Eurosonic day 2 (12/01/07)

(Day one here.)

Day two begins with another couple of instores - first of all The Duke Special, who remind heavily of Liam Frost's passable but derivative folk-pop, only with a Belfast accent.



Then Tunng, who also offer folk but of a decidedly more twisted bent. Their acoustic instore is good, but they promise 'more beats and some dodgy rave music' for their Usva performance later. The latter claim is rather an exaggeration but electronic edges do improve their set and the closing cover of Bloc Party's "The Pioneers" is just as wonderful as hoped.



Massive queues prevent us taking in Osark Henry, bar his closing song, which has enough of a feel of Coldplay's "Clocks" about it to make his popularity unsurprising.

Dead Combo, upstairs at the Grand Theatre, are a Portugese duo who play intricate instrumentals somewhere between fado and spaghetti western in style. Between song explanations that broken English frequently renders funnier than intended (and this is as good a place as any to note that every act we saw spoke English, usually not even attempting Dutch venue names) they show off some fantastically proficient guitar and bass playing. It's not music that I'm particulary familiar with, but their enjoyable set is always approachable, culminating in a kazoo driven Tom Waits cover.



Datarock are a bunch of overenergetic red tracksuited Norwegian mentalists, and as such are great fun to watch. Unfortunately what we see of their set proves a little lacking in hooks or direction, to the point where actually remembering what they sounded like afterwards proves a bit of a challenge.So it's upstairs again early in plenty of time for Hello Saferide.



Seeing Annika Norlin (Hello Saferide is her, plus her friend Maia for tonight) play her songs further emphasises some of the contradictions of her recorded work. See, the person that you see in her lyrics - the one that's jealous, neurotic, obsessive and scared of feet - is kind of pathetic. Her slightly stilted explanations almost always place her songs as autobiographical, too. There are moments when she's obviously exaggerating for comic effect, like "Last Bitter Song"'s 'I'm feeling happier already' followed by an overdone grimace, but these are few and far between. For the most part, this is being presented as straight down the line.
And yet, as she marches her way through great song after great song, taking in much of her debut album and more recent Would You Let Me Play This EP 10 Times A Day? it's impossible not to take her side. Surely someone able to write songs this consistently funny, insightful, and quotable can't really be such a wreck as she makes out? Not the one whose new year's resolutions in "2006" include 'I will learn a new word every day, today's word is dejected' or who can make the brilliant handclappy pop of "My Best Friend" and make despair sound as good as on "Summer's Going To Take The Pain Away".
A handful of new songs even suggest that there's still better to come. The finest is about how 'people are like songs' and balances very funny verses ('I'm like Can't Get You Out Of My Head/Sure I'm annoying sometimes but I'll make you dance') with a chorus that's the most ingenious and affecting declaration of love I've heard in a long time: 'You're the only one who is like God Only Knows'. Aww.



From there it's back downstairs for Belgians Goose, whose name seems particularly ill-suited to their energetic dance-rock. LCD Soundsystem and Soulwax says the bits of the EuroSonic programme entry that I can understand and both are fair comparisons. But they're most similar in the more song-based early part of the set, where they are good but suffer from a frontman who doesn't quite have the necessary authority to convince. No such problem later on as he gets more into it and the emphasis switches to pounding, euphoric instrumentals. They're great enough to be worth looking up as soon as possible after the festival and it turns out that they're signed to Skint Records with an album to come out in the UK next month. With the right press and a flimsily attached new rave label, they might just get somewhere with that.

After Goose it's a quick trip to Fancy, whose preposterously awful glam rock provides a few minutes of laughs. Bar some time at an underpopulated but still enjoyable party on a boat, that's it for Eurosonic 2007. With some luck, I might just be back next year!

(Thanks to Ada for photos, bar the Hello Saferide one for which I have Sabrina to thank)

Eurosonic Day 1 (11/01/07)

Eurosonic is two thirds of the Noorderslagweekend festival in Groningen, the Netherlands. With Patrick Wolf among the hundreds of acts from across Europe playing at the town's many venues, and a generous invitation to stay with a friend in the town, I couldn't really turn down the chance to go.

Utroubled by licensing or noise issues, the festival proper starts at 8pm and runs through well into the night. There's stuff to watch during the day too, though, at Groningen's big record shop, Plato. As well as being a hell of a lot better than the crap ones in Amsterdam that I visited, it puts on instore performances from some of the festival acts, and that's where I start with Peter, Bjorn and John. Armed with infectiously cheery demeanour and equally infectious songs that come to life much better than on record, they play an enjoyable if short set. The highlight is obviously "Young Folks" though, complete with badly mimed whistling and a cardboard cutout of Erykah Badu standing in for Victoria Bergsman.



First choice of the evening was between The Young Knives and Gomez singer (yeah, that one) Ben Ottewell. Alone I would have gone for the former but the latter isn't without his merits and is playing a rather nice venue, the plush seated upstairs room at the Grand Theatre.
Now, one of the better organisational points of the festival is having 45 minute sets, with some venues having two alternating stages to eliminate any time in between sets and few gaps built into the schedule to move around in. This does make it hard not to miss the starts/ends of sets but is generally preferable to the measly 25 minute shows common at UK festivals. Not in Ben Ottewell's case, though. As amazing as his voice is to be bellowed at with up close, there's nowhere near enough in just him and an acoustic guitar to hold interest for so long. Especially when he insists on playing as many Gomez B-sides as A-sides. A cover of Nick Drake's "Black Eyed Dog" works very well though (what is it about that song? I've seen JJ72 and South play it too...)



Worries about overcrowding in the tiny Usva send us there well before Patrick Wolf's set, giving a chance to check out the preceding act Lo-Fi-Fnk. No expectations there, really, but they turn out to be easily the greatest discovery of the two days. They are three ridiculously young looking Swedish guys who play slightly fey and extremely sugary electropop, and they are FUN. Winningly unwilling to take anything very seriously, a precision and ear for a glossy hook shines through regardless and every time it seems like they might let up another exhuberant beat or riff comes from somewhere. Their set produces wide grins and dancing all round and anyone getting excited about the likes of I Was A Cub Scout at present would do well to have a listen.



Patrick Wolf is initially plagued with tehcnical problems that are a welcome abscence everywhere else at the festival - he starts about 15 minutes late, instruments repeatedly don't work and setting up a microphone at the front of the stage and at his piano is a task beyond the flustered looking guy running around the stage. Though he once looks like losing his temper, Patrick largely takes it in his stride, joking about the difficulty setting up a microphone stand for a 6'4" platform shoes wearer and offering to take requests. The start of his set is ruined beyond rescue though, with a wobbly "Teignmouth" particularly awkward. It's only when he says that he's in a 'retrospective mood' and turns to his laptop that he really gets going.
Highlights: "Tristan" is more of a defiant holler than ever, he brings out unexpected high camp in the normally harrowing "The Childcatcher" and he finishes off with a great run through the title track of his (amazing) new album and a defining "A Boy Like Me". He'll do better sets, but seeing him play so many old songs so close up is a treat unlikely to be repeated.



After that we go to Vera (more like your standard small gig venue than most here) for The Hormonauts. They're Italian rockabillies whose set is not particularly impressive but includes a song that rips off "Bang Bang You're Dead" by Dirty Pretty Things so blatantly that it's admirable for its gall if nothing else.

To finish, cancellations and rearrangements allow us to take in a second set of the night from Lo-Fi-Fnk. It's still fun, although not nearly as revelatory as the first, not least because they have the distinct air of being up well past their bedtime... us too.




The second day (when we saw a few more bands than on the first!) to come very soon.

Some people wait a lifetime for.... Chartsengrafs

See what I did there?
Anyway, time to review the burning wreckage of the UK's singles charts. Well, really, the switch to allowing all downloads to chart at any time was a sensible and inevitable one, and within a couple of years will give us a perfectly good download based chart. Only problem is that while physical singles overall sell much worse than downloads, newly released big singles are still mostly sold on old fashioned CDs (or vinyl, or DVD, or... cassette? Perhaps not). This means that unless you follow the release dates very closely, lots of singles are going to start having big jumps for no apparent reason. At least last year's one week in advance rule made things easier to follow.



Sunday gone: Leona Lewis just about manages to hold off Eric Prydz (less than 100 copies in it, apparently) for a fourth week at number 1 with "A Moment Like This". At this point the only explanation I can come up with for such dreck still being foisted on X Factor winners is that Cowell and co. actually make more money by them having a massive first single and then a career that's over by June in order to better clear the way for next year's chump.
3 and 4 are new entries on downloads only, so pretty much readying themselves to fight for next week's number one are Mika and Just Jack, both highly placed in the BBC's early year survey of music biz types to find the next big thing. The former's song, you'll notice, all but announces him as Freddie Mercury redux, such is the conviction that this is all that we should want. "Too Little Too Late" surprisingly isn't for Jojo at 6.
The View's "Same Jeans" (previously a number one for Cornershop nine years ago) enters at 11 just ahead of full release, Freemasons get a 12 with the help of some actual CDs and Klaxons get a very early 16 for "Golden Skans", which is probably going to be rather big. It's worth mentioning at this point that my previous unimpressed stance on them has been overturned, not so much by this song as by belatedly seeing the fantastic video to "Magick". The response was something along the lines of 'oh, now I get what they're doing'. Amy Winehouse just about manages to get her new single ahead of "Rehab", at 18 to its 20. It's working out well, anyway, because her album hits the top of the (otherwise uninteresting) album chart for the first time.
"Chasing Cars" is back out of the top twenty again but still ahead of The Ordinary Boys' "I Luv U". I would like to say something about that one and it's video, but really, where the hell to start? The Automatic's rerelease of "Raoul" (hey, it's better than Lostprophets) gets to a measly 30, with the small consolation that it does at least place ahead of the six month old "Monster". Just. Evanescence are at 32, Jarvis is at 36, Jamie T at 40 (but sure to climb next time) and The Cooper Temple Clause are 41 and unlikely to ever see any higher again.
That's your lot for this week. Finished. Done.

Oh, alright then, the much reported big news of this week's chart is that of Koopa, who at 31 are the first unsinged act ever in the top 40. As long as we're ignoring, you know, Marillion, SimplyRed.com, Sway having managed the same thing a year ago, that type of thing. Which we are, since they didn't make it through revolutionary chart changes that reflect the changing ways in bla bla bla. This is their single, and they've, uh oh, decided to use it to make a statement about the music scene. Its chorus goes 'this is what real music sounds like'. Click at your own risk, because if I have to cover a more disheartening single this year I'll be kind of surprised.

Sunday coming: Mika is going to be number one, though his single isn't out til 29/01 so under previous rules he wouldn't even be allowed in yet. There'll be some more news stories about that, no doubt.
Just Jack just behind, followed by The View lining up to be this year's Kooks.
Other new or rising songs by:
JoJo
Ordinary Boys
Klaxons
Jamie T
The Good, The Bad And The Queen
Guillemots
Akon with Snoop Dogg
The Gossip

Haha

via Popjustice. It's difficult to grasp how anyone could have the necessary skills and time to create this and put it up on YouTube and yet...

Chartsengrafs - I just need time

Sunday gone: Take That never really looked in doubt and indeed sell a lot more than your average number 1 with their not-that-exciting-but-at-least-it-isn't-Westlife-or-Akon "Patience". Didn't that Akon song come out months ago anyway? The Jukebox has confused me, probably. Not even charity can put Emma Bunton ahead of it, anyway.
Girls Aloud pop back into the top ten with their most successful single for a fair while - contrast this with Sugababes' similarly Greatest Hits trailing "Easy" which came out later and is already down to thirty. They're never going to quite make anything better than "Overload", are they?
Nelly Furtado ft. Chris Martin is at 13 on downloads; Red Hot Chili Peppers are 16 with a song even they looked bored with on TOTP2 (to any confused onlookers who thought that TOTP had ended - you're right to be confused); The Feeling's craftily timed "Love It When You Call" (it probably got more airtime on Children In Need than the official single) can only make 18 but will be selling albums aplenty, and Booty Luv are 19.
Outside the top twenty we have Lemar at 21, Faithless ft. the guy from Kubb at 26 (you can see the mistake there), Pink's mystifying run of recent success ending with a 27, Chamillionaire at 35 (insert Weird Al reference here) and The Feeling's previous single back in the top 40. This will probably annoy someone.

Speaking of which, over in the albums it's THE SAD WEEK THAT REAL MUSIC DIED as Westlife have the temerity to sell more of their bunch of newly recorded covers than Oasis' rather miserly greatest hits package and that good, but... Beatles thing. Oh, and U2. Well done to Vernon Kay, contributors to The Void et al for somehow managing to make a Westlife number one seem the preferable outcome here.

Sunday coming: Take That will take up residence at the top of the singles chart, and look set to do much the same in the albums. Comparisons of sales to Rudebox are going to be fun.
Akon and Eminem similarly set up stall at 2, with Booty Luv the highest new-ish entry. Nelly Furtado is going to get a third top five hit of a very successful year - here's the aforementioned Chris Martin version if anyone's interested. Try to ignore the 'video'. Muse's "Knights Of Cydonia" should finally get a top ten place to go with its awesome and slightly Firefly-esque video. And, shit, I left it off my singles of the year ballot. Barefacts favourites The Fratellis will be alongside them, The Killers a bit lower. Other info seems unusually sparse, except that, if it wasn't too long before release to be allowed, Chris Cornell's James Bond theme would be top ten on downloads. Yikes.

Well let's look at our other prospective album chart entries instead, then.
Hmm. Il Divo? G4? Katie Price and Peter Andre??? Ok, that was a mistake.

We just danced, danced, danced to the midnight trance

It's been a while, hasn't it? Apologies, and regular service will soon resume, or at least as close to that as exams allow.
Anyway, just to prove that I haven't been completely idle, here's a little something I wrote about one of my favourite Super Furry Animals songs.

'a quick whiff of “creepy stalker” in the air'

Stylus Singles Jukebox! This week mine are all there except Kashia Chante's dated but excellently constructed "Been Gone" [7], Depeche Mode's dated but likable "Martyr" [6] and Roxette's dated but ignorable "One Wish" [5].

Chartsengrafs - A razor that leaves your soul to bleed

Sunday gone: Fedde Le Grand and Bodyrox make it a pretty rare dance 1-2 at the top. The former actually sold worse than it did last week, but had the way cleared nicely by McFly's plummet from 1-9. If it wasn't for last year's limited Elvis reissues they might be on their way to some kind of record there.
Girls Aloud just miss out on climbing a place but Beyonce doesn't, taking "Irreplaceable" to 4. It's also now five weeks in the top 5 for supposedly cult concern My Chemical Romance. U2 and Green Day take 6 on downloads with their greatest hits promoter/Katrina charity single (wonder what Michael Jackson's will be like? Oh.) and Amy Winehouse says 'no no no' at 7.
All Saints' comeback gets off to a rather promising start with the rather promising "Rock Steady" at 11 on downloads, Simon Webbe is the less edgy Lemar at 12 and Depeche Mode are 13. Amusing Oasis-like sales fact: To the nearest 200, Playing The Angel has sold the same number of copies as Exciter.
Someone apparently still cares about Babyshambles at 17 and Keane's "Nothing In My Way" is 19, one place better than their Mew impression "Crystal Ball" managed. As well as the usual CD, vinyl and download it was made available on a memory stick, something that no one in their right mind sees as the format of the future. Surely.
Outside the top twenty, Damon Albarn takes off where Blur left off in more way than one, with The Good The Bad And The Queen's "Herculean" matching the peak of "Good Song" at 22. Tenacious D are still funny to someone, scoring their best position ever at 24, and Panic! At The Disco's awesome "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" limps in at 25 because it was already a hit, except that it wasn't.
The Game and Klaxons aren't getting anyone too excited at 26 and 29, Sean Paul's career seems to be slipping away from him at 31 and Sugababes get a download entry at 30. Hur, 'download entry'. CSS are in with a bang at, er, 89.

Turns out that Girls Aloud's number 1 album isn't actually anything to do with everyone waiting for the greatest hits, just picking a better week of release than last time. Anyway, hooray! Amy Winehouse is 3, The Who are 9 and Madeleine Peyroux 12. And they all have rounded corners.

Sunday coming: Just last week I was talking about McFly being the new Westlife in chart terms, and now we have the return of the real thing, probably to number one. Oh joy. They have done an online thing where you can insert you name into the video to "The Rose", which is just asking for it really, and Popjustice have duly delivered.
The return of probably the worst group ever makes for an unlikely situation whereby U2 and Green Day's song would be the lesser of two evils even if it wasn't for charity. Let's hope they overtake.
All Saints are going to have to make do with 3; Madonna apparently records music and is heading for 7; Sugababes might only just make it into the top ten but at least they'll beat Mutya and George Michael.
Your other likely new entries this week:
Akon (downloads)
Christina Aguilera (downloads)
Robbie Williams (downloads)
Kasabian (twats)
Infernal
Pigeon Detectives
Taio Cruz

The albums charts is really very close, with McFly managing another plummet from 1 in the first midweeks down to 5 in the space of days. Jamiroquai's greatest hits is currently leading, just ahead of Damien Rice's If I Could Express Seriousness In One Character I Would Call It That. Angelis are apparently also near the top, although it might be that someone missed off a V.

'I know the name of Sailor Moon’s love interest'

I'm back in the Stylus Singles Jukebox this week. Hooray!

All that's missing:
McFly decide to be Train, are never going to make a record as good as "Five Colours In Her Hair" again. [3]
and Sugababes have a rather routine chorus but are good enough elsewhere to compensate. There's a lot of fun just to be had from the absurd innuendos, for a start. [7]

In other news

I've read in numerous places that the darker haired of the two main boys in Sigur Ros' Viðrar Vel Til Loftárása video is actually a girl. Really??

Charts redrawn

The rumoured-for-a-while changes to the official UK singles chart have finally been announced recently. As expected, downloads are going to be counted as soon as they're available, rather than only a week before physical release, as HMV, Virgin et al have at last dropped their objections. Probably because they've all but given up the ghost on the single completely; looking at the measly space alotted to singles in even their flagship stores is pretty depressing.
The new rules don't come into play until January 1st next year, so we stay with the current slight stupid situation for a while, although a new year is a reasonably good time to change.Except that a more unexpected change in the new rules is that there's no need for a single to be specified by anyone (I guess as it would be impractical to enforce?) and with January always a particularly low selling, weird time for the charts anyway all kinds of weird things are going to happen. Expect Oasis to have 5 songs in the top 40, or something.
Anyway, those potential teething troubles aside, this is a very sensible move. If people are buying singles as downloads, that's what should be represented. As long as no one persuades them to go with including airplay, we should have a fine chart for a while yet.

Oh, and 4 track singles (or more, if some are remixes) will be allowed to count for the charts once more! Which is great, but about 4 years too late.

Sound Of(f)

More coming soon, but for now here's a review that I wrote for my university's newspaper. It doesn't say anything new, I guess, but given that I got laughed at by almost everyone when I chose the review it still needed saying:


Girls Aloud
The Sound Of: The Greatest Hits
5/5

The cover to this compilation (group present only as tiny silhouettes, flying tambourine to forefront, terrible font) is so ugly that it’s difficult to believe that it could have been carefully calculated and designed. Maybe that’s the idea because there are still so many people who baulk at manufactured pop, never mind pop manufactured through (yuck) reality TV. Yet in, er, reality, the musical message that’s emerged from Popstars, X Factor et al has been a remarkably bright one. The lasting successes from their ranks (Will Young, Lemar, this lot) have been so because they’ve released great songs. Take the public’s interest for granted and you’ll last a couple of singles at most. (Hi, One True Voice! Hi, Shayne Ward!)
The Drink*’s most famous visitor Cheryl, Nadine, Nicola and… the other ones may account for only a small part of their creation but the songs on this CD still have more musical skill, invention and awesome tunes than all your Fratellis, Kooks and Hollways put together. The futuristic, three choruses in one blitzes of “The Show” and “Biology” are breathtaking, “Love Machine”’s skewed skiffle is still brilliant and their early hits are masterclasses in edgy fun. Zigzag electro bursts make covers “Jump” and “I Think We’re Alone Now” their own and they throw in two great new originals. Even that perennial pop punchbag, the ballad, doesn’t prove a big stumbling block bar the reheated Wonderwall-lite “Life Got Cold”. One bad track in 15 – this is an essential collection.


*local reference here

Songs to Learn and Sing

There are fine goings-on over at Sweeping The Nation this month: each day, a different contributor each day will be writing about one not so well known song that they love. There will, of course, be mp3s too.
It's an excellent idea, and I'm not just saying so because of the choice of first guest...

Chartsengrafs - Detroit, a lovely city

Sunday gone: McFly get their sixth number one (that's twice as many as Busted, you know), with decent 50K+ sales, pushing the massive promotion to fanbase for big first week sales method that everyone else has kind of given up on in the downloads time. In chart terms, they're pretty much the new Westlife, almost guarenteed number one though the chances of anyone new becoming interested are minute. The song at least isn't quite that bad though.
Fedde Le Grand overtakes Girls Aloud since midweeks to take number 2 and leave them with 3 (still best since "I'll Stand By You") and Beyonce is 5 with her unusually quite good ballad "Irreplacable". Amy Winehouse lands a 7 with "Rehab". Which is the score I gave it for this week's Jukebox, incidentally.
Bodyrox (are they meant to be something to do with New Rave? I can't rememeber, not that it means much if Hot Chip are) are 11 on downloads; The View get to 15 for a second time despite being a bit rubbish and having an annoyingly wrong chorus ("it's never been played before and it never will" - never will BE!); The Magic Numbers at 16 seems about right/ Rihanna's late week rally gets her to 17 but, still, ouch; The Kooks are at 20. This is the sixth charting single from your album, please go away now. And preferably don't come back.
The Raconteurs are 22? Third singles from White Stripes albums barely do better. The Long Blondes don't just fail to progress but actually go backwards with "Once And Never Again" only at 30 and it's a shame that all momentum has now pretty much been lost just as they finally bring out their excellent album. Upper Street: reality TV, 'boyband stars' (except for, um, the one not from a boyband), 'combined sales of 50 squillion!', number 36.
It's a bit more of a surprise that The Cooper Temple Clause, whose new single displays a lack of anything much to interest after such a long break, even make it as high as 37.
Oh and one last note: "Chasing Cars" has now left the top twenty!

Albums: Robbie Williams' 150K or so is about half as much as usual for one of his albums but still enough for number one; My Chemical Romance, Meat Loaf and Rod Stewart line up behind him.




Sunday coming: McFly are set to suffer the expected plummet, but there's nothing new and big enough to replace them. So, Fedde Le Grand will climb to number 1 while Girls Aloud and Bodyrox fight it out for 2. Keane are somehow heading top 10, along with Depeche Mode, who have now reached the stage of their career where they release as many Greatest Hits albums as new ones.
The Good The Bad And The Queen might just about make the top twenty, Simon Webbe definitely will and so will Panic! At The Disco's rereleased massive-hit-except-it-technically-wasn't "I Write Sins, Not Tragedies"
Your other new entries will be:
Jamiroquai!
Klaxons!
Tenacious D!!
Moby!!!
The Game!!!!
Christina Aguilera (downloads)
Sugababes (ditto)
and Sean Paul.

In the albums The Who and Madeleine Peyrouzzzzzz are heading top ten, Amy Winehouse top
three and the occasional "oh, I'll wait for the Greatest Hits" boost to pop groups strikes again as Girls Aloud are heading for the first number 1 album.

Compare and contrast

Girls Aloud - "I Think We're Alone Now" (mp3 on POPtastic!), from their new Greatest Hits with incredibly shoddy cover.
The Pipettes - "I Think We're Alone Now" (mp3 on Girlpants) from earlier this year.

Not bad for a list

Drowned in Sound's Top 66 albums since 2000, the year that they begun (and I can remember almost that far back, when they let any loser write for them...)

It's interesting anyway, but most complaints about it are pretty much overridden by the choice of Vespertine as number one, just as I'm wishing that I hadn't taken so long to discover it - beautiful and sensual and everything that Kid A and Amnesiac weren't quite plus more besides.

Anyone else annoyed at missing Guillemots yesterday?

You can watch their set with BBC Concert Orchestra here at least. Lots of other Electric Proms things available here, including the whole set (and so whole new album) of Damon Albarn's new band. I was actually at that one, so more soon.
On the Guillemots one, if you only have time for one song it's worth skipping to 15 minutes in for "Bad Boyfriend". Words fail me.

Chartsengrafs - I fell in love with Uranus

Sunday gone: My Chemical Romance make it two weeks at 1 without much difficulty. Bob Sinclar continues his determined climb, making it as far as 3, Girls Aloud pull a 5 on downloads out of nowhere, leaving me briefly wondering if they were going to actually fall down the chart on physical release. That's already better than any single off Chemistry and "Wake Me Up", for those noting similarities.
Meat Loaf (if only he started singing about his own songs, we could have Meta Loaf) suffers the inevitable late week fall but still lands at 6, his best since ten years ago. Everyhit tells me that one of his hits went by the over-lengthy title "Objects In The Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are" which links him nicely to our current number one single's genre as well as to our current number one album and its soundalike single. James Morrison single reaches 8, still sounds like KT Tunstall knockoff. The Ordinary Boys are pushing their reality TV fame for all it's worth at 10 - their new album includes not only their rereleased Lady Sovereign remix but also "Boys Will Be Boys", i.e. the lead single from their last album.
Jamie T is 13, just ahead of Beyonce's downloads. Amy Winehouse makes the top twenty with hers, too.
Pet Shop Boys suffer a non-top twenty place for the time since "Was It Worth It?" as "Numb" only makes 23 - should have stopped at two singles like last time, I guess. The Holloways are at 30. I guess even Fratellis fans have to draw the line somewhere. Rogue Traders (33, full, oops) and Cassie (38, downloads) round out the new entries in the forty.

The albums has one last hella boring week, with The Killers still at 1.




Sunday coming: McFly, who obviously have some kind of aversion to downloads, have enough fans left who haven't defected to Panic! At The Disco to take them to number 1 again. Girls Aloud look likely for their fifth 2 although Fedde Le Grand might push them close. Beyonce will have to settle for 5 and I take back what I said about Fratellis fans earlier as The View are heading top 10.
Amy Winehouse isn't doing much on physical sales and will only be up a couple from last week (this week? whatever), while The Magic Numbers might be a little disappointed with their fortunes too. Serves them right for ruining Jonathon Ross' Japanorama. The Long Blondes aren't going to be stars after all, even now they have finally got really good, while The Kooks have finally released one dull single too many to get any higher than 20 or so. The Raconteurs and a rather folorn looking Rihanna should also get top forty places.

The album chart looked like finally being a close run thing this week, but Meat Loaf's good sales and My Chemical Romance's very fine sales (more than 100K by the end of the week for sure) are no match for Robbie Williams, even a Robbie Williams who doesn't appear to know what he's doing any longer. Rod Stewart and John Legend are also going to clutter up the top and an outside top ten place doesn't look good for the aforementioned Ordinary Boys album.

Bloc Party - A Weekend In The City

Details just coming out about this one - it's out on 5th February next year, so just about sooner than two years after Silent Alarm, and has a tracklisting a bit (or a lot) like this:

• Song For Clay (Disappear Here)
• Hunting For Witches
• Waiting For the 7.18
• The Prayer
• Uniform
• On
• Where Is Home?
• Kreuzberg
• I Still Remember
• Sunday
• SRXT

"The Prayer" is the single and it's apparently all about life in the city.

Chartsengrafs - More than any laws allow

Sunday gone: Ladies and gentlemen, behold your new number one single:

Hooray! Almost exactly a year on from "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor" and My Chemical Romance's preposterous, brilliant "Welcome To The Black Parade" is the first time since that a song's ability to actually get to number one has come as such a pleasant surprise - they're not on an indie label and have reams of press coverage of course, but still. A look at the airplay chart shows that they've achieved it with less radio play than the last Kooks single is still getting, incedentally. Razorlight and Scissor Sisters are 2 and 3, Bob Sinclar and P Diddy swap round to be 4 and 5 and the next biggest new entry is Beatfreakz at 7, who ignored demands to withdraw the single because of their rip-off of the Superman logo.
Laid back? James Morrison and Corinne Bailey Rae will give you laid back at 20 on downloads and 32 on physcials; the smell of repetition really is on Hot Chip as "Over And Over"'s rerelease reaches 27; Placebo and Alison Mosshart are S-E-X-I-N-G at 35; like a monkey with a miniature cymbal (but don't ask how) The Ordinary Boys poke casio at 36 and Badly Drawn Boy has started thinking about what he has to do to get anyone to like him again at 38.
Goo Goo Dolls and Meat Loaf lurk outside the top forty on downloads and Blazin' Squad (remember them?) are 54.

In the albums it's much the same as last week with The Killers at number one and only Trivium entering the top 10 (at 7). Most notable lower down is Sting's lute album at 24, which according to Metro is "rubbing shoulders with the likes of Razorlight and Scissor Sisters". Well, apart from the twenty place difference.




Sunday coming: Week 2 at number one is to come for our emo overlords, probably selling more than last weeks 33,000. Biggest new entry will be Meat Loaf and Marion Raven at 5 or so and James Morrison and The Ordinary Boys are likely to follow them into the top 10. Pet Shop Boys look set to keep their almost 100% top 20 record with "Numb". Jamie T is heading top 20 too - really?
Lower down, The Rifles might just make the top 40, Goo Goo Dolls releasing thier new single as a double A side with their Ronan Keating cover "Iris" will only be enough to scrape in, and The Holloways continue to bring N7 into disrepute.
Next week there will be a much needed clearout near the top as we have a whole lot of download entries coming this Sunday: The Kooks, Rihanna, Cassie, Girls Aloud, Beyonce and, topping the lot in unlikely fashion, Amy Winehouse. Well, she'll get a nice new platform to slag people off from. Should be fun.

In the albums nothing comes close to threatening The Killers, with Badly Drawn Boy and P Diddy heading for middling entries.

'Not bad for a 30-second wrestler's intro piece'

Stylus Singles Jukebox returns! Your bonus thoughts:

Papa Roach go vaguely emo to catchy but still rubbish effect [3]
Akon turns out his worst song yet and Eminem decides to show up for some reason [4]
and I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness are called I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness. And have a lovely dreamy song that sounds a bit like The Cure, possibly. [7]

The Knife at Kentish Town Forum (14/10/06)

This isn't much like ordinary gigs. Aside from occasionally playing kettle drums with fluorescent orange sticks, it's difficult to work out what Olof Dreijer is actually doing for much of the time, and with his sister Karin, the only other onstage, only singing it's clearly not about reproducing their records live. Both are, of course, wearing balaclavas and orange facepaint, often then only part visible in the shadows.

I didn't see their show earlier this year at the Scala but its difficult to imagine how much of the show would have worked on a smaller stage - the size of the many, brilliant projections and, in fact, a certain distance from the audience being key factors in the experience tonight. After a couple of songs of elaborate images on the big screen behind them, all of a sudden a thick white line is drawn on the screen and simultaneously appears in the air in front of the stage. It's only after a few more lines are drawn that it becomes clear that they are in fact playing behind a second, translucent screen. It's a great trick but works beyond the intial "what is that?" factor; the impression that they are caged and that Karin is singing through a barrier matches up with the strained, distorted nature of many of the Silent Shout vocals. Aside from the likes of "Forest Families", though, it's the danciest ones which work best - their first album's "Kino", where artwork is abandoned for manically flashing lights, sounds fantastic. "Heartbeats" is actually slightly, strangely, underwhelming. It's played in a different, barer form that loses most of its bounce, though it would be difficult to really fuck up a song as great as that.

More extra tricks, like distorted faces either side of the main screen, are gradually revealed and the length of time they wait before using their surround sound makes it all the more startling when things start happening directly overhead too. It's hard not to admire such a well put together show, and it's only very occasionally that it feels cold or distant. A shame there's no "One Hit", though...

Born In Great Britain

So I've acquired both these two albums recently (the latter particularly for review purposes only) and was giving them a first listen when something jumped out. Born In The U.K., after its brief talky intro, starts for real with a blast of the first few notes of "Land Of Hope And Glory". And So This Is Great Britain? starts with... yes, a blast of the first few notes of "Land Of Hope And Glory". And they come out within a week of each other. It would be hilarious even if it wasn't kind of a lame idea for either one of them to begin with.

Chartsengrafs - The saviour of the broken, the beaten and the damned

Sunday gone: Scissor Sisters are gone (well, to 2/3 in singles/albums), swept aside by a wave of stadium rock. Yes, The Killers take the album top spot with almost as enormous numbers as Ta Dah did, and Razorlight really are singles number one single with "America". I could at least say ha, they barely sold 30,000 but that's kind of normal now I suppose. Sigh. This brings nu-Britpop/haircut indie (someone had better give this a proper name before it's done) to a total number one tally of three, so it's basically only its own Oasis short of equalling Britpop's.
Scott Mills David Hasselhoff gets a number 3 single - imagine if they did charts for 'hilarious' photoshopped emails! - and P Diddy, Nicole Scherzinger, Bob Sinclar and Cutee B squeeze into 4 and 5.
Snow Patrol go up a place once again to 16 and it doesn't look like "Set The Fire To The Third Bar" will get much a look in on release at this rate.
My Chemical Romance are 23 on downloads and Bedouin Soundclash stall at 24 on full release. I've never come across Nerina Pallot's "Sophia" but it's at 32, and Trivium squeeze just into the top forty for the first time with "Anthem (We Are The Fire)", which sounds horrifying. The usual download effects manage to get previous singles by Lily Allen, Razorlight and Paolo Nutini all into the top forty, and what use that is to anyone I'm not sure.

Sunday coming: Well, it's a bit late in the week for this to be worth much, but essentially you're looking at the same as last week. Except... last I heard My Chemical Romance were only 400 sales behind Razorlight. Now there's something to root for! Unless you're of the opinion that they're just as bad, in which case you're wrong. Very wrong.

This isn't because I'm not in it

The BT Digital Music Awards list of top 50 blogs makes for interesting reading, if largely in the bad sense that their definition of a blog seems to be anyone who fancied being one:

1. Some guy on The Streets' website - Just about is, though it requires navigation of a ton of Flash to get there and find out
2. Mew's website journal - Well, barely. Weren't these UK awards anyway?
3. David Gilmour - ??? Disappointingly it turns out to be by 'features editor'
4. a James Blunt forum - This is really just getting silly
5. Styleslut - hooray! A non band site blog, on blogger and everything, and we're only at number 5. Quite a funny one too.

You know, I might just review the lot next.

Amusing referral search of the week

"the long blondes can't sing"

Chartsengrafs - Nothing on the radio that means that much to me

Your last Chartsengrafs was absent due to a week's silence in commemoration of The Bluetones' "My Neighbour's House" reaching 68 and becoming their first ever proper single to miss the top 40. Aww. Joking aside, not that much happened at the top that week anyway with continued Scissor Sisters dominance, The Killers at 2 and not a lot else. On to normal, only slightly outdated business...



Sunday gone: Scissor Sisters stay on top of both singles and albums, making it four and two weeks respectively now. Lil' Chris achieves a number 3, which I certainly didn't see coming. Reckon anyone from Ice T's Rap School will manage as much? Evanescence at 4 comes as just slightly less of a shock, though seems no less incongruous these days, and Lily Allen only reaches 6 as everyone goes and buys the album instead. No such problem for Pussycat Dolls (7), who appear guarenteed a top ten place for every single track off theirs at this rate. What is this High School Musical thing at 9? I had never heard of it before seeing the chart although I now discover it's a fairly big deal. I must be too old. Shakira is still in the top 10.
Razorlight go 15 on downloads. 15. On downloads. Snow Patrol are at 17 so, er, haven't been deleted after all (well, not that the question was whether Snow Patrol themselves would be deleted anyway, obviously) and Paolo Nutini at 20 would be a failure if it wasn't for the fact that his album is back into the top ten. Its TV advert resorts to quotes from 'The Metro' and The Sun for positive coverage.
Bob Sinclar seems everpresent this year and is now 21 with one Cutee B and some downloads. The combined forces of P Diddy And The Singing One Out Of Pussycat Dolls are just about enough to see off James Dean Bradfield for 30, even on downloads. Dirty Pretty Things (34), LeToya (35) and US5 (38, Top ten for the single! Top ten for the album!) bring up the rear.
Well, apart from the lower down still, particularly full of big names this week. Not so much for The Pipettes (46, doing the "Bastardo" video but not as well) but for Bryian McFadden AND LeAnn Rimes, who are 48 on full release. He's had a nervous breakdown as a result, apparently. And for Simply Red at 57 missing the top forty for the first time in who knows how long.





Sunday coming: What the fuck, Britain? I saw Razorlight supporting Hope Of The States (heh) almost exactly three years ago and thought that they were a decent, if unoriginal band who put on a good show but weren't going anywhere much. They went on to release a decent, if unoriginal first album and eventually managed to go somewhere, seemingly by force of talking themselves up alone. Since then, though, they have become more pompous and useless by the day. Much, much more pompous and useless, in the case of "America" which is, of course, probably going to be number one. Makes The Killers sweeping aside all others in the album chart look all the brighter a prospect in comparison.
Other singles chart action will involve P Diddy (I thought he wasn't allowed to call himself that here?) and Bob Sinclar charging the top 10, David Hasselhoff and My Chemical Romance's downloads storming the top 20 and Bedouin Soundclash bumping into the top 30.
In the albums Evanescence are heading for 2 but the more interesting news is Beck managing to get himself banned completely, Ikara Colt style, by giving away a 'free gift' with the album. Is that an acknowledgement that stickers to make your own cover art with are way cooler than bonus DVDs or any of the things which are allowed? Anyway, here's my attempt.

More from your all Guillemots, all London news service

Found out from teletext today: There's a series of acoustic gigs (called the Little Noise Sessions) by fairly big names next month. They're going to be at the Union Chapel in Islington, a quite popular venue which ran into trouble last year but is now back to strength. Ticket prices are a little steep but that's because it's for charity. And among some slightly dodgy lineup choices (well, Jo Whiley is involved...) there are some who should make for excellent gigs. Although I wish Bat For Lashes and Jamie T were swapped.

20/11: The Kooks, Plan B, Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly
21/11: Paolo Nutini, M Craft
22/11: Guillemots, Mystery Jets, Jamie T
23/11: The Fratellis, The View, Mohair
24/11: Mika, Bat For Lashes
27/11: James Morrison, Lily Allen

Oh, and Guillemots are playing Brixton Academy in February too, which is going to be weird. I didn't think that they were doing quite that well yet.

It's name sounds a bit like a DS game or something

Scissor Sisters' Ta Dah and The Killers' Sam's Town are big selling albums. The first sold 288,000 or so copies in its first week and the latter is heading for roughly the same.
And among a few other things they have in common, they both come in the same really weird cases. A bit of searching and internet help and I find out that these are Super Jewel Boxes!! They're not really new, because I have a My Computer album from 2002 with the same design (though slightly smaller hinge bits) but they definitely haven't got quite such a massive push before. I can't really see much advantage (yeah, you can have writing on the other two spines, but who ever looks at those anyway?? And I won't be able to replace broken bits with jewel cases from free CDs anymore. At least til those all change over too) but I guess it's the future.

New U2 best of

What is the point? Surely only a matter of time before they release two best ofs in a row and desist with the bother of actual new albums now.

More pleasingly, Brakes have finished their second album, The Beatific Visions, and will be releasing it next month (Nov 6th to be precise). They describe it as '28.9 minutes of literate country-punk'.
And it includes "Porcupine Or Pineapple"!

'Oh, the waves of cheap keytar'

...and somehow it's already a week later and here's another Jukebox. Oops. I can't even offer you anything in the way of bonus thoughts, beyond how enjoyable Shana Tesh's utterly disposable "Boum Boum Boum" is. [7]

'Synthesized farting'

This week the Stylus Singles Jukebox is named after one of my words. What an honour! A shame that no one else loved the Katerine single in question.

Not included:
Orange Range are ridiculous fun [7] and The Blood Arm sound a lot like Franz Ferdinand, but not as good [4].

First impressions: Fopp crop

My ultra hipster recent purchases at Fopp (a few pounds each = yay):



Clap Your Hands Say Yeah was something that I expected to strongly like or dislike, with that voice (preferably the latter, obviously, and I rather loved "Is This Love?") but it seems to be stuck in the middle for the moment. Apart from the horrible first track.

The Knife and Hot Chip albums are both kind of weird to listen to because they took such massive steps away from them for this year's breakthroughs - there is a bit of a sense of "is this really the same band?". Though the Hot Chip one, despite the "how the hell does Stevie Wonder see things?" and "blazin' out Yo La Tengo-ay-ay" bits is actually a lot less amateurish and jokey than I imagined. I'm warming to it rather fast, "Crap Kraft Dinner" and "Baby Said" especially.
The total lack of sinister on Deep Cuts is proving more difficult to adjust to. Even when Karin Dreijer's voice gets shifted and she's talking about shooting you in the face it still sounds way friendlier than Silent Shout. Still, even if I don't end up liking the rest it was worth it to have a proper version of "Heartbeats". Yum.

And the Britney one is interesting... the large handful of mainly recent songs that I bought it for are great ("I'm A Slave 4 U" is way better than I remembered and "Everytime" is easily my favourite pop ballad ever, not that that takes much as I still don't get many of them), but I actually find it impossible to listen to "...Baby One More Time" and "Oops" I Did It Again" and still haven't got through without skipping them. Far worse songs ("I'm Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman", anyone?) have no such effect and are just kind of fascinating in their hopelessness. I guess through total overexposure (and past ideology?) I've built up some kind of instinctive repulsion as far as the megahits go. Perhaps I'll return to this with a better thought out reasoning soon.

Bonus link: All the versions of "Heartbeats" you could ever want!

New Patrick Wolf video!!

It's rather fuzzy for now, but still deserving of at least two exclamation marks.

"Accident And Emergency yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy":


Proper popstardom only a matter of time now or what?

Chartsengrafs - Doesn't look a thing like Jesus

Sunday just gone: Scissor Sisters still receiving blanket coverage, still outselling everyone else very comfortably indeed. Fergie's highest 'new' entry ends up at 3, matching "Pump It", "Don't Phunk With My Heart" and, yes, "My Humps". The Killers are all the way up to 5 on downloads and probably expecting number one next week, and the other top tewn entry is a rather disappointing 10 for Jamelia. Meanwhile Snow Patrol drop to 8 but are about to be unceremoniously removed anyway, thanks to Polydor not being bothered to send out a few physical copies of the single anymore as it's mainly selling on downloads anyway. Rightfully long term top 10 singles disappearing thanks to this rule has happened a lot this summer ("Crazy" and "Maneater" for two) but it's not going to next year. More on rule changes in a forthcoming post...
It's a slightly bare week high up as the next new entry is for Daniel O'Donnell at 21. His last hit single ("You Raise Me Up" - presumably that one) was three years ago and reached 22, so he's nothing if not consistent. He's two places ahead of Lostprophets (whose staying power, if nothing else, is impressive - remember Hundred Reasons, anyone?) and they're two more ahead of Lupe Fiasco. Embrace see an end of week collapse take them to a rather lowly 29 - this album hasn't sold that well even after being repackaged with their world cup song, has it? Maybe something to do with being rubbish. Cherish ft. Sean Paul at 30 appears not to be on downloads; Larrikin Love (32), Guillemots (36) and Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly (38) all definitely aren't. But they've beaten Katie Melua (41)! With a new song! Oh and thanks to some kind of advert (look at my research skills there) Bedouin Soundclash are up to 40 on downloads even though the single isn't released for several weeks more - it's allowed because there are still physical copies hanging around from the last time it was released, I think.

In the albums it's an all new top three with Justin Timberlake, The Fratellis and Lemar. The
Feeling continue to take hold in the top 10 with Muse and, worryingly, The Kooks and Razorlight lurking just outside again.




Sunday coming: The UK really loves Scissor Sisters, enough for them to be set to hold off The Killers' full release of "When We Were Young" for a rather surprising third week at number 1. They are, of course, outselling almost everyone else combined in the album chart.
No other top 10 new entries means likely returns for Pink (sure) and Cascada (why?) with Janet Jackson, The Zutons and (ugh) Jet set for the lower reaches of the top 20.
Unsurprisingly Lily Allen, Evanescence and Pussycat Dolls are selling well on downloads ahead of their releases next week. But who would have thought that Lil' Chris would too? Someone more pessimistic, perhaps. The Automatic and (deadly dull) CORD are the final likely new entries.