Mother Mother - Hay Loft / Ganglians - Candy Girl

Here we are on the first weekend of the year that really suggests that spring, heck maybe even summer, is starting to rear its head around these parts, which means that even here at the Spacerock Launch Pad we are stuck into the gardening and general spring cleaning, pausing only to come up for breath and the second impressive performance of Matt Smith as the new Doctor Who. At the same time, a couple of things have landed here that once again are a bit outside of the original remit of this blog but that have rather caught the whole mood of this warm and sunny weekend and have to be worth mentioning for their zest and sparkle. And the picture of a Princess Leia wannabe complete with *that* bikini? Dunno really, it's just something to merge the summer sun with some sci-fi imagery, honest.

How to describe 'Candy Girl', the recently released single from Ganglians' debut album Monster Head Room? The press release talks about 'headphone acid pop', and quotes from early reviews that mention 'psych pop' and a fabulous, I wish I'd written that, piece from Daytrotter that describes them having 'music that's all about woozy feeling, about just getting carried away into unfamiliar territory, where the lights are brighter and more colorful than they usually are and the sounds are made of freaky scripture and streams of consciousness.' I've actually got the album here, though I've not had a chance to listen to it yet... but I do also have a one-track promo of the single that I stuck on for the first time in the car yesterday, and from its opening whoop, through its skewed Beach Boys sensibilities and its lo-fi sunshine sparseness thought it totally charming and beguiling. More on this Sacramento three-piece to come, but in the mean time check them out here, they have a handful of UK dates in the early summer and are heading out across Europe late May and through most of June.

Mother Mother are equally grin-inducing - and, again, 'skewed' would also go very well as an opening statement to describe this Vancouver quintet. Over here, they're looking forward to the UK debut of their album O My Heart at the end of May but whilst that date looms they're about to release (19th April), a brilliant single entitled 'Hay Loft' (my two-track promo also includes 'Wrecking Ball') which is just totally madcap and eccentric from the band's spiky staccato sound to the idiosyncratic vocals and the simply wild lyrics... 2mins 44secs of bubblegum, Hanna-Barbera, whimsical vaudeville. Very smart stuff.