For those of you (mainly bloggers and writers) who’ve had this album for the last few weeks you’ll know just how good this is. For those of you who haven’t then you’re about to be bedazzled.

It’s been over a year since Brian Oblivion and Madeline Follin sauntered onto the scene as Cults with their hot-damn-how-good-is-this-sugary-sweet-dream-pop three-song Bandcamp posting.  Nobody knew anything about them, they didn’t post their songs to blogs or sites and just uploaded them to their Bandcamp page, but within a week they were blowing up from here to the indie blogs in Timbuktu.

Between then and now they’ve released 7″ singles on Forest Family Records, they’ve toured the U.S and Europe, they’ve released other singles on Record Store Day, they’ve posted remixes, videos,  b-sides, collaborations with family members, and everything else you can think of in between. Oh, they even signed a major fucking record deal with Columbia/Sony, but now we have the entire album to make our ears salivate and our mouth blister.  It’s been delayed for a little but finally comes out next week and thanks to NPR the entire jovial thing is streaming below.

Album of the year contender?  Damn right.

Connect with Cults – Facebook | Twitter | MySpace | Bandcamp | Website | Last.fm

I think it’s only fair that since they pushed back the release date of their eagerly-awaited debut album, that they put a new non-album track out there for us to hear, right?

The song “Make Time” is listed on the Irish iTunes store as a single with a release date of May 6th meaning it’s been around for about 10 days without anyone knowing.  You’d think that when you release music for people to buy that they’d make an announcement that it’d been released so that, you know, people can buy it and stuff, but I guess not with Cults.

Maybe they’re already millionaires? Maybe they’ve already moved into their Scrooge McDuck Money Bin and don’t need the cash? Oh, and I resent the generalisation that Scottish people are tight with their money, we’re actually a very charitable people and spend more money at Christmas than any other country in the U.K.  Granted that most of it’s on alcohol, but still.

Anyway, the song in question is beateriffic with handclaps flowering over the edge of Madeline’s feathery echo-tinged voice as it flits across their now-de facto-upbeat-twinkly sound.  You can grab it from iTunes for a buck or so (it’s not available in the U.S. but you can get it from the Irish iTunes store apparently) or you can just listen to it on repeat below.

Connect with Cults – Facebook | Twitter | MySpace | Bandcamp | Website | Last.fm

(via)

Connect with Cults – Facebook | Twitter | MySpace | Bandcamp | Website | Last.fm

(via)

With every new song that I hear from Cults, my anticipation-chubby gets that little bit more anticipatory.

Does that even make sense? I don’t fucking know, but with the rash of new bands that came out last year and released/are releasing an album this year, Cults and Yuck might be the only two who are consistently good.  Tennis kinda fell by the wayside after releasing their debut album in January and new artist Panda Bear’s album “Tomboy” literally sucked.

Well now the kindly dudes at NPR are streaming another new track from Cults’ debut album and presumably a week before the release of the album they’ll have the whole thing to listen to, two, too. to. tu.

Updated with a Soundcloud stream.  Check it out below at around the 26 minute mark.

Connect with Cults – Facebook | Twitter | MySpace | Bandcamp | Website | Last.fm

Unless you’ve seen Cults live in the last 12 months then this new song is the first in close to a year (except that “Oh My God” one they did with accompanying weird video). This time in 2010 they had only just come bounding onto the scene, layered-guitar-driven-dream-pop in tow.  They had upload three songs to their Bandcamp page and as soon as one blog got a hold of them they ended up everywhere, and rightly so, those three songs were gems.

They’ve done a few guest appearances on other artist’s work, most notably DOM’s “Bowl Cut” and featuring alongside Caroline Polachek and singer Madeline’s brother Richie on Guards’ debut EP, but that’s likely the extent of recorded new music from them.  Today, however, they uploaded a brand new song to their Soundcloud page and if “Go Outside” was the best of those three (it was), this new one is the second best; it starts off like a 60′s Motown crooner and drifts off into a bit of a wall-a-sound jam-sammich.

Presumably it’ll be on their major label debut LP coming out in a few, but give it a listen over at their soundcloud page or below thanks to Will.

Connect with Cults – Facebook | Twitter | MySpace | Bandcamp | Website | Last.fm

I gush, what can I say?  Sorry?  Ok, maybe sometimes a “sorry” is warranted, but most of the time it’s not because I’m not the only one gushing.

The latter part of that sentence is definitely true for Cults.  I gushed back in March when they showed up unannounced out of nowhere and turned us all on.  I gushed when Forest Family Records told us they were their first signing/release on the new label, and I gushed when I got the limited edition vinyl.

Now I’m gushing because thanks to Adult Swim’s glorious 8 Singles in 8 Weeks project, we now have a brand new, gush-worthy Cults song.  It’s a little more upbeat than their previous three songs and the words are easier to make out, but it still has that sweet summer Cults sound to it.  Give it a listen below as well as the lead track for their first 7″ single “Go Outside”.  They also did a video for it, their first ever video (other than that video that was doing the rounds a month or two ago of them playing live).

Cults – “Oh My God”
Cults – “Go Outside”

Along with Gauntlet Hair, Sleigh Bells, BRAHMS, and Burnt Ones, Cults round out my top five buzz bands of the year so far.

They burst onto the scene back in late February, early March with three ridiculously catchy songs, the biggest hit of which was “Go Outside”.  This is what appears to be the first video of them playing anything live, and the sound is just as good as on the 7″ they released via Forest Family Records a few weeks back.  It was recorded at NYC’s Mercury Lounge at the start of May and shows the pair (Brian Oblivion and Madeline Follin) doing a damn fine job of bringing their big sound to the live stage.

Deek it below and have a gander at my write-up about them back in March and listen to their three songs; “Go Outside”, “Most Wanted”, and “The Curse”.

Cults, the mysterious and much hyped band that burst onto the scene a few weeks back have signed with Forest Family Records.  FFR is a brand new record label, founded by Gorilla vs Bear and Weekly Tape Deck, and their first release is a limited 7″ run of 400 copies of “Go Outside” (the song that put Cults on the map), pressed on bright yellow vinyl with the B-Side “Most Wanted”.  The single drops on April 20th and you can pre-order it from their site for $8.

Also, for every order placed on their site, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to a charity that benefits animals. So, go order.  I did.

Check out “Go Outside”, “Most Wanted” and “The Curse” below.

(via Gorilla vs Bear)

Eight days ago a mysterious, unknown band called Cults uploaded three songs (“Go Outside”, “Most Wanted”, and “The Curse”) to their Bandcamp page that quickly started being passed around the interwebs among bloggers and music fans alike.  The fact that these three songs are pretty damn good but yet little-to-nothing was known about them is what makes it all the more intriguing.

As it turns out it’s a couple (Brian Oblivion and Madeline Follin) based in New York, both 21, both from San Diego, and both really fucking talented.  They spoke to Pitchfork who got some more information about them which you can read after the music.  I’ve posted the three songs below, each of which you can download for free from their Bandcamp page.

Cults – “Go Outside”
Cults – “Most Wanted”
Cults – “The Curse”

Pitchfork: How did Cults start?

Brian Oblivion: We were just making music in our house in our free time. Neither of us have ever been in serious bands before. Actually, Madeline had a record contract when she was nine years old.

Madeline Follin: Yeah, it was pretty funny. My stepdad’s band was recording, and I just got on the mic. He had me cover “Amoeba” by the Adolescents, and some record company offered to sign me, but my parents wouldn’t let me. In the song and another song I had recorded, it said something about me drinking gin or something; it was really funny. I had a chipmunk voice singing punk rock songs at nine years old.

BO: The band was called Youth Gone Mad. But that’s the extent of it thus far. Doing music together really just kind of came out of living together and dating. I would make tracks and try to sing on them. Eventually, I realized that Maddy was a lot better at it than I was, and we started writing songs together.

Pitchfork: I just looked up Youth Gone Mad on iTunes. Did you do a record with Dee Dee Ramone?

MF: [Laughs] Yeah, I did. Dee Dee was friends with my stepdad and my mom. My mom was his art dealer.  He was a nice guy.

BO: She was obviously really young when…

MF: Yeah, I was super young. I was probably only 12 when he passed away. But yeah, he would come over and record all the time.

Pitchfork: I know you weren’t expecting to get any kind of attention this early, but do you have any plans for Cults? Are you going to play any shows or release any music?

BO: Yeah, we’re finishing up a full-length record right now. We’ve been working on it for a while. The first three songs were just part of a larger full-length that we were working on for a long time. But we’re making plans to tour this summer and just kind of seeing where this could take us.

Pitchfork: Are you talking to any labels?

BO: We’ve had a couple of emails so far. But we just put these songs up online two weeks ago. It’s all just been really surprising and bizarre. Madeline’s been walking around almost throwing up all day.

MF: People have been emailing us. I don’t really know what to do at this point.

Pitchfork: It says something about the way the internet works that you can get attention so instantaneously like that.

BO: Right. I think that’s awesome. Part of it plays into the fact that we didn’t have any information about the band online. That’s what’s so great about the internet. Someone out of left field with no connections can gather a lot of attention if they create something worthwhile. But it’s also a problem with the internet. Everybody wants to know everything about you. We want to pigeonhole and categorize bands, and it kind of flattens their image. Back in the day, there was kind of a mystery to rock and roll, where you could look at album covers and imagine what their lives are like. Now we’re not satisfied unless we know exactly what they do everyday, who they are, where they live. Putting the songs up online without any info was partially just a coincidence, but it’s also a reaction to that attitude– trying to inject something bigger into what’s become an extremely compartmentalized music industry.

Pitchfork: Does it make you uncomfortable that people want to know these things about you?

BO: Yeah, kind of. Because we’re not… I don’t know. As cheesy and cornball as it sounds, at the end of the day, it’s all about the songs. We want to make classic music, and where we live or how old we are and what records we’ve played on before is all interesting, but that doesn’t really matter.

MF: Yeah, that’s why we’re so happy about it. Nobody has any idea who we are, and everybody’s like, “Whoa, what is this? Awesome.”

BO: It’s been really validating for us.

Pitchfork: Your songs have this nostalgia to them. You’re both young, but they sound like simultaneously like 50s pop songs and 80s pop songs.

BO: Yeah, that was kind of the idea. Madeline comes from a largely punk rock background. We both grew up in San Diego, but I came from more of like a psychedelic surf-rock kind of thing. So when we got together and started dating, we had the problem of finding music to listen to. We met up on the common ground of Motown and soul music.

MF: Lesley Gore.

BO: The Shangri-Las, stuff like that. Through listening to that, we started getting really into it and writing songs like that.

Pitchfork: On “Go Outside”, you sample the cult leader Jim Jones talking. How come?

BO: The next sample is these kids being interviewed by the BBC. They were living in a cult, talking about the terrors of the outside world. A lot of the idea of the band and its name is the idea of liberation, of choosing your own way of doing things. Madeline and I both had weird times in our life before we met up and got together and, through the music, got into a really good place. It’s about finding your own meaning and how something that’s potentially looked down upon doesn’t necessarily need to be bad. I wanted to incorporate these speakers saying beautiful things even though they’re bad people.