New Releases - 11 Aug

New Releases - 11 Aug

06 August, 2008
by: Music Team

*Single of the Week*
The Verve – Love Is Noise
Parlophone

Ten years on from 'Sonnet', The Verve return with the comeback single that closed this year's Glastonbury. Pitching up somewhere between the psych-rock of 'A Northern Soul' and the orchestral bombast of 'Urban Hymns', any hangover from Richard Ashcroft's insipid solo ventures is (thankfully) conspicuous by its absence.

It's basically the band's 'Best Of', distilled into four minutes – Richie even throws in some more William Blake poetry for good measure. A welcome return for one of the most important British bands of the '90s. MF


Go: Audio – She Left Me
Epic Records

More pop-rock nonsense, and the culprits this week are Go: Audio. At least bands like McFly seem to know they're a bit shit. These Go: Audio guys probably think they're really good. They're really not.

This is what you listen to if you're a 12-year-old girl wearing tight black jeans with hand-coloured pink chequer-board Vans and you're taking the Metropolitan Line into town from Rickmansworth. It's Topshop music, and should stay there. TJ


Delays – Keep It Simple
Fiction

This song is actually alright. Delays have decided to allow their grandiose style to emerge on latest album 'Everything's The Rush', giving singer Greg Gilbert's falsetto more of an airing.

And instead of some diatribe about one of the band members' girlfriends, the video features a fat man tucking in to a burger and jogging at the same time, which leads to him keeling over and getting smothered in food by a load of devilish angels before the band serenade him back to life. The lesson's in the title. LC


Cary Brothers – Ride
Blu Hammock

A turgid piece of acoustic indie rock, if The Last Kiss is anything like Cary Brothers' 'Ride', then it must be an overlong piece of bubblegum pointlessness that goes nowhere – except straight in the bargain bucket of our local Texaco garage. This is so dull I almost slept through it.

The Tiesto remix is similarly rubbish, reminding me of Sash (the god of Euro-shite) when he was going through his Ibiza phase. You can grow a mean beard Cary, but how about growing a pair of balls? Please? DH


Hamfatter – The Girl I Love
Hamfatter

With the financial backing of Dragon's Den nice guy Peter Jones, Cambridge pop rock trio Hamfatter are bound for chart greatness. That's not to say that money can buy you fans, but it surely pushes them in the right direction.

A combination of Vampire Weekend's 'Oxford Comma' and Scouting for Girls' 'It's Not About You', Hamfatter's 'The Girl I Love' is a wonderfully simple melody with irresistible lyrics. Luckily their pitch hit the right Dragon, huh? SS


Bloc Party – Mercury
Wichita

Will the real Bloc Party please stand up? So far we've had them as Gang of Four revivalists, whiney, radio-buggering miserabilists and now – as previous single 'Flux' hinted – they are delving further into danceable electronica.

A promising swing, but if this is the best they can come up with, then they should rush to their nearest copy of 'Entertainment' and listen intently until they can write another 'Banquet' or 'Helicopter'. This might be excusable as a fan's bedroom remix, but as an A-side, it stinks. MF


The Music – The Spike
Polydor

Like Kasabian, The Music make songs that you can swagger around reasonably priced pubs to pretending to be an extra in Snatch, saying things like 'mine's a pint you slaaag' and 'stand your ground, you daft twat'.

This song is typical Music territory and if it had come out 16 years ago, people would have been going 'wow, this is like the Stone Roses mixed with Oasis'. Nowadays it sounds old and dated. People who read Nuts on a weekly basis will love it, but the rest of us will just shrug and move on. DH


R.E.M. – Man-Sized Wreath
Warner Bros

R.E.M. are finally back on form – making proper indie rock, not laptop pop. This track gets its kick from session drummer Bill Reiflin, and restores Mike Mills to prominence as he tries out some mesmerizing funk-riding basslines and sings harmonies.

The result? R.E.M sound like a real band. Producer Jacknife Lee has flattened the single a bit for mainstream radio, but it still rocks. Stipe is on defiant lyrical form – he knows Bush is out, and now we know: R.E.M. live! JH


Madcon – Beggin
RCA

Madcon are a Norwegian hip-hop duo (no joke) whose 'Beggin'' is a minor rework of a Frankie Valli song, casually adorned with the odd half-baked rap.

Ersatz doo-wop tear-jerkers like the original do have a certain ghostly quality, but here it's thoroughly erased, leaving us more or less with a miserable, Scandinavian Outkast. Then again, this could be popular among the beery carpet and chrome of nightclubs in, say, Doncaster. If every provincial working DJ in Yorkshire buys a copy, is that enough for a number one these days? RH


Red Light Company – Meccano
La Volta

'Meccano' initially sounds interesting with plinky-plonky xylophone, fervent bass strumming and a pleasant warble from singer Richard Frenneaux. Then the chorus turns shouty, noisy and generic. However there is something true in the lyrics: 'for crying out loud the weekend is over'.

Watching the video, Frenneaux gives me the creeps - when he steps out of the shadows with a sexy yet menacing look on his face he looks frighteningly similar to the child catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It wouldn't surprise me if he had a Werther's Original in his hand instead of a guitar. EM

Music Team