Where to start? SILVERY, the ill-fitting five-piece whose debut album ‘Thunder And Excelsior’ was a minor work of crazed genius, are back with a second LP which really ups the maverick ante.

It sounds like a ‘70s art-rock circus (it even begs to be played in a Big Top, rather than, bless them, opening for us at our Bull & Gate gig last month).

This is not, I hasten to add, a “look at us, we’re crazzzzeeeee” type of craziness. In fact in these days of witless celebrity and coalition uncertainty, Silvery are probably, comparatively sane. It’s TRUE! There is a method in their madness.

‘Railway Architecture’ is for anyone who ever liked The Cardiacs in their prime, or is up for an awkward waltz through the works of British Sea Power, post-hit XTC or upside down Roxy Music. And that’s just (another) start.

The mangled influences of punk, glam and psychedelia all make an appearance.

For once however – and in stark contrast to the current trend for copyists – Silvery pull through this record sounding essentially alone and new.

They have created a sort of Victorian Pop full of pomp and skulduggery. And here’s the revelation: songs like ‘The Quaire Fellow’ and ‘A Deconstruction Of Roles’ are almost a prequel to Ray Davies and definitely a pre-prequel to ‘Modern Life Is Rubbish’.

Totalling 14 tracks in all – only three of which last more than two and a half minutes – and also featuring the brilliantly titled ‘Will Self (Or,The Man Who Wasn’t There)’ and better still the jaunty, schizophrenic ‘Two Halves Of The Same Boy’, here you have final proof that you can ‘dance about Architecture.’

Or at least nod your head to it.

More Silvery here

Now all confirmed, THE CROOKES will headline our next Going Deaf For A Living night at the Kentish Town Bull & Gate next Thursday (August 19).

Ahead of the release of an EP on Fierce Panda Records and a tour of libraries (how many outstanding books do you have boys?) Sheffield’s scintillating songsmiths head up a bill which also features the nifty pop footwork of BOY MANDEVILLE and the smouldering “glossy groove” of MOON VISIONARIES.

Crookes we like because they’re actually very nice young blokes and their songs have bits of the Smiths, Orange Juice and Eddie Cochran. Not to mention the fact that lyrically they tie other bands in knots.

Boy Mandeville meanwhile, won us over with their recent single ‘Christina’, which was so cheery, you could get a lot of chores done round the house while listening to it.

And Moon Visionaries have already been one of those NME Breakthrough Bands Of The Day (plus you can download two of their songs from their website below).

Anyway it’s £6 to get in. Or £5 in advance from We Got Tickets

So come early and make a night of it. Here’s the stage times and links.

The Crookes : 10.15
Boy Mandeville : 9.30
Moon Visionaries : 8.30

Crime And The City Solution are a timely reminder of an era when bands didn’t explode into our musical consciousness perfectly formed with a manifesto, a flawless first album and a festival tour already in the bag.

Formed by singer Simon Bonney in the late 1970’s and partly staffed by ex-Birthday Party bad seeds they spent the best part of a decade churning out introspective, Cave-esque slabs of post-punk blues to little effect before decamping to the brooding, pre-unification Berlin of the mid 1980’s.

It was here that the band, under Bonney’s increasingly assured direction, completed a tantalising triumvirate of albums, ‘Shine’, ‘The Bride Ship’ and ‘Paradise Discotheque’.

Inhabited by Bonney’s desolate baritone with its character-driven confessionals, Bronwyn Adams’ weeping, wracked violin and Alex Hacke’s ghostly blues guitar, the album’s evocations of regret and restrained, ruined majesty were, at their best, both brutal and bewitching. But it was on the group’s last album ‘Paradise Discothèque’ that they finally embraced their own nascent ambition.

Epitomised by the improbable opener ‘I Had A Gun’, possibly the only song in recorded history to flip from breezily acoustic country and western to desperate, metal dirge and back again, the album reels and revels in untrammelled invention.

The sleazily, swinging jazz sax of ‘The Sly Persuade’, the tremulous tabla and mournful mandolin of ‘The Sun Before The Darkness’ and the delicate piano ripples of ‘ The Dolphins and Sharks’ display the joy of a band unshackled.

Lyrically too, Bonney’s depictions grew in emotive resonance. Whether drawing bleakly, obsessive portraits of devotion such as ‘The Dolphins and The Sharks’ or wryly detailing the paranoiac megalomania of a fallen leader as in ‘The Last Dictator Part 1’ Bonney’s clear-sighted, poetic introspections provoke and disturb in equal measure.

Almost inevitably, however, the band’s ambition overreaches itself at points. The laboured bass and irritant toy-town keyboards of ‘The Last Dictator Parts 2 & 3’ sound ill-considered whilst Bonney’s lyrical narrative struggles to find focus, crushed by the weight of its own complexity.

In its final third ‘Paradise Discotheque’ starts to fall apart both musically and lyrically but Crime And The City Solution are still a band that demand your attention. They never made a perfect album, never had a manifesto and never played the festival circuit but there is a well-spring of haunting, heart-rending melancholia within this fascinating document. Accept its flaws. Treasure their music.

One of the problems with American Blog bands is that they seem to have the sell-by date of a bag of vegetables. From the moment Pitchfork has dug them up, they start to go off.

Not SLEIGH BELLS. Their album – released this week on MIA’s label (yes, I know! MIA has a label !?!?) – ‘Treats’ turns out to be surprisingly fresh. It is a proper piece of work, to whit, it’s not two Ok songs which were momentarily top of the Hype Machine chart and a load of old tat to pad it out.

There is some justification here for all the frothing and foaming praise which has surrounded them on the internet for the past nine months (especially in the wake of their CMJ appearance in New York last autumn).

‘Treats’ is a thoroughly modern record. I thought it was too stilted and awkward the first time I heard it; that it had the hallmarks of someone almost trying too hard to be artful and obtuse.

But actually this is one of the most forward-looking electro-guitar pop albums of the year (by turns it mixes Atari Teenage Riot with MIA, the Mary Chain and industrial hip-hop beats). It seems to constantly push you to the edge of your senses and then reels you back in. It wants to give you a headache and then sooth your brow.

Made by the duo Alexis Krauss and Derek E Miller, the latter the engineer and architect of the sound, it contains 11 tracks which never stand still. Pointedly it also has elements of the post hardcore scene Miller emerged from and even a hint of the fearlessness of Riot Grrl.

Best of all though it isn’t afraid to take a chance (which again is where 99 per cent of American Blog Rock really falls on its face and why I don’t get groups like Freelance Whales at all).

Sleigh Bells, although fixed within a self-imposed narrow sound, manage to twist it here, there and everywhere: from the jabbing Le Tigre-esque ‘Infinity Guitars’ to the beautifully subdued ‘Rill Rill’ (where Krauss’ vocals suddenly start to glow) and onto ‘Crown On The Ground’, a brilliant and blustery hip hop boxing anthem.

They topple over on only a couple of occasions (‘Straight As’, as wild as it sounds, isn’t as punk rock as it thinks it is and title track ‘Treats’ sounds almost as if they’ve worn themselves out). But this is a small price to pay when the competition is so rotten.

Sleigh hello at MySpace