What We've Been Listening To This Week: The Goa Express, I Like Trains, Colorama, Hoofs, Bananagun, Nest Egg

Stand out single this week comes from yet another promising band from Manchester, The Goa Express with ‘Be My Friend’. Its almost a year to the day since the band released their last single ‘The Day’ (which also appears on the 7-inch release of this single) and this is some follow up. Be my Friend leads with a punchy riff, bouncing bass and propulsive drums - pure psychedelic pop at its finest. Check it out here and buy the limited vinyl here.

Similarly psychedelic and super is ‘And’ the new single by Colorama. 'And' is taken from the new Colorama album ‘Chaos Wonderland’ which gets its digital release on 31st July. Frontman Carwyn Ellis attributes the title of the album to travelling a lot and seeing a lot of flux, but whilst doing so witnessing ‘the warmth and inherent goodness of the vast majority of people I’ve encountered’ which is a pretty cool way to view life, and this is a pretty cool single too. He’s joined on the record by the eminently prodigious Shawn Lee, and a handful of guests including Lovisa Sigrunardottir (Lay Low) and Valerie Etienne. Listen to it here.

Another band returning after a long hiatus is I Like Trains, who’ve just released ‘Dig in’ the second single from their forthcoming album Kompromat, which is due to be released on 20th August. Dig in mixes post punk and krautrock to wonderful effect and it’s a top, top tune. Check it out alongside a great video here.

Talking about post punk, whilst browsing the Murderati Facebook page this week I noticed a post from Dutch band Hoofs about their new single Crash, asking for people’s thoughts. It seemed only right to give it a play, and that listen revealed it to be a short, sharp, bright bit of post punk, good stuff indeed. Give it a listen yourself here.

Switching our attentions to albums, remember the Bees? The Mercury prize nominated band that managed to fuse sixties psychedelia with a host of other musical genres, and in doing so make it sound contemporary? Melbourne’s Bananagun sound like that band reimagined and revitalised on their debut album ‘The True Story of Bananagun’ with their own brand of breezy psychedelia mixed in with afrobeat, funk and soul. The parallels between the two bands are uncanny; if you told me that it was the Bees I’d be none the wiser, songs like ‘Bang Go the Bongo’s’, ‘The Master’, Freak Machine’ and ‘She Now’ just sound like them, but in a really fresh way. The Bees didn’t really do too much in the way of afrobeat, but if they did it would definitely sound like the sublime ‘People Talk Too Much‘ on this record. Similarities with the Bees aside though, this a wonderful, summery listen.
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Last but not least this week, we reviewed the new album by Nest Egg this week which you can read about here. There’s only 6 tracks on Dislocation and all of them are mighty fine – thrashy numbers like the title track and What!!??! I’m a Bastard!!??! interspersed with brooding krautrock and post punk. It’s a very compelling listen. ​