The rock and pop music of the week reviewed...

Local Natives

Goilla Manor

Infectious ****

Hailing from LA hipster enclave Silver Lake, Local Natives have had a dizzy year at the coalface by anyone's standards. A South By Southwest festival find back in March, the Natives have gone from creating a bit of a buzz to scoring an international record deal and releasing a debut album in about six months. Such a rapid progression might stymie some bands' developmental arc and leave them grasping for songs to fill that album, but not these five. On Gorilla Manor, the Natives flex harmonic muscles, perfect rhythmic pecs, hone angelic vocals and exude a well-rounded sense of confidence about what they're doing. Every track here has a variation on that latter swagger, and it powers both the glorious skyrocketing sweep of Airplanes and the feel-good folky highs and riffs of Sun Hands. A delightful calling card from start to finish. www.myspace.com/localnatives JIM CARROLL

Download tracks: Airplanes, Sun Hands, Warning Sign

Mark Eitzel

Klamath

Decor Records ***

American Music Club founder Mark Eitzel's new solo album, his first since Invisible Man(2001), is a simultaneously spare and lush affair. Named after a river in Oregon, it combines feathery electronica and bright guitar with sinuous percussion and Eitzel's tender croon to create a song cycle that flows mercurially between wise-eyed introspection and wry social commentary, buoyed along on warm currents of jazz, folk and blues. Recorded in a log cabin but sounding like an intimate late-night club session, Klamathreturns Eitzel to the early folk roots of American Music Club but also finds him playfully subverting them, with warm harmonies and languid strings suffusing its confessional lyricism with a seductive charm. www.decorrecords.com JOCELYN CLARKE

Download Tracks: I Live in This Place, The White of Gold

Cold Cave

Love Comes Close

Matador ***

Often the most interesting musical outputs are born out of eclectic experience. Cold Cave mainman Wesley Eisold fronted punk/ hardcore outfits XO Skeletons and Give Up the Ghost, neither of which hinted at where he’d end up with Love Comes Close. His New York/ Philly foursome are masters of eight-bit synthesis, giving each track a dirty, pop undercoat. As infectious as some of this is, it’s hard to block out the memories of other bands – there’s more than a hint of Crystal Castles, but the influences mostly extend further back. Eisold’s vocals on Heaven Was Full sound like Ian Curtis singing over mid-period New Order. Caralee McElroy (ex-Xiu Xiu) has more range, from the Kim Gordan Goo-era vocals of Cebe and Me to her echoey turn on Life Magazine, easily one of the year’s best tunes. Frequently brilliant, but prone to derivative potholes.

www.coldcave.net

Download Tracks: Life Magazine, Love Comes Close

Boo Hewerdine

God Bless the Pretty Things

Navigator Records ***

Funereal and maudlin, or a snapshot of domestic bliss and paternal longing? Boo Hewerdine lays bare a swathe of sloping accounts of a life lived ordinarily (and evidently, well). Hewerdine distils the pain of separation from one's children while on the road and the struggle of living up to blithely made resolutions with some lyrical style. Musically, he leans heavily on a flat-footed rhythm and trance- like pacing, as if he's sleepwalking through all 11 songs. Only the wider vistas of In Paris After the War, with the pinprick assistance of Alan Kelly's accordion, lift this collection to a place that might invite a return visit from the listener. Musically, Boo is gentility personified, but is that enough to relieve the mawkishness of his lyrical preoccupations? Regrettably not. www.navigatorrecords.co.uk SIOBHÁN LONG

Download tracks: In Paris After the War, Sleeping Lions

The Basics

3b Records ***

This is the Melbourne trio's first international release. Their songs tend to focus on shiny, happy people having fun in the sun, and back home they're huge. However, recorded amid "a morass of broken- down communication, heartbreak and bitterness", their European debut turns its back on summer fun in favour of autumnal hues. Think "going-to-university" montage rather than "teens at the beach". Unfortunately, for a record with such a strong emotional background, the songs lack any real weight. Produced by Peter Cobbin, Keep Your Friends Closenods between milk-bland ( Home Again) and overblown ( Keep the Door Open). The most appealing track is the final one, All or Nothing. Bare and vulnerable, lead singer Tim Heath's voice cracks as he murmurs "there are no winners here". True sentiment isn't articulate, and a broken heart beats a big-name producer anytime. www.thebasics.com.au AILBHE MALONE

Download track: All or Nothing

Miss Paula Flynn

Miss Paula Flynn

Caballero/RMG ****

She's the intimate voice that took Bowie's Let's Dance by the scruff for a recent ad campaign and made it all her own. Miss Paula Flynn (quite what the origins of the slightly irritating "miss" are remain a mystery) brings her south Armagh accent, considerable songwriting skill and Duracell bunny-full of musical ideas to her solo debut. With sometime Bell X1 keyboardist Marc Aubele at the mixing desk, Flynn has thrown a raft of musings, meditations and a handful of highly evolved songs into this mix. That distinctive chink-filled voice is up front and highly personal, acting as both suitor and counsellor to cellos, trumpets and autoharps, and propeller to throwaway popsicles such as Five a Day. A delirious splash of a debut. www.misspaula flynn.com SIOBHÁN LONG

Download tracks:Holiday in Sweden, Boxed In

Sonos

SONOSings

Verve Forecast ***

Any scoundrel short of inspiration can have his or her wicked way with someone else's songs, but it takes a special talent to reimagine, reconfigure and reboot familiar songs in a manner to halt your gallop. Enter Sonos, a group of LA harmony singers who have no trouble using voices alone to throw a new angle on such contemporary indie classics as Fleet Foxes' White Winter Hymnaland Radiohead's Everything in Its Right Place. While it's remarkable to hear the latter two reworked as quasi-Gregorian chants, they do, at least on the surface, appear to warrant the solemnity and musical rigour of the Sonos approach. It's quite another thing entirely when the singers turn their attentions to the Jackson 5's I Want You Back, and give its popped-out soul swing the streamlined, sparse and spectral treatment. Best of all, it actually works. www.myspace.com/sonosings JIM CARROLL

Download tracks: Everything in Its Right Place, I Want You Back