good morning sports fans!

This is shaping up to be a truly wonderful day. Liverpool slipped four past the recently unbeatable Van Der Sar, Bristol Rovers went three up within nineteen minutes and both my Dad's and one of my best friend's teams are shaping up to avoid relegation. Wales are currently losing, which could ruin my life for the next week or so, but here's hoping they'll pull their fingers out.

This is something of an overdue post, what with the following songs frying my mind about two weeks ago, but the need to archive is no less consuming.

Arlo is a band I first heard while working on a new routine of recycling old copies of the NME. The routine was to read through, cut out articles of bands I liked but didn't know at time of publication and to choose one album by a band I hadn't heard of from the reviews section to listen to. They're a band who, as far as I can tell, ceased to exist after releasing two records on Sub Pop, the second of which being 2002's Stab The Unstoppable Hero. This song is a three-minute-flat, all-chorus, power-pop, Thermals-esque belter off said LP.

MP3: Arlo - Runaround

This song was picked up on its name alone and, in what is roughly a 1/50 chance, turned out to be a lo-fi gem along the lines of a really drunk Times New Viking. The main riff is incisive and strong while fuzz and bass dominates the rest of the mix, leaving only enough room for clipped vocals recorded at a two-dollar in-store booth. Solid fuzzy pop from Seattle.



MP3: Intelligence - Reading And Writing About Partying

the water, it was wet

Roughly once a month I find a song that gets all the way under my skin, crawling around my internal organs. Sleep proves only to be temporary relief from the beat or lyric or melody that I enjoy the most at any given time; I fall asleep with it rattling around my skull, I wake up mouthing the words.



This week the song is 'The World Is Falling' by Mirah, a tragedy set against a story of a doomed vessel on its final voyage. It's the second track on her forthcoming album, (a)spera, on which she has assistance from Phil Elverum of Mount Eerie/Microphones and a few Decemberists. No information on which of the album's tracks Phil works on, but I'd bet a wage on this being one of them. Brooding picked guitar sidles along with a muted beat as Mirah hushes all to the ground around her before a contained implosion sees the last ninety seconds build and build until the captain of the ship concedes.

MP3: Mirah - The World Is Falling

Gentle Friendly are a band I know very little about, other than the drummer used to be in fidget-pop band Hundreds, Tens and Units and that they've released a cassette, an EP and concocted a strange mix of eighties songs available over at No Pain In Pop's blog - click!
Just one more thing I know about this band: their track 'Five Girl Night' was possibly my favourite of last year.

MP3: Gentle Friendly - Five Girl Night