look what arrived today

13 o'clock

 "When Tom hears old Mrs Bartholomew's grandfather clock in the hall striking thirteen, he goes to investigate"

we've ordered some very special cover prints to be included with initial copies of the album, and the artwork needs to be there by 13 o'clock... 

to guarantee your print, why not pre order the album now?...

Limay test pressings arrived...

now, to make myself a cup of tea, and listen the be-jesus out of them...

a lovely review of Bolero

yup, the Songs For Girls To Sing blog has reviewed the first single from Limay:

"... it turned out to be mesmerizing. Okay, the exotic name helped too! There’s some exquisite guitar playing there, affecting enough to not even miss or anticipate the vocal to come along."

and you can download it for FREE! here

Bolero video

The first video from Limay is for Bolero. Ignacio says, "It has the sound of the trio playing live." He also says, "Give us the Falkland back, you bloody colonialists! And the name is Malvinas!" We'd be happy to oblige if our influence extended that far, because anyone who writes a song this good can have what they bloody well want.



Limay is released on February 18. You can order a copy now.

Alasdair Maclean reviews Limay

"Limay has the glamour and harmonic complexity of classical guitar music but the freedom of pop"

Alasdair Maclean of The Clientele and Amor de Dias played and sung on Hacia Dos Veranos's second, eponymous album in 2010. For their third album, Limay, he's reviewed it:

This is one of the reasons I love Hacia Dos Veranos: at 2:00 into ‘Las Bailarinas Azules’ a melody takes shape, swooping downwards; on first listen I followed the harmonies, the cymbals, the bass and I realised I had no idea where they were going. It was still recognisably a pop song but for one gorgeous moment the ground fell out from underneath me.

So few bands do this nowadays. Modern songwriting is about simplicity not subtlety, and the transcendental effect of the unexpected note (6th, 9th, 11th) has become a bit of a lost art. Maybe it’s all those fucking ukuleles.

Hacia dos Veranos play many, many beautiful chords and for that I love them.

Their guitarist is a maestro: economical, precise, lyrical. His rolling, arpeggiated style will remind you of Felt’s Maurice Deebank or Vini Reilly, but he also possesses a faint echo of Johnny Marr, in that for all his sense of space and harmony he’s playing tunes first and foremost. And he can strum too.

A closer touchstone might be the great Argentinian traditional guitarist Atahualpa Yupanqui, whose stately and elegant music was introduced to me by er.. Hacia Dos Veranos's guitarist, as payment for once singing a song for them. And yet.. and yet... it also sounds so weirdly English. Pastoral Witchseason type stuff but without using any of the obvious Nick Drake / Vashti motifs. It’s the atmosphere more than anything, the feeling of unhurried reverie.

This record couldn't have been made in past eras though. There's no singer, there are distorted bits and fast drums too. It's not jazz. It's too melodic and accessible to get Arts Council funding or be album of the year in The Wire. It has the glamour and harmonic complexity of classical guitar music but the freedom of pop.

No one has done that very convincingly before (I tried, since you're obviously dying to know, but got sidetracked). Which again, I love them for. I love them for the fact they're doing their own thing and it's entirely theirs, and it also happens to be so rich and so perfectly self-contained.

Limay is released on February 18. You can order a copy now.

free single from Hacia Dos Veranos

we thought you might like to hear some previous HITS from the marvellous Hacia Dos Veranos, so here, for your FREE downloading pleasure are Yo La Tenia and Despertar... we asked Ignacio to let us know a little about each track

‘Yo la tenía’ is an ode to those summer mornings in which you wander around the city after a night out under the influence of stuff, and you amaze at the ordinary becoming strange and fantastic. People exercising in the park or waiting for the bus to go to work are suddenly transformed into scenes of disturbing fascination.

‘Despertar’ is the third and last song of our first EP, which is conceived as portraying the three stages of a sleepy afternoon. This track represents the pleasant waking up after the confusion of sleep.