Album Releases | Stereo Jealousy

.
Foals
Antidotes

.
Mystery Jets
Twenty One

The Raconteurs
Consolers Of
The Lonely

.
Guillemots
Red

Does It Offend
You, Yeah?
You Have No Idea…

.
The Whip
X Marks Destination

Son Lux
At War With Walls
And Mazes

.
Beequeen
Sandancing

.
Rameses III
Basilica

.
Daniel Menche
Glass Forest

O. Rodriguez-Lopez
The Apocalypse
Inside An Orange

.
Singer
Unhistories

If nothing else, this weeks’ releases have some awesome cover art, check out Daniel Menche, Rameses III, Guillemots and Mystery Jets and Son Lux in particular. Album of the week is Foals’ debut effort, leaked so long ago that it almost doesn’t qualify as a new release.Whilst album leaks are great it does lessen the anticipation of big new releases: for shame I remember the massive thrill of getting Oasis’ Be Here Now on the day of release back in 1997. Those days are long gone. Musically, this week is dominated by some of the indie scene’s middle players; both Guillemots and Mystery Jets serving up their sophomore LPs. Guillemots will be hoping to emulate the success of 2006′s Mercury-nominated Through The Windowpane with Red, while Mystery Jets (who reside a mere float upstream from here on Eel Pie Island) soldier on amongst stories of them firing Harry Harrison, the lead vocalist Blaine’s father to offer Twenty One. Omar Rodriguez-Lopez takes some time off from The Mars Volta to turn out what sounds to me pretty much the same gear, all long twiddly bits and garbled vocals. The Raconteurs attempt to ‘stick it to the man’ by announcing and releasing a record in a matter of days. Annoyingly named Does It Offend You, Yeah? ride the swelling hype-wave to put out a record of enjoyable cliches, and The Whip release X Marks Destination, containing the blistering singles Trash and Sister Siam.

Does It Offend You, Yeah? – Battle Royale
Foals – Balloons
Son Lux – Breaks
The Whip – Sister Siam

Elbow
The Seldom Seen Kid

Crystal Castles
S/T

The Teenagers
Reality Check

We Are Scientists
Brain Thrust Mystery

Neon Neon
Stainless Style

Fuck Buttons
Street Horrrsing

.
Girls In Hawaii
Plan Your Escape

.
Youthmovies
Good Nature

Devotchka
A Mad And Faithful
Telling

.
Be Your Own Pet
Get Awkward

Freiband &
Machinefabriek
Oahu

.
Chris T-T
Capital

A varied set of releases this week, from chart-scraping hopefuls Elbow through to pysch-prog-space nonsense from Fuck Buttons. The Elbow album is pretty decent, certainly a better effort than Leaders of the Free World, even teaming up with Richard Hawley on one track. There’s synth-dance-pop a-plenty too, with excellent releases from Neon Neon and The Teenagers, and a slightly disappointing full-length from Crystal Castles. Back for a second helping are Be Your Own Pet and We Are Scientists, the latter attempting to prove they can better The Great Escape, which of course, they can’t. Be Your Own Pet on the other hand continue along the perverse scream-quiet path trodden by the debut. It’s not a bad trip though. Elsewhere, Foals’ cohorts Youthmovies get around to releasing their debut LP, while Chris T-T releases the final episode of his London trilogy, Capital. I saw said T-T more than a few years back as a support act. He had a song about how Eminem was shit. I think that says it all. Girls In Hawaii present some lovely indiepop from Belguim, and a lovely dead animal on their cover. Lovely. Also from continental Europe is the interesting release from Freiband & Machinefabriek where a 30-second sample of lap steel has been passed back and forth between the two producers for months, the end result being Oahu, a full length full of distortion, atmospheric noises and really not very much lap steel. Album of the week, however, has to go the superbly monikered Fuck Buttons, whose album full of blips and bobs has one of the crappest names and crappest covers in a long time, but still manages to be bloody great. Check out their Myspaz for what they sound like, because to be honest written description doesn’t do it justice.

Crystal Castles – Air War
Elbow – Grounds For Divorce
The Teenagers – Love No