Hits From The Box #128 - Nottingham Or Bust

Spending the weekend in Nottingham, so have written this in advance. So regardless of whether I have a good or bad time, I have these bands to take solace/rejoice in (I've put 8 through here, because I'll probably need the company on the train back, broken and ruing the start to another drudge of a week tomorrow).

First up let's listen to some Prism Tats. The voice of South African via LA garage hound Garett van der Spek, Prism Tats has crafted a debut album that is jam-packed full of rollicking, clattering psych’n’roll. He embodies the outsider assimilating the only way he knows how – through the sparse poignancy of 'Death Or Fame', the roiling roll of 'Pacifist Masochist', the garage blues blast of 'Weird Guilt' and the manic heave of 'Creep Out Freak Out'. Swinging from the White Stripes to Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, there is space for soul too on the likes of instrumental 'Make The Most Of The Weekend' and the emotive 'Midnight Mountain.'

Don't expect to be able to pin down Red Mass - the Montreal collective is a nebulous creative concern, anchored by the nucleus of Roy "Choyce" Vucino (himself connected to SM faves PyPy). EP Rouge N.2 is a 12" feral Francophone freak blast. Particular excellent is the Gallic sneer on 'Noir de Blanc', the gritty bowel growl amid urban clatter and decay of 'Confession d'un Chacal', and the destructive white heat of 'Infidele'. Red Mass is a masticated punk beast, therefore not to be messed with.

A nice throughline here! From Red Mass we head to Mass Lines who hail from England, and in their EP Personality Cult they have served up a heady dose of in-your-face punk. Like Pissed Jeans? Try 'Charm Offensive'. Miss Eddy Current Suppression Ring? Give 'Box' a whirl. Love your Hives a little bloodied and roughed up by Every Time I Die? Try 'Lapsed Catholics'. It's a muscular firebomb of an EP, this one - quite impressed.

Now to Auckland and The Raw Nerves. The four-piece released an album last year called More Nerves, and it has only come out on vinyl last month. They revel in Dirtbombs-era garage rock, rough and ready rock that is blown out, tongue-in-cheek, blues-ridden and coated in sawdust and spit. Then they can craft a rollicking country jam like 'Oh Girl'. Yep, they are a talented bunch of mad reprobates. You can listen to and grab the album here - listen to 'Oh Girl' below.

The Burning Roaches are a dirty grungy Melbourne 3-piece who seem to straddle the 90s scuzz aesthetic with its 21st century incarnation, most notably Violent Soho. It isn't full grunge though - the guitar on 'Feeling Real Good' refuses to go full distortion, which lends a weird sense of intimacy to the proceedings that makes the song go a lot further than you think it should. The drumming on 'My Only Prize' shows some rough ingenuity; 'Bad Things' take Black Keys and holds them over the hot coals. 'Shivering On Fire' is the track that shows the band are still finding their way - it's out of sorts, a little all over the place, unpredictable with flickering echoes of TV On The Radio with the melody, and therefore much more interesting as a result. You can see The Burning Roaches coalescing into something that unites all four of these songs into a cohesive, mighty whole

Back to Montreal. I had written a singular post about Solids but forgot to post it (that is fairly common around here) and seeing as I have been thrashing Else this past fortnight (and can guarantee I will be listening to this as I wander around Nottingham) it might be worth slipping in here. The duo (although I am led to believe they have expanded to a trio) have clearly benefited from playing 200+ shows since their 2014 debut Blame Confusion - the tracks here are bruising, whether they are arcing a propane torch to the face ('Blank Stare') or inexorably powering through the pain barrier, over the horizon and out of sight ('Wait It Out'). They have supported Pup, Nothing and Pity Sex in the past 18 months. They are ready to usurp these and take centre stage. Which they are - they are relentless touring over the next few months, playing alongside ex-Ovlov Stove and Metz, and play in London at The Old Blue Last with Birdskulls on 6th of June. Fuck yes!

Totally are a pretty brand spanking new band in London, featuring Susan Milanovic (Feathers, Pete Astor band) on drums. They played a show at The Victoria on Saturday with Dignan Porch and released a demo CD, which the below two tracks are on. There are some wonderful melancholic melodies here, especially on 'Moonlit Memory', while the songs have a peculiar reined in quality to them, like they are deliberately holding themselves back, not showing their hand too early, that is also enticing. They are playing their next show in May - best keep an eye out.

And finally we have Journalism, a Brooklyn four-piece who have just released new album Faces. The album sets out to document the difficulties and grind of playing in a band vying for gigs and recognition in one of the most musically overpopulated regions in the world, tied to songs that rip, roar and Krautrock their way through the ether.  When frontman Kegan Zema sings "Playing rock'n'roll, no one hears the words" you feel the anguish and frustrations, but also the necessity of plugging along anyway. And Faces is a pretty good indicator that they won't be "plugging away" for long.



Happy Sunday Everyone!

Hits From The Box #127 - Riding The MRI

Spent some of the day hanging around in a hospital waiting room, and twenty minutes in a thumping, shuddering tube. I got to play a CD in there - lucky me - and seeing as I don't own many CDs, I quickly burnt my own of stuff I've been listening to and wanting to listen to for Sonic Masala. Essentially "reviewing" music while having an MRI. Yeah, I'm pretty weird - especially seeing that a couple songs weren't good, but I couldn't shut them off, so had to listen to four minutes of bile in a claustrophobic tub. Fun times. Anyway, here are six acts that made things a little easier...

Now I know that most bands that grace a Hits From The Box post, they are either just breaking forth, have a small (and often rabidly devoted) fanbase, or have a release that has flown under the radar. The World Is A Beautiful Place And I Am No Longer Afraid To Die doesn't really fit into these three categories. In fact, I am the one that seems to have hidden under a rock - and willingly so. For some reason I shirked from listening to the Connecticut collective because of their name - I immediately thought they were likely to disappoint, being an overly pompous post-rock replica or a overly earnest post-hardcore chimera. Based on Long Live Happy Birthday, their latest EP and my first dip in TWIABPAIANLATD waters, their cantankerous grandiosity is pretty powerful, especially the constant build up on 'Katamari Duquette' - I felt like I was listening to a Slint meets Silver Mt Zion meets Built To Spill mash. I have heard that they have different sounds than this - an every-changing lineup which can flare out to twelve people can have that effect - but I absolutely love this 7" - you can pick it up here.

Chicago trio Impulsive Hearts have slowly built up their revivalist Vivian Girls in the Midwest sound the past year and a bit, and now the proof is in the pudding in their new album, Sorry In The Summer. It opens up with a plaintive swooner in 'I Wanna Be Gone' which builds into a sonorous explosion, ends with Broken Social Scene-esque groover 'Ykily', and touches many other colourful areas in between. The passion that bubbles up in every song here packs a quiet punch. It's just been released through London label Beautiful Strange - let's hope we see them over this way soon.

Heading over to Perth in Australia now, and we have 'Coyote', the new single from rollicking rockers Odlaw. It's a straight-up balltearer, and like it's namesake has a haunting howl and a hunted desperation throughout. It is a taste of what their forthcoming album Regret City will sound like - and it sounds like Odlaw is ready to rip off heads.

To a very new band outta Brisbane now. Cold Cuts have been around only a few months it seems, but their first two offerings really pack a punch. 'Crystal' has a rough growl to it, a bit of a motorik crawl, while 'Night Works' digs deeper and faster, shirking the post to take on a murky punk stance. Rough and ready power station, Cold Cuts are just warming up.

You might remember all the way back in 2012 that I was into the eponymous EP from Melbourne psych punks Sandcastle. I tried at one stage to try to get them to come up to Brisbane for a show, alongside another band called Pageants (and their only album Dark Before Blonde Dawn is still one of the greatest Aussie records never heard). Well one of the Sandcastle boys has upped sticks and moved to Montreal, transforming into Nothinge in the process. Real Boy is his latest album. With his black sack covering his head and with song titles like 'Kill Kill Kill Kill' and 'Die In A Daydream', you could be expected to be hit with harsh cyber punk, or electronic noise. No siree - these are wonky, weird electronic pop skewers, filled with sugar and spice and all things exotic. Other titles include 'Guyliner' and 'Professor Bum's Recapitulation'. He supported Pop. 1280 last month, and has announced a new album, Play Dead, that is in the works too. The boy is busy.

And finally we have Retro Burn, a collaboration between two Minneapolis sound artists that looks to take sampling into a vaporwave netherworld. Their album Follow The Light, The Light Is Your Guide is an existentialist cloudscape, an atmospheric suite of compositions that soars throughout the cosmos, the myriad sights met with innocence, confidence and awe. A extremely chilled sci-fi score for a film that doesn't exist except in your head - this is how I want my Sundays to end...


Happy Sunday everyone!

Hits From The Box #126 - Wild Women

As you may have noticed, there has been a dearth of posts on the blog over the past two weeks. I have been able to get a couple past the bugs of Blogspot, but the majority disappeared or got "frozen" in the blogosphere. Therefore this extended Hits From The Box, which was meant for International Women's Week, got stuck in the mix. Yet we should be celebrating everyone all of the time, right? So here are some female-centric acts that have heated up the airwaves in 2016...

I want to kick off with my favourite of these ten, all great, releases. BREI is the debut release from Dresden trio Brie, a stilted, lurking post-punk pustule, able to create a palpable spark of jaw-clenching tension with so little - infusing space with buzz, and brief wedges of bite - a no-fi Sonic Youth, Electrelane or Raincoats at their most elegantly wasted. It's hard to explain how vitally electrifying this releases is without diving headlong into its languid, lurid waters - I suggest you do so post haste, it's great, once you're in.

Another excellent release is the self-titled LP from Berlin's I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream. Besides naming themselves after the Harlan Ellison sci-fi novel (and the great 90s Sierra-esque video game), the quartet have cornered a sound that takes the percolating reverb-in-velvet sonics of The Cure, the whispered musings of Cocteau Twins, the spiked laconics of Thurston Moore, and the sonorous aesthetics that many late 90s/early 00s Aussie indie rock fans can fall in love with and to (listen to the close-out of 'Shadow' and tell me you don't hear Gaslight Radio/Gersey in there). 'Classic Rock Song' is a mix of all these things with some added Dunedin wist spun in. Seriously, this is a great little release, get all over this ASAP.

Fire Talk are responsibly for putting out No Sense, the 7" from NYC's Scully. It's the kind of pepped up throwback garage pop with Shangri-La shadings that has coloured the aural airwaves with impunity over the past decade, with 'Wave' a melodic chimera, playing both as a Burger blast and a psyched out seduction. With a show with current SM faves Bambara next month and named after the greatest FBI agent in television history (in my humble, red-cheeked opinion), Scully promise to be big.

Another 7" ready to be launched, this time from Melbourne miscreants Cable Ties (love this name, guys). They play with the Sharpies branded-iron-and-VB-grenades blunted intensity, a vocal squall that spits from the past (and more inverted vitriol than the likes of The Donnas could ever muster) and broken guitar solos that bleed fury. They just got covered by one of my favourite music outlets, Raven Sings The Blues, so it won't be long before these bad boys are sold out - get on board and get your arms up - it promises to be all out war.

Los Angeles trio L.A. Witch are already working people up into a lather, even before their debut 7" Drive Your Car hit last month. Playing Burger Records lineups and on the Levitation festival, sharing the stage with The Kills... It helps that their proto-punk grind is truly powerful, the sneers real, the garage rock smeared with reverbed grit and grime. It won't be long before you feel yourself bewitched by this band's barbed charms.

Back to Melbourne now and a decidedly shabbier outfit in Lazertits. Their latest EP Aubergine Dreams is a teetering balance of lo-fi garage punk, simple pretty-yet-plaintive vocals that are decidedly ocker and lyrics that bristle with Aussie euphemisms and barbed brio ('Ladies') and are more than happy tipping their hats to their idols ('Shonen Knife'). It's all silly stuff, sounding sweet while holding an abrasive jeer, ready to gleefully off the rails at any moment.

London's Secret Tongues have just been joined by a new member, Sarah Collins, and 'The Winter Curse' is the first taste of this new direction. There is a hint of autumnal Sonic Youth in the terse bassline that lurks in the shadows here. The distorted vocals towards the end, as the guitar gains some grit and bite, reminds me of Not From There-era Heinz Riegler also. There is a lot to like here - I am expecting this to be the first strike of a new level of creativity from this growing outfit.

Another Brit band in Vukovar here. I have to admit - this band has no female members as far as I know - but the female backing vocals that infiltrate 'The Blood Garden', the precursor to their upcoming second album, are so ebullient that they take these guys to another level altogether. The warm buoyancy accompanies the trio from the calm warm glow to the cathartic rollicking outro, almost like a more calibrated, more insular but no less anthemic Joy Formidable here.

Washington four-piece Big Hush have already sold out their tape Who's Smoking Your Spirit? (out through DZ Tapes) which is a real shame as its scuffed and scaly rock is both of the moment and insidious in its immediacy. Fast-paced shoegaze-laced feral fuzz like this never goes out of style here, but the thumping drums halfway through 'Cold Shoulder' before the acrid guitar break towards the end is something else. They are playing a show with Wildhoney and Expert Alterations at the end of the month - a great way for them to mingle with other excellent likeminded individuals and keep the scabrous fun going. Simply cannot wait to hear more from these guys.

Rounding out this mammoth outing is Spanish outfit Juvenilia, a Spanish quintet that like Aliment or Beach Beach before them love fast-paced garage pop and punk, infused with throwback psyche, Flying Nun nous and their own spices. If you can't hear the Feelies in 'Solaris', for example, you must be deaf - but if you don't throw yourself to it with raw abandon and joy, you must be dead. A brilliant 7" from a brilliant band.



Happy International Women's Day, everyone!

Hits From The Box #125 - Chimped Out

Thank God most of this post was already written before today - I have very little capacity to do anything other than lie around in stasis. I saw Part Chimp last night - and as always they were BRUTAL. Incredibly excellent - still one of my favourite bands - and that rumoured album that they spoke of back in December 2014 is still whispered to be on its way. We can only hope. In the meantime, I need an antidote for the noise blues, so this week I have chosen some acts that might be my aural upper.

LA duo Golden Daze bring a dreamy, sun-spattered psychedelia to their pastoral nostalgia on their eponymous record, an album that is euphoric, entrenched in genre tropes and trappings, yet somehow avoiding the predictability that other bands fall into when embracing the past. LA has all the nostalgic trappings of the Laurel Canyon freak folk flag flyers, but from the BJM drawl of 'Low', the UMO sparkle and fade of 'Never Comin' Back' and the overarching liquidity on interludes like 'Attic' that Amen Dunes adopted for their excellent Love record, Golden Haze is a warm time-capsule without the esoteric, egotistical trappings. Drop in and enjoy.

Summer Twins are also over on the West Coast, but eschew the glittering facade of LA for the inland empire of Riverside. Whether or not this decision and lifestyle echoes throughout their new LP Limbo, but they have crafted a garage pop oasis. Casting aside the garage rock aesthetic that drew them comparisons to Vivian Girls and had Burger Records a-knockin' a few years ago, the new album displays a concerted effort to embrace fidelity and production, expanding their compositions while remaining true to their love of the innate simplicity of guitar pop of the 50s and 60s. This is evident in the wailing fun of 'Demons' and 'Stop & Go'. But then it's tracks like opening noir gambit 'Blinds' and 'Helpless' that truly shine.

I have spoken about Minnesota quartet Brilliant Beast in the past, and they have just returned with new album Dissolve. They are still indebted to the shoegaze wash, but the warmth and melody of guitar pop bubbles effervescently underneath. That doesn't mean they have lost their edge - tracks like the slow-grind 'Adult Sun' to the caterwauling monotone of 'Stockholm 10' maintain the intensity. My favourite track though is closer 'Do You Think You Could Love Me Forever' - the kind of desolate countrified gothic noir that Brisbane band Keep On Dancins specialise in, with added wall of noise. Great stuff.

If you are into your rock getting all frenetic and progtastic, a la Mars Volta (with a bit of muscularity a la And So I Watched You From Afar), Brighton's Poly-Math's new record Melencolia is your drug of choice. Just listen to 'Erekot' - flirting heavily with prog-staples, kicking into some heavy rhythms in the middle, before finding the repetitive thread to ramp up in the home stretch. It's a harsh, meticulous, hypnotic cacophony.

I don't have much on Mateo Katsu as an artist - but 'Don't Forget' has been stuck in my mind like a burr all week. We head back to LA, and Katsu is a familiar head around there, tipping his hand in a bunch of acts. This track is a play at a chugging rock number that he calls an "dumb little rock song with an actual Hammond organ". Don't forget to forget/If you remember everything, you'll just get upset." Straight up knowledge, right there.

A rollicking mainstay on the Sydney rock scene, The Holy Soul is a great place to end off today. Their new album Fortean Times (produced by The Drones' Gareth Lilliard) swings from arms-slung-over-shoulders pub rock ('Systems & Machines') to party punk rock'n'roll of the Swami/Burger persuasion ('Alone Party') to Pere Ubu guitar wail mayhem ('There's A Hair On The Soap'). The warped Hawkwind psych permeating 'History Pt II' meanwhile is a lot of mind-melting fun.

Happy Sunday everyone!

Hits From The Box #124 - Midlands Running

It's good to get outta town for a while. The past week I have been cooped up at home, watching Wallander and The League episodes and Timothy Olyphant and Gaspar Noe films (gotta love disparate viewing), listening to a lot of records, playing Papers, Please on my new phone, reading The Walking Dead again. I'm doing this because - you guessed it - I am broke, like the rest of you. So this weekend I ducked into the Midlands. It's been nice, clean(ish - beer, curry, steaks bought, cracked, cooked and consumed) living. And I finished it with a half-marathon. I didn't run of course - I just watched. In Sleaford of all places. Why not? You only live once. Safely home now, and prepping for heading back to work, what's a guy to do? Launch into another Hits From The Box, that's what.

I think a great place to start is with Bambara, a Brooklyn band whose Ben Greenberg (The Men, Dream Police)-produced record Swarm is out next month. From the first two songs to be heard off it (listen below), it promises to be dark sworl of monochrome reverb, eviscerated psyches, cavernous Morricone swathes, Birthday Party nihilism and implosive squalls. I haven't heard much about this band before, but these two tracks alone have me mighty excited for Swarm to spread across this fetid land. It comes out on Nighthawk Records, pre-order it here.

Leeds brooding psychniks Chaika played with The Telescopes in Leeds on Friday (sorry about the late notice - only found out about it myself today) - and after listening to this two track release such a pairing makes a hell of a lot of sense. Pregnant with feverish paranoia, the swirling menace of 'The Mirror' and 'Untied' are two tracks that linger in the membrane well after the cacophony dies away. Noir psych? Yes please.

Deleter love their shades of purple.  They also love their angular, shapeshifting post-punk. From the spiked venom of 'Dysphoria (Dictionary Definition)', the opening track to their album Oblique Seasons, to the Wire-meets-Television-meets-latter Die! Die! Die of 'Seclusion', the noir Waits-esque bulk of 'A Ridiculous Man' and the 'Echo Beach' echo on 'Militant Idiot', there is a lot to sink your teeth into - and a lot to disappear in. Favourite cuts is the opening track, (surprisingly for me at least) the anthemic punk stylings of the title track, and the RFTC blast of 'Lab Rats Revolt'. See, told you it was a shapeshifter of a record...You can grab Oblique Seasons on multi-coloured vinyl here.

Lafayette outfit Brass Bed bring out their new album In The Yellow Leaf in April, and 'I Am Just A Whisper' has a heady pace about it that I really love. It has something of the faster-paced early Antics Interpol about it (which I maintain is a very good thing), alongside an Akron/Family weird-worldliness and a rippling motorik intensity throughout, it is an excellent start. I have listened to this song over and over the past week. It's a good'un.

We can hop over to New Orleans now and to Val Hollie, a dude who loves his gifs (head to his FB page to see what I mean - picked up some goods there ma man) and has in 'Siberian Summer' ripped out a languorous psych drawl that will keep me high and dry forever. It bleeds out in relentless dronal waves, an inexorable sonorous delight that submerges ad infinitum. I would gladly hit this on repeat and forget about the world for a couple months/years. I'm a damn Val Hollie addict now.

And finally to disappear down the rabbit hole with Stockholm freestyle spazz-jazz killers Eye Make The Horizon. The Walls Do The Talking is a three-song sacrificial offering to the improv gods, what the trio like to call "horizontal free rock". The saxophone is bloodshot eyes and sweatstains feverish, the drums a trashcan symphony that never loses sight of the middle distance, while the guitar roils and rolls almost in another plane, barely anchored to the noise being propagated here. It's mayhem; it's


Happy Sunday everyone!

Hits From The Box #123 - Birthday Valentine

I cannot remember celebrating Valentine's Day in my life. I know that I have - but I cannot really remember what I did. My high school girlfriend I probably bought flowers and a teddy bear or some shit. My university relationship, probably dinner and a lot of booze. All other relationships haven't gone on long enough to reach this commercial dive of a day. And now I am engaged to a wonderful woman whose birthday is on Valentine's Day - which she hates because her friends never want to do anything because Valentines, and everywhere is expensive because Valentines. So, blanket ban on Valentines. Sometimes, things just pan out... Here are some bands that we both agree on this week - a much, MUCH harder proposition than it sounds - so happy birthday Valentine's...or not.

It might seem an incongruous choice to start a Valentine's post, and a girlfriend's birthday post, with a song called 'You're Not Gonna Love Me Anymore' - but stick with me. Beat Awfuls is a Kentucky-based band who seem loathe to craft anything that is plus 3 minutes long (only the last two tracks, 'Shitty City' and 'The One They Love', from their recently released record Nothing Happens, out now on Jurassic Pop, steps over this invisible limit). Their brand of jangly, distant lo-fi pop is incredibly potent, a combination of ramshackle rambunctiousness infused with a loquacious charm. But it's the wistful beauty of 'You're Not Gonna Love Me Anymore' slays me. Such a great song, album, band.

Blue Movies is a slowly percolating ambient somnambulist dreamscape conjured by out of East London. Not really the kind of music you associate with this self-perpetuation touchstone of the London zeitgeist (AKA hipster haven). Kuroi Karasu is a serene sojourn through the gloaming, clear star-flecked skies above, campfires in the wilderness with sparks living trails across the retina, sunrise/sunset over environments that can never be tamed, the human condition internalized then spat out, a contemplation of all this infinitesimal and infinite.

Here is a song that has blown me away on a couple levels. First of all, these guys are all school aged. Secondly, they are from Toowoomba - a Queensland, Australia town that has had a few bands break out of its volcanic bowl, but not many. And thirdly, Tinted Sun's 'Only One' is an incredibly mature, ultimately ebullient track that screams mid 2000s indie rock. The kind of rousing, gently coalescing track that is heartfelt, overcoming angst with a wash of cacophonous euphoria. In short, very impressive - let's see where these kids take this.

Down and across the Great Dividing Range into Brisbane to say Cheers G'Day, which is also the name of this new dreampop outfit. 'Dream Girl' is a pretty apt title - it floats along and away with hardly any weight to it at all - making some of The Ocean Party's more ruminative numbers feel positively bulked up. Mixing tremolo with yacht rock, louche pop and a delicate chime, the song seems like a precursor to further sun-drenched dreamscapes.

Still in Australia, we have a new label in the form of Our Golden Friend. The first release is a 7" from 808s & Greatest Hits, a pseudonym for Skube Burnell. It's wonky, surreal pop, the kind of lounged easy listening you would hear when submerged under the ocean, approaching a case of the bends, life flashing before the eyes, the pain of bursting lungs superseded by ethereal glimpses of shimmering mermaids, and velvet-curtained gin clubs frequented by comatose bachelors and dapper dwarves. OK so this isn't about a on-death's-door purgatory in Twin Peaks territory, just some of the images I think of when I hear it. Don't trust me - just dive in, the water's fine.

All small acts, but now we head to Indianapolis for a bigger concern. Lily & Madeleine are a sisterly duo who are releasing Keep It Together later this month. Their film clips for 'For The Weak' and 'Hotel Pool' are infatuated with the wash of water superimposed over the girls - again, the music flows over your, disappearing inside their sonorous world. It's the kind of psych-tinged alt folk territory that bands like The Besnard Lakes or The Cave Singers inhabit (both of which also have new albums on the way) - albeit more lilting and upbeat. Looking forward to seeing how this album pans out.

Alison always gets angry when she thinks I think she only likes light whimsical stuff. Now I am not saying that anything we have listened to already this morning is that, but there is a propensity for me to find things that aren't guitar-heavy when sitting down on a Sunday morning with her. Plus she is an 80s fanatic - our joined fanaticism of Roxy Music speaks volumes. But there are notable exceptions - we have been digging The War On Drugs, The Go, Courtney Barnett and Triptides in the past months, and Mikal Cronin of late. Worn-Tin, the thinly-veiled moniker for slacker extraordinaire Warner Hiatt, has taken over this mantle. Thanatophobia is an album filled with ragged charm, a rusted garage recording that touches on everything from psych-pop rock, pastoral rock breakdowns, haunted ballads, honky-tonk reveries and Midwest instrumental meanderings. All on his own, Worn-Tin has crafted a rough yet sparkling gem to be bloody proud of.

Let's finish with The Multiple Cat, a musical outlet for Daytrotter co-founder Patrick Stolley. 'Maps' is a solid laidback sun-drunk blast, but I have chosen to finish off on this track because of the Outrun film clip. Alison and I spent some of the day in a bar in Peckham feeding quarters into arcade games of Asteroids, Sega Rally, Pac Man and Street Fighter 2 (mostly Street Fighter 2) - yet I would have killed to have played this. Well played, Multiple Cat - well played.

Happy Sunday Valentine's everyone!