Oooh…April already? More top news this month as we unveil a brand new release from Tender Trap; gush about a new Lucksmiths EP; divulge information on forthcoming releases from Harper Lee, Lovejoy and Brighter; post exclusive new soundclips; announce upcoming live dates for Matinée artists; and more!
Leading off with Tender Trap, we can now reveal complete release details of the new album ‘6 Billion People’ (matcd040)! Twenty years on from the NME’s legendary C86 cassette, with anniversary shows featuring key artists planned at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts and a Bob Stanley-produced documentary in the works, Tender Trap’s new album is striking proof that some of the original protagonists of that movement are still making intelligent and engaging pop music. As lead singer of the seminal Talulah Gosh, the proto-riot grrrl Heavenly and the classy pop act Marine Research, Amelia Fletcher was the voice and face that launched a thousand fanzines, an iconic presence whose influence can be traced in bands as diverse as Le Tigre and Belle and Sebastian. Together with her cohort in the latter two of those bands, Rob Pursey (guitar), and Marine Research drummer John Stanley aka DJ Downfall (bass), Tender Trap formed in 2001, releasing one album to date, the coolly electronic ‘Film Molecules’.
With the addition of the crisp drumming of The Magnetic Fields’ Claudia Gonson, ‘6 Billion People’ marks a move away from the pared-down approach of its predecessor towards a sound recalling the best of the band’s previous incarnations. This is immediately evident on the big chorused title track, Rob Pursey’s sub-sonic backing vocals uncannily reminiscent of erstwhile collaborator Calvin Johnson, while recent single ‘Talking Backwards’ (matinée 058) is a pop rush of shimmering guitars and mellifluous vocals and ‘I Would Die For You’ marries a chugging rhythm to an ethereal melody. The short-but-spiky ‘Applecore’ ups the sass quotient as Amelia demands answers from an indecisive lover to a series of oblique questions over a stop-start bassline, whereas the spacey-keyboard sounds of ‘Fahrenheit 451’, the heartfelt ‘(I Always Love You When I’m) Leaving You’ and the haunting album closer ‘Dead and Gone’ lend the album variety and depth. ‘6 Billion People’ is Tender Trap’s most fully realized work to date, a collection of sumptuous tunes and bold arrangements that makes a claim to be one of the best pop albums of the year.
Full tracklisting and soundclips are now posted on the catalog and sounds pages. Although the official release date is May 29 in the shops, you can pick up your copy RIGHT NOW via the Matinée mailorder for just $10. We have snazzy Tender Trap buttons and postcards too so what are you waiting for? For those of you in Europe, the CD is available from our good friends at Fortuna POP! so tell Sean we said hello!
To celebrate the arrival of the album, Tender Trap are making some rare live appearances next week in London featuring for the very first time a real live drummer (Claudia) in place of the faithful old CD player:
Thursday April 13th: How Does It Feel To Be Loved? at The Windmill, Blenheim Gardens, Brixton, with Fosca and Strange Idols. Doors open 7:30pm. Advance tickets are £5 from http://www.wegottickets.com/event/9462.
Saturday April 15th (afternoon): Fortuna POP! showcase at RoTa, Notting Hill Arts Club, 21 Notting Hill Gate, with Cannonball Jane and Simon Fanfarlo. Doors open 4pm and it’s free!
In addition, Amelia will be guest DJ on Friday April 7th at How Does It Feel To Be Loved? at the Canterbury Arms in Brixton. The club runs 9pm to 2am, and Amelia is doing a 90-minute girl-based set sometime between 10pm and midnight. Get your dancing shoes on! More details on this and the live shows at the Tender Trap website.
In other new release news, the magnificent ‘A Hiccup In Your Happiness’ EP (matinée 060) from The Lucksmiths is now available in all good record shops! The second single lifted from recent album ‘Warmer Corners’ (matcd039), coupled with three exclusive new tracks, validates yet again why The Lucksmiths are among the most popular indie bands of our time. Boasting strings, horns, some seriously funky guitar and a bassline possibly borrowed from Orange Juice, ‘A Hiccup In Your Happiness’ is a dancefloor sizzler that just had to be a single. We’re featuring the song on the sounds page now if you need to have a listen. Its magnificent b-sides are all set in actual places: ‘From Macaulay Station’ is an ode to one of the unlovelier stops on Melbourne’s rail network, ‘Rue Something’ a more-or-less factual account of an evening spent on tour in Paris, and ‘To Absent Votes’ a tale of election night in the Australian outback town of Lake Cargelligo. Combined with ‘A Hiccup In Your Happiness’ they create a brilliant EP designed to give ‘Warmer Corners’ another shot at the glory it deserves. The EP comes housed in one of our signature minijacket sleeves (matte coated…oh so nice!) with liner notes from comedian Daniel Kitson.
The EP is already generating some world-class press, with each of the new songs receiving mentions as the favorite. Among the early reviews, Pitchfork and Tasty laud ‘From Macaulay Station,’ while All Music Guide opts for ‘Rue Something’ and Erasing Clouds chooses ‘To Absent Votes.’ Our favorite changes daily so the jury is out until the next batch of reviews. You Ain’t No Picasso recently published a fine interview with Marty Donald too so check it out for even more Lucksmiths fix.
Finally, lucky readers in Australia (or anyone else with a penchant for last minute travel) can catch a trio of EP release shows coming up this weekend:
Friday April 7th: Karova Lounge, Ballarat, with Fred Astereo. Tickets $12 at the door.
Saturday April 8th: Northcote Social Club, Melbourne, with Fred Astereo. Tickets $15 in advance or $18 day of show from the venue.
Sunday April 9th: Northcote Social Club, Melbourne, with Mid State Orange (tickets as above).
 |
 |
 |
The recent ‘Sleepydust’ EP (matinée 053) from The Snowdrops, ‘Language Lessons’ EP (matinée 058) from Tender Trap, and ‘Movie Ending Romance’ EP (matinée 059) from Math and Physics Club continue to fly off the shelves and generate excellent press. Check the catalog pages for the latest reviews and get your copies now because they all contain exclusive tracks that you probably need to hear. These are part of a magnificent run of Matinée EPs that we trust one day will be looked upon as a classic moment in indie history. See the sounds page for further encouragement.
In the coming soon category we have a pair of EPs that will surely only add to this classic singles run:
The new EP from Harper Lee is entitled ‘He Holds A Flame’ (matinee 061) and is heading to the pressing plant imminently to make you smile sometime next month. The EP includes five tracks—two versions of the title track plus ‘I Could Be Wrong,’ ‘William Blake’ and ‘Come Rest Your Weary Head.’ Of course they are all brilliant but our pick this very moment is the Go-Betweensy acoustic pop of ‘I Could Be Wrong’ which has us singing out loud as we type this sentence. You’ll have to wait to hear that one but can preview the ace title track right now on the sounds page. Harper Lee are keen to play live dates around Europe to support the EP so if anyone is interested in bringing them to your home town please let us know! In an ideal world I would convince them to visit America as well so cross your fingers and buy lots of Harper Lee releases and we’ll see what we can do.
Something is apparently in the water in Brighton because in addition to new releases from The Snowdrops and Harper Lee, Lovejoy are set to return with a four track EP of their own! Entitled ‘England Made Me’ (matinée 062), the EP features new songs ‘Brightness Falls,’ ‘Are You Analogue or Digital?’ and ‘England Made Me’ plus a fourth track that is still under consideration. Lovejoy recently contributed songs to compilation albums released in Australia, Sweden and Ireland too so see the newly updated Lovejoy website for details. More details on this release next month but for now you can preview ‘Brightness Falls’—surely one their very best so far, no?—on the sounds page.
In other Harper Lee news, we are at long last reissuing the magnificent 2001 debut album ‘Go Back To Bed’ (matcd009) which has been sold out for several years. Featuring the debut single ‘Dry Land’ plus early classics ‘Bug,’ ‘Only Connect,’ and ‘Brooklyn Bridge,’ the album is a Matinée favorite that will once again grace a new release shelf near you so stop spending £30 for it on eBay!
Ditto the £50 or so you’ll need for a copy of the sole Brighter album ‘Laurel’ released on Sarah Records way back when because we’re reissuing those eight songs plus 12 other Brighter classics very soon on a new Brighter compilation ‘Out To Sea’ (matcd041). We’ll reveal complete release details next month, but you can listen to the brilliant unreleased song ‘Wallflower’ on the sounds page now to help you get excited for this splendid release.
Continuing now with our back catalog spotlight feature, this month we showcase classic releases from The Windmills, The Guild League and The Snowdrops! Each release is specially priced for the next month if you care to add to your Matinée collection. Further encouragement follows:
The back catalog spotlight album is the sophomore full length ‘Sunlight’ (matcd014) from The Windmills! Released in October 2001, the album built upon the skilled songwriting, sincere vocals and impressive melodies of previous Windmills releases with a new air of fervor and conviction. Among its ten tracks are fan favorites ‘Drug Autumn’, ‘When It Was Winter’, ‘Unkiss’ and our personal pick ‘Cloud Five.’ You can preview each of these songs on the sounds page if you like. The album did very well in the music press, with Careless Talk Costs Lives describing it as “some of the finest, most upliftingly down-beat Pop since East Village ripped hearts apart with their awesome beat noise back in the late ’80s;” IndiePages writing “with just the right mix of jangly pop and melancholy, this is one of those classic bands that can’t really do much wrong” and PopMatters calling it “a real corker of an album.” Check out full reviews and soundclips on the catalog page. As we always say, The Windmills rule and if you’ve not already discovered their brilliance this is a fine place to start.
The July 2002 ‘Jet-Set Go!’ EP (matinée 039) from The Guild League is our back catalog CD single of the month. While the band has boasted a revolving lineup on its three releases, the ‘League was launched as an Australian coterie featuring Lucksmiths vocalist and percussionist Tali White, fellow Candle Records artist Richard Easton, and members of Sodastream and Art of Fighting, and its debut single was a wonderful racket with guitars and drums and handclaps that you couldn’t get out of your head. The three-song EP also featured acoustic tracks ‘A Faraway Place’ and ‘Cornflakes’ which showcased Tali’s signature voice and presaged some of the magnificent softer moments on subsequent releases ‘Private Transport’ (matcd023) and ‘Inner North’ (matcd034). The Guild League were instant press darlings, with Mundane Sounds awarding the EP “single of the week,” Tangents calling the EP “a real gem that has been stuck on repeat all morning,” and Tasty writing “a perfect debut single—hug it hard.” See the catalog page for reviews and soundclips. You probably need this too.
Our back catalog 7″ of the month is the ‘Mad World’ 45 (matinée 029) from The Snowdrops! Serious students of the label know this was a release that nearly didn’t happen due to a frustrating licensing holdup but in the end the publishing gods smiled on us and the single saw its release nearly two years later in May 2003. The debut single from an indie supergroup featuring Keith Girdler (Blueboy, Beaumont, Lovejoy), Pam Berry (The Pines, Castaway Stones, Glo Worm, Shapiros, Black Tambourine, etc.) and Dick Preece (Lovejoy, Beaumont, Spinning Wheels), the A-side is a cover of the Tears For Fears hit which later topped the UK singles chart as a Gary Jules cover from the film ‘Donnie Darko.’ We always knew the song was a hit and if we had only sorted out the licensing issues earlier might have had our very own UK number one but alas, we settled for the single topping the Matinée hit parade for several months running instead. The flip is an original called ‘Don’t Buy Anything’ with Keith on lead vox and Dick and Pam backing in a style recalling the earliest days of Blueboy. Erasing Clouds wrote “this is what a pop 7″ should be—a little document of lovely moments,” while Tangents declared the Snowdrops “ace” for their “absolute peach of a version of the aforementioned ’80s electropop chart-topper.” The band later contributed brilliant songs to the ‘Matinée 50’ (matinée 050) and ‘Romantic and Square is Hip and Aware’ (matcd030) compilations before recording the recent ‘Sleepydust’ EP (matinée 053)…but the ‘Mad World’ 7″ is where it all started and you probably should have a copy all your own. The artwork is quite nice too and let’s face it, 7″ singles still rule, right?
Last month you bought lots of buttons so our selection now stands at 29 different designs. See the fanclub page for scans of the designs or the order page for availability. Still quite a bargain for the 5-pack or 10-pack so get yours before they all sell out. We will have new designs before too long too so watch this space.
As always we leave you with the list of top sellers from the previous month…our official hit parade. This one’s actually a combined February/March sales chart which puts the Lucksmiths squarely on top and proves that singles are still alive:
10. Harper Lee – Everything’s Going To Be OK CD
9. The Young Tradition – Northern Drive CD
8. Razorcuts – R is for Razorcuts CD
7. Brighter – Singles 1989-1992 CD
6. The Lucksmiths – Warmer Corners CD
5. The Snowdrops – Sleepydust CDEP
4. Tender Trap – Language Lessons CDEP
3. Math and Physics Club – Weekends Away CDEP
2. Math and Physics Club – Movie Ending Romance CDEP
1. The Lucksmiths – A Hiccup In Your Happiness CDEP
Hurrah!
Jimmy
x