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New Music this week on the Current

Posted at 2:49 PM on February 18, 2010 by Jim McGuinn

Free Energy - Bang Pop - Once there was a local band called Hockey Night. Then, like many local bands, they broke up. But unlike most bands who stick around and form new bands from the same group of rotating musicians, former Hockey Night-ers Scott Wells and singer Paul Sprangers split town, settling in Philadelphia, where they formed Free Energy, hooked up with James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem) and the DFA label, and crafted one of the best top-down, rolling down the highway pop albums since the '70s. As they used to say, more hooks than a tackle box, and after playing a few tracks last fall way in advance of the release of their debut full length Stuck On Nothing, we're adding Bang Pop, their official first single. See them at 7th Street Entry on March 3rd, and check out this live video of Bang Pop!

Local Natives - Wide Eyes - Another band emerging from LA's Silverlake scene is Local Natives. From their debut Gorilla Manor.

Standard Fare - Love Doesn't Just Stop Proof that Sheffield, England's scene isn't all about trip hop and fat beats (see Massive Attack, Portishead), here comes a young pop group that screams youthful abandon. On their myspace they list Belle & Sebastian, Lemonheads, Sam Cooke, and Graham Coxon among their influences, and it all makes sense. Like the sonic rush equivalent of downing a fizzy coke in one gulp, this is one of those records that comes out of nowhere and makes you fall in love with pop all over again.

Shout Out Louds - Fall Hard Can we call it a comeback yet? From album #3 titled Work we get the return of one of Stockholm's best pop bands.

Gil Scott-Heron - Me and the Devil On a completely different wavelength, music critics and fans have been heralding the return of this jazz poet pioneer. With a career that pre-dated and pre-saged hip hop culture, the man who told us "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" in 1970 is back with his first studio album in 16 difficult years that found Scott-Heron in and out of prison, on and off drugs, and finally, back to making music.

February 2010
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