The new site will be at www.littlesparrowmusic.com, where you can already go to sign up for an announcement of our launch. It’s going to be exciting, we promise (for us and a few very special musicians and their fans, at least), so please bear with us while we wrestle to find time alongside our day jobs to make this happen.

Loads of love, and a happy Christmas when we get there,

Merlin x

The music video can be viewed below.

Following the release of their second album Everything Under the Sun in 2010, Jukebox The Ghost’s profile exploded and a relentless tour schedule saw them playing 150 shows a year, headlining the largest venues of their career. During their rapid rise the band’s music was featured in an iPad ad, they played on Letterman and Lollapalooza, and much more.

Safe Travels was recorded in Brooklyn with Dan Romer (Ingrid Michaelson, Jenny Owens Young) producing and engineering. Their most ambitious album to date, Safe Travels strikes a balance between the peppy piano pop of songs like Oh, Emily and the radio-ready drama of Don’t Let Me Fall Behind to more poignant, contemplative songs in the album’s second half that represent the band’s desire to travel into new sonic territory. This creative shift is best exemplified by Dead, Adulthood, Ghosts in Empty Houses, and The Spiritual – songs that deal with death and mortality head on, with an immediacy that was masked on previous albums.

Jukebox The Ghost are pianist Ben Thornewill, guitarist Tommy Siegel and drummer Jesse Kristin.

http://jukeboxtheghost.com

http://www.facebook.com/jukeboxtheghost

For publicity enquiries please contact chris@partisanpr.com

Let’s face it; In Time to Voices is arguably the best album Blood Red Shoes have produced so far. Is it because it’s fearlessly innovative? Because it pushes the boundaries of what alternative rock can do? Frankly, no. It’s because, compositionally, it’s extraordinary. Countless bands, including Blood Red Shoes, have had a crack at the kind of no-nonsense style of writing the album is made up of and produced good material, and with their first two albums it was easy to hear what the Brighton-based duo were working towards. The fact of the matter is that this has been realised in the painfully brilliant melodies present in their newest release.

The second single to be released from the record, ‘Lost Kids’, is an absolutely stellar example of the honed rock writing they’ve perfected. Written in the midst of the 2011 London riots, the track holds a warm, sweetly harmonised verse accompanied by steady and gritty instrumentation which precedes a chorus to make even the greatest alt rock bands quail. The glorious abandon of lyrics like “We’re not fighting to be heard/We just want to watch you burn” is mirrored in the driving force of the pair’s voices, complimenting the gargantuan sound this superb outfit create.

‘Lost Kids’ was released May 14th 2012

After releasing one of the most critically acclaimed British albums of 2011, Veronica Falls return with a brand new track ‘My Heart Beats’; an effervescent bubble of anthemic pop brilliance. Recorded with Rory Brattwell on a freezing boat on the Thames last week, it represents a tantalising taste of things to come for the band.

Headlining will be Feist, a long-standing member of acclaimed music collective Broken Social Scene. Feist has has also collaborated with the likes of Wilco, Beck and Grizzly Bear, and this month received a 2012 Brit Award nomination for Best International Female Solo Artist.

Artists also announced to be joining her in Green Man’s gorgeous backdrop of the Black Mountains this summer are:

The Walkmen
The Felice Brothers
Yann Tiersen
Jonathan Richman
Junior Boys
Damien Jurado
The Time & Space Machine (Live)
Cass McCombs
Scritti Polliti
Slow Club
Ghost Poet
Pete Paphides – Vinyl Revival
Peaking Lights
Dark Dark Dark,
Cashier No. 9
The Wave Pictures
Islet
Rocketnumbernine
Alt-J
Teeth of the Sea
The Perch Creek Family Jug Band
Richard Warren
Goodnight Lenin
Sweet Baboo
Alaska

Tickets for Green Man Festival 2012 went on sale this morning at 9 AM, and are available here – get them while you can, as this year’s festival promises to be an incredibly special one.

It’s fitting, really, that an album that came into the world on Christmas Day should be as magical to experience and as incomparably difficult to explain as Under Sleeping Waves. Accompanying vocals and soundscapes akin to the softly-uttered coos of Sigur Rós and Parachutes, Happy Particles create truly vast and icy tones, such as with the silvery ‘Infinite Jet’, or the translucently tender ‘Slowness’. The album’s more tranquil moments feel far from contrived – something that can rarely be said for a great deal of the often vapid ambient music out there – and the diversity of the content is truly refreshing. The gorgeous elegance of ‘Classes in Silence’, an instrumental made up of mellifluous strings, is utterly breathtaking, and racked up next to the deliciously understated ‘Reprise’ creates a portfolio of incomparably rich sounds. Laced in amongst the the mystical otherworldliness that the album is built on are the honeyed falsetto vocals and sweet harmonies that give the album a marvellous touch of Western accessibility.

Frankly, if I could use just one word to sum up Under Sleeping Waves I wouldn’t pick ethereal or ambient despite it being both of those things. No, if I had to pick one word, it would be perfect, because really, that’s exactly what it is. I can think of no other way of explaining the feeling of listening to this album other than to profess that it simply… caresses you into a state of absolute bliss, before rendering you almost paralysed as the thundering enormity of tracks like ‘Empty Circle’ explode into life. Whether it’s counted as a late 2011 or early 2012 release, Under Sleeping Waves is a true contender for the best album of the year, and if you experience just one work of art today, make it this astounding album.

Under Sleeping Waves was released on December 25th 2011, and is available here.

There Will Be Fireworks first announced themselves to the world – and make no mistake, it was an announcement they made with next to no help from anybody else -  through a debut album of vast soundscapes, soft acoustic murmerings and blistering British post-rock, all rolled together in recordings so honest you could have been watching them come together in the studio. It was a combination that, coupled with an icy breath of Scottish conviction, set them apart from almost every other band on the scene.

It is not, however, the same band that return to us two years later with Because, Because. The shoegaze connotations have fallen by the wayside, along with the ferocious delivery and harsh instrumentation. What has remained – no, nurtured – is the gentle and wintry beauty that defined There Will Be Fireworks as a Scottish band. Opener, ‘Harmonium Song’, floats over a softly struck piano melody, as velvety guitar lines whisper between the calmly delivered vocals, painting a delicate picture of something truly picturesque. The recording quality far surpasses that of the heartfelt favourites from the album; enough that the tracks feel cared for, but not as if they are coming from anybody but the band.

‘From ’84′ is one of the group’s finest songwriting moments; its entirely unornamented acoustic backing is the perfect match for the thoughtful vocal melody and its softly cooed accompaniment. As we’re led into ‘In Excelsis Deo’, a track as delicately twinkly as to make anyone pine to stroll down a dimly-lit cobbled street in the snow, it’s hard to decide whether or not I miss the There Will Be Fireworks I got to know in their debut. As the track reaches its climax, however, it is suddenly not a question I have to answer, as cymbals and thunderous guitars crash into life around strings that feel as if they’re euphorically ringing in a thousand New Year’s Days. Balance is restored, and There Will Be Fireworks remain one of the most interesting rock bands in the UK, boasting sound that has truly grown and matured – a realisation that makes the looming release of their second album a burning light on the horizon. Merlin Jobst

Because, Because was released December 18th 2011 and can be purchased here.

As psych-pop six-piece A Classic Education’s first full-length album, Call It Blazing, chirps modestly into life, its authenticity is almost palpable. The effervescent blend of Sixties pop and modern surf-inspired indie boasts a uniqueness rarely found within the genre, and feels relaxed and perfectly natural. Elements of James Mercer’s work with The Shins can be heard in Jonathan Clancy’s wonderfully understated vocals, whilst components like the delightfully sweet violin around the closing phrases of ‘Gone To Sea’ and the snare that patters through the dreamy garage gem ‘Billy’s Gang Dream’ compliment the jangly, Americana-tinted feel of the album immaculately. Merlin Jobst