Here We Go Magic have announced details of a new single, plus confirmed more UK shows for late summer. Casual, one of the stand out tracks on current album Pigeons, will be released on 13th September through Secretly Canadian and will be available on CD and download.

Recently proclaimed the best band at Glastonbury by Thom Yorke, the band head out across the UK for a handful of shows in support of the single.

To read the Suitcase Orchestra review of Pigeons and our Q & A with Here We Go Magic, click here.

September

3rd Ireland Portlaoise Electric Picnic – Crawdaddy stage

4th Jersey Royal Showground Jersey Festival

7th London Hoxton  Bar & Grill (headline show)

9th France Tourcoing Le Grand Mix ‘Radar Festival’

10th Salisbury Larmer Tree Gardens End of the Road Festival

11th Isle of Wight Bestival Rock n Roll stage

14th Glasgow Captain’s Rest

16th London The Troxy Campfire Trails (w/ Wild Beasts )

18th Manchester Deaf Institute Pull Yourself Together

Luke Temple’s mind, it would appear, is somewhere worth getting inside if the soundtracks to his life (and the answers for our Q&A) it produces are anything to go by. Barely a year since his first using the Here We Go Magic banner, Pigeons, a bright psychedelic assemblage of ideas, marks a crystallising of their style.

The album is a set of neatly positioned contradictions. It is by turns intense and overwhelming yet distant and aloof; jittery and manic yet super-chilled. In its feel however, it is always tethered to the telling lyric from Casual; ‘It’s four in the morning’. Whatever reason you may have for being awake at four in the morning and whatever your emotional state might be, Pigeons has it covered.

Admittedly lacking anything so spectacularly awe-inspiring as the dizzyingly hypnotic Fangela which marked the stand out moment of last year’s eponymous debut (and the stand-out song of the whole year) Pigeons is nevertheless an album to immerse yourself in. Opening with, by their standards, two furiously fast tracks, the pace returns to a customary Here We Go Magic rate for the shimmering dream pop of Casual, a vibe which is reprised on F.F.A.P. and Land Of Feeling which feels like the  Cocteau Twins trying their hands at Philly Soul. Sandwiched neatly between this dream pop soundscape is Old World United, a punk anthem recorded inside a 1980’s Pac Man machine.

Temple’s mind throws up two further gems to close the album. Vegetable Or Native is a tribal chant from beyond the Solar System and I love You Herbie, Now I Know could easily have been lifted from a Sun Ra album.

Pigeons is available from June 7^th on Secretly Canadian and Western Vinyl

Luke Temple’s feverishly off-beam brain has also been chewing over 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?

Sam Kinison, in the pergatory waiting room, to help him figure out which way to go. It would depend on what his last sin was.

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

The Big Biscuit-  Last Stand, Hurrah For Hope!

On the subject of being sent to the moon, what 3 things would definitely be in your suitcase?

Power converter, lonely planet guide, two cases of thin skin.

What film would you be a character in?

The Weasel and Jesus Go On A Date

Tell us an interesting fact.

There’s bees that kill hornets by raising their temperature around the creature to exactly 106 degrees, one degree above where the hornet can survive, the exact degree the bees can survive.

Recommend a book.

Wet Mop Goes Fishing

Which literary character would play you in the book of your life?

Fluffer

What’s the worst record in your collection?

Sick of Tweezer, Give Me Sponge- by T.Cups

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

Q: What’s your name, ceiling?

A: Geronimo!

Visit the Here We Go Magic MySpace here.

Ahead of the release of their second album, Pigeons (review coming soon) Brooklyn band Here We Go Magic have announced further dates to their UK tour.

June 27th        London            Hyde Park – Hard Rock Calling – Bella Union Stage

June 28th        London            Hyde Park  - Serpentine Sessions – Acoustic Stage

July 2nd          Glasgow          King Tut’s

July 13th         Bristol             Thekla

July 15th         Leeds              Brudenell

Sept 3rd          Ireland             Electric Picnic – Crawdaddy stage

Sept 10th         Salisbury        End of the Road Festival

These dates are in addition to the following previously announced dates…

May 13th         Brighton          Alternative Great Escape Fat Cat Furballs night @ The Loft 12am

May 15th         Brighton          Great Escape @ Digital, 8.45pm

May 16th         Bristol             Start The Bus

May 18th         London            The Lexington

May 19th         London            Electric Ballroom w / The New Pornographers

June 26th        Somerset        Glastonbury Festival – Park stage 11.50am

June 26th        Somerset        Glastonbury Festival – Q Queens Head stage 5pm

July 16th         Southwold       Latitude Festival – main stageSept 4th           Jersey             Jersey Live

Sept 11th         Isle of Wight    Bestival – Rock ‘n’ Roll stage

Does this count as a debut? Depending on what you read, either Luke Temple wised up to the fact that the current overload of tiresome singer-songwriters can impact negatively on any artist trading under their own name and changed the name of his act to Here We Go Magic, or he decided enough was enough with his solo work and formed a group instead. It doesn’t really matter as he’s come up with a blinding album which ever way you look at it.

I am a bit late with this one actually. It was released back in February and it’s been lying dormant on my hard drive for a while after being downloaded in an effort to use up some spare eMusic credits but that seems ok as it has a very summery feel and now seems like the perfect time to be delving into it.

Inhabiting the same sort of territory as Department of Eagles, Grizzly Bear and Animal Collective, the basic pattern of the album is one of simple repetition. A catchy hook is repeated and a tune is built up in layers around it. It sounds loose and spacious and it works effortlessly. Opening with ‘Only Pieces’ , a mantra set over an African rhythm, the album really kicks off with the second track ‘Fangela’. This song is so damned good it’s hard to believe that it wasn’t written sooner. It’s basically Simon and Garfunkel’s greatest hits all played at exactly the same time – glorious stuff.

‘Ahab’, which contains, dare I say it, prog influences, chugs along nicely and would sound equally at home on Stuart Maconie’s BBC 6Music ‘Freakzone’ show and nestled on a compilation on early nineties pioneering mod label Acid Jazz.

Throughout the record there is a very evident ambient element to the music and this really comes to the fore on the second half of the album. The aptly titled ‘Ghost List’ is the most gentle of these, a single chord which reverberates for four and a half minutes, growing from a whisper to , well, a slightly louder whisper. The prettiest of the ambient tracks is ‘I Just Want To See You Underwater’, which I curiously read as I Just Want To See Your Underwear on first scan of the tracklisting. (There’s a remix title for you there fellers.)

Then, just as you think the album is fading away in a series of pulsing tones in ‘Babyohbaby – Ijustcan’tstanditanymore’ and ‘Nat’s Alien’, the album finishes with the absurdly catchy waltz ‘Everything’s Big’, which sounds like it came from a sadly abandoned attempt by Ray Davies to write the soundtrack to the classic children’s tv shows ‘Camberwick Green’ and ‘Trumpton.’ Ahh, what a record that would have been…