Let's Whisper - The shortest days

After a couple of EPs Let's Whisper are now ready to conquer the remaining bits of our hearts as well with their first full length album, The shortest days, which is also the first full lenght release for the WeePOP! label. Of course we all know Colin Clary and Dana Kaplan from their solo projects and their other shared band The Smittens.

Both Colin and Dana have very distinctive voices, so there's no mistake we're dealing with a Smittens spin-off here. Not that this is a bad thing, of course, or that this means Let's Whisper is not a full band in its own right. The music itself is a little bit more bedroom pop, but in an upbeat enough way and with such a full sound that it never gets boring.

The album starts off great with two already familiar songs: California girls and one of the hightlights, All happy endings. All songs after that stay as warm and heartfelt as the openers, with their trademark harmonies and the hum-along-melodies. After two listens the three other songs that jumped out most directly at me were Meet me on the dancefloor, Snowy Sunday afternoon and what could be called their theme song, Let's whisper, but it's too early to really name favourites. Every second of the almost 37 minutes sounds like lovely, instant nostalgia. Like The Smittens, Let's Whisper feels like home. A very special achievement.

Pre-order The shortest days here.

Download (right click, save as)
1. California girls
2. Shortest days

Motel Mozaïque 2011

From 7 to the 11th of April, this year's edition of Motel Mozaïque takes place, again in Rotterdam (the Netherlands). You can see the full program here, but the bands most worth mentioning here are probably Architecture In Helsinki, Belle & Sebastian, The Coral, Dum Dum Girls, José González, Josh Ritter and No Age.

3 x (not so) new

There's real new, and there's new to me. And then there's new to me, and new enough to me to not have mentioned them here before. Reading back through this blog, I noticed it's been quite a long while since I shared some newer music with you. That's surprising (or lazy, call it what you want), because it's not like there's nothing worth writing about out there!

Looking through this week's playlist on my last.fm page I quickly came up with the following three that surely deserve your attention:

Cuffs (Andrew Churchman from Pants Yell!'s new band)
Chalk and Numbers (indiepop sixties style)
The History of Apple Pie (jingle jangle heartbreak pop)

If you've been living on the moon like me and have not listened to these yet, enjoy!

Undercover poplover, part 24

"Well if you want to say yes, say yes
And if you want to say no, say no
'Cause there's a million ways to go
You know that there are"

Download (Mediafire)
1. Death By Chocolate - If you want to sing out sing out
2. They Might Be Giants - Istanbul (not Constantinople)
3. Rose Melberg - Devoted to you