New Releases - 13th April

Music Team

New Releases - 13th April

08 April, 2009
by: Music Team

*Single of the Week*
Health – Die Slow
Lovepump

Health have really manned up recently. Where once their music was a disparate barrage of beeps, whistles and moody sounds, their new stuff knocks you out with one well-placed punch.

'Die Slow' is a lot more restrained than previous efforts, a song that is like the bastard son of 'How Soon is Now' and a ghost train. It's an impossible shape of nerve-shredding noise, blissful psychedelia and pop hooks that leaves you mouthing two words – holy crap! 4.75/5
DH


Camera Obscura – French Navy
4AD

The national dish of Scotland is not the haggis or the thistle. It's the chip. A bag of chips please pal, and one on ma shoulder. How else could a country love all three of fighting, frying and fey indie music? It's the chippy Celt underdogs' secret love of losing, that's what.

Anyway, I like this song. It's as upbeat as the Scots get: like Madness' 'Embarrassment' varnished with a bookish sense of regret. What for? Flodden Field? No, lost love or something. In short: chipper. 4/5
TJ


Bombay Bicycle Club – Always Like This
Island Records

I defy anyone to be miserable whilst listening to this catchy little tune from everyone's favourite school-leavers.
 
Maybe it's because the sun is shining over Spoonfed HQ today, but I can just imagine listening to this on a warm summer's day, hanging out in the park, playing on the swings and eating ice cream, before heading off for a night on the town. And judging by the video, the Bombay Bicycle Club boys think so too. 3.5/5
GT


Delta Spirit – People C'Mon
Decca Records

There's been pain. There's been mistakes. He's got no place of his own.

But someday there'll be peace in his soul (ohh, woah). Delta Spirit's jaunty little tune is meant to remind us that we're pretty much miserable but there's a chance things'll get better.

So it goes with the song. Some fairly self-pitying accounts of the past in the first verses mesh into a catchy bridge and the sense good things are close at hand, quite possibly on the same album. 3.5/5
MF


Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Zero
Interscope

There's something about the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' new single 'Zero' that makes you feel like you've been teleported back to the early '90s. Oh yes: it's the music.  'Zero' starts well, but erupts into something like a '90s power ballad-cum-rave tune.

It's pop, basically, but inexplicably, sounds like euro-pop. It will certainly make a danceable club hit, but unfortunately I doubt it will make much else, as none of the raw, authentic energy that originally made the Yeah Yeah Yeahs what they were seems to have been retained. 3/5
MD


Calvin Harris – I'm Not Alone
Sony BMG

No, Calvin! It's not that this tune is actually bad. It's just that it sounds exactly like the kind of thing you were pumping out in 2006. In the intervening years, we've been treated to a fair amount of great music – weren't you listening?!

Maybe it's a deliberate throwback. There's a haunting, original quality to the vocal and the four-to-the-floor dance underlay is amusingly retro pumping yah! If you were already out of it, this might keep you moving... 2.5/5
JH


Audiojack – Radio
20:20 Vision

In my high-octane-loving ears, it's very easy for techno to be boring. And while this track is just the right side of deep, with a nice, late night hypnotism to it, I still find it lacks the guts to make me want to jump. The problem is it just doesn't GO anywhere.

You nod your head sagely, and are transported to a dark club where green laser javelins stab you in the dark and everyone is wearing glasses. Or maybe it's just my mind playing tricks again. 2.5/5
LC


The Big Pink – Too Young To Love
4AD

The Big Pink sound like Glasvegas locked in a room painted luminous green with a laptop. Yet they're determined to make the most of it, and generally they do.

'Too Young To Love' however, is unambitious. It seems like an attempt from a band that's taken some time out from producing original music to release a song that might actually grab the public's attention. My advice? Listen to the band's other songs. They're much better... 2/5
SL


Paikan – Dancefloor Fight
Jazzman Records

Paikan strikes me as a gap year student who took too many drugs while travelling and hasn't got the life-changing experience out of his system yet.

His (creepy) voice begins by telling us that he's just got back from India which was 'so groovy you cannot imagine' with 'clubs, DJs and musicians all over town'.  All over town? Whatever next?!  He then fuses the worlds of funk, jazz and Bollywood using bass, saxophones and, wait for it - a sitar! Someone get that man a desk job, he's lost the plot! 2/5
EM


Noir Friction – Lips Sealed
Night Moves

I'm down with almost any sexual fetish you care to name so the prospect of some Dominatrix House from Warp's Jimmy Edgar, operating under his guise of Noir Friction, might seem just the nipple clamp I need.

However this minimalist, insipid, sub-house track, that seems to sample the guy from Saw recorded through a fully zipped gimp suit, is about as aurally arousing as a Pat Butcher sex tape.

Truly music to make you want to crawl down the nearest K hole and never return. 1.5/5
JS


So, Noir Friction and Paikan, it's time for you to grow up! Or stop being so French, at any rate. The rest of you – well done, we really enjoyed this week!

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