They wrote the song which named this website, they have their own record label, Double Feauture Records, and now Britta Phillips from Dean and Britta has completed the Suitcase Orchestra Q & A.

If I were to play just one of your songs to someone who hasn’t heard your music, which would it be and why?

Night Nurse… because it’s my favorite.

You are being sent to the moon. You’re allowed to take 1 album. What is it?

Velvet Underground LIVE 1969

What was the last album you bought?

Velvet Underground box set

Tell us an interesting fact.

My 10-year-old step-son has a million of them, but I can’t remember one.

Tell us about a band or singer we might not have heard of who should be featured on Suitcase Orchestra.

Moondog… Cheval Sombre… Stereo Total

What film would you be a character in?

L’Avventura

Recommend a book.

Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes:
I wish it were required reading for every American.

What’s the worst record in your collection?

Britta: We have a huge vinyl and CD collection, so it would take way too long to figure that out… but I’m not fond of the new compilation in MoJo, “Man Machine.” There are a few good songs on it, though.

What question should I always ask in a Q & A? And answer it please

What do you experience when listening to a song you love?
Well… that depends on the particular song, of course, but often it is a similar
feeling to watching someone you are madly in love with from far, far away…

Find out more…

Dean & Britta here

Double Feature Records here

Destiny Disrupted: A History Of The World Through Islamic Eyes here

Fresh from their tour supporting Grizzly Bear, the gloriously hazy Beach House have announced that their third album Teen Dream will be released on January 25^th across Europe (January 22^nd for America). Teen Dream, which was recorded in a converted church, will be accompanied by a DVD which features a video for each track, each having a different director. The album, track listing below, will be supported by an extensive tour with dates to be announced soon.

Beach House – Teen Dream

1. Zebra
2. Silver Soul
3. Norway
4. Walk in the Park
5. Used to Be
6. Lover of Mine
7. Better Times
8. 10 Mile Stereo
9. Real Love
10. Take Care

Beach House Myspace is here.

Static Moves is Belgian group Sukilove’s fourth studio album but somewhat unlikely, given the soundscape it contains, this impressive slab of noise-pop benefits from being recorded almost entirely live, its rough edges failing to detract from the immediacy of the sound. Lead by Pascal Deweze, the band wrote as they recorded and while in places the songs meander and lose focus, overall it feels fresh and spikey with a big wall of sound acting as a backdrop to prettier guitar and keyboard melodies.

Vinyl junkies should be pleased to note that Jezus Factory Records will release a vinyl version of the album on November 2^nd and the band play two London dates at Fighting Cocks and the Hobgoblin on December 1^st and 3^rd respectively. On this basis, they should be well worth investigating.

Sukilove’s Myspace is here.

Bradford Cox: Behind those eyes...

Named after the karaoke machine on which he made his first recordings while still at school back in 1994, Atlas Sound is the solo project of Bradford Cox, better known as the frontman of the mighty Deerhunter.

Cox describes his Atlas Sound output as the ‘ideas that I can’t make work with a five piece rock band’ and Logos definitely has the feel of a stripped back Deerhunter album. Retaining the slightly disturbing psychological lyrical content of Deerhunter, this is a much sparser and dreamy affair – the kind of dream that gnaws at your subconscious without ever revealing its content and leaving you feeling unsettled for days afterwards (fittingly, the album artwork depicts the faceless emaciated figure of Cox himself– enough to give you a disturbed night’s sleep itself)

The undoubted highpoint is Cox’s collaboration with Noah Lennox, Animal Collective’s Panda Bear, on Walkabout, a dizzying piece of pop in which wouldn’t have been out of place in Brain Wilson’s head during the recording of Pet Sounds. The rest of the album proceeds at a much slower pace as it goes about its business of worming its way into your brain.

It’s an unsettling but brilliant album. It’s also a debilitating album – it is impossible to listen to as background music, you simply have to stop what you are doing, lie back and listen. Really Listen.

Logos by Atlas Sound is available now on 4AD Records.

Visit the Atlas Sound Myspace here.

One day I’ll make a film – just so I can have Andrew Morgan write the score. A proper score, like they used to make. His beautifully cinematic music will trail our hero through an autumnal Paris as he outwits his enemies and gets his gal. In the mean time, this will do just fine.

As Long As We’re Together is the first single taken from Morgan’s autumnal Please Kid Remember album, released earlier in the year, though with eight tracks it has more of the feel of a mini-album than an E.P. Presumably, these are the tracks which failed to make the final cut for the album. If that’s the case then Andrew Morgan is clearly a man who has hit his musical stride.

The E.P. picks up exactly where the album left off with a blend of breathless euphoria and misty melancholy, awash with sumptuous string arrangements. There isn’t a single moment on here which isn’t simply glorious.

As Long As We’re Together is released by Broken Horse Records on November 16^th.

Please Kid Remember is available now.

To find out more about Andrew Morgan read his Suitcase Orchestra Q & A here or visit his MySpace here.

He’s a busy bee and that’s a fact. When not making solo electronic-pop records or working with his new band Acres, Acres Jeremy Warmsley can be found on guitar duties for Fanfarlo. Despite his hectic schedule, he has also found time to put together a free acoustic E.P.  5 Versions contains four versions of his own compositions and one by Abba.

Apparently put together in his bedroom in a single day it represents a decent’s day’s work.  How We Became, a jittery piece of electronic on its album release, is now a twinkling folk-pop affair while Lose My Cool maintains its status as Warmsley’s finest hour in its stripped back banjo fuelled format.

Biggest surprise of all is his version of Abba’s One Of Us which gets the layered harmonies treatment and has the feel of a one-man Fleet Foxes about it.

Great stuff…and it’s free. Click here before he changes his mind and starts charging for it.

If you’d like a free sample of Jeremy’s band Acres, Acres you really ought to click here.

I(Heart)Music have made a live Canadian radio session by Woodpigeon, with the help of the Voicescapes vocal ensemble, available for free download. What are you waiting for? Click here.

Stephen Duffy is almost a complete stranger to commercial success. In the early eighties, he found a flicker of fame under the sobriquet Tin Tin“with the hits Kiss Me and Icing on the Cake. He didn’t care for it.

After that, he has been hired by a plethora of record companies and then promptly dropped after sales proved to be disappointing. He’s tried being Duran Duran, Stephen “Tin Tin” Duffy, Dr Calculus, The Lilac Time, Stephen Duffy, Duffy, Stephen Duffy and the Lilac Time. All failed to bother the charts – at least not while he was in the band.

Duffy gives the impression that he didn’t perhaps try his hardest at the promotion and PR game; he doesn’t tour, is rarely found in print, can’t afford videos. He just shrugs in self-deprecation. The only ventures that seem to have resulted in substantial PRS cheques are collaborations with the Bare Naked Ladies and Mr Bob Williams Esq., the latter resulting in millions of CD sales.

If you have a Lilac Time or Stephen Duffy record in your collection, you probably heard of it via word-of-mouth and if you’re like me, you find yourself in the possession of finely-crafted, beautiful music that almost no-one else has heard of.

So at the 30-year mark in his music career, Duffy has produced a film and retrospective compilation album entitled Memory and Desire: 30 Years in the Wilderness with Stephen Duffy & The Lilac Time. The film is part of the Raindance Film Festival and the album is released this week. In a typical anti-commercial piece of curation, the album omits all his singles and instead promotes several b-sides, extra tracks and other ‘hidden gems’.  His biggest hit, Kiss Me, is re-recorded as a funereal dirge.

This shouldn’t put you off. The two-disc set is festooned with unknown delights like An Open Book, the shuffling autobiography of Twenty Three and the Cohen-esque The Postcard. Duffy’s rich melodic delivery is bolstered by exotic acoustic arrangements and sweet harmonies. Lyrically, he is a beat-poet John Betjeman.

Now sporting a terrific beard, Duffy hopes to sweep to obscurity by returning to the charts at #75, “but no higher”. With a carefree shrug of the shoulders he can then move on to make a new album of unmarketable classics.

Which no-one will buy.

• The Lilac Time on Wikipedia
• The Lilac Time Official Site
• Listen to Memory and Desire on Spotify

Robert Kirby: Strings arranger for Nick Drake.

When I was first setting up this site, I had two names in mind for it. In the end I chose Suitcase Orchestra but the other contender was ‘Dear Robert Kirby‘ due to my love of his arrangements for Nick Drake.

Naturally then, I was sad to read that Robert Kirby has died aged 61 following emergency heart surgery.

His string arrangements for Drake’s Five Leaves Left continue to be the benckmark against which all other orchestration on popular music should be judged.

The Westgarth Social Club in Middlesbrough may be an unlikely setting but it’s building an impressive reputation for being one step ahead of the game. So far in 2009 promotors, The Kids Are Solid Gold, have brought, amongst others,  Canadians Woodpigeon, American whispering folksters Horse Feathers and probably most impressively, The Leisure Society who packed the venue out just weeks before landing an Ivor Novello nomination. Tonight the joint headline tour of First Aid Kit and Fanfarlo are at the venue. It is what is says it is on the label – a social club function room – but once the lights go down its as intimate a venue as you would want and a place where bands seem to love to play, with many citing their shows at the Westgarth as tour highlights. It is, in its own way, similar to the Band Room in North Yorkshire, only without the breathtaking scenery outside and having the advantage of having an inside toilet and a good pint of beer on tap.

First Aid Kit specialise in folky harmonising with a distinct Swedish accent, which isn’t surprising as they are from Sweden. They are also sisters and impossibly young to be producing music as well written and performed as this. A mixture of wistfulness and dry wit, their songs are melancholic without being overbearing. Most of their excellent Drunken Trees mini album gets an airing including their cover of Fleet Foxes Tiger Mountain Peasant Song. It’s a huge gamble and it pays off because their voices are strong enough to carry off both the harmonies and the soaring solo impeccably. They are a band that will only get better.

Fanfarlo however are already very much the finished product. Looking like the cast of a Cohen Brothers film, they are a strangely entrancing bunch. Comparisons to Arcade Fire may surprise some but their songs share a similar structure. Where Arcade Fire crank up the noise though, Fanfarlo create a wall of sound by layering strings, horns and keyboards over the guitar and mandolin. Also like Arcade Fire, their lyrics have a literary feel to them and every song becomes a novella read in a voice with more than an echo of David Byrne.

Three encores tell their own story and by the end you feel they have probably just about run out of songs, with their debut album Reservoir having formed the backbone of the set. The only mystery is how the almost overwhelmingly great Fire Escape, the highlight of the album, is almost overlooked. Called for by the audience the band concede that ‘Oh yeah, we could play that.’ What follows is about the most you can hope for from live music. The song is worthy of obsession, which is handy as that’s where I’m headed with it.

Already hailed by David Bowie, gaining increasing radio play and having just completed a sell out tour of America, there probably won’t be too many more opportunities to see Fanfarlo in a venue like this. That’s a shame, but as Fanfarlo move onwards and upwards, the Westgarth will be most probably be providing a home for next year’s next big thing.

To find out what’s up next at the Westgarth click here.

Fanfarlo live here.

First Aid Kit can be found here.