A Sunny Day in Glasgow release free album

A Sunny Day in Glasgow released one of this blog's favourite albums of last year, the dreamy shoegaze soundscapes of Ashes Grammar. Autumn, Again is their new release, and seems to be regarded as more of a clearing ground for unfinished material than a new statement proper. I haven't listened yet but it's free so you can't really go wrong. It got a respectable 7.9 on Pitchfork.

Go to their website here : http://asunnydayinglasgow.com/ to download the album.

Galway shows for Real Estate, Sunny Day in Glasgow

After the mighty coup of sealing a Dinosaur Jr/Built to Spill double-bill, Galway continues to fly the flag for the oft-neglected west: there's more mouth-watering shows lined up in May. Previously announced for Whelans, Philadelphian shoegazers A Sunny Day in Glasgow will also be dropping into Roisin Dubh on May 17th. Real Estate will also bring their psychedelic sun-kissed jams to the same venue on the 11th, the night after their show in Crawdaddy.

A Sunny Day In Glasgow for Whelan's

Apparently they played to 12 people last time they were in Whelan's. If the brilliance of last year's Ashes Grammar LP - a suite of MBV/Cocteau-styled dream-pop that was by turns disorientating and blissfully soothing - is anything to go by, A Sunny Day In Glasgow will be pulling in a much bigger audience this time around. They'll be playing the venue on May 18th.

Primavera line-up grows in awesomeness

I've been going through the line-up for the Primavera Sound festival (May 27 - 29), and it's actually enough to make your head explode with the sheer volume of great bands playing in the Parc Del Forum in Barcelona. A heap of new acts were announced last week:

Broken Social Scene, Beach House, Les Savy Fav, Diplo, Pet Shop Boys, Sunny Day Real Estate, Titus Andronicus, the Almighty Defenders, Surfer Blood, Best Coast, the Field, the Books, a Sunny Day in Glasgow, Owen Pallett, Matt and Kim, Sleigh Bells, Florence and the Machine, CocoRosie, the Slits, Gary Numan, Scout Niblett, Moderat, Marc Almond, the Smith Westerns, The Charlatans, The Drums.

That's added to an already mouthwatering list of acts that includes the reformed Pavement and the Pixies.

Full line-up and other details available here: http://www.primaverasound.com/ps.php?seccion=home&idioma=en

Albums of the Year, 2009 : 3 - A Sunny Day in Glasgow - Ashes Grammar

"The formula the band established with Scribble—that of textural ambience and the Daniels sisters’ dense vocal melodies over conventional rhythm—is here exploded with perfect production to match depth to breadth. The songs hum like electricity and thump like groundswells, surprising and shifting with innovative pacing and dynamics. But they also sound natural and unhurried, seamlessly patched. The sisters’ unidentifiable lyrics are no less engrossing for their incomprehensibility; the preempted mini-pastiche of each short song no less committed to the album’s overall aesthetic. That “Ashes Grammer” is divided from “Ashes Math” makes as much sense as their sum when combined. “Close Chorus” continues Scribble‘s tendency to not only approximate but maybe even improve upon Stereolab’s electro-lounge before to evolves—again, so naturally that it’s almost unnoticeable—into some of the best shoegazing pop to come out this year; and then “Shy” picks it up where “Close Chorus” ends. “Passionate Introverts (Dinosaurs)” shimmies and shivers with trembling ambient noise and melodic techno. And together it’s ineluctable truth: A Sunny Day in Glasgow are writing years ahead of where they should be for such a young band, forming gargantuan records of consistently enjoyable and inventive melodic rock."

- Conrad Amenta, Cokemachineglow