Olly HearseyThe announcement that London trio Micachu & The Shapes had been signed to Rough Trade came with a short video for the song “Lips”, and curious as to who this latest labelmate to faves like British Sea Power and Basia Bulat was, I gave it a spin. And after viewing the 90-second clip, the only response I could come up with was, “uh, what?”. It depicted a scruffy-looking trio with an androgynous-looking frontperson creating a racket that seemed willfully primitive, and yet you couldn’t deny how meticulously and precisely it was all assembled – a method to the madness indeed. My initial reaction was that I never wanted to hear this again. My second reaction was to hit the repeat button.

And Jewellery, the trio’s debut – out today in UK out April 7 in North America – follows much the same pattern, simultaneously repelling and addicting with a dozen tracks of no-fi, hip-hop, anti-pop seemingly built from found sounds, circuit-bent electronics, willfully abused junk shop instruments and the hollered vocals of Mica Levi. It sounds dementedly otherworldly at first, but with repeated listens it becomes clear that it’s very much of this world – just gleefully turned inside-out and upside-down but never straying too too far into abstractionism. It’s like it knows it can only be anti-pop if there’s still some pop in there, so for every obtuse sound collage like “Ship”, there’s an only slightly bizarro melodic gem like “Golden Phone”. And while it’s nice to be able to metaphorically come up for air with tunes like that, I’m as surprised as anyone that I’m actually eager to dive back down into the depths of musical confoundment. Don’t take this as a Damascene moment that finds me abandoning good, old-fashioned pop for a life in the musical outer fringes, but I think my horizons just got a little bit wider. Just a bit.

MBV Music is currently streaming the whole of the album for today only and it’s officially unofficial Micachu day there – keep checking in for thoughts and commentary on the record from the other contributors. Drowned In Sound has an interview with Levi conducted by Emmy The Great, I Like Music offers an annoyingly paginated feature and The Telegraph profiles the band and confirms that Levi really does know exactly what she’s doing, whether it sounds like it or not.

MP3: Micachu & The Shapes – “Lips”
Video: Micachu & The Shapes – “Lips”
Stream: Micachu & The Shapes / Jewellery

The Sun has a feature on Polly Scattergood, whose debut self-titled album is out in the UK today. The bad news is that the North American release date is still a couple months off – May 19 – but the good news is that it’s even getting a North American release, which hopefully implies some touring/promo on this side of the pond. I got a promo of the album last week and my initial enthusiasm has proven not to be misplaced in the least.

Scotland On Sunday sits down with Charlie Fink of Noah & The Whale about their new album The First Days Of Spring, set for release sometime around the last days of Spring, in June. They play the Mod Club on April 27 and support for that tour has been announced as Ferraby Lionheart and Anni Rossi.

MP3: Anni Rossi – “Ecology”
MP3: Anni Rossi – “Wheelpusher”

St Vincent has released the first MP3 from her new album Actor, out May 5.

MP3: St Vincent – “The Strangers”

And St Vincent’s will be teaming up with The National on a cover of Crooked Fingers’ “Sleep All Summer” for SCORE! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers, a cryptically-named compilation celebrating Merge Records’ 20th anniversary by means of cover songs. Details at Pitchfork. And while there’s no shortage of mouth-watering contributions on the album, this particular one jumped out at me because Dignity & Shame is by far my favourite Crooked Fingers record (and I love them all quite a bit) and Annie Clark and Matt Berninger are about as perfectly cast to step into Lara Meyerratken and Eric Bachmann’s shoes on this song as anyone on the planet. You can hear the original on the Crooked Fingers MySpace. The National are at the Kool Haus May 21, Crooked Fingers at Trinity-St Paul’s April 17 and 18.

PitchforkTV and NPR are offering video and audio, respectively, from Antony & The Johnsons’ recent concert in Washington DC. The Advocate has an interview.

Yes, they were here just last week but Asobi Seksu will be back on April 19 at the Mod Club as support for French composer Yann Tiersen, perhaps best known for his work scoring Amelie. Is it a pairing that makes any sense? I have no idea. But there it is. Tickets are $20 in advance.

Also in the “back so soon?” category, The Von Bondies – here in February at the Horseshoe – are back on May 29 for a gig at Lee’s Palace. Tickets for that will be $13.50.

MP3: The Von Bondies – “This Is Our Perfect Crime”
MP3: The Von Bondies – “Pale Bride”

Brooklyn’s Kevin Devine has a date at the El Mocambo on June 3. Tickets $11.

MP3: Kevin Devine & The Goddamn Band – “Brother’s Blood”

And finally, U2 will be at the Rogers Centre on September 16.

MySpaceSo even though I’ve got a mighty backlog of stuff to cover and even though this has been a long weekend (or maybe because), I’ve still not had time to get to any of it properly. So coverage of the past few days worth of showgoing will start tomorrow. For today, you get this. A free album. Which is probably better than my concert reviews.

Welsh trio The Joy Formidable know how to get media attention. Last Summer, they had a video for debut single “Austere” banned from YouTube on account of it being comprised of video clips of people… well, I’d rather not have my site indexed for THOSE particular keywords but even though it was just a fan-made clip, the band gave it their seal of approval by posting it on their own website. And it’s probably NSFW. The band also made an official clip, but it’s far less controversial. And now, they’ve opted to take their debut album A Balloon Called Moaning and give the whole thing away for frees via NME. It was already released in a limited edition box set which sold out in a heartbeat and will be out in physical form tomorrow, but you can have it digitally now.

Now both of these might seem like gimmicky ways to get people talking about the band, but fact is that even without these talking points, The Joy Formidable would be more than worthy of your attention. Its eight tracks veer from dreamy to wide-awake and in-your-face but always maintain a gleeful enthusiasm, propelled on a wave of fuzzy, barbed hooks and snarlingly saccharine vocals. It sounds like a being hit in the face with a sack of sugar. When anyone asks me next week what I did over the long weekend, I’m going to say (and truthfully) that I listened to this record ad nauseum and didn’t tire of it at all. Is that sufficient endorsement to get you to go download and listen? It’s free for goodness sake. Just go get and listen. Thank me later.

Uncensored has an interview with the band.

MP3: The Joy Formidable – “Austere”
MP3: The Joy Formidable – “Cradle”
Video: The Joy Formidable – “Austere”
Video: The Joy Formidable – “Cradle”
MySpace: The Joy Formidable

The Joy Formidable had been listed as one of the acts heading to SxSW next month and surely would have been one of my highlights, but with the release of the official schedule last week, they’re nowhere to be found. Actually, instead of heading to Texas, they’ve opted to go out on a UK tour as support for Howling Bells, another band I was hoping was going to be in Austin. In fact, the entire Sx lineup is looking pretty weak. I know I said the same thing last year around this time and ended up having the best time ever anyways, but there’s going to be a lot of digging to find acts that will get my attention. But on the plus side, I already know how my Saturday night is ending – seeing Echo & The Bunnymen play a gay Texan cowboy bar.

If you missed the numerous edits to last week’s post about Polly Scattergood, allow me to sum up – rather than her debut album being entitled Other Too Endless and being released on March 9, it will now be self-titled and be coming out on May 19. But there’s a new video for the next single, which would have been the title track but is now just a song. A great song.

Video: Polly Scattergood – “Other Too Endless”

Emmy The Great week at Drowned In Sound wrapped up with another set of interviews conducted by Emmy. First off, she talks with Aidan Moffat, formerly of Arab Strap and who’s just released a new album in How To Get To Heaven From Scotland. There’s also a piece with Darren Hayman, formerly of Hefner and also with a new solo record in Pram Town, a talk with Mica Levi of Micachu. And to wrap up, a heart-to-heart with Dev Hynes, aka Lightspeed Champion, about the genius of Steve Martin. She also lets Metro have a look at her iPod (though they evidently look at her as they’ve run a picture of Los Campesinos with the piece, and helpfully identify the one of them as Emmy) and gives an interview to Virgin Music.

BBC profile Saint Etienne.

This Is Nottingham talks to Bloc Party drummer Matt Tong. They have two dates at the Kool Haus on March 13 and 14.

The Boston Globe, Boston Music Spotlight, Metro and The Village Voice have interviews with various member of Los Campesinos!, in town at the Opera House on April 1.

Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3 may be saying Goodnight Oslo on their new album, out tomorrow, but they’ll be saying “hello Mod Club” when they come to town on April 16. Tickets $20.

Tom Henry JonesBy nature, I’m an album guy and prefer to let my impressions of an artist unfold over forty minutes or so. But sometimes I get swept up in the joy of the single – the one individual song – and give the “repeat” button on my CD player a workout that more than makes up for its usual state of neglect. Such was the case of “Nitrogen Pink”, the first single from UK singer-songwriter Polly Scattergood (her real name).

Musically, it unfurls from a simple, unadorned intro to a thing of great sonic grandeur in the span of five minutes, sounding like the finale to a musical set in the distant future. Not a new trick, but when executed properly – as it is here – it’s always impressive. But the centerpiece is Scattergood’s voice, a wonderfully expressive and elastic thing capable of evoking tremendous strength and utter frailty within a single phrase. Like many of her female English singer-songwriters peers do these days, Scattergood owes an immense debt to the influence of Kate Bush but like the best of that group – Bat For Lashes and Florence & The Machine come immediately to mind – she takes that inspiration and interprets it in a way that’s very much her own.

Her self-titled debut album Other Too Endless is set for a March 9 May 19 release and based on the additional samples available on her Myspace, the addictiveness of “Nitrogen Pink” isn’t a fluke – it sounds like the record will carry forward a fine balance between theatricality and vulnerability. It’s probably a tall order to expect the entire record will tickle my ears to the extent that the first taste has, but I’m hopeful.

MP3: Polly Scattergood – “Nitrogen Pink”

Yesterday was – after long last – the release date for Emmy The Great’s debut First Love and as much I’d have liked to be able to mark the occasion with a review, my copy is still somewhere between the UK and here (hopefully). So my gushing praise will have to wait for another day – instead, I’ll link to the slew of press clippings that have accompanied the release, which are worth the read because Emmy is as entertaining an interview as she is a songwriter. There’s features on Ms Moss at For Folk’s Sake, MusicOhm, BBC, Dazed Digital and The Irish Times. And though she did a quick song-by-song annotation of the record forThe Reading Evening Post a few weeks ago, the one she does for Drowned In Sound is considerably more in-depth. And also as part of what Drowned In Sound have declared “Emmy The Great week”, Emmy turns from interviewee to interviewer turning the spotlight on artists she deems worthy of attention. So far she’s talked to a couple of her bandmates about their own projects – with Tom Rogerson about Three Trapped Tigers and with Euan Hinshelwood about Younghusband – as well as with with Shilpa Ray of Shilpa Ray and her Happy Hookers. And to wrap my own “Emmy The Great day”, her session at Bandstand Busking is now up, with three songs and an interview.

And it’s interesting/amusing that a running theme through the interviews is Emmy’s disavowal of the whole “UK anti-folk” scene, particularly between her band and Noah & The Whale, because that’s one of the threads running through this piece in The Independent about, well, the so-called UK anti-folk scene.

And speaking of Noah & The Whale, they’re finally making up that December show which was cancelled when they decided they’d rather work on album number two – entitled First Days of Spring and due out sometime in the Spring – rather than drive around North America in Winter. They’ll be at The Mod Club on April 27, tickets $12.50. The Times checked in with the band while they were in the studio.

MP3: Noah & The Whale – “2 Bodies 1 Heart”

Camera Obscura have released details of their next album and first for new home, 4AD. My Maudlin Career will be out April 21 and they’ve made the title track available to sample.

MP3: Camera Obscura – “My Maudlin Career”

Frightened Rabbit have a new video from The Midnight Organ Fight.

Video: Frightened Rabbit – “Bright Pink Bookmark”

Duffy documents a day in the life of Duffy for The Times.

The Quietus talks to PJ Harvey and John Parish about their forthcoming collaboration A Woman A Man Walked By, out March 30.

Exclaim reports that Beth Orton’s debut album Trailer Park will be getting the deluxe double-CD reissue treatment – look for it March 10.

Sky Larkin, whose debut The Golden Spike was released yesterday, have been keeping a tour diary for Clash and Tourdates.co.uk has an interview with singer Katie Harkin. Said album will be getting a proper North American release this year as their label Wichita Recordings is setting up shop Stateside. They’ve made available a sampler of the first batch of artists they’ll be looking to introduce to folks on this side of the Atlantic.

ZIP: Wichita Recordings sampler

Some additional updates and clarifications on a few recently announced shows. Firstly, the Neil Halstead show at the Drake Underground on March 21 is open to everyone, tickets $20. The invite-only anniversary thing is something else entirely.

MP3: Neil Halstead – “Paint A Face”

Would it have killed Ladytron to have released their new video alongside the announcement of their Spring tour so that I could have rolled it all into one post? Apparently so. Tickets for their April 6 show at the Phoenix go on sale this Friday and will cost your $28.50.

Video: Ladytron – “Tomorrow”

Lily Allen’s April 22 show at the Phoenix has been moved to the Sound Academy, on account of selling out in no time flat. Additional tickets now on sale. Chart has an interview.

Good news – Elbow are coming to town. Bad news – it’s as opener for Coldplay. They’ll be at the Molson Amphitheatre on July 29. Is seeing them play a half-hour set worth buying Coldplay tickets for? That is a question only you can answer.

And last but not least… Le Blogotheque has a Take-Away Show with Tom Jones.