Thursday, February 7, 2008

slumberland revival


Forget Led Zeppelin, The Pixies, Spice Girls, NKOTB, et al - Slumberland is back in town, and they're ready to unleash a billion and one brilliant 7"s to the world! Hooray! Surely this has to be the record label revival of the year - to clarify, band revival of, well, last year was The Jesus and Mary Chain, who I am terribly excited to see in late March.

So, after a few years of not doing much, apart from sending me Aislers Set and Go Sailor stuff a couple of years ago, Mike and co. are back and they have a suitcase exploding with the best pop songs. First up, there's two limited edition split 7"s - first one features Roy Moller & The Company (who my dear friends at Book Club Records introduced to we antipodeans about two years ago; Roy's band features dreamy Stevie Jackson) and The Hermit Crabs. The second one teams Archie Moore's new band Bye! with The Happy Couple. You know, I'm considering making a mix containing bands with exclamation marks in their names - wouldn't that be exploding with emphasis! These two 7"s come out on February 18, and I'm keen to get my warm little hands on copies.

There's some other great stuff to come - an album by Sarandon called "Kill Twee Pop", which, if it counts Los Campesinos!, has some (but not total) approval from me. I've listened to a bit of Sarandon and I don't mind it...I am hoping it will grow on me with further listens. There's also a 7" by Sexy Kids, who have risen like a phoenix from the ashes of The Royal We, and a couple of releases for Cause Co-Motion, who I first heard on a mixtape last year, thus proving that mix-tapes from hip English boys are so much cooler than Australian girly mix cds.

It's difficult for me to quantify just how much Slumberland has influenced my music loves, because it is just so enormous. From Black Tambourine to every band Amy Linton and Rose Melberg have ever been in, and so much more, it's all been brilliant. Given Slumberland's pedigree, I'm layin' out the welcome mat and inviting them back in for a cup of tea and some lamingtons. It's good to have Slumberland back in our lives again.

(p.s. read the slumberland blog, too! if things were perfect)

2 comments:

martijn said...

Slumberland are *so* great - even though I might not have fallen in love with some of the new things (yet). What's that picture by the way? Mike Slumberland uses it as his avatar on Anorak too.

alex said...

I'm not sure what the picture is - I stole it off the Slumberland myspace page. I was looking for the picture of the goose he used to use on the Slumberland site but it's seemingly disappeared off the internet.

I've just joined anorak, too :)