Of all of the current crop of bands who could be described as chamber pop, Brighton quintet The Miserable Rich stand out as that which embrace the concept most whole heartedly. While other bands use the chamber pop sound to add an extra dimension to their folky or indie backbone, The Miserable Rich are as pure as they come. Strip James De Malplaquet’s timbrous vocals from the mix and what you have here could easily form part of the soundtrack to a BBC period drama, so baroque is their sound.

Somerhill , a preposterously pretty song about hidden love in a small town, will be the first release from their forthcoming album, the follow up to the velvety 12 Ways To Count.

Somerhill, backed with Bye Bye Kitty is available for download now from i-Tunes and Boomkat. The album Of Flight And Fury will follow in May.

The Miserable Rich MySpace is here.

Mark Linkous, frontman with Sparklehorse, has, according to a family statement, taken his own life.

If you aren’t familiar with Sparklehorse, you should take the time to investigate. It would be a fitting tribute.

The Sparklehorse MySpace is here.

The uber-prolific (he recently announced that he was set to release 50 free ‘bootleg’ albums, each comprising improvised songs) Devonte Hynes returns with an impressively expansive record and UK tour.

Life Is Sweet! Nice To Meet You is the second offering from the former Test-Icicle in his Lightspeed Champion guise and pushes his sound into new territories.  The big production and melodramatic sound (Hynes doesn’t just wear his heart on his sleeve, he positively staples it to the cuff and reaches his arms out to you, all the time serenading  you with his pleading voice) mark this album out as being like Mika, but for music-lovers.

Hynes has been hugely ambitious with his sound, boldly chucking all sorts into the pot to create a genre-defying record – where else could you find the country-funk of recent single Marlene? Where else could you find the pairing of jaunty Eighteenth Century harpsichord and sci-fi keyboards of The Big Guns Of Highsmith? Somehow, he’s pulled it off. Life Is Sweet! Nice To Meet You is an almost maddeningly addictive record.

Not content with that and his self-bootlegging, Hynes and friends have put together what they call a  ‘TV show trailer’ featuring a medley of Lightspeed Champion hits and popular b-side 69 Année Erotique, a cover of the Serge Gainsbourg classic and announced a string of UK dates. (Details below)

Hynes will also find time on May 10^th to release a single, Madame Van Damme. ‘Kill me,baby won’t you kill me?’ he implores in the song…chances are he’ll have already worked himself to death.

Full tour dates are:

1          May           Leeds - Live at Leeds at Stylus

3          May           Nottingham – Bodega

5          May           Glasgow - King Tuts

6          May           Manchester -Deaf Institute

7          May           Newcastle - Cluny

9          May           Birmingham – O2 Academy 3

10        May           London - Heaven

11        May           Portsmouth - Wedgewood Rooms

13        May           Norwich - Arts Centre

14        May           Bristol – Academy 2

15        May           Cambridge- Haymakers

Of all of the current crop of bands who could be described as chamber pop, Brighton quintet The Miserable Rich stand out as that which embrace the concept most whole heartedly. While other bands use the chamber pop sound to add an extra dimension to their folky or indie backbone, The Miserable Rich are as pure as they come. Strip James De Malplaquet’s timbrous vocals from the mix and what you have here could easily form part of the soundtrack to a BBC period drama, so baroque is their sound.

Somerhill , a preposterously pretty song about hidden love , will be the first release from their forthcoming album, the follow up to the velvety 12 Ways To Count.

Somerhill, backed with Bye Bye Kitty will be released 8^th March on Humble Soul Records. The album Of Flight And Fury will follow on 31st March.

The band have also announced the following UK tour dates.

February

25^th Cellar, Oxford

26^th Folk House, Bristol

27^th With the Willkommen Orchestra, King’s Palace, London

March

2^nd Cluny, Newcastle

3^rd The Yorkshire House, Lancaster

4^th Glee Club, Birmingham

5^th The Black-E, Liverpool

6^th Red Rooms, Glossop

7^th The Deaf Institute, Manchester

The Miserable Rich MySpace is here.

Portland noise-pop trio Quasi’s eighth album, their first since 2006’s When The Going Gets Dark, sees them walking the line between the dirty guitar sound of the Stooges and the spiky melodies of Sonic Youth.

American Gong is a battle between sprawling noisescapes and catchy pop riffs, best captured on Bye Bye Blackbird, a slice of sixties Mersey Beat which jangles along nicely before repeatedly collapsing into a snarling maelstrom of distortion and wailing guitars. It’s wonderful stuff.

Elsewhere, Little White Horse is a helter-skelter paced sonic explosion and Rockabilly Party sounds like a Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton duet rewritten by a Bandwagonesque-era Teenage Fanclub.

The band have also announced European tour dates which include a performance at All Tomorrow’s Parties, curated this year by Pavement.

14/05/10 : All Tomorrow’s Parties – Minehead (UK)
16/05/10 : Paradiso – Amsterdam (NL)
17/05/10 : Tsunami – Köln (D)
18/05/10 : AB – Brussel (B)
19/05/10 : C-Halle – Berlin (D)
20/05/10 : Hafen 2 – Offenbach (D)
21/05/10 : 59:1 – Munich (D)
22/05/10 : Rocker Fest @ Covo Club – Bologna (I)
24/05/10 : Point Ephemere – Paris (F)
25/05/10 : The Freebutt – Brighton (UK)
26/05/10 : Hoxton  Square Bar & Kitchen – London (UK)
27/05/10 : Night & Day – Manchester (UK)
28/05/10 : Captains Rest – Glasgow (UK)

American Gong is released by Kill Rock Stars in the U.S. and Domino in the UK and Europe on 22nd February.

Quasi’s MySpace is here.

New independent record label, One Bird Records, will be officially launched at Puregroove in London on February 24th.

After meeting at a gig they were both reviewing, founders Laura Scott and Natalie Shaw decided to form a new label aimed at putting some soul into buying downloads.

One Bird, which will be a digital singles label, allows fans to purchase the single with limited edition liner notes designed by up and coming artists. ‘We  want to bring a tangibility back to the ever-present digital download, and make the single precious once again,’ Laura and Natalie state.

The label also aim to nurture their bands by keeping management and PR in-house.

To celebrate the launch of the label, One Bird is throwing a party at Puregroove. Pop along for a chance to find out what One Bird is all about, listen to its founders spin some of their favourite records and check out a small exhibition of artists’ reinterpretations of their favourite album covers.

Visit One Bird Records here.

Manchester artist Michael Gutteridge is currently showing ten brand new paintings in a joint exhibition with Dia David at Mooch Art Gallery, Manchester. The exhibition runs until 2nd March and admission is free.

The exhibition’s title, All That Jazz, refers to how elements of jazz have been utilised as a source of inspiration in the artwork of both artists featured at the gallery.

Michael’s earlier work has previously been used in a video by Manchester band The Tides.

For more information visit the Mooch Gallery website here.

Or better still, visit Michael’s site here.

Mooch Art Gallery can be found at The Triangle,

37 Exchange Square,

Manchester M4 3TR

If you are one of the many people who have been admiring Jo Cameron’s beautiful Suitcase Orchestra logo, you can now cut a dash in a Suitcase Orchestra t-shirt. Or perhaps a tote bag or a mug are more your style.

Visit the Suitcase Orchestra Storechestra for more information.

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