New Releases – 26th January

New Releases – 26th January

21 January, 2009
by: Music Team

*Single of the Week*
Mike Bones – What I Have Left
Vice

Mike Bones has been fizzling away beneath the surface of Brooklyn's music scene for a while now. Although 'The Sky Behind The Sea' is generally considered to be a bit uneven, if 'What I Have Left' is anything to go by, then the follow up will be amazing.

Starting out with a catchy and rather disarming guitar riff, the song builds to an amazing emotional climax thanks to sparse, starkly haunting vocals about unrequited love. In fact, this song is so poignantly heartbreaking it almost made me cry. It's that good. DH


Lily Allen – The Fear
Parlophone/Regal

I have to secretly admit that I kind of love Lily Allen, despite reason dictating otherwise. So when I heard new single 'The Fear', I allowed myself a muffled 'Yay, she's back!' 

Although the electro-pop production marks something of a departure from her debut album, this single is still classic Lils. Her voice is sweet but archly bored, the video's cool, and she does a nice line in lyrical ambiguity: 'I'm not a saint, but I'm not a sinner / Now everything's cool as long as I'm getting thinner.' Brilliant. TJ


Jay Sean – Tonight
Cash Money Records

What Jay Sean is clearly trying to do here is marry off Jodeci's early '90s body-humping rnb to Chris Brown's breathy vocals. While Chris is pondering the offer, he says 'here, take it, it's a good track'. Then the confident preen: 'I'm gonna give it to you tonight'.

So the actual song revolves around a girl who definitely wants him ('I can tell that you're wanting me'), but who is planning to elude him (to which he calmly replies, 'you 'aint going nowhere'). Possibly a bit creepy? LS


The Days – No Ties
East West Records

Do you remember Rooster? Probably not. They came, bleated their way through a few mediocre hits and then got dropped.

We can only pray that The Days go the same way. If you're a 12 year old girl you've no doubt heard these guys, you fancy the lead singer and are pestering your parents to go to one of their kid-friendly gigs. If you don't come under this category then I'd recommend giving 'The Days' and their single 'No Ties' a miss. GS


Pulled Apart By Horses – I Punched A Lion in the Throat
Too Pure

This song is just a load of awesome post-hardcore nonsense from Pulled Apart By Horses.

Picking through its lyrics makes the whole thing far less interesting, since you'll soon realise that though the story of a man getting his kicks out of fighting lions might be a bit funny, it isn’t funny enough to carry a whole song. What is fucking fantastic is the anarchic audio representation of said brutal act: messy, bleeding lines of The Jesus Lizard and Fugazi strangle a noisy, perishing Pavement. Fun times! LS


Keith – Lullaby
Lucky Number

I want to like this song and I kind of do. It's really promising to begin with: uplifting piano bars, cut with amazing vocals and manic guitar plucks. However it fails to really get off the ground, even during the chorus and is stuck in some sort of ballad/indie-pop limbo.  

The guitar and drum parts that were so endearing become quite irritating. There is something I really like about this track but it's not enough to make me go out and buy it. EM


N-Force – All My Life
All Around The World

Fantastic. This cynical ringtone trance has plenty to offend, from cheesy piano arpeggios to jumpstyle breakdowns and half-stolen, half-nonsense lyrics: 'I pray the Lord above/ To se-end me your love/ I cherish every hug'.

However, in the video, our heroine meets her God-given man in a casino. He teaches her to play the fruit machines. Cashing in her change, she immediately takes him to her hotel room, before encouraging him to have sex with herself, and two other women. Lois McConnell, I want to live in your world! JH


Mark E Smith with Ed Blaney – Transfusion
Voiceprint

With The Fall seemingly obsolete these days, Mark E Smith has teamed up with former manager Ed Blaney for a cover of Nervous Norvus' 1956 novelty hit about a guy who repeatedly crashes his car, requiring a succession of transfusions.

The light-heartedness of the original is lost under swathes of clanging feedback, and Smith delivers the morbid lyrics with perhaps unnecessary schadenfreude for someone who looks like he could use some fresh blood himself. Needless to say, it is awesome. MH


Electricity in Our Homes – Silver Medal in Gymnastics
4AD

Dear Lord.  Is this experimental? Post-punk? It's a bloody racket whatever it is. On their MySpace page they describe themselves as sounding like 'discord: a confused or harsh sound, an inharmonious combination of tones.' I couldn't have put it better myself.  

The song is called 'Silver Medal in Gymnastics' but the lyrics seem to be mostly about trying not to fall off a beam. Does managing to stay on the beam really constitute a silver medal? Surely bronze would have been more appropriate? EM


Little Dragon – Fortune
Peacefrog

Occasionally, doing this job, you get to review a song that you're really glad has come into your life. 'Fortune' is one of them. It's ethereal, sounds ghostly and indistinct; like acid trails, or phosphorescence at moonlight.

Most of Little Dragon's stuff has this quality, but this song is elevated to the beautiful by the layered vocals which could be in any language, the chimes and the implicit tragedy in the minor key changes. It feels like purity. 'I'm going blind from too many shiny stars.' LC


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Music Team