Friendly Fires - Live Those Days Tonight (From Pala out May 16th)

There's been a lot of very welcome Friendly Fires news coming out in the past 24 hours or so. First the St. Albans band revealed that their sophomore album would be called Pala (named for Aldous Huxley's utopian Island) and would be ready for release on May 16th. Then, for some of their lucky London-based fans, a show at intimate Shoreditch venue XOYO was announced for April 7th, where the band will be exclusively unveiling the new material.

The Go! Team - Rolling Blackouts

The Go! Team are all about bringing the party, theirs is music to dance to. And I don't mean dance well, I mean dance like an epileptic Peter Crouch coked up to his eyeballs and standing under a strobe light. The Brighton sextet's latest effort, Rolling Blackouts is their third, and continues to bring together old-school New York hip-hop, live indie guitars, and brash 70s soul horns, with a childish sense of fun.

Wavves - King of the Beach

After my review of Best Coast's Crazy For You earlier in the week, it only seems fair that I give Wavves' new release a chance as well. Wavves, aka Nathan Williams and Best Coast's Bethany Cosentino are the indie sweethearts of 2010, enjoying a very public, and very loved up, relationship. They also both had albums released this week, going head-to-head in the charts. And as I mentioned in the last review, Crazy For You is winning that little contest with ease.

I've never been one to place much importance on record sales though, selling a million records is hardly a reliable measure of an album's value after all. So Wavves' King Of The Beach gets a fair crack of the whip from me, and a chance to get one over on the missus by beating her Popsiculture score of 60%. Yeah, that will make up for disappointing sales, right?

Best Coast - Crazy For You

Best Coast are an indie-pop girl group who make the kind of sun-drenched, hook-laden pop music that could only come from California. Lead singer Bethany Cosentino is also the current squeeze of Wavves' Nathan Williams, whose second album King Of The Beach is going head to head with Best Coast's debut Crazy For You as both were released this week. According to all the charts I've seen up til now, Bethany is outselling him indoors by some distance, which I like to imagine is adding some frisson to that relationship.

So what can I say about Crazy For You? The music is all fuzzy, jangling guitars and bright melodies, but the star of the show is Cosentino's vocal performance. Always featured high in the mix, Bethany sings in an innocent, girlish style repeating the simplest of mantras over and over ("I wish he was my boyfriend", "I want you so much" etc.) like a spoiled Veruca Salt type who won't stop until she gets what she wants.