The Decemberists
- Last Proper Album: The King is Dead, released in January 2011.
- Recent Activity: They put out a live album, We All Raise Our Voices to the Air, in March 2012, but haven't released anything since. They've got a few gigs in May - a festival and a couple of benefit concerts - and singer Colin Meloy recently recorded an EP of Kinks covers, but aside from his vague assertion that he's "starting to dabble" with new Decemberists material, there's been no word on when we might get a new set of songs from the band.
- Why I'm Desperate for New Material: The King is Dead was good, but it represented a conscious effort to strip things back after the proggy song structures and epic rocking that littered The Crane Wife and The Hazards of Love. As enjoyable as it is, the slender, folksy LP that the band left us with in 2011 simply isn't enough to keep us going for this long. We need more (and I personally need more of the aforementioned proggy epic rock).
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Guillemots
- Last Proper Album: 2012's Hello Land!
- Recent Activity: Last I heard, they were in Norway recording a new album.
- Why I'm Desperate for New Material: Normally, a two-year gap between albums wouldn't be worth commenting on, but the band's original plan was to release four in the space of twelve months. Hello Land! came out, and then...nothing. Fyfe appeared on 6Music to preview one of the new songs, but that was ages ago, and there's still no word of when the second album in the quadrilogy will materialise.
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Modest Mouse
- Last Proper Album: We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, which came out more than seven years ago.
- Recent Activity: They did release No One's First and You're Next in 2009, but that was really more of an EP. They cancelled a UK tour last year to concentrate on the new record, but even with the extra time this allowed, we're still waiting.
- Why I'm Desperate for New Material: I really liked We Were Dead, but that was ages ago and No One's First wasn't enough to satisfy seven years of Mouselust. More, please!
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Brakes
- Last Proper Album: Touchdown, released in April 2009.
- Recent Activity: Not much since Rock is Dodelijk, a live album, came out in late '09. The band's Facebook page is the only real source of info; check out this exchange from a couple of weeks back:
- Why I'm Desperate for New Material: Because their albums are always superfun and fancy-free. They're pretty close to my heart, too - before I was even officially going out with Sarah (my girlfriend of four years), we went to a Brakes gig together. I sort of assumed that they'd called it quits, to be honest, but that Facebook post suggests that we may see something eventually.
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Radiohead
- Last Proper Album: There's been nothing new since the surprise release of The King of Limbs in February 2011.
- Recent Activity: They've been updating their blog on a regular basis, which is nice. The band's various members have kept themselves busy with solo albums and the like, but really, nothing they do alone is an acceptable substitute for their work as Radiohead. Apparently, they're going to 'make a plan' for album #9 this summer, but that's no indication of when it will actually come out.
- Why I'm Desperate for New Material: Because The King of Limbs didn't do it for me, quite frankly. It was missing the gooey, emotive goodness that's hiding in the centre of Radiohead's best work, and so it feels to me like they haven't had a new album since 2007's In Rainbows. We need another one like that!
Whose next album have YOU been eagerly anticipating for far too long? Post your own suggestions in the comments.
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