All Tomorrows Parties: Caribou, Les Savy Fav, Battles Curate

This weekend, I will brave the bracing winter wind in Minehead.

Here are my top line-up picks, in all-singing and dancing YouTube glory.

(I will try and remain sober enough to report back in as much detail as possible).

WILD FLAG

NO AGE

ARCHERS OF LOAF

SILVER APPLES

FACTORY FLOOR

These are so many more (inc. all three curators) but all these vids are crashing my computer. See ya next week.

Lions and Tigers and Bears - Oh My!

Wild Flag released the video to their first single, 'Romance' this week, and it's a fitting video for such a great song - the four of them driving around Portland in a hot pink car, causing trouble in a race against time. I managed to get tickets to their Lexington show in December, and I'm probably more excited about that one night than the whole of the Christmas season.




Which brings me nicely onto another song that's been bringing joy to my ears this week. A few months ago, Daniel Glass from the record label Glassnote came into work, and besides sharing some interesting tales, he also left us with a demo CD from a band called Oberhofer.  This one song in particular caught my ear - it has a familiar feeling to it, and I'm not usually a fan of xylophone (or whistling, for that matter) in songs, but this track pulls it off without verging on cheesy or twee.

The video is also spookily in line with the new Wild Flag video - people donning animals masks, but 'Away FRM U' is a lot more lo-fi and introspective, without the heady high jinx of 'Romance'.

Watch below and see what you think:

Listen: Wild Flag - Wild Flag

I write this sat in bed, recovering from the carnage that was Reading Festival at the weekend. I swore I'd never go back, but seven years is a long time away & a free ticket was way too tempting to pass up. I feel like I've been smacked in the head with a welly boot for three days straight.

My saviour in this horrible little hungover rut I've got myself into today is WILD FLAG. After months of waiting for a full album, it has arrived, and we are not worthy. I know they don't want to be called a super group, but this record is proof that the tag is well deserved. Very different from anything Sleater-Kinney produced, but bold, showing off both their technical talent and creative energy and resulting in a fiery garage rock record that channels some Patti Smith (I know they cover 'Ask The Angels', but the are definate parallels in Carrie's commanding, jumpy vocals). It's the debut I think everyone had been hoping for; this is what the new era of guitar music should sound like.

Click HERE to stream at NPR

Wild Flag - Romance by MergeRecords

Wild Flag - Ask The Angels

I swear I'll do my very best to make sure this doesn't end up being an obsessive Wild Flag fan blog... but I'm not making any promises. Anyway, I just wanted to share their awesome cover of Patti Smith's call-to-arms anthem, 'Ask The Angels', recorded at a recent show in Philadelphia.



WILD FLAG PLEASE COME TO THE UK!

Wild Flag - Glass Tambourine

When Sleater-Kinney announced that they were going on an indefinite hiatus in 2006, I'd just seen them live for the first time at Reading Festival a few weeks before, and the news was a horrible blow as I was forced to wave goodbye to yet another much-loved band (and a band I can safely say are my favourite band EVER, no exceptions). It looked as though all three members might be going their separate ways for good, never to share the same stage again. Janet Weiss joined Stephen Malkmus' Jicks band and put out another Quasi record, Carrie Brownstein created ThunderAnt (later to turn into Portlandia) and wrote a brilliant column for NPR called Monitor Mix, and Corin Tucker decided to go it alone last year with her solo record 1,000 Years. Although their individual bands and projects were hugely successful and enough to keep S-K fans going, there was still a large void left behind.

Hearing the news that Janet and Carrie have teamed up with Mary Timony (previously of Helium) and Rebecca Cole (The Minders) to form Wild Flag was unbelievably exciting, and since September we've all been patiently waiting to hear what the 'supergroup' have come up with, constantly bugging poor record shop employees to look up on their systems to find out if a release date has been set (Maybe just me then? Oh, OK.)

It's just been announced that their first 7” featuring the tracks 'Future Crimes' and 'Glass Tambourine' will be a special Record Store Day release (on 16th April), put out on Merge. The release was produced by Britt Daniel of Spoon, although the tracks will later be re-recorded with producer Chris Woodhouse for their debut album, so this really will be a very special record.

Ever good with putting sounds into words, Carrie told NPR that the track 'Glass Tambourine' exemplifies why she loves being in Wild Flag, describing it as starting off as “a warped pop song and then veers into something more psychedelic. There are melodies, harmonies, and then a fair amount of chaos. For this very reason, it's one of our favourite songs to play live. There is an improvisational aspect at the end, and we rarely know what's going to happen.”

The same can be said for Wild Flag, but whatever the outcome, it's bound to be awesome.

You can stream 'Glass Tambourine' on NPR here.