CUT COPY
In Ghost Colours
(MODULAR)  A+

If you were somewhat underwhelmed by Cut Copy’s ace 2004 album “Bright Like Neon Love,” then there’s every chance that their sophomore effort contains that little something you may have thought was missing the first time around. Four years later (almost to the date!) since their now iconic debut record was released, Melbourne’s favourite indie-electro kids have truly trumped any connotations thrown at them of possibly being one-trick ponies. “In Ghost Colours” is a much more enjoyable, mature, delightful, melody-filled record than anything we’ve heard from the trio before, and boasts a refreshing slab of delicious electronic cuts, whilst containing more truly pop-infused tracks than they’ve ever attempted before.

“Feel The Love” lustfully opens the record with harmonious strums of the guitar and celebratory oooh oooh’s, which are immediately followed by a remarkably joyous chorus and sharp use of the vocoder. “Out There On The Ice” merges quite nicely into current single “Lights & Music,” which is fabulous but isn’t even this albums best moment. “Unforgettable Season” conjures up images of The Strokes or The Teenagers and, alongside previous single “So Haunted” (also included on the new album,) is Cut Copy’s most truly brilliant and convincingly Indie moment in their discography.

The long players most defining moments spawn itself over three tracks; the interlude “Voice In Quartz,” sliding into the truly mesmerizing first single “Hearts On Fire” (which contains the greatest use of a Saxaphone since any-given-scene in an 80’s Rob Lowe movie,) and the pulsatingly catchy “Far Away,” which carries the bands finest and poppiest chorus to date.

“In Ghost Colours” is the finished product of years of fine tuning, clever production, intensely astute writing and memorable lyrics. And all that hard work and effort shows; this is the years first sign of true album perfection. Van She; you are officially being given a run for your money..

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Remind you of anything?

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A couple of weeks back the guys were discussing the clip in the Herald Sun, and made mention of Madge’s “Justify My Love” clip being a bit of an influence in its creation.  Lovely!

I’ve decided to completely throw that plan of not blogging due to the worldy departure of my best friends out the window. I am yet to reach the point of being angry by their abandonment (ie: Adem is still howling like a Nonna at her Grandsons funeral,) but surely it’s not incredibly far off. Anyway, like fuck I’m going to put any writing ideas on hold while they’re off having fun on International waters, especially when there is music to be enjoyed right here at home in Australia.

I actually have this mammoth post planned which covers everything that is special and amazing about Australian music at the moment. It’s not finished though, and I don’t want to rush it, but it should be happening soon. Until then, I’d like to divert your attention to one of the artists which will appear in that post; the completely amazing and totally unsigned Sydney four piece The Jezabels.

I found out about The Jezabels indirectly through Van She. During the She’s most recent Aussie tour, The Jezabels supported them on a select number of dates. Sadly, none of those dates included the Geelong or Melbourne leg of the tour, so, out of interest, I looked them up on TEH INTERNETS to see what I was missing. Quite a lot by the sounds of things!

Three of their tracks are available for fully-legal download in VERY HIGH QUALITY MP3 FORMAT right now over on their MySpace page. All three moments are truly amazing, but it’s “Disco Biscuit Love” which completely won me over. It is essentially a love-song-but-not about a poor girl who has become somewhat attached to a boy who seems to only care about her after ingesting a Green Mitsubishi (not the automobile) OR WHATEVER IT IS THOSE ECSTASY TABLETS ARE PRINTED AS NOWADAYS. I have become almost dependently devoted to the song in question over the last 24 hours and think it’s beautiful, ridiculous, hilarious, and sad all at the same time. A winning combination, non? Especially with my incredibly schizophrenic emotional state today…

Their MySpazz blurb’s great too.

“We don’t have a manifesto as such, but we do have definite intentions in what we do. We want to be pop… but with a sense of certainty that our audiences won’t walk away thinking that we take ourselves too seriously.”

Fucking. Brilliant.

You can also watch a Medium-quality live clip of them performing that very song over on the ever-resourceful YouTube.

I’m not entirely sure if Indie radio such as RRR or Triple J are playing these guys (the completely groundbreaking FBI in Sydney seem to be though,) but they should be. I definitely know they are now the latest band receiving rotational airplay during my Friday night radio show, and are an act which will appear on every single compilation CD I put together for various friends over the next two months.

Someone sign these guys; they are super-fab.

Continuing the Aussie tip; Cut Copy album review on Monday (in short, it’s the album - so far - to beat for me in ways of an ‘Album Of The Year’ type-title,) Muscles double-whammy gig review, and something about that ace new single from The Presets.

Van She’s people have uploaded a new video to YouTube which documents the travels made during their Japan tour earlier this year. The truly brilliant thing about this 2:25 running video is its featured backdrop track; “Changes,” my Number 2 favourite track of 2008 thus far, and so totally not made available anywhere other than their live shows until now. It’s also the boys’ favourite track from the new album.  Whilst it’s not the whole song, it’s certainly enough to tide us over until the album release in June.  Picture me with my happiest of faces when this arrived in my email.

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Fucking Amazing. And we’ll pretend whoever edited that video didn’t go and spell “censored” incorrectly.

News-wise, MY favourite song from the new album and next single “Strangers” (which is also my Number 1 favourite song of the year thus far) is hitting radio in two weeks, meaning we’ll be getting a new video clip from the boys soon, which ALSO means I’ll finally be able to show you all this completely bonza pop song.

On the other side of the world, UK radio seem to be enjoying the ace Van She Tech remix of that Utah Saints “Something Good ‘08″ reswizzle, and apparently some Very Important Deejays are playing it over on that Radio 1 thing. Very good news. I’m just hoping one of these Very Important Deejays is going to bother with mentioning the actual BAND once the new album is released over there, because their original material completely wipes the floor clean with any of their remixing efforts.

Finally, Van She are supporting PNAU on their national tour in April. Full details here. See you at the Billboard show on the 18th, front and center…

Oh, and if you don’t like my constant Van She scribblings then tough; 2008 is ALL about the V. If you love it, you can read more about them on this site by clicking here. Review of their Geelong gigs and Audio Interview with Matt online soon.

Phwoar.

That’s a full stream of my interview from last week with Axle Whitehead. In the interview we discuss his upcoming album, taking time off, why Avril Lavigne is a cunt, stripping off for the gays and - the topic I enjoyed the ‘moist’ (DO YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE?!) - his cock ‘n balls.

You can also download - via RapidShare - the interview if you wish. Link here.

Axle’s brilliant debut single, “I Don’t Do Surprises,” is released this Saturday the 8th of March. You should definitely buy it from either iTunes, Sanity, or one of those novel record stores (!) in your nearby shopping mall.  You can also buy the very-nice-on-the-eyes video clip, again over at iTunes.

Oh, hello there… 

Phwoar.

As the Summer (or winter, depending on where you are geographically) season draws to a close, we inch closer and closer into the third month of 2008; it’s already going by so quickly.  It feels like just yesterday I was seeing in the New Year when in actual fact it was 55 days ago… oi vey!

I haven’t really popped up any sort of list containing the songs that have, thus far in, tickled my musical fancy, so I thought now was as good a time as ever.  In chart form, here are the 10 best songs 2008 - whether they be singles or album tracks - has brought us so far.

01.       Van She - Strangers
02.       Van She - Changes
03.       Axle Whitehead - I Don’t Do Surprises
04.       Róisín Murphy - You Know Me Better
05.       Pigeon Detectives - I’m Not Sorry
06.       Cut Copy - Lights & Music
07.       Ashlee Simpson - Outta My Head (Ay Ya Ya)
08.       Sam Sparro - Black & Gold
09.       Goldfrapp - Caravan Girl
10.       Duffy - Rockferry 

I cannot wait for people to hear Van She’s “Strangers” because it is so sublime.  The synths during the chorus are magnetic and fierce.  “Changes” is just as ace and is also single material (and now that I’ve realised how similar the words “strangers” and “changes” sound when said over the phone, I’m back to being unsure as to which of the two songs are going to be the NEXT Van She single. Boo!) - sounded exxxxcellent live on the weekend and the boys told me it was their favourite track from the new record.

Axle’s debut “I Don’t Do Surprises” still impresses me, as does the man himself.  I spoke to him on Friday afternoon and the interview will be online later this week; went really well and he was incredibly charming.  Miss Murphy’s “You Know Me Better” somehow manages to become a stronger song the more I listen to it; and I already loved it immensely.  I’m aware that the Pigeon Detectives song in my list was released in 2006 and then again last year, but I’ve only just discovered the guys in the last 2 months and that song is so brilliant, I just couldn’t leave it off.

Cut Copy’s new single is a delicious taste of what’s to come from their hotly anticipated sophomore album, and Ashlee Simpson’s bonkers “Outta My Head (Ay Ya Ya)” sounds like a stripped down homage to Madonna’s “Burning Up.”  I love it!  Both Sam Sparro’s “Black & Gold” and Duffy’s “Rockferry” were introduced to me by the lovely xolondon, who has just written a stellar review of the new Goldfrapp album, which the track “Caravan Girl” comes from.

Anyway, what are your favourite tracks of the year so far?

Here are numbers 11 - 20…

11.       Goldfrapp - A&E
12.       Van She - Talkin’
13.       Girls Aloud - Can’t Speak French (Jeremy Wheatley Radio Edit)
14.       Kylie Minogue - Carried Away
15.       Courtney Love - Never Go Hungry Again
16.       Duffy - Mercy
17.       Courtney Love - Happy Ending Story
18.       Lykke Li - Little Bit
19.       Utah Saints - Something Good ‘08 (Van She Radio Edit)
20.       Rihanna & Klaxons - Umbrella (Live @ The BRIT Awards)

WOULDN’T YOU JUST?

So on Friday afternoon I’ll be chatting to the seriously delicious Axle Whitehead about his aces new single “I Don’t Do Surprises,” and no doubt covering the whole cock-flashing thing. Sadly, it’s not an in-studio interview and I can’t ask for a personal demonstration, but I’m sure he’ll make it down to Geelong sometime in the near future.

Was just wondering if any of you lot had a question you’d like me to ask of Mr. Whitehead? Email or pop the question in the comments field. The best will brought up on Friday afternoon and, more than likely, a couple of the worst too.

Oh, and his clip is finally on YouTube for those who couldn’t view it on the Hot Hits website.

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So tonight I spoke with Matt (far left) from Van She for a little on-air banter, and he provided me with some seriously spectacular sound bites. Would you believe we even got a Britney Spears related one in which Matt imitated Chris “Leave Britney Alone!” Crocker. But the best of all was information on the bands NEXT single. Looks like that little baby will have a video clip ready made in about a months time, which should tie me over until the now-pushed-back album release of June.

The even better news is that the next single will be the astoundingly poptastic “Strangers,” which is the song you may remember me referring to a few weeks back as The First Truly Great Song Of 2008. Which means that in a short while you’ll all finally get to hear what I’ve been banging on about.

The guys are also planning another tour around the UK and US towards the end of the year, with plans to go with singles only at first in the “hard to crack” American market. Will post the interview next week to coincide with the beginning of their Australian tour. Dates, venues, et cetera, can be found here.

Meanwhile, here’s the hilarious new video for the old-but-new-because-it’s-getting-a-proper-release Van She remix of Utah Saints’ 90’s dance classic “Something Good.” Matt hadn’t seen it yet but was quite keen to YouTube it after I’d told him how rather-good it actually was.

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Three posts in a day?  I don’t think that’s happened since the days of IAR.  Anyways, just a small bit of Van She news on top of what I’ve already reported today, the debut album is to be called “V” and according to the Modular website - frustratingly - has now been scheduled for a June 2008 release, rather than the originally planned April release.

ARGH. It honestly feels like I’ve been waiting all my life for this album.  Imagine how they feel!  Anyways, those spunky boys better release “Strangers” as a single before June, because I’m going to internally combust if I don’t own that baby on CD soon.

Me likey the above picture; I’ve not seen that one before.

LOTS of live music news to report today. I - quite excitedly - posted earlier this morning of the news that Róisín Murphy was coming to our shores in April for the V Festival.  The side show I’ll be checking out is being held at Melbourne’s ICONIC Billboard Nightclub on April the 7th.  That exciting news kicked off my morning and the live goss only grew as the day went on.

Whilst the following names have not been revealed as yet  to media, I can somewhat exclusively reveal that the likes of Robyn, Van She (pictured) and Tommy Lee (yes, as in Pamela & Tommy Lee) will be on the same bill together for an event being held at Birrarung Marr.  That’s all I can really say for now but once news becomes official, I’ll keep you informed.

Speaking of Van She, the boys - who are currently in Japan - are about to embark on their “Cat & The Eye Tour,” with the first show taking place at Melbourne’s Corner Hotel on February 21st.  The boys also play Geelong’s Barwon Club Hotel on the 23rd… no doubt if you’re going to either of those dates, I’ll see you there.  Full list of Australia-wide dates can be found on their MySpazz page.  I was quite the happy camper with all of this brilliant tour news.  But then something ELSE arrived in my inbox…

Whilst it’s somewhat old news that McFly are currently recording their fourth studio album in Australia, the sudden announcement of Australian concert dates completely caught me off guard.  February 23rd and March 1st have been penciled in for McFly’s first ever shows down under.  What a pity that both of the shows are being held in Sydney.  WTF?! No Melbourne?  Once again Melbourne is disregarded as Sydney takes precedence.  When Girls Aloud came to Oz in 2006, their only live performance was held in Sydney.  Take That in 2007 - same story.  Spice Girls were officially scheduled - and canceled - a show only in Sydney, whilst the likes of Mika (who I don’t really care for anyway, but that’s beside the point) and Joss Stone all made one-off appearances in Sydney early last year, leaving Melbourne off their ‘to-perform’ lists.

Anyway, I’m really angry and incredibly upset that I won’t get to see one of my all time favourite bands play their first Australian shows purely because of the distance.  And before you start saying I could fly out to Sydney to see them, you have absolutely no idea how broke I really am at the moment.

Come to Melbourne boys.  Make one of my dreams come true and allow me the opportunity to watch you do what you do best in the flesh.