One of my favourite bands emerging from the past few years has been Grammatics. Watching them grow from some very promising early singles (”Shadow Committee” / “D.I.L.E.M.M.A“) to eventually releasing their stonkingly awesome self-titled debut early this year, gaining a ton of positive reviews and giving them their much deserved attention.

They’re doing rather well for themselves right now, currently touring with Bloc Party on their (awfully punned) Bloctober tour. There’s also been a little talk here and there of work on a second album, but no solid details have emerged from that.

Solid details have, however, emerged of a new single. It’s called “Double Negative” and doesn’t feature on the album. It’s more of their signature complex pop with a really beautiful, soaring chorus. Owen digs back to his punk roots a little, bursts of strong screaming contrasting with his almost angelic vocal-style. The single also features a great cover of “Notes in his Pockets” by The Good Life as its b-side.

You can grab the single right now from iTunes, but the physical single will released October 26th on 7″ by label Dance to The Radio. If you pre-order the 7″ from DTTR’s online store right now, you’ll get the mp3s to download right away before the release date, so jump on that deal NOW!!

MP3: D.I.L.E.M.M.A (from Grammatics, 2009)
Buy ‘Double Negative’ from iTunes
Pre-order ‘Double Negative’ 7” + free MP3s
Bloctober tour dates

Hosting a summer party? Need something to play on the car during the hot, sunny days? Feel like just randomly shaking your ass to the groove in your bedroom when your significant other hasn’t yet got to share a summer vacation with you? Then look no further than Finland, or if you prefer it this post. Blossoms are here for you.

Blossoms are a band from Finland who believe in the power of love, boogie and sunshine. Their music is an infectious mixture of sunshiney pop, dance-enducing disco and sexually funkaliciously grooved out rock n roll. And of course, a whole bunch of good feeling: it’s all about fun! Funky bass throbs along a steady drum beat and a guitar groove, keyboards spicing up life here and there as frontman Aki sings about love and partying with his seductively macho and charismatic voice, with wonderful female backing vocals offering a gentle support at strategic moments. Sometimes the music gets slower (though not often), sometimes you get real rockers such as the hi-energy “Get Laid” (guess the subject matter!). While their output so far has been quite small – one EP, one single and one album – what they’ve let out is essential for your summer.

The band started their career with a self-titled EP, offering four songs of such magnitude that when this little blogger heard the samples and found out that his local music store is one of the few places that stocked the EP, he was off in an instant. “One Night” chugs on with its addicting funky poppiness and guest female dueting, rolling so deliciously that you’d never guess it was the band’s first recording. With its fantastic chorus and general feel-good greatness, it stands as the band’s greatest moment so far. Well, tied with “Beach” which ends the album. Beach could also be considered the band’s most serious song, starting with a gentle peaceful pace and declarations of romance to an epic crasher ending rocker of a beast with the repeated line “we’re all gonna go someday/don’t you know that”, at the same time celebrating life and defying the short time we all get with it. The two other songs of the EP complement the two highlights well, even if never threatening to dethrone them. And because the EP is pretty much unavailable anymore, check the end of the post for a mp3 grab of the whole thing!

The main Blossoms offering however is the also self-titled album released in 2006. One Night and Beach have been transferred from the EP and both have gained slight updates, beefed up, taken even further and hitting with even greater grooves, effectively creating the definitive versions of both songs. The aforementioned Get Laid storms with a primal lust through its hilariously energetic rocking three minutes, “Love Me for a While” is the centrepiece disco epic, “Sonando de la Luz” takes a mediterranean tinge and actually manages to pull it off, while “Celebration” is moreso a Blossoms version of Andrew W.K.’s “Party Hard” rather than the Kool and the Gang song of the same name. While the album might seem terribly brief, clocking only at 32 minutes, it’s the exactly perfect length for a non-stop summery party groove.

Blossoms themselves seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth, with what their official website having been down for over a year now. This is a bit of a bugger, not only in general but because one of their very best songs – an 80’s tributing synth-funk thing – never got a studio recording. I had the chance to see the band live once and while I’m not usually the sort of person to go wow over live acts, that performance made me a Blossoms fanboy for a while. I’ve calmed down slightly now but when you get down to the suave dance moves of their music, you’ll understand the feeling.

Download Blossoms EP
MP3: Get Laid
MP3: Love Me for a While
Buy the Blossoms album from Record Shop X

What the hell no one told me that the cheesy-but-oh-so-wonderful pop group The Crash had decided to finish their career last month and are about to play their last ever concert next month. This was a complete shock surprise when I randomly checked out their webpage yesterday for any news on new releases.

Sure, The Crash were never the sort of band who’d stand up in history books. Their music was heavily derived from 90’s britpop mixed with 80’s synths and while Teemu Brunila’s syrupy voice definitely gave the band their own tone, they didn’t do anything particularly original during their four studio albums. And they were cheesy as all hell. But what they had was heart. A big heart, made of soft cuteness and instant adorability. They are probably the most adorable band in my collection, a band that instantly puts you in an upbeat mood with their addicting sunshine.

And as such, some mp3s, some youtube and some ramble behind the cut.

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If you asked me which band had the most impact in the Finnish music scene in the 90’s, I’d answer with two words: Ultra Bra. And despite me often being a non-conformist idiot who tends to disagree with the popular opinion, in this case I wouldn’t be shocked if I was actually correct. It was impossible to avoid the group in the latter half of the 90’s – in the just five years between their debut and their last album, they managed to score countless hit singles and album tracks that garnered enough radioplay to become a part of public consciousness. They were the Finnish soundtrack of the late 90’s and going through their best of album is like browsing through an archive of immensely familiar songs in an amount that most bands would be jealous if they could get even half of them.

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I own all of Wilco’s studio albums bar one on CD, and the remaining I’ve got in digital format waiting for a physical purchase some day in the future. They’re number 16 in my Last.FM top artists chart. “Jesus, Etc” is one of my favourite songs of all time and Jeff Tweedy is a fantastic singer. Wilco’s a band whose future endeavours I’m excited to follow.

But at the end of the day, when I really start thinking about it, I really have no good reason to be as into them as I am. One of their albums is quite frankly poor, two of them are alright but dodgy. Out of the remaining three, only one is a genuinely great record (and one I love dearly). The other two, while good, definitely have their flaws. Sometimes I wonder why I spend my money on them.

The reason? Because those three albums just make it all worth it.

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Here’s a bunch of exciting news from electro Cambridge, MA duo, Arms and Sleepers. Firstly, they have a new EP out on 7″, called ‘The Motorist‘. It was released last month and is available from their myspace with a limited press of 300. The Motorist is somewhat of a prequel EP to their currently unnamed upcoming album, which is set for release in May this year. There’s no other details about it yet, but I’m sure they will all start to emerge soon enough. They also talk of a sequal to their dreamy ‘Cinématique‘, to be released sometime early this year in a hand-packaged limited edition of 100. And if that’s not enough for you, there’s also this little tidbit of info on their blog of info about a possible re-release of ‘Bliss Was It In That Dawn To Be Alive’:

There are talks about doing a vinyl version of this release with a bonus song and additional artwork, but this won’t be for a while. We’ll let you know when/if we get closer to this.

I would have written a short review of The Motorist, giving all my great thoughts and opinons of it, but I only found out about it a few days ago and haven’t actually heard it yet (my copy is in the mail somewhere). I couldn’t even find a tracklist for it anywhere :(. Luckily some people on last.fm scrobbled the tracks from it, so I can only guess it’s something like this:

1. Dear Charles, My Muse, Asleep or Dead
2. The Motorist
3. Jetty
4. Algiers Point
5. In The Empire of Builders

I’m pretty excited to hear it. Arms and Sleepers played one of the best shows and made one of the best albums I’ve ever had the pleasure of listening. Speaking of shows, they’re currently on tour right now around the US. Here’s their tour poster with upcoming dates. Although check their myspace for the latest dates, since they might have changed!

I don’t know why the rest of the Indie Paws clan has been slightly more silent than usual lately, but I have a good excuse! I swear! You see, my computer broke down and it’s still going to take a bit (hopefully a very tiny bit) for it to go up and running again. Because I’ve been lacking my usual place to chill down, listen to music and go into that sort of creative trance where I ramble pretentious words into the Wordpress “add new post” box, I’ve also been lacking any sort of inspiration to make updates because, you know, you don’t really update when you don’t really listen to stuff. So without my music collection – which I still have perfectly intact, I just haven’t felt the desire to spend time with it thanks to a lack of peaceful listening place – I’ve been reduced to mainly spamming Youtube whenever I want to hear a certain song. Another source of easy listening has been band Myspaces – we here at Indie Paws get a nice amount of emails from bands who want to be featured here and this time of not concentrating on my main music collection has given me a chance to check back on what we’ve received. A recent email gave me a Myspace address that did indeed provide something rather interesting, something that’s been playing in my head now for a while and made me return to that URL.

Squirrelhouse, MySponge here, are a five-member band from Alabama and they have three things going on for them. One, they’ve got a great name. Two, the vocalist Paul Hanninen has a Finnish surname which raises interest in all us sad Finns who perk up our ears at the slightest reference to our little country. Three, they’ve got some good songs and stuff, you know.

Squirrelhouse has that 00’s indie sound - grounded, homely production but somewhat grander songs, traditional rock instruments mingling with non-traditional ones (in this case, a horn player is a fixed member of the band). Squirrelhouse stands out however with their own little special sound, adding a sort of hazy groove to every song. The bass is wonderfully lively, the ever-present horn really does sound absolutely wonderful and makes you wish more bands used horns in a more regular basis. The guitar tends to go on its completely own adventures instead of following the usual melody repeats which is another interesting side (check out the wildly frolicing lead on “Monster pt. 1″). Finally, you have Hanninen’s permanently daydreaming voice that manages to do quite a bit while emoting very little, often backed with a brightly contrasting female vocals.

The Myspace comes with five songs. “The Hunter”, “Nagasaki Shuffle” and “Fours” are taken from the band’s debut SPQR, the former rocking a bit more than the other material while Fours advances with a subtly funky, choppy rhythm and sweet horn melodies – Nagasaki being somewhere in the middle. The two-part Monster is from the band’s upcoming album and are the ones that raise the greatest interest, from the first part that perfectly showcases the lazy groove of the band’s sound and with a chorus that’s wonderfully striking in its utter simplistic nature, to the rolling and restless second part with some really addicting musical hooks. Most of these songs can be downloaded from here.

It’s very hard to say anything from a new (to me) band based on five songs but I guess the best way to sum up my opinion I’m actually posting about them here and I’m greatly interested in checking out their albums at some point.

MP3: multiple mp3s

Javs loves him some shoegaze, but moreover, Javs loves him some free shoegaze that transports him to another, more peaceful world. That’s just what Florida band Kingsbury has to offer with their just-released Lie to Me EP.

Pop over to their website and download their entire catalog if you like. All of that is free too. Kingsbury is embracing digital culture, and that’s what we at Indie Paws like to see. If you really enjoy the stuff, don’t hesitate to send a donation their way.

Lie to Me – Download
Back in the Orange Grove – Download

(And yes, these download links work because they’re hosted by the band themselves. Our mp3 downloads are still down.)

When we last dwelled into the career of the ever-fantastic John Frusciante, we got through the first half of his discography – an assortment of albums with artistic growth in every way but nothing really to tie them together outside the obvious matters. However, as we descend to check the man’s works after 2004’s Shadows Collide With People, we’ll enter what one could call the Record Collection era (after the label his future album would be released under) or 2004 craze. A short while after the release of Shadows, John announced that he was going to release six more recordings, solo or side project, in 2004, one per month. In the end it didn’t quite work out the way it was planned as some months got skipped and the final release would see the light of day in January 2005, but regardless of all that it was a celebration of massive inspiration. The most overwhelming thing in the whole fuss is that pretty much all of these releases are brilliant.

The six 2004 albums each have a lot of things that bind them together as one entity – outside release dates and the fact that most of these were born from the same sessions, each album is home-produced. The purposedly sought out minimally lo-fi quality to the recordings (what one would imagine a high-quality home recording would sound like) lends each album a beautiful warmth and personal touch. It’s like little living room sessions in your own home. While sonically they’re bound, the styles however vary from one album to another. The basic gist stays the same in most cases – Frusciante’s warm, elegiac rock moodiness – but the actual style the final song comes out varies greatly.

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Hallelujah the Hills have recently finished work on their second full-length album. While the title has not yet been released, a tentative track listing has:

1. Flight of the Paper Pilots
2. Put the Gurus in Charge
3. The Might Come Back Club
4. Blank Passports
5. Allied Lions
6. Otus Pagoda
7. Variations on the Grand National Championships
8. Echo Sequence
9. (You Better Hope You) Die Before Me
10. Cash of the Titans
11. Enter the Exit Interview
12. It Carries Back
13. A Guide to the World’s Most Fantastic Monsters

We saw “(You Better Hope You) Die Before Me” on Prepare to Qualify as a live track, but all the other titles are unfamiliar and presumably brand new in studio form. Don’t forget that, as mentioned in an earlier post, HtH’s Prepare to Qualify is still available for free download.

As a general disclaimer, any mistakes in this list are caused by my not being able to read the scanned sheet of paper on which the tracklisting is printed. If you have any corrections, let me know.

Nurses 5 Float Past – Download
(You Better Hope You) Die Before Me (live) – Download

Official website.