Naturally, being the Futureheads, writing a song about strolling along in a reversed sort of a way isn't quite enough, that's what a lesser band would do. To really complete the quirk-circle, they have to employ the double-negative, and sing about walking backwards, backwards. Which is just walking. This is an example of how lyrics are different from science. You can sing any old nonsense and it'll sound more meaningful than actual things with real meanings.
"In 2007 brothers Peter and Alex formed 'The Sea', they did it for one reason, FUN! To impress no-one but themselves and never try and chase industry approval or the mythical record contract!"
And yet they have employed a PR company to tell us this. Interesting...
Cascada used to scare the pants off me. They were the sort of noise I'd try and listen to, feel a bit funny and have to turn off because it was so alien and disturbing to my aesthetics; pushy melodies turning generally quite sweet lyrics into aggressive manifestos, with driving eurodance beats and unironic rave horns. Plus those brassy female vocals always scare me a bit.
Not that I'm a music wuss, you understand. I like aggressive electronica, it's one of my first music loves; I adored industrial noise when I was younger and I'm still partial to the occasional excursion into, say, the Hellfish back catalogue. There are a lot of people who like that kind of thing and laud it as a very true form of music that pushes boundaries, as opposed to, say, 'happy hardcore', which they would claim does not.
During the course of this interview, in which KT and I attempt to create a little bit of paradise on Earth, she made the - slightly strange - confession that she was so influenced by the children's classic 'Stig Of The Dump' that at one time she used to take a load of jam jars out into her back garden, ready to make windows out of them.
I am here to tell you that I personally believe that this is a lie. But it's a sweet lie, and it's not a lie about anything which matters in any way whatsoever (unless you are KT's mother, and you're wondering why stocks of lemon curd are forever low), so let's not linger on it.
In fact, you don't really need any more information about this interview whatsoever. Not a smidge. I don't need to explain that it happened last Friday, at the Eden sessions, that only raises more questions than it answers. No, it's best if you just listen to the nice lady talk to the slightly over-excited and breathless bloggerer, and then get on with your life in the best way you can. 'K?
When I was a young lad, and all of this was just trees and fields, my friends and I used to go and see a band called Jonah and the Wail. They were this kind of Misfits-y panto goth rock troupe, and their singer - who was presumably called Jonah - used to caper around the stage dressed in stripy prison pyjamas and looking like the reanimated Frankenstein's monster after a whacking great dose of super-voltage and an intravenous litre of Red Bull. He also had three polka-dotted backing singers, and a guitarist with an amazing quiff.
They used to do a cover of Frank Sinatra's 'New York, New York', and changed the words to make them more depraved (it began, if memory serves, "start spreading your"...erm, actually, let's not go there), and then abandoned bits of the song to do a ramalama punk chorus which was not in the original version at all.
Jonah's little brother Noah does not do any of these things, it's fair to say...
NOTE: Forget the fact that Michael Stipe's head is rapidly filling with water and that this is why there's a slight bluish tinge to his facial features. I say 'slight' out of politeness, for the same reason that you never say someone's massive nose is as big as it really is, or that their teeth are the same size and shape as Bugs Bunny's. It's not nice.
Anyway, forget it. The important thing to realise, before you all go running towards Michael and scrabbling at his ears, is that you need a Captain Hook hook on your hand, if you wish to empty out his cranial fishtank. That's the law.
This is for largely for hygeine reasons, but there's an element of cool to it too.
While I freely admit that is not really the best source of research for, well, anything, I generally make a habit of looking up any band I have to review on there before writing the review, just because sometimes there are some interesting fan-supplied titbits that provide an interesting jumping-off point. And sometimes there are just things in there that amuse me, like when I was doing my background check on Brigade and discovered that they perform in the genre of "post-hardcore". I didn't even know such a thing existed. Sounds brutal, though.
The thing I love best about this lot is people are tying themselves in knots trying to find the right genre word to describe the music that they make. Is it drum 'n' bass? Is it rock? Is it pop? It's the kind of debate YouTube comments were made for, and as soon as someone puts an idea forward as to what kind of music you could say Pendulum is, twelve other people give them the kind of abuse you would normally reserve for the person who has pulled a loved one's head clean off and then spat on the neck stump.
I would like to say that this is the kind of passion that the band create in their rabid fanbase, but it's more about people being Brave Online again...
So much for Sam's reputation - based on the one song, admittedly - for icy cool purr-fect synthpop. This time around he's brought in a slap-bassist with disco chops and upped the tempo, and it seems to have shocked his vocal cords into passionate life. The dark growl is still there, but there's a lot more yelping and swooping and general off-showing. The combined effect is what you'd get if Calvin Harris were 10 years older, a lot more muscley, and less prone to just bang on about what girls he would fancy, if he were not such a young and weedy fella.
Not that we would want to....break him, that is. It was a weird moment in an otherwise laid-back and relaxed interview with Natty, the dreadlocked fella with the nice song about the month of July. A little bit of banter about starting a union for people who do interviews and suddenly you find yourself being accused of having the power to make or break people.
I don't think he meant it though. And just as well.
For the record, the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ would like to make the following points.
1: ChartBlog does not have the power to make people. That requires a man and a lady who love each other very much (possibly on a very temporary basis)...or some friendly scientists and a lady, or God.
2: ChartBlog does not have the power to break people. People are, by and large, extra-ordinarily resilient, and there would need to be some form of industrial crushing device if we were to even stand a chance. The license fee pays for a lot, but it won't stretch that far. We've asked.
I've got to admit to being a total sucker for any creative endeavour which attempts to work out what goes on in God's head. And I don't just mean the comic asides in Family Guy, or the bits in South Park with Jesus in either. There's the comic book Preacher, for starters, that asks a lot of awkward questions about the mythology of religious stories, and contains an Irish vampire and loads of swearing and violence, what's not to love?
Hazel Robinson takes a look at the nominations for this year's Mercury Music Prize, becomes irked, puts fingers to touchpad, stands well back...
==================================
Music prizes have got a bit jokey, lately. From the Brits to the MOBOs to the VMAs to any given music magazine's Poll Winner's Awards, to, well, anything. There seems to be general dissatisfaction with the whole awards process, and a feeling that they've become increasingly irrelevant.
And whether awarded by a panel of muso experts or democratically chosen, it doesn't really seem to make anyone - even the artists - happy.
No matter how much guitar fans harp on about hip hop just being a man talking over a backing tape, it's not like it's massively hard to make indie either. Or at least, certain bands are possibly not trying as hard as perhaps the could. Take this, from a band who are - controversially - one of the big ticket indie-ticians of current times. What does a brief examination of their song's musical structure reveal? Well, it's not exactly complicated, is it? The same four note backbone, repeated for verses AND choruses, with a minor deviation for a middle eight, and even that feels a bit uninspired. It arrives, it gets rowdier, it gets quieter, it gets rowdier again, it leaves.
Das Pop are a Belgian band who are channelling the spirit of classic soulful pop, complete with Motown beat and spiralling disco strings, but who have left all the ridiculous polish off, so their unique qualities and rough edges are still plain for all to hear. It's a ridiculously charming formula, and very nowadays.
*chinstroke*
Their new single 'Underground' is great, on many levels, you can hear it in a minute. It also contains a reference to "the things you learn in Germany", which is the kind of line you can really have a good old wonder about, right?
It's also a line I could not help but ask the band's singer Bent about, in the interview which you will find beneath this bit of writing here.
Some things just aren't broke. Iggy Pop, for instance; it has been scientifically proven that it is impossible to break Iggy Pop using conventional or nuclear weaponry. Or maths, that's pretty much holding out, too. Or, say, the floor; still popular after all this time. Or Kylie singing beautiful, dreamy dance songs, that's definitely still a winner.
It's not that this is the only thing Kylie can do; we also know she can write children's books, wear very short shorts and cop off with Nick Cave. However, there would probably be an argument for saying that even if it isn't the only thing she's capable of being very good at (I liked '2 Hearts', personally) it is perhaps one of the things she's uniquely brilliant at. People like to call popstars like her talentless but I'd love to see Noel Gallagher carry this one off, frankly.
NOTE: OK, so while it is theoretically possible to pull on one end of a dandy's scarf and twist their head around, please don't practise on your style-obsessed mod friends. It will throttle them, and you will end up in prison.
This manouevre should only be attempted by experts, and only if you have lethal intent towards a foppish pop star who also happens to have some kind of dastardly plan to take over the world, or who has begged you - in writing - if you will do it because he can't take the pain of his own genius, or something. 'K?
At the risk of sounding like an old man, it's a brave record company who tries to launch a new girl band these days, with Saturday morning kids' TV shows not really being the fertile marketing ground there used to be, and with Top of the Pops/CD:UK/Popworld all having fallen under the axe. You're rather taking a lot on faith in hoping that any radio station is going to give you airplay, especially in these days when pop is a dirty word (unless it's Scandinavian, in which case it's okay - hey, I don't make the rules, I just report them).
You know when you get a Christmas present, and it's something you really wanted, but somehow, over the course of playing with it a couple of times, it changes from being a fun thing to do to a bit of chore, and winds up on a shelf getting dusty?
Well, in some ways, having a Lyriscope is like that. In theory, attempting to live the reality of the lyrics to a hit song sounds like great fun. In reality, well, those tricky readings are not easy to get. This report, in which we attempt to examine the words to 'Dance Wiv Me' by Dizzee Rascal, has been particularly hard work, so forgive me if I don't linger with the introduction.
I've a guilty confession to make, and it's a bad one. Listening to this song has forced me to confront an unpleasant truth which I didn't even know was hidden away in my psyche, and so I should really begin by saying that if anyone is offended by anything in this review, I apologise. I'm trying to be honest, in the hope it will turn out to be in any way helpful.
Anyway, the truth I mentioned is this: If I didn't aleady know what Natty looks like...in fact, let me be clearer...if I thought Natty looked like a white surf dude - Newton Faulkner or Jack Johnson, for example - I think I would probably like this song less than I do.
1 Dizzee Rascal ft. Calvin Harris - 'Dance Wiv Me'
2: McFly - 'One For THe Radio
3: Kid Rock - 'All Summer Long'
4: Basshunter - 'All I Ever Wanted'
5: Jordin Sparks ft Chris Brown - 'No Air'
Usual rules apply. High five the screen if you approve, slap the faces of the people you don't like if you don't.
It might seem deliberately controversial to say so, like I'm trying to prod Death Cab fans to see if they'll cry, but there are definitely moments in this song where Ben Gibbard sounds just like James Blunt. OK, a James Blunt who doesn't seem to be trying to say the most perfect thing he can possibly think of, to a lady he wants to make sexy with. A James Blunt who can handle a loud, obnoxious guitar or two, and a James Blunt whose songs are like little film scripts, and who isn't afraid to kill off his female romantic lead, if the story demands it. But still...
What with reviewing Annie last week and taking on Ida Maria this week, I'm on the verge of becoming ChartBlog's official Norwegian pop music correspondent. Not that the two really have very much in common beyond their nationality - Annie's music revolves around deceptively sweet bubblegum pop with a sting in the tail, whereas Ida Maria, on the basis of this song at least, is far more about the brash, in your face, quite cheeky rock side of things.
*whispers* Here we are, in the undergrowth, tracking the lesser-smiling indie band. They travel in herds, never more than a shoulder-width apart, and always facing the same way.This makes them easy prey for predators, such as the Rockodile or Hiphopotamus, but it also provides protection for the alpha males, as they allow the lesser members of their herd to be picked off, one by one.
I've often wondered why it is that indie bands just won't smile in photographs - even the pretty ones. Is it a legal matter? A spiritual thing? Are they all just really grumpy people?
So, when the lovely Jess from the Eden Project rang to tell me that I had interview time with Ricky Wilson of the Kaiser Chiefs (they did a concert there, you see), but added that there were to be no pictures taken, it seemed a perfect opportunity to raise some of these very important issues with an expert. And that, dear ChartBloggers, is what I did.
The brilliant thing about 'Umbrella' by Rihanna is that it's a cold, sad song with reassuring, warm lyrics. Rihanna's frosty delivery and the icy synths added drama to the lyric, and left the listener in no doubt that it must be raining cats, dogs and frozen blue whales, and that being offered a space under her umbrella (ella ella ey ey ey) is the most magnificent gesture anyone could ever make towards another human being.
This, on the other hand, is a cold, sad song with cold, sad lyrics. It's still howling it down - the blue whales are now being ridden by sperm whales in crash helmets - and silly old Usher has managed to do something wrong, and finds himself without an umbrella (ella ella ey ey ey) to shelter under. It doesn't look like he's going to be able to convince his special someone to budge over either, so he just wants everyone to know that he's trying...and failing.
Gentle ChartBloggers, today I feel like Gwyneth Paltrow at the Oscars, Madonna at the Rock 'N' Roll Hall Of Fame, Take That at the Brit Awards and Leon Jackson at the X-Factor final last year (but not Leon Jackson at any point before or since).
There aren't that many accolades a blog can receive. If we have an awards ceremony, it is not one which is covered by the paparazzi. If we have Best In Show rosettes, they are only virtual ones, and can be easily deleted. And If there is a blogging chart, it is not one which gets a rundown with Fearne and Reggie on a Sunday night - and even if it did, I'd be fully expecting ChartBlog to be excluded on the grounds that people would think the figures were fiddled no matter what ranking we managed to get.
So, you take your compliments where you find them in this game. And when I find that a national tabloid newspaper has taken the interview I did with Basshunter from last week - the interview about his battle with Tourette's syndrome, in case you missed it - and run it from their website from start to finish, well, I can only glow with pride and dab my drippy eyes with a mulch of tissues.
In my more pompous moments, I have been known to claim that this reviewing lark is all about giving every song the chance to win you over. I have been overheard droning on and on about how you can't settle down to listen to a new song preparing to hate every moment, because that's exactly what will end up happening, and that's unfair, not to mention being a rubbish way to spend your working day. My handy explanation for this has always been "if Westlife ever get around to putting out a song which is not rubbish, I want to be sure I don't miss it", but you could just as easily substitute the name of any artist whose work regularly gets dismissed by reviewers, only to go on and sell in magnificent quantities - Nickelback, Snow Patrol, Mika, James Blunt, and especially this fella.
NOTE: Of all the people you would expect to help out in the prevention of farm-based accidents, cynical ol' Slipknot would probably be among the last, right? The irony being that here's a band who think people equal something I can't say here (but we all do it, and it's perfectly natural by-product of the digestive process), and yet they've taken the time to appear in a public service cartoon like this one (based on the cover of their new album, no less), to illustrate the point that standing in front of a combine harvester is a very very bad idea.
So it's not so much a case of 'Wait And Bleed' as 'Wait And Bleed, Or Leave Quickly And Avoid Bleeding'.
I'm not sure if this still goes on but certainly when I was younger morning telly quite regularly featured ridiculously toned people in terrifying lycra shouting at members of the public to do aerobics. The lycra-wearer would always be incredibly upbeat as they yelled things like "FEEL THE BURN! THAT'S IT, FEEL THE BURN!" in a tone so frighteningly peppy it made the average children's TV presenter look morbidly depressed. This was the kind of traumatic spectacle that burns itself onto your childhood mind and occasionally recurs, like a terrible vision, in your adult life.
We all know McFly are not shy when it comes to taking their clothes off, but is there method to their madness? Have they REALLY thought through every aspect of baring all, or are they just *embarrassedcough* arsing about?
Well, we sent AJ from Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Switch to put a series of questions to the band, in order to, y'know, strip away the gossip, peel back the lies and uncover the truth.
INTERESTING THING: You'd have thought the people responsible for those McFly posters behind the band would have put them a bit lower down, wouldn't you?
You've got to love a song which correctly uses a word like "opaque", haven't you? It's a great word, and you just don't hear it often enough in modern popular song, even though it's clearly a very easy word to sing and does capture a mood rather well.
In fact, if you'll forgive a little meander away from the point for a second (and if you won't, you clearly haven't been here before), budding songwriters should realise that there are a few words like this which could do with being used in songs more often. A word like elegant, melancholy, fractious, thrown in at just the right moment and sung well, can be the making of a song. Remember when Lauren Hill used "reciprocity" in her song 'Ex-Factor', and sent literally several R&B fans scurrying to the nearest dictionary? Well, I do.
1 Dizzee Rascal ft. Calvin Harris - 'Dance Wiv Me'
2: Basshunter - 'All I Ever Wanted'
3: Jordin Sparks ft Chris Brown - 'No Air'
4: Ne-Yo - 'Closer'
5: Ironik - 'Stay With Me'
Usual rules apply. High five the screen if you approve, slap the faces of the people you don't like if you don't. And then put either High Five! or Denied! in the comments box, depending on how you feel.
WARNING! WARNING! Hot women, you do NOT want to go and stay in the hotel in which Primal Scream filmed their new video. There seems to be some kind of leather-gloved murderer there - it's not clear whether he is a guest or the owner, but as nobody seems to be ringing the police, or attempting to leave the building, it's probably safe to say he's managed to get hold of the master set of keys. And now he's chasing all the pretty ladies in the hotel, all of whom are backing away slowly, rather than just pegging it. Which allows him to murderise them using just the contents of a game of Cluedo, rather than anything cinematically boring, but actually useful, such as a weapon of some kind.
The emergence of this single caused me to squeal in a most undignified fashion, because I'd given up all hope of more material from Annie; I'd assumed that she was quite content with the superstar DJ lifestyle and wouldn't be making any more of her own. So the promise of a new single, with a new album to follow, was approximately equivalent to it being Christmas, Tina Fey declaring herself my best friend, and me winning Strictly Come Dancing all at the same time. (I have weird ambitions, it's best not to ask.)
There's not a lot I can add to this interview, except to say it has entirely changed my opinion of the man doing the talking.
It's with Jonas Altberg, the hell-raising dance-monster we all know as Basshunter, and it's about how he overcame the debilitating effects of Tourette's Syndrome, and took control of his life to such an astonishing degree that people in a similar situation now come to him for tips.
So, this is the third time One Night Only have faced the ChartBlog review panel, and to be honest, it hasn't gone too well for either them or us up until now. We gave 'Just For Tonight' two stars, and got a telling-off for our trouble, and then 'It's About Time' got three stars, with a note saying the band should try a bit harder. Now they've re-released 'You And Me', which hardly takes our advice on board, now does it?
You know, if you wanted to walk away, if you really wanted to leave behind all of the good times we've shared over the years, those crazy days, and wild nights, you could at least have had the decency to say so to my face. But oh no, I have to find out that you're letting a good thing die by reading an article on a , an article about a special report, which has been commissioned by statisticians.
Have you any idea how humiliating it is to be told by some random third party that you're about to be dumped? A random third party with PIE CHARTS??
When I'm writing a review, I often find myself with a lot of half-started ones in a document, usually train-of-thought or unnecessarily bitchy/gushing phrases that I'd need to tone down to actually use or simply jotted ramblings. Normally these would never see the light of day (or indeed even be looked at by me after the time I wrote them) but I thought I would share with you some of my initial and unconsidered feelings about this song and its video here. Obviously, this is not just because I can't really think of anything else to say but because this is an important experiment in, err, communicative interfaces and, uhm, the translative barriers between thought, intended thought and creation or, y'know, something...
They say the first sign of madness is black hairs growing on the palms of your hands, and that the second sign is looking for them. Well, here's a third.
Ever since we started doing the ChartBlog Slightly Annoying Email Questionnaire (formerly the Top Of The Pops Slightly Annoying Email Questionnaire), one question has always managed to get a more shirty response than any of the others, and it's the one concerning what we have decided to call "new product".
Never mind that the same questionnaire gets sent to many different people in many different stages of their career, people who are attempting to promote their new album, new single, new tour, new DVD, new T-shirt range or perfume, and that we needed a catch-all term for whatever it is they wish to talk up...If you refer to what they do as 'product', they will find a way to act as if they are mildly miffed. It never fails. If they don't bristle, they're heading for madness. It's official.
Here's Charlotte from the Subways. See if you can spot her moment of near irritation. It's hidden!
A short while ago, I read one of those NME features where they pull apart an album by a current musical act, and suggest some of the artists from the olden days who might have directly influenced their sound. When they did CSS, they suggested that in attitude, the band borrow heavily from the pioneering pop/dance/rock fusion of a band like Blondie, with the idea that cool things and uncool things can sit together quite happily if you just lose those pesky inhibitions and get loose...
Which is a fair point, except CSS have only really taken on Blondie's amazing pop perfection with their second album. Their first, which was the one under the microscope at the time, is a far more ramshackle, thrown-together affair, especially with Lovefoxxx's sing-song confrontational vocal poetry, suggesting that if a debt is owed to a female-fronted band from that era, it's the Slits, rather than Blondie.
NOTE: This actually really isn't a nice thing to do to someone, no matter how funny it might look. They could bang their head, they could crack an elbow on the tree trunk, and if you leave them hanging there for long enough, eventually they will have to wee, and, what with gravity and all...it's not going to be pleasant. So don't do it. It is only justifiable in this case because look, the person laying the snare is a bass, so it's like, y'know, the hunter becoming the hunted and stuff. Which is a very zen state of affairs. Karma and all that, yeah?
NEXT WEEK: Bullet For My Valentine face a greetings card firing squad. Meanwhile, Alanis Morrisette watches the singer of 'Stay With Me' walk by and asks "Isn't that Ironik?"
Did I ever tell you about the time when I managed to annoy Shane Lynch from out of Boyzone to a massive degree? It was backstage at Top of the Pops, and there was a team of us interviewing celebs backstage for one of the anniversary shows. It was either the 2,000th show or the 40th anniversary, something like that anyway. Our team were doing a rolling webchat, where a celeb would be bustled in at a fair old lick - a member of the Hollyoaks cast, for example - asked a few questions about Top of the Pops, and then kicked out to make room for a Vengaboy.
Geri Halliwell did it because she wanted to go faster, Bullet For My Valentine did it to help them shoot straight and Super Furry Animals said it was an international language. None of which helps work out exactly why screaming is quite so popular amont the proper ROCK fraternity at the moment.
And not just any old screaming. Certainly not screaming like a girl who wants a lolly even though she has just had one, and she's going to have to wait until tea-time for anything else to eat. No, this is more screaming like a sore baboon attempting to scare a rival away from all the lady baboons, or possibly like Satan asking for two sugars in his tea.
So who better to ask about all of this than one of Funeral For A Friend, a band who arrived playing lots of screamy songs, and then wrote lots of singy songs, and who have elected to put these two vocal extremes together for their next album?
That's right, Dave Grohl!
But apparently he's busy. So Gareth, the non-screaming FFAF bassist, will just have to do.
ChartBlog's resident Madonna fan reporting for duty, and to prevent poor Fraser from having to review yet another of her singles and risk having some kind of seizure. Although the problem with trying to review a Madonna single is that at this side of a music career spanning over 24 years that hasn't exactly been conspicuous by the lack of media attention afforded to it, what can you say about Madonna that hasn't been said already? Except, perhaps, "I think her film career is some of the finest work that cinema has to offer," I suppose.
1 Dizzee Rascal ft. Calvin Harris - 'Dance Wiv Me'
2: Ne-Yo - 'Closer'
3: Basshunter - 'All I Ever Wanted'
4: Jordin Sparks ft Chris Brown - 'No Air'
5: Chris Brown - 'Forever'
Usual rules apply. High five the screen if you approve, slap the faces of the people you don't like if you don't. And then put either High Five! or Denied! in the comments box, depending on how you feel.
Something odd has happened to the wider public perception of this band in between their first album and their second. '12 Stops And Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ' was a startling collection of very unfashionable kinds of music, put together with total commitment and joy, and as a result, was bought in droves by people who really don't care what the music they listen to says about their cool. And at the time, people who do care about this kind of thing were sort of prepared to let it lie, because they were too busy picking up Pete Doherty's scuffed mumbles and waving them around.
Everyone's on about the Winehouse-ettes at the minute. Well, by 'everyone' and 'on about' I do mean several broadsheet articles earlier this year but even so, there's an awful lot of white British women doing funky soul/Motown-influenced songs and I'm sure they're all doing it totally of their own volition and not due to cynical marketing ploys at all but it does all seem to have happened in the wake of 'Back To Black''s surprising success
In fact, female singers seem stuck in the difficult catch-22 of this faux-Motown vibe being simultaneously code for credibility and also an increasingly trend-degraded and credibility-destroying sound. Such is the way with the fickle world of popular music; first it giveth, then it slappeth you on the front of a gossip magazine and screams "SLAPPER!"
"Originally from Hungary (where the ringtone was number 1 for a staggering EIGHT MONTHS and the album Top 20!!!)..."
Oh ha ha ha. A ringtone based on a popular sweet was at No.1 in HUNGARY?
What's next? A singing polar bear ringtone makes it big in Iceland? A singing drum is top of the charts in the Congo? A singing chip becomes massive in Greece?
We are living in a time where fresh ideas are becoming harder and harder to come by, and songs are becoming more and more rooted into a set way of doing things.* This isn't just true of pop music, by the way, most musical performers are working to a set pattern, and often have a very clear idea of the kind of song they want to make - right down to the exact song they wish to RE-create - before they even start to get their ideas together.
This is where remixers come in very handy. We already know that Freemasons are doing sterling work in keeping the careers of several US R&B stars ticking over here in the UK (we know this because we asked them). And it looks like Jay Sean's latest has been helped towards amazingness in a similar way.
NOTE: This will also work for on Last Shadow Puppets, but not on the Rascals. I'm sure you can guess why. It's also worth saying that spinning people round and round until they are destroyed is a bad thing to do. It would only be appropriate if you were to discover that Alex's relationship with Alexa Chung has create a rift in the space-time continuumnmum, equivalent to that of matter and anti-matter coming together (Alex + Alexa, see). And if they were unable to put a stop to their sordid doings right away, the entire universe would be blinked out of existence.
Music, as we know, is a massively subjective thing. The same song never hits different people in quite the same way. That said, some songs seem to be perfect for every occasion, and some only work if they just happen to come on the radio just at the point at which something sympathetic is happening for the listener. Then there are songs which don't work at all, no matter what, and songs which can actually kill the moment, even if it's a really good one.
So the trick for an aspiring songwriter is to try and come up with something which perfectly matches a specific mood, or something which can stop most listeners in their tracks and take them to the mood you've created for them.
Musicians, as we all know, are not like ordinary people. Their lives contain experiences which are so far beyond the sort of things that you or I could imagine that, even if they could share them with us, our feeble minds would explode, creating mess. So, it was with a certain amount of fear that ChartBlog entered into an interview situation with Owen Holmes, bass player for indie chart stars Black Kids, armed only with a sheet of questions about important life lessons, and wearing a metal wastepaper basket as a makeshift protective helmet.
You can tell at the start that he is concerned about the effects his words could have, but I think you'll agree we weathered the storm handsomely...
Admission time: I volunteered to review this, having no prior knowledge of the band or the song, purely because I liked their name. I'm not really sure what I expected them to be like - I think probably some kind of achingly hip, attitude-laden electropop band like the Ting Tings - but I definitely didn't expect them to be a band of teenage siblings playing marvellously old-school countrified pop music. But proving that some of the best decisions in life are made entirely by accident: I love it.
After the drizzle and huff of the Verve on Friday, time for something fresher. Sunday night's concert by the Raconteurs and Vampire Weekend, at the Eden Project.
Vampire Weekend are not a band who are selling their music off the back of the fact that they have massive amounts of The Cool, it's fair to say. Not because they are ugly, or geeky, more because there is something about each member which is just a little bit...well...lacking in those virtues we all traditionally associate with The Cool.
Ezra Koenig seems to be an (only just) grown up version of Fred Savage from TV's The Wonder Years. An interesting thought when you consider that it was rumoured for a while that his best friend was played by a young Marilyn Manson. That's an alternate reality TV show I would LOVE to see...
There are things which you can talk about in real life, and there are things you can talk about in the media (y'know, on the radio, on TV, in songs, blogging), and while there is some overlap between these two lists, it's not total. This is partly because media people have no way of controlling who accesses the stuff they make, so you have to keep innocent minds away from bad things by not sending bad things out there in an unguarded fashion. It's also because people have very strong views on topics such as drug use, swearing, sex, violence, and it's impossible to find an exact balance between realistic and obscene that everyone agrees on.
Don't worry, this is entirely relevant to N*E*R*D's new song, I'm not just ranting about censorship and stuff...
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Naturally, being the Futureheads, writing a song about strolling along in a reversed sort of a way isn't quite enough, that's what a lesser band would do. To really complete the quirk-circle, they have to employ the double-negative, and sing about walking backwards, backwards. Which is just walking. This is an example of how lyrics are different from science. You can sing any old nonsense and it'll sound more meaningful than actual things with real meanings.
Cascada used to scare the pants off me. They were the sort of noise I'd try and listen to, feel a bit funny and have to turn off because it was so alien and disturbing to my aesthetics; pushy melodies turning generally quite sweet lyrics into aggressive manifestos, with driving eurodance beats and unironic rave horns. Plus those brassy female vocals always scare me a bit.
During the course of this interview, in which KT and I attempt to create a little bit of paradise on Earth, she made the - slightly strange - confession that she was so influenced by the children's classic 'Stig Of The Dump' that at one time she used to take a load of jam jars out into her back garden, ready to make windows out of them.
When I was a young lad, and all of this was just trees and fields, my friends and I used to go and see a band called Jonah and the Wail. They were this kind of Misfits-y panto goth rock troupe, and their singer - who was presumably called Jonah - used to caper around the stage dressed in stripy prison pyjamas and looking like the reanimated Frankenstein's monster after a whacking great dose of super-voltage and an intravenous litre of Red Bull. He also had three polka-dotted backing singers, and a guitarist with an amazing quiff. 
While I freely admit that is not really the best source of research for, well, anything, I generally make a habit of looking up any band I have to review on there before writing the review, just because sometimes there are some interesting fan-supplied titbits that provide an interesting jumping-off point. And sometimes there are just things in there that amuse me, like when I was doing my background check on Brigade and discovered that they perform in the genre of "post-hardcore". I didn't even know such a thing existed. Sounds brutal, though.
The thing I love best about this lot is people are tying themselves in knots trying to find the right genre word to describe the music that they make. Is it drum 'n' bass? Is it rock? Is it pop? It's the kind of debate YouTube comments were made for, and as soon as someone puts an idea forward as to what kind of music you could say Pendulum is, twelve other people give them the kind of abuse you would normally reserve for the person who has pulled a loved one's head clean off and then spat on the neck stump. 
So much for Sam's reputation - based on the one song, admittedly - for icy cool purr-fect synthpop. This time around he's brought in a slap-bassist with disco chops and upped the tempo, and it seems to have shocked his vocal cords into passionate life. The dark growl is still there, but there's a lot more yelping and swooping and general off-showing. The combined effect is what you'd get if Calvin Harris were 10 years older, a lot more muscley, and less prone to just bang on about what girls he would fancy, if he were not such a young and weedy fella. 
I've got to admit to being a total sucker for any creative endeavour which attempts to work out what goes on in God's head. And I don't just mean the comic asides in Family Guy, or the bits in South Park with Jesus in either. There's the comic book Preacher, for starters, that asks a lot of awkward questions about the mythology of religious stories, and contains an Irish vampire and loads of swearing and violence, what's not to love? 
Music prizes have got a bit jokey, lately. From the Brits to the MOBOs to the VMAs to any given music magazine's Poll Winner's Awards, to, well, anything. There seems to be general dissatisfaction with the whole awards process, and a feeling that they've become increasingly irrelevant. 
No matter how much guitar fans harp on about hip hop just being a man talking over a backing tape, it's not like it's massively hard to make indie either. Or at least, certain bands are possibly not trying as hard as perhaps the could. Take this, from a band who are - controversially - one of the big ticket indie-ticians of current times. What does a brief examination of their song's musical structure reveal? Well, it's not exactly complicated, is it? The same four note backbone, repeated for verses AND choruses, with a minor deviation for a middle eight, and even that feels a bit uninspired. It arrives, it gets rowdier, it gets quieter, it gets rowdier again, it leaves. 
Some things just aren't broke. Iggy Pop, for instance; it has been scientifically proven that it is impossible to break Iggy Pop using conventional or nuclear weaponry. Or maths, that's pretty much holding out, too. Or, say, the floor; still popular after all this time. Or Kylie singing beautiful, dreamy dance songs, that's definitely still a winner.
At the risk of sounding like an old man, it's a brave record company who tries to launch a new girl band these days, with Saturday morning kids' TV shows not really being the fertile marketing ground there used to be, and with Top of the Pops/CD:UK/Popworld all having fallen under the axe. You're rather taking a lot on faith in hoping that any radio station is going to give you airplay, especially in these days when pop is a dirty word (unless it's Scandinavian, in which case it's okay - hey, I don't make the rules, I just report them).
I've a guilty confession to make, and it's a bad one. Listening to this song has forced me to confront an unpleasant truth which I didn't even know was hidden away in my psyche, and so I should really begin by saying that if anyone is offended by anything in this review, I apologise. I'm trying to be honest, in the hope it will turn out to be in any way helpful. 
It might seem deliberately controversial to say so, like I'm trying to prod Death Cab fans to see if they'll cry, but there are definitely moments in this song where Ben Gibbard sounds just like James Blunt. OK, a James Blunt who doesn't seem to be trying to say the most perfect thing he can possibly think of, to a lady he wants to make sexy with. A James Blunt who can handle a loud, obnoxious guitar or two, and a James Blunt whose songs are like little film scripts, and who isn't afraid to kill off his female romantic lead, if the story demands it. But still...
What with reviewing Annie last week and taking on Ida Maria this week, I'm on the verge of becoming ChartBlog's official Norwegian pop music correspondent. Not that the two really have very much in common beyond their nationality - Annie's music revolves around deceptively sweet bubblegum pop with a sting in the tail, whereas Ida Maria, on the basis of this song at least, is far more about the brash, in your face, quite cheeky rock side of things.
The brilliant thing about 'Umbrella' by Rihanna is that it's a cold, sad song with reassuring, warm lyrics. Rihanna's frosty delivery and the icy synths added drama to the lyric, and left the listener in no doubt that it must be raining cats, dogs and frozen blue whales, and that being offered a space under her umbrella (ella ella ey ey ey) is the most magnificent gesture anyone could ever make towards another human being.
Gentle ChartBloggers, today I feel like Gwyneth Paltrow at the Oscars, Madonna at the Rock 'N' Roll Hall Of Fame, Take That at the Brit Awards and Leon Jackson at the X-Factor final last year (but not Leon Jackson at any point before or since). 
In my more pompous moments, I have been known to claim that this reviewing lark is all about giving every song the chance to win you over. I have been overheard droning on and on about how you can't settle down to listen to a new song preparing to hate every moment, because that's exactly what will end up happening, and that's unfair, not to mention being a rubbish way to spend your working day. My handy explanation for this has always been "if Westlife ever get around to putting out a song which is not rubbish, I want to be sure I don't miss it", but you could just as easily substitute the name of any artist whose work regularly gets dismissed by reviewers, only to go on and sell in magnificent quantities - Nickelback, Snow Patrol, Mika, James Blunt, and especially this fella. 
I'm not sure if this still goes on but certainly when I was younger morning telly quite regularly featured ridiculously toned people in terrifying lycra shouting at members of the public to do aerobics. The lycra-wearer would always be incredibly upbeat as they yelled things like "FEEL THE BURN! THAT'S IT, FEEL THE BURN!" in a tone so frighteningly peppy it made the average children's TV presenter look morbidly depressed. This was the kind of traumatic spectacle that burns itself onto your childhood mind and occasionally recurs, like a terrible vision, in your adult life.
You've got to love a song which correctly uses a word like "opaque", haven't you? It's a great word, and you just don't hear it often enough in modern popular song, even though it's clearly a very easy word to sing and does capture a mood rather well. 
WARNING! WARNING! Hot women, you do NOT want to go and stay in the hotel in which Primal Scream filmed their new video. There seems to be some kind of leather-gloved murderer there - it's not clear whether he is a guest or the owner, but as nobody seems to be ringing the police, or attempting to leave the building, it's probably safe to say he's managed to get hold of the master set of keys. And now he's chasing all the pretty ladies in the hotel, all of whom are backing away slowly, rather than just pegging it. Which allows him to murderise them using just the contents of a game of Cluedo, rather than anything cinematically boring, but actually useful, such as a weapon of some kind. 
The emergence of this single caused me to squeal in a most undignified fashion, because I'd given up all hope of more material from Annie; I'd assumed that she was quite content with the superstar DJ lifestyle and wouldn't be making any more of her own. So the promise of a new single, with a new album to follow, was approximately equivalent to it being Christmas, Tina Fey declaring herself my best friend, and me winning Strictly Come Dancing all at the same time. (I have weird ambitions, it's best not to ask.)
Seconds out, round three...ding ding!
Dear ChartBlogger,
When I'm writing a review, I often find myself with a lot of half-started ones in a document, usually train-of-thought or unnecessarily bitchy/gushing phrases that I'd need to tone down to actually use or simply jotted ramblings. Normally these would never see the light of day (or indeed even be looked at by me after the time I wrote them) but I thought I would share with you some of my initial and unconsidered feelings about this song and its video here. Obviously, this is not just because I can't really think of anything else to say but because this is an important experiment in, err, communicative interfaces and, uhm, the translative barriers between thought, intended thought and creation or, y'know, something...
A short while ago, I read one of those NME features where they pull apart an album by a current musical act, and suggest some of the artists from the olden days who might have directly influenced their sound. When they did CSS, they suggested that in attitude, the band borrow heavily from the pioneering pop/dance/rock fusion of a band like Blondie, with the idea that cool things and uncool things can sit together quite happily if you just lose those pesky inhibitions and get loose...
Did I ever tell you about the time when I managed to annoy Shane Lynch from out of Boyzone to a massive degree? It was backstage at Top of the Pops, and there was a team of us interviewing celebs backstage for one of the anniversary shows. It was either the 2,000th show or the 40th anniversary, something like that anyway. Our team were doing a rolling webchat, where a celeb would be bustled in at a fair old lick - a member of the Hollyoaks cast, for example - asked a few questions about Top of the Pops, and then kicked out to make room for a Vengaboy. 
ChartBlog's resident Madonna fan reporting for duty, and to prevent poor Fraser from having to review yet another of her singles and risk having some kind of seizure. Although the problem with trying to review a Madonna single is that at this side of a music career spanning over 24 years that hasn't exactly been conspicuous by the lack of media attention afforded to it, what can you say about Madonna that hasn't been said already? Except, perhaps, "I think her film career is some of the finest work that cinema has to offer," I suppose.
Something odd has happened to the wider public perception of this band in between their first album and their second. '12 Stops And Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ' was a startling collection of very unfashionable kinds of music, put together with total commitment and joy, and as a result, was bought in droves by people who really don't care what the music they listen to says about their cool. And at the time, people who do care about this kind of thing were sort of prepared to let it lie, because they were too busy picking up Pete Doherty's scuffed mumbles and waving them around. 
Everyone's on about the Winehouse-ettes at the minute. Well, by 'everyone' and 'on about' I do mean several broadsheet articles earlier this year but even so, there's an awful lot of white British women doing funky soul/Motown-influenced songs and I'm sure they're all doing it totally of their own volition and not due to cynical marketing ploys at all but it does all seem to have happened in the wake of 'Back To Black''s surprising success
We are living in a time where fresh ideas are becoming harder and harder to come by, and songs are becoming more and more rooted into a set way of doing things.* This isn't just true of pop music, by the way, most musical performers are working to a set pattern, and often have a very clear idea of the kind of song they want to make - right down to the exact song they wish to RE-create - before they even start to get their ideas together.
Music, as we know, is a massively subjective thing. The same song never hits different people in quite the same way. That said, some songs seem to be perfect for every occasion, and some only work if they just happen to come on the radio just at the point at which something sympathetic is happening for the listener. Then there are songs which don't work at all, no matter what, and songs which can actually kill the moment, even if it's a really good one.
Admission time: I volunteered to review this, having no prior knowledge of the band or the song, purely because I liked their name. I'm not really sure what I expected them to be like - I think probably some kind of achingly hip, attitude-laden electropop band like the Ting Tings - but I definitely didn't expect them to be a band of teenage siblings playing marvellously old-school countrified pop music. But proving that some of the best decisions in life are made entirely by accident: I love it.
There are things which you can talk about in real life, and there are things you can talk about in the media (y'know, on the radio, on TV, in songs, blogging), and while there is some overlap between these two lists, it's not total. This is partly because media people have no way of controlling who accesses the stuff they make, so you have to keep innocent minds away from bad things by not sending bad things out there in an unguarded fashion. It's also because people have very strong views on topics such as drug use, swearing, sex, violence, and it's impossible to find an exact balance between realistic and obscene that everyone agrees on. 