New singles - God, I wish they weren't (well, some of them).
The Strokes - One Way Trigger - 6/10
Once upon a time when the Casablanca's charges appeared on the scene with their scratchy NY garage-pop, critics almost imbibed their own tonsils at the drop of the band's debut album, "Is This It?". Me, I was too busy avoiding the hype to get excited. And here I am again, some ten-plus years later, still wondering what all the fuss was, and is, about. One Way Trigger sounds like Scissor Sisters on helium (if that's possible) and oddly throwaway. Sure, it's jolly enough - it might even be the forthcoming album's only commercial tune - but to these ears, apart from the tinny jingle-jangle guitar hook, this sounds nothing like a band previously heralded as the future of rock 'n' roll.
Depeche Mode - Heaven - 7/10
The thing with DM's 'first-single-from-a-new-album' syndrome is all-too-often you feel disappointed - and here's another example of that feeling. Imagine Muse doing one of their slow, arse-grindingly histrionic-filled stadium-busting tunes - then remove all of the build-up and all of the epic thunder and you've got Heaven. I've heard it five times and I still don't 'get' it. Much, much better is the b-side All That's Mine, a mid-paced electro throbber in the dark, sleazy mode of the Mode - quite how this wasn't picked ahead of Heaven is a mystery, but hey ho, we've got Heaven as the main contender. Depeche Mode still make better music than most of the trash around today and for that, I can forgive them for a rather big huff and puff of a comeback.
Foals - My Number - 6/10
And so another promising band trawls through its collection of U2 tablatures and signs itself over to sounding like the Irish rock gods. The chiming, spangly guitars and the silly Popcorn-style keyboards still fail to detract from the fact that this isn't actually a song but merely an exercise - an exercise in 'meh'. From the same sparky outfit that issued a truly engaging and exciting album in Antidote some years back, My Number is a cataclysmic descent into softened hipster blather that neither offends or excites - it just 'is'. If disco-rock a la LCD Soundsystem with the rough edges bevelled away is your thing then hurry, hurry - this may be the greatest thing in your life.
Izzi Dunn - Visions - 7/10
A few years back, I reviewed Izzi's Cries and Smiles album for Allgigs (you can read it here), a collection that featured the many facets of the singer-cum-cellist, including her ability to create more than just a mood with an instrument commonly associated with atmosphere and tension. Thank heavens she hasn't swapped her strings for a laptop - Visions is gripping stuff, if a little out of place in today's soulless musical world. There's a live version doing the rounds on You Tube which probably speaks more volumes than the EP version on general release but, if you can remember Carmel from the '80s, with their simple voice-percussion-double bass formula, this lady does the same without the piercing vocals - she's more breathy and soulful. Bring on the album.
London Grammar - Hey Now - 8/10
I know sweet shit-all about London Grammar but I want to know everything after copping an earful of this. Hey Now is the sort of song you crave to wake up to after a heavy night on the brain blitzers, rather than the earshambles you're used to on certain radio-stations I could mention. Someone in this trio (I know that much at least) got a great voice for Christmas, while the other members learnt all about the urban darkness turning into sunlight and a comedown ushering in the start of a new day. This ain't no party, this ain't no disco but this is a marvellous fooling around in an almost religious musical experience. I'm reminded of One Dove, Clannad (stop giggling) and that ambient EP that Billie Ray Martin knocked out on R&S's Apollo nearly twenty years ago. Like, like, love.
Theme Park - Tonight - 5/10
Gah - back to reality and the mid-'80s. Tonight sounds like Level 42, Johnny Hates Jazz, The Real Thing or Heatwave mixed with Foals and I've already had the urge to harpoon a puppy after hearing their lame effort. What have Theme Park given us here? After the fabulous ramshackle funk of Wax and A Mountain We Love and a clutch of so-so singles soon afterwards, we get Tonight - or rather, we don't. It's smooth, it's catchy (like a rash) and it's perfectly suited to sound-tracking a smug drunken ride through Kensington in one of those stretch limos, just before you poke your bare arse out of the window at some poor unsuspecting tramp. Nope, they've lost it. Next.
Mogwai - Les Revenants EP - 8/10
Scotland's dynamic post-rockers need little introduction but if you're new to them, think long and hard about how you would soundtrack a TV series about a remote village overrun by zombies and the recently-deceased or murdered coming back to life with unsettling consequences. I don't know what makes the base of my spine tremor more - the plot or Mogwai's beautiful bowel-trembling music, as heard on this sampler EP from the series of the same name. Wizard Motor is perhaps the most typical 'rock' number, while the rest of the EP is transcendental and as spell-binding and still as a lake that may well have a stack of bodies drowned in it (I've not watched the TV series but I bet there is such a scenario). If you liked Mogwai's Zidane soundtrack, you'll mess your pants over this. And so you should. Top notch.
Muse - Supremacy - 6/10
In which Bellamy (Matt, sadly - not David) has carved another notch on the Freddie Mercury bedpost of theatrical songwriting and rewritten the James Bond theme in the process, turning the whole thing into the sort of tune you'd hear just as Daniel Craig's character gets a sock in the face with a mace by some unruly Japanese Yakuza who has mistaken him for a punchbag. Then shits in his eye-sockets. There's no song here, just our Matt yodelling at the top of his voice like some tortured spaniel with its foot in a gin-trap and the rest of Muse fumbling around for a riff. They find one about halfway through, by which time Mr Bond has been catapulted into a rice field full of piranhas whilst strapped to a pig. Now that's a Bond scene I'd pay good money to see.
Single(s) of the round-up - London Grammar and Mogwai.
The Strokes - One Way Trigger - 6/10
Once upon a time when the Casablanca's charges appeared on the scene with their scratchy NY garage-pop, critics almost imbibed their own tonsils at the drop of the band's debut album, "Is This It?". Me, I was too busy avoiding the hype to get excited. And here I am again, some ten-plus years later, still wondering what all the fuss was, and is, about. One Way Trigger sounds like Scissor Sisters on helium (if that's possible) and oddly throwaway. Sure, it's jolly enough - it might even be the forthcoming album's only commercial tune - but to these ears, apart from the tinny jingle-jangle guitar hook, this sounds nothing like a band previously heralded as the future of rock 'n' roll.
Depeche Mode - Heaven - 7/10
The thing with DM's 'first-single-from-a-new-album' syndrome is all-too-often you feel disappointed - and here's another example of that feeling. Imagine Muse doing one of their slow, arse-grindingly histrionic-filled stadium-busting tunes - then remove all of the build-up and all of the epic thunder and you've got Heaven. I've heard it five times and I still don't 'get' it. Much, much better is the b-side All That's Mine, a mid-paced electro throbber in the dark, sleazy mode of the Mode - quite how this wasn't picked ahead of Heaven is a mystery, but hey ho, we've got Heaven as the main contender. Depeche Mode still make better music than most of the trash around today and for that, I can forgive them for a rather big huff and puff of a comeback.
Foals - My Number - 6/10
And so another promising band trawls through its collection of U2 tablatures and signs itself over to sounding like the Irish rock gods. The chiming, spangly guitars and the silly Popcorn-style keyboards still fail to detract from the fact that this isn't actually a song but merely an exercise - an exercise in 'meh'. From the same sparky outfit that issued a truly engaging and exciting album in Antidote some years back, My Number is a cataclysmic descent into softened hipster blather that neither offends or excites - it just 'is'. If disco-rock a la LCD Soundsystem with the rough edges bevelled away is your thing then hurry, hurry - this may be the greatest thing in your life.
Izzi Dunn - Visions - 7/10
A few years back, I reviewed Izzi's Cries and Smiles album for Allgigs (you can read it here), a collection that featured the many facets of the singer-cum-cellist, including her ability to create more than just a mood with an instrument commonly associated with atmosphere and tension. Thank heavens she hasn't swapped her strings for a laptop - Visions is gripping stuff, if a little out of place in today's soulless musical world. There's a live version doing the rounds on You Tube which probably speaks more volumes than the EP version on general release but, if you can remember Carmel from the '80s, with their simple voice-percussion-double bass formula, this lady does the same without the piercing vocals - she's more breathy and soulful. Bring on the album.
London Grammar - Hey Now - 8/10
Theme Park - Tonight - 5/10
Gah - back to reality and the mid-'80s. Tonight sounds like Level 42, Johnny Hates Jazz, The Real Thing or Heatwave mixed with Foals and I've already had the urge to harpoon a puppy after hearing their lame effort. What have Theme Park given us here? After the fabulous ramshackle funk of Wax and A Mountain We Love and a clutch of so-so singles soon afterwards, we get Tonight - or rather, we don't. It's smooth, it's catchy (like a rash) and it's perfectly suited to sound-tracking a smug drunken ride through Kensington in one of those stretch limos, just before you poke your bare arse out of the window at some poor unsuspecting tramp. Nope, they've lost it. Next.
Mogwai - Les Revenants EP - 8/10
Muse - Supremacy - 6/10
In which Bellamy (Matt, sadly - not David) has carved another notch on the Freddie Mercury bedpost of theatrical songwriting and rewritten the James Bond theme in the process, turning the whole thing into the sort of tune you'd hear just as Daniel Craig's character gets a sock in the face with a mace by some unruly Japanese Yakuza who has mistaken him for a punchbag. Then shits in his eye-sockets. There's no song here, just our Matt yodelling at the top of his voice like some tortured spaniel with its foot in a gin-trap and the rest of Muse fumbling around for a riff. They find one about halfway through, by which time Mr Bond has been catapulted into a rice field full of piranhas whilst strapped to a pig. Now that's a Bond scene I'd pay good money to see.
Single(s) of the round-up - London Grammar and Mogwai.