Meet me in the dollar bin

You like receiving emails, you like free music, and you like unzipping zip files.

Ergot, go to Wichita Records (homepage), give them your email address and they'll send you a zip file's worth of tunes.

Tunes from Los Campesinos!, Conor Oberst, Les Savy Fav, Peter Bjorn and John (and just Peter by himself), Euros Childs and others can be yours. Oh, and These Dancing Days, whose album 'In Our Space Hero Suits' is called 'In Our Space Hero Suits' and therefore going to be mega. Go now!

Here's a picture of Wichita Kansas, which has no involvement with this promotion at all.

Swap an alibi for an alibi

I'm about to leave Tallahassee after five weeks, so this is just a quick update.

There's a new Los Campesinos! track over at Pitchfork. Hooray! 'How I Taught Myself to Scream' is not going to be on their second album, but will hold us over nicely until October.

Hear it now.

More when I'm in some other town.

[Previously: AYGH? on 'Hold On Now, Youngster...]

You look desperate! You look pathetic!

Having paid my dues as a teenage indie kid with a barrage of pretty terrible hair cuts, I really see the appeal of Cardiff's brightest young things Los Campesinos!, whose debut album 'Hold On Now, Youngster' dropped this week in the UK. It's giddy, fast, often tracks blend into one another, it's hard to retain whole songs but various lyrics stick in your head. Then you listen to it as many times as I have, and it's a joy. Walking around in the glorious sunshine listening to this album on headphones yesterday was great fun. Especially the parts where shouting becomes mandatory. Phrases like "It's not what you like it's what you're like as a person" or "We have to take the car cos the bike's on fire!" or "We! Are! CONTENT!" or just counting really loudly. Even the album's darker sentiments are buried under bouts of giddy guitar and synths work. There's a lot going on in forty-two minutes, and that it's a great album without 'The International Tweexcore Underground', and that 'You! Me! Dancing!' isn't the best song on here says a lot. That'll be 'Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks', which like the opener, is about sixty times faster than its original demo, and features the gleeful refrain "One blink for yes, two blinks for no!" What are these guys, Jean-Dominique Bauby? I've been waiting to make that joke for weeks. Elsewhere there's a lyric about the Breakfast Club that's pretty sweet, a song called This Is How You Spell "HAHAHA, We Destroyed The Hopes And The Dreams Of A Generation Of Faux-Romantics", references to Meanwhile, Back in Communist Russia, livejournal and a song with "unison" in the title. 'Hold on Now, Youngster' is an album to listen to loads and loads of times, so why don't you do that?

There's an embedded video below. I hope you watch it!



[download Los Campesinos! - Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks (old version)]

Los Campesinos - official site / myspace
Buy 'Hold On Now Youngster' UK

This is all we care about

Most Disconcerting Trend: Great bands that are younger than I am

I'll be turning 25 in February, and for the first time this year, I really noticed that there are (a) plenty of bands who are way younger than me, and (b) many of them are actually really great.

From the United States, there are two bands of Kids (Black and Cool), from Jacksonville and Chicago respectively, who are pretty good and show promise for the future. Cool Kids, particularly, have the balls to name a song 'I Rock' and it's entirely accurate. Beirut put out a great second album that sounds like a travelling carnival. I'm sure there's other American whippersnappers that I'm forgetting.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the water, London gave us Cajun Dance Party, whose single 'Amylase' is one of those summer singles that grabs your attention and stamps on your attention and then leaves your attention bleeding on the pavement. Their mate Fryars put out an EP that I talked about here before Stereogum and GWFA (small victories!) and Ben sent me a nice message over myspace, so I've nothing but time for him. Los Campesinos! have received all the attention in the world, and good luck to them with the album due very soon. My birthday party had a facebook event entitled 'You! Me! Dancing!' in fact.

The year's MVPs for me, though, were The Strange Death of Liberal England, a band whose debut album 'Forward March!' brought out the best parts of dearly beloved Hope of the States, plus a bloke whose voice is like Efrim's from A Silver Mt. Zion. For me, at least, it's been a match made in vocal post-rock heaven. Check 'em out.

[download Cajun Dance Party - Amylase]
[download The Strange Death of Liberal England - I Saw Evil]

Bonus: 'I Rock' (live) from the Cool Kids video:



[Black Kids myspace / official site]
[Cool Kids myspace / official site]
[Beirut myspace / official site]
[Cajun Dance Party myspace / official site]
[Fryars myspace / official site]
[Los Campesinos! myspace / official site]
[The Strange Death of Liberal England myspace / official site]

Four of us dressed as schoolgirls

A few other places on the internet have already posted about Los Campesinos! but, you know, they're dead good so they're worth the mention. The song 'You! Me! Dancing!' is phenomenal. Begins sounding like it'll be slow and moody and possibly about heartbreak, then some drums arrive it and give it urgency, before at 1.37 everything else, including a xylophone, come to the party. The lyrics nicely capture the fun and awkwardness of going to clubs when you're, like 17, hoping your fake ID will get you in, and once you make it, realizing that you're crap at dancing. And accordingly, the song is absolutely PERFECT for dancing indie-kids. Boy girl vocals, a spoken word outro, laughter, shouty chorus. The most joyful six minutes of the year so far. Grab a few songs, including 'Dancing!' here, courtesy of BBC Wales. They're full of promise, full of hooks, full of great lyrics, and most noticeably, full of exclamations.

[download Los Campesinos! - You! Me! Dancing!]

And here's the sweet-ass video for their new single, 'You Throw Parties, We Throw Knives'.