http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKBDaL0xZ34
White Fence
For The Recently Found Innocent
[Drag City]
White Fence sound like the band Guided by Voices wanted to be, delivering on the ramshackle Nuggets swagger but sidestepping being watered-down with cheap Midwestern beer. Thanks in no part to the exemplary work behind the desk of Ty Segall, The Fence’s latest release is equal parts kaleidoscopic and focussed, setting Presley apart from his innumerable denim jacketed contemporaries. Touching on SydBarrett and Gram Parsons, this is one of the first genuinely indispensable releases of the current psych revival. – Danny Wilson
Spoon
They Want My Soul
[Loma Vista]
A band as old as Wilco, or the National – a mid-1990s creation – Spoon too have settled into a groove,though one more nuzzled on post-punk than either of the aforementioned big hitters. The perennially peripheral Spoon have always managed to evince a real personality by playing much the same groove,to mix nifty studio craftsmanship with immediacy of lo-fi, to sing the soft words of New York Kiss in such a gruff voice. TWMS continues that tradition. – Ian Lamont
Love Inks
Exi
[Republic of Music]
There will most likely be a tendency to compare super-pared back Austin three-piece Exi with the XX (and they didn’t help themselves with the name, right?) but there is a lineage of ultra-minimalist post-rock that runs out of Krautrock through These Marble Giants, Low and others, all of which feed into Love Inks. It takes a certain amount of bravery to appear this naked, but it’s also handy when you don’t have to pick an outfit in the morning. – Ian Lamont
Diamond Dagger
Estate Crudele
[Self-released]
Local analogue buzzer Diamond Dagger deals in both ‘boogie’ and ‘electro boogie’ genres (as per the bandcamp page) as well as propagating what sounds like soundtracks to forgotten or possibly non-existent, made-up movies and computer games on Estate Crudele. On Apollo’s Creed for example,layers of vintage synthistry build sweetly over a krauty beat that feels like it could build infinitely. Only complaint: there’s not more of the likes of last year’s What’s Your Friend’s Name, the DD collaboration with Meljoann. – Ian Lamont
Avi Buffalo
At Best Cuckold
[Sub Pop]
Well this truly is some twee, lily-livered shit. Avi Buffalo continue the tradition of bands irrelevantly using the word ‘buffalo’ in their names (which has been for the most part a straight graph downwards since Buffalo Springfield) by serving up an album’s worth of generic, anaemic gock that would’ve been filler on Music From the OC: Mix 6. Imagine a bad Evan Dando solo record, riddled with devoutly charmless indie whine all over it. – Ian Lamont
Cloud Castle Lake
Dandelion
[Happy Valley]
There’s a particularly enjoyable moment just before the four-minute mark on opening track Sync, when everything is just the opposite of that what the title suggests. Underpinned by some inversion of the funky drummer beat, the guitars, brass and percussion all wander off in various directions, like gravity has momentarily gone offline, but the impression is still one of a band very much in control. It’s indicative of the quality that CCL have been honing while making this big EP, particularly on the powerful, kinetic A-side. – Ian Lamont
Merchandise
After The End
[4AD]
The most recent release from Floridian former punks plunders the same seam of 1980s inspired Breakfast Club balladry as surprise crossover stars of the summer, Future Islands. Merchandise still draw on the kind of navel-gazing sincerity of their emotional hardcore roots but it continually gets undercut by production so knowingly dated it borders on the pastiche. Though, there is an audible giddy thrill from the band as they so often turn to tropes that are frankly a bit naff. Not bad, in fairness, not bad. – Danny Wilson
Interpol
El Pintor
[Matodor]
Interpol are shameless teases, the first 30 seconds of El Pintor hint at a return to the ethereal urban transcendence off their debut *Turn on the Bright Lights* but then, at the drop of a hat, probably a jet-black trilby, they reveal what they are really about, and that is sounding like We Are Scientists. And a single tear rolls down Interpol’s collective cheek as they look at Crawdaddy’s disused shell and theysolemnly whisper to themselves “what happened?” – Danny Wilson
