STAR SLINGER - TAKE THIS UP

Star Slinger has released another hot beat called 'Take This Up', a disjointed bevvy of little highly strung beats in a vein similar to his first digital-only LP Volume 1, except with a more mainstream dance feel than Volume 1's quasi-spaced out charms. Download it free below.

(I say 'another'. They don't come nearly often enough!)

LUCY ROSE - LIKE I USED TO [ALBUM STREAM]

Potentially a review to come. Out tomorrow on Columbia Records. Lucy is playing in-stores in London this week before embarking on a UK tour.

JAI PAUL - JASMINE (DEMO)

In the background of Jai Paul’s website for‘Jasmine’ is a repeated and unexplained picture of a Mercedes Benz and a random dude smiling. Arranged in the headache-inducing style of Microsoft’s tile background option, it brings to mind a very bad graphics student’s attempt at a collage, or a teenager’s quickly thrown together Myspace page.

According to XL, Jai has a DIY ethic. Like the band website that seems deliberately shit and brings to mind nostalgia for the internet’s blocky early design era, Jai’s taste in an unwavering self-effacing public image chimes with the fact that offsetting music against an incongruous and shambolic aesthetic is distinguishing. This is especially when most around you are trying to do crisp, clear and easy to comprehend.

Jai Paul is far from that though. He is an iconoclast. ‘Taking a break’ or so it would seem after self-produced ‘BTSTU(Edit)’, he reclaimed the critical limelight with ease after five years out with only track, and formerly only one track to his name. Now ladies and gents, we have ‘Jasmine’. The song was on Pitchfork and other leading music blogs almost immediately after it was posted to Soundcloud and was invariably lavished with praise.

Despite being released by XL (Adele, The XX, Willis Earl Beal), ‘Jasmine’ has the interesting qualification ‘(demo)’. To me this is interesting because a demo that’s brill, as opposed to a single that’s brill, makes you think the ‘real thing’ will be even better. Except because the ‘demo’ is actually the ‘real thing’ / the version that’s being released in stores near you, this is clearly not a demo at all! ‘Demo’ both excuses ‘Jasmine’s vague crackly production and smartly suggests that this clearly brilliant record is not Jai in full flow, but half-formed, casual demo…ism. This might be the thinking anyway.

Also, when you hear ‘Jasmine’s cassette-like muffling, you’ll swear you’ve ‘discovered’ Jai, even if you do notice it’s already clocked 700,000 odd plays on Soundcloud. It has that demo quality; that personal touch that ‘BTSTU (Edit)’ had. Where the latter went "Don’t fuck with me, don’t fuck with me" in its disturbingly gentle opening, this pulses with a skittery funk beat whose distant production sounds like it was recorded in a church confessions booth.  

Jai is enigmatic. At only 21 odd when XL signed him, ‘BTSTU (Edit)’ was I believe his only available track online, which makes you wonder what XL knew about him that we didn’t (or don’t), particularly given that he seems to be a songwriter/producer first of all. Yet Stereogum have called him ‘possibly visionary’; in an interview with XL owner Richard Russell about XL's success, Russell said ‘Jai is a wizard.’ The BBC even cast him in their Sound of 2011 poll for 2011's most promising artist or band, such was the furore surrounding Jai’s exceptionally good but small output. That year, RockFeedback’s feature on Jai (complete with his provisional driving licence photo) just concluded “There’s not much we can do with Jai Paul nowapart from to carrying on listening to the pop genius of ‘BTSTU.” That’s then.

The story of Jai Paul is certainly intriguing so far. Whatever happens next though, ‘Jasmine’, I’m sure you’ll agree, is indeed superb, worthy of the praise lavished upon it. If ‘BTSTU (Edit)’ struck music’s beating heart once, ‘Jasmine’ can do so again.


Pre-order 'Jasmine' on limited vinyl here.

LIVE REVIEW: Hypnotic Brass Ensemble @ Jazz Cafe, London

Twirling care-free in a field of anonymity like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, Grapevine draws resolve from all your charming reading. You survive this tautological word racket, and hopefully gleam some new music in return. It’s for you that I tune in, turn on and drop out or whatever it’s called, and do this wacky nonsense after work when the laptop flickers and the world is but a husk of numbers on a computer. Yet, despite this, if a tree falls in woods and no one is there to hear it, it makes a seismic sound...because that tree will soon be on Grapevine, heralded as some brilliant new band and splayed like a drab strumpet for all her glory in the naked stocks of Soundcloud shame.

Could being covered on here really sound anyyy more saucy? Maybe...if there were pictures.

Today’s post is from a Hypnotic Brass Ensemble gig. The Chicago band who played London’s Jazz Café Monday night, but missed the pages of the national press (it soon transpired) are not your ordinary show-stoppers. Fans include Jude Law and Damon Albarn, the Blur liberal world arts genius. The band have tirelessly toured their back yard for 10 years, busking (check out some of their videos on youtube), ducking and diving, making self-released records- working their way towards these sorts of moments: gigs with roomfuls of warm, pre-disposed crowds. Their self-titled album- their first in the UK- was released by distinguished label Honest Jons in 2009 after the band were spotted busking near the record store in Ladbroke Grove. Sooner or later they were on Later…with Jools Holland. This, quite literally, is an urban hip-hop nine piece brass band, EIGHT of whom are brothers (awkward for the ninth member, eh?) and sons of jazz musician Tony Cohran. HBE smack you with something so direct and- as anyone who was there will testify- insanely loud, that you will be jolted to recall that brass is not only something heard in the grounds of Buckingham Palace or at the local arts centre. It has a historic place in music: the street, community life.

The nine are lively, spinning their four trumpets, two trombones, one sousaphone (yeeeaah, that’s this) and baritone in different directions to Gabriel Wallace’s drums. Their unified and determined symphony is great, aesthetically as well as sonically. It’s a powerful, raw image, these nine lads bopping to brass. They punctuate the drive with raps, each taking turns to draw in the uncertain crowd and re-assure them. You can see this is something they’ve honed. Whether due to their roots on Chicago’s south side, personal gigging experience or a wilful effort to integrate rap into their recordings (see this year’s EP Bulletproof Brass, which has vocals), heavy crowd interaction is necessary for things to fully come to life and break down a difficult fourth wall that haunts many a contradictory musician. HBE look different, even if they’re just another band. Cynics won’t know what to think when nine men with tattoos and bristling egos turn up and start pushing their trumpets on everyone and then take off their shirts. What’s English popular culture’s point of reference for this? None. Audience interaction is necessary for the uninitiated to understand what HBE are to them. Lots of cheesy call and response gets the crowd going. Chanting before ‘Touch the Sky’, ‘Kryptonite’ and ‘Party Started’ among other tracks warms them to dancing and trusting this lot of American orchestra men before the raps step aside for brass. It doesn’t take long for these gestures to become reciprocal and soon we're part of the mix. The crowd finally chant the band back down from the Jazz Café’s high restaurant balcony in appreciation. HBE get the crowd down on the floor. Everyone- (even closet killjoys…it’s hard to tell what proportion of the audience are engaging in this sort of act of obedience because they genuinely want to) was down, groovin, before rising to touch the sky. THAT sort of infectious enthusiasm is hard. HBE must have realised that certain audiences want to be led, and once they are, the atmosphere can just build.

HBE’s music is assertive. The Hypnotic in their name, derived from when the group were busking and a subway passenger missed many trains to hear them play, is certainly apt. Each song marches to a defined formula; a deep, jagged groove rather than the soft melodies often heard in jazz. Tycho Cohran- who to me seems like the leader of group for his massive sousaphone - settles into a bass groove that the rest of the band follow. Energy is then brought on by trumpets. On ‘War’, their trademark track that they must have played hundreds if not thousands of times, this formula is clearest. Rumbles blaze from Tycho, and his brothers swirl around him with repetitious horns.

Looking ahead, how will HBE avoid being labelled one-trick ponies? They deliver hip-hop’s rhythm, but songs from the UK debut didn’t allow much room to manoeuvre. Most importantly, the band ultimately have to do what they want to do. The moment Gabriel, Seba, Tarik, Gabriel, Uttama, Jafar, Saiph, Amal and Tycho’s love for their instruments and inquisitiveness dies out, so too will everyone else’s. They’re integral. This is the same with many bands I’ve seen live who come out of leftfield to mainstream tastes, particularly jazz and ‘world’ musicians. The moment the love and soul is lost between the artist and his music, uninitiated music aficionado get all aloof from it. Bulletproof Brass is a good indication of future direction. The rapping works well as an extension to their energy, live and on record, and the samples show an interesting change of style. I hope, personally, that we get something like a brass version of The Roots from HBE: a band that’s reflective, single-minded and soulful, to join a great collection of modern popular hip-hop artists. HBE certainly have the independence to do that, and the road-hardened experience to find their way. As we’re seeing fleetingly on the new EP, and most notably in the calmer ‘Black Boy’, Hypnotic’s awakening might yet be to come.

Hypnotic Brass Ensemble - War by ChoiceCuts

Hypnotic Brass Ensemble bit at Jazz Cafe by MiCloud

Tennis- 'Tell Her No' (The Zombies cover)

Tell Her No by tennisinc

Ahhh it feels good to be back.

I had an email Q&A exchange with the awesome Lucky Number Music (home of Caged Animals and Friends), which was rudely botched by a website I occasionally do some writing for- but never mind: my musical mojo is still intact. I’m going to endeavour to bring you everything great and spongy that I’ve heard of late, for your great and spongy ears!

The first piece- saying that- is lifted from gorillavsbear.net- a recent post about husband and wife duo Tennis, who we featured earlier this year on the site.

They’ve covered (download here) The Zombies’ 1965 chart hit ‘Tell Her No’. It’s a classic Beatles-cum-Beach Boys-esque song but with a cruel anti-romance twist. The lyrics go: “And if she tempts you with her charms, Tell her no, no, no […] Don’t hurt me now for her love belongs to me.” It could have fitted pretty well on their debut LP Cape Dory if you ask me, due to all the 60s-style throwbacks.

A follow-up to 2011's debut is in the pipeline. Here’re some words:

“We’ve spent the last several months writing and preparing for what we hope will keep us busy all winter. We will be announcing a Forest Family release in the next couple of weeks as well as tour dates to make up for the Vaccines tour cancellations. Also, we are excited to announce the existence of our next album (produced by our new friend Patrick Carney coming out early next year. In the meantime, we made this cover of the Zombies “Tell Her No.” It’s been a long time favorite of ours and is the best use of a lone-clap we’ve ever heard.”

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin- Tape Club

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin- Tape Club

(2011, Polyvinyl Records)

For when there’s a lull with nothing to post about, I’ve kept this back in reserve. One of my favourite bands of the last 10 years who create music that occasionally hits me like a truck (‘House Fire’, ‘Some Constellation’) or takes a while to sink in (most of Broom), but always succeeds in wriggling inside my brain-box and building a nest for itself: Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin. I wrote about them earlier (see here) and as you may know, they were an "of the moment" band on US-based indie blogs around 2005 when recording Broom, their first album. This was a home-recorded, extremely lo-fi record and had very little to say for itself in the way of production, but stood out promisingly for its tunes. An internet following was born.

Since Polyvinyl picked Broom up and released it, the commercial fortunes of Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin- or SSLYBY for short, arguably waned slightly according to speculation from loyal adherents. Thankfully though, their music and passion didn’t. Two diverse, lively and enjoyable records followed in 2008 and 2010, Pershing and Let it Sway respectively, filled with shamelessly catchy pop tunes. Broom, re-released for Record Store Day in April this year with some new tracks- that first home-recorded record, now sits atop a small number of dreamy indie kids’ post-2000 lists as a cult pop classic. I give mine a listen quite regularly, and often wonder what in those loosely formed arrangements and hushed vocals keeps me coming back. But it does. And regularly.

Their honeyed sound and image isn't for everyone. However, if you’re a fan of good music without pretence; a follower of healthy tunes over fashion, SSLYBY are one of the best bands to draw into your listening arsenal. Cavorting with my ears through train journeys, helping while away 40 minutes in town or sound-tracking an evening with friends before heading out, SSLYBY can be taken anywhere (and will take you anywhere) with their infinite lightness.

I turn to the reason for this post: Tape Club, a 26-song compendium of b-sides that SSLYBY will release in October. How impossible to imagine that a band as lo-fi as SSLYBY would even have b-sides. How much more demo-like could they be, especially the b-sides from Broom?! Well in their seven-year fringe-of-the-public-zeitgeist tenure, and ten years as a band, their production values have wilfully soared and plummeted as much as a kite on the breeze. It makes SSLYBY sound like two different bands, one playing at Will Knauer’s house in a suburb of Springfield, Missouri, and one recording in a high-tech, gee whizz, sound-proofed studio. (In reality, even the uber-polished Pershing was recorded at Knauer’s aunt’s house).

So sound varies wildly. At the end of ‘What We’ll Do’, you can literally hear the tape stop; on ‘Song 1000’, the band just about hold things together while they muck around with (what sound like) kazoos. At the other end of the scale, Let It Sway’s lush mid-range pours out of the speakers on ‘Bended’ and ‘Letter Divine’, a richness and warmth, employed from Pershing onwards, to give singles like ‘Think I Wanna Die’, ‘Glue Girls’, ‘Banned (By The Man)’ and ‘Critical Drain’ their glamour and anthemic charm.

A few songs don’t really fit into either of these two categories and float innocuously between them: ‘Sweet Owl’ is the sort of tune I thought SSLYBY would never record, just because it’s so folksy, and ‘Yellow Missing Signs’ (the first song leaked from Tape Club) adopts an electro edge that makes you wonder what the band were up to when non-rock influences took hold in jamming sessions.

Diamonds in the rough tease themselves out, as is often the case with SSLYBY. Campfire ditty ‘Bigger Than Yr Yard’ could have made it onto Broom to close it with a late-night sing-a-long. Some of the newer, cleaner production stuff also grabs hold of you after a few listens: ‘New Day’ and ‘Coming Through’ are a class act placed by side by side. They’re probably my highlights of the album and shimmer with an innocent, harmonious glow. They're much like the flowering of confidence that seemed to resonate in Pershing: the realisation of the group's creative energy and pop prowess.

It's a great collection. There's no doubting that. I say it as a fan and as an advocate, but also because I think Tape Club shows quite clearly how enjoyable a band can be with a few chords running round their heads spontaneously knocked out on tape. Purveyors of lo-fi fun, nonsense and slivers of brilliance, SSLYBY are pop stalwarts.

Indie-blog praise hasn’t quite lived up to expectation: the objective 'standard' that artists are supposedly aiming for, but that is too crude. Even if ubiquity doesn't come calling, it doesn't need to, for many of us are just happy listening to SSLYBY….and occasionally writing about them.

Tape Club is in stores on 18^th October and comes in all sorts of formats (see here). The band are currently touring the States, as always. Fingers crossed for European dates. See above to stream the album.

death masks stares

Folk-rock with a slightly baroque feel is what my friend Jonny deftly described as ‘In the woods’ music. Fleet Foxes, Midlake, Woods, Dry The River, all that sort of stuff……basically any band that would play at End of the Road or Green Man festival if you want to be sweeping.

It feels like I haven’t heard something like this in ages. Merseysider Thom Tyrer’s project sounds like a track from Woods’ At Echo Lake from 2010, tumbling with carefree jangling guitars and the weary reflections of autumn.

‘Stares’ is part of a four track cassette tape & free digital EP called I Know A Short Cut that is available on Tyrer’s bandcamp. An LP will be released later this year.

Death Masks- Stares

Friends- I'm His Girl

Friends- I'm His Girl

(2011, Lucky Number Music)

I noticed on twitter this morning that Friends will be releasing a new 7" single and thought it was worthy of a new blog post. Great song, very catchy and full of effervescent positivity. It is certainly getting better with every listen. The band are sounding like a cleaned up Best Coast; something that could have been on the three-piece's Crazy For You if not for the clearer production and neater presentation of their songs. Indeed if it was, it would have probably been one of its strongest tracks!

The song is a dictated lesson in the nature of a good relationship, which gives 'I'm His Girl' a sense of self-confidence and empowerment as clear and unapologetic as Beyonce's Single Ladies (albeit the message to young women is completely different and is about giving one other space, not marriage!) Samantha Urbani takes cues from her own satisfaction in the one line chorus: "When you see me walking around with him, I'm not just another chick, I'm.....his.....girl." It is masterful in reeling you in, and her cool self-confidence is sexy and finger-tingling. Then, when there's a bridge 2/3 of the way through and all you hear apart from Urbani is a cowbell/wooden block, she takes centre stage to deliver a blunt message in full, off-hand, and almost a little disinterested:

"If you love someone, let them be free. I know I don't want no one suffocating me. Don't settle for ownership, make a team. If you love someone, it should feel good to let them breathe."

It is corny, but in Urbani's deft delivery, 'I'm His Girl' manages to be deadly serious and flirtatious at the same time: a confusing, poker-faced flirt. It's out 31 October via Lucky Number Music (limited to 500 copies). Ooo you filthy dogs- keep your relationship safe.

Check it out above!

just for the hell of it.....

Sweet Female Attitude- Flowers

(2000)

I don't why I'm posting this but to hell with it. (It's not the official video). Sort of coming from all the cool shit New Look reminds me of.

Baxter Dury- Happy Soup

Baxter Dury- Happy Soup

(2011, Parlophone)

The problem, the paradox with children of popstars is that no matter to whom and to what they align themselves, it is nearly impossible for the public to stop seeing parents in them. These often more successful forerunners to their offspring loom large like menacing spirits in the room, dampening it must be said, the pursuits of their children. Where music is concerned, critics very often take aim with their metaphorical rotten fruit; yet when your Dad is a rock n roll icon, it isn’t easy to realise your own qualities at the best of times, let alone live up to the expectation that has been foisted upon you.

This is not Baxter Dury’s first album; however, in the two weeks since its release, Happy Soup has already proved to be his most widely publicised. The son of Ian Dury and the Blockheads singer Ian Dury, Baxter, now nearly 40, has had two previous LP- Len Parrot’s Memorial Lift in 2002 and Floor Show in 2005. The film Sex & Drugs & Roll revealed some of the tumultuous experiences he went through as a child under his Dad’s heady rock n roll influence.

That back-story though clearly did not get in the way of critics’ response to this latest Dury outing. No. You see Happy Soup­ is an odd, ramshackle, cockney Londoner’s album. It’s Baxter’s, not Ian’s, teasing out and celebrating as it does the idiosyncrasies of his own unusual persona. Dury’s voice is striking: strikingly plain, dour, direct and deadpan. Unsentimentally recalling personal events that really should warrant some kind of emotion or cracking of the mask, his style is like a male Lily Allen in middle-age, Alan Donohue from London band The Rakes in positively sombre form. With witty urban social commentary and pokerfaced delivery giving the impression that Dury is jaded, quietly brooding and disconnected from his own depictions, Happy Soup in many ways appears mildly cathartic. Indeed he apparently didn’t change the names of ‘Claire’ of ‘Isabel’, which describe former relationships. “I think my mate slept with you when you were in Portugal” is one such revelation, yet Dury delivers it like trying to get his words recognised on an automated booking line.

If Dury’s songs are about personal experience, he tries not to wallow in their sorry bog, both in terms of his disconnected delivery and the music itself. In the spirit of the English rock everyman, ‘Trellic’ delivers a simple riff and vocal that would put the best Rakes and Art Brut tracks to shame. Yet, even when trying to sound hopeful, the morose atmosphere usually wins. On ‘Leak at the Disco’ (a song closely resembling Maximo Park’s ‘Acrobat’ from 2005), he sings to a thudding bass drum and carefully chosen synth notes: “Love has all but broken you” goes the grim chorus line. In these moments, Dury finds tenderness and beauty. There is an implication somewhere in the music that sadness and reflection will one day bring redemption; that all is not lost, but we cannot find a way out just now. The song soars to its anxious close. Elsewhere, Dury uses sparse instrumentation to draw attention to his voice and lyrics.

Happy Soup is a great and unusual album. It is well-imagined, easy to listen to and while in betrayal of its title it is a little downhearted, excellent instrumentation and Dury’s sensitively summoned vocal transform its defeatism into a rich, human and vivid charm that belie its simplicity. For those who are interested, Happy Soup is one of Rough Trade's picks of the month. Baxter will also be touring the UK in October/November this year.

new best coast- how they want me to be

Hey folks! Here's some new Best Coast for you. It's called 'How They Want Me To Be' and it is a typically laid back, unassuming affair. Here's a note that accompanied it:

"You guys have been some of the most wonderful fans this past year, and I want to thank each and every one of you for supporting Best Coast. When times are rough for me, and I am traveling and not sleeping, and am worried about daily life, it always makes me feel better to know that my fans are out there.

I know I've been talking a lot about our second album, but it's still very far away from being created. I wanted to share a bit of life from recent Best Coast with you guys, so I thought I would post this song for you all to hear as a little teaser for the album.

This song was recorded a few months ago at Black Iris, the same studio we recorded "Crazy For You." This song is not properly mixed, it's mostly a rough studio demo of a song I wrote and wanted to record. I am about 99% sure that this song will get re-recorded and changed up a bit and will end up on our second album. It's called "How They Want Me To Be."

It's just a small taste of what's to come, and I wanted to give you guys something to get excited about since you've been the best fans in the whole world!

I am off to New York to start a weekend of fly in dates, so wish me luck, and I hope you all love this song and I can't wait to record more."

Love,

Bethany

lucy rose- middle of the bed

Lucy Rose is a good friend of the British band Bombay Bicycle Club and a rising star on the country’s indie scene. Featured in the ‘Shuffle’ video and lending her voice to ‘Flaws’, Rose is currently on a UK tour promoting debut single ‘Middle of the Bed’, a reflective, sombre song reminiscent of fellow country-woman Laura Marling.

It is for her writing though that comparisons with the 2010 Mercury-nominated Marling are made. ‘Middle of the Bed’s candid autobiographical style would feel right at home with any of Marling’s works. However, hoping to find a middle-ground between the female pop and folk genres, the music accompanying Rose’s despondent, jaded voice is occasionally more upbeat. Various live performances on the web testify to her ability as a performer as much as a songwriter. Quiet and introspective, Rose manages to remain the right side of mawkish and banal, infusing a delicate charm into her voice to retain your attention.

That is precious and easily scuppered in the saturated world of acoustic music. However when song-craft comes this good, it is a pleasure to be reminded that the humble acoustic pop song can be made as fresh, tingling and delightful as it ever was.

Middle Of The Bed - Single Version by Black Book Management

guerre aka lavurn lee

‘Bedroom’ artist Guerre (aka Lavurn Lee) has produced a big musical catalogue in the past two years. His music is quietly enticing, like sand immediately after a wave has struck that gently gravitates towards the sea. It’s the after bits that Guerre deals in; the clicks, the slurs, the tiny cuts, to produce delicately emotional results.

Debut EP Darker My Love is available for digital download via new label Yes Please.

disclosure- carnival

We all love that feeling of a limited release, don’t we listeners? Isn’t it a fetish when we rush to buy a song whose production run is in three figures, enjoy the triumph of ring-fencing one of those copies in our little pockets, and then gallop to the nearest listening facility and share it heartily with our friends? I think so.

Well Disclosure, comprising 19 and 16-year-old brothers Guy and Howard Lawrence, have released 'Carnival' in a seriously limited, 300-print run 7” double A-side single (that’s one copy for every member of Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band, probably). However, simultaneously, they have been good enough to accommodate the fact that most of us won’t be able to get our mits on one by releasing the song as part of a free 5-track EP in exchange for liking the Disclosure Facebook page. Aw, guys.

If light market whoring seems an effort, then release aside, 'Carnival' is a great song. Its 2-step rhythms bring to mind SBTRKT’s recently successful 'Wildfire', which crossed sparse dubstep and garage, and herald good things for a duo that are so incredibly young. The tight vocal loops and minimal instrumentation that have been popularised by James Blake in the past year help the song build to a crescendo: a lively ball of fidgety pop that is at once familiar and irresistibly danceable.

Disclosure- Carnival

stevie nicks- white winged dove (secret panda society remix)

We don’t know each other very well reader, but if we did, you would know that I love Fleetwood Mac. It corses through my 1980s veins like a splendid glucose my love of the Mac, and provides an energy and sanctity in equal measure unmatched by many other pop bands.

Why do I love the Mac? Well one of the reasons is of course Stevie Nicks. That little ball of a fiery voice box pounds out every darn word of the song she’s singing like every second is a galactic All-Star American Idol that she must, must win.

As for a dubstep version of the Mac, you could do far worse than ditching the rest of them bearded buggers and concentrating on Nicks’ ‘Edge of Seventeen (Just Like the White Winged Dove)’ from Bella Donna, which Secret Panda Society have done. Because it’s so pert, upright and direct, the song works fantastically mashed into a snowball of dubstep breaks and effects.

If Nicks was in a Rocky film, then this is what the soundtrack to the training montage would sound like. If Nicks did dubstep, this would be her b-side remix. All angry and convincing and that. Brrr...get me an earphone.

Stevie Nicks- White Winged Dove (Secret Panda Society Remix)

the vaccines- wreckin bar

Can a review for a song that lasts 82 seconds be written in 82 seconds? The Vaccines’ fast, fast ‘Wreckin Bar’ is making me type very very fast, and shooting endorphins into my brain. But I just don’t think it can be done, because with ‘Wreckin Bar’, you’ve got to allow the thought part of your noggin to take a bit of a battering, and then perhaps take a rest.

For all the criticism that has been piled The Vaccines' way by some critics, whose opposite numbers declared them a heroic third in the BBC’s Sound of 2011 poll in December, ‘Wreckin Bar’ is, surely, their most memorable pile-driver single, and their best musically. Firstly, for any song to achieve in 82 seconds what most take four minutes to do (or don’t do at all), namely jump your heart into eager alertness again, is impressive. Secondly, the song’s spinning Catherine wheel of a chorus speaks only to your heart, and ignores what pointless, silly little thoughts you may be having (who needs thoughts?) to deliver precisely the musical equivalent of a caffeine high. Lastly, ‘Wreckin Bar’ tears to tiny tinkerbells the idea still peddled by men with moustaches, bowler hats and monocles, that good music must be complex, must be clever, or must, in frank, be of itself original and unheard of.

Now, don’t get me wrong- the four London-based Vaccines did pen this with their own minds and such; however, so born out of meat and two veg, unpretentious, punchy rock is ‘Wreckin Bar’ that it may as well be a guidebook for anyone looking to create a thumping rock single with two guitars, a drum kit and a screaming urge to declare to the world 'pick me and you will be thankful!'

The Vaccines- Wreckin Bar

on the weeknd

Ok, so I should really have written about this ages ago, but I have been pretty busy: The Weeknd. The mixtape ‘House of Balloons’ has been around for about 3 months now, although as eponymous as it is, it feels like a year. Since then, a new track called ‘Rolling Stone’ has been dropped via twitter, and last month, a song called ‘The Birds (Part 1)’.

So, what’s the deal with The Weeknd? Who or what is it, and why the heck is he or she or it so popular? Well the answer to all these questions has been a source of great discussion from almost the first days of ‘House of Balloons’ going online, and a source of great publicity too. We now know that the The Weeknd is Abel Tesfaye. He is from Toronto, and he’s only 20. But that’s about all we know.

This has proved part of the allure in itself. However much we are aware that it is a very clever bit of marketing for an artist to cut himself off just after dropping a great record, (and a record with a musical tone that is itself enigmatic, jaded and disconnected), The Weeknd’s glow continues to mesmerise us like hip little flies. In this media age, that refusal to speak is worth a thousand double-page spreads. To not give anyone an interview when the entrenched presumption is that aural and public exposure rise in tandem, is frankly unheard of. Tesfaye probably knows it, and it is a very, very smart thing to do if you’re planning your career, and its successive releases, gigs and so on, for the long game. Right now in fact, Abel Tesfaye might well be the holy grail of music interviewees. And, others might say that is well above his station.

The British national newspaper The Guardian online published two features in response to the internet attention Tesfaye received. Both were rather cynical….or questioning at least of The Weeknd’s music and cleverly non-existent marketing, particular Alex Macpherson, who acknowledged how many cultural commentators have got carried away. On the Village Voice, he said:

“It probably counts as some sort of triple whammy of music-critic idiocy: a sweeping proclamation about an entire genre, a blundering dismissal of that same genre, and hyping up an unremarkable new act after being taken in by their marketing strategy.”

Macpherson also denounced the music hand-in-hand with the media attention in his article by saying that R&B today has far more to offer than the stripped out, emotionally shallow Weeknd. Now, of course, one’s pronouncements on ‘better’ or ‘worse’ or ‘great’ are subjective. Art is like that, as is music, as are all cultural creations, and I don’t think Macpherson was holding himself up as a beacon of the objectively Correct. However, if The Guardian's great music critic isn't seeing the talent of The Weeknd, then what is it that the rest of the net sees that he doesn't?

The Weeknd are interesting to me personally because they touch on new and old feelings at the same time. On a basic level, their samples are drawn from all over the place chronologically (e.g. Beach House- c. 2008 on 'Loft Music', Siouxsie and the Banshees c. 1980 on 'Glass Table Girls'). However, more importantly, like How to Dress Well, there is a strong theme of old R&B melodies being stripped down to their simple core and built up again around ambiguous, ambient noise, that brings to mind the lo-fi styles of current indie music. Therefore, 'House of Balloons' hits a strange middle ground chronologically, between familiarly rich soul melodies and the newer lo-res production of Tesfaye's contemporaries.

Secondly, the theme of The Weeknd is undoubtedly despondency and indifference. Yet, what is good about R&B for a lot of people is the artist's emotional investment. Whether pining after someone or getting it on, R&B is for the most part optimistic and uplifting. R Kelly either laments something he can’t have or he’s getting down n dirty. The Weeknd have done away with all that. All that remains is a sort of emotional bankruptcy and a void: one that Tesfaye is constantly drawing our attention to. The R Kelly, the TLC, the Aaliyah, Brandy and Bobby Brown that sit somewhere in the backs of our minds form the core of The Weeknd’s music, just as they do with HTDW, and make all the songs initially familiar. However, around it is a bleak description of a drug and sex-fuelled lifestyle that has gone wrong a left the writer empty. There is a malaise. That part, in my view, is what gives ‘House of Balloons’ its exoticism, its confusion and ultimately, its cool.

The Weeknd therefore take on many tenets of mainstream chart R&B and turn them on their head. One artist’s regret of the drugs, sex and material lifestyle may not be new in R&B lyricism, but I think it has never been conveyed through the music like this. 'House of Balloons' actual lyrics are pretty clumsy if you listen to them; however, subverting the positive feelings materialism brings into really cold, hard, lost, negative ones is alone an idea that has artistic traction in my opinion.

I hope that wasn’t too laboured to read reader! What The Weeknd will do next is a really exciting topic, and perhaps an even bigger one, is to whom Tesfaye will give his first interview (including the cynical question: 'why?')