John's New Music Blog

Summer Camp, the London duo of Elizabeth Sankey and Jeremy Warmsley (previously featured here), have announced a new single from their upcoming debut album. The single, "Better Off Without You," is a summery '80's ode to breakups that could have come straight from The Human League circa 1983; I hope that the video includes a Rover SD1 (Jeremy Clarkson knows where they can get one cheap, just don't mind the water damage).






Summer Camp is self-releasing their debut album on their label, Apricot Recordings, and you can help bring the album to reality by contributing a few dollars to their campaign (they have all sorts of neat thank you's for pledging). I kicked in £50 towards the effort and if you like the single, you should too. Go to their PledgeMusic page to see what they are offering their contributors.

(H/T: Gorilla vs. Bear and Beachtapes)

Merry Ellen Kirk has just released the single, "Field of Dreams" from her upcoming album The Firefly Gardens. We've featured Merry Ellen in the pages of John's New Music Blog a few times (here and here) and Merry Ellen's voice is somewhere between Tori Amos and Sarah McLaughlin with a little Amie Miriello thrown in for good measure. For someone who's only 21 years old, her singing and songwriting show her to be wise beyond her years. Take a listen to Field of Dreams and if you like it, send her a couple of bucks to help finish the album.








The video is for Merry Ellen's song, "Blinding Me," from her Invisible War CD, is about how eyes can actually be a hindrance in seeing what's really important. It's a beautiful song that gives you a good representation of her voice and her songwriting ability.  





The Firefly Garden is still in the works so please help Merry Ellen make the album a reality by investing in her project (I did, you should too). The Invisible War is available from Merry Ellen's Bandcamp page.

Merry Ellen will also be playing the Elephant Talk 2011 Indie Music Fest in Atlantic City on Saturday, August 6th (click here for the schedule).

This is the new video from Cults for their excellent song, "Go Outside." I'm not sure how I feel about it, it's a great song, but the video is more than a little disturbing. The video features clips from NBC's coverage of Congressman Leo Ryan's ill fated trip to The People's Temple in Jonestown with bandmembers Madeline Follin and Brian Oblivion digitally added to the scenes.





Go Outside, by Cults from Boing Boing on Vimeo.

I think the video is too clever by half, the band and the director are making a statement about the power of cults (get it, cults and get outside?), but by inserting the band into the clips, the message is muddled and Jonestown might be considered ancient history by their fans (if they even know what Jonestown was).

I love the band and the song, but the video just doesn't work for me. Go get the album from iTunes and Amazon and listen for yourself.