dear John that was actually very funny in a sad-sack kind of way, about a guy named John whose wife leaves him for his best friend.  It was “comfort TV” in that for awhile, your pains and troubles seemed a little less significant than the heartache of the characters you were watching and laughing at.

Loney Dear is kind of like comfort music, in a way, because when you sit and listen to Emil Svanängen’s one-man pop orchestra, you’re immediately drawn into the sweetness and delicateness of his precious arrangements, while simultaneously experiencing the heartache and longing in his songs as a casual observer.  Dear John, his latest album as Loney Dear picks up the musical blueprint laid down by previous releases, Loney Noir and Sologne but the mood and tone isn’t as sunny and bright.  There’s definitely a sense of darkness and desolation in some of the tracks, tempered with moments of warmth.  It’s as if you’re feeling your way though an underground cave, and finding a lone glowing torch every couple hundred feet or so; the heat and light of the last torch sustains your trip through the darkness until you can come upon the next torch and warm your hands, your heart, and your soul before venturing deeper into the impending dark.

Loney Noir lost it’s appeal for me after a few listens, but the more I spend time with Dear John the more I enjoy  its synthetic, almost mechanical atmosphere.  Svanängen’s really delved into a new set of sounds far from the orchestral, organic sounds of previous recordings.  It’s an odd cross between modern instrumentation and traditional song structures, but it works.  Dear John isn’t the kind of album that’s going to leave you after a brief, flirtatious fling.  It will entertain, it will engage, and it will sustain repeated listens, and that’s comforting in and of itself.

MP3: Loney Dear “Airport Surroundings”
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(photo: Myspace)

The Decemberists have announced their latest disc, The Hazards of Love, is to be released on March 24th.  It is a 17-song suite that is based on a tale of a woman named Margaret who is ravaged by her shape-shifting animal/lover William, and features a forest queen, and a cold-blooded, lascivious rake, whose tale is told in the album’s first single, “The Rake’s Song”.

If you thought The Crane Wife was high-concept, this will surely do your head in.  I expect nothing but big and bold surprises from The Decemberists, as “The Rake’s Song” sets expectations for this album pretty high.  It’s less melodic than the pop pearls they released on the Always The Bridesmaid single series last year, but it’s most definitely a Decemberists song, with Meloy’s distinctive voice lending the heavy-handed arrangement a light counterpoint.   The song is available as a free download from the band’s website, in exchange for joining their mailing list.

Tour plans are taking shape for this Spring, and promise to feature older material in the second half, with the first half dedicated to The Hazards of Love.

MP3: The Decemberists “The Rake’s Song”
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(photo: Steve Gullick)

Although initially turned off by the rather violent name, I have to say that I’m warming to New Zealand’s Cut Off Your Hands.  As tiresome as it may be for new emerging bands to be saddled with comparisons to older, more established acts, there’s no denying that the stamp of The Smiths influence is all over their debut album, You & I.  The guitar riff on first single “Turn Cold” is a dead ringer for “This Charming Man”.  This isn’t a radical rethink of the indie pop guitar sound, but then, why fix what ain’t broke?  The more listens I give You & I the more it reveals.  “Still Found” is a curious little nugget that reminds me of mid-80s UK indie pop without directly referencing any song or artist in particular.  It has one of those classic melodies that you’ll swear you’ve heard before but just can’t place where.  Same holds true for “Happy As Can Be” which clearly owes a debt to “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”  It’s my favourite track on the album so far, very over the top in comparison to some of the album’s other moments, but I think it’s an indication of where these guys can go next, and that makes the future for Cut Off Your Hands seem pretty bright.

Cut Off Your Hands are on tour with Passion Pit and Ra Ra Riot through the U.S. for the next couple months, so if you happen to catch them live, please drop me a line and let me know how the show was.

MP3: Cut Off Your Hands “Happy As Can Be”
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Buy: Cut Off Your Hands You & I

(photo: Percu)

Like a third child born, Franz Ferdinand 3.0 arrives to much joy and anticipation from the band’s loyal family of fans, but the rest of the world isn’t as bothered as it might have once been to hear the news of a new album from the Scottish quartet.  As fresh-faced and exciting as they may have sounded back in 2004 and 2005, we’ve moved on, and with a four-plus year gap between album number 2 and number 3, Franz Ferdinand have some ground to make up.

Unfortunately, I don’t think Tonight: Franz Ferdinand is going to be the album to close the gap for them.  There isn’t anything particularly wrong with it, but the spark of creativity and exuberance that dazzled us when we first heard “Take Me Out” and “Do You Want To”.  Tonight… feels like it had a really long labour, and the band is just tired and glad to have the ordeal done.  It’s their “pop” album they say, but some of their choices seem at odds with that.  “Lucid Dreams” was first premiered on iTunes and a video game, and promised such great heights for this album.  It was rough-edged and catchy as all hell–in my opinion one of their best songs ever.  Now, on the album proper, it’s a bloated, uninteresting throw-away track that pulls the rest of the album down. I’ve read reviews that call album-version “Lucid Dreams” fantastic, and I have to question if that’s just because it’s so very different from what the rest of their canon sounds like.  Do we reward the experimentation regardless of how disjointed and unspectacular it is?  I’m all for stretching the boundaries and nurturing creativity, but there isn’t anything else on the album that even attempts to push the limits that far, so it is totally out of place and is a detriment.  I’m almost tempted to go in and swap versions in my iTunes library.

There’s more to Tonight… than just “Lucid Dreams” though, so with all due respect, let’s highlight some of the album’s finer points:  “What She Came For” has a dazzling supercharged guitar riff at the end that spikes the volume and intensity level up to 11.  “Katherine Kiss Me” soothes the savage beasts with a pretty acoustic strumming that contrasts the scuzzy dive-bar inspired lyrics to inspired effect.  This is experimentation that I can live with and appreciate.  By now you’ve heard “Ulysses”, a fine fine example of what this band can do when they’re on  form, and the punky “Bite Hard” is probably in line as the next single, but overall, Tonight: Franz Ferdinand falls short of being a great album by more than just a few tracks.  You could have it so much better indeed.

MP3: Franz Ferdinand “Lucid Dreams”
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Buy: Franz Ferdinand Tonight: Franz Ferdinand