Silver Rays and Tiny Lucifer on Youtube

Just to say I’ve put these two songs up on to Youtube.

Silver Rays

Tiny Lucifer

For now they are just accompanied by the single cover, might try and put something more interesting up to accompany it later on.

Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky

Might be another little flurry of activity coming up in the spring. We’ve all been a bit busy since the last visit to the studio, but I think we are drifting towards another go.

I’ve got a nice new song with words from Hank, which would be my vote for one of the songs. It’s about the rivalry between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer. And drinking stolen booze. And, um, various Hanna-Barbera and Looney Tunes cartoon characters. It’s even got a hedge in it.

Honestly, it will all make sense when you hear it…

Current ETD April 2012. I think we’re going on the theory that recording a couple of songs a year is a pretty strenuous workload, so we should have the album finished in about 2018.

HB

Hedge Britannia

Alistair at the Unpopular blog was asking if Hugh Barker, the author of the forthcoming history of British hedges Hedge Britannia  is the same individual as the Hugh Barker from Animals that Swim.

Just to confirm it is the same person – there’s more info at the Hedge Britannia blog.

Not the most obvious career progression, I grant you, but stranger things have happened…

HB

Pink Carnations video on Youtube

The original Pink Carnations video is on Youtube now

Our old friend Gavindirected it and has uploaded it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yl_YDFUdkvg

Don’t we look young…

I am also rather fond of this one which someone put up when there was nothing else there:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdRX1n41z-Y&feature=list_related&playnext=1&list=AVGxdCwVVULXeojLZVGZjPPoeG2g5FKt1q

New Songs

Just a reminder that the two new songs Silver Rays and Tiny Lucifer are available from iTunes and also from Amazon if you don’t have iTunes. I’d put a link here, but iTunes is weird and I can’t work out how to, so best to just go and search by some combination of title and bandname and you should be able to stumble into them eventually.

Thanks to everyone who bought them so far.

We are talking about doing another couple of songs in a month or two, though it depends on when and whether we can find enough time to all be in the same place.

Faded Glamour full video

Someone has kindly uploaded the full video to Faded Glamour to Youtube (rather than the truncated Chart Show version which is also there).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR32O2vXLHQ

Thanks to briggsl for this – we don’t have a copy of the original so it’s nice to see it again.

New Songs Out Now

You should now definitely be able to download Silver Rays and Tiny Lucifer from iTunes.

There is a temporary glitch with the search, so it doesn’t show on our artist page, and I can’t link to the songs directly.

However if you search for “Animals that Swim” or “Silver Rays”, you should be able to find the songs, and use the Buy button to download them.

I will try to sort out the search issues. Meanwhile if anyone has problems downloading please do let us know via the comments box (comments won’t show immediately as they need approval but I will see them).

Edit: Slightly corrected post as I wasn’t 100% sure it was working earlier but people have confirmed it works for them.

Interview

There’s an interview with us on the Finest Kiss blog here:

http://finestkiss.wordpress.com/2011/04/23/back-from-their-distant-star-an-interview-with-animals-that-swim/

Release date…

I’ve been assured that the new songs will finally show up on iTunes today.

I’m a bit reluctant to believe this as they promised something similar last week, so I’ll report back once I actually see them show up.

HB

Popular culture no longer applies to me

Hank sang a duet with Eddie Argos of Art Brut a while ago – Eddie has posted it up here:

http://eddieargos.tumblr.com/post/3786644871/direct-hit-duet-version-with-hank-starrs

But the reason for this post is that for various reasons it took me a while to get round to exploring the rest of Art Brut’s back catalogue and now I’ve done so I think they are fucking brilliant. Evidently, plenty of people already know this, but on the other hand, why aren’t they on Top of the Pops every week??? They probably are in that wonderful imaginary universe where Top of the Pops still exists, of course.

Anyhow if you don’t know their stuff, Formed a Band is a great place to start.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qryAwfpHG8o&feature=related

(Hugh)