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Well, if you had to guess which band had a jigsaw puzzle amongst its official merchandise, I'm sure it wouldn't have taken too long to guess Belle and Sebastian.
Yes, for just £5, you can spend your evenings listening to some twee indie pop, whilst trying to locate your favourite band member's face, as well as matching up a clear blue Scottish sky.
Stock levels say 'plenty left'. We're not surprised.
Bands often come together after former disparate musical journeys end, and the impetus to start afresh brings like-minded souls instinctively together. Such as it was with London four-piece beat-folk-psych'ers The See See.
Richard Olson (The Eighteenth Day Of May), Kevin Peyok (Waxwings), and Ben Swank (Soledad Brothers) are joined by Leeds folkster Pete Greenwood. Together they bring ‘guts’ to the traditional 60s rock-lite sound. Sold-out debut single ‘Up The Hill’ takes the West Coast jangle template and brings that sought-after ragged, world-take-a-hike angle on events. Another track ‘Keep Your Head’ sounds like ‘Eight Miles High’ on a particularly frazzled night out. Meanwhile the tremeloed guitar and on the beginning of new song ‘It’s True Pt. 12’ shows the influence of various lilting luminaries (The Pretty Things, Buffalo Springfield, Teenage Fanclub), before briefly heading into more lysergic territory with some heady and heady psychedelic guitar lines.
If you've spent much of your life thumbing through racks of dusty old vinyl, you'll be familiar with something like this Suck UK LP Divider Set.
Designed for authenticity, the set offers an alphabet of lettered cardboard (plus a few extras), complete with the odd bit of sticky tape to hold the letters in place. And to double the use, there's also a nice genre breakdown on the reverse (see the site for an image), should you wish to separate your psychedelia from your krautrock - all done in random fonts obviously.
You could say it's great design or even a good example of recycling. Or you could say it's a pile of old rubbish. Either way, the set should be available to buy in the new year for an as-yet undisclosed price.
Find out more at the Suck UK website
Via Retro To Go
Want to own just about everything by one of the greatest bands of all time? Well, you can if you win one of three Picture Book boxsets by The Kinks.
It's a six CD boxset compiled by Ray Davies, featuring just about everything worth owning by the band (around 138 tracks) in chronological order and with a 60-page booklet to explain the band's story. And if you're a serious fan, it's also packed with rarities and unissued material, including very early tracks recorded as The Ravens.
Check out the full trackisting here and if you like it, you can go out and buy it now. Alternatively, you can try and win one over at the Modculture site. Just follow the link below and get your name in the frame. Good luck!
Enter The Kinks Picture Book competition at Modculture
