Showing posts with label The Smiths. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Smiths. Show all posts

Today's Featured Band -- International Waters


Today's featured band is Austin, TX's International Waters, a four piece consisting of former Voxtrot member Mitch Calvert on vocals and guitar, Ryan Hall on guitar, Alex Gehring on bass and Marcus Haddon on drums. The band describes their sound as "jangle pop" and cite The Smiths as one of their influences; Johnny Marr comes through in nearly every track. The band is streaming their album 1994 via their Bandcamp page as they look for a label to pay for a proper vinyl edition.


The video is for the song "1994," a song that's infused with surfpop and jangly guitar goodness that will have you listening to the rest of the album.


 
1994 - International Waters from Mitchell Calvert on Vimeo.


Here is the rest of the album for your listening pleasure:




International Waters is currently working on new material and should be playing dates around Austin soon. In the meantime, their first EP, It Felt Like, is available for download from iTunes.

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Today's Featured Band -- Help Stamp Out Loneliness


Manchester has spawned many of the greatest bands of the last 35 years, (Joy Division, The Smiths, New Order, Stella Marconi, The Stone Roses, The Buzzcocks) and now the collective Help Stamp Out Loneliness (HSOL), joins that list. HSOL was started in 2007 by Bentley Cooke and Colm McCrory as a way to recover from their years in the twee indie pop band Language of Flowers but soon found themselves wanting to return to their debauched life in indie pop. Cooke and McCrory recruited four more members, Ben Ambridge and Louise Winfield from Star and Garters, Kath McMahon and their vocalist, D. Lucille Campbell.


HSOL recently released their first album, the self-titled, Help Stamp Out Loneliness, a 12 track masterpiece produced by Smiths producer Craig Gannon. Take a listen to the whole album below:



Help Stamp Out Loneliness is available for download from their Bandcamp site, their label, Where It's At Is Where You Are (scroll down), Amazon and iTunes. You can also download their free Record Store Day release, "Record Store," here. HSOL's previous singles, "Pacific Trash Vortex" (iTunes and Amazon) and "Torvill and Dean" (iTunes and Amazon) are also available for download. HSOL is playing dates in the UK in July, no word on plans to come to the US.

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New Music Sunday -- Chapel Club



Chapel Club - O Maybe I

Chapel Club | MySpace Music Videos

New Music Sunday is a new feature bringing you new bands that have yet to break in the United States. The first band to be featured is a London based band named Chapel Club. The Sunday Times has tipped them to be the next big thing.

First a little history: on June 4, 1976, the Sex Pistols played the Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall and in the audience were a unknown local band named Warsaw (school friends Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook) that was looking for a lead singer, an unemployed music fan named Steven Morrissey, producer Martin Hannett, local television personality Tony Wilson and a host of others who may or may not have actually been there. The promoters said that only 100 people attended the show, but if you comb through the biographies of most punk bands of the late '70's and early '80's you find nearly 1,000 people claiming to have been at the show. The show spawned a second on July 20, 1976 when Ian Curtis, a friend of Bernard Sumner, and Johnny Marr saw what their friends had seen almost two months earlier: raw, unbridled rock music that no one had heard before. The shows were the catalyst for the for the Manchester and the greater punk music scene that is still thriving today. Why is this history lesson important? Had Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook run into Steven Morrissey that night rather than wait for Ian Curtis to be available, the history of music would have been dramatically different and the outcome would have been Chapel Club.

Their first single, "O Maybe I," has the patented Peter Hook bass line that instantly recalls Joy Division and a jangly guitar that evokes Johnny Marr and The Smiths. The lyrics are dark and have the proper amount of despair between the choices of settling down into a quiet existence or putting everything to chance for "a perfect night." If you are a fan of Joy Division and The Smiths, then check out Chapel Club. I look forward to hearing more from them during the coming year.

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