What's New(s)?

The Breeders are working on first new material in 5 years

Pixies be damned. Breeders co-founder and bassist Kim Deal doesn't need her former bandmates to continue making new music. Last year she and the rest of the Breeders (Kelley Deal, Josephine Wiggs, and Jim Macpherson) went on a well-received 20th anniversary tour for the game-changing Last Splash. And now with the tour wrapped up, that current lineup is in the studio's working on the first new Breeders's music since 2009's Fate to Fatal EP. 

Talking to Stereogum, Kim Deal says the band is " down in the basement recording and the songs are sounding good." To Deal, the recordings are what need to be done because as she freely admits "This is what I like to do. I like to record and play songs." The band recordings closely follow Deal's own work under the "Kim Deal Solo Series", which has seen the release of ghostly "Walking with a Killer" among other singles. No word yet on when the Breeders material will be released, but here's hoping it's nowhere near the legacy-killer Indie Cindy is.

Future meets Future Islands in a new Hood Internet mashup

It had to happen at some point right? Considering they share part of a name it was inevitable that ATLien Future and Baltimore-trio Future Islands would link up at some point, but its still jarring to hear that meeting unfold. Quite honestly, hearing anything laid over Future Islands now-viral "Seasons (Waiting On You)" would be jarring. For my own money it's the song of the spring, a piece of inescapable synth-rock that you wouldn't want to run away from if you could. The guitars blissfully hum along, the synths wriggle with crystal-clear clarity, and Samuel T. Herring's unmistakable vocals manage to sound giddy even while he's growing tired of someone else to grow up. There's seemingly nothing that could make the track more joyous.

Save of course for Future's Auto-Tuned hiccup from "Honest", which Chicago mashup group the Hood Internet liberally slather over "Seasons"' bright instrumental-bed. Though it still thrashes like a blind ghost-in-the-machine, his voice manages to find the heart and soul of the track with ease. It alights on the pinging synths and bass gulps as if it had been with them since the beginning. Put simply: it's a near-perfect fit and deserves to be heard.

Check back tomorrow for more of the newest in new(s) and follow AllFreshSounds on Twitter for updates throughout the day.

What's New(s)?

Titus Andronicus planning a rock opera

Titus Andronicus' "lean" 2012 record Local Business was in many ways a market correction of Civil War reenactment The Monitor the group staged in 2010. But now it appears the New Jersey punk-band is getting bullish again with frontman Patrick Stickles promising a fictional rock opera encompassing thirty plus songs. In an interview with Missoulian, Stickles detailed the narrative partially inspired by his own bouts with manic depression, as well as "Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy and Touched with Fire, psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison’s book on how manic depression relates to the artistic temperament." Speaking to the musical scope of the record, Stickles detailed an even sharper punk aesthetic that's "faster and the guitars will be more distorted." As of now the "rock opera" has yet to be recorded and there's no time table for a release date. So while you wait, here's a live cut of a song believed to be featured on the LP.

"Fatal Flaw"

Sleigh Bells Bitter Rivals

The ear-drum rupturing New York noise-pop duo Sleigh Bells is following up last year's molotov cocktail of beauty and brutality Reign of Terror  with Bitter Rivals, their third LP out October 8 via Mom + Pop. The first in-the-red offering from the album is the strutting title track whose molten guitars and 80s rap drum machine hits burns early acoustic strumming and finger snapping into a pile of ash. These little adornments could be a cosmetic touch-up to the band's sound or the signaling of a full-blown makeover. Either way, when October 8 rolls around ear plugs will be required. 

"Bitter Rivals"

Tracklist:
1. Bitter Rivals
2. Sugarcane
3. Minnie
4. Sing Like A Wire
5. Young Legends
6. Tiger Kit
7. You Don't Get Me Twice
8. To Hell With You
9. 24
10. Love Sick



Pixies announce new EP

 


 




















The Pixies 2013 return continues to roll down the tracks now fueled by today's surprise release of new EP EP-1 . According to a piece in the New York Times, the band now without Kim Deal is making plans for a series of "mini-releases put out sporadically over the next 15 months." The first release is available on their website for download and purchase in a limited 5000 copy vinyl run. Frontman Black Francis describes the third cut "Indie Cindy" as a "love song that reflects the anxiety of trying to seduce his audience all over again." The seduction act is carried out through a return to the alternatively blistery choruses and melodic verses Kurt Cobain once copped to ripping off. “All we can do... is go forward and just prove ourselves,” drummer David Lovering says in the article's close. The next 15 months will be the proof.