Check out the seasonal four track EP from Aidan John Moffat over at Bandcamp.

Our Blood is the new record from cult singer-songwriter Richard Buckner. His voice is an extraordinary instrument and this set of songs is so strong. All human life is here: love, loss, hope and redemption – it’s a brilliant collection of perfectly constructed Americana.

So download Richard’s mini-concert over at Daytrotter and pop over to Aquarium Drunkard to get a couple of tracks from the album.

And play them all, over and over again.

Lashings of Hallertau‘s excellent beer and the sprightly indie pop of all-girl octet St. Rupertsberg made for a delightful Saturday afternoon at The Golden Dawn. Sunny tunes in a C86 style, close harmonies,  instrument swapping shenanigans, handclaps, bursts of brass.. just right. The girls captured the mood of the day perfectly, despite operating in a space slightly smaller than your average linen cupboard, and I’ll be watching out for future releases.

Their debut EP is called Seasonal Glimpse – check it out at Bandcamp.

Dave King dropped me a line to tell me about the title track from his upcoming album Under The Golden Sun. Dave’s nom de musique is The Heavy Dream and the album drops in October, with stellar contributions over the past twelve months from folks like Wilco‘s Pat Sansone. A slice of beautifully controlled power pop with hook-y, squiggly guitar lines.

And you can grab it in exhange for your email address, alongside Rachel’s Garden, over at Bandcamp. Matthew Sweet and Jon Brion fans, go there right now.

Dee Dee says it’s “big, woozy, and hopefully dream-inducing” and inspired by a Dante Gabriel Rossetti poem. Mmm. Works for me. Check out the Chrissie Hynde-ian “Woh.. oh oh”.

And here’s one I wrote earlier about the Girls.

Spring 1986, The Triffids headed out into the wilds of Western Australia, armed with an 8 track machine and a mixing desk, to record an LP in a shearing shed owned by the parents of band members David and Robert McComb. It would be a relaxed affair, completely low-fi, and maybe “not suitable for the likes of Virgin”. If the sounds of the wild found their way on to the tape, no problem.  David McComb wanted all of the atmosphere to be preserved in the recording, and a room microphone was used to capture as many of the noises and as much of the back chat as possible. There was so much leakage across the tracks, it was almost mono. The band made good use of ‘instruments’ found in the shed: water tanks, brooms, floorboards.

..in five days the Triffids and some friends ate one sheep, drank more than several slabs of beer, glimpsed a disappointingly faint Halley’s Comet and recorded 19 new songs – (Evil) Graham Lee

The budget was laughably tiny – Recording equipment hire $300. Food from F.E.Daw & Son Ravensthorpe $310. All sheep from Woodstock. Beer from Liquorland Coles Nth Perth/Wine & vodka from Hopetown Ravensthorpe hotels $340. Petrol $240, cars – Datsun 1803/2 Toyota Hiace/ Campervan/ Tim’s Renault – but the results are marvellous, heard at their best in the remixed and remastered version. It’s a fan’s favourite album, precisely because it doesn’t have the adornment of a full on studio: it’s the most honest representation of the band on record. You can feel the isolation in the evocative lyrics of the stripped down melancholy tunes, especially the lilting Born Sandy Devotional and the faux country-soul of One Soul Less On Your Fiery List. If Robert Smith had been born in Austin, maybe he’d have made music like this.

There’s more than a glimmer of playfulness there too, shining through the gloom, demonstrated best by a singalong cover of Bill Anderson’s country classic Once A Day. And there’s a taste of things to come, with three songs that were held over for a ‘proper’ studio: A Trick Of The Light, Blinder By The Hour and Jerdacuttup Man all feature on Calenture in revised form.

In The Pines is a classic. Every home should have it.

2010′s Losing Sleep album from Edwyn Collins wasn’t just a good record, it was a massive achievement, coming as it after did Edwyn’s prolonged period of neurological rehabilitation following cerebral haemorrhage. I was very happy to see a mini career retrospective session from Edwyn over at Daytrotter a few weeks ago. Five tracks: a couple of Orange Juice classics, two from Losing Sleep and his biggest hit. If you ain’t got it, git it.

An early candidate for the music maker closest to my new house is Paquin, which is the nom de musique of producer/creator Thomas Healy. “Sugary waves of shoegaze, electro and pop” sounds just about right, “steering away from bedroom pop towards a full band sound”, for which we should all be grateful. Impressive stuff, and you can check it out here at Bandcamp.

..we like fuzz, pizza, vinyl, bad habits, beer, power chords, stompin’ tom, feedback, fuzz, anything with big knobs and blinking lights, dogs (f*ck cats/fuzz cats), coffee, haters, beer, fuzz bass, the replacements, not remembering the night before, quentin tarantino, tube amps, waffles, analog, swearing, distorted anything, willie nelson, bacon, soda pop, french fries, and noise.

Hamilton (Canada, not NZ) rockers The Dirty Nil sent me the above entertaining note which also told me that I could get a couple of their tracks for free at Bandcamp. So why would you not do that, folks? Great stuff.

Golden Glow is the solo project of Manchester singer/songwriter Pierre Hall, which began following serious injury sustained in a car accident. Incapable of getting around, Pierre started from scratch and honed his home demos, attracting the attention and support of Brooklyn indie-poppers The Drums. Download Adore Me, from the album Tender Is The Night – Franz Ferdinand meets Lightspeed Champion with a tip of the cap to Manchester bands past. None of the rough edges knocked off, bash it down, pump it out. Nice.

Unknown Mortal Orchestra is the new project from Ruban Neilson, of Flying Nun indie darlings The Mint Chicks. Grab a couple of slices of distorted indiefied R&B – Ffunny Ffrends (courtesy of Pitchfork) and How Can U Love Me – ahead of an eponymous debut album on Fat Possum. If Prince used Toe Rag Studios, he’d sound like this.

Yuck‘s eponymous debut album is chock full of scuzzy loud indie-pop and has gone down a treat at Riverboat Towers. You can get four tracks from Yuck in session here.

And if you like that, you’ll like this: The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart have added some muscle to their skeletal twee-core frame on the excellent sophomore album Belong, evidence of which is also over at Daytrotter.

Moving down under, Ghost Wave (the newest star in the Arch Hill firmament) offers Sunsetter, the lead track from their excellent new EP over at Bandcamp.

I featured Snow & Voices a short while ago, and Lauri Kranz wrote to let me know about the second track in the Covers Project series, an atmospheric version of Disintegration (The Cure).

And finally, I’m entranced by Elbow‘s Build A Rocket, Boys! because to paraphrase another famous Northern band, it says everything to me about my life. When I’m a little less star-struck, I’ll write more about it, but try this one for size:

And don’t forget Record Store Day!

Scuzzy noise pop channeling 60s girl groups, replete with a slice of The Jesus and Mary Chain’s sonic splendour, and one of those voices.. front woman Dee Dee righteously shivers my timbers in a sulky, sultry kind of way. So give it a listen, for free.

Download He Gets Me High here (courtesy of Sub Pop). Here’s the video: