The Underground of Happiness

Tantalising follow-up EP to last year’s tasty Love this giant album from this pair, who trot out at the Electric Picnic Festival in Ireland this weekend. You might find a hint of Bjork’s Dancer in the Dark soundtrack in the austere, awe-inspiring brass tones and mechanical percussion (by John Congleton) of lead track ‘Cissus’. Although that’s the EP highpoint on track one, there are still enough bonkers flights of fancy and musical nuggets on the rest to blow the opposition out of the water. Including a couple of live tracks from their touring over the last year (one Talking Heads number ‘Road to nowhere’, one St Vincent , the marvellous ‘Marrow’) and a couple of remixes. Whatever this pair get up to, they can do no wrong in my book.

Rejoice! The first track is now available from the upcoming third St Vincent album, Strange Mercy . The album comes out in September on 4AD . You can get your digital hands on Surgeon now in exchange for your e-mail address at http://strangemercy.com/ It features lots of woozy synths and what sound like cut-and-paste guitars, as well as the memorable opening line, " I spent the summer on my back ". It also sounds like Annie Clark has been listening to some dirty funk music since the last album. You can view some fairly strange video teasers on that site too, including one where Ms Clark, as well as several other beautiful women, deliver some of the most polite, delicious, crushing rejections ever to camera. It's disconcerting and intriguing at the same time, quite like her music actually. And to get us even more in the mood for the new album, here's the video for Laughing with a mouth of blood from her last album Actor . It showcases her irreverent brand of ...