The Twilight Sad - Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters
True to the title there isn't a hint of summer anywhere in this, the debut album on Fat Cat by Glaswegian miserablists The Twilight Sad. Instead, they've collected the most dour, sodden days of the last fifteen years and condensed them into one album. Which, as you can imagine, makes for very dense, depressing listening.

By this point, some of you will have already tuned out. The type who bemoan bands for being music to slit wrists to, who don't like to listen to anything too

heavy when they get in, who think negative music breeds negativity. Those who have stuck around, however, are in for an absolute tour de force of glorious, collosal drainchord dirge. Held together by the thickest Scottish brogue this site of Rab C Nesbit, thumping, dirty chords tumble from staggering mountains of fuzzy distortion and battered drumming. Tales of dying rabbits and titles like Here, It Never Snowed add a gothic charm to what is, in truth, four men pouring disillusion through a megaphone into the bleak, unforgiving void of an expansive universe.

If you need more specific coersion to delve into the black, murky depths of this stellar debut just plunge your consciousness into one of the earliest Twilight songs I heard, previously an untitled demo on the 2006 Fat Cat sampler, That Summer, At Home I Had Become Invisible Boy. Starting off with distant but pounding drums and shattered, echo-y creeping guitar, chiming under heavy distortion while our Glaswegian friend tells us 'the kids are on fire in the bedroom, the cunt sits at his desk and he's plotting away', to rapturous applause as the organ sounds blast from the floorboards and the volume spirals skyward.

You can pick a point anywhere in this album - from the taunt, jagged start of Walking For Two Hours to the crushing, implosive climax of And She Would Darken The Memory - and you can feel both the tense, impending emotional collapse looming overhead and the granite strength and backbone that is evident in every fibre of the record. For a first record from a band who don't seem to have had that long a gestation it's a revelation. Anyone who loves music that almost violent doesn't love itself will soon find a home here.

Review by Aidienn Ellison
http://www.myspace.com/thetwilightsad

Maps - We Can Create
Speaking of an ability to create, I personally have enough Maps material on my computer to last a good three albums and still have leftovers for an EP. Wonderfully prolific, this one man band from Northampton still to this day gives away free CDs of alternative and demo material to run a parallel timeline to the more easily obtained, official releases. Codes for downloads, remixes, covers, he just loves to make music.

Luckily for all concerned, then, the music he makes is infused with that self same love. A sort of spark, a zest for life that exists just below the surface, like stars twinkling below the frozen surface of a lake a dusk. The songs he has

collected on We Can Create aren't uptempo tracks, they don't jump out at you in day glo, gurning and throwing shapes but, for all the quiet heaving and measured swell of his music, this is no slouch. Instead, tracks break from a trot into a gallop and before you know it you're being swept along in their wake as they soar through fields and glens, sending shivers up and down your spin like the cold dead hand of a loved one from beyond the grave. Chilling perhaps, haunting clearly but warm with it, reassuring and with a geniune affection.

One of the main things this album serenades you with is the acres of space each track has to float through. Individually, the elements of the music sound dense - heavy synth organs, defined clacking drum tracks and layers of wash over the vocals and melody - but as they stream at you from the speakers, from the world that Maps has created, they feel so free of constraints, so airy. It's this dichotomy that allows the music to fulfil these two distinct roles, that makes We Can Create both the sombre funeral chamber music it first sounds while still infusing you with a warm, optimistic embrace.

He's been around long enough for us to have seen this coming but it's still good to finally have and hold the record proper. The demos he released all that time ago now sit, complete and fully formed along side newer singles and unreleased songs, all playing out as the perfect theme to hazy summer evenings of love or loss, longing or lament. Like a thin shard of sunshine in a dark room. Precious.

Review by Aidienn Ellison
www.myspace.com/mapsmusic

New Young Pony Club - Fantastic Playroom
Fashionably late, is the long-awaited debut from New Young Pony Club.

Vogueish inasmuch as this record references lipstick and tight clothes. But peel, strip that away and you’re left physically with what NYPC represent musically: sex and sass. Yes, one of these tracks is called ‘Jerk Me’.

The neu-rave schtick was blatant opportunism, but it served the London quintet well, with fluourescent adolescents everywhere gagging for this long player since ‘Ice Cream’ started flogging corporate wares and being served up at

music mag tours. From the vinyl, Tahita Bulmer’s wondering what the kid’s waiting for too: “Show me what you’re here for, boy”, she demands oh so derogatorily.

Neu rave? This is femme punk, boy: “Let your girlfriend do what your boyfriend can’t”.

But it’s a bigger part lounge pop. Bulmer’s alluring drawl delivers innuendo and sass en masse against electro-grooveish beats and warm synths.

Halfway through, the tempo adjusts to that disco-funk ouevre more tight-fitting of the band. ‘The Get Go’ is a louche, provocative four minutes of post-coital decompression.

“Why d’you wanna wear it so tight?” Hum the lurid purrs on ‘Talking, Talking’. “Because you’re so frickin’ hot, Tahita. And I wanna…”. You can nearly imagine the kid screaming.

A propos anticipation: serotonin-starved neu-ravers won’t like it much beyond current single ‘The Bomb’ but when the ephemeral day-glo has faded, these risque Londoners won’t be fretting which genre to join.

Review by Michelle Connelly
www.wearepony.com

Larsen B - The Treasured Memories of Cecil Element
Shadowy newcomers Larsen B wear their British Sea Power influence proudly on their collective sleeves. Such unashamed flaunting of ones key influences is often cause for concern in the indie community, but Larsen B tread the thin line between ‘copyist’ and ‘inspired’ with aplomb. Along with a hearty dose of idiosyncratic BSP-style psych-pop the band also lob a couple of handfuls of countrified twang and a table-spoon of Syd Barrett surrealism into the mix. This six track mini-album twinkles with confidence, and while some indie fans may find their British Sea Power-esque machinations too close for comfort, the

band are likely to have a bright future ahead of them if they carry on producing gems like ‘Atlantis’. Warmer and lovelier than a band named after an Arctic Peninsula Ice Shelf has any right to be! Watch this space!

Review by Tom Leins
www.myspace.com/wearelarsenb

Yucatan
With this lush, self-titled album, Welsh experimentalists Yucatan have come up with an unexpectedly appealing otherworldly debut. After a chance meeting with members of the stunning Sigur Ros, Yucatan holed up in their Icelandic studio and set about creating this dreamily-experimental collection. Swollen, expansive and at times spooky, this is an intoxicating Welsh-Icelandic brew that drifts irresistibly through pop’s hinterland. Enjoyably tricky to try and describe, this is a quietly beautiful album. Sigur Ros devotees need this album in their lives.

Review by Tom Leins
www.myspace.com/yucatanambyth

The Bird & The Bee
Many bands experiment with combining acoustic music with electronic music. There are few who do it very well; most bands start with one, then slap the other over the top and hope for the best. They could learn a lot from this album, which shows how well the two can be blended.

The melodies are beautiful and often delightfully unpredictable, backed with smoothly blended but eccentric harmony. ‘Birds and the bees’ combines the harmonic innovation of jazz with an ultra-modern barbershop quartet sound. ‘I’m a broken heart’ could almost pass for a Brian Wilson track. The production and arrangements thoroughout this album are rich and imaginative enough to keep any student producer busy.

Review by Hannah Higham
www.thebirdandthebee.com

Biffy Clyro - Puzzle
Scottish Trio Biffy Clyro have for some time now been hailed as the saviours of British Rock. Gigging frantically and a trio of albums in as many years saw growing sales and even a top 20 single (the mental "Glitter and Trauma")

Whilst now residing on a new (major!) label, little else has changed for Team Biff. The riffs still act like razors to the ears, the lyrics still tumble untidly over the page like spiderwebs and when the choruses arrive you can still probably see them from a looooong way away. The difference however from 2005's Infinity Land is the refinement of all of what makes Biffy Clyro great into a snarling, caged rock beast. Like Gizmo strapping on a headband and pumping iron in

Gremlins 2, the scottish trio have transformed into a genuinely world beating rock band.

Opening with the apocolyptic "Living is a problem..." and its chanting choral arrangement, this album never lets up, pummeling senses and speakers through "Saturday SUperhouse", glammy stomper "Whos Got a Match" and recent download single "Semi Mental", its a breathless affair that will no doubty thrill converted fans and newcomers alike.

Death and mortality touches most of the lyrics here, with the passing of Simon Neils mother greatly affecting the writing process, not least on the sublime "Folding Stars" (this years big massive summer cross over hit for sure!) where Neil proclaims "Its not getting easier"...

All told this is one of the most important records to come out of Britain in the last three years, and should see the Biff get the chance to take their seat at rocks top table.

Of course come the end of year polls, journo's everywhere with blather themselves into orgasm over Alex Turner and his band of merry men but deep down we will know who the real band of 2007 were...

10/10

Review by Ben Mainwaring
www.biffyclyro.com

I’m usually scrupulous about listening to everything I review at least once, but by half way through the sixth track I was defeated. I think this album was meant to leave me emotionally wrung out and in love with its composer, but lyrics such as ‘all my poems remain unread/someone will find them when I’m dead/and then I will be rich’ should only be available on prescription and under controlled conditions.

Review by Hannah Higham
www.myspace.com/lonelyboyandothertragedies