PUPS

Where It's At Is Where You Are's 2013 7" series has yielded another smash in PUPS' "Month Long Sleep".  I'm aware that I really love it as I do everything faster when it plays.  The downside of this is that I've just eaten too many chocolate (plain - I am a grown up!) digestives .  The upside of it, however, is that I walked home in double-quick time as I listened to mp3s of it on repeat last night.  PUPS are Katie, Rose and Caitlin.  Rose is Rose Melberg.  That's thee Rose Melberg who hasn't appeared on a bad record in her best-part-of-two-decade long involvement in music.  As with Tiger Trap, Rose doesn't sing all the songs and, as with Tiger Trap, the other singers in PUPS are great in their own right, adding a little more spikiness and bite to the proceedings.  PUPS are from Vancouver, Canada and continue that city's fine line of nippy, zippy pop groups that includes Cub and Gaze.  PUPS' debut 45 is everything I need a single in summer 2013 to be: it's vigorous, it's breezy and it's completely unpretentious.  Way to go WIAIWYA!

Brave Irene

It's a struggle to think of too many artists who've never released a bad record over the course of, say, a near 20 year 'career' in music.  It's even more of a struggle to compile a list of people who've never made an average record over such a period.  If I were to draft the latter list Rose Melberg's name would be on it and right up the top, too.  Whether solo or with Tiger Trap, The Softies and Go Sailor (or Gaze, for that matter) her records have been uniformly cute, lovable and brilliant.  It came as no surprise, therefore, to discover tonight that the debut e.p. from her new group, Brave Irene, was a breezy delight.  After the gentle folk of her last solo album, Homemade Ship, it's a thrill to hear her pick up the pace once more with 8 zippy, organ-enhanced songs that could equal Go Sailor and Tiger Trap for succinct catchiness.  So, a gold star and a sugar mouse each for Rose and her label Slumberland!

Brave Irene - No Fun by Slumberland Records