Early February,  the sky is uniformly cardboard grey and the first big chunk of summery pop music has plopped through the letterbox of Suitcase Orchestra HQ.

In The Sun by the deceptively confusingly named She & Him (Is it Him & Her? He & She? His & Hers? Hers & His?) is two minutes and fifty four seconds of shimmering sunshine pop. Aided and abetted by Tilly and the Wall, the result sounds something like Carly Simon sings Badly Drawn Boy, with pretty piano, subtle orchestration and an immediately catchy melody.

In The Sun will be the first single off the second She & Him album, Volume 2, the ingeniously titled follow up to their 2008 debut Volume 1, and will be released on March 15th with the album following on April 5th.

The summery feel is continued with the single’s second track, a cover of the Beach Boys‘ I Can Hear Music.

Owen Pallett will release Lewis Takes Off His Shirt as the first single from his recent album, Heartland, on March 29^th.

Lewis Takes Off His Shirt, features Owen’s trademark looped violin and vocals augmented by the Czech Symphonic Orchestra and comes very close to Pallett’s stated aim of ‘putting so many notes on the page that the paper turned black’, with its layers of electronica, strings and flute which build to an ecstatic crescendo

Simon Bookish has remixed album track  Keep The Dog Quiet which is available as a free download here.

Following his recent show at the Union Chapel in London, Owen Pallett will return to the UK and Ireland for a handful of dates in March with support on all shows except for Dublin coming from Next Life.

Full dates are as follows:

MAR 18 DUBLIN – WHELAN’S

MAR 25 CARDIFF  – MILLENIUM MUSIC HALL

MAR 26 LONDON  – KOKO

MAR 27 LIVERPOOL  – RAINBOW WAREHOUSE

MAR 28 MANCHESTER – THE DEAF INSTITUTE

Craig Fortnam, the creative heart of the North Sea Radio Orchestra, is the man behind Arch Garrison who are very much a pared down version of his mother ship. The lush orchestration has been stripped away to reveal a very English folk record.

Fortnam is evidently fond of the same records that Midlake’s Tim Smith has been immersing himself in, though while the American take on Fairport Convention,  Fotheringay, Mellow Candle and the like sounds bleak and wintry, this is a much sunnier sounding record.

While at times it does sail perilously close to the historical re-enactment society wind, particularly on Thames Fluvius, a medieval sounding instrumental in the Greensleeves mould, the album works best when the folksy feel is tempered with often unexpected layering of sound and use of instruments which on paper have no place on a record like this. The finest moment of the whole album comes  in The Days Don’t Feel The Same – the album’s standout track, when Fortnam’s beautifully finger picked guitar drops out to be replaced momentarily by a squelchy synthesiser which sounds like it has been sampled from a Pacman game.

Other highlights include Here’s To The End Of The Road and Stone On The Pound, both of which have something of Ray Davies in his more pastoral moments about them, while Fortnam’s vocals bring to mind Gregory Webster of indie janglers The Razorcuts, who were themselves the nearest thing the C86 generation got to authentic British folk rock.

King Of The Down will be released on Double Six Records on 22^nd February.

Arch Garrison’s Myspace is here.

A fraction shy of two years since their last album, Beach House have taken a great leap forward on their third long player. Their love of Phil Spector has been placed at the forefront of their sound and the production effects dial has been cranked round from the ‘Dreamy/Woozy’ setting to ‘Wall-of-Sound’.

Teen Dream is a big sounding record with everything seemingly up in the mix.  The sleepy wash of droning guitars and lullaby vocals has been replaced by twangy reverb heavy guitars, looping organs, scratchy hip hop beats and Victoria Legrand’s suddenly soaring voice. It’s the most startling vocal transformation since a young Barry White awoke one morning with his testicles an inch closer to the ground.

Legrand and co-Beach Houser Alex Scally suddenly find themselves subject to a fair amount of mainstream media attention, shifting them from cult band to being cited as essential listening for 2010. This may well be due to their close links with Grizzly Bear who frequently mention them in dispatches and who are again taking the Baltimore duo out on tour with them.

There’s certainly a dash of Grizzly Bear’s sound to Teen Dream – the album was produced by Chris Coady who lists the Grizzlies on his CV and the pounding organ on Walk In The Park more than echoes the intro to Two Weeks (on which Legrand contributed backing vocals). Never though does this record feel like Grizzly Bear-Lite. This is a bold ambitious album which will undoubtedly and deservedly muscle its way into many an end-of-year review.

Before touring with Grizzly Bear, Beach House play a handful of dates at small venues. With the British broadsheets salivating so profusely, it may be the last chance to catch them in such intimate settings. February
10 Glasgow King Tuts
11 Salford Islington Mill
12 Leeds Brudenell Social Club
14 Belfast Speakeasy
16 Cardiff Arts Centre
17 London Bush Hall

What this album is, is a collection of well written, perfectly executed songs. Inspired by British folk-rock, but thankfully with none of the twee shrillness that often accompanied that particular sub-genre, The Courage of Others is in itself a fine album. What it isn’t however, is The Trials of Van Occupanther and ultimately, and unfortunately, that is what may define Midlake’s third album.

Nobody expects a band to try to remake the same album over and over, but what The Courage of Others lacks is the variety of its forerunner. There’s none of the exhilarating rush of Roscoe or Head Home; none of the sparkle of Bandits; none of the pounding surge of Young Bride and the only time it comes close to the stripped bare beauty of Branches is on Fortune, placed slap-bang in the middle of the album to punctuate what is otherwise very much a samey sounding album.

Had this album been released before Van Occupanther, it would have probably been hailed as a great leap forward but coming as a follow up, and especially as so hotly anticipated as it is given the hiatus between the two albums, it seems like a step backwards. Which is a shame as individually, each song is perfectly fine but as a collection serves only to remind you how great The Trials of Van Occupanther was.

Thirty five years into their musical odyssey, Cluster return with their latest collection of gentle beats, bleeps and beeps. Qua, released on Klangbad / Broken Silence on February 15^th is, according to the sleeve notes, ‘like a toy caravan of dark, fast camels, loaded with alien and precious drams’.

Having been unable to track down such a toy caravan of dark fast camels etc, Suitcase Orchestra is unable to verify this claim. We are able to state however, that if you like your electronica  a little left of centre, this may well be an album you ought to investigate further. Like the Orb meets Steve Reich. Or like a toy caravan of dark, fast camels, loaded with…oh, let’s not go there again.

Cluster’s Myspace is here.

Charlotte Gainsbourg’s 2006 album 5:55 saw her collaborate with Jarvis Cocker, Neil Hannon, Air and producer Nigel Godrich. This time on IRM she chooses only one muse, Beck. IRM is the French acronym for Magnetic Resonance Imaging, the equipment used to save her life after a brain haemorrhage following a water skiing accident.

Musically, Beck introduces loops, strings and syrupy treated vocals while Gainsbourg switches between a breathy French whisper and nervous English recital. One suspects that the Beatles White Album is high on both protagonist’s playlists, with double-tracked vocals, reverse loops and glass onions.

At its best, the collaboration yields delights such as the poppy Heaven Can Wait, remixed by Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor for its single release, and Time of the Assassins and the delicious waltz In The End.

• Charlotte Gainsbourg Official Website
• IRM on iTunes

The somewhat excellent Wild Beasts are headlining a UK & Irish tour in March to support their forthcoming single We Still Got The Taste Dancin’ On Our Tongues.  Full dates are below. Support on all UK dates will come from Erland & The Carnival and Lone Wolf, except for London Koko on March 22nd, when Everything Everything and Esben And The Witch will support. Full line-ups for the Irish shows are yet to be confirmed.

Wild Beasts describe the single as ‘a tale of insatiable lust, full of twisted bawdiness and louche adventures’, which sounds like a great night out if nothing else.

Tour Dates are as follows:

03 March – Portsmouth, UK – Wedgewood Rooms

04 March – London, UK – Koko

11 March – Warwick, UK – Warwick Uni

12 March – Bournemouth, UK – 60 Million Postcards

13 March – Leicester, UK – Uni Queens Hall

15 March – Norwich, UK – Waterfront

16 March – Exeter, UK – Phoenix

18 March – Liverpool, UK – Academy 2

19 March – Newcastle, UK – Cluny

20 March – Manchester, UK – Academy 2

22 March – London, UK – Koko – with support from Everything Everything and Esben And The Witch

25 March – Galway, Ireland – Roisin Dubh – support TBC

26 March – Cork, Ireland – Cyprus Avenue – support TBC

27 March – Dublin, Ireland – Academy – support TBC

Charlie has assembled quite a cast of friends for this his debut album; there are two High Llamas, one Stereolabber and one member of the uber-cool Metronomy on board.

Home/Hidden, a largely instrumental affair, sounds like a semi-acoustic Air or Royksopp, a little more chilled out and with a richer string driven sound that only real instruments can add. It’s somewhere between a fifties cocktail jazz album and the bedtime hour on ClassicFM (if there is such a thing) – but in a good way.

Kicking off with Plan9, the music that will backdrop Take-Hart’s The Gallery in the year 2525, complete with Robot-Tony-Hart, the album meanders along fuzzily for just over half an hour.

Fransisca’s Theme is the most straightforward of the tunes on the album – achingly beautiful strings over a softly bubbling vibraphone. The strings are back with maximum effect on Cortot No6, a delightful slice of chamber music that threatens on a number of occasions to mutate into a drum and bass track and one which remixers will be itching to get their hands on. Elsewhere, things are usually mixed up a little more with the addition of treated piano, a Theremin and even the ingenious use of typewriter keys and bell as percussion on Mao, possibly the most inventive use of a rhythm track since Brian Wilson taped Paul McCartney chopping carrots for the Smiley Smile track Vegetables.

There’s a very cinematic feel to this – Telephone Song would make an ideal piece of incidental music, with its jaunty yet haunty piano and slightly discordant harpsichord sound. Expect to hear various bits and bobs from this album crop up in adverts and TV shows and in a couple of years time when you’re nestled in your cinema seat making a mental note to check the credits to find out who wrote the score, don’t be at all surprised to read the name Charlie Alex March.

Home/Hidden is released February 1^st on LoAF Recordings.

Charlie Alex March’s Myspace is here.

Even if you’ve never heard of him, you will have heard him. Owen Pallett is the man behind the strings on both of the Arcade Fire albums; he wrote the huge Scott Walker-esque musical backdrop to the Last Shadow Puppets’ album and has worked with The Hidden Cameras, The Pet Shop Boys and Mika, amongst others. His name first quite literally struck a chord here when he orchestrated one of Suitcase Orchestra’s Top 10 Albums of 2009 Luxury Pond’s eponymous album.

While hiding in the sleeve notes of these other albums, Pallett has previously released two of his own albums using the name Final Fantasy, Has A Good Home and the less than brilliantly titled He Poos Clouds. For this album, he has ditched the Final Fantasy moniker and is just plain old Owen Pallett.

The orchestration, recorded with the Czech Symphony in Prague, is very much in evidence here, though rarely in a straightforward form. Strings and horns are looped, chopped up and generally messed about with to make a gloriously unconventional pop record but one which never strays into avant-garde territory or ever becomes less than very listenable.

Keep The Dog Quiet comes over as a Faithless track, stripped of the drums, it’s pulsing use of strings acting as its own rhythm section. Elsewhere, Red Sun No.5 sounds like a reconstructed Pet Sounds era Beach Boys song while Lewis Takes Off His Shirt comes very close to Pallett’s stated aim of ‘putting so many notes on the page that the paper turned black’, with its layers of electronica, strings  and flute which builds and builds to an ecstatic crescendo.

The Lewis in question is the narrator of the album, a young ultra-violent farmer in the fictional world of Spectrum. As I said, it’s a very unconventional pop record.

Heartland by Owen Pallett is available now on Domino.

Owen Pallett’s Myspace is here.