Better Than Worse

The Mercury Prize must be doing something right with similar events springing up elsewhere - the latest is Canada's Polaris Music Prize, which has just been won by Final Fantasy's wonderful He Poos Clouds. I would like to say that it's the best on the list, but that would mean needing to know who Sarah Harmer and K'naan are. Either way, yay Canada.

edit: 'If "He Poos Clouds" wins, I'm founding a new award with the prize money. It's called the "Rogers Wireless Biggest Tits in Canada" award.'

Radio Free Europe #1

An idea mercilessly stolen from The Wonders I've Seen to fill in time waiting around when not doing research project work. I set my mp3 player to shuffle and talk about the songs that come up, providing occasional download links if you're in luck. It's named after the almost appropriate first song to come up.

R.E.M. - "Radio Free Europe" (link)
I love late period R.E.M. (well, ok, middle period R.E.M. up to and kind of including Reveal) but although I have every album a lot of the early, mumblier stuff has never really clicked for me. Even something as relatively accessible as this sounds good but nothing more. "Fall On Me" is the only huge exception, and that wasn't for a couple more albums.

New Rhodes - "You've Given Me Something That I Can't Get Back"
Incredibly frustrating song, not because of anything in itself - its chorus is catchy as anything and the sound midway between jangle and post-punk works well - but because they've not done anything else to live up to it.

Guillemots - "Redwings"
Some of the ballads on their album are the only slight weak points but this sure isn't one. The policy of throwing everything they can think of at a song works when it's all tied together as well as here, and on top of one of their most beautiful and crushingly sad songs. Excellent backing vocals from Joan As Police Woman, too.

Joan As Police Woman - "Flushed Chest"
Huh, that's weird. Anyway... only slightly more restrained than the previous song in arrangement, with lots of lovely brass and some more fine backing vocals. Somewhat less devastated in tone, though, and almost too gentle to work outside the album. Which is really good, in case you were wondering.

Feeder - "Godzilla"
So, yes, this feature will reveal what a load of rubbish I have on my mp3 player. I had forgotten that Feeder were still doing full on fuzzy rock at this stage of their career (Comfort In Sound) but would certainly take it over most of their recent blandness. At least it sounds like they're having fun making such a racket.

And that's your lot, for now at least.

'Really, really into creosote'

I'm back in the Stylus Singles Jukebox this week. And so, among others, are Doug Robertson and Jessica Popper, which is very welcome!

Bonus bits:

• Larrikin Love lack anything very positive or worthwhile; thanks to the likes of them and The Fratellis hyped British indie is finally starting to lose me [3]
• Flyleaf's angst-rock is if anything even less interesting but marginally less annoying [4]

The Picture Show - Bad Killer Bat Girls

The Killers' generally unlovable "When We Were Young" actually seems a lot better when taken with its fantastically overblown video. Does their album really have songs called "Enterlude" and "Exitlude"??


Badly Drawn Boy's new single "Nothing's Gonna Change Your Mind" unfortunately continues a slide to dull irrelevance, but the video is still awfully cute:


And because it's rather excellent and, while a little dark, still way above usual live video quality, Bat For Lashes covering Bruce Springsteen's "I'm On Fire" at the Spitz show on Tuesday:



Finally, it doesn't actually have a video, but YouTube also has a stream of the new Girls Aloud single here. Sounds good! Apparently from a greatest hits rather than a new album, of course.

Wot, no Brakes?

Way back in March I posted about an intriguing charity compilation in the offing, involving fifty bands recording a minute long song each, and then kind of forgot about it. But the great (and not totally unsurprising) news is that it is going ahead and will be released at the end of next month.

It now has a final tracklisting (available on official site, although it's flash so you'll need to navigate a bit), too. I won't list it all but it includes the fine likes of Dead! Dead! Dead!, The Hot Puppies, Youthmovie Soundtrack Strategies, Jeremy Warmsley and Emmy The Great. Will be interesting to see what they and others do within the limitations.

So...

If you're still wondering, it's Kasabian that Guillemots and the BBC Concert Orchestra will be playing with in October. Unfortunately has failed on both counts of the main act being something that I really want to see and being something that won't sell out before I get a chance to get tickets, thanks to them sticking them on sale immediately.

More bad (or badly reported) research

People with iPods don't have them full of music from iTunes. Apparently these findings have 'profound implications for the future of the online music market' - well only if they were completely totally stupid before!
Surely someone is either going to get an iPod because they already like music (and so already have lots of CDs/other downloads waiting to go onto it and dwarf the number of iTunes songs they buy) or for the cool thing itself (in which case they aren't going to buy lots of music from iTunes or anywhere else). Unless it really was expected to create an army of Apple zombies that wouldn't accept music-related product from any other source?

Chartsengrafs - My two feet can't find a way

Sunday just gone: The UK still LOVES Scissor Sisters and they remove Justin at the top with ease. Nelly Furtado and Timbaland reach 3, which is pretty impressive, becoming her second biggest hit ever. And all this after five years of not troubling the top 10. Whether "Promiscuous" would have been as huge a first single here as "Maneater" is an interesting question - I reckon it would have been number one but not for three weeks. Robbie Williams' "Rudebox" turns out not to be the entertaining disaster hoped/expected, although a place of 4 is still the worst for a first single from an album apart from his first and "Feel", that one being due to it being released well after the (very well selling) album.
Snow Patrol climb up yet another place and are only one away from the top 5, despite their album selling well enough to get back to number one for a third time. "Chasing Cars" is largely there thanks to continuing downloads, second on that particular chart behind the unassailable Scissor Sisters. More impressive is its (rather similar) current run in the US top ten. Last week's Stylus Singles Jukebox favourite Lemar achieves 7, which is about right, and all those young people with their downloads push The Feeling's "Never Be Lonely" into the top ten after entering outside last week.
Muse's "Starlight", which is sadly neither the Queen one or the Depeche Mode one, climbs from the depths of the forty to 13 on full release, with Kelis similarly going to 22. Ouch. Whoever Supafly Inc are, they're at 23. Fergie's "Ha, That's Tower Bridge" and Jamelia's "Not The Depeche Mode One Either" are both in on downloads at 25 and 28 respectively. Jealousy is an awful name, but not enough so to prevent 30. Since I didn't do this last week let's pause to gloat at Sandi Thom's new single's failure (22, now 31); the resulting amusement is possibly the one thing which can make "I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker"'s reappearance just below in any way welcome. The Feeling similarly find people again buying their last single enough to put it into the top forty. Oh brave new world. Final new entries are Lorenz' "Set Me Free" and The Rapture's first hit here with "Connected". Oh wait, someone's probably already done that one.

In the albums it's the Mercury effect which is most interested - no, not Freddie with a new greatest hits propelled to number 6 by endless nostalgia, but the (officially no longer Music) Prize which sees its mardy winners up just one place but Guillemots up fifteen to 31, Richard Hawley in the top forty for the first time ever at 37, Hot Chip up to 44 and Thom Yorke up twenty to 52.



Sunday coming: Scissor Sisters for another easy win, with Justin Timberlake at 2 and a distinct lack of challengers being enough to give the unlikely prospect of "Rudebox" now reaching the top 3. Fergie is heading for a very Black Eyed Peas number 5, with Jamelia and possibly Embrace heading top 10 on full release and Meatloaf The Killers doing so just on downloads.
Other new entries will be from Lupe Fiasco, Lostprophets (whose unparodyable song title is "A Town Called Hypocrisy"), Daniel O'Donnell, Larrikin Love, Guillemots and Bedouin Soundclash.

In the albums it's out with the old and in with Justin Timberlake. And, er, The Fratellis. I missed out on my chance to attack them last week but having just seen a poster for their album (which, as usual, is based entirely on the selling power of drawings of ladies) which featured the quote "The most important album you could possibly buy! - NME", now is as good a time as any. Gosh, they're hateful.

Bat For Lashes

(Chartsengrafs hasn't died and will be here soon. Maybe even tomorrow. Don't fret.)

So apparently I missed a not very announced Guillemots (or 'The Guillemots') gig at Islington Academy yesterday. Crap. I only found this out via London Lite (the far more godawful of the two new free papers we have now) and their atrocious review of it. Although perhaps part of my dislike of it may come from worrying that my gushing on them sounds similar even if I try to cover the music and don't actually write "Gosh, she is gorgeous!". Twice.

I did see Bat For Lashes on Tuesday though, which was rather good. It's amazing how much confidence she has gained since six months ago and a lot of the newer album songs sounded fantastic. "Moon & Moon" made a welcome reappearance in the encore too, the most straightforwardly beautiful of all probably and reminding me somewhat of the Elbow likes of "About Time".
The Spitz joins Bush Hall on a list of venues never to go to when it's hot though. Argh.

Surrounded

Look what I got home to find, largely courtesy of a leaving gift from work:







There's my listening (and viewing) sorted out for a while!!

Free Music Friday - Strap, Adventures, Guillemots

Commiserate/celebrate/start to find out what the fuss was about; Arab Strap songs are on offer on Culture Bully, Done Waiting and mp3hugger.

Fans Of Kate released a couple of really great power-pop singles and impressed me a lot live, before seeming to vanish totally at the start of this year. Their website still hasn't updated, but a look at their forums has shown that they, or at least some of them, are now New Adventures. And totally ungoogleable.
Judging by "Speak Up" their songs are now aimed a little bit more at the epic, but there's certainly still promise there.

Your novelty cover for the week is, I'm afraid, going to be another Live Lounge one, but it's hard to want to be more imaginative when Under The Stars has Guillemots doing what's pretty much a standard by now, yes "Take Me Out". I'm a little unsure on this one, but the end is beginning to win me over.

The night before the funeral

Arab Strap have split. And before I got round to really getting into them too, although I do loveMalcolm Middleton's solo album Into The Woods. Aidan Moffat's cameos on The Reindeer Section's albums also superb.
For fans in the UK, there's a farewell tour, at least.

And the Mercury winner is...

Arctic Monkeys. Not my favourite album of the year by any means but a really good one. And despite the hype and overattention already given to them I'm kind of peversely pleased at its win, partly at how annoyed people are going to be. Hmm.

Girls Aloud's "Biology" has won the Popjustice £20 Prize. See above, pretty much! Apart from the people being annoyed bit.

'Casually pulling away from a bus stop while people are still running to catch it'

Sorry for lack of weekend presence... blah.

Anyway, Stylus Singles Jukebox is up. Your bonus reviewlets: Robbie Williams finally goes properly weird and even some twattishness doesn't count against it too much [7]; I don't really get The Rapture [5]; Anais' cute asides rescue a slightly dull song [6].

I also have a bit in the Mercury Music Prize article about (you guessed it) Guillemots.

Chartsengrafs - I'll let you whip me if I misbehave

Sunday just gone: Beyoncé's single may not have been met with great excitement by anyone much but it still removes Shakira from number 1 at long last. Cascada move up one to 5 and Snow Patrol somehow move up five to 7 (this year's "You're Beautiful"?) in an otherwise featureless top 10. Don't worry, things are finally changing around a bit next week!
Matt Willis achieves a just about respectable 11, and things start to get interesting with Justin Timberlake's 13 on downloads for a song which is initially barely identifiable as him. Morrissey at 17 almost might as well not be there and Keane's newfound tabloid notoriety isn't enough to get Mew-lite "Crystal Ball" any higher than 20.
Stacey Orrico and Thom Yorke's about equally catchy songs are at 22 and 23, just ahead of The Feeling. Difference is that they're there on downloads - how are they turning out to be such a big singles band as well as albums? Pink and The Fratellis follow similarly at 28 and 35, with Lazy-B and Pharell/Kanye less successful at 30 and 31 on full release. Missy Elliott at 38 isn't that great a sign for her forthcoming album, but it's a Greatest Hits so she should be ok. Hope Of The States go out with a whimper not a bang at 63.
And in the albums Snow Patrol are back up to number one ahead of Christina Aguilera's Back To Basics. 'Including the number one single Ain't No Other Man!' trumpet its posters around town, rather misleadingly.



Sunday coming: Justin Timberlake is of course set for number one with ease. The real interest, then, is in Scissor Sisters' more of the fine same "I Don't Feel Like Dancin'" set for a top 5 place on downloads alone and therefore in with a decent chance of deposing him after another week. The Fratellis are depressingly heading for 3 and Shakira still at 2. Likely to be up there or thereabouts for some time yet unless someone gets the bright idea of deleting it. Nelly Furtado's "Promiscuous" is also doing pretty well on downloads, joined by full top 20 entries for Pink and The Feeling. Little Man Tate are doing not quite so well, but still better than Sandi Thom and, rather surprisingly, Basement Jaxx, set to barely make the top 40 this time around.
In the albums Kasabian look set to overpower up and coming rivals Bob Dylan and Iron Maiden with ease. Oh well.

The Last Picture Show

After rumours from Reading onwards, where they apparently announced that they were playing their final ever show, it's now been officially confirmed that Hope Of The States have split.
Perhaps the fact that I am not that bothered despite them having been on the verge of becoming my favourite band 2/3 years ago says it all, but it would have been nice to see whether they could have clawed things back from Left given a chance, and their live shows remained great.

The Daily Growl is offering a host of mp3s in celebration/commiseration.

Full Chartsengrafs coming tomorrow morning...

But in the meantime just a quick note on the performance of a song which won't be in it yet: Robbie Williams' amazing career suicide "Rudebox". It's out next week and unlike Nelly Furtado and Scissor Sisters is absolutely nowhere in the charts on downloads. More impressive still, though, is its performance on the airplay charts. It's at 64. Or, in other words, 30 places behind Richard Hawley.

'Gross'

Time for this week's Stylus Singles Jukebox, in which my predictions of a Veronicas victory turn out to be rather wrong.

Bonus ratings:
Five For Fighting's lyrics and overcooked plod are bad enough, their insistence on using horrific falsetto every line is worse [0], JoJo offers nothing new or interesting [2] and I really like Maria Daniela y su Sonido Lasser. Yes, almost as much as CSS. [7]

Hysteria

Just happened to turn on near the end of xfm doing a countdown of their listeners' votes for the 104 greatest tracks of all time.

5: "Paranoid Android"
4: "I Am The Resurrection"
3: "Love Will Tear Us Apart"

So far, so predictable.

And then at number 2... "Hysteria" by Muse? What the hell? Surely that isn't even one of Muse's 10 best songs? Weird.

V Festival - Radiohead, Beck, etc. (19-20/08/06)

I've long been a defender of the V festival (and there's plenty to defend it against) - perhaps it's a product of only having been to recent Glastonburys but the distance between the two in terms of atmosphere has always seemed small and with the addition of extra stages at V the line-ups get closer in standard every year - it's not like you don't get plenty of Daniel Powters among your Phoenixes and Richard Hawleys at Glastonbury too.

This year was the first time that a lot of complaints rang true though. Being charged £10 to find out what time bands were playing was just fucking ridiculous and the official line:

'the charge was for a programme, laminate, and plastic rucksack. Previously, programmes and laminates were sold separately, at a greater price'

rather takes the piss, equating to an admission that it was because no-one in their right mind was previously willing to pay £7 for a load of record company promo fluff ('programme') in addition to the £4 for the actual lineup. No wonder people were complaining (warning: also contains expectations of cashpoints at a festival, dearie me). Toilet and drinks queues were indeed massive but only if you didn't have the sense to go to the less busy toilets or drink free water so that wasn't such a problem, although the free water was rather difficult to find.
Walking around and hearing an attempt at good-natured banter about someone heading away from the main stage met with a shout of "Keane can suck my arse! They're a bunch of fucking gays!" did make me feel pretty uncomfortable and wasn't exactly isolated.
Only putting on bands for 25 minutes (20 once allowing for being late) on the smaller stages is pushing things a bit far too though I guess it's common for many festivals now. And scheduling turned up some other problems: I timed arriving on Sunday in time to get to Lily Allen's set but of course the tent she was playing at such an early time (with no one else much on elsewhere) was utterly packed, leading to comical scenes of people breaking through the barriers set up around the tent and being chased by security. Combined with too-near tents blasting out louder music it wasn't worth staying.
But the solution to putting acts on in the wrong place is surely not to then also give them an unannounced two song slot on the main stage, delaying what people actually want to see and inflicting James Morrisson on them. Unless you want to come off like a local radio event or something.

Anyways, enough moaning, onto the music:

If it bothers The Divine Comedy that it's the songs from the ten year old Casanova that get the best reception then he wasn't showing it, going through highlights with a greater delight than ever. Not only did he play "Becoming More Like Alfie" and a hilarious run through "Charge", we got the rare treat of a joyous "Something For The Weekend" to finish. As well as barely newer "National Express", of course.
Neil Hannon was in fine form between songs as well and a brief cover of "Maneater" was an effective surprise. The only downside then: the new songs. "To Die A Virgin" is witty pop to just about match the hits, but "A Lady Of A Certain Age" fell completely flat and the apallingly smug "Diva Lady" sounded worse than ever with added guitar wanking. Playing the hits and those instead of playing anything at all for the last two albums (which had their great live moments like "The Happy Goth") felt a bit of an unfair compromise, though it was difficult to care for most of one of the most enjoyable sets of the weekend.

For two songs The Upper Room (not really my choice to see...) reminded a lot of Long-view: earnest indie that bores on record but somehow makes perfect sense with the aid of live atompshere. After that things went a bit wrong and the bland took over though, culminating in a version of U2's "I Will Follow" that sucked all life from the song in horrible fashion.

A combination of dodgy sound and standing right in front of one speaker stack gave the impressing during Bloc Party's set of watching from the inside of Matt Tong's bass drum. This may have been what stopped "Blue Light" or "So Here We Are" or "Two More Years" or the new song "Waiting For The 7:18" having any impact at all, but it did help make "Like Eating Glass" and "Helicopter" into intense, insane monsters, so that was alright.

Art Brut! Top Of The Pops! What is there to be said about their chaotic and exhilarating live
show apart from to list the new changes and things? So this time "Formed A Band" had 'we'll play it as the first ever song on the all new Top Of The Pops!' and, inevitably, 'write the song that make Israel and the Lebanon get along' and "Emily Kane" got a conversation with Jay-Z in which he was ticked off for his misogynistic language but thanked for his advice. And a cover of "Kids In America" was announced, then not played, and then (kind of) played after all at the end.

I don't know many of Beck's songs ("Girl"! "E-Pro"! "Loser"! They were all great, mind) and don't remember many of those that I was introduced to much. His set was all about spectacle anyway though and probably the most fun of all. You've probably already read all about it now but in addition to the usual mad dancing, dinner table percussion and bearsuits, there was a replica puppet band! With the same clothes and making the same moves! With their own percussion/dinner table!They even got their own film in which they made disgusting jokes and sang "phew for a minute there, I lost myself" over and over!
I don't think the full awesomeness of this could ever really come across in writing, but suffice to say, it was awesome.

Radiohead, ah Radiohead. I've never properly got to appreciate your live set, and this time was to be no exception thanks to spending half the time (and "Pyramid Song", which I've only waited, like, forever to hear live) arguing with some loudly talking people I was stuck next to (they were really nice when I spoke to them later though, and it's my problem as much as theirs in way. Sigh.)
But I think that with a setlist like this (let's ignore "The Gloaming" here, most of us did) you should have managed to blow me away more anyway. I don't understand how you didn't. Thank you for "A Wolf At The Door" though, and "Creep" was a generous and wonderful gesture to a crowd who totally appreciated it, even if I would have preferred "Anyone Can Play Guitar". Or "Pop Is Dead".

Sugababes are now armed with enough songs for a completely fantastic set, and that's just what they managed! Hooray! Squeezing "Shape" and "Stronger" into one medley was a nice way to stop them dragging things down, and "Overload" was brilliant, compelte with nice introduction acknowledging that only one of them was actually there then. The amateurish "oh, has it started?" beginning of the set (with "Freak Like Me") and tacky shiny silver curtain they were playing in front of was adorable. And they even smiled as well as making excellent full use of the entire stage width. "Push The Button" was the perfect finish, of course.

Bands in brief: I wasn't going to bother with James Dean Bradfield (a common decision judging by the comically small crowd) but he played "No Surface All Feeling" and I came running from a distance upon hearing the first chords and it was great. And then he played some solo stuff and I left again, nearly bumping into David Tennant on the way.
The Crimea managed the small tent, atmospheric songs thing soo much better than The Upper Room although there was little more to say different from the last time I saw them.
And Starsailor promised a treat for missing Paul Weller and then played "Poor Misguided Fool", surely the exact opposite of a treat. The bastards. Overdone version of"Four To The Floor" was ace though.

We'll end with Hard-Fi. They looked set for absolute disaster for a couple of songs, playing the exact same setlist as they have done for approximately 100 years (PUT THE "SEVEN NATION ARMY" COVER OUT OF ITS MISERY NOW, PLEASE) and with Richard Archer's always dodgy voice having gone to shit to a remarkable and previously unheard of extent. Yet somehow they turned it round into total triumph by little more than force of personality and a lot of songs that a lot of people love. Probably the perfect band for the festival: make of that what you will.

Free music Friday - GoodBooks, Kazakstan, The Sky Drops

Yes, it's back.

GoodBooks' new angle on the whole post-punk thing has already impressed me a lot in the past. And now they give their new single away for free! "Turn It Back" is available here and while not quite as instant or great as their best songs is certainly worth a listen.

Kazakstan are not, of course, from Kazakstan but from Sweden. Their website has a couple of free downloads from their album; "Backseat Driver" starts out regular enough charming/chiming indie but builds a particularly fine momentum towards its raucous horn-driven conclusion.

The Sky Drops offer up gorgeous shoegaze pop downloads on their Myspace, with "Hang On" the pick of the bunch. Oh, that feedback! One of them apparently used to be in Smashing Orange, in case that means anything more to you than me.

And for your traditional final covers, Music Is Art provides a huge selection of attempts at Radiohead songs. Includes John Mayer's bafflingly good version of "Kid A" and The Darkness' spectacular assault on "Street Spirit", which was the first thing I ever heard by them and sounds no less enjoyably stupid now, whatever their sins since.

Sometimes laziness rules

I never quite got round to getting tickets to the TDK Cross Central festival but was planning to. But I now discover the day before it that they've cancelled two whole stages' worth of acts and left Hot Chip as the only real draw anyway!

I wonder if the people partying outside my window are something to do with it.

Chartsengrafs - The audacity to have me with the curtains back

(now with added YouTube links for part 1!)



Sunday just gone: Shakira number one for a fourth week in a row, in the end. Still selling almost 30,000 a week, still not getting played on Radio 1 or of course Radio 2, still faintly confounding. Chamillionaire gets the usual late-week boost for 2, relegating David Guetta vs The Egg to 3. Credit is surely due to Arctic Monkeys at 4 for the success of their continuing efforts to get rid of all of that awful fame that they've achieved, this time extending right to the single artwork as well as accompanying lack of willingness to promote. The cover version B-sides basically exist as an attempt to deflect some interest onto their mates 747s and The Little Flames too.
Cassie moves up to 6 with Micky Modelle v Jessy the other top 10 new entry. Is the current mini-dance-revival just down to lack of much else out there in August or something more? Alesha gets to a middling 14... I would have expected higher or lower before hearing the song but it's actually not nearly as abrasive as hoped. It's (hooray!) a place above Ronan Keating though, reaching his career low in every sense with a hideous cover of Goo Goo Dolls' "Strange Glue" "Iris", a song which is actually not bad in itself but can surely be considered largely responsible for Hoobastank's "The Reason" and similar monstrosities. Maria Lawson somehow turns around from The X Factor a year ago to get a top twenty hit, while Chico recovers from a far more ignomious midweek to reach 24. Someone must have been helping him.
The Young Knives (This song was all over the V festival: I still have "it's not importtant! it's not importtant!" stuck in my head) and The Sunshine Underground slip in at 35 and 39 respectively. Oh and "Horny Like A Dandy" (still in the top 40) is not the worst mashup in existence afterall - that would be the one of "I Believe In You" and "What You Waiting For?", complete with videos that weren't so much mixed as alternated, that someone chose to put on screen at V.
The rest of the top 75 is littered with quite good songs: The Futureheads' "Worry About It Later", The Spinto Band's "Oh Mandy" and The Divine Comedy's "To Die A Virgin" (approximately 10,000 times better than his last single) among them. The last one is a link to a whole range of videos entered for a competition, by the way.The Crimea (not actual video) and Hot Chip (not YouTube) don't even get as far as the top 75, though.

In the albums, Christina Aguilera is number one with ease, not much else happens. Captain at 23.




Sunday coming: Shakira may finally be removed by Beyoncé (ft. Jay-Z)'s leap from the twenties although it looks far from certain. Morrissey gets his guarenteed top 10 midweek and Snow Patrol are climbing again as radio clings on tight and refuses to let go.
Thom Yorke and Priory clients past and present Matt Willis and Keane (well ok, not all of them) are all due for a top 20 which is not too great for any of them, especially with Justin Timberlake beating them on downloads alone.
Hope Of The States, whose last single barely reached the top 40, are staging a spiriting and surprising comeback but are only likely to manage similar with Left's title track at best. Prospective top 40 new entries are completed by The Rolling Stones, Lazy B, Taking Back Sunday, and Pink with the third single from her current album in on downloads alone. A lot of people may be looking on and wondering why they can't still manage that.
Duncan James (you know! Blue! That song with that woman who did that song with the cricket team!) is outside the top 50.

In the albums it's going to be as you were again at the top. Lower down OutKast will be completely failing to capitalise on the popularity of their last one, barely beating Slayer in the lower teens, and Seth Lakeman's promo is starting to pay off as his rereleased album heads top 40.

'Scaring off anyone who might dare covet his neckpiece'

Stylus Singles Jukebox is up now. Thanks to my V-going it doesn't actually include me at all this week but that's no reason not to read!
There's also a J-Rock video sampler, and that one is mine.

Disheartening press releases

'Reunited with producer Hugh Jones, "My Neighbour's House" sees The Bluetones back to the sounds of their classic debut Expecting To Fly and its follow-up Return To The Last Chance Saloon'

Noooooooooo! Why give up and retreat now when it's too late to win any neutrals back anyway?

You've probably already seen it doing the rounds...

...but in case you haven't, a genuinely hilarious article from The Daily Mail:
EMO cult warning for parents!!

Some choice selections:

• 'There is a also a term which is new to me and amounts to a much more dangerous teenage cult. The Emos - short for Emotional - regard themselves as a cool, young sub-set of the Goths. Although the look is similar, the point of distinction, frightening for schools and parents, is a celebration of self harm.'
• 'The internet has many sites dedicated to Emo fashion (dyed black hair brushed over your face, layering, black, black, black), Emo bands (Green Day, My Chemical Romance)'
• 'How many bedroom walls have been plastered with posters of drippy pre-Raphaelite heroines, or Marc Bolan or Kurt Curbain?'
• 'Many of the alluring women of our time - Nigella Lawson, Debbie Harry, Chrissie Hynde, Sophie Ellis Bextor, Lily Allen - have a touch of the Goth about them.'

edit: The Independent have also got in on the act. What they lack in tabloid panic, they more than make up for in naming Dirty Pretty Things as a key new goth band.

Weekend

I went to V festival yesterday. Amongst others: Radiohead played "Pyramid Song". The Divine Comedy played "Something For The Weekend" and an attempt at "Maneater". Beck had a replica band of puppets on stage.
I have somehow ended up going today as well, so expect a full report in a few days' time when I've recovered.

Groaning? Frowning?

'NME sales are up again thanks to an ever growning army of readers'!

Edit: As Chris Brown pointed out over at XRRF, the related links section on that page is also worth a look...

I just keep repeating myself

OK, so I only posted about Guillemots and their show with the BBC concert orchestra a couple of days ago, but more stuff has now come to light in their latest mailing list email which is totally worth another!

First of all, for those elsewhere in the country (well, ok, for London too... we get two dates), there's a full tour coming in October as follows:

OCTOBER:

16-BIRMINGHAM, ALEXANDER THEATRE
17-NOTTINGHAM, ROCK CITY
18-BRISTOL, ANSON ROOMS
20-LIVERPOOL, CARLING ACADEMY
21-NEWCASTLE, UNIVERSITY
22-MANCHESTER, ACADEMY 2
24-GLASGOW, ABC
25-LEEDS, METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY
26-CARDIFF, UNIVERSITY
29-BRIGHTON, CORN EXCHANGE

NOVEMBER:

2-LONDON, ASTORIA
4-OXFORD, BROOKES UNIVERSITY

Secondly, there's this: 'Trains to Brazil is coming out - sort of weirdly, as it was a co-incidence, but seemed vaguely appropriate - on September 11th, and we spent a few days recording a new bunch of B-sides for the single [...including...] the first ever Guillemots R'n'B song, 'You Can Look (But You Can't Touch)', which has been a joke idea for a while now but has now become a reality! It features a beat written on the bus on the way to the studio by Greig, Justin Timberlake-esque vocals from me, a lead vocal from Arista, some very demented guitar noises from Magrao and a rap from Freakshow - aka Arista's boyfriend.'
Now, as great as that sounds, I have to question its status as the first ever, because the Of The Night EP had a song ("Bad Boyfriend") which, ok, was 9 minutes long and mostly noise and Fyfe and Arista saying 'I like sex in carparks' and similar, but also featured in the middle two minutes of scarily great and catchy electro R'n'B!

Related to this is the third and kind of most excitingly piece of news: 'Aroundabout October, we're going to be releasing the 'Of the Night' EP 'physically' (this is the 4 songs that we made available for download for a few weeks around Valentine's Day this year). We're going to be comissioning some animations to go with these songs too, more details of which will follow soon. We're also planning to play these songs live with the BBC Concert Orchestra on October 28th at the re-opened Roundhouse in Camden, London, as part of the newly-launched Electric Proms festival.'
This means that not only are they finally going to play the aforementioned "Bad Boyfriend" after many shows of people calling for it, they're somehow going to play it with an orchestra!! Their take on glam-monster "She's Evil" should also be fascinating. The bad news here is that they're only playing for half an hour in support of 'a mystery bigger act', but hopefully that will be someone brilliant but incapable of selling out the place in minutes before I can get a ticket. Say... oooh... Elbow? I can hope!

Chartsengrafs - There's nothing left to guess now

Sunday just gone: Shakira number one for a third week in a row, which is difficult to have too much to say about by now. Cascada up to two; Snow Patrol creep into the top ten with long-time Chartsendgrafs irritants The Kooks following up three places just below.
Michael Gray and gray Shelly Poole are the highest new(ish) entry at 12. I promised to report back on The View (15) last week, and my response after searching YouTube for it was "oh, it's that one", meaning that I'd heard its Libertines/Monkeys mediocrities a few times before without being too annoyed, at least. The wonderfully named Chamillionaire and Krayzie Bone breach the top twenty on downloads alone, and people actually bought that Mousse T vs The Dandy Warhols record. Oh dear. They bought Orson (27) too, but that's less of a surprise.
Cassie and David Guetta vs The Dancing Transformer are also top 30 on downloads. I've just noticed that The Zutons are still there, too. It's a slow summer. Tom Novy (31), Peter Bjorn John & Victoria (35), Panic! At The Disco (39) and Primal Scream (40, and not downloads either) are your remaining top 40 newies.
If you thought that was unexciting, just look at the albums, where a leap for Orson passes for something happening.




Sunday coming: Shakira tops the midweeks, unbelievably. But David Guetta vs The Egg isn't far behind!! Arctic Monkeys seem to have shaken off any interest in them quite admirably and look set to barely make the top five, probably as good a chance as any to ask if anyone else can't follow the lyrics to their single. Ok, so its protagonists are leaving the club before the lights come on, that makes sense. But then after they've ended up sleeping together (either in the dark or too drunk to remember, I guess), and one has woken up we get "Quick, let's leave, before the lights come on,
Cos then you don't have to see [...] what you've done". Where are they sleeping that the lights are going to come on by themsleves without having to walk over and flick the switch?? Am I missing something obvious?
Anyway, that over with, Chamillionaire is heading top 5 too, with Cassie and Micky Modelle (?) following in the top 10. Ronan Keating has finally outworn his welcome, set to barely make the low teens, with Iron Maiden currently ahead of him but sure to fall. Alesha (of Mis-teeq "gonna burn you with my lyrical flame!!" fame) is off to a bit of a shaky start too. The Young Knives and The Sunshine Underground are heading for the middling 30-40 indie entries of the week (although only one is middling in musical terms as well), with TV's The X Factor's Sharon Osbourne's Maria Lawson managing something similar. That might look bad if it wasn't for Chico, barely in the top 75. Ha.
In the albums, Christina Aguilera's Back To Basics, a bit of a mess by most accounts, is selling rather fast and sure of number one. Captain will probably be the next highest new entry, doing surprisingly well in the top 20.

We Like Electric

Guillemots plus BBC Concert Orchestra? Yes please!

Meanwhile Damon Albarn and co. seem to have thoroughly crashed the Camden Roundhouse's site in the rush for tickets for their part of the event. Well, them or The Who.

'Singing from the great beyond'

Yes, it's Stylus Singles Jukebox time.
Missing from me this week:
The Killers lose pop brilliance, gain Meatloaf impression [5], Peter Bjorn and John make me wish I could whistle [8], and Snow Patrol make another horrible choice of single with the only other song on Eyes Open that really does sound emptily formulaic [3].

35,000 isn't much but...

There's still a big question raised by the fact that Radio 1's chart show is gaining listeners and has overtaken Hit40UK for the first time.

If hiring irritating music-hating presenters, junking musical content in favour of gossip and irrelevancies and ignoring what people actually like in favour of only playing what they should like, as it seems, actually works... why is Top Of The Pops no longer on the TV?

The Picture Show - Knights, Monkeys and Guillemots

Now with added YouTube.

For some reason, Muse have decided to go with the decidedly dull "Starlight" as their next single here, and it has a decidedly dull video to match. The Americans, on the other hand, get "Knights Of Cydonia", and this:


Arctic Monkeys' indie status is worth something after all, allowing them to release a completely new single already with no sign of an accompanying album rerelease. The song itself is a decent tune let down by either a massive lyrical plot-hole or some shoddy and confusing writing (on which more later), but the video is rather good. See if you can spot the twist coming!:

(this one is slightly better quality but doesn't allow embedding. Oh and the guy at the end is in the band, apparently.)

Finally, in advance of the song being released again, probably with a new one, here's the tremendously cute old video to Guillemots' "Trains To Brazil":

Brakes, Battle, ESP - Electric Gardens (06/08/06)

The very first thing noticable on arriving at Kent's new festival, Electric Gardens, is the size of the place. It's tiny. The Eat Your Own Ears-sponsored second stage and Myspace.com New Bands Tent are practically alongside each other, and its only two minutes' walk to the main stage field. This makes moving around between them and seeing a lot of bands very easy, which is nice, and actually leads to far fewer problems with clashing sound than expected. There are about the right number of people there for it too, at least in terms of filling the stages without overcrowding (although only about 20 people watch Brakes' headlining set later)

We start with most of The Boy Least Likely To's quite enthusiastically recieved main stage set. We miss "Be Gentle With Me" but "Hugging My Grudge"'s bouncy pop and a ramshackle cover of George Michael's "Faith" are both excellent, and "Monsters"' surprising anger and frustration tied to a similarly great tune make their album look worth finally getting around to buying. They're quite witty, too. "Hello, near Canterbury!".

The reason for leaving early is that next on in the (also tiny) New Bands tent are The Hot Puppies, appropriately named as it is indeed very very hot outside and hotter still inside, as well as stiflingly humid. There also appears to be mould growing on the inside of the tent, which can't be a good sign. "It's too hot to get it on!" as lead Puppy Bec Newman notes, although a group of boys at the front disagree. Their set is sadly all too brief at barely half an hour (a theme throughout the day) but is thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish, Newman even more conifdent and charismatic than on record and "Terry" and "Green Eyeliner" in particular sounding great. The contrast between her slightly demure look and the gurning, shirtless drummer pounding away behind her is quite amusing, too.

After that, The Long Blondes on the main stage are quite the disappointment. Kate Jackson's voice sounds awfully shrill, her dancing is kind of awful and a lot of their set runs together into one uninspiring song. Only whichever song involves her and their guitarist exchanging words and set closers "Giddy Stratospheres" and "Separated By Motorways" impress at all.

The second stage is already running half an hour late (as is the new bands tent) but for now that's a good thing as it means catching two songs of Absentee's set! They still have the same
issues as the last time I saw them - essentially, their sound is very much based around Dan Michaelson's amazingly deep drawl and it's almost inaudible - but "Treacle" is still rather sweet. Certainly better than MCraft, who is chosen because we can't face the heat of the less well aired tent again unless absolutely necessary and turns out to be inoffensive but extremely boring.

Things get worse after that as we go to get some food - the food hall, it seems, didn't have enough food to last past 5pm (it eventually reopens at about 7) so there is no choice but to queue for the one stall selling crêpes. These don't really lend themselves to being made quickly, and so it takes over an hour to get them. Although they are quite nice and suprisingly large at least (Mmm, garlic mushroom and cheese! Chocolate and marshmallow! Er, that's two different ones, obviously), this is still a ridiculous situation. It's coupled with the massively behind schedule stages where setting up seems to take longer than the actual sets, and the fact that Larrikin Love have cancelled but we only work it out from a handwritten rearranged schedule stuck on the sounddesk that still turns out to be a little wrong. The organisation is certainly by far the worst thing about the day. Next year, hopefully, they'll get the hang of it a bit better.

While finishing the crêpes, we catch the end of The Automatic's set, including their hideous but peversely enjoyable version of "Gold Digger", complete with flute and "she ain't messing with no broke, broke" radio edited chorus, and of course "Monster", which they make sure to close with and which provokes mass bottle throwing. I may previously have accused this of just being an amazing chorus and not much else, but that is to not give credit to the guy who rasps out the repeat of every sung line in the verses who, it turns out, is the real star.

The Electric Soft Parade are seen next at a distance thanks to the tent still being too hot and full. They play a surprising number of older songs but none of the best or better known ones, so it's actually the Human Body material which gets more of a chance to shine. "A Beating Heart" especially is great, though their performance doesn't add so much to many of the songs and the other White siblings only look like stars when they return in two bands time.

First, though, the nearest thing to a local band here, Battle. "Children" suggested that they'd run out of good songs after a pair of amazing singles, but while "Demons" and "A Forest""Tendency" are the intense highlights they have some others to match. "Takuya" sees Jason Bavanandan resort to spitting out nonsense by the end over madly thrashing guitars and is all the more enjoyable for it. They are still a little derivative but together with a couple of other new songs it suggests that their album could still be a worthwhile contender in the overcrowded post-punk scene.

Finally, aside from catching the very end of Mystery Jets' set ("Alas Agnes" and "Zootime"! Perfect! Also worthwhile for my brother's comment that when they said "this one is about a tranny" he presumed that they meant "You Can't Fool Me Dennis") are Brakes.
They begin by blasting through Give Blood's best three songs ("Ring A Ding Ding", "Hi How Are You" and "Heard About Your Band") with barely a pause for breath, making for possibly the best opening four minutes of a festival set ever. After that things could easily get disappointing but they don't. Their cartoon country-punk could easily make for an overly knowing, one-joke show but they never play it anything less than straight, Eamaon Hamilton barking out every word with a dangerous stare and Tom and Alex White revelling in the chance to play rock gods. Not that aren't hilarious at times of course. See: deadly secret weapon "Porcupine Or Pineapple". The lyrics to that for you: "Porcupine or pineapple? Porcupine or pineapple? Porcupine or pineapple???...... YEEEEOOOOOWCH!" (see it for yourself from T In The Park).
As well as that, new songs recently recorded in Nashville ("I got a tan and [bassist] Marc Beatty didn't!" taunts Hamilton) are fuller and less ragged than old but still almost as fun, "Cheney" is worth playing twice and the chorus of "All Nite Disco Party" threatens to tear the roof off. A great way to end a pretty good day.


Other reviews of the festival are out there from Jukebox, Another Form Of Relief and Seebass, who got some pretty good photos.

Coming Up - Decemberists, BDB, Beck, Timberlake, Bluetones

A look at some of the forthcoming album releases that details have come out about recently...

The Decemberists are going at quite a rate with their album releases, which is always good. The Crane Wife is out on Capitol on October 3nd in the US, with the tracklisting as follows:

• The Crane Wife 3
• The Island, Come And See, The Landlord’s Daughter, You’ll Not Feel The Drowning
• Yankee Bayonet
• O Valencia!
• The Perfect Crime #2
• When The War Came
• Shankill Butchers
• Summersong
• The Crane Wife 1 & 2
• Sons And Daughters

Nice 3 before 1&2, there. Seems there might actually be a UK release at the same time this time around, too.


Badly Drawn Boy has another chance to escape from a career of every album being "the best since Bewilderbeast", for better or worse, when he releases Born In The UK (do you see?) on October 16th. The first single, of the same name, is a bit much close to a stripped down "You Were Right" but likable all the same, and is out now on limited vinyl in fish and chip wrappers, apparently.


Beck's new album is out October 2nd, and is called The Information. It will have a blank sleeve and stickers to make your own! Didn't Ikara Colt do that once? Tracklisting has now emerged as well. Mmmm, 15 tracks:

• Elevator Music
• Think I'm In Love
• Cell Phone's Dead
• Nausea
• Soldier Jane
• Strange Apparition
• Dark Star
• Movie Theme
• We Dance Alone
• No Complaints
• 1000 BPM
• Motorcade
• The Information
• New Round
• Horrible Fanfare / Landslide / Exoskeleton

Popjustice have the artwork to the new Justin Timberlake album FutureSex/LoveSounds! Further incredulity to be had from the tracklisting:

• Another Song
• What Goes Around Comes Around
• Sexyback
• Crowd Control (feat. Nelly Furtado)
• Lines (feat. Timbaland)
• The One You Have Not Seen
• Help Me Breathe
• Lose Your Way (feat. Mario)
• Nocturne (feat. India Arie)
• I Walk Alone
• No Connection
• The Darkest Childe
• My Love (feat. T.I)
• Your Tongue Like The Sun In My Mouth

...especially the last one. And the goth one! Album's out September 11th.


Finally, The Bluetones are releasing their fifth album in October, say Planet Sound. It's going to be self-titled, which is a bit unimaginitive, and may or may not continue the bubblegum alternate-universe Strokes sound of Luxembourg. I'm sure I'll be interested either way, although I could probably actually tell you by name most other people who are by now. Oh well. Single is "My Neighbour's House"

Chartsengrafs - Young heavy hopefuls staying the night

Sunday just gone: Shakira number one for a second week (plus the one weeks ago). Anything to do with ending the final TOTP? Probably not, but anyway "Hips Don't Lie" hits 33,000 sales for the week, the highest since week 4 of its 9. Not much excitement below, with Rihanna and Christina swapping places at 2 and 3 ahead of entries from Cascada (nope, no idea) and ParisHilton' kind of good "Stars Are Blind" at 4 and 5. A lack of anything much out also helps Paolo Nutini, The Kooks and Snow Patrol to all climb a few places, to the highest position yet at 13 in the last case. The Similou just about get the top 20, which is impressive enough by itself, really. The Raconteurs (29), not as good as promised when it comes to their album Captain (30), not quite as awful as remembered The Holloways (33) and doing so badly it's hard not to feel sorry for them Frank (40) complete the top 40 new entries. It's worth noting that The Kooks still have two singles in the top 40, too, and that were it not disallowed for having been deleted too long ago, JayZ and Linkin Park's Numb/Encore would be joining them, presumably solely on the basis of being used for Miami Vice TV ads.
In the albums... James Morrison gets number one, and The Puppini Sisters are in the top 20. Lets move on, quick.




Sunday coming: Yes, we're going to still have Shakira at number one. Top 5 movement will probably be confined to Rihanna and Christina maybe swapping round again and basically no one much released anything this week.
The View are set to be the biggest new entry at 10 or so. That's a name which meant ntohing to me, but apparently their single is a "fiery slice of teenage rock 'n' roll", they supported Primal Scream and (this is where you can tell how good they are) they got banned from a hotel for riding a scooter along the bar!! Ok, perhaps I should wait to actual hear the song before the scorn. Will get back to you next week. Chamillionaire is also going top 20 along with Michael Gray's snoozefest and the rather irritating Mousse T/Dandy Warhols mash-up. Other top 40s expected from Orson, Tom Novy, Panic! At The Disco, Primal Scream themselves and Peter, Bjorn & John. See, 6Music and evening xfm shows can help you into the charts!
In the album chart, nothing is happening. Really.

News (08/08/06)

• Chart to include video downloads by the end of the year.
• Teenagers listening to music with sexually explicit lyrics have sex earlier, claim researchers. I'm not sure where to start on this, but 'the researchers tried to account for other factors that could affect teens' sexual behavior' could rather do with some expansion to actually support the assumption that one is the cause of the other. Perhaps the actual study isn't quite as badly thought out as it's presented here.
• The Tube is coming back, but, er, only on the radio.
• Carl Barat injures himself.
• Kasabian previously claimed that they would have to pay to watch The Rolling Stones' set after supporting them, they've now changed their mind.
• Michael Jackson's lawyers are conspiring against him! He's also recording a new album, apparently.

'We’ve all had accidents'

Stylus Singles Jukebox up now! This week I kind of sucked, so you get rather more bonus comments than normal. In brief...

Shanadoo overcome generic riffs/chrous with awesome synth crashes and general mania [8]
Kasabian are thuggish and lyrically inept as ever but manage an unexpectedly interesting song nonetheless [5]
Trace Adkins is hilarious fun and not annoying, yet [7]
Michael Gray is innoffensively boring as anything [4]
and Kasey Chambers has the best MOR acoustic pop song in the world... ever! [9]

By the way

Apologies for the lack of updates in the past week, coursework was back more than ever. Partly this was down to my (just discovered) amazing move of managing to delete an essay that I finished months ago but never actually printed out or handed in. Hooray.

I didn't go to see Monkey Swallows The Universe in the end (next month!) but I did go to one dau of the Electric Gardens festival so expect a review of that soon. In brief: rubbish organisation, great bands.

Let Go

I was thinking of taking an "ignore it, it might go away" approach to Q's awful 'guilty pleasures' list but it's worth pointing to a surprisingly good rebuttal of the idea on the BBC.

'Muted pianos are not as good as silly string sections'

Another Tuesday, another Stylus Singles Jukebox! This time all of my contributions made it apart from enjoying Panic! At The Disco's mastery of the emo template a little more than anyone else did [7].

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.