Supporting We Are Scientists on tour feels like a fair fit for Cincinnati-based indie-poppers Bad Veins, as they take to the live circuit across the UK this July. There’s that same quirkiness underlying the guitar lines and cutesy hooks, a collegiate chic that runs through a gamut of tuneful American predecessors from the The Strokes to the Dandy Warhols. There’s knowing nods to the past in their video for single Dancing on TV too; a nostalgic penchant for outmoded games consoles and brash decor that suits the track well. UK radio may have moved on from the days when bands like Ban Veins were ten a penny, but it’s reassuring to know they still exist out there somewhere, still turning out unsuspecting gems like this.
The band play the following live dates through July and August:
Calvin Harris must be rubbing his hands in glee right now. First Rihanna’s We Found Love – then Cheryl’s Call My Name... if things carry on at this rate he’ll be giving Mr Guetta a run for his money in terms of universal chart domination stakes.
But musically speaking, Example collab We’ll Be Coming Back feels a little like the sound of a man who’s already spent his load. Sure, all the trademark rave o’clock synth hooks and pill-popping drum fills are in place, but the song feels lifeless, a dry-run of a track that pales away into nothingness when stood alongside the artistic peaks both artists have previously shown themselves to be capable of.
Call My Name, We Found Love and Ne-Yo-featuring Let’s Go all worked because on top of all the standard dance trappings was an indelible sense of pop melody, the kind of thing to grip the mind not only into the early hours, but right on through to the next night. As both club smashes par-excellence and chart contenders, they were right on the money. We’ll Be Coming Back, why by no means a bad record, just doesn’t operate in the same league – we just hope this doesn’t mark the start of the Calvin formula entering a distinctly watered-down phase.
Timeless soul diva or spritzy Spanish beverage? Cleo Sol could quite easily be both, but a perfunctory listen to her debut single affirms she is most definitely the former. Having already featured on tracks by some of the best in UK rap, the songstress goes it alone on the back of a grooved-up chunk of strutting R&B class. There’s something of a gloriously sunny mid 90s summer to the whole affair, quite the antidote to the rancid weather the UK has deigned to deliver us this June. Oh, and it certainly doesn’t hurt that Sol spends much of the video working it out in a variety of figure-hugging outfits. There’s touches of old school Diana Ross there too, a passionate performance that goes far beyond early collabs with Tinie Tempah and Wretch 32, breaking free of her Ladbroke Grove roots and gearing up to take on the world.
‘I decided that this remix has to be a belter that people can go mental to’ says Rob Jevons of his remix of new Hounds track Fan The Flames of Desire – and belter it is, a throbbing slab of gristle and dub-laced power. Subtle, it is not – but then, you’d expect nothing less from a group fresh from an impressive slot at Download and gearing up to support The Prodigy at the Milton Keynes Bowl.
And it’s with The Prodigy that Hounds find their closest kin here – yelped, punky vocals clashing with a veritable battering ram of noise. With the likes of Enter Shikari and Korn already enjoying impressive returns from their delvings into the sub-sphere, Fan The Flames of Desire makes for a meaty appetiser for the group’s current EP release, The Wicked.
Misha B IS attitude. A full-on force ten gale when so many of her fellow contestants from the X Factor school of 2011 were mere whimpers in the winds of popular music. And Home Run is everything that was great about her before disastrously poor song choice and tepid styling converted her into a caricature of herself.
The video makes for a neat fit to the track too, colourful and fun for the youth audience Misha is clearly gunning for, but with the accompanying slickness and production whizz to push her to the hipsters to. Dare we say it, Home Run could very well be the first tentative steps in the making of a British Minaj?
The second single from London five-piece exlovers, Emily finds itself playing along two central strands. On one hand, there’s the wonderfully retro guitar lines, like something dredged out of the mid 90s, a tuneful harking back to hazy Britpop memories. And then there’s the interplay of hushed boy/girl vocals, a lo-fi murmur that floats around with an apt sense of spaced-out individualism. It all sort of revolves in that fey Dandy Warhols artfulness that comes on here, reborn for a new generation of disaffected youth – the music in the corners of the radio static, a lost gem for long afternoons.
Now here’s something – imagine a collective of feisty northerners in the vein of Reverend & The Makers allied to edgy slabs of LCD-Soundsystem-esque electro. A potent cocktail, and one that Mancunian five-piece Swiss Lips pull off with thrilling ease on hi-energy stormer Danz. It makes for a frenetic exercise in synth power-pop, the kind of thing Duran Duran might have been making if they had kick-started their career in the 21st century rather than the early 80s. The group’s other tracks show a great deal of promise too, U Got The Power ups the quirk considerably – mixing and matching in funky basslines and hedonistic whoops. Grow returns to the Duran-alike sounds, needling synth hooks underpinning another full-throttle up-tempo number.
The band are playing the following upcoming live dates:
General Fiasco sure don’t go in quietly. Sledgehammer guitar riffs slam out of the speakers, opening the gates for a tour-de-force in steely modern rock. Big, weighty and with a fighter-like poise to the Northern Irish group’s lyrical delivery, Bad Habits makes for a brawling follow-up to Zane Lowe Hottest-Record-in-the-World pick, The Age You Start Losing Friends. Even compressed into the tight confines of this studio version, you can feel the energy straining to be let loose live. With two UK-wide tours already polished off this year, the thrill and vigour of the gig-setting forms the very lifeblood of General Fiasco’s music.
Towards the end of last year we featured Josh Kumra’s freebie download Call off the Search; for the Swindon lad who’d already guested on Wretch 32’s Don’t Go, his own music saw him making a confident stand at the forefront of a new wave of British White Soul. A James Morrison with infinitely more street cred, if you will.
New track Helicopters & Planes pairs Kumra’s distinctive vocals with a moody synthetic backing and the subdued rumble of lo-fi percussion. It’s a moment of enchanting, arresting claustrophobia; those haunting string sections lifting Kumra’s voice up to where it can soar most freely.
Earlier in the week we featured Sheffield band Twin Bears,
and well, like busses, these things always seem to come in twos – so, from the
same northern climes, allow us to present Kartica. Debut single Don’t You Think
So manages to pretty much encompass anyone who was anyone during the heights of
90s Britpop; big, grey-sky guitar lines with a vocal halfway between your
Gallaghers and Ashcrofts. In its more tuneful moments, there’s even a touch of
the Doves and the Bunnymen, a plaintiff to carry the baton of British lad-rock
on to the next generation. With recent efforts from the likes of The Enemy
proving to be particularly uninspiring, Kartica offer a well-polished
alternative.
When Billy Joel recorded Uptown girl back in 1983, we don’t think even God could have imagined it’d one day end up with a massive rave synth shoved up its arse and used as the hook in the latest Usher/will.i.am collab. But here we are, and the short of it is that Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, for all its ridicu-sampling, is a bit of an anthem. Sure, there’s none of the sensual poise that made Climax such a crucial artistic re-invigoration for Usher, but in terms of plonking the R&B star back in the centre of clubland as previous will.i.am team-up OMG did, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop feels just about right.
As an entry point to Wisconsin duo Peaking Lights’ LP Lucifer, Beautiful Son makes for an almost bewilderingly varied number. From floaty, disembodied vocals to twitchy electronics that recall the heydays of Orbital and 808 State, it’s a veritable tropical rainforest of musical touch-points. At its best, there’s even a sprinkling of Screamadelica-ish transcendentalism to it, a slow, gentle wash of blissful emotion and the bond between parent and child. Indeed, as far as spaced out, trippy love songs go, we reckon we’d be pretty chuffed if someone wrote something like this about us. Surprisingly touching, Beautiful Son manages to be both heartfelt and sonically explorative in the artiest of ways.
Now here’s a thing – esteemed London rapper Riz MC knocking
together a Blade Runner tribute, including a cameo appearance from Channel 4’s
Fonejacker? It sounds like a concept too surreally unreal to be true – but here
it is, existing for all the world to see, and we reckon it makes for a rather
entertaining re-work of some of the most recognisable scenes from the classic film.
Soundtracked by Dark Hearts, a dapper, pin-point precise cut from Riz’s
upcoming MICroscope album, the video sees the MC blasting his way through a
series of replicants until... well, we wouldn’t want to spoil the final twist
for you.
For their second single, promising Devon newcomers These Reigning Days go for classic British guitar sounds, but revitalised with a proficiency and sense of scope that feels grander and more ambitious than a good deal of their contemporaries. A big hearty chorus and slabs of steely guitar that march stoically along, Living It Up is the kind of track The Enemy would have done well to have had on their new album. With a support slot alongside Metronomy under their belts already, one imagines that with songs as strong as this, These Reigning Days are chomping at the bit to head out on the road again.
It’s a brave band that goes about covering 80s classic Take My Breath Away. Still, we’re rather liking this version by Cologne two-piece Vimes, who give the track an icy chilled-out makeover, all subtle synthetic touches and a lovely sense of atmosphere. It’s the sort of thing we imagine OMD might come up it if they ever did a covers album. The group’s own track Neglect offers more of the same, verging into Hot Chip territory for a moody electronic work-out.
Hailing from Oakland, Jhameel casts himself in the guise of a suitably chameleonic sonic wizard as he leaps from genre to genre on bewitching new single A Maiden Calling. With a rhythmic, pin-prick guitar line underpinning the track, a trailing breeze of treated vocals whisper themselves into an enveloping shell of sound – atmospheric in the most ethereal of senses. There’s hints of Temper Trap hit Sweet Disposition to the overall composition, but Jhameel pushes A Maiden Calling towards a far more futuristic feel; a glossy, involving soundscape to really lose yourself in.
Tinie Tempah might have made Miami 2 Ibiza a byword for club-land thrills, but it’s MC trio Marvell that take a bassier, more minimal approach for London 2 Atlanta. Positively purring beneath a smattering and crisp beats, it’s the distinctly transatlantic allure of a tweaked vocal hook that really lifts the track a cut up. As a slow-burner to underscore the excesses and pleasures of the club, London 2 Atlanta hits the spot and carries on out the door, ushering you away to a life of jet-setting with reassuringly confident swagger and cheeky lyricism.
Pressing play on Killer On The Dancefloor – the new single from Brummie three-piece Rebellious Jukebox – is like slipping through a fault in time, falling backwards into the folds of gloomy Cure-esque atmospherics and a lapping, sea-like wash of throbbing bass and emphatic vocals. There’s a touch of the White Lies to the group too, but with an arty piquancy that hints at something potentially far darker. Killer On The Dancefloor makes for a formidable introduction to the group, albeit one that leaves the listener haunted by a soundscape that is as slippery as it is involving. One for greyly overcast days where somewhere out there in the mass of clouds, there’s a hint of something moving...
We're very much liking this new single by Helen Boulding - she's sort of like Ellie Goulding meets The Pierces, and The Innocents makes for a solidly tuneful pop-rock number. All soaring and anthemic in the right places, it's an impressive front for Boulding's upcoming album Calling All Angels, set for a July release. It's the kind of radio-friendly morsel that so many female songstresses in Boulding's vein aim for, but never quite seem able to pull off with the right degree of songwriting maturity and tasteful production. Considering her experience in the industry (she co-wrote tracks for 911 and Alex Parks as well as providing backing vocals for Holly Valance), it seems only right that Boulding has crafted her own solo efforts into being with ease.
What do we think about what effectively amounts to Kimberley Walsh's third solo musical effort after her Aggro Santos collab and the Horrid Henry soundtrack job? Well, the thing about her cover of Queen's One Vision is that you have to approach it on two levels.
At face value, I think it's fair to say that it's probably the weakest track any of Girls Aloud - either as a combined force or individually - have released as a single. Queen are one of those bands that you just don't touch when it comes to covers, it's too much of an impossibility to ever come close to matching anything of Freddie Mercury's original performances on the tracks. It's in the pizzaz of it all, and the flamboyant diction.
And you'd sort of think, that with her theatrical background (and Kimberley really has utterly excelled in Shrek of late), that flamboyance would suit Kimberley. But in this case, it really doesn't - it's sort of like a Glee version of Queen, if Glee was populated by successful British popstars. Too studied, too safe, too predictable. And Alfie Boe's operatical blasts across the track certainly don't help either - it trips the track over into a kind of Mary Poppins-esque extravaganza of jazz-handed showbizness that wipes away the firey heart of the original.
What does the cover have going for it then? Well, for starters - because it comes from one fifth of Girls Aloud, we - as long-serving eternally loyal fans - feel honour bound to purchase it, which we did. There's also the fact this is all in support of the Olympics and Team GB, and we felt it might be rather patriotic of us to 'do our bit' and part with our pennies. And to be fair to this re-work of the Queen classic, we rather like the way they've kept much of the production pretty faithful to the original - those strings sections are really quite gorgeous.
And above all, there's a real heart-bursting sense of inherently British pride to the whole thing. It makes you swell with passion for our great nation, this wonderful land that has had the fair grace to produce such musical greats as Queen and Girls Aloud. And while this cover presents a rather cock-eyed look at both groups' ongoing legacies, we like to think we can take One Vision as a reminder of how good they are in their own right rather than this rather outlandish mish-mash of extravagance.
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