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...

Chartsengrafs (29/06/06)

Sunday just gone: Nelly Furtado stayed number one for a quietly impressive third week. Shakira climbed a further place to number two, as much through lack of competition as anything else, forcing Sandi Thom to three. "Supermassive Black Hole" did indeed outdo "Do Somethin'" at 4 (and a ha at John Earls' "Muse have always suffered comparisons - first to Radiohead, now to Britney" on PS today) with The Automatic completing the top 5.
Lower down in brief: equally surprisingly high entries at 8 for Lostprophets and 9 for The Zutons. Pussycat Dolls at 12, The bloody Kooks got 14 just on downloads, jesus, with "Naive" back up to 26 - go away already! I wish I hadn't given good news that it was about to a few weeks ago now! All American Rejects (18), Ne-Yo (21; downloads), Michael Jackson (22), Lupe Fiasco (29), Young Knives (38) and Editors (39) completed the list of new or sort of new top 40 entries.

Sunday coming: Nelly Furtado will still be there. Surely not another 9 week run coming up? Pussycat Dolls, Ne-Yo and The Kooks all to climb to the top ten in a rather sparse looking week. Next highest is Michael Jackson for now although he'll surely fall. The Long Blondes are heading top twenty! Hooray! Shame about the particular song. So, bizarrely, are CORD.

Guillemots are really finally going to have a hit! In the top 30 maybe! Unless they've broken some obscure rule again. Too many versions of a video on the beach anyone? Oh and to anonymous commenter on their album the other day... haven't heard it yet so can't say much but must admit that as wonderful as it is live the idea of "Blue Would Still Be Blue" being made five minutes long is slightly worrying. Will see!
Kelly Clarkson's toomanyth single from Breakaway is just below, along with Belle & Sebastian's "White Collar Boy" which I must admit to having thought was out in a few weeks time. Lacuna Coil and Larrikin Love may just slip into the top 40 too.

Notes From Wireless

(some nice photos) (they're not mine)

• Turning up in time only to see the last three main stage acts of the day doesn't do much to help get an impression of a festival atmosphere (I was watching England v Ecuador in the world cup in a pub with a projector that broke down every twenty minutes. I missed GoodBooks sadly... not much else though)
  
• What kind of festival finishes at just gone 10pm anyway though?
• 2/3 acts mention the football: Dave Gahan gives a shout of 'One-nil!' midsong and Mystery Jets are all in matching England shirts. Well, matching apart from the drummer, who ruins things by wearing an actual replica shirt instead of the unofficial ones of the rest

• They get saddled with absolutely atrocious sound for "Little Bag Of Hair" in particular
• Also slightly overuse Blaine Harrison's additional percussion
• And still sing "you picked me up at the station" in "Alas Agnes" instead of King's Cross like on the demo (and album lyrics booklet!) which annoys me far more than it should
  
• Enjoyable set though

• Goldfrapp don't quite have a whole set of twisted pop masterpieces and so their distance (barely a word between songs, of course) just occasionally translates to boredom
• They nearly do though, and Alison looks very cool indeed
• They also have some dancers for about half the songs who liven things up, almost sexy but just too weirdly dressed to be entirely comfortable considered as such
• The person next to me loves "Ooh La La" and it's her favourite Goldfrapp song ever and that's why she knew they had to come and see Goldfrapp!!
• She still spends most of the song on her phone and/or watching her friend pull his cocaine out of his underwear and snort it though.
• She and her friends believe that one song goes "I'm in love with a sex machine" and sing along loudly. Which is hilarious enough to make up for anything else.

• Depeche Mode have a lot of Eastern European fans
• They have got really, really good at what they do, as a lot of bands their size do I guess
• Dave Gahan looks far better with his shirt off than could be expected
• He is also struck with some kind of ailment which makes him unable to last a song without shouting "Woo!" though. I believe Bernard Sumner suffers from something similar...
• My knowledge of their songs beyond Violator is sketchy at best. It's amazing how many intros I can kid myself into thinking are either "Personal Jesus" or "Enjoy The Silence" as a result
• They really do play them both though! Together! Before the encore!
• Yeah, they're really impressive
• I guess I don't feel too ripped off but it still isn't really much of a festival
  

Since actual posts here are a bit thin on the ground for now...

If you haven't already seen it, this week's fine Stylus Singles Jukebox has, as usual, a few of my contributions. Not included: More gushing about Guillemots [10], liking Augie March's single at first and then somehow going off it a lot [5] and praise for Death Cab For Cutie's best moment from Plans [7].

Favourite comment of the week: Jessica Popper's ' the singer sounds like he should only ever sing Christmas songs' on Ben Gibbard.

More TOTP

A couple of excellent pieces on the demise of Top Of The Pops:

Pete Baran on FreakyTrigger
Marcello Carlin on Stylus

Chartsengrafs (22/06/06)

Sunday just gone: Nelly Furtado more comfortably gained a second week at number one. Shakira climbed to three, The Automatic managed an impressive second week at 4 and Bon Jovi of course didn't live up to the midweeks and finished at 5. Let's not mention 2. Baddiel, Skinner and The Lightning Seeds' ten year old song went up another place to 9, but that can be put down to "Crazy" being disqualified as you can't buy it in old peoples' music shops anymore.
Armand Van Helden climbed to 11 with the also a couple of years old "My My My" - I thought that sounded familiar! No idea who Solu Music (18) are, but they helped to keep The Fratellis (19) down a place so may well be a good thing. Dannii Minogue was the final top 20 entry at 20.
Lower down: TI (a surprisingly high 22), Michael Jackson (26, how much longer do these go on for??), Sergio Mendes (19, downloads), Lostprophets (39, downloads), The Zutons (41, downloads), John Parr VS Tommyknockers (43), AFI (44) and Muse (46, downloads).
The Divine Comedy's 52 for the slightly overly-smug "Diva Lady" is at least 8 places ahead of Battle, and doesn't seem too bad, until you consider that even after the album of the same name had been released, "Absent Friends" still scraped into the top 40 two years ago. Ah well, blame the football.

Sunday coming: Nelly Furtado for a third week at number one, still selling not too badly. Muse starting the week impressive but falling; they will still likely stay top 5 and get their biggest hit ever. Plus they have "Do Somethin'"'s mark at 6 to aim at beating of course! Lostprophets, The Zutons and Sergio Mendes to climb to the top 10 - has "Mas Que Nada" even been on any football adverts this time round? Or just the load for his album?
Outside the top twenty, Editors' neverending rereleases are still kind of working, Ricky get as many people as possible to sing on their football song so they'll all buy it, The Kooks' next single appears on downloads even before "Naive" finally gets lost, and entries for All American Rejects, The Young Knives, Placebo and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Liberty X are outside the top 40.
Keane for a second week in the albums of course, ahead of The Automatic and Fatboy Slim's greatest hits.

Not always and forever

It's with no great surprise that I see that JJ72 have announced their split.

The near comical tale of the third album, On, that they completely finished around a year ago, but have been unable to release following a couple of flop singles, has dragged on and on. They changed line-up, threatened legal action against their label last year and have been updating less and less regularly; eventually it has to come to this:
'JJ72 decided it was the end as it did not want to undermine its achievements by continuing a ridiculous argument with a label that would not be able to support the release and touring of the third JJ opus - a label who lost funding from Sony/BMG some time ago.'

It's a bit of a shame really: their singer had a voice which was certainly a stumbling block to many, and their was something decidedly teenage about a lot of their songs but I loved (and still do) a lot of them regardless. Underrated second album I To Sky even added a lot of craft and depth to the forceful angst and had some really great moments like "Sinking". The fact that they started in much the same time and (musically) place as Muse may have hindered them somewhat as they were clearlynot going to reach such heights, perhaps?

Hopefully "Radio", admittedly the only new song to sound especially great when they played new songs live, will see release at some point.

Inevitable, really.

Yes, I'm still here. Chartsengrafs should be with you within a couple of days at the longest, in short Nelly Furtado was number one last week and will be again, same for Keane.

Anyway... the BBC are finally giving up on Top Of The Pops. Tony Blackburn's verdict: It went wrong because of their choice of presenters: "for some reason, they started introducing small little blondes from children's programmes. And you thought 'they're not really music people". Er, I see.

Personally I lost track of it somewhat once it got moved to Sunday and switched around every other week. Before then, though, the point where it really stopped being essential viewing was when they stopped booking acts on the basis of chart positions and started having the same old predictable faces nearly every week. That's even before we get onto the ridiculously pointless time consuming interviews - yes, cd:uk had them but it had nearly twice the time and didn't attract as many viewers.
Anyway, with choices just based on who was expected to do well and with risk thoroughly avoided, no longer could an appearance feel like some kind of triumph to cap a chart success - the same thing happened to Radio 1's chart show at much the same time.

Of course, a lot of people will say that this is because the charts don't matter any more and no one's buying singles. They may well have a point, and we might be seeing the end of TOTP now regardless. But it would have been nice to have seen them give it a go.

More World Cup thoughts

Kasabian's version of ""Heroes"" (ah, that's where that formatting isn't a good idea) is, I think, the single worst thing of all about ITV's coverage.
Quite an achievement when it has to beat Comic Sans captions and an insistence on not actually talking about whichever game they're showing, really.

Chartsengrafs (14/06/06)

Sunday just gone: She did it! With an impressively tiny difference in sales (48724 v 48538), Nelly Furtado took the top spot from Sandi Thom. She did to number one at the head of an all-new top 5 in the albums though, ahead of The Feeling, Ronan Keating, Paul Simon and Primal Scream. The last two were seperated by an even smaller margin of 32 copies.
Embrace went up to 3, with such a shedload of football songs ranging from bad to worse following that I can't even be bothered to list them. Although at 30, "Scotland Scotland Jason Scotland" by The Trinidad And Tobago Tartan Army possibly deserves a special mention of some kind though I have (sadly?) not heard it yet. What chance a top 20 place in the rather unlikely event (ie he isn't playing) of him scoring against England?
In what passes for chart normalcy, The Automatic somehow took their massive shouty chorus and not much else all the way to the 4, Morrissey (14) and Depeche Mode's (18) fanbases couldn't stop them getting crowded out of the top 10, Lordi (25) have missed their chance and Sugababes (32) and Duncan James (35) suffered shockingly bad results probably even worse than Ukraine's today. Hope Of The States fell down from a surprisingly promising midweek to bring up the rear at 39. Oh and The Kooks' increasingly annoying "Naive" (38) may at long last be on its way out!





Sunday just coming: Nelly Furtado looks pretty comfortable for a second week, with a bizarre number two for Bon Jovi making them the current nearest contenders. Extremely unlikely to last the week, though. Shakira for highest new-ish entry at 5, with Sham 69 (bleh), The Fratellis (double bleh), Dannii Minogue and Armand van Helden also going top 20.
Lower down in the top 40, we have Solu Music, Sergio Mendes and his Black Eyed Peas, T.I, and The Divine Comedy, still just about clinging on despite choosing a first single which is just about everything bad he's always accused of being.
Battle are just outside, next to download only entries for The Zutons and Muse, who maybe won't get quite such a Britney-sized hit next week then.
In the albums, Keane will take number one. But you didn't need midweeks to tell you that, right?

Vashti Bunyan / Emma Pollock / Adem / Final Fantasy / Chris Stills at Homefires (04/06/06)

Homefires has probably the most good-natured and welcoming atmosphere of any music event I've been to - taking place in a hall in central London which, complete with hanging paper banners and more paper circle stuck all over the wall, has somewhat of the feel of a school assembly about it, especially when everyone sits down cross-legged, apart from those who have come prepared with cushions and really relax. Being allowed to bring in food and water is as great as it is sadly novel, with just alcohol having to be purchased on site (from a wider variety than the Carling or else of most venues...) and some tasty looking food on offer too.

Chris Stills is first on and shows off an amazing voice which comes a lot closer to Jeff Buckley than any of his appointed successors that I can think of. Unfortunately he still lacks the songs to get much beyond mediocre folksy singer-songwriter stuff, except on a cover of "Rock The Casbah" so ridiculous it works.

Later on, Final Fantasy eventually turns up over half an hour late for his slot and seems audibly and visibly out of sorts for a while, not helped by having misplaced his belt, leaving him alternately pulling up his jeans and showing off his arse troughout. Choosing to start with "This Lamb Sells Condos" probably doesn't help either as even by He Poos Clouds' general standards it's absurdly ambitious and impossible to play solo with a violin, no matter how many clever effects pedals and playback devices he has within reach of his feet. His vocals are worryingly muted too, and the second song, "Hey Dad", which seems to be an extended version of "->", fares no better.
"The reason that I'm not saying much is that I'm filled with rage" says Owen Pallett, worringly calmly as anything, but things do pick up and watching him assemble (the word is really fitting in this case as he patiently records and plays back layer after layer) a perfect version of "This Is The Dream Of Win And Regine" is captivating. The rest of the set seems to further prove that Has A Good Home, while the weaker album of his two, is much better suited to a solo live show, although recording the backing shouts of "Many Lives -> 49 MP" through his violin and playing back the distorted results is winningly creepy.

While waiting for him to turn up, organiser and host Adem did an excellent and charming job of keeping the audience occupied, playing several warmly enveloping versions of his songs. In possibly the highlight of the whole day, he received a phone call from his mum during one of them, holding the phone up to the microphone for everyone to hear her responses to his perfectly dry mentions that he was going to be on at seven but was actually also on stage now. He returns later for his assigned slot with the Ellysian Quartet in tow, who add some nice arrangements to his songs, but without knowing any of them in advance, the same songs played on his own when he was put on the spot earlier seemed that much more magical.

The downside of the homely atmosphere seems to be various organisational and equipment problems, with ex-Delgado Emma Pollock's set having a complete false-start when none of the effects pedals on her sole present band member's piano work and they have to spend a good 20 minutes fixing matters. Her set is rather underwhelming, with even her vocals seeming a bit thin and not as gorgeous as expected, although things pick up towards the end and a couple of songs, including one called "The Optimist", suggest that hope shouldn't be abandoned yet. She promises that they'll all be "much louder" on record as well which is a good sign - more massive orchestration like Hate please! She also comments on being unable to play the guitar while standing up because she's "too wee" which is rather adorable.

Vashti Bunyan is too twee for words, whispering throughout her set and seeming a little embarassed to be back in front of a crowd and receiving so much love. While a little samey her gentle folk songs bring a smile are all short enough to not drag and her band is really excellent. "Diamond Day" is the inevitable highlight, questions about whether the hippy image can take being used by T-Mobile notwithstanding, and it's a fine end to a very enjoyable day.

Guillemots at Scala (30/05/06)

[my even more condensed review of this appeared on Planet Sound this week]!

I fall even more in love with Guillemots practically by the week at the moment. This show was presumably meant to be in promotion for their long-delayed album Through The Windowpane before it got moved back another month (Fyfe Dangerfield announces that they've just finally finished it before wryly suggesting that perhaps he'll destroy it all and start again) but instead they're still in the position of only having released a few singles.
It doesn't matter though because they have so many great songs and never, ever alienate or seem uninvolving or dull, even when showcasing two completely new songs as an encore. "Go Away" and "Sea Out", longstanding highlights of the live set, are as great as ever but aren't even on the album.
Even better, they have the ability to play everything differently each time so at the fifth viewing their older songs still seem fresh. Fyfe gets around problems with reproducing the recorded scale of "We're Here" by playing a solo acoustic version, "Trains To Brazil" gets a freaky white noise intro and "Made Up Love Song #43" is lovlier than ever in a wobbly music box form.
With four equally incredibly talented and enthusiastic band members, plus regular contributions from sax and one from (earlier pretty impressive in her own right) support act Joan As Policewoman there is always something to watch too, MC Lord Magrão's various typewriter/drill trickery and insistense on never playing his guitar in such a way that it sounds like a guitar particularly standing out.
They can already confidently play for over an hour and a half before concluding, in the second encore, with the hilariously enjoyable glam racket of "She's Evil" and never have a single moment that isn't fantastic - imagine what they'll be like a few years on!

Free Music notFriday

Things might get a bit off schedule here with Blogger being annoying recently and the World Cup on - yesterday evening was spent watching Poland v Ecuador and saying "No, really, almost all the games will be better than this" a lot. I'll try to stick to music around though so if you want to read more about that you should go here.

Sound Team have a touch of the shoegazers about them, creating dense, echoey washes of noise with songs ranging from tantalising glimpses beneath to more strident and dancey numbers - pretty impressive stuff which you can listen to a few examples of on Red Blondehead.

Next Monday sees the release of The Delgados' Complete Peel Sessions, which should not only offer some great different versions of their songs and provide an overview of their career and show just why they were one of the very best bands of recent years, but also showcases quite a few excellent covers - OneLouder have one of The Dead Kennedys' "California Über Alles" which sees them in excellent noisy form akin to their own debut Domestiques.
Emma Pollock's official site is still offering "Fortune", for those after a taste of where she'll go next. No word yet on other singer Alun Woodward.

And on the new covers front, two things for you. First and inevitably from live lounge, My Old Kentucky Blog have Nelly Furtado's version of the omnipresent "Crazy", which is really rather likable and not just because she needs to be supported against Sandi Thom this week.

Secondly, from GoodBooks who impressed so much at the Camden Crawl and have just signed to Columbia, an interesting version of Mystery Jets' You Can't Fool Me Dennis from the recent rerelease of said single. (click)

Chartsengrafs (07/06/06)

Sorry for the lateness, further caused by Blogger being down last night.

Sunday just gone: Sandi Thom climbed to number one. There isn’t really anything to say against her which hasn’t been said many many other places, really, not least in Popjustice's fabulously nasty piece. And since she actually sold more than the previous week it wasn’t even really by default thanks to the Gnarls Barkley deletion! Speaking of which there seem to still be plenty of copies left, and certainly enough last week to have kept them at two ahead of Keane who had to settle for equalling their best ever position. Infernal fell down a place before resorting to World Cup versions, Pink somehow made five, Ronan Keating and Kate Rusby 6 (yawn), Oakenfold and Brittany Murphy 7, and Nelly Furtado 8 on downloads alone. Woah! (sorry). Also surprising, Primal Scream’s second week in the top ten.
Just outside, Tony Christie’s laughable “(Is This The Way To) The World Cup” got to eleven with the worrying possibility that it will rise once the tournament's actually started. Full onslaught of World Cup songs coming up, but also making the top 40 last week were Stan Boardman (19… yikes) and Embrace (38 on downloads alone), alongside even more non-football related songs than Embrace’s by LeAnn Rimes (22), The Automatic (23; downloads), Michael Jackson (30), Loleatta Holloway (37) and Corinne Bailey Rae scraping in at 40. We seem to have had an awful lot of those recently, huh?

Sunday coming: Time for an unlikely saviour of pop, as Nelly Furtado is currently leading the way ahead of Sandi Thom - though by a painfully narrow margin. Embrace may also have a slight outside chance at climbing from 3 over the weekend like Tony Christie is doing already - now heading top 10! The Automatic will surprise everyone if they can hang on to a top 5 place, as will Hope Of The States if their return goes top 20 and doesn't fail completely. Morrissey's inevitable top 10 place will surprise no one, however.
Elsewhere in the top 20, Depeche Mode, Crazy Frog, Stan Boardman and Mariah Carey (what song is that?).
20-30: Duncan James, Baddiel & Skinner & Lightning Seeds (someone should probably put that one to rest soon), Sugababes underperforming badly and The Streets even more so. His single also raises something I've wondered for a while about downloads counting for the chart - I bought Guillemots' lovely version of "Never Went To Church" which is technically a B-side to his, does it count as a sale for The Streets or for no one?
30-40: Tonedef Allstars, Fightstar, Lordi (who can't really use late 6/6/6 release date as an excuse because I saw copies of it on sale on Monday!) and Talksport Allstars.

Guillemots - Through The Windowpane

Just a quick note to say that while I’m planning to wait til its release to listen myself (unless they put it off forever like Final Fantasy – current release date for his album next week but don’t hold out not much hope on that), Through The Windowpane has leaked. I’m sure some of you know how to find it much better than me anyway.

And since nowhere else seems to have it yet, here’s the tracklisting:

• “Little Bear”
• “Made Up Love Song #43”
• “Trains To Brazil”
• “Redwings”
• “A Samba In The Snowy Rain” (which was previously the first half of…)
• “Through The Windowpane”
• “If The World Ends”
• “We’re Here”
• “Blue Would Still Be Blue”
• “Annie, Why Wait?”
• “And If All…”
• “Sao Paolo” (all near twelve minutes of it, oh yes!)

On a totally unrelated note I’m just hearing Jim Noir’s “Eanie Meanie” on the radio and it’s very nice, but it’s practically “Ask Me How I Am” by Snow Patrol, isn’t it? Or is it just me?

Infernal

I've been pondering doing a post on all the appalling football songs around (and there are more than ever) but can't bring myself to listen to more than a little of any of them even for the purpose. Today my digital TV videos thing has added one which I hadn't heard of elsewhere and which almost defies belief to a degree that makes it worth mentioning though - "Paris To Berlin (World Cup Mix)"
In which Infernal's (Danish) singer, who appears to have only a passing acquaintance with the English language, never mind the football team, sings "From London to Berlin, with every game that we win, England will win the world cup" and a load of stuff about "Roo". Is someone really buying this stuff??

Hot Fuss

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, I've been kind of busy but should be back in force next week.
But there's a couple of things I can direct you towards quickly. Number one, this guy, whose taste in music bar James Blunt, The Kooks, Orson etc. is actually weirdly close to mine as well as his name.
And number two, if you haven't gawped at it yet, the results of the recent poll for greatest album ever by NME.com and the Guiness Book Of British Hit Singles (hope I got that name right). Really, I don't know where to start.

Chartsengrafs (31/05/06)

Sunday just gone: Gnarls Barkley did indeed hold on at number one for a ninth week. Sandi Thom's rise to two was at least expected enough to not be shocking as well as depressing. Infernal STILL remained in the top 3, Primal Scream surprisingly failed to plummet during the week and ended up with their biggest hit ever (!) at 5 (I still haven't heard it though actually), The Ordinary Boys with Lady Sovereign hit 6 but may have both pissed off their fanbases in the process ("she's a chav!" "they're indie!"). Daz Sampson went up to 8 and The Feeling just about stuck around in the top 40.
Keane made number 15 on downloads alone, followed similarly and surprisingly by Pink at 19. Robbie Williams did indeed do pretty poorly but did manage to climb above The Futureheads (22 v 24). Taking Back Sunday got 36, just ahead of Oakenfold ft Brittany Murphy on downloads (is she someone famous? I think I missed something there...) The Darkness at 39 and again one entry each side of the 40/41 divide: this time it's on the rise Little Man Tate and less so Mystery Jets. The Spinto Band's 55 is actually quite the success, really. Meanwhile, what is that still at number 70? "Gold Digger"? Wow.

Sunday coming: Oh dear. After reading about the deletion of "Crazy" (although it's still within 37 copies of number one, their chances of catching up are now just about zero) I should have realised what was going to happen. Yes, Keane aren't quite the force that could be hoped when it comes to actual sales of CDs (one format at 3 quid only can't help) and so Sandi Thom is set to climb to the top. Pink is heading for the top 5 again, definitely beating her progress last album, and Ronan Keating is dragging Kate Rusby down with him within the top ten, alongside Oakenfold/Murphy. And, I hate to even mention it, but Tony Christie's unbelievably rubbish "(Is This The Way To) The World Cup?" (see what they did there?) is also heading for the top 40.
And for some less depressing news in the album chart... ah, Orson are going to be number one.

Eurovision!

As promised, some of my thoughts on it here, with more to come throughout the week.

News (29/05/06)

• Gnarls Barkley's 'chat-topper' "Crazy" deleted - there's a suggestion here and elsewhere that it will end its run at number one, or even ensure that it has never charted anywhere else, but aside from being readily available online, there are also still a lot of copies left out there in shops. (incedentally, today's bank holiday probably means a wait til Wednesday for midweeks, and I'm off seeing Guillemots for the fifth time in as many months tomorrow anyway)
• Gorky's Zygotic Mynci split.
• Sandi Thom's publicists deny PR tricks being responsible for her rise to success... well, that's the headline, but they don't appear to have actually really done anything of the sort but instead just gone "Ah, well, she's a home-grown talent and she's worked really hard you know. Let's not talk about details!"
• Essex FM bans James Blunt songs, manages to get itself loads of attention - presumably they've started playing one of the other five artists on their playlist twice as often now.

They've made it now!

Heard in Topshop today: Snowfight In The City Centre's "No Light Left". Slightly bewildering but a good sign for them, which is nice.

Heh (again)

PopMatters have a feature on less famous siblings of pop stars tagging along in their wake. Among their list of wannabes is... 'Daniel Bedingfield (brother of Natasha)'!

Free music Friday (26/05/06)

• Fans of Stars will already be aware of Amy Millan's fine voice: she's now taken up the popular pursuit of a country-based solo album to show it off on. "Honey From The Tombs" is out next week in Canada but will take til July to reach UK shores; you can get first single "Skinny Boy" for free on label Arts&Crafts' site now though.
  
  
• Boston's The Cinematic Underground have been around a while, it seems, but I've only just heard them and they do a rather good line in dramatic, melancholy indie with a sprinkling of experimentation (which owes a debt to Radiohead circa Talk Show Host). Listen to possibly their best moment:
  The Cinematic Underground - Carparks & Cubicles
  
  

In this week's covers section:

• Skatterbrain have The Pipettes taking on "I Think We're Alone Now", much to the dislike of some of their comments section.
• And regular readers will already be well aware of my total Guillemots worship, but please believe me when I say that their version of The Streets' new single "Never Went To Church" (as streamed by NME.com) is exceptionally beautiful, almost-as-wobbly-as-the-original singing notwithstanding.

Crap

I typed out a whole news post with comments and it somehow got deleted. So, er, just imagine me making fun of Red Hot Chili Peppers' plagiarism and the Evening Standard's coverage of James Blunt winning awards for selling lots or records here.

The internets win music

Just when you thought you'd never have to see another article about the internet-related rise of Arctic Monkeys again, various other stories have conspired to bring them back, at least in the Guardian today.
I admittedly didn't see the programme that sparked them off, largely because it indeed looked like it would be rubbish, but they seem to be making reasonable replies in general - MySpace being responsible for anyone's rise to fame is surely a complete red herring fallen for by sections of the media who don't really know what they are talking about and are trying to bluff their way through. It might be a useful tool for keeping people in touch with what you're doing (although it certainly wasn't the case for Arctic Monkeys) and offers a place to listen to music easily, but the bulk of people still have to be directed there from somewhere, be it elsewhere online or from Radio1, and most of what it does could equally be done on a well-maintained official site with forum.
Sandi Thom's story is obviously not to be taken at face value as well - even if you believe her manager Ian Brown (ha!) that she performed webcasts to large audiences created by word of mouth, had a friend of a friend set up the streaming and pay for bandwidth and was signed afterwards as a result of their success, one glance at the billboard posters for her single (''I wish I was a punk rocker broadcasting from a Tooting basement!") still suggests that she was signed more for having a highly marketable story than any great musical merit.
Lily Allen also makes an appearance - and it is pretty amazing that from never having heard of her all of, ooh, three weeks ago, it's now impossible to go anywhere online without seeing a mention. That's largely within music blogs which are 'read exclusively by other music bloggers' though, of course... it is still a bit disconcerting to not see mention of anywhere online promoting her other than MySpace, but it only takes a look at MIA to see how far internet hype can actually get you, I suppose.


On the other hand, easy as it is to agree with most of it, the whole article is about incorrect media reporting of acts' progress and features this:

'At the heart of this music revolution, declared The Money Programme, was a social networking website called MySpace. "With the boost from MySpace, the Arctic Monkeys proved yet again that successful bands can do without big record companies. They released their debut single and album on small independent label Domino. Both went straight to No 1."
Limited release
In fact the Monkeys' first release was a limited seven-inch vinyl single on Bang Bang Records. Domino, far from being the fledgling start-up operation, had already brought Franz Ferdinand to international prominence.'

Let's leave aside issues with the Domino part (fledgling start-up and small independent are in no way the same thing, and the latter isn't necessarily impossible while having successful bands). Yes, it's really awful when facts are bent and exaggerated to fit a story better than they should do. Like, uh, claiming something was a seven-inch vinyl single when just as many copies were released on CD, perhaps?

News (24/05/06)

• Madonna's crucifixion is, uh, 'part of an appeal to the audience to donate to Aids charities'.
• Elton John wins damages from Daily Mail but sees musical close after all of 39 shows.
• Prince, Kristen Bell are world's sexiest vegetarians.
• Pitchfork report on first listen to Thom Yorke solo album.
  

Chartsengrafs (24/05/06)

Sunday just gone: Gnarls' score reached 8. Infernal continued to rise to highest place yet at two, more through lack of competition than anything else, Christina Milian got to 4 with full release, which is lower than "Dip It Low", "AM To PM" and "When You Look At Me" managed. Can anyone else actually remember that last one? Busta Rhymes climbed to 6 with his first charting since ruining "Don't Cha", Sandi Thom was a disturbing 15 on downloads only, Angels And Airwaves 20 on full release. Elsewhere in the top 40: Primal Scream (23 on downloads, and it weirdly turns out, 'the most exciting single of the year', not Thom), The Feeling (28; downloads), Towers Of London (32), Nerina Pallot (37; downloads), The Ordinary Boys vs Lady Sovereign (38; downloads) and Eddie Thoenick and Kurd Maverick (39; who?).
In the albums RHCP became the first since Arctic Monkeys to do two successive weeks.

Sunday coming: RHCP to now make it three weeks, indeed. And - hooray! - Gnarls Barkley to make it nine and hold off Sandi Thom. Primal Scream heading top 5, which assures them of their biggest hit since 1997 and maybe ever, with Daz Sampson also heading into the top 5 despite the usual UK Eurovision failure. Top 10 places due for Matt Willis and The Feeling, which ought to be good news as I have one of these but annoyingly it still doesn't seem to be increasing in value at all (note also the usual 'guilty pleasure' crap).
Nerina Pallot's now going to climb to the top 15, with Pink somehow heading top 20 on downloads alone and The Futureheads looking a little folorn outside the top 20, though ahead of Robbie Williams (fully released and all! And indeed the only single being stocked in my local HMV this week).
Rounding off the top 40 are Jack Johnson, who must be selling almost no CD copies at all as he was just outside on downloads last week, and Keane who seem to be a popular bet to finally dethrone Gnarls Barkley next week when released fully. I would reckon against it and go for Embrace the week after. There will also be competition from Lordi (released on the Tuesday for 06/06/06, of course), though I would be surprised if that does anything more than make the lower reaches of the top 20.

Heh

Something Awful's David Thorpe takes on the music blogosphere - or at least a certain recently prominent section of it - with pretty amusing results.

News (23/05/06)

• Rap 'motivates a small number of children in a violent sub-culture.', apparently.
• Ricky Wilson run over.
• Jamie Hewlett 'designer of the year' for Gorillaz.
• Belle & Sebastian get together with others to record compilation for children.
• "Lordi's victory shows us that with hard work and belief in your own abilities even the greatest dreams come true," said Father Christmas."
• Babyshambles dropped.
• The Dears announce more details of new album Gang Of Losers.

Liam Frost & The Slowdown Family at Scala (22/05/06)

There's a pretty poor turnout at the Scala tonight - it never gets more than half full and despite the doors opening half an hour after the tickets claim there are still fewer than 10 people there. Even fewer manage our feat of somehow wandering past security and into Jeremy Warmsley's soundcheck (ps how hard is Jeremy to type correctly? Eep!) - fascinating.
Anyways, he plays mostly on his own with a bit of support from Tom Rogerson on keyboards tonight although full band sets are promised elsewhere soon, and it would be interesting to see the difference - his twisty constructions are full of interesting ideas and even a couple of great tunes but only rarely seem to fully take off for now.

We're here to see Bat For Lashes, and are slightly lucky it turns out, as they have cancelled shows in the last few days thanks to singer Natasha Khan's throat illness. Aside from a couple of coughs in between songs it doesn't show at all though - her voice sounds as rich and extraordinary as ever (somewhere between Cat Power and Bjork... ish) and she's visibly more confident than supporting My Latest Novel in March too, still speaking timidly but a little less terrified looking.
There is a certain potential for tweeness in their setup, not helped by the gold headbands and glittery facepaint sported by Khan and her two bandmates on violin, backing vocals, handclaps, bells and various unidentifiable weird things, but it evaporates with the yearning power of her voice and the way that they use silence so chillingly well, not so much leaving gaps in their songs as creating an inky blackness against which to set them. And in "What's A Girl?" they've now even written a twisted but definitely pop song to go alongside the mystery and magic elsewhere.
[listen to Bat For Lashes for yourself]

With Liam Frost & The Slowdown Family, the story is largely the same as in January - great choice of support, charming guy, technically excellent band, but all rather hamstrung by the fact that almost every single song sounds just like someone else. There's a couple of I Am Kloot numbers (not helped by his voice being a dead ringer for Johnny Bramwell's), the one which is practically Bright Eyes' "At The Bottom Of Everything", followed by the one which is practically Bright Eyes' "Lua", and an unamplified encore which sounds just like David Ford, all of them never exactly living up to the standard of those they resemble. Fortunately they do at least have one really great song in "The Mourners Of St. Pauls" which doesn't sound like anyone else... although it does crib a couple of lines from "(What A) Wonderful World", but we'll forgive that and mention that it comes out as a single next month and is actually worth checking out.

The Decemberists at Koko (19/05/06)

Radar Bros. look a little awkward in front of a clearly fairly disinterested crowd, and that's even before a glaring spotlight is suddenly turned on them mid-song, leading to a cry of "Oh no! The police have caught up with us!". A shame because while admittedly their sound (think Grandaddy with a lot of extra layers of noise) doesn't particularly lend itself to converting newcomers, at least a couple of the songs ("Shovelling Sons", the closer "Papillion") are really very good indeed.

They can't compare to The Decemberists though, who prove themselves once again one of the best lives band I've ever seen. Tonight doesn't quite match up to their astonishing show at ULU last Novemeber - it's at a bigger venue, violinist Petra Hayden isn't there, there's no "Mr. Blue Sky" and thanks to Club NME afterwards meaning a 10pm curfew there's no time for "The Mariner's Revenge Song" either, much to the distress of one guy who shouts out that he's travelled two hours just to see them play it.
Despite all of that though, they put most other bands to shame, playing everything with a stunning confidence and skill that allows them to play with changes and pauses everywhere without breaking the flow and ensures that just about every single song is a highlight. They make everything seem so easy you begin to wonder why not all bands sound this crisp, clear and perfect live (even "For My Own True Love (Lost At Sea)" sounds great!!) without losing any of the emotion in the songs at all. Of course it helps that there's a lot of inherant showmanship there to begin with, but it's still quite the feat and it's no wonder that Colin Meloy has the crowd in the palm of his hand throughout - he even gets us to excercise at one point, although not before a very funny shout of "speak for yourself!" when he suggests that we need to.
The ultimate trick comes during an encore of "The Chimbley Sweep", which mutates from the kind of bustling sea-shanty rock that The Coral would kill for into the the kind of dreamy psychedelia that, well, The Coral would also kill for, before Meloy points at each band member in turn and they exaggeratedly collapse to the floor. He then turns and with a simple gesture gets everyone on the entire floor and first balcony of Koko to sit down at once. It was awe-inspiring when they did the same at ULU but it's even more so tonight and the glee with which everyone jumps up as one once the song resumes pace is if anything even more exciting. Next stop, getting Brixton Academy to sit down?

The Shins at Koko (17/05/06)

Dungen's sheer dedication to recreating the excesses of seventies prog-rock is kind of inspiring - their hair is simply magnificent and they even bring out a flute numerous times - but while their ten minute epics are never boring (more than can be said for, ooh, Dead Meadow) but while technically great they lack immediacy and passion and so still don't make for an especially great live show. And there's a suspicion that if it wasn't for a longstanding love of Camel and similar I might find them just as irritating as Wolfmother.

The Shins also start rather umpromisingly - James Mercer stands to the side of the stage and is thoroughly undemonstrative, his shyness seeming to weigh down a lot of the early songs. They are helped by enthusiasic keyboardist Marty Crandall, who in contrast takes centre stage and clearly loves it. He begins by thanking us for coming despite the game (Champions League final) being on, a theme he returns to throughout with cries of "The Shins 1 - Evil 0!" and frequent enquiries about the score as well as a final dismissal of the entire Spanish nation on finding that Arsenal have lost, and goes on to ask about Madonna's gig at Koko before singing an amusingly ramshackle cover of "Justify My Love" "Borderline".
Either his confidence rubs off on Mercer or they just hit their stride, but by the end of the set they seem almost a different band, with "New Slang" and "Saint Simon" reliably brilliant and a couple of new songs almost their match. The third album is due in Autumn, they claim, and should be good on tonight's showing - new songs generally seem harder than those of Chutes Too Narrow but without the dusty coating of noise of most of the Oh, Inverted World material.
They return for an encore after the longest gap I've ever seen - the lights even come on a few times and just as it seems certain that they can't be coming back they do, finishing with a vital and triumphant "So Says I", for a clear second half victory.

Eurovision

As Finland's Lordi (imagine the above but with comedy white and blue Finland hat!) race away to win, time for a quick word on this year's (I've written a lot more for elsewhere which I will direct you towards when it's online) contest. The win actually seemed kind of inevitable from even before the contest, given the amount of coverage they got, but it was still great fun. There was a much wider variety of songs than last year's wall to wall Turkey/"Kiss Kiss" influences which led to better and, well, worse songs than ever, and the votes did go by a bit quicker thanks to not reading out every one although it did miss something, not least working out who actually gave France some points.

I should Koko

Apologies for the lack of updates this week, coursework mainly to blame, but I do have a couple of reviews of Koko ATP related gigs from this week coming soon - The Shins from Wednesday (good, not great, but worth missing Arsenal v Barcelona for especially as they lost anyway) and The Decemberists tonight which should hopefully be amazing again.

In the meantime, I appreciate that I am years behind here but I just recently got The Fiery Furnaces' Blueberry Boat (which certainly seemed to polarise opinions at the time...) and really really love it, although I actually didn't think nearly as much of EP (the only other one I've heard) apart from the one celebrating Spitalfields Market.

News (16/05/06)

• Creative to sue Apple over iPod menu system ripping off their Zen one - blimey, I own one and presumed that it was the other way round, or that it was just the only logical way to arrange mp3 player menus.
• Pete Doherty bored of getting into trouble in the UK, decides to try Germany instead.
• Hard-Fi joined onstage by Paul Weller on second day of Brixton 5 - don't think that I missed out much by going the previous day there.
• The Coral gain extra member on keyboards, currently recording fifth album [Planet Sound]
  

Chartsengrafs (16/05/06)

Sunday just gone: Gnarls Barkley inevitably made it 7 weeks, with a sales figure of almost 43,000 - still far from low by current standards. LL Cool J/JLo jumped up to 2, Infernal and Beatfreakz swapped places at 3 and 4, Rihanna is still selling well at 5, Pet Shop Boys made 8 which is the best for a while but not by enough for it to mean much in terms of getting beyond an established fanbase, and complaining about The Kooks last week must have jinxed the chart because they climbed into the bloody top 10 again.
From 10-39, entries came from Daz Sampson, Boy Kill Boy, Christina Milian's downloads, The Upper Room, Busta Rhymes and Orson (both downloads again), Delays and Graham Coxon. And finally, Hot Chip and The Beautiful South, separated by the length of last week's Stylus Singles Jukebox, were only one place apart, but it couldn't be a more crucial one as they ended up at 40 and 41 respectively.

Sunday just coming: Gnarls Barkley look likely to get an eighth week at number one - first time since "Love Is All Around"! Christina Milian is climbing to be the closest challenger, followed by Busta Rhymes and Orson also in the top 20. Lower down there's the oh-so-eagerly awaited return of Sunblock, as well as Angels And Airwaves, Towers Of London who sadly haven't fucked off after all, The Sunshine Underground and rather surprising download-only entries for Primal Scream and Nerina Pallot (downloads really must be taking over). Plus a worrying downloads only entry for Sandi Thom, who somehow manages the feat of making Towers Of London not the worst act on this list.

Hard-Fi at Brixton Academy (14/05/06)

Professor Green (here acompanied by a DJ and a couple of other guys, one seemingly just for high notes, is signed to Mike Skinner's label, and includes a cover of When You Wasn't Famous (as well as one of So Sick) in his set. All the signs are that he is really, really bad, but the appalling sound that a first support act at Brixton's cavern gets makes it impossible to even be certain of that - his set is a near-constant bassy boom with absolutely unintelligable rapping bearly even audible over it and not much else going on.




Billy Bragg gets round this by playing with only an electric guitar, of course, and plays a set which is hugely impressive, constantly passionate and amusing throughout. Non-musical highlights inluding a distraught recounting of West Ham's FA Cup final woes and an apoplectic denouncing of the BNP's success in his home town. I have to admit to not being familiar enough with his stuff to name musical highlights, besides a surprsingly near full crowd singalong to A New England to finish, but there are plenty and a (rather clever) special discounted version of his greatest hits being leafleted certainly looks tempting.
The only downside is someone repeatedly shouting "Fuck off!" between songs, at one point even following this with a superhumanly moronic "We haven't come here to see you!". It would be easy to place them as a BNP supporter or similar but they don't even respond to the relevant parts of the set so maybe they just genuinely hate his music and are, erm, physically incapable of going out to the bar.

I rather expect to be underwhelmed by Hard-Fi - thanks to my girlfriend being a massive fan I have seen them a lot more times in the past 12 months than I would have chosen to myself and they have certainly not improved each time - but am actually very pleasantly surprised. Playing the first of an astonishing 5 nights here but after most of a UK tour, Richard Archer's voice is no stronger than ever but is carefully controlled, rather than stretched and made to fail completely by halfway through the set as previously seemed to be the norm, and only new songs suffer as a result, although "You And Me" is rather too close to "Gotta Reason" for comfort anyway.
Helped no end by a crowd who enthusiastically shout along to nearly everything (though are far from the drunken mob that might be expected, maybe it's just because it's a Sunday), the singles from Stars of CCTV and a few others that somehow actually haven't been released yet are blasted with energy and a new musical ability. They have even finally dropped their rambling, overfamiliar cover of "Seven Nation Army" in favour of a decent one of Big Audio Dynamite's "E=MC²", and never suffer more than a little from playing such a large venue with only one album's worth of material to call on. The fact that their popularity has grown so fast that they could easily be playing somewhere far bigger by now might have something to do with it, but so does the fact that there is not a single weak link bar the new songs, with even the awkward-on-record "Move On Now" shining in the encore, played solo by Archer with appropriately more than a hint of Billy Bragg about it.

The Avalanche

Just read a very interesting post on You Ain't No Picasso, expressing (shock) a lack of excitement for Sufjan Stevens' The Avalanche album and suggesting quite reasonably that this could be down to the sheer amount of stuff that he's put out recently.
The "but it's only outtakes!" view does seem sensible in some ways, but I would take further that the problem is the similarity of his music rather than the amount of it. I adored Illinois (it was second in my favourite albums of last year for a reason) but after getting into that quite late on and buying Michigan afterwards I found it very difficult to get that into an album which had quite so much in common. It's pretty much put me off being excited enough to expect anything more than occasional great songs, or even bothering to find enough else for overkill to be the problem for me.
I may be eating my words come the next album proper though, I guess.

News (12/05/06)

• Beach Boys counter-sued by collector accused of stealing their stuff. ''At their height, the Beach Boys' success rivalled that of the Beatles'' offer the BBC helpfully.
• Maybe it's part of getting their staff in the mode to go to watch Top Of The Pops.
• Björk releases another box-set - actually kind of tempting having only bought her Greatest Hits recently and not got round to buying the whole lot of albums.
• Elbow to release B-sides album - less tempting as I have them all but thoroughly recommended!
• The Cooper Temple Clause still going after all.

Free music Friday (12/05/06)

More free downloads available out there with varying degrees of legality.

I mentioned the forthcoming Pipettes album the other day, and a host of sites have tracks from it up now: Pardon My Freedom offer two, plus a review (in French!), and Skatterbrain have new single "Pull Shapes" plus pics of Rose, which is clearly what some people are after.

I also mentioned Anathallo last week, and Good Weather For Airstrikes offer a profile including some more songs to sample.

Stereogum offer Editors' cover of "Orange Crush", just to make sure that no-one at all need buy the Blood rerelease.

And finally, Some Velvet Blog has a couple of songs from the new album by the freakishly talented Smoosh.

Not so good stuff

Clor split :(

News (09/05/06)

• Chinese Democracy will be out this year, says Axl Rose. Sounds in no way familiar.
• Take That to release new album.
• The Pipettes' album details emerge (In brief: We Are The Pipettes, July 17th)
• TDK Cross Central has more names announced, all the good bands one one day (phew)
• Britney Spears gets to see that freakish sculpture thing of her.
• Alex Kapranos to release cookery book.

Chartsengrafs (09/05/06)

Sunday just gone: Gnarls Barkley made it 6 weeks at number one in singles (knocked off by Snow Patrol in albums), though selling a now merely quite high 50,000 copies. RHCP just about edged out Beatfreakz for 2, The Kooks were STILL at 11, Feeder were as midtable as ever at 12, and LL/JLo 15 on downloads. Outside the top 20, We Are Scientists, Michael Jackson, Panic! At The Disco, Goldfrapp, T-Pain, Captain and at 40, ¡Forward Russia! failed to even get the biggest hit of the week for a band with ! in their name. No sign of any ¡-weilding competitors though.

Sunday coming: 7 weeks and counting looks certain for Gnarls Barkley. LL Cool J will climb to 2, Pet Shop Boys will continue to make the top 10 on the basis of a huge fanbase a la Depeche Mode (although they're not yet quite as ignored generally). Daz Sampson will be just outside, ahead of a possible rise (or fall) when Eurovision is on TV next weekend, together with Boy Kill Boy. Outside the top 10 that is, not on Eurovision. The Upper Room's surprisingly not boring single, Delays, The Beautiful South and Graham Coxon round out the forthcoming top 40 entries. And Bat For Lashes' The Wizard is nowhere, being download-only, but is brilliant nonetheless.
In the albums Red Hot Chili Peppers are unsurprisingly heading for 1, Dirty Pretty Things for 3.

Meanwhile in other chart commentaries, James Masterton is excited about 'the fact that the release of the most exciting record of the year is just two weeks away.' It seems likely that he may mean Sandi Thom's. OH THE HORROR.

News (08/06/05)

• Grant McLennan of Go-Betweens dies.
• French fight for free copyrighted music downloads, or at least no hobbling DRM.
• In other music-related legal battle news, Apple beat Apple.
• The Sleepy Jackson to play UK tour, hopefully not be as godawful as when I saw them in 2004.
• Liverpool FC get Ian McCulloch to cover Ring Of Fire.
• People continuing to buy Dark Side Of The Moon.

Muse/Britney continued

Seems that I wasn't too uniquely perceptive in noticing the similarities between Muse's new single "Supermassive Black Hole" and Britney's "Do Something"... just about everyone on this fan forum noticed too, and one of them has even made a mix of the two songs together (bottom of the page) which is certainly briefly amusing.

Editors: Officially just taking the piss now

Just got an email including this:
"'Blood' will be the final single release from Editors' 'The Back Room' on June 19th. The single will be released on 2 new formats with brand new B-sides and artwork (both formats will be printed in a special metallic ink) from its original release in July 2005."

That makes 7 singles released from The Back Room: "Bullets", "Munich", "Blood", "Bullets", "Munich", "All Sparks", "Blood". Only the first of which was limited edition (presuming that "Blood" doesn't deservedly flop this time) didn't make the top 30.
I mean, no-one has to buy them, but has any other band even ever beaten this?

The Picture Show (07/05/06)

Yes, I haven't completely abandoned it. Click pics for videos as ever.


Another great video from an endearingly daft Japanese electro/pop/punk/indie/whatever group, who thanks to a support slot with Kaiser Chiefs might even get somewhere in the UK now.


This is the other, Irvine Welsh directed video, not the one which is getting all the music channel play that sounds like "Even Better Than The Real Thing". The video here is impressively creepy and that fits the song, Keane still hampered a little by dodgy lyrics but making a valiant attempt to take forward all the best bits of Hopes And Fears (the atmospheric electro ones) rather than just doing more identikit anthems.


A more straightforward song than most on their debut but pretty good nonetheless. The video sees them all very smartly dressed and getting married. To the same person.

Muse's new single

...sounds like Britney's Do Somethin'.

Popworld

I saw the new Popworld for the first time this morning (yeah, 10am is waay too early) and it was ok - liked Pet Shop Boys' performance with orange jumpsuit wearing and Bush/Blair-masked dancers, and it was even pretty funny in places but Alex Zane and Alexa Chung would surely be a much more comfortable fit if they weren't trying so hard to take the roles of the previous presenters - 'Alexa's big pink box' in particular fell totally flat and I'm sure that more of a change of style (while still not turning into cd:uk) would fit better than trying to replicate the past.

News (06/05/06)

• Fall Out Boy 'blasted' for 'liberal homosexual rally'.
• My Latest Novel tour in May.
• Bono gets to edit The Independent.
• Radiohead premiere more new material in Copenhagen. '4 Minute Warning was the most instantly memorable new song, a classic pop tune'... classic pop tune? 4 Minute Warning? Can it be?

Free music Friday

Highlighting some of the most interesting legal, or less so, music out there to be downloaded...

MyselfMyself offer downloads of all three new Radiohead songs played at Friends Of The Earth's recent Yorke and Greenwood-featuring event at Koko. A setlist including "How To Disappear Completely", "Pyramid Song" and "Gagging Order" doesn't quite sound worth the £55 asking price (what, no "True Love Waits"?) but mouthwatering nonetheless.

Anathallo don't quite have enough of a unique identity yet to be truly great but their album Floating World, positioned somewhere between the Arcade Fire and Sufjan Stevens in sound, is very enjoyable indeed. See for yourself as their myspace kindly has songs to download as well as listen to. "Hoodwink" is especially good. (thanks to Sweeping The Nation for the recommendation)

And, speaking of Sufjan, Pitchfork offer a new song from his forthcoming album of bits that didn't quite make it to Illinois (see Stereogum for another). It's not an idea which excites that much, to be honest, especially if it delays another proper album further, but this song does sound reliably grand.

Finally, on the ever enjoyable strange Live Lounge covers front, Van Tango has Goldfrapp's 'Oompa-Ska' version of The Ordinary Boys' "Boys Will Be Boys" (it's just above the Joss Stone pictures) and You Ain't No Picasso have We Are Scientists attempting to tackle Sigur Ros' "Hoppipolla". Words fail me.

Yahoo/Launch outdo themselves

A review of Captain's 'debut single' Broke? Easy enough mistake to make.
A review of Panic! At The Disco's 'debut single' But It's Better If You Do? Erm....

News (04/05/06)

• British albums accounted for almost half of UK album sales last year, most since 1998. This is apparently accounted for by the success of 'rock', which apparently doesn't include James Blunt, Robbie Williams or Scissor Sisters but does include Keane, Coldplay, KT Tunstall and Gorillaz. Weirdly and slightly worryingly this is just a KT Tunstall out from defining all the ones that I bought.
• New RHCP album leaks (2 hours? Like the last one wasn't way too long already); Flea gets very upset.
• Killers' next album 'one of the best albums of the past 20 years'. Right then.
  

Worth looking at

Goodhodgkins' analysis of Pitchfork's reviews, not least for the revelation that the band that they have reviewed the most times is KISS.

News (03/05/06)

• Warner and EMI merger off, for now at least.
• Muse now title album, it's out July 3rd and called Butterflies And Hurricanes 'Black Holes And Revelations'.
• David Bowie 'fed up with industry'.
• Britney pregnant again. (news from Drowned In Sound, no less)
• Liam Gallagher: Oasis 'not the biggest band in the world' shocker.
  

The Big Ask at Brixton Jamm (28/04/06)

Seeing Guillemots again and supporting a cause (Friends Of The Earth) without having to pay £55 for the honour like for their Yorke/Greenwood show was reason enough to head out to Brixton late at night (first band on at ten, though we didn't quite make it by then) and brave buses home at 2:30am, which turned out to be not as bad as expected anyway.

Walking in to Polar Bear's set midway through a very long droney experimental piece doesn't give a very good first impression but they turned out to have a very wide range of tricks up their sleeve, making their instrumental jazz (something I'm sure I'm not alone in knowing very little about) very approachable and enjoyable with complete with great playing and some cool electronic flourishes.

The Bellagios (featuring Guillemots' Aristazabal's boyfriend) slightly outstay their welcome in the end but their enthusiastic hip-hop, if somewhat indecipherable, is funky and dancable and great fun all round, especially with constant interaction between the four vocalists and between them and the audience



Somehwat surprisingly they seem to attract more of an audience than Guillemots - perhaps it's just coming on at gone 1am which is the problem. Whatever, they choose to play a slightly shortened (i.e. only 75 minutes!) set including large sections of potentially tiresome improvisation (it's that kind of night) and yet are almost as stunning as in their full glory at King's College a month ago.
Dropping most recent single We're Here to make room is actually a great move because they don't seem to have worked out how to play it yet, and they spread the improvised songs out, although Fyfe in particular has such an amazing gift for melody that there's almost no need. Only the squealing saxophone eventually becomes wearing, but they still have everyone on their side, playing more fantastic than ever versions of Trains To Brazil and Made Up Love Song #43, overdoing the usual pause in the middle of Who Left The Lights Off, Baby? to a ridiculous degree and once again showing why Sau Paolo needs to be released as soon as possible.





(usual thanks to Ada for photos)

Chartsengrafs (02/05/06)

Sunday just gone: Gnarls Barkley made it 5 weeks at number one and showed little sign of showing down, also indeed taking the album top spot. The Raconteurs were highest new or semi-new entry at 4 which is strangely better than The White Stripes have ever managed, also beating Dirty Pretty Things by one place and Snow Patrol by 3. Beatfreakz got beaten by the actual Michael Jackson (although on downloads, not for real), and Ultrabeat arrived at number 35, possibly through some kind of time-travelling wormhole. Sigur Rós crept to 44 ahead of a full Planet Earth-backed release this week. Arctic Monkeys non-eligible EP does seem to have avoided records to the extent that even the usual sources so far have no clue as to how many it actually sold.

Sunday coming: Gnarls Barkley still to be number one of course, at least in the singles (Snow Patrol to inevitably take his place in the albums) ahead of Red Hot Chili Peppers' latest attempt to make a video better than the associated single by the largest possible margin at 2. Beatfreakz and Feeder (what, still?) also heading for the top 10, Panic! At The Disco (not yet sounding as amazing as their last single), We Are Scientists and Goldfrapp (what, still?) for the top 40.

News (01/05/06)

• Glastonbury to attempt to expand even more.
• But Coachella might be ending, or at least moving.
• Will Young most popular UK artist of all time according to commercial radio listeners. Seriously, he's pretty good nowadays but is this a month late or what?
• Katie Melua gets a tulip named after her, as 'the people of The Netherlands love her'

The verdicts - Snow Patrol's 'Eyes Open'

A new regular feature looking at the range of opinions on a new album, starting with Snow Patrol's fourth. Because Metacritic doesn't read blogs. Or teletext, although I'm a bit too late to remember anything more than that they gave it 8/10, sadly.
It might be updated in a couple of weeks when there are more opinions out there too.




The Times goes for 4/5 but seems a little unsure - it says Eyes Open 'takes Final Straw and projects it on to a larger canvas' and as a result 'feels like a nerveless triumph.'
The NME give it a grudging 6/10, similarly bemoaning its '[tackling of] the familiar musical ground of 'Final Straw' with verve but little variety'.
And Observer Music Monthly (3/5) are even less generous: 'Big, bold, cleverly-executed, thoroughly hollow stuff'.

Meanwhile on the blogs, where generally speaking those bothering to comment on the full album are by definition those who enjoyed 'Final Straw,' the reaction is a little more positive but still not ecstatic.
Musicisnotdead reckon 'the more polished sound fits them well' and that they are now 'sounding like the soundtrack to a coming of age movie'.
The Razor Wire, meanwhile, suggests that while it 'surpasses Final Straw in terms of listenability [...] the band may have slightly dumbed down their sound in order to attract a legion of new listeners'.
And Good Weather For Airstrikes also cautiously celebrate its 'decidedly major-label feel, absolutely dripping in production flourishes', ending on the suggestion that 'Eyes Open sees Snow Patrol finally finding their niche as the UK's next great arena-rock band, somewhere in between Coldplay and Muse'.

Captain - Broke

I had no idea til I bought this (very good) single today that it was produced by Trevor Horn, surprised the fact hasn't got more attention.