Showing posts with label singles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label singles. Show all posts

Monday, 24 March 2008

Singles Reviews: March 2008


Look See Proof – Do You Think It’s Right released 24th March 2008
The promising likely lads from Look See Proof are warming up to the release of their debut album in June with this single taken from it. As a sign of things to come, it could be worse for the Hertfordshire four-piece. Riding the crest of the fashionable uptempo indie wave, Look See Proof blend the fast pace of dance floor fillers from Bloc Party with the colloquial guitar-pop vocal stabs of the Pigeon Detectives. Though this might sound like a nightmarish combination, the result is an inoffensive, polished kind of chaos. ‘Do You Think It’s Right’ opens with an angular guitar riff that spills into unpredictable, skittering high hat and cheerful bassline, overlaid with well-placed, melodic guitar work and infectiously repetitive lyrics that that will stick in the heads of indie-kids like their favourite hair product. There’s a good few chorus yells and an unwinding drum build up mid-track for good measure, too. Though the outfit is perhaps best boxed with the commercially popular likes of The Wombats than the melodic inventiveness of The Maccabees or Mystery Jets, this comfortable middle-ground gives Look See Proof both indie credibility and a more universal appeal that shows promise for the forthcoming album.


Clinic – The Witch released 24th March 2008
Anyone who has ever witnessed the surgically costumed strangeness of Clinic live will be aware that chart success have never been particularly high on this Liverpudlian four-piece’s list of priorities. Things are no different with new single ‘The Witch’, which also announces the release of Clinic’s fifth studio album next month. Describing the escape from a modern-day witch-hunt in search of a new future, the single has a sixties-sensible dance floor chug about it, carried through with lingering trade-mark organ backing and lisping, swing-like percussion. Ade Blackburn’s distinctive acid vocals are beguiling, making for a mesmerically psychedelic track that practically defies named comparisons. Clinic have long established themselves as rather fashionably commercially elusive, yet always critically adored, and their latest single shows little signs of any swing to the mainstream.


It Hugs Back – Other Cars Go released 31st March 2008
Seductively murmuring vocals over layered barely-moving guitar melodies that strum seamlessly into an ethereal dreamland, ‘Other Cars Go’ is the kind of caramelised post-shoegaze indie-pop that manages to express cosy Sundays in sound. Too soft and pleasantly sparse to approach My Bloody Valentine’s sound-drenched nineties cacophony, It Hugs Back still manage to incorporate a good build up of senseless guitar-noise and strange organ tones into this single, taken from their forthcoming debut album. Vocals merely act as another layer of melodious weave for It Hugs Back, who concentrate attention on filling their music with finely pitched fuzz to create an aural blanket that is warmly numb, like frozen fingers curled under the duvet.

Wednesday, 13 February 2008

Basia Bulat - In The Night EP


Basia Bulat hails from Ontario and has been creating beautifully crafted folk-pop for a good few years now, with very little recognition. Having released an album last year entitled Oh, My Darling, she returns this year with an EP comprising of a new number In The Night, as well as a reworked version of an album track, Before I Knew, and a cover of fifties soul legend Sam Cooke’s Touch The Hem Of His Garment. Bulat is endowed with a voice that immerses the soul, gossamer soft and encompassing, yet shot through with a steel-like strength that winds around the hubbub of the thick folk instrumentation of her band, to gently waver, bird-like, at the ends of phrases.

There’s something gloriously organic about Basia Bulat’s music, which she purports to have found ‘dangling from the trees’. In The Night is a midnight musical stomp through the woods (check out the video): upbeat and somewhat anthemic, it’s definitely a grower. Meanwhile percussion and pace have been added to first-love-song Before I Knew to make a grander sound that overwhelms after hearing the beguiling ukulele-beauty of the album version. Touch The Hem is a different vein for Bulat, showcasing soulful vocal capabilities that carry the simple piano-chug of this old soul song into the realm of chamber-pop. Though enchanting, these EP tracks are still not a patch on the best songs of the album; an indication, perhaps, of Bulat’s singular talent.

Monday, 8 October 2007

Singles Reviews

The low down on October's singles releases

The King Blues
Mr Music Man
The first single from this acoustic ska/reggae trio will already be familiar to regular listeners to Radio 1’s The Lock Up. Voted ‘Best Song Of 2006’ by listeners, Mr Music Man is a mellow infusion of infectious reggae beats and cheerfully simple acoustics that has enough laid back pop appeal to take the charts by storm. This is unaffected street punk repackaged for a rapacious commercial generation: the kids will love it.

The Departure
7 Year
The Departure return with 7 Years, an intensely bland and meaningless piece of emo-trash that does away with any hope that the Northampton band might have developed or encapsulated some of the angular post-punk hinted at in the first album ready for the release of their second next year. Expect nonsensical lyrics, wet killers-esque guitar hooks and plenty of noisy dissatisfaction.

Shocking Pinks
End of the World
Nick Harte (aka Shocking Pinks) finally sees his first full release on DFA in this enveloping bundle of melancholic wonderfulness. End of the World is a little symphony of heartbroken bliss that evolves from a wobbly drum break into a tension building, colourful combination of oversaturated acoustic guitars and swirling synths. It might not chart highly, but its encompassing fragile warmth is the perfect soundtrack to a rainy student Sunday.

The Thrills
The Midnight Choir
This is doubtless a highlight of The Thrills third album, released back in July: jangling melodies and a relentless banjo riff drive this second single forward over Deasy’s fragile vocals, heralding a return to the good old days of first album cheer. A clamourous little number, The Midnight Choir might not be ground breaking, but happily raucous choruses, a woeful edge of love lost, and a slice of those characteristic harmonica harmonies will keep toes-tapping and fans smiling.

The Envy Corps
Rhinemaidens
Iowa four-piece The Envy Corps return to the UK with Rhinemaidens from their debut album, due for release in January 2008. The single is an uncomplicated friendly number comprising of a chattering guitar and a keyboard that seems to have time-warped straight out of the eighties. Reminiscent of early Primal Scream, this is an inoffensive piece of summery pop – nothing new, but eighties nostalgia has its charm.

Hundred Reasons
No Way Back
If you like your pop-punk to come the other side of the Atlantic you’ll love this. Power chords and heavy guitar riffs feature in abundance under jarring American vocals in No Way Back; which can be download free on iTunes from the 16th October. Lyrically juvenile and limitingly formulaic in their approach to songwriting, Hundred Reasons seem to be getting something right: the track comes from their fourth (fourth!) studio album, due out this month.

Richard Hawley
Serious
Richard Hawley of Pulp/Longpigs fame offers us another slice of his 1950s rock-a-billy pie with this upbeat little skiffly number that maps out the faultlines between loneliness and love. With so many bands churning out reinvented rubbish, this undeniably dated but perfectly put together dancehall throwback may just have you crooning along in your bedroom. If not, give it to your mum. She’ll love it.