Mar 27 - The Singles
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This week’s most splendid single!
The Streets
When You Wasn’t Famous (679 Recordings)
Man, only Mike Skinner could gloat ‘when you’re a famous boy it gets really easy to get girls,’ then deftly flip the traditional hip-hop tripe we get peddled these days about MCs picking up ladies on its head, and come up with another ‘Geezer’s adventures in Wonderland’ tale about his scrapes and japes in the world of pop. This time our boy’s realised that by dating a famous lady, ‘it feels like when you wasn’t famous’ and you’re back to the drawing board in the love stakes. No-one else but the nation’s favourite underbelly poet (the real one, not that fathead Doherty) could come up with this skittish yarn (set over a bleepy Gorillaz ‘19/2000’ style reggae bounce) have a swift stab at the music industry, let us know what he’s been up to, and still walk away with his Good Lad image reinforced. The original pirate is still on top form.
Nizlopi
Girls (FDM Records)
Etc. feels a bit miserly speaking ill of Nizlopi, who seem nice enough and write heartfelt folksy ballads that should neatly tug at all our emotional strings and make us want to curl up in a duvet. But for some reason, despite all that whimsy (and the cute song about the tractor, or whatever it was, that seemed to whip the nation into a daftly sentimental pre-Christmas frenzy), they leave us colder than cold. This lovelorn number has everything in its right place: slightly catching vocals, subtle strings underscoring everything, ‘don’t you want me baby?’ lyrics…but the result? Well, as meaningless as their name. Sorry lads.
Imperial Vipers
Jewels (Eminence Records)
By God it’s hard to do posturing, all out Rawk well without looking like a muppet, but the Vipers get it pretty much right. Fresh from victory in the last round of the Sun’s battle of the bands, they combine the usual crunchy riffery, inch-perfect headbanging harmonies and leather waistcoats with a sneer of punk spittle that edges them ahead of the rest of the snakepit. They’re a long, long way from the Darkness and not a million miles from AC/DC – worth keeping your eye on, and your bandana handy.
Crosbi
Sonny (Split Records)
Crosbi have picked up on the tragic truth that not nearly enough choppy guitar bands are using racks of conga drums on their tracks these days, and have addressed the situation forthwith by banging the blighters good and proper underneath this anthemic gem. Good. All the good bits of Liverpool’s curious musical influence are here, from the thick burr of the vocals to the slightly unpredictable melodic twists, but best of all they’ve got a distinctive sound, bold and muzzy and charged with imagination, that makes them sound fresh and pretty bloody exciting.
Guillemots
We’re Here (Polydor / Fantastic Plastic Records)
Speaking of exciting, meet the Guillemots. They’re from all over the place (Birmingham, Canada, Brazil and the Scottish Highlands), have a singer with the ace/quaint name Fyfe Dangerfield, and are busily carving out a niche for themselves somewhere in the magical cave of kookydelicious music. ‘We’re here’ is a gloriously symphonic meditation on our place in the universe – no, come back – packed with rolling strings and rhythms and a slanted lyrical view (‘the world is our dancefloor now / remind me how to dance again’) that’s a delight – somewhere between a disco-d up 50s weepy soundtrack and Mercury Rev, whispered over by a romantic poet with a voice to make Snow Patrol bang their heads and go ‘D’oh!’. Irresistible, surely.
Editors
All Sparks (Kitchenware Records)
Editors are so far down the road to world domination now that it really wouldn’t matter if this single was a cover of the Fast Food Rockers, their progress would still be as unstoppable as a glacier. As it is, ‘All Sparks’ carves on through the hellish post-Blunt landscape, hurling jagged, eerily metallic licks and cover-your-head-in-a-black-bag-and-breathe-dark-threats-in-your-ear vocals at all and sundry. And yet for all the chilly desolation of their sound, there’s still something strangely beautiful about Editors’ music, making the glacial comparisons seem all the more appropriate. Be grateful for them.
The Energies
Beyond the End (Hypertelic Records)
According to Nick Nicola (for he is The Energies), who lives alone in a log cabin with his collection of 70s sci-fi, this song is about ‘the paradox of the physical closeness of people in the city and this absence of community, or emotional closeness, and then a wider reflection on life itself.’ According to team etc., who live here and now and have had just about enough of this retro nonsense, this song should have stayed in the cabin buried under the entire series of Blake’s Seven DVDs where its cod-psychology babble and slushy strumming wouldn’t have disturbed anyone. Chase back to the woods with flaming iPods, children of the digital age.
Six Nation State
Keep Dancing
Ox
Broken Silver (Worst Case Scenario Records)
It’s a leap, but imagine Sons & Daughters fronted by Editor’s songmaster Tom Smith, with a little of the mad gypsy knees up purveyed by Gogol Bordello, and you’re approaching the infectious racket of Six Nation State. Their distorted yelping is a joyous thing, especially as they seem to like doing it so much.
Ox, on the same Worst Case Scenario records release, could never be accused of enjoying themselves, but the saw-edged balladeering of ‘Broken Silver’ is engagingly mournful without wallowing in songwriterly misery. This is a fine split single for whichever side of bed you get out of.
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