News (31/07/06)

• DRM needs to be more consistent and simpler - or you could just get rid of it?
• Damon Albarn can't stop forming bands. Wasn't Simon Tong practically a member of Blur now anyway?
• Pink Floyd to reform again, for Syd Barrett's benefit?
• Final TOTP ratings weren't that great, but a large improvement. Wonder what would have happened if they'd started with Art Brut.
• Scissor Sisters voted gayest album ever.
  

That final Top Of The Pops

Featuring an appearance by my girlfriend standing behind Tony Blackburn for half a second! And no new live performances! And a rather embarrassed air all round!

It wasn't really up to much, was it? I mean, perhaps the fact that it was so important is shown by just how overfamiliar almost all of the archive footage was - "Starman" must have been incredible to watch at the time, and was great to see for the first time on I Love the 1970s or whatever, but for the 100th? And the compromise between wanting to show whole performances and to cover every popular musical movement ever got a bit awkward at times. Gnarls Barkley's performance of "Crazy" was actually one of the highlights - a little fresh in the memory but not yet dulled by being endlessly carted out. The Arcade Fire and Guillemots' appearances in the past year also immediately spring to mind as far more exciting than seeing any of the older clips. Even the ones after I'd actually started watching the show, which may have been a factor in this I suppose - the idea was maybe to get everyone who hadn't watched it for twenty years to settle in for just another nostalgia programme?
If you ask me, though, the perfect tribute would really have been to leave the repeats to UKG2 and to run a show (with Jimmy Saville and Dave Lee Travis and all the other past presenters, if you really like) featuring live performances of the six or seven biggest new hits of the week like it should be, and was before Andi Peters and Tim Kash got involved. That would have been awesome.

edit: heh, I just remembered that I never actually saw the Guillemots performance on TV. Maybe that proves all the internet as the enemy points, but I say that if I had known for sure that they'd be on because they'd just reached the top 30 I would have been watching, France vs South Korea or not!

Science Is Golden

I somehow managed to miss this before it was released on Monday, but Monkey Swallows The Universe, very fine purveyors of acoustic beauty unbefitting their name, have a new single out! One which wasn't on their album even! Even better, it's called "Science", allowing for this picture:


and has a video, although sadly it doesn't continue the lab theme. Watch here. Or listen on their label's myspace, or download songs (including the sweetly desolate album highlight "Sheffield Shanty") here.

Edit: oh, and they're finally playing a London gig! So expect a live review soon...

I actually spent five minutes staring

Before I figured out the difference between the covers here.

News (27/07/06)

• EMI-Wanrer merger finally called off.
• Metallica songs now available online; world hasn't ended yet.
• Kazaa gives up the (peer-to-peer) ghost, Soulseek next?
• That guy from Audioslave does theme to new James Bond film.

Chartsengrafs (26/07/06)

Sunday just gone: McFly unsurprisingly indeed get to number one. Apparently "Don't Stop Me Now" is the real A-side of the double A-side (and the one they did on TOTP) which is certainly no good thing. Rihanna gets a third number 2 in four attempts - it's like S Club 7 all over again. Or S Club Juniors. James Morrison (Should possibly come with a 'now available in...'. Well, if it was Morrisons. Whatever) is 5. Gnarls Barkley just about make the top ten as the final new-ish entry there.
Ne-Yo's "Sexy Love" falls 4 to 14 but deserves a mention as I've only just actually heard it and it's rather enjoyable. Certainly a lot more so than Red Hot Chili Peppers falling further than ever into recycling themselves (16) and a bit more than Christina Aguilera wailing her way to 18 on downloads. Sean Paul and Chris Brown are feeling a bit sorry for themsleves at 22 and 23, Snow Patrol keep up early week progress for 25 on downloads - that's only just lower than "Chocolate" and "Spitting Games"' full entries, you know. Franz Ferdinand do less well (30) with "Eleanor Put Your Boots On". Perhaps they shouldn't have killed it. They're followed by Wolfmother. Words fail me. The bottom end is full of entries as Supermode are 36 (downloads), Bullet For My Valentine are apparently still around at 37, Ray Lamontagne is 38 with "Trouble" - surely due a remixed rerelease in another year's time - and Klaus Badelt is 40. No idea who he is but his song goes by the title of "He's A Pirate" which may be worth something.
In the albums: Razorlight! The Kooks! Paolo Nutini! YAY!!




Sunday coming: In a nice turn for the unexpected for the chart that no one even cares about any more that's why Top Of The Pops is ending you know anyway it's all that modern rap manufactured rubbish in the charts these days anyway you know it was better in the old days, Xhristina's quest for number one is going to be thwarted by The Shakira Record That Will Not Die. Well, either that or Rihanna finally getting there. Less surprisingly Madonna will be in the top 5, followed by Kasabian. Now, when I saw their single reviewed in commuter newspaper Metro on Monday, I thought that they'd just made some cock-up, like continuing to run This Life, but apparently not - "Empire" has been released to download shops, those other shops and radio stations all at the same time. It's certainly a more forward looking move than any of their music.
Lower down, predicted entries and risers for Pet Shop Boys, Paris Hilton (downloads), ¡Forward, Russia!, Supermode, Snow Patrol, Ray Lamontagne and Feeder.
In the albums, it will be as you were, pretty much.

First Impressions: Puppies / Jackson

The Hot Puppies' debut is all tortured retro glam and rather good with it, remains to be seen if The Long Blondes do a better job of the same thing eventually I guess.

The Sleepy Jackson... well, they (or should it be he? Luke Steele is pretty much the band) have called their second album Personality - One Was A Spider, One Was A Bird which says a lot. It takes the symphonic, paranoid template of Lovers and runs with it, but will probably takes a good few more listens to decide if that's actually for the better. Check out some of these lyrics though: "All the girls they live right across the sea in computers and talk like a lazy bee. Bathe in the winters in disguise. They dance in corners marked as 109." Er, quite.

Not new, but new to me, are Readymade. A few listens to their last album (thanks Ian...) and it sounds totally gorgeous stuff, plus it seems like there is loads more there to take in still. (Motel De Moka have one song from it)

Oh and the new Cursive album Happy Hollow that I've been enjoying very much indeed for the past few weeks turns out to have been an unmastered version or something - the final thing sounds even better.
(Check out Saddle Creek's site for a couple of songs)

News (24/07/06)

• Un-hobbled MP3! From a major label!
• The Concretes lose a singer, carry on regardless.
• Patrick Wolf reschedules tour for autumn, plans new single "Accident And Emergency". The album isn't til next year though - boo!
• Member of Phixx gets punched - surely not through being recognised.
• Pavement reissue another album.

"you’re IN A NIGHTMARE DEMON WORLD while on ACID and you’ve JUST REMEMBERED YOU LEFT THE GAS ON"

This week's Stylus Singles Jukebox up now, including my return to commenting after a few weeks off.
Not included: Me finding Calle 13 very lazy and somehow offensive even though I couldn't understand more than a few words [3]; me enjoying Beatriz Luengo's delicate Spanish guitar, stuttering beat and comedy shouting [7].

News (24/07/06)

• Bob Geldof cancels gigs in Italy after selling in one case 45 out of 12,000 tickets. He was 'the victim of an organised boycott', apparently. Sure.
• The Rolling Stones still getting people to go their gigs, making more money than anyone else.
• Guns N' Roses bottled at Newcastle gig, have to stop playing after just 2 hours.
• The Streets after a place in the record books with a twenty minute long video. The single has to make the top 75 to count, apparently, which given the performance of "Never Went To Church" must be a bit of a worry.

One last post on Guillemots' Through The Windowpane

With all of its detail and dramatic shifts in volume, I can't think of another album recently that has made me wish quite as strongly that I had more time in my life to devote to listening to music really properly, perhaps with a rather more impressive stereo. It's kind of frustrating, especially at the moment when a lot of my listening time is during my commute and at work where there are occasional interruptions, and in both cases I am unreasonably paranoid about listening to anything loud enough that it might disturb other people. This is an album that should be taking over my life but it's there for special occasions only for now. Still, that's worth a lot more in many ways.

Oh yeah and though, if eligible, it could well have already been a top 40 hit last December, "Trains To Brazil" seems set to be the next single. Of course.

First Impressions: Pipettes v Allen

I wrote this on Tuesday, but computer problems have delayed it and somewhat defeated the 'first impressions' point. Oh well, maybe next time.

A feature (well, if there turn out to ever be any more, you know what it's like) in which I offer my opinion on new/leaked albums that I've only listened to a few times. Sure to be ripe for ridiculing when I totally change my mind a few months down the line.

This week sees the release of two of the albums of the summer of a genre which can loosely and not entirely seriously be defined as pop for people who don't actually like pop. Lets start off with the fact that The Pipettes just about beat Lily Allen on having the less awful cover art. When it comes to the actual music, We Are The Pipettes is quite the glittery burst of fun too - having somehow avoided "Pull Shapes" thusfar it's great to find out that yes, it really is that special, but many other moments are instantly loveable too ("he don't know about X T C!", the statement of intent opener, the new piano on "Dirty Mind", lovely "A Winter's Sky"). Better still, fears about it being too samey seem very ill-founded and every song is the perfect length which is always helpful. A couple of songs don't work yet ("Sex" and "Judy", which is apparently the next single) but the whole thing goes by in such a blur that it doesn't matter too much for now.

Alright, Still... on the other hand doesn't seem likely to do such a great job living up to the hype. Musically it's immaculately put together, with some great samples and a breezy ease which suits Lily's vocals well. "Alfie", "Littlest Things" and of course "LDN" are all fantastic songs as a result. Not many other songs are memorable though and Lily's much-vaunted wit really isn't up to much. There are quite a few embarassingly poor moments lyrically whether being funny or not, indeed.
The night-out subject matter, clunky earnestness in portraying 'real life' and borrowed reggae/dub trappings add up to somehow leave the album reminding me most so far of Hard-Fi's Stars Of CCTV. That wouldn't be a bad thing (at least to me) if it had the tunes to match, but I don't think it does.

News (19/07/06)

• Full V Festival line-up finally announced. Presumably 'Crimera', playing between Oceansize and Bell X1, aren't this lot. Perhaps they mean The Crimea?
• Channel 4 to launch another new music show, which doesn't really sound all that different from the Album Chart Show but well done for trying.
• Robbie Williams releasing another album soon already, featuring William Orbit and Pet Shop Boys. The lead single is called "Rudebox" and may well continue the recent theme of his lead singles being preposterous and really good. The second one will be boring as anything though, no doubt.

Chartsengrafs (19/07/06)

Sunday just gone: Lily Allen, who shot to fame via the popular website "My Space", was number one for a second week. Shakira showed remarkable staying power to remain at 2, Nelly Furtado was still at 4 with Rogue Traders replacing Razorlight at 3. Their actress singer's performance on TOTP the other day was very much a don't quit the day job affair, to put it mildly. Busta Rhymes climbed to 8 and is just like Badly Drawn Boy, apparently.
News that Shayne Ward was releasing a new single obviously didn't get very far as it could only make 14. The very existence of a third single beats Steve Brookstein or Michelle McManus though. Rihanna was the biggest download entry at 16, two ahead of James Dean Bradfield with a song which I haven't heard yet but must be better than Nicky Wire's first effort. Gnarls Barkley unsurprisingly failed to match previous achievements with "Smiley Faces" but 23 on downloads isn't bad.
The top 40 new entries were rounded out by James Morrison (27; downloads, unfortunately), Nylon (29), Milburn (32), Rooster (33; ha) and Richard Ashcroft (40).

Muse were still number one album, not very shockingly, with Thom Yorke (featuring artwork which puts the music to shame, mainly) at 3 and Guillemots at 17. Hooray!





Sunday coming: McFly (where were they on downloads? Was it actually not released in advance?) are going to be number one with their Sport Relief single, the very idea of which is a bit confusing. The last song afforded this honour was Rachel Stevens' "Some Girls" unless I've forgotten one here and "Please, Please" definitely isn't as good a song. Their cover of "Don't Stop Me Now" isn't as bad as "More More More" though. Rihanna and James Morrison (4 and 5) both make the expected big jumps. How many more Blunt-alikes can the nation stand? Your other potential new entries and risers in the top 40 are Red Hot Chili Peppers, Gnarls Barkley, Wolfmother, Christina Aguilera (downloads), Franz Ferdinand, Snow Patrol (downloads, maybe it will be a bigger hit than the later ones from the last album) and The Flaming Lips.

Razorlight are well ahead in the album chart. Coupled with the continuing presence of The Kooks and alarming new emergence of Paolo Nutini in the top 5, this makes Lily Allen (2, probably) look somewhat more like an exciting saviour from total mediocrity than her album would suggest.

News (18/07/06)

• Retailers calling for an end to cheap CD imports from Jersey. Kind of a tricky one this, but Fopp being in support and still being able to offer new albums for 8 pounds does help to persuade that it isn't just an effort to increase prices, and anything taking away incentive to buy all music from supermarkets can't be a bad thing.
• Kasabian lose a member.
• Mogwai to release Zidane soundtrack.
• Nicky Wire apparently not a success at Latitude Festival.

Now for your other award nominations of the day

The Popjustice Twenty Quid Music Prize

• 'Biology' - Girls Aloud
• 'DARE' - Gorillaz
• 'Destroy Everything You Touch' - Ladytron
• 'I Said Never Again (But Here We Are)' - Rachel Stevens
• 'Number One' - Goldfrapp
• 'Over & Over' - Hot Chip
• 'Push The Button' - Sugababes
• 'Smile' - Lily Allen
• 'Supermassive Black Hole' - Muse
• 'Up All Night' - Matt Willis
• 'Valentine' - Delays
• 'Who Am I?' - Will Young

5/12!

And, er, wrong on two of the four I thought were most obvious.

• Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
• Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan - Ballad Of The Broken Seas
• Editors - The Back Room
• Guillemots - Through The Windowpane
• Richard Hawley - Coles Corner
• Hot Chip - The Warning
• Muse - Black Holes And Revelations
• Zoe Rahman - Melting Pot
• Lou Rhodes - Beloved One
• Scritti Politti - White Bread, Black Beer
• Sway - This Is My Demo
• Thom Yorke - The Eraser

It's not a bad list, certainly nothing like 2004's shocker (Keane, Snow Patrol, Joss Stone) although for that to be the case it would have taken Sandi Thom being nominated I guess. Lily Allen and Corinne Bailey Rae are the surprising ommisions but while they both had fantastic singles the albums are respectively a little clunky and more than a little boring. It's more the fact that the whole thing looks very short on pop as a result that's the problem, then, and it would have been a nice surprise to see Girls Aloud or Sugababes in there.

Another problem is the continuing trend of ignoring anyone previously nominated unless they're Coldplay or Radiohead (or their singer), which just makes their default nominations seem all the more unfair. I don't think that Under The Iron Sea or Eyes Open among are the best albums of the year, but the first especially is clearly a big improvement on its nominated predecessor. Belle & Sebastian and Elbow can probably feel pretty hard done by on that one.

Of course it does need the big mainstream albums in to attract an audience, and a sales cap on nominees like the US version would be a really bad move. Neither Thom Yorke or Muse's albums feel like anything to strongly get behind at all though, Muse in particular doing little more than treading water for the first time apart from on a couple of songs. Black Holes And Revelations being included feels more of an acknowledgement that ignoring Absolution was stupid than anything. The Back Room has its moments while suffering from the opposite problem of being almost a year old already but I never really loved it much as a whole. Arctic Monkeys obviously don't need a win and would in practise it would probably be rather tiresome, but while not filling in the innovation requirement (like anyone still believes that) their album is actually brilliant, which surely must count a little.

That leaves Hot Chip and Guillemots (yes, in case you were wondering, their album almost lives up to expectations, which is quite something) to really support this time round for now. Plus any of the other six that I haven't heard the whole of yet and still have a chance to impress me, which is where the possible benefit of this whole business other than a chance for me to write this comes in.

News (17/07/06)

Yes, hopefully things here will now start to return to regularity or something resembling.

• Kylie returns next year with Wembley shows.
• Probably largely ignored ban on MP3-FM transmitters removed.
• Lady Sovereign album in October surely missing the boat somewhat.
• Shayne Ward past his sell-by date according to 'industry insiders', anyone who looks at the charts.

Mercury predictions

Mercury Music Prize nominations tomorrow, time to guess what they'll be...
(I haven't actually read Sweeping The Nation's answers yet, and I was going to do this anyway, honest)

Arctic Monkeys, Lily Allen, Guillemots and Corinne Bailey Rae are all near certainties. It's surprising that Muse haven't been nominated before and this could finally be their year. Pet Shop Boys are possible for the older nominee like they usually have.
The Boy Least Likely To... came out too long ago. Damn. The NME suggesting Girls Aloud is wishful thinking, Kate Bush less so (although there goes the Pet Shop Boys reasoning.. oh well).
Plan B probably has a pretty good chance (critical approval, wide appeal, what can kind of count for success), same for Sway. Thom Yorke being nominated would be kind of boring but might well happen anyway. And the other two I will never have heard of so I'll get in Franz Ferdinand (to prove it wasn't a one-off) and Mystery Jets (there's always one indie album that no-one really thought was that good) as bonus guesses.

I realise there's a bias towards the recently released there, but there usually is in the actual nominations.

still running the world

Just in case you haven't already come across it, Jarvis Cocker now has a Myspace page with a new song. A proper one, even, not one of those Relaxed Muscle things!

Chartsengrafs (06/07/06)

Sunday just gone: Shakira (ok, and Wyclef) rather surprisingly climbed to number one with a late-week surge, selling more than last week too. Perhaps, though, it actually fits the odd yet naggingly addictive nature of the song. Is it just me who thinks that her vocals sit totally uneasily on the whole thing yet somehow it works really well? Pussycat Dolls went up to three, seemingly without a great deal of attention being paid, ditto for Ne-Yo at 5 and The Kooks only making 7 was rather a relief (though "Naive" went up one!). Lily Allen and Razorlight got to 13 and 15 respectively on downloads, but more of them shortly because below that we have Guillemots! 23! Finally! The Long Blondes at 28, CORD somehow at 34, Larrikin Love one below and an (underperforming?) Fatboy Slim at 39 completed the top 40 list. The 41 is worth mentioning though - Lacuna Coil doing "Enjoy The Silence".

Lostprophets managed to knock Keane off the top of the albums, and I thought that they'd lost all their fans a la Hundred Reasons, with Plan B the next highest new entry at 30 and The Kooks making their worrying their towards the top at 3.




Sunday coming: Time for another round of newspaper articles on the blogosphere/Myspace (take your pick according to pessimism levels) as Lily Allen is heading for number one! With a song vastly inferior to "LDN", but lets wait and see what the rest of the album is like. Razorlight probably won't even make it to two with their deeply average "Float On" "In The Morning" which is pleasantly surprising. Paolo Nutini beats even CORD in the "act in my Camden Crawl review I thought were total nonentities I'd never hear of again, who have somehow got somewhere" stakes by heading top 5. George Michael, Bob Sinclar and Rogue Traders are also going top 20. I haven't heard any of them.
The Pipettes, Jamie T, The Rifles, Justice vs Simian (rather too late for them to finally get a hit huh?), Busta Rhymes (downloads), another Jose Gonzalez cover, Fall Out Boy and Till West are your other prospective new top 40 entries.

In the albums, Muse are of course going to be number one, with Johnny Cash top 10 as the only other major new entry. Liberty X also deserve a mention though, currently heading as they are for somewhere in the region of 170.

I'm in awe

Talent In A Previous Life's guide to Shakira's body is, as someone says in reply, "Best. Entry. On. The. Blog. Ever." Even before it gets to my particular easily guessable favourite.

News on a couple of forthcoming albums...

...from bands I've been plugging for a while on here:


The Hot Puppies' debut album Under The Crooked Moon will be out on July 24th on Fierce Panda. Since the usual amazon, HMV et al don't seem to have it yet you can have the tracklisting too:

01. Terry
02. The Bottled Ship Song
03. Green Eyeliner
04. Bonnie And Me
05. The Drowsing Nymph
06. Heartbreak Soup
07. Theda Bara
08. The Girl Who Was Too Beautiful
09. Love Or Trial
10. Love In Practice, Not In Theory
11. Baptist Boy
12. How Come You Don't Hold Me No More?
13. Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall

What, no "The Party"? Or the title track, for some reason. Still, should be fun. The Guardian says nice things about them here.

Teletext's Planet Sound also brings news that Bat For Lashes' debut will be called Gold And Fur (or, er, it might have been the other way round) and will be out on September 11th, which seems an awfully long time to wait for something which should hopefully be very good indeed.

Non-world cup related music post

Four songs from the upcoming Cursive album streaming here (ignore all the oh-so-funny false names and stuff). The album is really rather fantastic for first few listens, which is particularly impressive as the last one was a bit meh and overly self-referential and clever outside of a few moments of perfectly unhinged anger. Lots more of that on this one, along with plentiful brass, an interesting narrative thread and much-improved jokes.

Sunny Day Sets Fire - Brainless (download taken from their Myspace page) : excellent summer pop with hints of The Shins, Architecture In Helsinki and even at times The Polyphonic Spree if they worked as well in practise as in theory.

And since I normally finish with a cover or two, you can have Lily Allen doing "Oh My God" on Shoes Are For Work. Apologies to anyone completely fed up with her already, was certainly easy to find though...

Another joyous collision of music and the World Cup

Lily Allen offers her views on England's exit.

"I bet the press are gonna use Rooney as the scapegoat, but I reckon we should go after Ronaldo"

Yeah, no one else will have thought of that...