Apples and...

Discovered The Oranges Band today from Baltimore, Maryland.

They are a group of 4 guys with a lot of guitars - thank you garage rock. Funnily enough they say on their website that their major influences include Tom Petty, The Beatles and Paul Simon, but they come off as much more Strokes-y than any of the above (and really, who isn't influenced by The Beatles?).

Their myspace page has clips from four of their songs - which are fairly uppity and easy to bop along to. Plenty of guitar riffs and easy lyrics - but I wouldn't say vocals are their #1 attribute. Likely their live performances are pretty good - and since they're from Baltimore all those who live in DC area (that's you Fergs) should look out for their shows.

Check out their song White Ride here to get a good idea of what they're playing.

Speaking of good guitar riffs, Razorlight is putting out their second album, In the Morning, this summer.

The clips of the first single of the same names are available on their website and on their myspace page.

For those not familiar with Razorlight, they were touted as one of the biggest bands of '04-'05 with the release of their first album Up All Night. Critics called them the next Libertines and thought they were going to be enormous. While they did sell upwards of a million albums, their fame stayed mostly in the U.K., and they remain somewhat unkown still here in the U.S.

I'm not 100% sure why this happened, especially since the song "Golden Touch" off Up All Night has the same universal appeal as most big pop hits. It's extremely melodic, well written, catchy and transcends the garage rock genre-of-the-moment to become a single that should have mainstay for years.

Some of the problem probably lies in the fact that Razorlight's U.S. tour last fall got cut short when lead singer Johnny Borrell fell ill. Not to mention, when I saw them at the Bowery they were extremely disjointed. Some songs they hit right on the mark (like Rock n' Roll Lies), while on others they seemed like 4 random people up on stage - not a band (this is especially true for Stumble and Fall, during which Johnny lost his place and stopped the song in the middle).

Not going to lie - after I saw them I thought Johnny might be headed the way of blood-spurting syringe-loving Pete Doherty (side note - Don't Go Back to Dalston on Up All Night I've heard was written for Doherty - as the two are/were good friends).

But! Razorlight seems to be on the right path and everyone is eagerly anticipating In the Morning. Johnny himself is talking it up quite a bit in NME - and you can read a portion of the hilariously arrogant interview here.