Clever Eleven December 2007 ¤

I hope everyone has enjoyed their holidays, and what better way to celebrate the new year than with 11 new great tunes?! December is traditionally not a very fertile month when it comes to new music, so this collection digs out a handful of overlooked pop gems from the fall (no, not the band, stupid), as well as tasters from a couple of interesting upcoming releases.

1. Army Navy - Saints
- LA anglofiles jangle, shimmer and shine on the title track from their fresh debut EP.
2. British Sea Power - Waving Flags
- With their third album out in January, BSP has obviously set the course for stadiums, although captain Yan still exhales more than he sings.
3. The Dead 60s - Start A War
- Less ska and more big tunes on the Liverpool quartet's second full-length Time to Take Sides, due out in European shelves mid-January.
4. Club 8 - Heaven
- The pleasant Swedish indie duo give a hint of how New Order may have sounded had they grown up in the Swedish countryside instead of Salford.
5. The Weakerthans - Civil Twilight
- Beautiful storytelling indie pop from sympathetic Canadians that are probably just sitting around waiting for Zach Braff to look their way.
6. Kenneth Ishak - Don't Touch My Brother
- The Beezewax vocalist finally bring some proper production to his solo work, and voilà: a soulful masterpiece of 70's strings and melancholy.
7. Stereophonics - My Friends
- Little Kelly Jones gives the ol' sandpaper throat a good workout on this stomping rocker.
8. Future Clouds and Radar - Back Seat Silver Jet Sighter
- The frontman off Texan cult rockers Cotton Mather carry the psychedelic fairground-production aesthetics on with his new peculiarly-titled project.
9. The Frank And Walters - City Lights
- The Irish veterans that is not a duo amusingly released this bouncy second single exactly one year after the release of its parent album.
10. Scouting For Girls - Elvis Ain't Dead
- The merry London popsters tell us what we already knew on their christmas single.
11. Black Mountain - Stay Free
- These soothing tones from 70's rock revivalists' upcoming second outing may sound familar, due to its inclusion on the Spiderman 3 OST (although you could have sworn you heard it in Almost Famous).

BONUS TRACK FOR ALL YE FAITHFUL BLOG READERS:
Little Man Tate - Boy in an Anorak (only 96 kbps, but legally from their official site)

Also shortlisted: Foals - Balloons, The Warlocks - Dreamless Days, Good Shoes - Small Town Girls, Jack Johnson - If I Had Eyes