It’s been a busy week and I’ve got an ever-growing pile of things to review, as usual far more than I can possibly handle.

And whilst I do have a thirst for new music - in the words of John Peel ‘I just want to hear something I haven’t heard before’ - there are also days when I want something familiar.

Northern Ireland’s Therapy? are still going, and are probably still best known for this track from 1993. ‘Screamager’ was originally the lead track on the 1993 EP Shortsharpshock and then on the following year’s Troublegum LP.

Make three minutes to listen to this.

The National -’Trouble Will Find Me.’ (4AD)

For whatever reason, I seemed to be about the only person who couldn’t connect with The National’s last album, High Violet. So it is with delight that I can announce that I have well and truly fallen in love with Trouble Will Find Me.

In fact, you know you’re onto a good thing with an album when you want to play the album again before you’ve even finished it. I’ve got a whole heap of albums to work through, and this album tempts me : ‘they can wait another day. Enjoy me again.’

‘Demons’ is the first track from the album to do the rounds, but it’s one of many excellent tracks on here, like the opener ‘I Should Live In Salt’ and ‘Fireproof.’ The whole album is sublime, and in fact, I knew I was falling for it when I kept trying to find negatives to balance the review…To hell with it. Superb, sublime and even when it’s melancholy, it’s not drag-you-down depressing.

So, a major thumbs-up from me. Go and check it out.

****

Trouble Will Find Me is released by 4AD on May 20.

Any new release from Camera Obscura is always a cause for celebration, and so it is that the band have annoucned that June will see the release of their fifth album (and second for 4AD) Desire Lines.

Recent single ‘Do It Again’ is an upbeat affair…

…meanwhile, ‘Fifth In Line To the Throne’ features Neko Case on backing vocals and is almost unbearably sad.

Camera Obscura -’Fifth In Line To the Throne.’ mp3

According to the press bumf, the band’s singer Traceyanne Campbell has said ”Fifth In Line To The Throne’ is a song about someone in a seemingly perfect relationship but there is a dark underside to it. We wanted to sound menacing and give folks the creeps. I believe Princess Beatrice is fifth in line by the way.”
The album tracklisting is as follows:

1. Intro
2. This Is Love (Feels Alright)
3. Troublemaker
4. William’s Heart
5. New Year’s Resolution
6. Do It Again
7. Cri Du Coeur
8. Every Weekday
9. Fifth In Line To The Throne
10. I Missed Your Party
11. Break It To Me Gently
12. Desire Lines

Atlas Genius are a duo, of two brothers from Adelaide, Australia: Keith (vocals and guitars) and Michael Jeffery (drums). While most bands end up in the studio after having gigged for a while, in their case they seem to have done things a little differently. They built their own studio where they could write and record music for their newly formed band 3 years before they even played their first live show as Atlas Genius.

And this week, their first album When It Was Now, has been released in the UK. It dropped into the 17 Seconds inbox last night and the tracks that I have heard so far are mighty fine. The weather in Scotland may still be positively wintry (I mean, dammit, it’s only halfway through May) but when you hear their music, it feels like Spring and Summer are with you.

There’s no UK dates that I can see as yet, but here’s a couple of tracks to whet your appetite.

‘Centered On You’

‘Electric’

Meanwhile, unless you’ve no interest in modern music and/or have been under a rock for the last month, you’ll know that Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky from their forthcoming album Random Access Memories is pretty much unavoidable right now.

And a cover of the XX’s ‘Islands’ to whet your appetite yet further!

This Friday night will see a gig I was supposed to be putting on at the Dalkeith Arts Centre moved to Edinburgh’s Cabaret Voltaire.

Midas Fall will be making their return to Edinburgh, to play their first gig here for nearly three years. With them will be Tom Morris from Her Name Is Call playing a solo set, and up and coming Edinburgh band Glassbooks.

Midas Fall released their sophomore album Wilderness last month (Read review here) and rather fine it is too.

Glassbooks, who I profiled back in January are in the middle of exams, but are taking a break to play this gig.

Be there!

By The Rivers-’By the Rivers’ (Kompyla Records)

If on paper, By The Rivers might not sound a great proposition (six young white guys playing reggae) a quick blast of their music blasts away your preconceptions AND prejudices. I think I was in a cynical, grumpy mood (just for a change) when this first popped into my inbox. Within a short space of time I was genuinely uplifted.

The band take their name not from a Boney M ‘classic’ (*cough*) but because the band were formed by two guys from Leicester named after rivers, Nile Barrow and Jordan Birtles. Expanded to a six-piece, right from the off with opener ‘Vulture’ this album makes you long for proper weather and a decent summer.

And hell, even if it doesn’t shine out there (and this is Scotland I’m writing in), By The Rivers are a joy, Goddamit. In a just world, this sparkling debut would be the sound of summer. This can be an unjust world, but I’m going to do my bit and play this loud…

****

By The Rivers is out now on Kompyla

An interview with By The Rivers will appear here shortly.

Edinburgh Electric Circus, May 10

It’s a Friday night in old Edinburgh, and it’s a pleasant surprise to discover that the support act to Adrian Crowley is the acclaimed Aberfeldy band Star Wheel Press. Their album Life Cycle Of A Falling Bird
picked up some high profile fans back in 2011, and what imp[resses about the six piece band live is their larger-than-life (in the best possible way) frontman Ryan Hannigan.

Right from the off on show opener ‘Hey Lord (An Existential Enquiry), his personality wins over the small crowd (apart from the stag party sitting getting drunk in the corner, but he’s far more generous about them than the audience and bar staff), coming on like a Scottish Tom Waits.He’s a great raceonteur, telling us about how he had a dream about the Scottish Music Industry being run by the mafia and also reading us renaissance literature. But as well as this there’s songs like the fantastic ‘Being Michael Jackson’s Son’ and the finishing ‘Subbuteo’ (no, not the Admiral Fallow song!) to show how flaming excellent they are.

Galway’s Adrian Crowley is on the penultimate night of his tour, which started back in September. He’s been touring the really rather fine I See Three Birds Flying, his first album for the mighty Chemikal Underground and his sixth album in total.

Armed with just his electric guitar and effects pedals that are used to gorgeous effect, with just a few picked chords he manages to shush the crowd. It’s beautiful and sad, but what could make for a difficult set in any circumstance is balanced with the fact that his humour is so warm.

Anecdotes about people grumbling about him putting his guitars on seats in busy trains are moments of lightness (light and shade? perhaps) in amongst songs like ‘Alice Among The Pines’ ‘The Beekeeper’s Wife’ and ‘Long Distance Swimmer.’ It may be sad music, but it’s also not depressing in in his hands/voice/guitars/whatever.

A rather excellent night out…

eagleowl -’This Silent Year’ (Fence)

It feels like this has been a long time coming. eagleowl formed back in 2005, and in that time, their recorded output has amounted to two EPs and one single. But as a cliche-speaker will tell you, it’s quality not quantity, and there’s been an ever-growing number of us who have been waiting for This Silent Year.

Listening to this album, I tried to explain to my wife -who likes them, too - why I think eagleowl are so special. In some ways, when I heard their Into The Fold EP in 2010, its’ sheer completeness was overwhelming. In some ways, it was the final piece of the jigsaw falling into place; that if I couldn’t write songs like this, it was best to leave it to the experts. Bart Owl, his trusty sidekicks double bassist Clarissa Cheong and violinist Malcolm Benzie (and an ever-expanding band) on delivering this album -finally!- prove most definitely that they are the experts.

If eagleowl have their detractors (fools!) who argue that they simply follow the path of Low and (Smog), then those detractors miss the point. Because the gestation of this record has produced a record that sees them spreading their, umm, wings musically further than ever before. ‘Summerschool’ opens with feedback, yet progresses into a song that sounds more alt-country than anything they have produced so far. There’s collaboration with Woodpigeon on the appropriately entitled ‘eagleowl vs. woodpigeon’ (not to be confused with ‘Woodpigeon vs. eagleowl’ on Woodpigeon’s Die Stadt Muzikanten). It sounds like eagleowl and it’s as good as a debut as we had hoped for. And there’s even the most gentle of profane humour on ‘It’s So Funny’ which manages to mock Cliff Richard (you’ll have to listen to the track to find out why).

So. We’d love a sophomore album, folks, but in your own time…

****1/2

This Silent Year is released on Fence on May 13.