The title track from the Mancunian band's second album, Cadenza is a mystical little thing. Leaping from place to place on a bouncy piano riff, there's an elusive, meandering quality to it; almost as if it was some magical little firefly.
As the guitar kicks in there's touches of Two Door Cinema Club to the track and the vocals certainly reflect said band too. Both share that same knack for penning sprightly, modern indie-pop tracks that aren't willing to simply do things by the numbers for a cheap shot at success.
Hailing from Manchester, we can't ignore the immense legacy Dutch Uncles find themselves following in the footsteps of. Madchester, that great idol-like explosion that spawned forth so many wonderful classics twenty years ago.
Sweeping out of that proud city, these early innovators changed the British musical landscape forever with their fusion of guitars and dance heritage - so it's immensely heartening to see Dutch Uncles following this same ethic all these years on.
The Shield And Sword is one of those records that radiates class. Big disco strings and thundering piano chords, all led by Clare's powerhouse vocals. So much attention has been lavished on Adele of late with her record breaking chart run, but Clare's new single highlights how she's more than capable of holding her own with the big-timers.
One of the stronger cuts from her debut album Light After Dark, I confess, I would have preferred to see the title track get a single release first. Anthemic and epic The Shield And Sword might be, but not to the same degree on the shivers-down-the-spine Gothic beauty of the title track. What we have here though is a rousing, powerful pop record that sees Clare in her element; spinning a bewitching tale of the trials and tribulations of love.
YES! That was my reaction to hearing the title track from The Script's second album has finally been scheduled for a single release. You know the feeling; you get yourself an artist's new album and one song, more than any other, you fall head over heels in love with. And you wait months and months, hoping and praying that it will be released as a single so the general public at large can share in just how utterly amazing that song is. two or three singles might go past; other, lesser choices from the album, but finally, at long last, they put out that song.
I've experienced it before with Kylie's The One and Girls Aloud's Untouchable, and now I get to experience it again with Science & Faith. I still, to this day, remember when I first heard the track and was bowled over by the breathtaking melody of the chorus and the heartfelt anthem to searching for love that this song encompasses. It's a theme the Script have always excelled at, but here, they nail it once again.
With its opening crystalline, ringing, U2-like guitar hook, we quickly descends into reverberating chords, the blank pages for the band to paint the intense emotion of their lyrics upon. Maybe it's just coincidence, or maybe it's fate, but The Script's singles always seem to soundtrack certain vivid moments of my life that I can recall perfectly years later. these lyrics will hold their own meaning for me, as I'm sure they will for each and every listener.
'You won't faith and hope down a telescope, you won't find heart and soul in the stars. You can break everything down to chemicals, but you can't explain a love like ours...'
The real beauty of this song is that it endorses such a romantic view of love. Study the inner workings of attraction and desire all you want; but this scientific approach to something as magical as love with never work. Look at it in the most microscopic level of detail, and you'll still miss the raw power that untamed love can hold.
I think we all have our own ways in which faith, of whatever kind, has worked its way into our lives; and in this tale of love and the mysteries it will forever hold, The Script have come up with something wondrous and truly magical.
I think I’m falling in love with Nicole Scherzinger. Her debut album (finally out, after that unfortunate hiccup with shelved LP Her Name Is Nicole a few years back) has got me bewitched. Her voice is stunning; laced with a really distinctive twang too, really helping to contribute a more human element to her songs. In terms of recent pop records, as great as it is, Britney’s album can seem a little robotic at times, the voice serving merely as a tool amidst the other instruments that make up the track. But on Killer Love, Nicole’s voice is pure personality; you can truly feel her in every track.
The overall feel is future disco – there’s so, so much energy here. Think back to her breathtaking X Factor performance of Poison if you want a sense of what’s going on. It feels like she might jump right out of your speakers, grab you and force you up on the dance-floor.
What marks Nicole out amidst the crowd is that there’s so much versatility in her voice. Technically it’s perfect; with the power to dominate big, epic dance tracks like Number One hit Don’t Hold Your Breath, to the delicate subtlety needed for gloriously beautiful piano ballads like AmenJena.
For so long Nicole was just ‘the lead singer out of the pussycat dolls’, then, come her brilliant role as a guest judge on X Factor last year, we begun to see her blossom into a fully fledged star in her own right. Killer Love is the culmination of that. Lead single Poison comes on like The Prodigy; bleepy techno synths and machine-gun-like beats snapping away. Nicole spits out the chorus with a passion that could set light to the coldest of hearts.
It’s nice that they’ve featured Nicole’s collab with Enrique Iglesias on the album too, interestingly in an edited and remixed form that injects it with a bit more dancey-ness. Basically a big fat bassline slapped on that helps the song slot in a little easier with the hype- energy of the rest of the album. I adored the track when it was released last year; all its spacey love-on-the-dancefloor vibes and late-night passion was transfixing. That hypnotic, floaty quality the track carries itself with. That piano hook hammers itself into your consciousness, the strongest of aural hooks; the literal heartbeat at the core of the song.
To be fair, there are a few weaker moments across the album. Take, Right There; while every inch the radio friendly single, it sounds like it could have been cut and pasted straight off a Rihanna album. Here, Nicole’s individually that carries so much of the rest of the album sinks and fades away.
Where Killer Love is at its absolute best is on the title track. Here, the beats stomp, stomp away like factory machinery – unstoppable, impossibly powerful. Any other artist would find themselves lost amidst the noise, drowning in it all. But Nicole rides the music like she’s having the time of her life. The chorus is incredible, anthemic; everything you want from a pop tune in 2011. It’s even got a big chanty bit that is custom-built to be shouted out across arenas and stadiums across the world. When I first heard Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance I described it as a discotheque getting fucked by a train, and Killer Love is like that, but ten times bigger... and dare I say it, potentially better.
And then there’s Club Banger Nation. Anyone who names a track on their album that wins a hell of a lot of points from me. Here, the euro-dance leanings reach their climax as Nicole cries ‘tell me can you feel it’ before chucking in the customary ‘RedOne!’ shoutout. But God yes can we feel it. There’s the wonderfully groovy ‘we can stay until the sun comes up’ bit that makes you wish you could be out partying away right this minute. Then there’s some wild and seemingly random guitar riffing and Nicole screams a bit – again the fun element. That’s what Killer Love as an album is; pure fun, pumped through the ‘club banger’ machine. And it’s delivered an absolutely cracking creation.
