You Charged My Heart With an Unfathomable Bill

At long last I will get to see Twig in the flesh. In two weeks, at Rip It Up. Of course you've picked up the "Ciao Ciao Bomb"/"Wentworth" single already? It's in the list to the right if you look close enough. They also have lots of songs on Myspace, some of which I'd like to see on the upcoming album Plastilina promises will be out this summer (along with the Blue Train and Bollweevils retrospectives!). If that wasn't enough you can now hear that old, dog-eared volume called "At the Library" (from 2004, but there is even older material around) in the new sidebar player.

Northern Portrait, sadly, are not playing (although I have a feeling the arrangers are sitting on something even bigger) but they have a track for download here. I would have given you the link to the Rewind website, where the other 80s covers part of the project are featured, but it attacks you with loud annoying music that there is no escape from. The rest of the covers submitted look quite boring to say the least, so you don't need to see it. "Some People", as the Danes' choice is called, was originally recorded by Cliff Richard. As you may have read in the previous post, they have a new ep out this month on Matinée.

Like the Twig 7", the other Cloudberry stuff is only listed by catalogue numbers in my list, cause it's simply too much. But as Roque makes a point of letting the music speak for itself, there are a few things that might interest you. The Firekites was a band started by Iain from The Mayfields after the split. The music is a bit more dreamy, with a female vocalist, and actually this was their demo that made the rounds in the early 90s! There's no reason why these songs shouldn't have been released back then, as a photocopied review from an old local newspaper makes clear, so well-done Roque to succeed where others have failed! Get "Good Times" on the label's website, and "Victoria Summer" is on the second of my two summer mixes below. A fourth song called "Kansas" is on the ep that comes with the third issue of Roque's fanzine (this also holds an exclusive Arc Lamps song which is better than an estimated 90% of the music written about here all year).

The Hillfields first ep came out earlier this year, at no. 78, and is still available! Their hit ("Spoon" of course) is not on this, but an ep for a Cloudberry/Lostmusic event called What's All the Fuzz About. That you cannot acquire legally, but it's not unlikely it will appear on a future release from the band. Any fan of Flying Nun outfits like The Chills and The Verlaines will dig the three songs on A Visit EP, and if you don't believe me download "The Front Room" from Cloudberry HQ. Why no Indietracks slot though?

The Andersen Tapes is believe it or not Amanda from Free Loan Investments and The Busy Band. I have an mp3 dated 2006, so I guess she's been using the pseudonym for at least that long. All the songs on the ep, which is her first release, are brilliant and she's also got a track on this:


...a Cloudberry compilation that comes with the next issue of the awesome Bottlerocket fanzine. It's also got a 'new' Nixon song, which I'm certain is a huge event for most people. The ep title is from a Dolphin 7 split-flexi with The Gravy Train and The Lavender Faction - I know you wondered.

No.s 95-97 are all essential: the new jangle explosion from The Catalysts would not even have been rejected by Sarah Records; The Parallelograms make the songs from the sold out Atomic Beat split-7" available again, adding new must-have "Orchard Square"; The Mai 68s is a new UK band blessed with a Joe Foster production and I'm greatly looking forward to their Indietracks set; "College" by The Sunny Street is the best I've heard from them yet. And the last releases (yes, he's stopping at 100) will all be just as remarkable, I can assure you.