VIDEO: Cults - Go Outside

My Cults single d/l post from last year is one of the most read things of the last few weeks - is that all you naughty scamps looking for the album link? This is the song that hooked me into a state of obsession for a brief period back there. Turns out it's really the only song they have, but it's a killer and now it's got a proper video to go with it.

DOWNLOAD: Guards - Guards EP

Guards
Guards EP
DOWNLOAD

Here's another incredible free album for you, from New York band Guards. 3Syllables are putting this out on limited edition 12" in November, but it is also available to download for free from their Bandcamp right now and it is one of the most exciting and fresh reinventions of recent history I've heard all year - this will make your weekend.  With no web presence other than a recently activated twitter account - possibly at the insistence of friends Cults and Best Coast - and the Bandcamp, Guards offer a fresh enigmatic yet uncontrived take on their self-promotion. Similar to Twin Sister, which I like to describe as Vintage, this is a sound that rolls so many references into it that it sounds instantly classic - IS instantly classic - take opening track Resolution of One; as soulful as a Stax ballad with an injection of garage-rock adrenaline to take it into an altered dimension of musical lineage that continues through the album to mix disparate elements and meld them into a beautifully high-functioning Pop music; a multiverse of free spirited downtuning and dissonance, lilting horns and shimmering waves of chilled surf twang; Cults join them on Sail It Slow, dialling the pace down several notches with a slow-motion take on 50's heartbreaking milk-bar jive; closer I See It Coming matches the epic scale of Arcade Fire with chime backed ooohs and aaaahs but adds a feral a kicking upswing of tenacious rock and roll With an album that's as effortlessly all-encompassing as this they're easily a band that is going to get catapaulted to...you know, like MASSIVE Blog Hype or something even bigger, and deservedly so.

Before the physical album release, they're putting Resolution of One out on 7" through Small Plates now, which you can order from HERE and to celebrate their first ever gig the band have put up new song Swimming After Dark to download from Yours Truly:

DOWNLOAD: Swimming After Dark


They tagged themselves as “alternative, doom, new wave, power pop, rock & roll, New York"  Seem like good people.  Tweet 'em @guardsmusic

DOWNLOAD: Cults - Cults 7"

And here it is. My Cults obsession. Another genuinely inspiring gem from the Gorilla Vs. Bear label Forest Family. New York boy/girl two piece, slickly Motown, and sugary like the sweetest Spector Pop. Awesome.  Think free, loose and sweatily sensual experiences - ephemeral, transient, tangible.

This kind of stuff, I have recently realised, is made all the more potent by it's limitations, the consciousness of its disposability and sense of finity. Pop music succeeds when it harnesses it's brevity, when it injects every ounce of energy and enthusiasm into each moment of it's brief life with the understanding that this is all the time it will have on Earth, like a mayfly that once hatched has to outperform itself in a perfectly executed performance of existence. If Pop music and it's practitioners cannot submit to their fatality of their art and reproduce that urgency within their music then they are cheating us all.

This is that 24 hour artistic perfection smashed onto tape.

You an download their full Cults 7" ep totally free from their BANDCAMP,or order the real life shellac from the label.

Here's a video of Go Outside: