Listen Before You Buy

If, like me, you were barely old enough to string sentences together during the early nineties heyday of shoegaze, the genre’s ongoing revival is something of a blessing. On Volcano, a four-piece group from Tampere, Finland, provide the latest aural treat for revivalists. “New Blood”, their second EP released late last year, is a little [...]

Picture by James Chadderton/Peter Hook   It’s fairly indescribable the impact that Joy Division have had on my life, but it’s fair to say it’s been nothing short of life-changing; one of those artists that literally do change your life, and personally it’s only happened with four others (Oasis, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Arcade Fire…gotta [...]

While I was going through LBYB’s SXSW list, I listened to the first few seconds of each track.  If you can get me at “hello,” then I’m yours.  All I needed to hear was that first bass drumbeat of Superhumanoids’ track “Persona”, and I knew I was going to like it.  Then in walked that [...]

Click on the image to listen to the entire album for free.

Click on the image to listen to the entire album for free.

When thinking of bands from Scandinavia your list would probably start with Abba, then move on to other mainstream ones like Roxette, Ace of Base and The Cardigans.  You might also have a complete list of all the Death Metal bands to hail from there. Alternatively you may well be heading into my particular taste [...]

Follow Friday is an “event” on Twitter where users suggest other Twitter users to follow.  It’s a great idea but so many awesome sites and blogs and users get lost in the noise, so for everyone who doesn’t follow LBYB on Twitter, I’ll do this every Friday and highlight one site or blog I frequent that [...]

Go on Scotland, go do your thing (I know Frank is all about the homeland); as he should be, especially with good music coming out of it like Aerials Up. Aerials Up is an outfit from Glasgow, making some serious noise this past year. This is a good one, a seven piecer with a wide [...]

Artist: Arcade Fire Hometown: Montreal, Canada Members: Win Butler, Régine Chassagne, Richard Reed Parry, William Butler, Jeremy Gara, Sarah Neufeld, Tim Kingsbury Formed: 2003 Released: 2010 Genre: Indie, Rock, Alternative, Awesome Label: Merge, Mercury Singles: “The Suburbs”/“Month Of May”, “We Used To Wait”, “Ready To Start” Connect: Facebook | Twitter | MySpace | Website | Last.fm Buy The Album: Amazon - Vinyl [...]

I’ve noticed that Win Butler (Arcade Fire‘s head honcho) has been wearing a fair amount of militaristic clothing lately. I suppose it’s nothing entirely new, he’s kinda been doing that since their inception, but this year it seems like it’s more along the same lines as Chris Martin and Coldplay did with their latest album [...]

Of course NPR have gone and done it again. A full day before the album gets released in North America (it’s released in Europe today) they’ve got the stream for the entire album Pitchfork just gave it Best New Music with an 8.6 out of 10, and most other sites I’ve read have given it [...]

You can now listen to the whole album for free right here. By now you may already know that Arcade Fire’s new album “The Suburbs” has leaked ahead of it’s August 2nd/3rd release date. By now you may already have a copy of it, or have listened to it and have heard this song already. [...]

If you’re unaware of what Music Monday is, it’s a Twitter recommendation system where users of Twitter share their favourite music, artists, genres, etc in order to not only find new music themselves but help others find new music too.  Using the hashtag (#) followed by “MusicMonday” you can easily find new music posted by [...]

An entire album being given away as a free download?  Those can be hard to come by these days, you might think that if someone is giving away an entire album they spent time recording, it must be pretty bad.  The digital equivalent of a second-hand shop and their bargain bins, you might think.  Well [...]

You can now listen to the whole album for free right here. Two more brand new songs from their upcoming third album “The Suburbs”. This time it looks like they were passed around to various radio stations because a bunch of them started tweeting about it this morning/afternoon.  We’ve already heard snippets of “Ready To [...]

If you’re unaware of what Music Monday is, it’s a Twitter recommendation system where users of Twitter share their favourite music, artists, genres, etc in order to not only find new music themselves but help others find new music too.  Using the hashtag (#) followed by “MusicMonday” you can easily find new music posted by [...]