This months listen or 6 months

The Kings of Convenience

Quiet is the New Loud

After the favourable reception afforded their Live In A Room EP, Norwegian duo Eric Glambek Boe and Erlend Oye respond with the full album, variously recalling Simon & Garfunkel, Red House Painters and Belle & Sebastian. Spare acoustic guitars enjoy little company (a muted trumpet on Singing Softly... that's about it); no problem when they're as alternately spry and limpid as they are on I Don't Know What I Can Save You From, perhaps a touch monochromatic over the long haul (they're collaborating with Serge Gainsbourg arranger David Whittaker - that will help). Yet there's lashings of charm in the way the songs unfurl, touch upon an array of ethereal womenfolk and end, having gone nowhere much, but prettily. Good show.

Some other stuff I have been listening too:

The Lapse

  I fell in love with these guys after seeing them open for Stephen Malkmus (Pavement).

Chris Leo and Toko Yasuda gained cultish fame after collaborating on several EPs and two albums as the post-punk band the Van Pelt. Heaven Ain't Happenin', the duo's second album as The Lapse, proves to be enticing and playful. Filled with boundless energy, its dynamic, well-crafted art-rock tunes are stretched out into beautiful landscapes, but captivatingly, the tunes confound as they meander, rock out, convulse and then gently fade. Leo drops quasi-confrontational lyrics with an appealingly boyish delivery that approaches singing, but is closer in spirit to beat poetry reading. Just when it all seems to make sense, Yasuda takes the reigns and deliberately trips up the listener with a couple of bona fide pop tunes sung in Japanese.

The Avalanches

Never mind digging in the crates -- the Avalanches probably just buy them whole, sight unseen, and find a way to bounce off each platter. Eventually morphing into a gang of six merrymakers bent on filtering their all-encompassing record collections through original instrumentation and a great deal of sampling, the Avalanches came from one of the most unlikely places to generate mind-bending dance music -- Australia.Perfectly fitting with the band’s range, the roots of the crew are in punk. Robbie Chater and Darrin Seltmann were in a couple of short-lived outfits together, most notably the Swinging Monkey Cocks. Gordon McQuilten, Toni Diblasi, and Dexter Fabay eventually joined in on the mess, but they acquired turntables and set their sights on dance music of the sample-based variety, originally leaning on abstract hip hop and naming themselves the Avalanches. Trifekta Records released the Rock City single in 1997, which soon brought the interest of Australian label Modular. With a long-term deal freshly inked, they released the seven-track El Producto EP and polished their outlandish live show, including dates with the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy. Rex issued the Undersea Community EP in 1998, which culled from the band’s demo trove. Somewhere along the way, keyboardist James De La Cruz was added to the lineup.An extensive patch of time was spent building Since I Left You, a 60-minute melting pot of the band’s collective that sounds like a postcard to anyone who has ever made a record. Released in their native land in late 2000 and preceded by the appetite-whetting Frontier Psychiatrist EP, it received a response from critics and the public that reflected the album’s glowing nature. The group even had the blessing of Madonna, who allowed them to sample the bass line to "Holiday" -- the first time she okayed such a thing.

Mojave 3

For their third album, the former Slowdivers in Mojave 3 venture further into defining a very real and identifiable sound for their "new" band. This isn't surprising, since with Excuses for Travellers, Mojave 3 have now released as many albums as Slowdive. And though the sullen, acoustic drama they purvey was well-codified on their debut (Ask Me Tomorrow), it's not been until now that, that sound has come into its own.
The country-tinged melodies and beautifully simple arrangements combine with the downcast romanticism of singer Neil Halstead's lyrics in a way that is simultaneously inspired and confident. The undeniable tension in a song such as "In Love with a View" or the (relatively) light-hearted paean to Red House Painter Mark Kozelek ("Krazy Koz") reveal the breadth of possibilities within Mojave 3's sound.

Belle And Sebastian

A band that takes its name from a French children's television series about a boy and his horse would almost have to be precious, and, to be certain, Belle & Sebastian is precious. But "precious" can be a damning word, and Belle and Sebastian doesn't have the negative qualities that the word connotes -- they are private but not insular, pretty but not wimpy; they make gorgeous, delicate melodies sound full-bodied. Led by guitarist/vocalist Stuart Murdoch, the seven-piece band has an intimate, majestic sound that is equal parts folk-rock and '60s pop, but Murdoch's gift for not only whimsy and surrealism, but also for odd, unsettling lyrical detail keeps the songs grounded in a tangible reality.

Based in Glasgow, Scotland, Belle and Sebastian released their first two albums in 1996 at the peak of the chamber-pop movement. At first, some critics in Britain's music weeklies tied the band into the subgenre, yet the group was too pretty, too delicate, to bear that label. Through their first two years of public existence, the band shielded their personalities, submitting publicity photos featuring a girl that wasn't in the band and reluctantly posing for photo shoots. Furthermore, they performed in odd venues, playing not only the standard coffeehouses and cafes, but also homes, church halls and libraries.

Albums:
Tigermilk
If your Feeling Sinister
The Boy with the Arab Strap
Fold your Hands Child, you Walk like a Peasant -  which is new  

Also Stuart David the bass player left Belle and Sebastian to focus full-time on his solo project, Looper which is great too.