Like being engulfed in icy wind and rain, but in a good way

I was recently sent some promo for the Swedish band Pink Milk, and their new track 'Detroit', which prompted the following two observations:

Firstly, there are a helluva lot of good bands coming out of Sweden lately, aren't there?

Secondly, Shoegaze travelled the world, and the repercussions of this are now very apparent.

Neither of these observations are new, it was just that listening to Pink Milk reminded me of them.

'Detroit' is not a particularly summery track, but given the variance of weather locally this week, I'm happy to let that one go.

It has a ferocious glacial elegance to it, and is rather akin to standing in a wind tunnel while being engulfed in icy wind and rain, but in a good way.

I am looking forward to hearing more from them, but might give their cover of Foreigner's 'I wanna know what love is' a miss...

Modern Time Wasting

I've been meaning to blog about Tacocat for a while. I reviewed their third album, Lost Time, last month for The F-Word and had one of those 'Eureka!' moments while listening to the final song on the album ('Leisure Bees'), where I thought 'Hang on, this is all about time wasting, isn't it? Or, more accurately, time being wasted in different ways'. Maybe 'Eureka!' is over the top, as the clue is in the album title, but even so, it was a theme that crept up on me rather than battering me around the ears immediately.

And so to current single (and my favourite track from the album) 'Talk', which tells the story of a relationship being destroyed by a third party. In this instance, the smartphone. Given that the iPhone is nine years old now, and that smartphones are so ubiquitous (for the sake of context: I don't own one) they don't seem to have permeated song lyrics quite so much as I think texting did. The academic studies are starting to emerge though, you know, the ones detailing the havoc smartphones are causing to relationships, sleep patterns, and social etiquette. So it's refreshing to hear a song that lays down these concerns in such a clever, convincing and simple manner.

Hardly Art have some cracking bands on their roster, so I'm expecting good things to come over the next twelve months or so.