Apart from calling each other assholes, discussing paedophilia and making bad jokes, the people on the indiepop list have discovered Sally Shapiro. Sally is the Swedish girl who went for free indiepop credibility by covering Nixon’s Anorak Christmas. Her album, appropriately titled Disco Romance, is really good. You’ll have to like the more electronic side of pop, which I happen to do, but then it’s very pop after all, with a layer of italo disco on top (but I’m only saying this because other people who know more about music and are generally wiser say so). And she has a beautiful voice on top, which with this kind of music usually makes the difference between ‘enjoyable’ and ‘really good’.

At thimes, her voice is surprisingly similar to that of Bobby Baby, especially on my favourite track Find My Soul. Bobby a.k.a. Ella is from Sweden too, which probably explains. I’ve been listening to Bobby’s other songs, but nothing is as brilliant as Ten Years From Now, with the possible exception of the acoustic version of said song. Oh, and I think it was at Hot Stof/Heet Stof that I first read about her. Just so you know.

Song of the day: The Hi-Life Companion – Times Tables

Fellow West Countrians The Hi-Life Companion (they hail from Bristol) introduced me to the world of iSound. This is a new website (at least it’s new to me), that is kind of like Myspace, except that it looks better, it offers songs in a better bitrate, it gives them the right name when you want to download them and it’s not owned by Rupert Murdoch. So in a way it is not like MySpace at all.
The band has three songs on their iSound page, of which Times Tables is my favourite, not just because I am from a family of teachers. There’s an Airport Girl-link, but these have never managed to write a song that makes my into a virtual turntable that keeps spinning the record. Who needs these MySpace anymore?

I had written the review of Dýrðin a week before I actually posted it, but I had never found an appropriate time to publish it. That’s actually one of the great things about blogging: it shows that the whole idea of writing one definite mini-essay of 300-words about a record, which probably worked best for printed magazines in the pre-internet era, is just not the way I think about music. And I’m quite sure, it’s no one’s way.

But once, I too thought this was the only way to write about music. So when one day I was incredibly bored with my own life and at the same time felt very lonely about having no one to talk about all those fine indiepop records with, I started this online magazine. It was based on five reviews a week, one interview a month, ‘news items’ to connect them and, quite importantly, way too much free time. I’m glad you’re probably not able to read those first things I wrote, as the pretentious yet meaningless writing would probably shock you. Still, starting the thing was one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life.

That day was exactly five years ago today. Things have changed a lot since, but both my life and the website have gotten so much better and I think they both contributed to the improvement to the other. I wanted to mention that.

Yeah, we can all redicule my love for apparently silly and obviously unpretentious bands, of which Dýrðin is an example. But I really, really like them, what can I do? I’ve even tried to convince myself that they were probably just a novelty because of their Icelandic lyrics and that that sounds would bore easily.
Well, two of the songs on this debut album are sung in English and they are as exciting as the rest of the songs. And although half of the songs have been available through the band’s website for ages – making the ‘do not copy; do not kill indie music’ warning on the cd appear slightly ridiculous, they sound as fresh as they did when I first heard them.
Really, listening to Dýrðin makes one believe that it’s always spring in Iceland and that the ‘ice’ in the country’s name refers to the ice lollies that people eat there all the time. Oh, the cd was released through Skipping Stones records, about whom I have written bad things in the past, but this one deserves only praise.

Swedes, Please says there’s a new EP by The San Marinos. Now I don’t want to give the impression that I describe every second Swedish band as totally brilliant, but The San Marinos just are. Honestly. The blog also has a song which you can download, except if you are me, in which case you’ll have to wait until tomorrow night.
At least I have something to look forward to. I mean, work is great, it really is, but if you’ve been trying to solve two problems that seem very small, but haven’t succeeded after a full afternoon of staring at a screen filled with code, it is frustrating at the same time. And if you then get an email from you provider, telling you your blog is slowing their server down a lot, it doesn’t make you any happier. (They were very nice about it though, but in case you experience any problems over the next couple of hours/days, it probably has to do with that.)

Music Is My Girlfriend, who, of course, were the ones to discover The San Marinos, says you can download two tracks by the band. They’re my favourite ones, actually. Except that they’ve been taken offline for some reason.

Song of the day: The Motifs – Backwards

Speaking of hits, The Motifs’ Backwards is one. Or perhaps ‘hit’ is not the right description for 70 seconds of pure, intimate beauty. I always slow down my pace when I listen to it, and try to concentrate on the dialogue. I once described her (the Motifs is one girl from Australia) half-accurately as what Lupe Pipas’ imaginary solo project would sound like. The song has mysteriously ended up on my mp3-player – no, really, I can’t find it anywhere on the web – but I might just go and put it online some day soon. I should, really. We all deserve that.

We met up for lunch with Alistair last Saturday to discuss the club night thing that, believe it or not, is finally going to happen. Very soon in fact, so I’ll probably write more about it later this week.

It would be great if we could get The Electric Pop Group to play. They’ll play in London at the end of June and from a Gothenburg-perspective, that is not too far from Exeter. Of course, it would help a great deal if everyone just sends us a lot of money so that we can book the band without having to worry about financial matters. They seem really nice people who would deserve such a treatment, really.
But if you somehow don’t feel like doing so, you could also consider putting up the band at your local venue, pub or living room. They’d love that too and having played a half-active role in organising some gigs in Athens, I can say that it’s a great thing to do.

I always buy open return tickets for going to work. Or, more accurately, I buy open returns for going home, as the first Monday I did not come from home. Such return tickets are valid for up to a month, so I was really excited when I got off at Radley station earlier today and my ticket hadn’t been checked. It means I can buy a single coming Friday and (re)use today’s return part next Monday.
But, according to First Great Western, the cheapest singles from Radley to Exmouth this Friday are exactly one pound cheaper than a return. That is one-and-a-half euros, two US dollars and probably a lot of Yens, but in any case, it’s hardly worth the fuss. Bummer.

Song of the day: Bobby Baby – Ten Years From Now

Bobby Baby is a Swedish girl, formerly known as Ella Glockenspiel, doing some subtle, dreamy electronic pop thing. She is new to me– I discovered her over the past days after this song had mysteriously ended up on the mp3-player– but that’s just because I’m blind, apparently. Well, it’s not like discovering new bands is a competition and Bobby/Ella provided me with some happy moments while I was reading on a hostel bad last night. That’s what matters.
The song, by the way, can be downloaded from her website, along with a couple of other ones.

Last.fm says I haven’t been listening to music in 13 days. Of course, that is a lie, but my mp3-player doesn’t have a synchronize-thingie like a thing that, apparently, exists for iPods and the likes. Well, it’s not like I listen to tons of much music these days – and it’s therefore not so surprising that since forever my first two last.fmneighbours have been people who hardly seem to listen to music either. It’s not even that I can’t listen to music here, or that my job requires a lot of inter-personal communication that would make listening to music inpractical. So I suppose that, once I feel more comfortable, I might put the headphones in every now and then.

But sometimes it’s just frustrating not to be able to plug them in the computer and download some mp3s. Everything I download is scrutinized by the IT department and, although it’s not forbidden or anything, I think they’ve got better things to do than check some indiepop on viruses. They’re talking about The Dansettes on the indiepop list and while that doesn’t necessarily mean that the band is any good, I would like to check it out myself. From the photos and the description, it seems to be either a parody of The Pipettes or just a band that likes them a lot.

Song of the day: Die Fünf Freunde – Nordsee ‘79

If it wasn’t for Die Fünf Freunde on the mp3-player this morning, I would have arrived at work in a very miserable state. I had spend the night in a ‘funky’ hostel among lots of party-people, which made me suddenly feel incredibly old, the lights in the common shower room turned themselves off while I was shaving, this morning the bus to Abingdon refused to stop at the bus stop where I was waiting, so I had to take a train, which meant I had to walk even more. And it was pouring with rain. The good side to this is that I was even more happy than usual to arrive at work.

Die Fünf Freunde (‘The five friends’, named after the children’s book) were an indiepop band from Germany, that nowadays is as legendary as overlooked. They were around between 1989 and 1995 and released several records on the Marsh-Marigold label, from their native town of Hamburg. Me, being the indiepop geek that I am, of course have been listening to them forever. Except that I haven’t. It wasn’t until Dimitra discovered them the other day* that I checked them out. Wow. Brilliant post-C86 jangly indiepop that Germans always have been fond of. I copied Inspektor, Inspektor to my mp3-player –did I moan about it taking only 512 500 MB of songs?– an album that is almost entirely sung in German. I think the English ones are even better, but I’m in love with the German songs already. Especially this one, about a holiday near the North Sea in the Summer of 1979.

Due to the lack of information on the band on the web, I might even upload the song in the weekend.

* because on their new album, the Magic Whispers cover a song by die Fünf Freunde-side project My Guru Says. If anyone, by the way, knows where to find said song Sally and John, I’d be very happy to hear.

My mp3-player takes 512 MB of music. And since 2¹⁰ equals 1024 and not 1000, this means it can actually take 500 MB (it makes sense, somehow). I’ve listened to most of that during the journey from Exmouth to Abingdon this morning. This was thanks to some help from First Great Western, without whose brilliant connection service I probably wouldn’t have been able to listen to the full Pants Yell! Recent Drama album and half of the new Pines compilation. Yay!

Some random thoughts from said journey: these Pants Yell! are a nice example of good contemporaty indiepop from the US, while Baby Calendar, who vere voted as ‘best new band’ in the most rcent TweeNet pol, aren’t really (though others, who have probably listened to more than one song, disagree). Also in French I prefer female vocalists over male ones. The new Saint Etienne song that Turquoise Days posted a while ago is really good. And the new Hidden Cameras is just too much of the same; I couldn’t even be bothered to listen to more than three songs.

Song of the day: Cuberbil – Metal Solar

This one’s for my former colleague E. He left the world of math too and works for a bank now. And he too is in love with a girl from a country far away, his girlfriend is from Monterrey in Mexico. At university, I used to drop by his office (which was next to mine) at least five times a day, always with a maths question as an excuse, but usually just to have a nice chat. About long-distance-relationships, politics, football and, occasionally, even about work. I miss that a bit sometimes. (But I’m not getting melancholic, really. I like the work I’m doing right now, probably more than I’ve ever liked a job. It doesn’t even feel like work.)

Cuberbil is a tweelectro couple that hail from, indeed, Monterrey. Metal Solar, from their 2006 debut album Camino Para Colorear, can be downloaded at the site of their Peruvian label Plastilina.