Reasons to be Cheerful

New release news from two acts who couldn’t be more different now, written in the style of that bloke who tells you what new videos you can pick on The Hits:

:: Gwen Stefani is going to release ‘4 In the Morning’, one of the few triumphs on her last album, as a single. A shimmering eighties-sounding love song, it could be the tune that saves (or at least reboots) her career.

:: Queens Of The Stone Age have ditched the cock rock and gone back to the sort of pneumatic psycho stuff that made them popular in the first place. ‘Sick Sick Sick’ is their new single and features the kind of repetitive-in-a-good-way hook that hallmarked earlier favourites like ‘Quick And To The Pointless’.

Actually, The Hits probably wouldn’t criticise Gwen Stefani’s album like that. Or use the word ‘cock’ for that matter. It would be a much better channel if they did.

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.