New Music Friday

Here are a couple of new songs for your weekend listening pleasure.

Following in the footsteps of early 90s UK bands such as Mega City 4, China Drum and Ash who in turn followed the trail blazed by late 70s groups like the Buzzcocks, Vibrators and Adverts, comes the Nottingham foursome, Lovvers, who will be bringing their take on the raw-garage meets pop-punk genre to the west coast before settling in Austin for South by Southwest this March. Taken from their late 2009 debut full-length, OCD Go Go Go Girls, the album’s title track just plain rips for those with an admiration for the bands named above. That being said, the vocals probably could have been brought up a bit in the mix but overall this is a terrific song.

Lovvers – “OCD Go Go Girls” (mp3)

(from the Wichita Records CD, OCD Go Go Go Girls, 2009)

And if the next epic of a song is even a half-way decent representation of what the Red Sparowes upcoming third album, The Fear Is Excruciating, But Therein Lies The Answer, will sound like then I can already tell you that it’ll find a comfortable place on my Top 10 Albums of 2010 list next December. Coming off as the soundtrack to some spaghetti-styled western movie, the Red Sparowes seem to have crafted an album that sits squarely between the landscape ambience of Explosions In the Sky and the sludge-metal drone of Pelican. I anticipate a future dilemma as the band will be playing at the Lincoln Hall here in Chicago on April 21st, the same night as Echo & the Bunnymen who will be holding court over at the Metro. Grrrr…

Red Sparowes – “Giving Birth To Imagined Saviors” (MP3)

(from the upcoming Sargent House CD, The Fear Is Excruciating, But Therein Lies The Answer, 2010)