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.

A film is always better for having a specially written soundtrack rather than a thrown together mish mash of songs by different artists. Always better. Nobody would ever convince me that Breakfast at Tiffany’s would have been improved by being backed by a selection of late 1950’s pop instead of Henry Mancini’s masterful collage of cocktail jazz, or that the Italian Job was anything less than the ultimate caper movie for having had Quincy Jones at the musical helm.  So it’s good to see that some people still care enough to insist on an original score.

This, the third album by the Ralfe Band, provides the backdrop to writer and director Paul King’s Bunny and The Bull, a road movie set entirely within the confines of a flat.

For me, the great thing about a deliberately written film score is the way that the artist can come at the same piece of music from different directions. In this case, the same melody is presented in a wistful piano track, as French folk music and surfaces in Atlantis Rising which somehow manages to shift from a delicate baroque piano piece into a sixties Hammond organ groove into something sounding like early Madness playing at a North African bazaar.

Elsewhere, as the film visits several European countries, without ever escaping the four walls of the flat, the soundtrack follows, adding mandolins, accordions, viola and electronic instruments to the core of piano. The piano sound that the band wanted was in fact so important to them that they left it outside in the snow to make it sound ‘more degraded’. Like I said, it’s good to see that some people still care enough.

Like all good soundtracks, it sounds cinematic while also standing on its own two feet as an album in its own right, largely down to the fact that the band resisted the temptation to litter the album with dialogue from the film. A largely instrumental affair, when vocals do appear they seem to be in some way intruding, it moves along at a sedate pace before sporadically bursting into life in moments like the aforementioned Atlantis Rising, the fairground ska of Museum and the mariachi flavoured Fiesta Song.

Bunny and the Bull is available for digital download now and will be released on CD by Ghost Ship Records in the UK on February 1^st.

The Ralfe Band can be found here.

Ignore the fact that one of the stand out tracks on this album is called Summerland and you have the very essence of a wintry album. Sparse yet pretty, clear and crisp, The Woodlands sparkle like the frostiest of January mornings.

Nothing is rushed, nothing is overblown – it’s all very simplistic stuff, but very beautiful with it. Essentially the strummed musings of married couple Hannah and Samuel Robertson, the songs are added their frosty shimmer by sporadically dropping in strings, piano, accordion and glockenspiel overlaid with Hannah’s vocals which are not so much whispered as sighed. This is an album which demands that you listen to it with strained ears.

‘Such light shines so bright through the winter’ Hannah sings on the album’s closing track, neatly summing up the album’s contribution to the Suitcase Orchestra playlist over the last few weeks.

They have also done the Suitcase Orchestra Q & A, below, in which they give the best answer that anyone has ever, or will ever, give to the question What is the worst record in your collection?

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

Hannah:  If only one, then Summerland.  The song came from a deep and beautiful well I found within myself.  It was like meeting a truer version of myself.  It tells of a land that I had dreamed of and longed for and found inside me all at the same time.  Beautiful and magical and enchanting!  It is both figurative and literal.  Summerland is probably my favourite song on the album.  I feel like after writing this song, something was solidified in my mind and I began to believe in myself as a songwriter and what Samuel and I were creating together.  It was a swirly, euphoric moment, and the song has always reminded me of it ever since.

Samuel:  Summerland is a good representation of a lot of the elements that show up in our songs on the album.  It has an innocent and untainted quality, without being naïve to the threads of darkness that run concurrently through the experience.  It has a quality of otherness.  Both mysterious and familiar.   It is a poetic song with images and melodies that continue to echo in your head long after listening.

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

Wow.  So much pressure.  Not only making all the necessary preparations for space travel to the moon (do they even have in-flight snacks anymore?), but also the tremendous pressure of choosing just one album?  An album that not only defies exclusion, but gravity as well?  At least we can choose two between us, and share them with each other when we get there.  So together we choose:

Seabear – The Ghost That Carried Us Away

MGMT  –  Oracular Spectacular

What was the last album you bought?

Hannah:  Au Revoir Simone – Still Night, Still Light

Samuel:   Florence & The Machine – Lungs

Tell us an interesting fact.

If you mean an interesting fact in general:  More children, women and men are held in slavery right now than over the course of the entire trans-Atlantic slave trade (International Justice Mission).

If you mean an interesting fact about us:  We both speak Spanish.

If you mean an interesting fact about our music:  We have two songs (Until The Day Dims and Day To Day) featured in a newly released international feature film from Greenland called Nuummioq that makes its world premier at the Sundance Film Festival and then off to more of the international festival circuit.  We are excited.

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

Folded Light

Catherine Feeny

Horse In The Sea

What film would you be a character in?

Hannah:  Chocolat

Samuel:   Hawaii, Oslo

Recommend a book.

Hannah: The Great Divorce – C.S. Lewis

Samuel: The History Of Love – Nicole Krauss

What’s the worst record in your collection?

Samuel:  In ninth grade my friend Ben Merris and I joined together as a doubles tennis team, mostly as a joke because neither of us had played tennis before.  Our record during the regular season was 0-9.  That’s zero wins and nine losses.  As in, we lost every single match.  At the end of the season, every team from every school in the city was allowed to participate in the city tournament.  The big dance.  Shockingly enough, we won our first match.  Shock upon shock, we won our next match.  Inexplicably, and to the utter astonishment of every soul in sight, we won the next as well.

A gradual buzz began to build around the tournament that some miscreant loser doubles team was slicing through the competition and steadily advancing.  We were those miscreants.  Tennis miscreants on fire.  Our miraculous ascent through the junior high pantheon of tennis elites simply could not be foiled.  Something just happened, some mistroke of fortune or stroke of misfortune, and we were hurled through the tournament brackets with our rackets blazing and our eyes gazing incredulously ahead at the little plastic tennis-man coated with a gold glaze that sat atop a faux-marble base with a little brass placard awaiting the engraving of the tournament winners’ names.  Our names.

We marched through five straight glorious matches to get to the championship, where we fought a close and embittered battle and seized a well-undeserved victory.  With upturned hands and brows, with murmurs and grumblings from astounded and unquestionably higher calibre opponents, and with a euphoric disbelief at the feat we had accomplished, Ben and I walked through a shower of applause that swelled from hesitation to elation as we claimed our trophy that decreed the worst and best record of our lives.

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

What do you enjoy in life outside of music?

Hiking through Forest Park in the Portland hills.  Making our own kombucha tea.  We love watching foreign films at home, finding affordable happy hour food specials, laughing ridiculously with friends, visiting family, travelling to new places with new adventures, inventing recipes, brainstorming art ideas, eating olives, browsing second-hand stores, showering together at night, talking about Europe, make fun of each other’s quirks, hoping.

The Woodlands can be found here.

To celebrate the release of their third long player, Die Stadt Muzikanten, in their native Canada , Woodpigeon’s Mark Hamilton found a bunch of answers to go with the questions we sent him. Amazingly, they match up. Almost.

While you read this ingenious coupling of question and answer, have a listen to Empty-Hall Sing-Along from Woodpigeon’s new album.Empty-Hall Sing-Along

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

Whenever I’m asked this question, I always think of the most recent song I’ve recorded or written. I think the most recent song one finishes is always the most accurate portrait of who you are musically at that exact moment. (And the song I’m thinking of is part of an EP project for later in 2010).

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

Most likely something timeless. There’s a piece by Brahms that wakes me up every morning that I don’t think I could live without. (More specifically, it’s the Concerto for violin, violincello and orchestra in A-minor).

What was the last album you bought?

John Jacob Niles’ ‘The Ballads of John Jacob Niles’.

Tell us an interesting fact.

It’s impossible to keep your eyes open when you sneeze. (Your eyes would fall out).

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

A trio of wonderful friends: Laura Leif (aka The Secret Brothers), Ryan Doyle, and Kris Ellestad.

What film would you be a character in?

Sometimes I feel that my life is enough of a movie as it is. But since I get to choose, I’d probably select someone who lives a long happy life (and scores the hottest guy).

Recommend a book.

‘Life: A User’s Manual’ by Georges Perec.

What’s the worst record in your collection?

It’s long gone — I did a clear-away of that stuff about 8 months ago and haven’t looked back.

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

Write your own questions! Otherwise, how about, “Would you prefer cash or cheque for your time?” Ha.

Die Stadt Muzikanten is released on January 12th on Boompa Records in Canada.

Way back in the mists of time, when Suitcase Orchestra first crawled, blinking in the light,  from the primordial swamps, chamber pop maestro Andrew Morgan recommended we check out Julie London. Well, we knew all about the delights of ‘Cry Me A River’ and sadly, Julie is no longer with us so we’ve made it our business to find a more than suitable replacement.

Described by someone at Radio 2 as a ‘real old school beauty’, Louise Hull does indeed have more than a hint of days gone by about her with her 1950’s film star looks and her rich, dark voice which recalls the aforementioned Miss London and a whole host of other female jazzers. She looks and sounds as if she should have a cigarette perched delicately in a cigarette holder coiling wisps of smoke around her face as she sings.

But, for all of the jazz imagery and vocals, her music has a more folky feel with picked guitar, some soft strings and a light dusting of xylophone. It’s the sort of thing Jools Holland might well have had on Later had he not lost his way.

Having started out in a four piece a cappella group and a folk duo, Louise started her solo career with an ambitious solo tour of America. Since then she has supported Martha Wainwright and Alessi’s Ark and recorded an album with Roxy Music producer John Anthony. She is currently working on an E.P. which should see daylight soon.

In the meantime, enjoy a slow waltz with someone special to this offering or check out Louise’s MySpace here.

Christopher-and-I -  click to listen