You'll Fall In Love Again: The Story of the School of Seven Bells | NOISEY

Kim Taylor Bennett, for Noisey:

Nine songs strong, their forthcoming album, SVIIB, is a slim, but supremely compelling collection, and in so many ways its completion and eventual release in February 2016 is a victory. For the most part, it sounds like one too. For instance, joyous album opener “Ablaze” clearly maps the thigh-tingling thrill of Alejandra and Benjamin’s first connection while introducing the record’s recurrent lyrical imagery: embers, flames, fires, the night sky, the stars, awakened inspiration. And of course love. She calls it her most blatant love song. “Our whole life together is that song.” Similarly at the record’s close stands “This Is Our Time,” melancholic, yet utterly uplifting too, it’s a love letter to New York in the early 2000s when the city was humming with possibility and all the best music was coming out of dives like the Mercury Lounge and Brownies. “That feeling we both felt when we moved to New York is that same feeling you feel when you fall in love, you’re just like—I can do anything, I’m all powerful, this world is working with me. It’s on my side,” she says smiling.

Poliça - Lime Habit (2015)

From thisispolica.com, Poliça announce new album 'United Crushers':

The new album builds on POLIÇA’s signature synthesizer and percussion-heavy sounds with more complex arrangements and a bigger, crisper hi-fi punch due to the new approach they took to writing and recording: together, all in the same room. There's a tighter groove to these songs and a more vulnerable quality to them, especially in Leaneagh's singing. Her impressive vocal range is consistently on display throughout, beautifully raw and less electronically effected than on previous recordings.

The themes found and explored on United Crushers are heavily political and deeply personal with thick references to social injustice, self-doubt and isolation, the rapidly increasing urban decline in gentrification, overcoming music industry machinations, and finding true and honest love in the wake of it all. Even at its darkest, the record is musically the band's most upbeat and celebratory. It is a weapon meant to empower the weak, the forgotten, and the disenfranchised.

There's a London show in February too. 

Magnificent news.

Life After The Vivid Dream: How Grimes Almost Got Sick Of Herself | NOISEY

Emma Garland for NOISEY:

The hardest battle Boucher faces is the struggle to be recognised as both the public-facing pop star, Grimes, and the technical mastermind behind the scenes. An architect of her own illusion, she's always handled every aspect of the production and packaging of her work, and the same goes for her new album. Boucher wrote, produced, performed and engineered everything, designed the artwork - and Art Angels also welcomes a new range of instruments into the Grimes repertoire, including guitar, keys, drums, ukulele and violin, which she learned to play for the record, plus 14 unique illustrations to accompany each track.

An excellent in depth feature.

Team Me -With My Hands Covering Both Of My Eyes I Am Too Scared To Have A Look At You Now (Live at Lydverket, 2011)

Team Me, announcing that they're splitting after their Norwegian tour via Facebook:

It is with great sadness, but also a bit of relief, we are now pulling the breaks on the Team Me train and say that’s that. The reasons are many, but not important right now. As they say, all things come to an end at some point.

Looking back, we’ve had an amazing time, our lives have been forever changed by all the great experiences we’ve had. We’re extremely lucky to have had the chance to travel around the world to play our music, and to have met so many wonderful people.

Aww. I thought they were fab.

Out Of The Desert: School Of Seven Bells’ Final Chapter - Stereogum

Ryan Leas for Stereogum, in an excellent feature on Alejandra Deheza and the final School of Seven Bells album:

Given Curtis’ passing, most fans probably expected there would never be another SVIIB album at all, and certainly not one this uplifting. But the writing all took place in summer of 2012, before Curtis’ diagnosis. It’s a time Deheza remembers as one of the happiest summers of her life. “We were finally in this place of just perfect peace, just being best friends,” she recalls. They would hole up in New York, working for 12 hours a day. It was a prolific time. Had SVIIB come out when they originally intended, it would’ve meant that it, Ghostory, and Put Your Sad Down would have all been released in the span of a year. They had struck a perfect rhythm together, and they were following it wherever it led.

So the album is called 'SVIIB'. Fantastic.

There's so much in this article capturing the beauty and sadness of the band's story.

School of Seven Bells Announce New Album For February 2016

Not sure if 'SVIIB' is the title but it would be apt.

Nothing else up on their revamped website other than this from Alejandra Deheza:

Friends, Benjamin and I wrote this record during a tour break in the summer of 2012. I can easily say that it was one of the most creative and inspired summers of our lives. What followed was the most tragic, soul shaking tidal wave that life could deliver, but even that wouldn't stop the vision for this record from being realized. This is a love letter from start to finish. It's the story of us starting from that first day we met in 2004, and that's the story of School of Seven Bells. So much love to all of you. Thank you for being a constant light in our lives. This record is for you.

Reading this brings a tear to my eye.