Co-written by pop gods Hannah Robinson and Biff Stannard, dance duo Freemasons and Sophie herself this is the Freemasons remix of Sophie’s new single Bittersweet. After some great but forgettable singles fans knew it would be interesting to see if progress was made and what, if anything, would be different this time. Sophie usually works the distanced ice queen with aplomb but on this song she also sings yearningly about how “the fire in your touch/ I always find so hard to beat/your love is bittersweet” and it feels like there’s some depth here. The chorus is easy to sing along and is set low which makes it poppier and more melancholic.
Instead of just providing an ‘oomph’ to procedures the bits where it’s just Freemasons carries a proper tune and when it all goes off it feels much more disco than they usually do instead of just a big dance beat. The ‘thud thud thud thud’ before the chorus is especially brilliant.
Suddenly it’s all looking promising for Sophie.
Fenech-Soler is a three piece consisting of two brothers and another man and their new single Stop and Stare is a synthtastic dance ‘number’. It creates a sweet and spacey atmosphere to start, with lines like “We stop and stare cos we don’t know where we’re going” and “I see you there like a light in the sky. Don’t give up. I’ll fight if you show me a sign”. Of course there’s the inevitable “I told a lie”. Don’t show him a sign unless it’s a V. Anyway, then it slows down and everything’s quieter and it’s all finishing quite nicely THEN there’s a massive breakdown of ‘Holiday‘ proportions. Very good indeed.
presents
New Noise 03/10.
Here are some acts that are releasing things soon and are new and excellent. Some are new in the sense that hardly anyone has heard of them before, others are new in the sense that after some people knowing about them they are finally getting on with it. They are all worth a lot of your time.
Diana Vickers
We’ve watched The X Factor on and off since the beginning but it’s fair to say that we’ve never really liked any of the contestants. Harsh but if you watch it you’d understand that most X Factor contestants blend in to one frustrating, blubbing, Whitney-shrieking bore. From the off Diana Vickers was labelled as someone “who has great taste in music, teenagers will love her” by Simon Cowell. This sort of recommendation by Simon might usually be treated with disdain and a raised eyebrow from our corner but we did love her, and we argued with people over her, because she did stand out mostly because she had an unique voice and when she sang it really did seem heartfelt. A year and a half on and she’s ready to release a single, ‘Once’, in April and it’s more than we could’ve ever hoped for her.
Once
The Golden Filter
No this isn’t a blog post from 2008 coming back to haunt you, The Golden Filter are still bubbling under but will finally be releasing their debut album, Voluspa, next month. A sublime girl/boy discopop duo making cool and clever music loved by blogs but unknown to most normal people, hopefully with some solid releases they will become more well-known and well-loved by a wider audience. Hide Me is their lead single, also released in April.
Hide Me
Japayork
The name Japayork comes from the fact that he’s lived in Japan, he’s lived in New York, heeee’s JAPAYORK. As a talented graphic designer, a good looking man and someone who makes very good, personal synthpop he is immediately a target for jealous people from all over the world. He made the video himself for his single Our Now and he is supposedly signing a big and proper record deal soon which will hopefully give him a boost to help him reach his full potential.
Our Now:
Nicki Minaj
Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne’s Young Money Entertainment label’s sole female signing, is a completely mesmerising performer. She features on many collaborations at the moment and is the best bit in every one of them, and often the only good bit which mostly works in her favour to highlight her talent. She’s an excellent rapper and performer but also a hilarious one from the lyrics to the faces she pulls. Her debut single ‘Massive Attack’ is set to be released this month.
Itty Bitty Piggy:
Penguin Prison
Penguin Prison’s music has been on constant rotation with us for a while now from his excellent remixes to his own stuff and his own stuff remixed by other people too. He’s releasing a 7″ single The Worse It Gets/Something I’m Not and we’ve seen The Worse It Gets get called the A side, Something I’m Not get called the A side and that both are the A side in AA side bonanza. It doesn’t really matter because you’ll be able to hear both songs, both are streaming on his MySpace, both are very good.
Something I’m Not
Our review of Hurtful (Penguin Prison Remix) and a free download of Something I’m Not.
As for us, we’re doing well.
The never less than amazing Jacky from Take It To The Chorus reviews a song called Tightrope by Janelle Monáe.
Despite signing to Sean Puffy P Diddy Coombes Daddy’s Warner imprint, Bad Boy Records, Atlantan wunderkind Janelle Monae is yet to blow up. If 2010 isn’t the year of Ms Monae, everything I know about the world will have been a lie.
Like Lady Gaga, Janelle doesn’t just do songs. She does concepts. Bold, Fritz Lang-influenced concepts. Her debut, Metropolis, narrated the travails of Cindi Mayweather, a 28th Century pleasure-borg dressed in monochrome brogues. Tightrope is the first cut from her forthcoming second full-length record, The Arch Android, which promises to continue the tale as “a self-realisation album”. Cindi Mayweather will recognise her android powers and become a messiah-like figure. Crikey. It all sounds like Blade Runner with brass sections.
Are you keeping up? It doesn’t matter if you are, because Tightrope is a standalone swirl of light-headed space funk. A crazy-in-love Janelle has a more soulful and more controlled voice compared with earlier singles Many Moons or Sincerely, Jane. And this idiosyncratic chick is still only 25. In the verses, she spins through tight couplets, confidently pairing rhymes like “rattlesnakers” and “alligators” (Big Boi, meanwhile, classes up his breakdown with “NASDAQ” and “ass crack”). For the outro, she’s meditative, cooing “’cause I play my ukulele / just like a little lady”. With saucy horns and beats to get those brogues shuffling, Tightrope is a superbly dizzying track.
If fraud is your thing and you want to spend money on some songs then why not install one of those blocks in a popular ATM machine that take information from people’s credit cards so you can steal some money to buy music? Because it’s illegal and it’s less hassle to illegally download in the comfort of your own home? WELL YOU CAN’T ILLEGALLY DOWNLOAD CLOTHES CAN YOU?! AHA! You’ve already got clothes and the reason you illegally download songs is just because you can and you don’t know anyone personally that’s been done for illegally downloading anyway so who cares? Hmm.
Anyway…
Ali Love – Love Harder
This has been available as a download on the internet for ages and a legal one at that so it makes perfect sense to release it on a 12″ record now. And why not? The song’s very good. Because you’re not from the 80s and don’t own something as ridiculous and space-stealing as a record player? Neither do we. We had to throw ours away because it didn’t work properly and listening to music hasn’t been the same since. Except it has. We are just being melodramatic and romanticising about a lost era that isn’t lost because it never existed.
Avril Lavigne – Alice
We used to quite like Avril Lavigne but this? RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. TOO FUNNY FOR WORDS EXCEPT FOR THE WORDS THAT YOU’RE SEEING ON THE SCREEN.
Daisy Dares You – Number One Enemy (feat. Chipmunk)
Daisy is like Avril Lavigne when she’s not being rubbish a young Courtney Love *ahem* and this is quite a good song about not being your sister’s number one enemAAAAY We reviewed this quite a while ago.
Fe-Nix – Swagga
We were surprised to find out that they’re British because someone’s definitely made them to be similar to American girl groups in terms of their ‘look’, video, name and name of the song. The song itself actually sounds like a song by a British girl group despite the whole “swagga” and “flossin’” thing and overall is quite good.
Gorillaz – Stylo (feat. Mos Def & Bobby Womack)
Our friend said the other day that Gorillaz had gone shit and pop. It’s not shit and they’ve always been pop.
Ke$ha feat. 3OH!3 – Blah Blah Blah
She’s not Jesus. She’s not Satan. She’s just another female singer collaborating with 3OH!3 on a quite listenable song.
Mumford and Sons – The Cave
Anaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasomethingsomethinganaaaaaaaaaaasomethingsomethingsomethingsomethingsomethinganeck. Thumbs up.
New Young Pony Club – Chaos
This doesn’t disappoint because New Young Pony Club were extremely pointless in the first place.
Tinashe – Mayday
This guy is one of those up and coming types and this song is quite good. This is out on a 10″ record. SIGHS GALORE.
Teenagersintokyo – Peter Pan
THIS IS A BLOG ON THE INTERNET SO THIS SONG MUST BE FEATURED ON IT ONE WAY OR ANOTHER.
Tinie Tempah – Pass Out
If we don’t stop this new releases list soon we’ll pass out. A good song. Well done Tinie. And finally, a rest for us.
Verdict: Isn’t owning ears delightful? Hopefully they’ll be able to help you out when it comes to choosing which songs to buy.
Download it: Ellie Goulding, Florrie, Marina and the Diamonds, My Gold Mask, Penguin Prison
Five terrific songs by five terrific recording artists. All for free.
This is the original version of Ellie Goulding’s Wish I Stayed. It’s the first song we heard by her and it remains one of our favourites.
Florrie is the drummer for Xenomania’s house band JFK but now she’s going to give being a pop star a go herself. This remixed version by veryFrenchman Fred Falke whets our appetite for the original version. As it is, it’s very good.
This song is from the album The Family Jewels which we reviewed and is released this week and is this week’s iTunes Single of the Week. A rumour that the song is about having good hair days after dying your hair are yet to be confirmed or denied.
We first heard this in good old 2009 and we haven’t forgotten about it. A video came out for it recently so it reignited our love for it and reminded us to tell you about it. My Gold Mask are a husband/wife duo from Chicago. They mix alternative guitar with a sparse Bat For Lashes style gypsy feel on this song which highlights Gretta’s interesting voice. We really like it.
This Penguin Prison song is about calling himself a caged flightless bird despite the fact that it’s “something I’m not”. It’s from the AA side single ‘The Worse It Gets/Something I’m Not’ released in March and if you haven’t downloaded his remix of Erik Hassle’s Hurtful then do so because it’s excellent.
Most pop singers are awful and don’t deserve another second of your time, the egotistical pricks, but luckily Paul from Fizzy Pop thinks otherwise about this particular pop singer, Sam Taylor.
Young Sam Taylor has been floating on the periphery of the pop world for some time now. He first came to attention when he had two songs on the soundtrack to the hit BBC comedy Beautiful People. These tunes gave the world their first taste of Sam’s silky vocal styling and how he could inject real emotion into his singing. Run Away is a gorgeous ballad performed with the BBC Orchestra giving it a real grandiose feel. Written by the ever so amazing Terry Ronald and Ian Masterson, a lesser singer could get lost among the production. Sam keeps control of the song at all times, including a lush middle 8 that evokes memories of The Beatles’ tunes and gives the song some additional urgency and drama. Heavenly. The other tune (Sometimes I Need You) is a heartfelt statement of yearning and honesty that once again is so evocative in delivery and production that you can almost see scenes from your own life play out as the lyrics take you on a journey. It’s wonderful work and one that gives newbies a fine introduction to what Sammy has to offer.
Dig a little deeper and you’ll find disco swirling, modest, low-key yet effective cover versions and some new music on the horizon that sounds absolutely marvellous. Nip on over to Sam’s Myspace and listen to his version of The Cardigans’ Communication for a lovely, sincere and faithful version of the tune. His bold version of I Don’t Know How To Love Him deserves a wide audience. It’s delivered with a meekness and subtlety that suit the song marvellously and the line “and I’ve had so many men before /in very many ways he’s just one more” sends shivers down my spine. Delivered with the right amount of regret and candour, it just further shows me that Sam knows how to deliver the right vocal inflections and emotive input to give the song passion and an element of his own personality. Want Sam to spin you around the dancefloor a bit more? Be sure to check out the 5 Star Gypsies mix of Out Of Fashion on his MySpace. It’s a throbbing swirling song with the brilliant put down line “You’re out of fashion, your moment is over” amid a whole symphony of beeps and beats that just make you want to pull up to the bumper baby and give it some of that deep shoulder action.
So there you have it – a whirlwind introduction to the golden voice of Sam Taylor. I suspect we’ll be hearing much more from him in the future, particularly if his latest tease (a clip of a gorgeous classic pop ballad Every Time We Fall on YouTube) is anything to go by. Oh and he’s sickeningly handsome too.
It’s Monday, singles are being released. Here are some that are worthy of mention for whatever reason.
Alphabeat – Hole In My Heart
After not being too keen on The Spell we absolutely love this. We saw them supporting Lady GaGa the other day and although they were no Semi Precious Weapons they were terrific and super super cute.
Ellie Goulding – Starry Eyed
We’ve been in the ‘Ellie Goulding fans’ category for ages now so this single release is exciting for us just because we want to see what everyone else thinks too. We like this song but it isn’t our favourite and we can’t wait for the album.
JLS – One Shot
It has that one good bit. Otherwise it’s zzztastic. They will never get anywhere at this roh hello topless picture of JLS!!
Leona Lewis – I Got You
Not only is this Zzzztastic but it’s also one of the album highlights.
Sugababes – Wear My Kiss
We would love it if 4.o could be the beginning of a new and exciting era but this is very nothingy. We reviewed it properly a few weeks ago.
Verdict: Buy Hole in My Heart and Starry Eyed.
After really loving all of her singles Marina had a lot to live up to when it came to releasing the album. Luckily The Family Jewels is a very strong debut. At its high points, of which there are many, it’s thoughtful and beautiful combining honest lyrics with catchy choruses and melodic piano. On the other hand it’s not perfect.
Are You Satisfied channels an Elizabethan ball while going on about what it takes to be satisfied. Shampain and Oh No! are its huge pop moments. Oh No! is especially big and brilliant and we’re so glad that this very late addition was included on the album since it’s easily a contender to be a very good single. Previous singles I Am Not a Robot and Obsessions are really wonderful and delicate and lyrically brilliant but sometimes get lost because there is so much going on on the album. There is also the terrific Hollywood, about dreaming the American dream because it’s better than an average life, Mowgli’s Road, about the music business and The Outsider, about being an outsider.
On the other hand, on Girls Marina trills “I look like a girl but I think like a guy” convinced that she must be a man trapped in a woman’s body and throughout the song Marina seems to think that the opposite of a shallow and vain person is a man. This is frustratingly completely at odds with the feminist image she’s pushing. Also, as much as being honest about yourself and the way you feel is a brilliant and rare thing, in some songs, like Numb, sometimes it’s better to sacrifice that for a more interesting song.
It’s a brilliant album and it’s a shame it trails off at the end. With thirteen songs on the album perhaps two or three songs could have been left off for a more perfect album. On the other hand it’s packed with a lot of perfect songs and there is no doubting Marina as a great lyricist or performer who, despite what anyone else says, is unique and relevant in today’s musical landscape.
Another band we’ve been keeping an eye on are Cassette Kids. They are from Australia and that is why we discriminated against ourselves and decided that only an Australian would be fit for writing about them so that’s why we asked convincing Australian Adem with an E Not an A to share his love for them.
With their long-awaited debut album “Nothing on TV” getting ready to launch, Cassette Kids are gearing up for the release of their new single “Spin”, a pop-delight with a slamming chorus that’s guaranteed to garner them some attention as they head overseas. Playing shows in London and then alongside Courtney Love at the SXSW Festival in Texas, the kids are definitely on the rise – spending more time in front of a global audience than just playing support for local touring acts. Katrina Noorbergen, the bands frontwoman, oozes charisma on-stage much like a cross between a younger Gwen Stefani, whilst the band as a whole deliver the pop-smarts of Ladyhawke and Roxette. The hotly anticipated album was produced by Van She keyboardist Michael Di Francesco, and is expected out in April.
Lying Around:
