Euphoric rock and downbeat pop

Laneway Singapore 2012. “A fantastic venue, a packed and up-for-it audience, and a lineup that mixed unimpeachable indie credibility with balls-out, dance-till-you-drop rock ‘n ‘roll euphoria.” That’s how Paul Kay, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Time Out Hong Kong, described the Laneway Festival in Singapore earlier this year. “Even the non-stop torrential rain couldn’t wash the smile from my face.”

Expect more indelible smiles early next year as Laneway Singapore happens on Feb. 12, 2012. Judging from the number of enthused-bordering-on-delirious comments that deluged Twitter as soon as the new lineup was made known late last October, Philippine fans will be flying over en masse to SG to watch. (Singapore-based Pinoys, get ready to have your homes serve as crash pads for your hotel-price-evading friends.)

Who can blame them? Check out who’s playing: Anna Calvi, Austra, Cults, Feist, Girls, Laura Marling, M83, The Drums, The Horrors, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Toro Y Moi, Twin Shadow, Wu Lyf, and Yuck. Each one of these acts alone would be worth flying over to Singapore for, never mind for a show that features 13 other worthies.

Keep Shelly in Athens: The awesomeness emanating from this Grecian electronic duo tends to distort attempts to capture them in photography.

St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival began in 2004, in Melbourne, and “has always been interested in finding what’s fresh and great and bringing it to unique settings and surroundings to be appreciated by music lovers.” Called “an urban music experience like no other,” it had its first Asian show early this year with the inaugural Singapore Laneway.

I missed it this year, but I’ve already paid for my plane ticket for the next show. Public sales for Laneway Singapore tickets start on Nov. 28. See you there.

Keep Shelly in Athens

That’s the name of the Grecian downbeat-pop duo that’s all over the music blogs these days. They just released their second EP, “Our Own Dreams,” and — well, I really can’t improve on this description of their music from The Guardian:

“If St. Etienne are about evoking memories of a London so idyllic it’s almost illusory, Keep Shelly in Athens do the same for every European beach resort, from Ayia Napa to Ibiza. This is the sound of lack and loss, of what My Bloody Valentine termed ‘emptiness inside.’ It’ll transform your recent holiday romance into the most resonant bliss imaginable.”

Our Own Dream: The second Keep Shelly in Athens EP is another six songs of pop-soaked, beat-driven intermingled melancholy and bliss.

This is music for beach sunsets and late-night city drives, for moving to, and occasionally being moved by. A mixtape they put together for the music site Stock-71 indicates a number of their influences: Star Slinger, Toro Y Moi, Thievery Corporation, even Enya. The St. Etienne comparison is apt as well, especially when you consider such tracks as DIY and Fairytale.

Citing their “dysfunctional private lives” as inspirations in an interview with Dazed + Confused, they went on to add that “We try to transform negative into positive through our music.” Sounds good to me.