It’s all over. The UK has a new Government, the pound is rampaging though the world’s currency markets like a coked-up Chuck Norris, and next week each citizen will be receiving an ingot of gold and a box of Mr Kipling’s French Fancies through the post.

Alternatively… the UK has a new government, the pound is slumped in the corner of the world’s currency markets weeing in its pants and with a bit of sick on its jacket, and next week each citizen will be receiving a dog turd and a box of Mint Aeros through the post.

So thank all that is good for the rock solid, um, rock in your life – The Mango. Let’s bring it!

Firstly, Infinite Arms, Band Of Horses. Using the album title which originally was set aside for a much-anticipated comeback by Mr Tickle (before the video of him accepting a drunken bet to stick his hand up a giraffe’s ass and wave out of its mouth made it to YouTube and completely ruined him), Seattle group Band Of Horses return with a slightly downbeat – but still quite lovely – new album.

Sounding like a cross between Neil Young and The Beach Boys, this album offers a nice take on the country/surf genre (it reminds us of The Thrills, and of Ki-Theory‘s latest album – aptly enough, Arms For Legs), while still advancing it and making an album with their own stamp upon it.

It’s pretty safe stuff, but well-executed. Go have a listen and imagine yourself lying on a California beach as you do so; trust us, it’ll help. Here’s its thought:

Oh man, this year’s TieDyeFest is going to ROCK! Got my tie-dyed t-shirt, got my tie-dyed shorts, got my tie-dyed dog. I am ready to…hey, wait. Need to get that Band Of Horses album loaded up before I go.

Loaded.

Huh huh.

I am partial to a bit of tie-dye myself. Do please transport me to Infinite Arms.

Secondly, The Foundling, Mary Gauthier. Here’s a description of Gauthier’s (pronounced GHO-shay, apparently. Huh.) latest album by the lady herself:

I was born to an unwed mother in 1962 and subsequently surrendered to St. Vincent’s Women and Infants Asylum on Magazine Street in New Orleans, where I spent my first year. I was adopted shortly thereafter but left my adopted family at fifteen. I wandered for years looking for, but never quite finding a place that felt like home. I searched for, found, and was denied a meeting with my birth mother when I was 45 years old. She couldn’t afford to re-open the wound she’d carried her whole life, the wound of surrendering a baby. The Foundling is my story.

Crikey. So… er… no chance of Walking On Sunshine this time around, Mary? What A Wonderful World? Happiness by Ken Dodd?

No? Okay, so what have you got for us? Well, we’re going to give you another quote, this one from the first – and title – track:

The shivering shadow, a child with no name. Accept, surrender, sinking in pain.

Those are some powerful lyrics, and believe us: they aren’t set to a jaunty Eurobeat.

No, it’s Mary Gauthier’s expertly-rendered take on Southern music. It’s a jamabalya of music from this Louisiana native, if you will allow us. There’s sausage (New Orleans jazz), there’s rice (zydeco), there’s seafood (Texas country).

We’d go on, but frankly the metaphor has made us a little peckish. So, to conclude: it’s a collection of beautifully written, wonderfully scored and magnificently played sad songs. Should probably come with some kind of “depression advisory” sticker on it. Here’s its thought:

Oh, so sad. So world-weary and sad. Let me flick through my music collection and see what’s there. Ooh, this one has a cute little cartoon girl on the front. Okay, here goes…

I promise I will not listen to this album while sharp objects are within reach. Just take me to The Foundling.

Thirdly, Exhibit B: The Human Condition, Exodus. You know when you go to an extended-family event – a wedding, christening, whatever – and you see old Uncle Johnny, sat at the bar with a whisky and a slim cigar, just like the 15 years since you last saw him haven’t happened?

And you think: good god, that old bugger’s still going? With his whisky, and his cigars, and his four bypass surgeries, and that German bullet he says is lodged in his inner thigh and he’d always ask the kids if they wanted to rub it?

That’s how we felt when a new album from Exodus landed at out fingertips. And sure enough, just like Uncle Johnny, Exodus are still going through life in the only way they know how: by producing tight, sharply-produced thrash metal.

It’s like Metallica never became famous from here to Venus, never perfected this sort of thing and then moved on, never realised that moving on was silly and came back to this sort of thing.

So, it’s good, but…it just seems like hamburger meat when you could so easily have a steak. Actually, perhaps that is exactly what it is: maybe Metallica pay Exodus to keep releasing albums like this to fill the time between their own albums, and to keep the denim-clad hordes desperate for a juicy sirloin.

Here’s its thought:

It’s the bi-annual D&D fest at Keith’s house tonight. I shall bring this new Exodus album, and I shall play it as we slay an 18th level Platinum Dragon, and the guys shall give me much kudos.

I have not taken off my denim jacket in 18 years. It’s basically been consumed by my skin now. As such, I am unable to venture into the public gaze, so please take me to Exhibit B: The Human Condition.

Fourthly, Love And Its Opposite, Tracey Thorn. Oh, Tracey Thorn. We cannot count the number of relationships you have advised us on. Nor how many breakups you have seen us through. And certainly not how many deserts we have visited with a watering can because you told us how sad they get without rain.

Formerly – it seems they may never get back together – of Everything But The Girl, Tracey Thorn has also recorded extensively on her own. From her opener, the too-reverb-heavy A Distant Shore, to this latest album, not much has changed apart from improved production.

Tracey Thorn has always been about the relationships, and here is more of the sublime same. That voice is the artist’s brush and pain here, and all else – the acoustic guitars, the finger clicks, the tinny synthesiser beats – are but a fine canvass.

We like Tracey Thorne.

Here’s the album’s thought:

Tricky moment in my relationship coming up. So many decisions, wish I could somehow take advice from someone who always knows what to do in these circumsta…oh, Tracey Thorn’s got a new one out. Problem solved.

I could have been the thinker who thought that thought. Please, hasten me unto Love & Its Opposite.

See you next Monday, Mangons.

In the meantime, if PR folk have music they’d like to pour into the ears of a simply astounding number of people, they should write to us here: TheGibbo[at]gmail.com

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