Singles, 1 September 2008

Conor Oberst – Souled Out!!!

Licentious drug referencing abounds, along with mystical tributaries to immigration concerns, religious considerations and conspiracy files being reopened.  The lyrical obtuseness covers an area roughly the size of the universe… "the whole world is just a little oyster… I woke in the age of wires… now I'm as cold as Popocatepetl… magic carpet is the transportation… went to the moon in a soda can"; with elements even in Spanish there's small hope of grasping his mental state any time soon.  But the boy who is Bright Eyes seems to be laying a huge garland of thanks to Dylan here, and you get the feeling that if anyone could go on to mimic his huge range and prolificness and longevity its Conor (currently in his 7^th incarnation and with 20 albums under his belt).  This chameleonic chapter sees a heavy folk artillery fire with countrified bullets, guitar solos by the bucket load, and a closing that slips into an acid wig out in danger of appearing on a Beefheart tribute album.  All in all, I'm souled!!!

Spiritualized – You Lie, You Cheat

A fuzzy bundle of gospelised accusations, clattersome instrumentation as though he's throwing his band down the stairs of the tallest lighthouse, and truly horrible feedback draining ear drum bursting cavity filling lo-fi meanderings.  It's like all the harps in heaven being played with blunt saws, with random organ thrashing and disjointed drum tempers in disharmony.  A magnificent noise.

Duffy – Stepping Stone

While it may be lovely and with purity of voice, this neo soul is fairly uninspiring stuff.  It's a mellow retreat for victims of falsified love and the tragedy of pretence and estrangement.  A much maligned coffee table slow burning bongo tapping xylophone teasing strung out syllabled Dusty effigy.  Have mercy! 

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Singles, 25 August 2008

Glasvegas – Daddy's Gone

Glasvegas have a way about them that sucks the emotive well dry every single time.  Wringing the last drop from humanity in a tireless pitch black resentment of unrequited love and loss, they move to tears with broken consonant doo wop harmonising and surfbuzz vibrations, like John Cale at his most extreme being backed by The Valentines.  How they can turn a Trisha show of the week premise into a hugely powerful and tearful adaptation of the lonely and misplaced, using a crescendo of incantations and My Bloody Valentine distortions, is only one mystery.  There's also the lyrical significance - a family breaking down and up, the absence of fathers and heroes, vacant dreams and churning unassailable directness… "be as fuckin' insincere as you can / forget your dad, he's gone".  Not to be heartless, but given where this has taken us, I'm praying for mother's departure too. 

Biffy Clyro – Mountains

Simultaneously thunderous and gushingly hope mongering, how about this for indestructiveness - "I took a bite out of a mountain range / thought my teeth would break, the mountain did".  Sheds a new light on the strength of self belief and the importance of others, that when you're finished you're not down, that horizons are never-ending because there's always something more, another side to find, another mountain to climb.  A subtly dramatic key led intro that traverses the deepest valleys and highest ranges, the guttural heaving guitar straining against a lion's leash, a storming chorus of invincibility and foreverness, and an unexpected piano break that at once asserts and lightens, a rock opera insert to brighten a snow capped peak of melodies and driving vulnerable masculinity.

The Raconteurs – Many Shades of Black

It seems that the Stones are starting to influence as many people as those Beatle folk these days, and Brendon Benson even manages to sound like Jagger at times, although the range of styles visited by this 'supergroup' is so vast something so obvious was always afoot; perhaps not so much an expectation to the deep blues phrasing of Gary Moore.  It's wild 60s rhythm 'n' blues then, with immediate soul thrown onto the fire with the Memphis Horns style sections blowing free from the off, before Jack White turns proceedings into a Queen style pompous and delicious racket, glamorous and widdly.  Many shades indeed.

Mystery Jets – Half in Love with Elizabeth

The videos imagery of the Queen may just be a handy theme to tie the song around, or it could mean that this a Royalist rant about money.  More likely an honest depiction of human nature and the fallibility of relationships.  Aesthetically 80s, as is their current want, the opening gamble of "some things are too painful to say out loud" pins the hearts of the world's lovers on their sleeve, translating the discipline of being a partnership of equals, the inevitability of deceit and the unreasonableness of soul mates to a masquerading Cure gloss party.

Paul Weller – All I Wanna Do (Is Be With You) / Push it Along

Another double header which again makes a play for the lively and the lovely, his extensive 22 Dreams album is providing a source of fantastical and alternating journeys.  'Push it Along' hurtles like a train failing the tracks, shining with a vibrancy that denies its composer's 50 years, a grandiloquent charged stomper that starts out with miramba rattleshakes before becoming a rock equivalent of 'O Fortuna'.  And indeed, 'All I Wanna Do' is lovely, a gentler plea with a rhythm 'n' blues undertow and the kind of fire in the belly poise that befits a yearning, a desire, a traced platitude that means more than is given.

Lykke Li – Breaking it Up

Singing through megaphones, whirling around to a whorish disco pop beat that Madonna would be proud of, cutting a devilish cold manipulation to commitment and flaying a distinct crudeness to bleating love songs everywhere.  True love isn't a warm joy, it's an abstract stop start clinical contradiction railing around an empty school hall of ghostly choirs and misunderstanding.  You know, the aforementioned Queen of Pop may want to cover this as a two purpose serve: a public statement and a high quality song for a change.

The Subways – I Won't Let You Down

It's boringly tedium garage rock where a guttural scream is welcomed to wake you up and shake the cobwebs that have collected during the depressing wait for a decent Subways song to come by.  The fact that it is surely one of the most personal songs they have written ("I won't tear your heart out… you said there's nothing else for you to do but hate me") makes things even more lamentable, Billy and Charlotte enduring a poisoned relationship for this? The spiders are spinning again.

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Singles, 18 August 2008

The Automatic – Steve McQueen

Rawk action and synthesised heaviness marks the return of those Monster baiting Cowbridgians.  A keyboard driven chant, perhaps a deliberate focus on the instrument of the departed Pennie compounded in the lyric "the position is already filled", which refuses to let go of the aforementioned hit maker.  "I was a teenage Steve McQueen" references the similarly titled monster flicks of the 50s, does it not?  So effectively a reminiscence of who they were, a realisation that not much has changed, and ergo there is not much of a 'great escape' to make.  Still, frustrations and turbulence shifts focus, and the since self confessed necessity of losing the shrieking one has enabled a beefed up sound to breath with Paul Mullen's yourcodenameis:Milo style experimentalisms.

The Fratellis – Look Out Sunshine!

That's where Panic's punctuation went!  The Fratellis always provided the best sounding weather reports to hit the UK, and none more so than here.  From the joys of spring of 'Chelsea Dagger' and the blue skies of 'Baby Fratelli', to this literal evocation of summer.  The lyrics are a somewhat cynical take on the music industry, and Jon's vocals will always take bigger strides than the music, but we're not here for complex investigations and taciturn pondering.  We're here for the sun!

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Singles, 11 August 2008

The Verve – Love is Noise

The Verve will never end; they're a musical institution which will always survive because they carry a heart and soul, a truth and belief that we – as musicLovers are unable to survive without.  And they have relaunched themselves with a lively soundscape rather than extended hippie jams (no doubt to be saved for the album), where euphoria rides high on 'ah-oh ah-oh' vocalised percussion amidst gut wrenching emotional cored disco drum beats.  Nick McCabe may be on a leash here, but there are some delightful Squire like waterfall moments.  Keeping to his Blake obsession, after his 'History' tribute, Mad Richard here paraphrases 'And Did Those Feet in Ancient Times' at the outset, starting a conquest for redemption over a world we've ruined, to obliterate destruction and constant violation, to sensitise against sins and quarantine us to an oblique review of society's startling ability to devalue each other – a history of manufactured lives and capitalist disgust and pointless negativity.  Through love, through religion, through forgiveness, through preservation, through the comfort of inspiration.

Delays – Keep it Simple

You'd perhaps be wary of a band that kept removing their singles from their Myspace page, but there's really no need, even if the piano fills here have been taken from the Baywatch theme tune.  They've returned with a more mature album on a bigger label, but are no less ambitious in scope while wiser in content. Extolling the virtues of waiting, this is a torch song that will endure mass participation and take on the world.   Do not be fooled by the fools expounding Feeling comparisons; that surely is a fate worth than death.

Kids in Glass Houses – Saturday

Have they done it at last?  Overcome the cuffs of emo to breakout and lead the charge down an indie disco this erm… Saturday?  Arguably about being out on the road, mixing it up with groupies and feeling the shame of sharing so much with strangers.  Starting to harden up, more in tune with fellow Welshmen Lostprophets than the hardcore punk of the beloved American Cult of Emotion, they've found fun and attitude in the life they are living.

The Music – The Spike

Even these comeback boys are jumping the 80s bandwagon, all brooding and menacing undertones of Rob's whispered vocals over retro dance beats and atmospheric keys.  The chorus turns into a hardcore rush, and come the end the disorientation leaves you unsure as to whether you are racing towards or away from the dealer.  For yes, given the short history and experiences stemming from within, surely the spike is the needle, the video the hallucination, and the acoustic balled conclusion the comedown.

Bloc Party – Mercury

Having only ever been enamoured by their non album singles, I was right not to hold out much hope for this.  Like: the astrological bent of the planet rotating backwards from the earth and leading to internalising and mentally analyse thoughts and feelings rather than attack new thesis with any curiosity.  Dislike:  the disjointed beats and dj scratch moves that try to turn a Radiohead trick but which just choke you like the element released.

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Singles, 4 August 2008

Noah and the Whale – 5 Years Time

A song where you can hear the hand dance come the chorus, its acoustic karma and zoo eulogies; its flute-some joy and James Dean idolising; it's sweet love and features Laura Marling.  Insanely happy and feverish, it starts with whistling – is there anything that quells a stormy mind more? – and continues to be lovelovelove.  Crazily optimistic, even with its final verse twist, even with the chorus' admissions; you'll be humming like a xylophone, air strumming ukuleles, playing imaginary violins and clapping yourself to a sleep of sweet dreams when the day is done.

The Futureheads – Walking Backwards

Seems like an amalgamation of the band's industry struggles ("sometimes it feels like we are walking backwards up a mountain") of the last couple of years, retold as an ultimate boy's own escape story ("that was then / this is now / we will find our legs…").  Hence the aggressive stance of doors being closed and being stabbed in the dark, the threatening distance of keeping their mouths shut and staying out of the way, the fear of being lost between the "the tiny gaps that we exist in", and final determination to tear away, pull apart and be free.  With productions of such blustering energy they can walk any way they choose.  And that's the point, right?

John & Jehn – Fear Fear Fear

With the squeak of an old bicycle in need of oil running through, this sounds like it's been produced by Steptoe and Son and recorded on the back of a rag and bone cart.  It's a couple hanging out in the alley where Bob Dylan recorded the video for Subterranean Homesick Blues, taping the rats for feedback loops and ragging out loose rhythms on whatever instruments have been junked there.  It's Bukowski calling the aliens and Simenon finding out where they came from.  It's The Doors recruiting Nico and living in French slums.  It's Good Good Good.

Keane – Spiralling

How many people missed Keane taking the funk baton on this digital download only single?  With Tom sounding like a straining Rick Astley, they arguably aren't missing much, as the band who have never had a guitarist finally get round to sounding how you always imagined they would – dangerously disco.  It sounds new, oh yes.  If it had been written for Soft Cell's first album in 1981; with a close to embarrassing spoken shouty bit that borrows from James, when they first recorded in 1986.  Apparently it is inspired by Ric Flair, a wrestler who taunted with shouts of "Whoo!" (sound familiar?), and reconstructs Tom's thoughts on "the human endeavour, built on an outrageous groove".  You can only spiral downwards can't you?

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Singles, 28 July 2008

The Pigeon Detectives – Everybody Wants Me

An update on the ugly duckling to swan parable coming out of Leeds?  The sorry tale of a popular girl taking pity on the loser at school for some unfathomable fumblings in the stationery cupboard, said loser morphing into Greek God filled with desire only for empty headed bimbo who has blanked his existence since and denied their shadowy liaison… surely a step up for the Detectives?  Something more subtle than a wham bam one night frisson, more constructed then a sexist tumble in nightclub toilets, more thoughtful than lecherous underage stalking?  Amassed around limited chords and their ever anthemic chanting, they continue to construct festival music that makes you happy to be swimming in mud.

The Levellers – Before the End

You do have to ask what's the point?  A romantic and introspective wallowing that sounds like a drowning man who can't even find a free hand to wave goodbye with.  All the usual suspects are thrown in – organ, acoustics and fiddle, but it derives something of an inert whole; they should have stuck with the opening didgeridoo croaking throughout and had the whole thing sung in the style of the breathy female backing vocals to get out the way of being so dull and ponderous.

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Mercury Rev: A Deserter’s Dream, A Snowflake’s Migration

Howling Bells singer Juanita Stein slays Paul McCartney halfway through their support set, for his lack of decent new shit, and replacing them on a radio session.  She then introduces us to 'Nightingale', one of a clutch grabbed from their own portfolio of new shit.  Butterfly handclaps frozen in desolate beauty.  Stick the Frog Song where Rupert can't shine, Sir Paul.  They are an intense grunge Elastica, cutting through wide open soundscapes that vibrate your nerve endings, painting a glacial portrait of jagged internal corruptions.  Lashing out with a metronomic cool, Juanita shudders with transensational wild cat yelps, swaying at once with child like innocence and an obscene luring; a hypnotising dominatrix minx.  Guitars are treated like violins; definitely Life With schizophrenically constructed Buildings.  New single 'Into the Chaos' is replete with magnificent guitar disco fascination, and there's an irony to closer 'Radio Wars' which has a bassline borrowed from The Beatles' 'Because' in its noisesome energy.

Mercury Rev, despite critical acclaim and an element of success, remain on the side of a cult band, tonight playing in a criminally downsized venue.  The fact that Feeder are also playing in town tonight at a 1,800 capacity hall makes the world seem that little bit more unfair.  Not that complaints fill the choking air of this tightly packed club, the spells to be enchanted work that much better when you can clearly see the whites of the eyes onstage.

The ambient sounds that start to creep out over the airwaves are like a sticky mass of insect larvae, breaking open and dragging over a rainbow, the bouncing drones that announce their approach like echoes around the Catskill Mountains at night.  The backdrop flickers into life, as a ragtime jazz intro tape carnival plays out.  Then to crackling images of infamous record and book covers interspersed with classic Rev footage, to the sound of a song played backwards with helium vocals.  David Bowie, Chuck Berry, Talk Talk, Jack Kerouac, Johnny Cash, Billie Holiday flitter by…

… until a dapper waistcoated Warlock, bottle of red held high, appears from the spreading mist, and almost new album title track 'Snowflake in a Hot World' mimics an entire universe exploding and melting through the tiniest of holes.  Jonathan Donahue, effective of a feminine, haunting falsetto verging vocal, spins webs and throws his arms like a batonless conductor.  His silhouette seems to have it's own life, casting a shadow behind that charms it's own tricks; while Jonathan – arms aloft at every musical flourish, dramatically freezes, hands clamlike, a cross between a mad professor and master magician, casting illusions upon band members and audience alike.  The last elongated note is like a wire for him to tightrope walk over as it merges with the instrumental flash of 'October Sunshine'.

From their most influential and attention grabbing long player "Deserter's Songs", springs the clanking 'Holes', this live rendition much more organically industrial, subsuming to machine gun scatter shots before reaching a recognisable summit that moves through the throws of orgasmic ghostly ecstasy.  A piano delight replaces the record's flute as Jonathan sings about time and faded signs.  More magic, like every song has a secret well to drink from, glowing like the sweetest dream, live flowing energy washing through your veins.  It's clear too that every track becomes even more epic and monumental, all inspiring on stage, the layering and construction coming from a pin drop to a hurricane.

Wherever magic of course, there are fairytales.  "If I was a white horse, and offered you a ride" takes us through 'Black Forest (Lorelei)', where the drums keep the heartbeat of a sorceress.  Between lines, as instrumental lushness sweeps high, Jonathan continues to wave and thrust his arms with his invisible wand, casting those spells over those onstage and off, drawing energy, spirits, dreams.  And on 'The Funny Bird' we walk, neigh are chased, through that woodland with thunderous aplomb.  The wolf roars and bites with venomous guitar, the pigs dousing flames in showering keys.  These twin instrumental forces conspire of Grasshopper's moth-light guitars and Jeff Marcel's ambient effects, key forces of experimentalist starlight.

They stylistically move to a hippie psychedelic rock 'n' roll effigy with 'You're My Queen', a firecracker from "All is Dream".  This is some lunatic paced zombie love song, an X-rayed prayer, a choir lambasting assault on the cognitive, a strangling instrumental ocean of messianic powers.

There's another new song amidst the feedback arrangement of 'People are So Unpredictable (There's No Bliss Like Home)', literally a sonic boom launching you to the cosmos – weightless, intense, pressured.  A silent breath, a white silhouette.  This psychedelic psyclone continues with a rare retreat to the shelter of their debut album "Yerself is Steam".  Even the drumstick count-ins echo as though from another world, although the centre of the whirlwind that is 'Frittering' stems from Grasshopper's dervish guitar.

Taking on the fragility of an operatic ballerina, Jonathan promises to return from a dream, on the voluptuous piano filled Tim Burtonesque soundtrack opus 'Tonite it Shows'.  Like a drying rain, there's the fulfilment of belonging to yourself, and a harmonica slide that rises like smoke from an undercover illegal cigarette.

'Tides of the Moon' unfurls like the wings of an eagle, organ vibes at the forefront, akin to The Doors, more poetic than Morrison.  This beat poetry style, all image led fantasticism, dark elegiac flamboyance, pulls throughout the atmosphere like the shake of a thunderbolt, the bite of a snake.

Ever for theatrics, Jonathan brings on the motionally emotional cavalcade for 'Dreaming of a Young Girl as a Flower', and the Rev go dance to a blustering beat frenzy, trance like near techno dilatancy.  You can sense the meteorites soaring by on the tension of an asteroid belt, the fork lightning spearing through an electrical storm of heliocentric dissidence, causing a gravitational hunger, some xenomorphic cataclysmic myopic menstruation.  "What happens now is up to you?" he sings, but is it?  Such force, such turbulence, every synapse fired, a glaring flare upon an abyss.

With a cinematic translucence, 'Opus 40' shines like a jazz avant garde piano interlude.  With every wave of his arms, Jonathan seems to create space amidst this density, and given what has gone before their almost spoken word existential psychotherapy session cover of Talking Heads' 'Once in a Lifetime' becomes a lighter moment, despite the jittering like Ian Curtis moves and slogans such as "are you a hologram?" screaming from the backdrop.  (To which, incidentally, your mind screams back "I don't know!!!!")

Returning to the stage with the classic 'Goddess on a Hiway', you're on the road together.  It's union making, a mythically defining togetherness moment between band and crowd, with a defying mantra of "this ain't gonna last", when it actually feels in that instant that it is the only thing that actually will.  Following with the symphonic majesty of 'The Dark is Rising', you only live twice for star-crossed lovers, there's more spell binding, more dream weaving.  A culmination of everything and more – sad, poignant, full of desire, mysterious, alluring, resplendent and yes… magic.

"Follow Your Bliss" flashes on the shade behind the band, a term coined by mythologist and philosophist Joseph Campbell.  Mercury Rev take a similar path, their ideologies painted inside music, stories of human experience vastly played out viscerally in sensuous grooves, earth shattering bombastic explanations, and visits to galactic worlds of ambient marvels.

They end with the noise drama of 'Senses on Fire', an exploding crystal ball as every future drowns us.  Tree roots are plucked like daisies, leading us to overload, climax, reset, reboot.

A phenomenal reverberating musical mindfuck.

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Singles, 21 July 2008

Fleet Foxes – White Winter Hymnal

Just beautiful, each pretty harmony breaking through is a star pricking darkness, as though the Beach Boys are tackling a monastic retreat in the snow, sparking a fire to gather round.  The build up and layering of vocals is like a destiny calling, before the music defines this very season (at an unseasonal time) with sleigh bells and echoing percussion, like fellow Seattle group Band of Horses converging with CSN at (a) Fairport Convention.  A very image led piece too – children wrapped in coats like parcels, a father dying amidst "snow red as strawberry", maybe more, less, else; vestiges of Edgar Allen Poe, Cormac McCarthy, Edward Gorey being called to mind.  Those ornate harmonies are at the forefront of it all though, as much another instrument than those traditional objects of musical art, decorative tinsel around an ever green snow covered tune. 

Ida Maria – I Like It So Much Better When You're Naked

The bass is straight from a 70s porn flick, the guitar running through a sex addicted cousin to Elvis' 'King Creole',  there's an orgasmic sing-along, and a new European anthem for hippie love is born.  Either that or a shambolic lost Libertines classic has been uncovered and covered.  Rasping words roll into each other, like a stream of cigarette smoke curling to the ceiling after a lust fuelled liaison, bringing a rattling commendation of promiscuity, advice on overcoming embarrassment and faint praise ("OK, you're kind of sexy, but you're not really that special").  Her best play so far, with a good chance of being taken home tonight.

Cajun Dance Party – Colourful Life

A song to sing while walking on water, a feeling of wonder and miracles.  Harp strokes egg shaking tambourines of joy as Daniel Blumberg sings of new places and familiarity, muses on sucking thumbs and gum, and preaches over not killing birds.  All positive stuff, you'll agree.  One their earliest songs (and ergo written when were about 12), it still shows a remarkable step up, shaped by the estimable production of one Bernard Butler.  There's a repressed passion in the vocals, that actually lends to the idea of growth to come and does nothing to hinder the shining light behind, and there's a definite whole band integrity philosophy which soaks into every chord played, string plucked, skin slapped and key depressed.  Soundtrack your fairytales with this Party.

Adele – Hometown Glory

If they can re-release songs, presumably I can recycle reviews?  This is a torch song to London, her love of this mass metropolitan scaled down to the minutiae of a local village.  Very Reginaesque piano, powerful yet restrained, as though it may explode at any moment, with a Massive Attack orchestral feel behind it.  Barely out her teens, with the soul of Etta James and the jazz infused blues maturity of Billie Holiday, her voice somehow breaks with the starch of experience and sincerity (and a 20 fags a day habit), like grey London skies at once refreshing and stifling.  Fittingly (although with no intention), a subtle call to arms against modern day extremism, redefining the beauty and wonders to defend, scattering worries to the wind created by her husky howl. 

The Ting Tings – Shut Up and Let Me Go

A ripped off Queen riff is so tragic, even when it is only that one about dust, especially when it is by the King and Queen of Dross.  Selling out to an Apple, turning disco chic into an annoying vulgar noise, unintelligent talentless piffle that not only seems to be as infectious as smallpox, but is as dangerous too.

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Singles, 14 July 2008

Neon Neon – I Told Her on Alderaan

Continuing the almost never-ending germ spreading of 80s decadence, but in such crystalline style.  The synths sound like the sheer glass cut edges of Superman's Fortress of Solitude, before being turned inside out by the clean polished soft rock edge of say …Roxette?  It sounds like the worst cheap thrill ever, the final rolling credit dirge to a romantic flick from said era, all tack and reheated drivel, BUT IT'S NOT.  A credit to the ever chameleon like Gruff Rhys and his electro wizard partner Boom Bip then, a man the ubiquitous Mr Peel labelled a modern day Beefheart, to be able to lift this ethereal past and dated sci-fi references to the future.  As shiny as that robot you'll one day be sitting in the pub with. 

CSS – Left Behind

Flashback to the robotic dance moves of playgrounds countrywide in the current epidemic of 80s obsessions, and therefore one of the truest reflections of such classic synth pop.  Undeserved criticisms abound for cleaning up their act (is there anything wrong with Gwen Stefano fronting Ladytron?), although it is a shame this Brazilian troupe have improved with their English, like, as much fun was had from the disrupted language interpretations of their first album, full of outright rudeness and unique rhymes.  Instead, we have served a genuine song of retribution ("a million pounds won't be enough to make me stare back in your face") and moving .. a break up.  Certainly a heartbreak to make your heart race, pop for a warehouse disco, and the chance to "dance my ass off til I die".  Ah, so they do still have it…

Primal Scream – Can't Go Back

Sugar coated bullets, Bobby confessed.  So here it is, hard edged and heavy beat led krautrock 'n' roll.  Like a restitution, it storms through electro destructive neon splashed razor sharp hooks, savage and gruesome ("stuck a needle in my arm… stuck it in my baby's heart") but still revitalisingly imperative.  Gone are the country rock Rolling Stone parodies, back is the bass heavy synth punk sordidness of yore (more Vanishing Point and XTRMNTR then anything on Riot City Blues).  No going back, then.  Is that a promise? 

The Strange Days of Liberal England – Angelou

Yelping treason, surely.  An art rock attack that reaches higher ranges than   helium whistle pitch peaks, and fools you into thinking you might be playing a vinyl version at the wrong speed.  Vocals that shout over each other and across instruments that are each playing different tracks, it's a fractious melee that culminates in Arcade Fire trashing the Devil's Suite while rehearsing for a West End tragedy directed by Millet reinterpreting Dali.  All told, it's a complex dream, segmented and sparky and passionate and brass fuelled and celebratory and hearty and vying with intent and caring and abusive and soaring and melodramatic and massively creative.  Burn all art as pointless.

The Little Ones – Morning Tide

A sunshine band taking time out by the sea, tame twee "doo doo doo doos" nearly being washed away before the guitar waves crash over shore.  Should The Magic Numbers ever write a song for Smashing Pumpkins, it might sound like this.  You can feel your feet sinking into the sand, warm from the sun, closed eyes seeing orange, aglow and glistening from oceanic swell splashes.  Pure bliss.

The Feeling – Turn it Up

Painfully trite, lyrically drastic, forced rhymes that mean nothing, striking power chords that sound weak enough for hospital and clean enough for the morgue.  As enjoyable as spending a winter's night at the base of a drained damp rat infested well, managing to climb to the top, only to fall again and break every limb.  Pray to drown.

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Singles, 7 July 2008

Kitty Daisy and Lewis – Going Up the Country

A vintage marvel, which they actually released as a 78 rpm!  There's a staggering history caught up in these three siblings, with maybe one just out of her teens.  Steeped in swing, the blues, rock 'n' roll and country, it's impressively fresh and rips a new chapter to what previously was just an influential legacy.  Recorded on legitimate equipment from the 40s and 50s, here they use it to strip back Canned Heat's original, moving from an acoustic growl stomp to a piano led handclap percussive jump swing.  The harmonica solos alone knock spots off the so called catchability of Kaiser Ferdinand, and in an age which seems to be harking back to the 80s repeatedly with an ironic stare, its actually feels genuinely creative to be authentically tracing things back further and with such skill.  Jive baby!

The Last Shadow Puppets – Standing Next to You

A case of The Beatles from their poptastic early 60s heyday performing for Burt Bacharach.  Flamenco rhythms soundtrack a tale of lost love, forlorn longing and acceptance of unfulfilled desires, with rapid percussive timpani tapping like shells on a beach being swept together and the requisite orchestration for this Turner/Kane project swelling like its shore.  You know what this sounds like by now, of course – an understated affair that went so very right.

The Hold Steady – Sequestered in Memphis

Superlative loucheness from a drunk frat boy Jagger and friends, which is fantastic by the way.  Trailblazing Springsteen and Black Crowes guitar licks set against Kerouac landscapes, the beat poeticism amidst blue collar honest lyricism ("in bar light, she looked alright / in daylight, she looked desperate") drawing on stylish horns revived from 90s Oasis b-sides and driving key vibes, to pull off an 'altogether' ending that is somewhat out of synch with the content – how can you make a one night stand resulting in a cry wolf situation and getting banged up in the clink sound such fun?  

Goldfrapp – Caravan Girl

When news breaks that Alison Goldfrapp has ran away and joined the Polyphonic Spree, anyone who has heard her latest album (or even just the singles) will not be surprised.  Is Tom DeLaughter hanging around production desks these days?  Golden rays shine through billowing robes, jewel encrusted confetti falls about you, as an enticement to join her in such runaway escapades sends shivering delight and an uplifting sense of purpose.  A gypsy roaming a euphoric electronica-side, head thrown back and spinning under the sun, with the sky opening and angels singing just for you.

Blood Red Shoes – This is Not For You

A vinyl only release for the fourth single to be lifted from their debut album, and it rips apart your needle with dirty garage spite and raw Laura Mary vocals that strip the truth bare ("let's pretend that everything is fine…").  A rough and ready tumble, a steady rhythmical bashing, with an ability to skip between dense and layered full force bombast and dropping to sparse minimal chord changing, bouncing from foot to foot and each time landing a punch.  The demanding final inquisitive duel screeched "are you listening? are you watching?" forces you to wonder that you may be the only one; criminally unjust, this is for you.

The Dodos – Red and Purple

A subtl