Birmingham’s Pram craft fairytales from concrete reality. The second city’s spin cycle of perpetual renovation, from the slum clearances to its current cosmetic upgrade, is etched in Pram’s restless groove, an endearing and gently refusenik mix encircling early Rough Trade innovators The Raincoats, astro jazz, sci-fi soundtracks, creepy Victoriana, tropical analogue and tumbledown funk.
www.myspace.com/pushthepram
Women, latest signing to Jagjaguwar (home to Bon Iver + Black Mountain) produce light and spacious sounds, at other times eerie and dense with an ominous weight, touching upon Velvet Underground, Swell Maps or This Heat while not really having any obvious precursors – a lo-fi masterpiece cloaked in layers of vibrato and guitar wash.
Noisy and claustrophobic songs smash through junkyard trash brawls while others lift and soar across the landscape of 50’s-informed pop; a contradiction and an enigma, the debut album by Women will find its way onto summertime pool break-in boombox mixes and the turntables of record store devotees.
“…. straddles the 1960s’ divide between the Warhol crowd’s speed-addled New York cynicism and the echoes of psychedelic San Francisco that bubbled up across the pond in the fey, catchy pop of UK groups like the Zombies.”
– Pitchfork
http://www.myspace.com/womenmusic
Poster by Ben Javens
