Today’s theme is a sad one. Goodbyes are hard but sometimes a sweet melody can help ease the pain. Sometimes, not so much. Still, we have to carry on and for that we turn to the Postmarks. Their self titled album from last year is littered with hushed heartbreak delivered in sugar sweet tones of sadness. The video for “Goodbye” is suitably charming and painfully autumnal. It looks like the most melancholy children’s book ever come to life (Madeline and the Bad Break-Up, perhaps) and also reminds us that it’s just about time for their next album! Hopefully the band can wipe away the tears soon and get it together in time to soundtrack the broken hearts of this autumn.

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It’s hard to imagine a meeting between Marc Bolan and Prince. What would the two pint sized wizards talk about? How hard it is to find pants in x-tra small? How easy it is to score with women when your talent far outstrips your shoe size? I guess we’ll never know, but we can listen to a musical mash-up of the two thanks to Pop Levi. While the UK based Levi’s first album, The Return to Form Black Magick Party, quite pleasingly leans toward the mystical bump and thud of T. Rex, his new song seems to lean toward recapturing “Kiss”-era Prince and dipping it in some pretty thick glam sauce. We’ve got video evidence here but a quick trip to Levi’s MySpace page also provides a few more previews of the forthcoming Never Never Love album, which will be unleashed sexily later this summer.

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If you could time travel to any musical era, any place in the world, where would you go? NYC of the ’40s to hear Charlie Parker and the beginnings of bop? Bakersfield in the early ’50s to catch Buck Owens & His Buckaroos kicking up some serious dust? London, 1965? L.A., 1978? Me, I would pick New Zealand in the mid-’80s, and these records are the reason why. (Oh, and they all need to be reissued, as soon as possible!)

The Bats - Daddy’s Highway
The Bats, headed by Robert Scott of NZ heroes the Clean, played the cleanest, purest pop of any band anywhere. They are the definition of jangle pop but they also brought a very pleasing chug to their sound (chug pop?) that was indicative of much of the Flying Nun stable of bands. They released a ton of records (and are still very much a going concern with the release of a very good album, At the National Grid, in 2005) but the pinnacle of their sound is Daddy’s Highway. Warm, peaceful and full of pastoral soul, the album is simply magical.

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Hey there, Bunky. Did you have a rough night? Maybe there was a cat outside your window singing opera or the neighborhood canine population was auditioning for AmIdol. Perhaps you were up all night wishing you had studied law, medicine or something that actually came in handy later in life. Are you having a tough morning? Maybe you woke up alone. Maybe you didn’t wake up alone. Maybe your cellmate, um I mean, cubemate will! not! stop! TALKING! What you need is Cub. Really, trust me. It’ll make everything okay.

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Orange Juice worship will get you far with the AllMusic blog. Chic + the Velvet Underground is the kind of musical equation that can’t be topped when calculated properly. Quick examples: Edywn and the lads on “I Can’t Help Myself”, Franz Ferdinand on “Take Me Out”, and now the Lodger’s “The Good Old Days”. The UK trio’s first album was fleetingly great indie pop with nice hooks and some songs you’d want to throw on a mixtape, but it lacked the one big song to help them break out and really be something special. “The Good Old Days” is the one, a sparkling summer jam for the sweater set to fall in love with. The soon to be released (May 19th on Slumberland) album Life is Sweet is destined to be a classic if the rest of the tunes are up to this level of gooey goodness. Keep your fingers crossed …

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Say you’re a huge fan of Canadian indie rock and and you don’t have the good fortune to live in Canada. Gee whiz, think of all the excellent CBC Radio 3 sessions you’re missing out on. Why, maybe A.C. Newman, Destroyer, You Say Party! We Say Die!, Tokyo Police Club or even the New Pornographers hit the studio recently to record sessions and you’ll never hear them. Think again, hoser! Thanks to their seriously sweet website you can access boatloads of archived sessions and concerts recorded for the station by some of Canada’s top indie rockers. Go to CBC3’s main website http://radio3.cbc.ca/, then click on Concerts & Sessions and you’re in. You can see the five most recently added shows or browse through the archive and find some gems.

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Every now and then the title of an album is a perfect embodiment of the music found within. Los Campesinos! are dead right calling their album Hold on Now, Youngster…, because from the first track on, the album is a thrilling madcap whirlwind of sound, words, and voices that by the end leaves you feeling like you’ve been engulfed in an indie pop-driven hurricane. The members of the Welsh seven-piece are hyper-literate, hilarious, and know their way around a hook as they pile through the 11 songs on the album like they are on a breakaway heading for the goal. Words tumble out in jumbles, the lead voices (Gareth with his high-pitched whine, Aleksandra with her sweet kid tones) trade off lines and sass each other, and the instruments (guitars, bells, keys, violins) whip up a joyful mess, while the drums try mightily to pin it all down. Bands with less grasp on dynamics and timing and a less sympathetic producer than Broken Social Scene’s producer Dave Newfeld might have ended up with a real mess of a record on their hands. Instead, Los Campesinos! have a ringing success here: a combination of punk rock energy, indie pop wit and emotion, indie rock experimentation, and the raw feel of classic garage bands throughout the ages.

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Last year while everybody was busy going wild over the Pipettes and their warmed-over take on the girl group sound of the ’60s, another band in England was effortlessly knocking their weak efforts into a cocked hat. Lucky Soul are influenced by a similar musical era but instead of slavish imitations, they pump their Northern Soul meets G-Group sound with a thrilling blast of energy and, thanks to Ali Howard’s sweet and soulful vocals, a warm emotion that’s missing from the Pipettes’ clinical approach. Lucky Soul also easily trump Duffy’s studied, over-blown and over-sung songs, give Candie Payne a run for her money and provide an indie pop alternative for anyone who’s tired of Amy Winehouse’s antics but still has an affinity for her backwards-looking, soulful style. (And though this might scare off older folks and mystify everyone else, if you close your eyes you can almost hear a Bite-era Altered Images influence, especially in Howard’s voice but also in the lushness of the arrangements.) The group’s 2007 debut album The Great Unwanted was pretty much slept on but it’s possibly the most joyful, pure-est pop album of the year.

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