Jennifer Lopez - On The Floor (feat. Pitbull)

I've lost count of the number of artists who've gone for a hip new dance 'angle' with their new single and thrown in a guest rapper for good measure too. It's easy to be cynical, but you know what, they do it because it works. And J Lo's new single On The Floor is the prime example.

With its staccato beats and rhythmic euro-trance synths, On The Floor is an anthem to the coming summer - the sound of a thousand dancefloors the world over beating as one. And that's the joy of tracks like these, they're just big dollops of ready-for-the-club anthem, precision tweaked to hit all the right buttons. So when you hear Pitbull's guest slot and think 'Isn't this a bit like what he did with Enrique, Alexandra Burke and Nicole Scherzinger', it's because it is like that.

This is the natural successor to all those songs; building on them, growing, snowballing... keeping the endless dance rolling on for another year. J Lo's last album Brave only managed to reach No. 24 in the UK charts, but propelled by On The Floor, her new LP Love? could very easily see itself shooting into the upper echelons of top 10.

I'm properly loving the whole Love? thing too, as if the album is questioning its own existence. It needn't though, as On The Floor is exactly the kind of life-affirming tune we want to hear from J Lo. It's hot, dance-able and without a doubt the future-soundtrack to many a night of shots at the bar. Bring it on.

On The Floor is released 27th March.

Chapel Club - Palace

When a band releases their debut album, it is all about first impressions. This is the big time, your chance to convince the masses you are worth investing in. And as debut albums go, Chapel Club’s Palace is a profoundly good one. The band’s guitarist Michael Hibbert says of the album that it is about “not being afraid to be too ambitious. We wanted to take the grandeur and force of the lyrics and make a record that resonates on a large emotional scale.” And he’s spot on. Palace is an album that builds itself around ambition and grandeur, and it succeeds.

There’s touches of early New Order and Echo & The Bunnymen here, particularly on Blind Light and Five Trees respectively, but only at their more guitar-orientated moments. Chapel Club are not a synth band. Instead they specialise in hefty post-punk guitar hooks - the tracks are powerful, big; certainly more weighty than contemporaries like White Lies, who their sound shares more than a lot in common with. Songs like After The Flood are atmospheric, explorative pieces; an experiment in just how many sounds you can pull out of a guitar.

As an album, Palace paints a bleak, modern landscape, a place of harsh, mechanistic sounds. Rhythmic basslines, thundering drum beats, wailing guitar lines. When you listen to this album, it is almost as if you are dropped into a factory-like labyrinth of sonic qualities and made to pick your way out. But the important thing is that this is a pleasurable experience, for the deeper you look into these songs, unpacking the towering wall of sound that manifests itself in tracks like White Knight Position, the more you get from this album.

The Shore has a more cinematic quality to it, the potential soundtrack to countless slick, American TV drama’s. You can almost picture a stark, rain-lashed cityscape now as you listen to the track. This is music to think to, and at six minutes long, there is ample thinking time provided. Reaching the second half of the album, the aforementioned Blind Light stands out again and again as a highlight. Indeed, it is refreshing to see that Palace, as an album, bucks the trend that so many albums fall prey too: starting well, only to trail into mediocrity in the second half. And with the sense of atmosphere Chapel Club create, consistency lends itself even more to ensuring a complete listening experience.

iTunes are currently offering O Maybe I from the album as their free single of the week.