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:
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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