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Animal Kingdom
“All you want is a rainbow,” offers the refrain to Animal Kingdom’s dreamy, elegiac album opener ‘Chalk Stars’. “And all you get is the rain.” It’s a contrast that also offers an insight into the London-based quartet’s brand of melancholy music that counters pop hooks with unpredictable arrangements and a dark, reflective soul. Although Animal Kingdom’s members enjoy a long shared history, the band has operated as a serious prospect for the past two years. Initially acoustically focused (“Everyone talks over an acoustic set,” explains bassist Hamish Crombie.
Avenged Sevenfold
As musicians, the members of Avenged Sevenfold are virtuosos in a time when being accomplished artists seemingly means so little. They are inquisitive and never fully satisfied with their own work. They seek to grow and improve every day, regardless of the obstacles or costs involved. They are a rock band. They are rock stars. They are Avenged Sevenfold. Avenged Sevenfold, the album, is a self-produced effort. While the band shared co-production credit on 2005’s million-selling City Of Evil with Mudrock, this new album is solely their responsibility — and they’re primed to accept it.
Biffy Clyro
Drive for an hour so outside Glasgow, you'll find an unassuming little town called Ayr. It's a pretty but unremarkable place; certainly not the sort of place you expect revolutions to start. But then, if we know anything about revolutions, it's that they never happen quite when or where you expect.
You'll have heard of biffy clyro before of course. About how Simon Neil and schoolfriend twins James and Ben Johnston formed their first band as young teenagers at school in the nearby town of Kilmarnock in 1995 over a shared love of experimental rock and hardcore. You'll know something of how they earned an army of rabidly devotional fans - christened Team Biffy – who followed them across the country and beyond, their hearts swelling with the searing emotion; their minds expanded by the threesome’s inventive rock that somehow managed to hit them in the gut at the same time.
Billy Talent
Appearances can be deceiving. By all accounts, Billy Talent is a young band just releasing their second album. Hell, it’s even called II. But like most stories worth hearing, the best part often lies beneath the surface. While II is the Toronto-based quartet’s sophomore record, the number hardly seems appropriate for this group of friends that first began this journey 13 years ago. And it’s those years of grounded experience that kept them from sacrificing II to the dreaded second album curse.
Chiodos
Michigan sextet Chiodos already have a Billboard Top 5 album and 200,000 Stateside sales to their name with their second album ‘Bone Palace Ballet’. Released in North America by indie label Equal Vision, ‘Bone Palace Ballet’ receives a UK release on February 23rd as part of a new deal with Warner Bros. Records.
Cobra Starship
Gabe Saporta was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, a tiny wedge of a country between Argentina and Brazil. At age four he immigrated to Queens with dreams of becoming a rockstar. His father, Diego, who had been a doctor in Uruguay, sold scarves on the streets of Manhattan to support his son's habits. By age twenty, Gabe was well on his way to realizing his dream. In typical rockstar fashion, he crafted existentialist drivel out of his big bag of regurgitated bullshit, developed a messiah complex big enough to house a couple of homeless people, and spread his "gospel" to the four corners of the earth. Also in typical rockstar fashion, he talked a lot of shit, picked fights, and ended up in a bunch of legal battles.
Cute Is What We Aim For
Cute Is What We Aim For is a four-piece power pop band, formed in 2005 in Buffalo, New York and is currently on Fueled By Ramen Records. They released their Billboard 200-charting debut album The Same Old Blood Rush with a New Touch in 2006.
Death Cab For Cutie
When asked to describe Death Cab For Cutie’s sixth studio album, Narrow Stairs, guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Chris Walla characterizes it as “having teeth,” and we can’t think of a more apt summarization of the disc. While many bands in Death Cab For Cutie’s situation would try to recreate the success of hit songs like “Soul Meets Body” or “I Will Follow You Into The Dark,” instead the band have crafted the most ambitious and varied album of their career by simply doing what they’ve been doing since they formed in Bellingham, Washington a decade ago – made a brilliant record that refuses to pander, while stretching the artistic boundaries of what a Death Cab For Cutie record should sound like.
Deftones
Textural, haunting and evocative, the long-awaited follow-up to 2003’s Deftones is deceptively tuneful and alarmingly heavy, see-sawing between melancholy reflection and jaw-clenching frustration like a manic depressive refusing his meds. “We really wanted to test ourselves with this record,” explains drummer Abe Cunningham. “It’s an album that explores a whole spectrum of sound rather than just switching between heavy stuff and light stuff.”
Elliot Minor
Elliot Minor reaped the rewards that their fiercely devoted hard work, infectious songwriting and natural musicianship deserved when they infiltrated the mainstream with five Top 20 singles and their eponymously titled Top 10 album. Now working on material for their eagerly anticipated second album, 2009 will be the year that they become a household name.
Enter Shikari
Common Dreads is the new album by St. Albans-based quartet Enter Shikari. It was born in a back garden shed in St. Albans after a mental two years (we’ll get to that in a minute) in the lives of these young men. Here, during summer 2008, in a bungalow dubbed The Low built in bassist Chris Batten’s parents’ back garden, the words and music came together.
Esser
Anyone who claims that pop music no longer boasts great characters needs to discover the music of Ben Esser, who records simply as Esser. A 23-year-old Essex boy brought up on UK garage but such a fan of legendary 60s producer Joe Meek that he’s planning to get Meek’s portrait tattooed on his chest, Esser makes music which sounds like the Radio 1 A-List re-imagined by aliens. First single ‘I Love You’, three beguiling minutes of off-kilter loops and vocal samples pulled together with a dead-on pop sensibility and such wonky lyrical observations as “Love can be dangerous/Like a fire in your kitchen”, has already been described by NME as “playschool pirate pop”, while Popjustice acclaimed it as “weird but sort of brilliant”.
Foals
Let’s start at the beginning. Foals are a five-piece dance-rock band currently living in their home town Oxford. Yannis Philippakis (20, vocals/guitar), Edwin Congreave (22, keyboards), Walter Gervers (23, bass), Jimmy Smith (22, guitar) and Jack Bevan (21, drums) met in their native city, where they bonded over a shared sense of humour. Bored with the interchangeable electro records they heard at every party, they decided to make the kind of music they wanted to dance to. “We wanted to make music that was very technical, that wasn’t just party music, but at the same time you could dance to it,” explains Yannis.
Gallows
Welcome to Grey Britain. Welcome to the real Britain: a land of poverty, petty violence, bad diets, bad attitudes. A land of dole queues, decay and dealers; ignorance and Jeremy Kyle DNA tests; of knives and gangs and ASBOs worn as badge of honour. Welcome to Gallows’ new state of the nation address. Grey Britain is Gallows’ second album. It was recorded in 2008 at London’s RAK studios, alongside a 33-piece string section recorded at Air Studios and piano pieces at Abbey Road - with producer Garth ‘GGGarth’ Richardson (Rage Against The Machine, Biffy Clyro) at the controls.
Get Cape Wear Cape Fly
So starts the second album from 21-year-old Sam Duckworth, aka Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. And it really is some journey, one that adds a roomful of musicians to the laptop and guitar that populated his critically acclaimed first album, 2006’s The Chronicles Of A Bohemian Teenager and that quantum leaps his sound into musically broad and defiantly joyful new territory. It marries GCWCF’s proven lyrical talent with expansive orchestration, razor-sharp laptop beats, folkish, fervent guitars and even a touch of afro-beat. “I started making it on my computer as we were touring, but the more I got into it, the less I wanted to make a bedroom sounding record. I wanted a tangible step forwards.” So he called in an orchestra and realised a new vision that is both intimate and raw. You can hear the strings emote – but you can also hear ‘em scrape.
Gnarls Barkley
“There is a part of myself that I would prefer to set free. If my heart could reach its full potential inside of a lifetime, my mind would reel at its accomplishments. But my heart can’t remember which sock goes on first.”
-Gnarls Barkley, in a letter to Gordon Gano
Is love ever "real"? When something ends, did it ever happen at all? If we're forever sealed in our own skins, can we connect with others, or are we doomed to face our own unique struggles alone? How do we know when it’s time to run? Are these the kinds of questions that should be addressed in brisk, infectious pop songs?
Green Day
DATELINE — Burbank, CA — Reprise Records will release Green Day’s long-awaited eighth studio album, entitled 21st Century Breakdown, on Friday, May 15th, 2009. The album is the best-selling trio’s first studio album since 2004’s two-time Grammy Award-winning punk-rock opera American Idiot, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard chart, spawned five hit singles, and went on to sell more than 12 million copies worldwide.
Gym Class Heroes
If you thought Gym Class Heroes were difficult to categorize in the past, with their latest release, The Quilt, it’s literally become impossible – and we mean that in the best way imaginable. In fact, the follow-up to 2006’s gold-selling As Cruel As School Children doesn’t just see the band expanding on their unique blend of hip-hop, rock, soul and punk, but transcending it.
Hadouken
Looking for a band who sum up the genre-vaulting, scene-splicing, boundary-pushing spirit of music in 2008? A band who can skip between grime, emo, drum’n’bass and euphoric rave in the space of a single chorus? A band whose very existence causes division between trad-rock bores and the youthful, enthusiastic, attention-hopping minds of a younger generation? Then you need look no further than Hadouken!, a band who’ve spent the last two years surfing the cutting edge of the music scene, armed with enough sonic ideas to make your common-or-garden indie band run for cover.
Hard-Fi
Hard-Fi are approaching a dramatic new apex in their career. Critically acclaimed, commercially successful and tower block tall, the West London four-piece continue to reinvigorate music with raw, category-defying sounds and instant, merciless beats. Neither bound by musical restriction or industry expectation, they follow their blazing, genre-defining Number 1 debut ‘Stars of CCTV’ with the eagerly anticipated ‘Once Upon A Time In The West’, September 3rd. In short, Hard-Fi are the sound of now.
Jacks Mannequin
Jack’s Mannequin will release their second album ‘The Glass Passenger’ on March 9th on Warner Bros. Records / Sire. The album follows the 2005 debut ‘Everything in Transit’ and represents their first album release in the UK. After his band Something Corporate decided to take a break in the summer of 2004, Andrew McMahon found himself writing a batch of confessional piano-driven songs that explored his return home to Orange County and his attempt to reconnect with the people he had alienated when he left to tour with Something Corporate. With the help of several musician friends (which included Mötley Crüe’s Tommy Lee), McMahon began recording the album ‘Everything in Transit’ under the moniker Jack’s Mannequin.
Kid Rock
After 22 million record sales and a three year hiatus, Kid Rock is back with a brand new album ‘Rock N Roll Jesus’. The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard charts (Kid Rock’s first US number one album) and is set for UK release on July 28 through Atlantic Records. The album is preceded by the single ‘All Summer Long’ on July 14 (July 7 digitally), which has been added straight to the Radio 2 A – list and is already B – listed at Virgin and Capital..
Kids In Glass Houses
Welsh quintet Kids in Glass Houses are set to release their second album ‘DIRT’ on March 29th. The album will be preceded by the Radio 1 play listed single ‘Matters At All’ on March 15th, and will be followed by a headline UK tour in May. The follow-up to 2008’s ‘Smart Casual’ which spawned singles such as ‘Give Me What I Want’, ‘Easy Tiger’ and ‘Saturday’, new album ‘DIRT’ was recorded in Tornillo, Texas at Sonic Ranch Studios with Jason Perry (The Blackout, ‘A’) Parts were also recorded on the road during the New Found Glory tour (who appear on Maybe Tomorrow), and at Jason’s studio in Essex, where the band met Frankie Sandford (The Saturdays) by chance, and invited her to appear on ‘Undercover Lover’.
LIGHTS
Most twenty-two year pop stars have an army of professional image sculptors behind them: producers, songwriters, stylists, abused assistants. But Lights, who grew up all over the world, is used to traveling light, so she decided she'd simplify things by doing all those jobs herself. "It's easy to misconstrue a young girl singer as a total puppet. I am the opposite of that. This is what I do. I am Lights."
Linkin Park
Minutes To Midnight (Machine Shop Recordings/Warner Bros. Records) is the third studio release from Linkin Park (Hybrid Theory, 2000; Meteora, 2003), set for release internationally on May 14, with the North American release one day later on May 15. The album, co-produced by the legendary Rick Rubin and band frontman Mike Shinoda, took 14 months to write and record. This intensive process resulted in the recording of over one hundred rough ideas for songs. The album’s first single, “What I’ve Done,” debuted at #1 at Alternative and #3 on Active charts.
Little Boots
The arrival of Little Boots has signalled something of a collective epiphany. Sometimes you don’t know what has been missing from your life until it’s right there in the room with you, and then you wonder how you ever managed without it. It has been barely a year since her solo project tentatively began, and already Victoria Hesketh is UK pop music’s most talked about new star. Ticking off every major piece of ‘next big thing’ feature press without even a properly released single to her name, she’s a rare instance of mirrored and completely justified industry and public hysteria.
Marmaduke Duke
Duke Pandemonium is the new album by Marmaduke Duke. It is Part II of a musical trilogy that began with the acclaimed debut The Magnificent Duke, released in 2005 on Captains Of Industry. Marmaduke Duke is the self-created surreal musical word of enigmatic Scottish duo The Atmosphere and The Dragon, two frontmen better known as Simon Neil of Biffy Clyro and JP Reid of Sucioperro respectively.
Mastodon
Prog metal behemoths Mastodon, release their highly anticipated 4th album, “Crack the Skye” on March 23rd on Reprise Records. Recorded in their hometown of Atlanta, GA with producer Brendan O Brien ( AC/DC, Pearl Jam), “Crack the Skye” takes you on an epic journey from start to finish. One that involves astral travel, wormholes, and even Rasputin…
Muse
The Muse that drove out of Glastonbury 2004 was a very different one from the Muse that had arrived. Following seven years of near solid touring, buzzing with nervous anticipation; their escalation from being the biggest band in Teignmouth in 1997 to one of the biggest bands in Europe by 2004 had been a rocket ride but still, closing Glastonbury was a major step-up, a classic Eavis gamble, and with a weary, mud-drenched crowd facing a long Sunday night welly-trudge home even Muse themselves doubted they could pull it off. “We got offered the headline slot which scared the shit out of us to start with because we didn’t think we were big enough to do it,” says bassist Chris Wolstenhome. “The day was muddy and miserable, and as it was the end of the festival we thought people would be kind of jaded, but it was completely the opposite.”
My Chemical Romance
My Chemical Romance would like to announce that its multi-platinum, critically acclaimed album The Black Parade is officially dead. Born October 23rd, 2006, The Black Parade has sold more than 1.3 million copies in the U.S. alone, spawned four smash singles, and served as the inspiration for the band’s 2007-2008 World Tour.
Natty
‘We’re the PlayStation generation/Xboxed up on your CCTV/You can file us under hoodie or Asbo as you take away our identity’, sings Natty on his song ‘Coloured Souls’. The 24-year-old from North London has long since swapped his hoodie for dreadlocks and a thoughtful take on what it is to be young in the inner city today. Using sounds from around the world he sums up modern Britain with pinpoint accuracy.
Panic At The Disco
For a second, forget everything you already know about Panic At The Disco. That means forgetting that the band’s 2005 debut A Fever You Can’t Sold Out has sold over 2.2 million copies to date; that their video for “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” became a #1 hit on MTV and snagged one of the network’s video music awards for best video in 2006; and, finally, erasing from your mind all of the sold-out clubs the band have played over the past three years and the ubiquity of Panic At The Disco’s music—and mugs—on radio stations, television programs and magazine covers all over the world.
Paolo Nutini
It’s September 2008 and 21 year old Paolo is busy finishing off his second record. He’s produced the record himself and he started working on it in February 2008. Paolo and the band have worked in studios in Ireland, Wales and London and there were even some sessions recorded in Los Angeles and New York. The new record will be out in 2009.
Paramore
As Paramore embark on the most successful year of their career, there seems to be no limit as to what they can accomplish. The band’s last 2007 album RIOT! has sold over two million copies worldwide, the group was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2008 for “Best New Artist” and even their live CD/DVD The Final Riot! has gone gold. However while these statistics are impressive, record sales have never been the driving force behind Paramore—and that fact has never been as evident as it is on the group’s highly anticipated third full-length brand new eyes. In fact, as excited as this group of young adults from Franklin, Tennessee are to have had the opportunity to tour with their heroes like Jimmy Eat World and No Doubt over the past few years, they seem even more ecstatic to share brand new eyes with the world.
Pendulum
Pendulum formed in their home-town of Perth (Western Australia) in 2002, when producers Rob Swire and Gareth McGrillen teamed up with acclaimed local DJ Paul 'Elhornet' Harding. While their individual formative roots ranged from producing drum & bass, breakbeat and hardcore, to playing in metal and punk bands, their comparable talents proved an unstoppable force when they managed to single-handedly conquer the world of drum & bass in their first 12 months together
Regina Spektor
APRIL 13, 2009 – BURBANK, CA -- Sire Records and Regina Spektor are very proud to announce the release of Far; the highly anticipated follow up to Spektor's gold album Begin to Hope. Set for a June 23rd release, Far continues to reveal new layers in Spektor's songwriting as she pursues the next level in her inimitable musical style.
Seasick Steve
Steve Wold is called Seasick Steve because he gets, erm, Seasick!
After leaving home at the age of 14, he became a genuine hobo (hopping freights, working the farms, getting locked up and such ) in the 1950’s and 1960’s – but always dragging along his 100-year old guitar with him, playing on street corners to earn enough to eat. This era is the inspiration behind the music he plays today, and boy does he have an arsenal of tales to tell!
Shinedown
Early in 2007, producer Rob Cavallo asked Shinedown frontman Brent Smith about his goals for the band's new album. Smith didn't hesitate.
"I said, 'You know what -- when I'm dead and gone, when everybody in this band has passed or what have you, I want the world to remember this as a record that needed to be made, and that there was a reason for it,' " Smith says. "That was the motivation behind this album. And part of the reason it took so long to make!"
Silversun Pickups
The L.A. quartet has emerged from the depths of recording studios and is ready to flaunt their new material, including a performance at Coachella Friday, April 17. “I’m really proud of Swoon,” singer/guitarist Brian Aubert says. “I felt that we started this thing with a complete blank slate just kind of staring at a big mountain, not knowing where this was going to go. Everyone worked so insanely hard and I feel like you hear that we were in there every day trying to make the best songs that we could.”
Sneaky Sound System
Arguably the biggest band in Australia right now is Sneaky Sound System. Their single ‘I Love It’ had the longest chart run in Oz history, their debut album has gone twice platinum and at one point they had four singles in the Top 40. They played the Antipodean Live Earth concert, supported Robbie Williams, and cleaned up at the Arias, the down-under version of the Brits. Yet Sneaky are not a hard-touring rock band or a manufactured pop act. They’re certainly pop and proud of it, but their background lies in their country’s exploding dance scene.
Taking Back Sunday
New Again – For Taking Back Sunday it’s more than an album title, it’s a declaration. “We kicked around a bunch of different titles, but that one always remained the top of the list, and that’s because it really does feel like a new band,” vocalist Adam Lazzara says. Taking Back Sunday is not turning their collective back on what is already a storied past, not when their resume boasts three gold albums, two of which hit the top five (including a #2 debut for 2006’s Louder Now), extensive touring with the likes of Linkin Park, My Chemical Romance, and Jimmy Eat World, as well as co-headlining the Warped package and appearing at the historic Live Earth, all in-between their own headlining gigs for 10,000 plus fans regularly, and appearing on every one of the late-night chat fests; Jay Leno, David Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel, and Conan O’Brien.
The Days
Another day, another sparkling pop gem comes winging out of a grungily cool west London recording studio. The Days are hunkered down in Eastcote, the vibey little wellspring of much of the last Arctic Monkeys’ album. They’re hard at it, demoing new songs: b-sides, future singles, ideas for albums two, three, four…
The Enemy
Return with April 27th release of bold new album ‘Music For The People’; album preceded by single ‘No Time For Tears’ on April 13th. The Enemy follow their all-conquering, chart-topping debut ‘We’ll Live And Die In These Towns’ with the release of their bold new album ‘Music For The People’ on April 27th. Released on Warner Bros. Records, the album will be previewed with the April 13th release of the single ‘No Time For Tears’.
The Flaming Lips
Nowadays, here in America, there is a deluge of metaphysical paranoia constantly flowing out of the new, smart, radical, fanatical, hippie, drug culture underground. It almost always centers around the exaggerated evil powers of George W. Bush and the exaggerated benevolent benefits of psychedelic drugs... mostly Ecstasy and L.S.D.
The Used
A few years ago, while preparing to send the album art for b-side collection Shallow Believer to his record label, Bert McCracken scrawled the word “Artwork” across its cover in silver ink. The sentiment, which, to Bert and his bandmates in The Used, resonated with both extreme simplicity and indescribable complexity, said everything without really having to say anything. Now, the Utah band has titled their fourth full-length album with that very word: Artwork.
The Veronicas
Already massive pop stars in their native Australia, 24-year-old twin sisters Lisa and Jessica Origliasso, known as The Veronicas, spent most of 2008 winning over legions of new fans while on the road with Natasha Bedingfield, Hanson, and the Jonas Brothers in support of their red-hot second album Hook Me Up, which was released by Sire Records in August 2008.
The Virgins
If someone made a film about The Virgins, the director’s pitch to the studio would be Stand By Me meets The Goonies meets Kids. It’d be an adventure story full of crime, hedonism, self-discovery and, more importantly, friendship against-all-odds. Three boys from opposite sides of NYC with polarised backgrounds, united in bizarre twists of fate and a shared love of good-times and guitars. This time last year, few could have guessed that this bunch of tear-aways would be preparing one of 2009’s gleaming radio-indie Trojan-horse albums.
The Wombats
At first, The Wombats were a joke they didn’t want anyone to find funny.
“For our first gig we wore jesters’ hats with sunglasses,” says guitarist/singer Matthew ‘Murph’ Murphy. “They had bells on the end,” adds drummer/singer Dan Haggis. Murph: “In the middle of the songs we’d break into uncontrollable screaming. The idea was not to be funny.” Dan: “If people laughed we’d be like ‘ah we dogged it’. We wanted it to die on its feet. Literally people would just stand there and there’d be this awful silence. You know like in The Office when there’s a dreadful silence, and the next day we’d be like ‘Ah that was amazing that bit, wasn’t it?’ We still love dying on our feet sometimes.” Murph: “It was a lot of silliness. The idea of the band was to be stupid. We were just idiots.”
Versa Emerge
For some people creating music is a choice, but for others it’s what they were born to do. VersaEmerge clearly fit into the latter camp. VersaEmerge was formed by drummer Anthony Martone and guitarist/vocalist Blake Harnage back when both members were in high school. Although the duo instantly experienced regional success selling out their first ever gig and gaining critical acclaim in their local music scene, it wasn’t until the band solidified their line-up—which currently includes guitarist Jerry Pierce, vocalist Sierra Kusterbeck and bassist Devin Ingelido—that things really started happening for this dedicated group of teenagers. “When Sierra first tried out for the band we didn’t know what to expect,” Harnage explains, adding that the then sixteen-year-old female vocalist lied about her age in order to land an audition. “She’s always been amazingly talented, but now she’s learning how to use that talent to its full potential.”
Wilco
As 2009 begins historically in America, so begins what is shaping up to be another historic year for the Chicago rock band Wilco - the group formed by guitarist and songwriter Jeff Tweedy in the mid-1990s. 2009 will see the release of a new studio album – their seventh. It follows their Grammy-nominated 2007 recording Sky Blue Sky (which followed their 2005 double Grammy winner A ghost is born). Recordings have been underway at the band’s Chicago studio, The Loft. The current plan is to emerge from Chicago’s deep freeze with a completed album by the spring thaw (which in Chicago could mean summer…).
