Free!!

A lot of bands nowadays are making occasional tracks available free on their websites. Some for limited periods, most for the tiny price of signing up for a mailing list - which you can always unsubscribe from if you really want to later. I do it often, and it accounts for a fair bit of my digital record collection.

Anyway, two such downloads that are well worth a listen also mark a comeback of the relevant artists.

If you go to Keane's website, you can download Spiralling, which is drastic change for the piano twonky music we've come to expect to them. Their brand new album "Perfect Symmetry" (Oct 14th) is apparently all like this. Tom Chaplin explains:

"The first band who we were all into together was The Beatles. You look at a band there, who over the years went from writing love songs for the masses, to changing the face of music and popular culture.”

“Those are lofty ambitions but we wanted to try and emulate that in some kinda way. With this record, at this stage, we really feel we’ve pushed ourselves and gone out of our comfort zone as much as we can.”
-BBC 6 music

Tell you what, if they're all like the single, it's so radically different it could be great.

Not quite a polar opposite, but still vastly different, not-that-long-ago-mentioned David Bryne is back with old sparring partner Brian Eno, with new album "Everything that happens will happen today" (18th August release) - on whose website you can download the single Strange Overtones. Byrne has stated that he wants to promote the album via internet hype and word-of-mouth, so I'm pleased to be a part of that. He says himself that it's only one track and may give a skewed taste of the album - but for such an illustrious partnership it doesn't dissapoint in the excitement it offers.
I understand the album will be available only via the website - streaming and digital download - with no record label around. I for one will certainly be streaming it, if nothing else.

Keane David Byrne Brian Eno