Weekly Round Up (02 Feb 2009)

Hi everybody. Things have been a bit slack this week, but have plenty of things to be going on with. To start with, a round up of the week's news.

Reviews
This week's major release has been Tonight: Franz Ferdinand. A full review will appear in the next couple of days.

Myspace Magic
It's been a relatively quiet week for me on myspace. Scouse power trio We Make Models have added further tracks "Fishing For Ice", "The Girl That Got Away" and a new mix of "So Much" ahead of their next gig at the Liverpool O2 Academy on 18 February (where they'll be supporting Metropolitans).

Would also like to thank Murcian gents, Second, for their kind words of appreciation following my review of their new release 'Fracciones De Un Segundo' (just keeps on getting better the more I listen to it) and US boys, The Rocks, for doing their bit to promote this blog - thanks!

Festival Fever
Line-ups for Spain's top festivals are now starting to be confirmed, at least in terms of headline bands. THE festival par excellence FIB (Benicassim, 16-19 July) has announced that Oasis, Kings Of Leon, Franz Ferdinand, The Killers and Paul Weller will all be gracing the stage this summer.

On hearing this I started to wonder why Murcia's SOS 4.8 was taking so long tell us what they had to offer (given that the festival is in May). They must have read my mind as they started to announce their confirmed acts this week. I use the term 'announce' in the broadest sense of the word, as the organisers had the totally frustrating (or brilliantly creative, if you're a masochist) idea of posting a series of riddles on the official web page and inviting surfers to work out the bands for themselves. Oh what fun! Christ, gives us the list and let us know whether to get our tickets now or head for the beach during the May bank holiday weekend!

Fortunately for me, my mate JuanFra (bless him) told me of a link (hipersonica.com), which had the answers all worked out for us. Much to my surprise, the festival is going to live up to expectations and build on last year's debut success. Spiritualized, Babyshambles, PJ Harvey, Those Dancing Days, Los Planetas, Russian Red and El Guincho (no idea!) is a very promising start and infinitely better than my rumour (Pet Shop Boys), although perhaps the most exciting band is still to be confirmed. If our riddle solving skills are up to scratch, it would appear the The Wombats will be in town. Now THAT is exciting. We will watch this space!

More news next week!