New Releases - 28th February

New Releases - 28th February

23 February, 2011
by: Music Team

The kids are alright (sort of)

Sound of Rum – Slow, Slow
Sunday Best

Powerful lyrics drawn from life and literature, rapped over downright catchy music. It's a simple combination that works so well, so why is this relatively-unknown hip-hop band the only one doing it at the moment?

The song's not perfect (the sudden ending is jarring, taking away from what is an otherwise amazing track), but it gets bonus points for the awesome stop-motion artwork in the middle of the video clip. 5/5

Erland and the Carnival – Map of an Englishman
Butterfly Recordings

Uplifting chorus, poetic lyrics; this brilliant song is inspired by a Greyson Perry work which maps out the emotions which make him. "I drew myself an island, of what I am made from. I built it round my consciousness next to a town called love."

The more you listen the more you want. Bodes well for new album 'Nightingale' 4.5/5
LC

Does It Offend You, Yeah? – The Monkeys Are Coming
Virgin

Does it offend me? No. I wish it did, I could've written this review from an 'outraged of Battersea' angle and how we would all have laughed at my acerbic wit. But no, it's actually really good, blinding in fact. The bassline is monstrous, there's just enough synth, just enough stabbing guitar, just enough vocal, just enough Shoreditch twat.

In fact if anything is offensive about these guys it's that they seem a little bit too perfectly 'now'. 4/5
TO

Trophy Wife – The Quiet Earth
Moshi Moshi

There’s something strangely affecting about Trophy Wife’s latest. The fact they describe it as “ambitionless office disco” might not turn you on, but give it a chance. It’s perfect coalition blues music, from its de rigeur James Blake shimmers, glimmers and blips, down to its mournful vocal and its sparse use of the violin.

Stuck in a dead end job? Family hate you? Fear not. Like a bridge over troubled water, they will ease your mind. Well, for 3 minutes and 38 seconds anyway.  4/5
LM

Tame Impala – Why Don’t You Make Up Your Mind
Hole In The Sky / Modular Recordings

More laidback than a sunbathing lizard on a deckchair at an all-inclusive, Tame Impala cast their dreamy, psych-gaze out into ethereal pools of mystic bliss. Staring at the sun will burn your retina to ashes, but staring just by it and avoiding the piercing scorch gives you a sense of heavenly haziness, and by embracing the trippy, bubbling distortion of ‘why don’t you make up your mind’ you feel like you’re glaring into hypno reserves of lo-fi, lovers. 3.5/5
DJ

Hurts – Sunday
RCA
 
Chronically cynical individuals (like myself) may find it hard to take this typically pop song seriously. The cheese factor is, however, dramatically undercut by the fact that ‘Hurts’ voices are actually pretty good and flow easily, resonating somewhere in between cynical and love sick.

Almost reminiscent of Robbie Williams circa the days where he actually could sing, I can see these guys getting enough loving to need to find some new material as they’ll no longer need to spend any more ‘lonely Sundays.’ 3/5
AM

Cassius – I <3 U So
becausemusic

Slow motion dubstep. I want it to speed up, drop or just do anything, but it doesnt so I'm left bored and unsatisfied - it's just all a bit too sinky, flat and despairing- even the motown lifeboat, with its electronic fresh face cant save this one. It's screaming for a remix. 2/5
NH

Roland Appel – Fleurs Du Mal
Poker Flat Recordings

Sounds like Appel's local church's getting its rave on in this cosmic choir of bell melodies. However, picturing a head bangin’ priest is about as fun as this groundhog day track gets. It'd be alright if the whole thing wasn't exactly the same until about two minutes in when a celestial choir pipes up, it starts to make up some ground only to end pretty abruptly.

I get that it's a slow-burner, but something's wrong when I'm too burned out to give a toss that it's ended. 1.5/5
JJB

Two words - meat house...

Music Team