Enon are playing Auntie Annie’s on the 12th of February along with Lafaro and Two Door Cinema Club. Recent album Grass Geysers… Carbon Clouds has been met with much of praise in the music world and I have to say I’m loving the single Mirror On You.

Coincidently, I’ve been listening to a lot of Holy Fuck this week, who just happen to share drummer Matt Schulz with Enon. Holy Fuck - LP is their second release and they’ve definitely come a long way. Reminds me of Caribou and Ratatat, except with a bit more tempo.

Enon - Mirror On You

Holy Fuck - The Pulse

Holy Fuck - Lovely Allen

Update (4th Feb): Radar presents — HOLY FUCK — Wed 9th April — Speakeasy @ The Union — £8.00

(it’s like i’m some sort of tasty fortune cookie….)

I know this has posted just about everywhere, but it’s a great excuse to post up an M83 track - a band I haven’t dedicated nearly enough time at all to this year. I’ll start by sharing the track in the above video, the intro to a skate video directed by the legendary Spike Jonze. Enjoy!

M83 - Lower Your Eyelids To Die With The Sun

The Test Icicles star burned bright and short. One week they were taking over the world with songs like Circle Square Triangle, the next it was over. They didn’t like the music that they were playing apparently so called it quits. So out of their smoldering ashes comes Devonte Hynes’s solo project; Lightspeed Champion, and it’s completely different from what I had been expecting.

Produced by none other than Mike Mogis, this is more country/folk than anything I expected and it really seems to work. Where Test Icicles went for fast riffs and beats Hynes opts for jangly guitars and chilled out drums. Managing to sing a line like “My neck will burn as we kiss and I’m sick in your mouth.” with utter sincerity is impressive, almost sweet…

The humor of his previous band is still there, and so is the emotion, it’s just the format that has changed. And is this down to rubbing shoulders with the likes of Mogis and Bright Eyes? Who knows. Falling Off the Lavender Bridge was released almost a year ago. I wish I had heard it sooner, don’t make the same mistake…

Test Icicles - Circle Square Triangle

Lightspeed Champion - Galaxy Of The Lost

Introducing “You Can’t Move For“, a regular feature exploring a band that you can’t move for hearing about. This week - Vampire Weekend.

For the past few months, tracks from the New York quartet’s self-titled LP have been sneaking out of wherever tracks typically sneak out of, onto music blogs everywhere. This week has seen the release of the album in its entirety via the more official mediums of download and CD, and seems like a solid collection of quirky pop songs. Try the following tracks as a taster, and continue on to your download service of choice for a larger helping …

Vampire Weekend - M79

Vampire Weekend - Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa

With a whole table of free drinks that would make even Christine Bleakley blush, on Saturday night ATL coaxed us down to Blackstaff for a few local band live recordings.

Six acts for six weeks of ATL TV: The Panama Kings, Oppenheimer, Fighting With Wire, Skruff, Cat Malojian and Foy Vance in the space of a few hours. Cue many takes of the same song, bad miming, half of Rigsy’s wardrobe and alot of half drunk indie kids.

Initially it was supposed to be at a secret location in the shipyards, but for complicated insurance reasons (they didn’t have any insurance…) it was moved into the studios at the last minute.

But not to fear, a few fancy lights, some well placed lamp shades (Ikea, £1.49) and we were back in business.

I was particularly impressed with The Panama Kings and Derry’s Skruff, with the latter sounding like a decent version of The Ordinary Boys (well ok, it’s not hard).

I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot more of them in the coming months.

I try not to build expectation levels up before gigs, having been poorly disappointed by shows in the past (Thanks Ryan Adams!) but I can’t help getting excited about Okkervil River coming to Belfast.

They’ve been around for the good part of a decade now but only really made their mark with 2005’s Black Sheep Boy, an album that transformed them from middle of the road indie ballad boys to the next Buffalo Springfield, The Band, Flying Burrito Brothers… Songs like For Real and In A Radio Song are pretty heavy affairs, dealing with loss, sorrow, sadness…

So last year’s offering The Stage Names comes to some as a bit of an escape. Lead singer Will Sheff deals with being a rock star on this release, and seems to take a step back from everything. You Can’t Hold Hands With A Rock And Roll Man is about being too old, too hung-over, too tired and too bored to tour and its worlds away from anything on Black Sheep Boy. Half of this album was written at 2006’s South By Southwest Music Festival which might go some way to explaining the theme, or maybe it’s just middle age…

So, Okkervil River are tired of touring, singing about being tired of touring and playing in the Empire in a few days… have I sold it to you yet?

Okkervil River – For Real

Okkervil River – You Cant Hold Hands With A Rock And Roll Man

You’ll hear no complaints from me when a new Cat Power record hits the shelves, which coincidently one just has. “Jukebox”, equally as suggestive a title as “The Covers Record”, follows the previous idea of a predominantly cover-heavily LP, and disappoints as much as previous attempts (ie. not in the slightest). Washed over with the eerie gloom only Chan can submerge these tracks in, you’ll find her slightly more vocally adventurous on this one - no where more apparent than on the opening track, a almost unrecognizable version of New York.

Cat Power - New York

Cat Power - Song for Bobby