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TUNE OF THE WEEK
Dizzee Rascal - Sirens

The hype will tell you that this is the first time we’ve seen Dylan Mills’ love of Nirvana come to the fore in one of his records. It isn’t. It’s way better than that. In fact, if you hear anyone using the phrase “grime meets ‘In Utero’” in connection with this song, you are legally obliged to shoot them in the head.

So forget Nirvana completely, and enjoy instead what just so happens to be YET ANOTHER ridiculously exciting Dizzee Rascal track. From ‘Fix Up Look Sharp’ to ‘Stand Up Tall’, Dizzee has made it clear he’s only interested in making songs that are less like music and more like vicious physical assaults, and this one is no different.

Over a backing made up of squealing sirens (hello) and brutal, crunching bass, Diz goes out of his way to paint himself as a complete and utter bastard. Believably, too: when he shouts “I break the law I will never change”, you almost feel inclined to delete the mp3 in case it tries to steal things off your hard drive.

Even with the recent addition of some Jay-Z-like ‘extra poundage’, Mills is still punching well above his weight.

Mettalic Carnage (???!!)

TUNE OF THE WEEK
Bjork - Earth Intruders

Hating Bjork’s face is no reason not to like her songs, but the fact that lately they’ve been prone to featuring twelve minute food-blender solos and suchlike is quite valid indeed.

Hooray then for a Bjork song that features no such experimental shenanigans and is actually quite pop, in an incredibly strange and unnerving kind of way.

The beat (‘Maneater’ by way of Autechre) comes courtesy of Timbaland and is the only thing that remains constant in a track that builds, twists and turns like a fiery tribal ritual going horribly wrong in the middle of the night. Great big stabs of distorted piano and synth ring out as Timbo’s demonic foundations do their hypnotic work under an apocalyptic, Knife-like vocal from Bjork.

This might sound like a bit of a mess on paper (and, to be fair, on record) but it’s one of those brilliant, mystifying messes that never fail to make perfect sense when you hear them. It’s also - and this is the biggest surprise - packed full of amazing hooks.

And if all that wasn’t enough, it’s even got a chorus.

Over here (in our charts)

TUNE OF THE WEEK
Hellogoodbye - Here (In Your Arms)

Releasing your best song as a lead single might seem like common sense to most of us, but after a year when people have been quite happy to “do the Rudebox” (Gwen), or push brilliant songs right down the release schedule (Amerie, Scissor Sisters), it comes as some relief that Hellogoodbye are doing the decent thing and bunging us ‘Here (In Your Arms)’ just in time for summer.

The rest of Hellogoodbye’s songs might be fairly mediocre and vocoder-free but the same goes for most bands these days, and we don’t see any of them getting naked at the drop of a hat.

‘Here (In Your Arms)’ is brilliant, and not least because it sounds like it’s going to morph into T.a.t.u.’s ‘Malchik Gay‘ at any moment. Synths, heartthrob vocals and those Xenomania-style backwards cymbals are all on the menu as the band rip through a fine appropriation of boybandiness that would put most real exponents of the art to shame.

Very good indeed.

Goodness, we like this

TRACK OF THE WEEK
Dragonette - Competition

Dragonette have recently released the very stylish ‘I Get Around’ to much acclaim (YAY!) and chart indifference (BOO!) but instead of being vaguely relevant, we’re going to write about one of their older songs, ‘Competition’.

‘Competition’ is brilliant. The version we’ve been listening to is apparently a new mix. Now, we haven’t heard the old mix of ’Competition’, but judging by this one it probably “lacked oomph” or something. This one is heavy.

It starts off in slinky tease mode, determined to seduce the listener into its proposed mucky liaison. ‘It’s risky business / keeping it hush hush’ purrs frontwoman Martina. Risky indeed, but by the time of the first bridge you’ll be willing to take more risks than a suicidal cyclist.


After a few more bars of this tempestuous foreplay, and a powerchord-heavy chorus or two, the whole song just EXPLODES into a totally unexpected rock wig-out, with hard riffs and heavy drums competing for airspace as Martina roundly mocks her rival; which is a bit cruel of her, but what is life if not cruel, etc. etc.

It is a perfect example of how guitars can be integrated into pop songs without it all turning to shit, and just goes to complete what is something of a ‘tour-de-force’ (?!) for Dragonette.


Finally, special mention must go to these lyrics:

She’s got no idea where you’ve been
No idea what you’ve been doing
In the bedroom, in positions
that you never knew existed

Amazing.

You know she's really good

TRACK OF THE WEEK
Amy Winehouse - Back To Black

Gothic, funereal, sombre - we’ve all heard about Amy Winehouse’s flat on a Sunday morning, but what is her new single, ‘Back To Black’, like?

Well.

If you must know, it’s a downbeat Motown shuffle with a heartbreak chorus that’ll sound mouth-dryingly familiar to anyone who has ever lost love like this.

Musically it sounds like someone told the Supremes to cancel their Christmas party; a sweeping, string-laden, piano-plinking epic of unworn dresses, smudged makeup and empty wine bottles. Quite sad, really.

There is also some percussion.

FYI, singles-wise, it now stands like this:

1) Rehab
2) Back To Black
3) You Know I’m No Good

This is what Amy’s people should do now:

1) Release ‘Tears Dry On Their Own’ at the end of summer.
2) Release a new mix of ‘Me & Mr. Jones’ before Christmas.

And here is what Amy’s people will probably do instead:

1) Release ‘Just Friends’ as a download-only single.
2) Without telling anyone when.

Now that would be sad.

See you later

SINGLE OF THE WEEK
Arctic Monkeys - Brianstorm

Blah. Blah. Blah.

Alone with Chelsea

SINGLE OF THE WEEK ONE
Stefy - Chelsea



Have you seen the advert for this single? Basically, someone who sounds like a cut-price Lauren Laverne bollocks on about the song’s story, but with added “THIS IS STEFY, HER BOYFRIEND IS A TWAT”, girlpowerness. It is both embarrassing and ridiculous.

Fortunately, the song itself features no such terribleness. It starts off sounding a bit like ‘Sweet Dreams’ by The Eurhythmics (ask your ancestors) and by the end proves itself a more-than-worthy successor to the long line of sharp, shiny and sexy electropop records that have gone before it.

Really, there is no understating this song’s quality. It's simply brilliant. The lyrics are amazing (“She called me while you were kissing / So I could hear what I was missing”), the video is amazing (why wasn‘t The Verdict more like this), the music is amazing, and together they combine to form one of the best pop songs of the year even if, technically, it is a bit old.

BUY IT!

You’ve heard this one before, it’s a Smiths song

SINGLE OF THE WEEK TWO
Mark Ronson - Stop Me

Amazingly, there are people out there who think that covering a song by The Smiths would be an act of massive sacrilege, roughly akin to throwing a burning sheep through a church window.

If it was up to them, records by so-called ‘important’ artists would be locked in a glass vault on the day of release and hidden in a very safe place, so no wrongdoing young ‘uns could get their messy mitts on them.

These people are idiots, obviously.

One person who is definitely not an idiot is Mark Ronson, who’s taken the rain-soaked melancholy of The Smiths’ ’Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before’ and replaced it with nu-soul strings, beats and an ADD-friendly title, and given it the kind of Pimp My Misery treatment that makes you think less about abject heartbreak and more about which shoes you’re going to go out dancing in.

That’s not to say there’s no feeling, there’s plenty of that, provided in the main by Daniel Merriweather’s aching vocal, which slides into your ears like melted chocolate, but without any of the sticky unpleasantness that would entail.

All of which bodes well for Mark’s upcoming album, ‘Version’. But what will the purists say when he gets his hands on Kaiser Chiefs’ ‘Oh My God’?! Only time will tell.

Give me something illicit

TRACK OF THE WEEK
Robyn - Konichiwa Bitches

This is a story about a Swedish girl called Robyn.

When Robyn was young, she moved to America to become a WORLD FAMOUS POP STAR. Not everything went to plan for her though. Lots of bossy record people kept telling her what to do, but Robyn wanted to do things “on her own terms”. This upset Robyn.

Tired, she moved back home. It was there that she met a band called The Knife. Robyn liked The Knife. She liked how they made insane songs sound poppy; how they crammed about a million ideas into each three-minute masterpiece.

Robyn was inspired. Without delay, she set about creating her own pop music. Eventually the music Robyn was making got so good, she realised how silly it would be not to release it in that place all pop stars dream about, the United Kingdom - Home Of Pop Music!

And this is where we find ourselves. Robyn is releasing ‘Konichiwa Bitches’ in the UK, as a proper single, with a proper video and everything. But has it been worth the wait?

Of course it’s been worth the fucking wait.

‘Konichiwa Bitches’ is amazing; 183 seconds of dizzying beats, bleeps and bombs, held together by a playschool-style rap from Robyn, where she basically goes over how brilliant she is, and how she is very probably going to beat us up.

By the time she starts jumping up and down all over the chords from The Cure’s ‘Close To Me’, you’ll be on the floor, ready to submit and pledge a lifelong allegiance to Robyn’s superpop cause. It is quite simply a brilliant song by a brilliant performer.

If all that sounds like your cup of tea, and it fucking well should, ‘Konichiwa Bitches’ is available now. If not, you deserve to be locked in a room with a Dido album for the rest of your life. It really is that simple.

We put on half a stone

TRACK OF THE WEEK
Siobhan Donaghy - Don’t Give It Up

You will definitely remember Siobhan from her time as part of the first Sugababes line-up, although, judging by the sales of her debut album, you probably didn’t know that she is now a solo star in her own right.

Well that ignorance no longer matters because Siobhan is back, back, BACK! Her new material is really very good, and this track from her upcoming album is the latest release.

It’s called ‘Don’t Give It Up‘, and it’s three minutes of weirdo-pop that basically negates the need for any further releases from Kate Bush (which is handy, since they’re probably not “pencilled in” for at least another fifteen years).

Unless your CD player is haunted, you won’t have heard anything like this for quite some time. It’s not exactly going to get you up throwing shapes, but it is an excellent bit of Sunday-morning reflectiveness that probably works very well as a hangover cure.

Lovely.

Love For Calvin Harris

SINGLE OF THE WEEK
Calvin Harris - Acceptable In The 80s

Chances are you will have heard ’Acceptable In The 80s’ on the radio, or out at one of your fancy clubs. It's the one that sounds as though it is being beamed here simultaneously from both the 1980s and the 2080s.

With an immaculate, wipe-clean production full of bone-fide synth stabs and bass squiggles (and those are the technical terms we’re using by the way), it flaunts its sunglasses-at-night brilliance to what should be a criminal extent.

It also pulls off the trick of managing to be brilliant while at the same time quite patently not giving a fuck about anything.

Basically, it is very, very good.

It’s also definitely out now, so go and buy it.

Time to blow the speakers.

Hadouken! - That Boy That Girl

We’ve been a bit slow off the mark with Hadouken! really. We only heard them for the first time a couple of weeks ago.

However!

They have a tune called ‘That Boy That Girl’, which is our tune of the week. We don’t know when it’s actually released but it is definitely the tune of this week. And most other weeks too, probably.

Sounding at times like ‘Crazy Beat’ by Blur fed through a techno blender, it is the aural equivalent of being beaten up by a gang of hoodies who use glowsticks as weapons and who are quite happy to leave you with little more than 12p in change and the word TWAT scrawled on your forehead as a memento of the experience.

If more people made records that sounded like this, they could invent a genre where all the tunes are like updated versions of the old rave records from the early nineties… but what would they call it? Our money’s on ‘Now Rave’, or ‘Current Techno’.

It’s going to be HUGE.