TV ON THE RADIO - Dear Science (Touch and Go / 4AD)
I think, no, I'm pretty sure, actually, I am certain, I want to marry this album, only in woman form (it'd be stupid to try and marry an actual album). But if the woman who is this album is out there, anywhere, please, can you introduce her to me? She would be complicated and deep. She'd be full of passion, not just in a lustful sexy way (although, that too) but about whatever it is she cares about - she'd be vehement about it. She'd challenge expectations as much as she'd meet and exceed even the most wildest of them. She'd not be afraid of trying new things as much as she knows who she already is. She'd carry the baggage of her past with dignity, respect and pride - she knows where she has been, what she has experienced and how that forms who she is today. She'd be dark at times, perhaps even a little sinister, but she'd shine the most glorious of light as well. She'd sound amazing on headphones. - AT

COLD WAR KIDS - Loyalty To Loyalty ( V2 / Shock)
Somehow it seems an age since the release of their debut Robbers & Cowards, but in fact it's just a respectable two years before the Californian "indie-rockers" release their sophomore record. Already, the album is dividing opinion Pitcfork (of course) gave it a less than favorable review, and The Gaurdian gave it only 2 out of 5 stars and said it consisted of "walking-pace trad-blues workouts in search of a tune, energy and purpose". While Rolling Stone said they   "attack their songs with unusual intensity, infusing even the most noirish, unsettling songs with a feeling of enchantment." And NME said the hyperbolic "They straddle the cosmos of art and soul with thrilling awkwardness." Me? Well initially I found it difficult but am totally warming to it and figure that after a few more listens it's gonna be in my top records of the year list. But maybe you should just make up your own mind 'cos the "experts" clearly can't agree.- AT

LADYHAWKE - self titled (Modular)
Possibly one of the most hyped albums of the year; proceeded by a slew of singles and remixes and even a (n amazing) French version of Paris is Burning. There was an air of eager excitement surrounding Ladyhawke's live show a month or so ago which, for many, let's be honest disappointed. But let's put that into perspective; to be fair, I think we all built that show up a bit too much - in honesty Pip would have to have been playing six guitars on fire suspended upside-down while dwarves made human pyramids around her for the jaded expectations of Auckland's indie-elite to have been even-halfway met.
But let's focus on the album now; preconceptions and expectations set aside; it's a solid collection of songs way beyond the singles you have heard before with a definite nod to the 1980s. Much of the album is co-written and co-produced by Belgian veteran musician/producer Pascal Gabriel who was the genius behind two of the biggest late-80s dance-hits - Theme From S-Espress and Bomb The Bass - with that sort of pedigree assisting Pip's amazing talent, it's hard to fathom that this record would be anything but stunning. And stunning it is. -AT

METRONOMY - Nights Out (Warners)
When I was a young teenager my family would, on occasion, take Sunday trips, further south-west, inland to the small town of Totnes which is on the River Dart, population 8,000. While Wikipedia states that the town is renowned "as a place where one can live a bohemian lifestyle" I think, in Devonshire that means you might partake in a glass of wine instead of scrumpy sometimes. So it's difficult for me to comprehend that this music comes from there; at least initially. But the more I listen to this, fundamentally electronic album, the more organic it sounds. There's a distinctive south-west-country home-spun ethos babbling, like a Devonshire brook through a field of bluebells, icy water from Dartmoor, glistening in the Devon sun. I feel homesick now. I love this record. - AT

CALEXICO - Carried to Dust (Quarterstick Records / Spiunk)
When I listen to this I become, for the length of the record at least, a dark, mysterious, probably quite mis-understood and much better looking man. I'm rugged, windswept and distant. Spanish speaking senoritas (who all probably look strikingly like Salma Hayek) attempt to seduce me; each one of them wanting to be the one woman who I'll let inside my stone cold hardened heart. The one woman who can understand me, understand what it is that I have seen, out there in the wild west. Mariachi trumpet players mysteriously appear behind me while I look out, past the dancing senoritas (did I mention they are dancing, now) with my glassy stare, not flinching, the expression on my face giving nothing away, while Iron & Wine's Sam Beam, Tortoise's Doug McCombs and contemporary folk singer-songwriter Pieta Brown show up to help Calexico out.   - AT

KINGS OF LEON - Only By The Night (Sony BMG)
Let's be honest, as much as we all wanted to like Because of these Times, it was difficult to really. It was that guy, in your group of friends who tried to fit in, but no matter how hard you try to include him, to accept him, when push comes to shove, to be honest, he's just a bit of a dick really, aye?
Well ok, so that guy, I dunno, he's gone away, maybe, like traveling or something, and now he's back, yeah? And, like, you're kinda dreading meeting up for drinks to welcome him home. Preparing yourself to be stifling your cringes; fully expecting that you are going to spend your entire evening rolling your eyes knowingly with your much cooler friends. And then you meet up with him and he's TOTALLY AWESOME. Something happened on his trip and now he's actually even crush-worthy. And now you feel like a dick for all those bad things you said about him before; for being so dismissive and shallow. Man, you're such a bitch. That's what the new album from Kings of Leon is like. - AT

JOLIE HOLLAND - The Living And The Dead (Anti / Shock)
Village Voice describes Jolie Holland's voice as "sultry and sweet, despairing and lonely". I don't mean to sound critical, I mean, I agree with all four adjectives, but do they really do the sound of enjoying warm honey on fresh bread on a balmy summers evening as birds fly past in the distance to seek their night-time roost with the deepest red sunset filling the western sky, justice? Because, that's what I hear when I hear these sultry, sweet, despairing and lonely tones.
This is her fourth studio album, M Ward appears on guitar on a couple of tracks as well as production on one, she's co-produced the album with Pakistani-born multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily who has added some new sounds via bass, moog, shruthi box and a duck call among others. Stunning record. - AT

FRIENDLY FIRES - self titiled (XL Recordings)
Described by some as shoe-gaze disco / electro-shoegaze (one can only imagine all these indie-kids dancing staring at the floor, and smirk, just a little) but really, without getting all fancy on descriptions this English three-piece (four-piece live) just make great pop songs that make you want to dance. Reminiscent of quality English 80's electro-pop before house music was invented (ie the stuff that pre-dated and inspired house), only, not regurgitated or carbon-copied; rather re-started, re-invented, re-structured with the equal benefit of it being twenty or more years later coupled with the fact that no-one in the band is old enough to remember it the first time around. - AT

JAGUAR LOVE - Take Me To The Sea (Matador)
This is the sound of virgin banshees having difficult, kinky and awkward sex for the first time; the aural pleasure and pain of it all is like Christina Amphett meeting the Marquis de Sade. In a playground. Johnny Whitney (ex Blood Brothers) vocals are much, much more than simply "distinctive" - Lester Paul of the Guardian described them as "like Robert Plant on steroids, or Perry Farrell after a sex change" but even those hyperboles don't truly do the sound justice. Sonically propulsive, angular, fuzzy and warm; melodies appear almost intuitively, creating the most unexpected hooks in the wrong places - making them border upon genius. - AT

TILLY AND THE WALL - O (Team Love / Dew Process)
Nebraska's Tilly and the Wall's third full length is actually untitled - the name actually represented by a circle. Also, in it's truest form it has no set cover art - instead it's intended that a different limited release cover issued every couple of months having invited many artists to contribute. The album remains true to who they are, upbeat catchy boy-girl, tap dance percussive lead indie-pop, but they have, I think, successfully, introduced some newer instrumental elements to make a record that'll be great for summer afternoon picnics under trees. - AT

BOND STREET BRIDGE - The Mapmaker's Art (Monkey Records)
Wine Cellar regulars will doubtlessly know Bond Street Bridge aka Sam Prebble's solo project. This debut album, has that distinctive sound of a man driven, perhaps a little obsessively, perhaps single-mindedly in creating exactly, perfectly, what he has in his minds-ear. Recorded completely on his laptop with a single microphone, in a falling-down villa next to a motorway; the sound beguiles that fact with it's lush soundscapes of guitars, violins, mandolins, piano and organs. The album feels like it has the New Zealand pioneering heritage behind and within it, darkly beautiful in it's ingenuity. - AT

YULE - Aaaarrrggh!!! (Scandal Street Records)
I have to confess that all week, whenever a track from this album came on my iTunes in a random play, I would wonder which Bomb the Bass or UNKLE or Radiohead or even Streets record I had forgotten I had loaded; thinking, each time, that I had discovered some amazing secret hidden track that, magically, no-one else had ever found. But no, instead it'd be a song from this locally and independently released collection of songs crafted by this ex-Dunedin-ite-now-Grey-Lynn-resident and each time, my mind was blown. - AT

UNKLE - End Titles... Stories for Film (Surrender All / Inertia)
This is NOT the new UNKLE album, James Levelle points out in the liner notes - it is a collection of music recorded in the two years   since they completed War Stories. He explains : "One of the most enjoyable areas we have been exploring over the years is the area of audio-visual collaborations, music for film, television, computer games and the like. However, there is a rather frustrating side to this type of creative endevour. A lot of the music you're making ends up sitting on the shelf, neither properly released nor heard. A waste, really we thought. So this album is our attempt to alleviate our musical frustrations whilst hoping that it will find a wider audience." I am, for one, glad this stuff is not sitting on a shelf un-heard. - AT

FUCKED UP - The Chemistry of Common Life (Matador)
Punk was, is and will forever be about fucking shit up.   I think, many people mis-understood this fundamental ethos as destruction for destruction's sake. It was never about that; Punk is about taking an accepted and expected paradigm and questioning it. Real punk is when you question and challenge your piers; any twat with a Mohawk and some patches on his unwashed jeans can question the authorities and regurgitate some anarchic rhetoric. A real punk will want to fuck up how his friends think. Tornoto's Fucked Up are real punk. Amid soaring hardcore riffs are layers upon layers of melodies that surprise you with something new each time you listen. Kerrang! Magazine asked if they were the most punk band in the world. The answer is quite possibly yes. - AT

MARC COLLIN w/ VARIOUS VOCALISTS - Hollywood, Mon Amour (Pias)
Marc Collin is one of the two musicians behind the French collective known as Nouvelle Vague who perform punk and new-wave songs from the late seventies / early eighties in a bossanova style. For this project he has strayed a little, to cover fifteen classic 1980's movie theme songs with various songstresses such as Skye Edwards (formerly Morcheeba), Yael Naim, Juliette Lewis and more. American Gigolo's Call Me to Rocky III's Eye of The Tiger to Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence's Forbidden Colours to the Breakfast Club's Don't You (Forget About Me). It'll be argued that this is nothing more than a novelty record - but what an amazing novelty it is! - AT

BRIGHTBLACK MORNING LIGHT - Motion to Rejoin (Matador)
I think Brightblack Morning light have the most wonderfully perfect name. I challenge you to find another band who in three words (or less) sum up exactly what they sound like so perfectly as this New Mexican duo-led collective. Motion to Rejoin is their second album for Matador and it continues in their Mazzy-Star-esque pyschedelic / narcotic   folk vein. Aurally dark and light in a hazy twilight, it's equally perfect to recover from the night before to as it is to set the mood for a quiet but illicit night in. Apparently this record was recorded solely on solar power. That fact, in itself, rules nearly as much as this record does. - AT

THIEVERY CORPORATION - Radio Retaliation (Shock)
I'll be the first to admit that I can be rather acidic in my dismissal of some music; more-often than not, it happens at a party when I'm a bit drunk and I meet some-one into snowboarding and dub. But, I think, it's nothing to do with the ugly head of Musical Puritanism - more to do with my frustration with people still celebrating an idea that is well past it's sell-buy date as the best thing since fresh bread. Anyway, listening to Washington DC's duo Thievery Corporation's fifth album, with it's world inclusive collaborations it; it's dub and downbeat tempos; prima face, it should be something worthy of a vehement Tidball critique, but the thing is, the rhythms are infectious, the sonic layers and combinations intriguing and the underlying messages worthy. I like a record with dub on it. There, I've said it. Happy now? - AT

REVIEWS BY
Andrew Tidball (AT) & Matthew Crawley (MC)
courtesy of The Eavesdrop Listening Party

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