Friday! I hope I have news next week! In the meantime I leave you with some great music!
Ultracrush: it is by no no mystery that Australia is one of the indiepop hotspots of the world. All the time I find new quality songs coming from there. The latest discovery is this Sydney five-piece and their track “Leave”, a lovely bouncy jangly track. But also don’t forget to check their other song on Bandcamp, “Swimming” as it is as good!
Peel Dream Magazine: “Agitprop Alterna” is the name of the new album Joe Stevens from NYC is releasing with Slumberland Records and Tough Love Records on April 3rd. To promote this terrific second album by his band (After 2018’s “Modern Meta Physic”) they just released a new video for the track “Pill”!
Figure Austère: this Paris band is releasing a tape on February 14th called “That’s Gone Now”. The tape will include 8 tracks but at this point we can only preview the first song, “Drippy Eyes”, which is a wonderful catchy bedroom pop song, like the ones from 15 or so years ago, a popsong like they don’t do anymore!
Tops: the Montreal, Canada, band is back with a new album called “I Feel Alive” which will be released on April 3rd. 11 tracks of superb pop I am guessing. Guessing because I have only heard the song that gives the name to the album, “I Feel Alive”. That’s the one song we can preview on Bandcamp but what a good song it is. The album will be available on vinyl, CD and even cassette!
Sunfruits: another Australian band, this time from Melbourne but on a French label! Wow. The label is called Six Tonnes de Chair Records and are releasing the band’s “Certified Organic EP” on February 11th and I think this is my favourite new release at the moment. I want a copy of it. The EP comes with 6 songs and you can preview two of them, “Above the Clouds” and “Sunfruits”. Catchy, good melodies, boy/girl vocals, just up my street.
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I’m heading to Sweden and not to Mexico on this post. Some swedes had no better idea to call their band The Mexicos and I don’t blame it, it is a beautiful country. Did they ever visit it? I hope they did.
I remember listening to them back in the mid 2000s. It was the time of Soulseek and blogs. I used to love all things Sweden then and collected CDRs, demos and live gigs of small Swedish indiepop acts. Among the labels that were important at the time, one that championed bedroom lofi pop was Bedroom Records. And it was them indeed who would release the self-titled mini-album “The Mexicos” (BED018).
This CDR was released in 2005 and included six songs: “Lofi Referee”, “Grenoble”, “The Paralympics”, “Undone & Undo”, “The Mexican Fury” and “It Takes Two to Finish Disco”. The art for the record is credited to Lisa Hall and Tommy Svenningson and the only other credit on the sleeve is that of John Haglund who played drums on “Undone & Undo” and “It Takes Two to Finish Disco”.
The band did appear on three compilations. The first one was from 2005 and was the very fine “Popkonst, Love & Understanding” which was released by Popkonst Recordings (POPK12). The band contributed the song “Undone & Done”.
A cover of Haddaway’s euro-pop hit “What is Love”, was included in the “This is Love” CD compilation released by Dig Your Own Grave (DIG003) in 2006. Actually every band on this compilation covered this same song. 12 bands! Among them we find Komon, My Enemy, Bare Knees and All of My Brother’s Girlfriends.
Lastly the band had the song “Förmögenhet” on a compilation called “Har Du Hört Den Förut? – 29 Svenska Artister Tolkak Förmögenhet” that was released by Diskret Förlag. Some very fine bands appear here like Action Biker, Ring Snuten, Gentle Touch among others.
I kow the band used to have a website and also a Myspace. Sadly these don’t exist anymore. So there’s barely any information about them. I will rely on you, my Swedish friends, to fill in the blanks! Who were The Mexicos? From where in Sweden did they come from? Did they have more songs? What happened to them? Were they in other bands? Many questions that I hope get answered some day!
EDIT February 22nd 2020.
My friend David has pointed me to some interesting new info about The Mexicos!
First of all there was a blog for The Mexicos. Here there were shared a bunch of songs which are not available to download anymore. Among these covers we find: “Sweet Chili of Mind”, “What is Love”, “Strange Things”, a cover of Aaliyah’s “Try Again (Remexified)”, three covers of Håkan Hellström “Klubbland – betaversion”, “Nu kan du få mig så lätt (who can hell stream)” and “En midvinternatts dröm”. According to David the band’s leader was called Mikael and he also found out that he used to collaborate with a Douglas Holmquist. Together they were called the Mex-Icons and they would do more songs like “Shooting Star” a cover of the Amy Diamond’s original.
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Listen
The Mexicos – Undone & Undo
