Let's dispense with the usual bum-flufferies - the London electro-pop trio's third single is far and away the best track around this fortnight. Pourquoi? It could be down to their ever-improving production skills, the same portentous grandiosity gradually building into a typical Gospel popgasm or it could be that singer Beth's voice is becoming more like how you wish Florence Welch would sound if she'd just stop SHOUTING. Comparisons with Fleetwood Mac and The National are a little adventurous but Ain't Gonna Let You In has all the musical luminosity of Purity Ring, London Grammar and Polica rolled into an emotional four-minute roller-coaster of a song that, after two minutes or so, jettisons the sort of killer melody that could stop speeding traffic. Or at least slow it down. As a bonus, they've issued a b-side as well. Cunningly monikered The Other Side, it's as glorious as the lead-off song and will sound rather special when piped through a hefty sound-system, methinks.
HURTS - Some Kind Of Heaven - ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆
I can't decide whether Hurts possess the same bonkers pomposity that earned Visage and Pet Shop Boys so many worthy hits or not. The duo's first few singles were slick, sophisticated blue-eyed pop and enjoyable, the debut album was mostly likeable and the future seemed bright. Then came album two and now this. Some Kind Of Heaven could have been sung by Olly Murs or some Eurovision entrant, possessed as it is with eyes to the sky pop chops and one hand firmly stroking its chin.
STEVE ANGELLO feat MAKO - Children Of The Wild - ½☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
Talking of Eurovision, Angello and Mako (plus some, er, children) provide the next fist-pumping anthem to drink Breezers by. It's not good. The start sounds like a rock ballad by Scorpions or some such lighter-waving hairies, before the whole thing builds and builds and builds without so much as a chorus to wipe its feet with. Four minutes, eleven seconds of my life I'll never get back, Children Of The Wild is by turns a dated aural miasma I never want to hear again because it reminds me of souped-up saloon cars being raced around city streets or, at best, being used to create 'donuts' in DIY store car-parks on a wet Tuesday. It'll sell bucketloads.
MUSE - Reapers - ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
Hands up who remembers classical-rock outfit Sky? They had one major hit, the grandiose Toccata based on a Bach work that oddly seems to be the inspiration behind most of Muse's admittedly impressive career to date. Reapers is exactly what you want from Muse - a ridiculous riff here, flamboyance by the ferry-load and the kitchen-sink lobbed in from the special effects department. Oh and that trademark Bellamy wail. This is six minutes of fret-fuckery that is three minutes too long with way too much noodling, widdling, self-indulgence etc which actually makes preposterously good fun in small doses. The bit where the whole thing gains weight, grows balls and lets off a siren should have been looped for a few minutes instead.
THE GORGEOUS CHANS - Marina and I / By The Highway - ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
The description tropical-pop seriously does my head in. So when another PR company inserts the words 'tropical' and 'indie' in the same paragraph, I feel the urge to crossbow my eyelids to a passing bus. Thankfully the music is better than the genre - The Wave Pictures have proved this, as has AJ Holmes and his Hackney Empire outfit and now come Nottingham's The Gorgeous Chans who have more or less adapted their take on Paul Simon's Graceland blueprint. I prefer By The Highway which sounds far less naive and chirpy than lead track Marina and I. There's some obvious African overtone thing going on but they've reigned it in on the second song. One to watch.
HAELOS - Earth Not Above - ★★★★★★★☆☆☆
And we finish where we started - that all encompassing and admittedly lazy electro-pop tag which applies to the likes of Haelos, a well-intentioned London trio that cites Massive Attack and Portishead as inspirations. I'd add Lamb and Jungle to that list judging by the Gorecki-like strings and old ravers' drumbeats on the lead track which is chilled-out solemnity encapsulated. A little livelier is Cloud Nine which takes its metronomic beat through a soundscape of harmonies and tethered gloom. Ethyr is perhaps the highlight, sounding like the kind of cinematic parlance you might associate with a slow-mo trailer for a particularly downbeat TV cop drama filmed entirely in black and white - it's basically a heavily stringed version of Earth Not Above.