We are now accepting preorders for the brilliant new ‘Correspondence Course’ EP (matinée 071) from Glasgow, Scotland’s The Hermit Crabs! Their third release for Matinée following the well received ‘Feel Good Factor’ EP (matinée 063) in 2006 and last year’s ‘Saw You Dancing’ album (matcd046), the EP features four fantastic new songs: 1. About You Before; 2. Correspondence Course; 3. Turn The Clock Back; 4. I Don’t Know How. They’re all winners so we had a tough time deciding which to use as a preview track. ‘I Don’t Know How’ is the current pick on the Matinée sounds page, while we have ‘About You Before’ playing on the Matinée MySpace. Meanwhile the band has ‘Correspondence Course’ featured on their website and MySpace. The EP is scheduled for release on December 2nd, but we are taking advance orders RIGHT NOW exclusively on the Matinée website and will have copies ready to ship by the 20th of this month which is just a few days away!

In other new release news, the third album ‘Speak Up’ (matcd051) from The Guild League is available now exclusively from the Matinée website and will be in shops from December 2nd as well. The album features 10 new Guild League classics including: 1. Mouse vs. Mountain; 2. If Not Now…; 3. Dead Hour; 4. Suit Fits; 5. The Idea; 6. Where’s The Colour?; 7. Brains; 8. Limited Express; 9. 17 Summer; 10. Incandescent. We are showcasing four album tracks on the Matinée catalog page and rotating songs on the sounds page and on MySpace. You can also watch great video clips for ‘Mouse vs. Mountain’ and ‘Suit Fits’ on the band MySpace. Pick up a copy today!

Finally, some upcoming live dates for your calendar if you happen to be in the right place or fancy some last minute international travel:

14 November: The Lucksmiths at Karova Lounge, Ballarat, Australia
15 November: The Lucksmiths at Hopetoun Hotel, Sydney, Australia
15 November: Would-Be-Goods at the Bull & Gate, London, England
16 November: The Lucksmiths at Hopetoun Hotel, Sydney, Australia
16 November: Gregory Webster at Lee Rosy’s Tea Shop, Nottingham, England
22 November: The Lucksmiths at Tilley’s, Canberra, Australia
13 December: The Electric Pop Group at On Our Honeymoon, Gothenburg, Sweden

Please see the respective band sites for more details.

Another Tuesday, another new release! We really are spoiling you. This week it’s the debut album ‘Doubleplusgood’ from Scottish favorites Bubblegum Lemonade and here are the enticing details:

matcd048
BUBBLEGUM LEMONADE – DOUBLEPLUSGOOD

Tracklisting:
1. A Billion Heartbeats
2. Beautiful Friends
3. I’ll Never Be Yours
4. Tired Of Sleeping
5. Last Time I Saw Andrew
6. Susan’s In The Sky
7. Penny Fountain
8. My Dreams Of You
9. Lost Summer Days
10. Here They Come
11. Tyler
12. Last Weekend

Fantastic debut album from Scottish pop favorites Bubblegum Lemonade! Following smash singles ‘Ten Years Younger’ (matinée 064) and ‘Susan’s In The Sky’ (matinée 069) earlier this year, the band delivers its all-important debut album just in time for holiday shopping and it’s a grand one of course!

‘A Billion Heartbeats’ kicks the album off with a 150 bpm adrenalin rush—if the Jesus and Mary Chain had studied anthropology they may have written something like this. Meanwhile, ‘Beautiful Friends’ is a paper thin celebration of surface beauty sort of like The Byrds’ ‘Lady Friend’ re-written by the Valentines, and ‘I’ll Never Be Yours’ is big chorus pop featuring Sandra from fellow Glasgow pop outfit Strawberry Whiplash on backing vocals. Think The Only Ones meets The Primitives with the recommended daily dosage of tambourines and you’re nearly there.

‘Tired Of Sleeping’ is a jangledelic ode to sleeping with the radio on, complete with multi-tracked 12-string Rickenbacker action straight from the early days of Creation or Cherry Red. ‘Last Time I Saw Andrew’ moves us into the ‘90’s with a lazy, looping, slow burning nostalgia somewhat like a cross between Slowdive and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. It’s dream pop-tastic. ‘Susan’s In The Sky’ is the title track from Bubblegum Lemonade’s second single. An everyday tale of an air hostess and her slacker boyfriend caught up in a Romeo and Juliet type scenario, it’s a sunshine wall of pop with Rickenbacker guitars, tambourines and nice organ bits. A classic!

‘Penny Fountain’ opens side two of the album with some Paisley Underground inspired bittersweet guitar pop. It’s a swinging mini epic that should have been another single. ‘My Dreams Of You’ contains Rickenbacker riffs, harmony vocals and portamento keyboards. Catchier than Byrd flu, it’s west coast indie pop art and the perfect prelude to the sixties come down sunshine guitar pop with guitar freak out ending that follows in ‘Lost Summer Days’.

Subliminally suggested by Vance Packard, ‘Here They Come’ masks criticism of the morally corrupt elements of the advertising industry behind jangling guitars and rich harmonies, while ‘Tyler’ is Rickenbacker pop about a cat. You don’t get many pop songs about cats these days, do you? Finally, ‘Last Weekend’ is some eighties sounding, major seventh acoustic strumming with strings and tambourine about the breakup of a long distance relationship. The band was going for Felt meets The Field Mice but ended up with Prefab Sprout instead. Ha!

With an educated nod to its influences, remarkably catchy songs, and stunning pop melodies, Bubblegum Lemonade remind us that old school indie is always in style. ‘Doubleplusgood’ is a superb example of the vibrant new music coming out of Glasgow and another modern classic from Matinée!

For band photos, soundclips, and more information please see the catalog and artist pages, or visit the Matinée and Bubblegum Lemonade pages on Myspace.

You can listen to four songs on the Matinée sounds page, or tracks from the album rotating weekly on MySpace, or 30-second samples of all the songs on iTunes. As always, we have a copy reserved just for you on the Matinée order page or in your favorite record shop today. An essential purchase, don’t you think?

Historic day here in the States you know. Oh, there’s a small matter of an election of course but the big news is today also marks the official release of the new album ‘First Frost’ from Australian favorites The Lucksmiths! Here’s all you need to know to support your favorite (pop) candidates:

matcd049
THE LUCKSMITHS – FIRST FROST

Tracklisting:
1. The Town and the Hills
2. Good Light
3. A Sobering Thought (Just When One Was Needed)
4. California in Popular Song
5. South-East Coastal Rendezvous
6. The National Mitten Registry
7. Day Three of Five
8. Never and Always
9. Lament of the Chiming Wedgebill
10. How We Met
11. Song of the Undersea
12. Up With the Sun
13. Pines
14. Who Turned On the Lights?

Over the course of 15 years and almost as many albums and international tours, Australian popstars The Lucksmiths have penned some of the most adored songs this side of the pop underground and built up a massive international fanbase in the process.

Most recent studio album ‘Warmer Corners’ received considerable praise, with Pitchfork calling it “idiosyncratic but accessible, literate but unpretentious, gentle but not weak, sincere not so much in presentation as in presence”. Two singles lifted from the album — “A Hiccup in Your Happiness” and “The Chapter in Your Life Entitled San Francisco” — both received heavy rotation across the globe. The latter also found its way onto Qantas Airlines in-flight playlist in 2006 — an achievement not celebrated lightly by a band with an enduring penchant for the somewhat ridiculous and irrelevant.

More recently, 2007 saw the release of a b-sides, rarities, and live compilation entitled ‘Spring a Leak’ with an accompanying set of US tour dates. At 45 songs in length, this exhaustive double-CD was well received and hearty enough to sate even the most impoverished Lucksmiths fan whilst awaiting a new batch of songs. In reviewing the album, Time Out Chicago declared “If a band can be this good on its cast-offs, imagine what the albums are like”.

A trip to Tasmania has yielded ‘First Frost’—the finest and most dynamic Lucksmiths album to date. Camped out in the wilderness, the band was free to explore and expand the musical palette, and with all four members contributing songs, the end result is a 14-song masterpiece bound to surprise anyone who thought they had The Lucksmiths pegged as sounding too much like The Lucksmiths.

On the album, the bands’ trademark lyrical hooks shine warmer than ever. Opening cut “The Town and the Hills” sets out some of the album’s central themes, examining the distance (geographical and metaphorical) between city and country. Meanwhile, “California in Popular Song” is a sweet slice of sun-kissed pastoral pop that combines sweeping strings, a throaty low-down guitar, some gentle fingerpicking and Tali White’s pensive vocal to become your new favorite Lucksmiths song.

Recent live hits, the jangly “Good Light” and the surprisingly glam-rockin’ “A Sobering Thought (Just When One Was Needed)” —the latter concerning a late-night drunken escapade at a public swimming pool ¬—both receive a fine rendering on ‘First Frost’. Elsewhere on the album, The Lucksmiths’ familiar strum is traded in for brief dalliances with a disorderly fuzz pedal, a choir of misplaced mittens, and a bird that just wants to know why you got drunk. Intrigued?

For band photos, soundclips, and more information please see the catalog and artist pages, or visit the Matinée and Lucksmiths pages on Myspace.

You can listen to four songs on the Matinée sounds page, or tracks from the album rotating weekly on MySpace, or 30-second samples of all the songs on iTunes. Of course, we have a copy reserved just for you over on the Matinée order page or in your favorite record shop today. You know you need this one…

Four new releases = big shakeup on the Matinée Hit Parade. Here are the top sellers for October:

10. Strawberry Whiplash – Who’s In Your Dreams CDEP
9. Bubblegum Lemonade – Ten Years Younger CDEP
8. The Lucksmiths – Spring A Leak 2xCD
7. Northern Portrait – The Fallen Aristocracy CDEP
6. Bubblegum Lemonade – Susan’s In The Sky CDEP
5. Northern Portrait – Napoleon Sweetheart CDEP
4. Bubblegum Lemonade – Doubleplusgood CD
3. Would-Be-Goods – Eventyr CD
2. The Guild League – Speak Up CD
1. The Lucksmiths – First Frost CD