'Allo Darlin'
There’s a special place in every girl’s heart for twee pop. The Cardigans doing ‘Carnival’, Belle and Sebastian doing, well, any of their songs – it’s enough to make any red-blooded chick wear Hello Kitty slides in their fringe, get a uke and wear their boyfriend’s ratty brown cardigan.
Mumford and Sons
Mumford and Sons played a gig in New York a few months ago, at the legendary Mercury Lounge, as a warm up to their SXSW performances. Foolishly, I didn’t go, despite all the hype I’d heard about them.
The Toxic Avenger
Simon Delacroix, better known as The Toxic Avenger has released another electro-thrash single (although from what I’m hearing it would be better coined electro-trash for the 4 minutes of pain endured by my ears!).
Blue Roses
Let’s get this straight – Blue Roses (aka singer-songwriter Laura Groves) is in possession of a ‘voice’.
And not just a pretty voice, not even just a strong voice – but a voice with a remarkable, unique quality which may have warranted legions of favourable Kate Bush comparisons, but ultimately means Laura transcends them.
Plasticines
If you’re not familiar with the Parisian rock chicks that are Plastiscines then strap yourselves in and prepare to go on an exciting musical journey.….
Beat The Radar
When a lot of indie bands seem to be going out of their way to add as many irritating sound effects their songs in the interests of being ‘individual’ or even worse ‘experimenal’ it’s nice to hear a band who understand the importance of injecting a bit of pop into the formula, and Beat The Radar do just that.
The Longcut
Don’t you just love seriously repetitive music with irritating vocals and uninteresting instrumentation? Me neither, but it seems as though The Longcut must, otherwise they’d have never recorded this track, let alone released it as a single and filmed a video.
Johnny Flynn - Sweet William EP
Another brethren of the insanely prolific London anti-folk scene, Johnny Flynn has always seems more mature than his counterparts, always vying towards medieval majesty rather than twee strumming – in short, far more likely to stay up all night studying Shakespeare than crying over a breakup.
His debut album A Larum was all Appalachian, old-soul weariness, punctuated by his lucid lyrical flights of fancy. His style can be compared to US freak-folkie Joanna Newsom’s, however, while Joanna is happy to witter on about Sawdust & Diamonds, Johnny Flynn is far happier dwelling on rubbish dumps and vagrancy. If Joanna Newsom is the archetypical medieval princess, then Johnny Flynn is the impish, impoverished court minstrel.
His achingly wholesome, plaid-clad and golden-haired good looks only add to this idealistic image; it’s easy to image him as the straight-A, golden boy of his school – perhaps the head boy and captain of the rugby team. He’s a new strain of folkie – rather than emulating the slightly grotty, bearded, Will Oldham-ish unkemptness of US folkies, Johnny Flynn is clean-shaven and squeaky-clean – he’s the kind of boy your mother would love. … Continue Reading
Uffie - Pop The Glock
Initial thoughts on this record: rubbish. Uffie is clearly trying to be ’80s Madonna/Lady Gaga.
After a few more goes at it though, ‘Pop The Glock’ grows on you. Which is annoying. After the first 20 seconds of the song, I really wanted to hate this.
The single itself is quite bland; Uffie basically just (sort of) raps over an electro/crunk drum beat – more annoyingly she uses one of those irritating voice things that Imogen Heap uses on all of her records (don’t get me wrong, I quite like Imogen Heap, but after listening to this track continuously for about ten minutes it starts to grate…)
Still, after a bit of research, I found out that Uffie was once the star of MySpace and everyone thought she was the next big thing. Listening to some of her other tracks from her MySpace, I can kind of see what the attraction is. They’re certainly more interesting than this single. But, I’m here to review this single, so that’s what I’ll do… … Continue Reading
Wolf Gang - The King And All Of His Men
Everything about this Wolf Gang track screams opportunistic bollocks. There’s absolutely nothing original and the song gives an unnerving feeling that you’ve heard each hook before in a different, yet identical, song. It sounds like Scouting For Girls. It has an “oooooooooooooh wooooooooah” bit solely included to tick a box on a record label clipboard. I should hate it. Everyone should hate it.
But… I keep going back to it. It’s so catchy I can’t help having repeated listens. And whenever it’s on I get this stupidly massive, shit-eating grin all over my moronic face. The melody is firmly embedded in my brain and doesn’t seem to want to come out. I can’t chase it away. I’m sure it was even in my dream last night. … Continue Reading
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