Candle Thieves ‘Sunshine EP’ out today…

A guilty pleasure for deep thinkers, the Candle Thieves reside in a very wonderful, weird and whimsical place. Gentle, poppy pleasures and soft-hearted sentiments with sinister undertows reside – and undulate deliciously through the ears.

Here at Alcopop therefore we are just delighted to be proudly heralding release day for their debut EP – The Sunshine EP, a marvelous collection of 4 delicious tracks ready to fill your heart with joy, and stereo with the kind of lush sounds not heard in this green and pleasant land for some while.

You can purchase it on limited edition (to 1,000 copies) CD or in digital format from the Alcopop shop… (75p straight up p&p however many things you order) And make October the cheeriest month of the year.

Viva Las Candle Thieves…

The Candle Thieves EP up for pre-order now w/ Pre order freebies!

Ah August, look at you so gloomy out there… Refusing to make any of us smile with your cloudy face. Well f**k you you bleak old bi**h, because great news is afoot for those of you who may be missing sun on your face, but enjoy it in your heart.

Woop – one of Alcopop’s latest signings The Candle Thieves have released The Sunshine EP (limited to 1,000 copies) so delicious it will literally leave you grinning for weeks… It’s up for pre-order right now from our shop (out on the 10th September – we’ll make sure you get it early), for the sum of just £5 of your English pounds, or £2.50 for the MP3s. This site is liable to be the only place where it’s available digitally, although iTunes would be another quid more expensive, so you’re better off getting it from us anyway…

But wait! There’s more! As you may know, the boys have recently been traversing the gardens of England playing a lovely tour outside in folk’s houses, and we were keen for people to take a little bit of the Candle Thieves magic back to their own gardens… Therefore, the first 20 people to order the EP (on CD) will get a promo TCT seed bag to plant or keep, all branded up with TCT/Alcopop stickers and badge – and limited (strictly) to just 100. Plus the first 10 we ship out are fully signed by the lovely Scott and Glock.

Awesome…

Love you poppers

Alter the Press Lead the Way in streaming albums

Try before you buy, take a good long ‘listen’ at the merchandise and give your ears a treat is what we all say (actually we don’t, it would probably make us sound like c**ts).

Nonetheless, that’s exactly what you can do at Alter the Press right now with Wolf Am I’s new album ‘Lead the Way’… Yup, the best music blog this side of Nottingham has decided to stream the entire album track by track. It’ll only be up till Monday though! To hear it, pop on over to their lovely site and, if you like it, you can come back and buy it from our shop, iTunes – or all those boring e-tailers who won’t send you a badge or sticker or two with your purchases…

Also, for a little more WAI goodness, why not check out their review over on the Music Magazine, and a super piece that our pals at Come Pick Me Up blog have lovingly put together (they’re SO ace). The sun is shining, summer booze is flowing – it’s time for WAI!

New Wolf Am I album out to pre-order *signed* – and win tickets

Yup – good news for well – everyone – is that you can now pre-order the magnificent Wolf Am I debut album Lead the Way from our shop now!!!

Sounding like something that will fill you full of fire, whilst breaking your heart with emotion overtones – ‘Lead the Way’ is a cracker…. First 20 come fully signed, and a few T-Shirt bundles are available too. Oh and did I mention it comes pressed in sexy cardboard gatefold with fold out inserts and things? I did now…

Pre-order from the shop and we’ll make sure it’s with you by the 3rd August (a week before official shop release)

To celebrate this, and WAI’s tour across the country – we’re giving a pair of tickets away to their show in London on the 30th – which will be scorching! To win, simply email us at info@ilovealcopop.co.uk telling us ‘what name you’d give a pet wolf if you were to own one’ – the best answer takes the tickets, as well as a limited edition copy of the band’s virtually sold out ‘Glasgow Seven’ single on vinyl effect CD…

Closing date Friday at 3.13pm – Now go buy the album and seek out your dancing shoes…

I’m excited

goFASTER>> kick out the Flammable Leisurewear jams in Hollyoaks

Bad acting galore may have ensued around them, but the consummate goFASTER>> were, as ever, the height of rock n’ roll professionalism as they smashed the hell out of the students union in Hollyoaks last week – opening, as I’m reliably informed, for a band who ‘sounded like CSS’.

Playing their first single released on Alcopop ‘Flammable Leisurewear’ – the episode was aired on the 1st July, and goes further to ensuring their scouse legendary status. I especially like the line ‘how’s your crotch’…

If you’re reading this today, or in the next few days you can watch the epic appearance over on 4OD around 5 minutes through the July 1st episode, but if you’re years into the future looking back – wondering where number 1 pop sensations goFASTER>> came from , then I’ve taken a really poorly rendered video of the appearance for your delectation and delight…

Enjoy -

Alcopopular 3 – message in a bottle compilation for pre-order!

Hurrah! As featured in Loud and Quiet (full page) – it is with great pleasure I can announce that our newest compilation Alcopopular 3 is up for pre-order… And coming out next week

Priced up at just a fiver, and featuring delicious tracks from the likes of Pulled Apart by Horses, Apples, Paul Steel, Unicorn Kid and Stagecoach (along with many more) your downloadable comp comes in bottle with hand-browned treasure map tracklisting and is pretty much a must for any record collection.  After all, you can pretend to be a pirate and listen to some cracking tracks… Can’t beat that eh!

It’s – in a word – amazing! But you don’t even have to take my word for it as we have a number of crack Twitter reviewers, picking it apart track by track in 140 characters or less over the next couple of weeks… So I’ll be letting you know some of the highlights of what they say about each track.

Bottle – Buy now / MP3s only – Buy now

Full tracklisting is…

1. Tellison – Wasp’s Nest
2. Apples – Theo
3. David Gibb – The Oxfordshire Brigade
4. Stars and Sons – In The Ocen (piano version)
5. Town Bike – Cock Muff Bum Hole
6. Pulled Apart By Horses – E=MC Hammer
7. Stagecoach – We Got Tazers
8. Paul Steel – Psychedelia Smith
9. Unicorn Kid – Nuts n Milk
10. Arrows Of Love – Prescriptions
11. Ice King of California – I Wouldn’t Want To Do That All
12. The October Game – Cast These Waves
13. The Computers – Track Four

Purchase, and fill that bottle shaped hole in your record collection, because – as Loud and Quiet say…

“but maybe it’s now that we need labels like Alcopop to offer us something a little out of the ordinary. There’s no character in a bunch of mega bites but there’s a hell of a lot in a bottle containing a modern day pirate treasure map that leads you to some audio booty.”

Awwww

My First Tooth and the Rubies – Out and officially on sale…

So it’s out – kids across the country have delighted smiles upon their faces, postmen are groaning in anticipation of the extra packages to be delivered – and My First Tooth continue to do what they do very best… Touring relentlessly across the country (York tonight) promoting their new EP – ‘My First Tooth and the Rubies’. Woop!

Six tracks of indie-folk infused harmonious loveliness (well – 8 tracks actually if you manage to pick up one of the last few copies with a free spray-painted bonus CD limited to just 100 copies) and all yours for just 6 sheets from the Alcopop shop. Whatsmore, who can argue with artwork that features 3 handsome bald eagles sitting atop a gramophone. No one – that’s who!

Tracklisting is as follows, and you can hear a number of the songs on My First Tooth’s MySpace. Have a listen, buy – and boom! Your world will be a lush, much prettier, place.

1.Sleet & Snow
2. Judge & Jury
3. Honesty Honestly
4. Typewriters
5. Red Carpet Rides
6. Take the Airship

Super stuff! Here’s a picture of Ross from My First Tooth

goFASTER>> EP making the summer start early…!

Now currently landing on digital music platforms galore, on the shiny shelves of your favourite indie store – and of course fresh from the Alcopop shop (with a free 4 track EP if you’re very quick… Literally we’re down to the last 10 or so of these) – goFASTER>>’s magnificent debut EP ‘A Modern Education’ is out today, and already making it feel a lot like summer in Alcopop HQ.

The tracklisting for the EP is:
1. A Modern Education
2. Magazine Addiction
3. Good Times
4. You Better Watch Out
5. When the Last Note Sounds

And I guarantee you will love it! Not Ed described the musical treat thusly as “A delectable indie pop four piece from Liverpool who make music in the same lunch-box as Good Shoes and Look See Proof. The EP also has a Hot Club De Paris aura to it, in how the songs all entwine together like they have a big shoelace tied around them” – and I think he’s just about on the nail…. Take a listen to the scouse champs here, and get yourself a piece….

Oh – and don’t forget this EP is available as part of a ‘binge’ style mega-deal package with the My First Tooth EP and one of our rapidly dwindling red white crocodile on skateboard tees too… Ace! Get yourself truly alcopopped

This City – they move!

Oh how we love the Alcopop family – myself and Kev stood like proud parents, (in matching crocodile T-Shirts no doubt) gazing out at awesome bands we’ve been involved with ripping around the country doing brilliant things, and causing hearts to leap for joy on a nightly basis! A small bubblegum tear – I shan’t lie to you – is shed, with every CD, T-Shirt or positive email dispatched.

But as is the lot of an indie that there are also that lusty bunch who come on by, spend a passionate few months (or more) between the Alcopop sheets, enjoy a lusty rendezvous – and sadly must move on, nevertheless leaving both parties with fond smiles, happy memories and more than an occasional wave over the parapet.

One of these is This City, who although I can say nothing about for fear of pre-empting any announcement or exciting news, have recently flown off to Seattle to record an album (you can bet no budget of Alcopop’s would facilitate that ) and will soon be launching something rather exciting on this lucky public of ours. More details when they’re official, but you should definitely look out for the former Alcopop types in the upcoming months.

Meanwhile, the single ‘We Move’ is being taken off’ve iTunes in the next week or two (so get it quick if you want it), and would you believe – we actually have a few copies of their single on Alcopop still sitting around my bedroom. There’s not a lot – but if you want a piece of the action now, before the eBay hunters get involved, do pop on by our shop.

Cut the Blue Wire – RAW AS F**K – No Song of Mine video

There’s occasions in life when a band you bloody love dip into the annals of their history and pluck out a video that displays all the raw talent and emotion in a demo that tells you why their well-produced debut EP (in this case released on Alcopop Records and available here) led to Punktastic gushing “CTBW are like trifle; so many layers every one of them is seven shades of awesome”‘. Too true chaps….

So have a butchers at this demo track video from a year or so ago, or visit the band MySpace here – and feel all energized. Even if it is gone midnight and you’re working all day tomorrow. Yeeeeas!