Spring madness - music and cats.

I seem to have had so many items on order (or on pre-order) for so long that I was beginning to become impatient and had begun to wonder if they, or at least some of them, would ever arrive at all.
The way notifications went today it looks like they will, and almost all at once - two vinyl LPs, two vinyl 12" EPs and two CDs. The strange thing is that, of the six items, three are recorded by UK artists and two of those have had to come from the US, along with the two by US artists. The remaining two, one of which is by a Canadian band, were more readily available here and that is a demonstration of the vagaries of the quasi-global market! The Canadian one, which I have not mentioned before, is the latest from Metric, a band that I would dearly love to see live. They are in the UK this spring but it now looks unlikely that I will be able to catch them on tour.

Less electro than 'Old World Underground...' and less rock than 'Live It Out'?

I can't wait to decide for myself and, while talking of electro-reinvented, here is one album that I've listened to a great deal in the last few weeks. Ask most people to name an artist from New Zealand and (Kiri Te Kanawa aside) I suspect you'll get blank looks...

Another inspired signing by (Australian label) Modular Recordings, released under license by Universal/Island Records in Europe, the music is quite remarkable - it sounds like nothing you can remember or pin a name to - and the album artwork is quite strange too, all done in watercolour and depicting the paraphernalia of electronic home-recording...

... and cats, lots of cats. Some look shocked and others are listening or merely asleep.

This is my favourite; it is truly surreal and so different from most current music artwork. It is actually the cover to the 7" single 'Paris Is Burning' as if a cat, particularly one in New Zealand, could possibly know or care.

It is an amazing single, and Pip Brown is a star, so the UK Government responded immediately.

The National Curriculum in 2011.

It has been trialled and all kittens will be taught to sing, read music and play piano from an early age.

Its funny what you miss, its funny what you don't...

They are back and not just in knitwear, although that is what the image above is of. Neither can it erase the memory of the circumstances in which I lost my "Old World Underground..." t-shirt.

I miss Metric, a lot, but they have promised a new album - already in the can - that will be released in early 2009.

Here's another surprise: Sunday at Devil Dirt was certainly one good thing in 2008; now Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan have spoiled us with a bonus for Christmas! It is a CD EP called 'Keep Me In Mind Sweetheart' and, while the title track does feature on the album the other five here, also recorded during the album sessions, do not and tend to be more mellow than those tracks that appeared on the album.

The artwork for the EP...

...probably mirrors the sentiment and 'Asleep On A Sixpence' and
'Rambing Rose, Creeping Vine' particularly do so.

Canada, then...

To some extent this (the wealth of new Canadian music) was where my curiosity for new music really started again. The rest was to follow, naturally enough, but it had to start somewhere and I'm about to reveal the original, before Arcade Fire, culprit:

Metric - Old World Underground, Where Are You Now (2003)

It however was not the first thing they recorded, and it is true that the new Canadian scene is more complicated than you could imagine because in 1999-2000 the proto-Metric (Emily Haines and James Shaw) were in London. Sometimes they were in the restaurant above the Bricklayers' Arms, 63 Charlotte Street, Shoreditch, talking about recording deals they knew they would never get. They got a free lunch, which was better than beans on toast, but otherwise they were spot on when it came to the reality of the deal.
They had nearly completed an album too, done on the cheap while holding down day jobs, but eventually they went back across the Atlantic in the hope that someone might like them more.
The toil in London eventually paid dividends but, until recently, that album has not been released on CD and it still isn't in the UK...

Metric - Grow Up and Blow Away (Last Gang Records Q2 00940)

Metric finally made it with 'Old World Underground, Where Are you Now' (Everloving, EVE006) and then a second studio album 'Live It Out' in 2006. In the meantime, while many of the band are also very much involved with Broken Social Scene, Emily Haines has also released her (second) kinda solo album. Knives Don't Have Your Back - Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton (2007) and also the less well known 12" EP What Is Free To A Good Home? (2007).

It is also available on CD, if you must, but the story certainly doesn't start or end here!