Shaz Condon / The Beautiful - Love's Leaving

For former Wonderland girl Shaz Condon, 2012 is a year of exciting new beginnings. Repositioning herself as part of four piece band The Beautiful, new single Love's Leaving on first impressions bears much in common with Condon's girl group days - sweet, melodic pop rock; but this time with added grit, crunchy guitar riffs and a definite 'band' vibe.

As with Wonderland, there's obvious debts to The Corrs in the airy, feather-light melodies and sugary vocal harmonies. Condon's vocals remain staunchly at the heart of the track and here she's afforded space to develop a sense of her own voice far more than on Wonderland's self-titled debut, where the vocal duties were obviously shared out piece-meal amongst the group.

Perhaps what stands out most about Love's Leaving though is just how rock it is. Cracking pop tune it undoubtedly is, but in the snarling feedback drenched guitar and Condon's belted ad-libs, the single leaps out as a tantalising promise for even greater things to come from The Beautiful. Popstars often don't get enough credit for sticking it out in the industry, but serious kudos are due to Condon for making a proper go of things - if there's more to come from her in the vein of Love's Leaving, you could very well be looking at one of the most promising new talents on the block. Wonderland, it seems, was just the beginning.

Love's Leaving is available as a free download from The Beautiful's Facebook page.

Gotye - Eyes Wide Open

Every year, there’s always a smattering of tracks that seem to utterly take over the radio – both through virtue of being played a hell of a lot, and simply sounding like a ‘radio’ track; something which merges into the consciousness of the surroundings. This year, Gotye’s 8x platinum (in Australia) Somebody That I Used To Know is one of those tracks.

Now firmly nestled in the public mind, Gotye turns to the track that warmed native audiences to him as his follow-up over here. Eyes Wide Open largely marks a big departure from his mega-hit; for starters, it’s placed far more firmly within the up-beat ouvre of standard indie-pop tropes. Like a shimmery middle-ground between Snow Patrol at their more pensive and Temper Trap’s Sweet Disposition, it once again nails that hazy radio-track substance, drawing it in, gorging itself on its essence. The result? A track that, while lacking the neat prettiness of Somebody That I Used To Know, shows that Gotye is more than just a one hit wonder.

Alt-J - Matilda

So, you call your band after an unpronounceable keyboard single (you know, the one that looks like a triangle) – where next? Knock out a tune of such quaint indie sugariness you can almost imagine the festival planners rubbing their palms in glee as they dial up the band to add them to their bill. Alt-J sound inclusive, communal – an everyman band for an everyman audience, and in Matilda – a bit like an early Maccabees – they hit on a simple formula of cute songwriting, minimal backing and general atmospheric spaciousness. It seems too early to bandy around phrases like ‘The next XX’, but judging by the twitching, arguably far better Tessellate, Alt-J certainly seem like promising candidates for the mantle.

Disclosure - Tenderly

From trippy, skeletal electronica to bass-ridden rubbery volleys into the heart of clubland, Tenderly feels like a track to put intelligence firmly back within the sphere of dance music. But in its rhythmic stabs of percussive energy, there’s echoes of the glory days of British house to the track – a spinning, whirling mix of eclecticism that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a mid 90s maxi-single. For the brotherly Moshi Moshi signed duo, Tenderly is both past and present, in one five minute compendium – and it really works.

Andrew Butler - February 14th EP

The debut EP from London singer songwriter Andrew Butler, for all its starry night campfire folk riffing, feels profoundly big. With its transatlantic sound, blending effortlessly between the idylls of rural England and mid America, feels brave and all encompassing – an open invitation for any listener to draw up an easy chair, sit down and enjoy. Songs like Wars of the Heart draw the focus back to the simple things in life, the pleasures of good company and sweet reminiscing.

Music this good, this richly textured, is made for a TV scale – even as the first delicate refrains of A Thousand Words creep in you can imagine it soundtracking some crisp autumnal scene in a well-made drama. The tender, almost apprehensive plucking of the guitar strings against the slow swell and ebb of strings is pitched to an emotion tugging ambience that’s arrestingly disarming. Speaking from the heart and the tips of fingers, Butler makes real stop and stare music, stuff that needs to be breathed in, absorbed, circulated – all distilled right down to the essence of what makes great folk tunes.

Butler’s Johnny Cash cover Guess Things Happen That Way is available to download for free.

The February 14th EP is, you guessed it, released on the 14^th February.

[Official Video] Alexandra Burke - Elephant

When you want to announce your come-back in style, you do it with a massive fuck-off knuckle ring and skimpy hot leather. That's how you go about things if you're Alexandra Burke anyway, and her video for Elephant certainly matches up to the dirty, gritty electro vibe of the track itself. Fierce only begins to cover it.

Elephant by pbax94

Madonna - MDNA megamix, first impressions

We've seen the video. We've all got rather excited. But looking into our Madonna shaped crystal ball (because the first single is only the start), MDNA - the album - is so much more than just cheerleaders and men in American football get-ups.

So what does the album actually sound like? A three track megamix sampler offers tantalising glimpses. Give Me All Your Luvin aside (which we've already established as pretty damn good), it seems overtly dancey. And that's good. Very good. After the urban side-step Madge took on Hard Candy, it's great to see her returning to what she does best, club records.

MDNA sounds less celestial than Confessions, less magically enchanting, but rather pushes down the glossy up-beat route of Celebration, which, I suppose, would represent a logical progression of her sound. Of the two, Turn Up The Radio sounds better but both tracks strike the right balance between 'mature' and 'fun' Madonna, and while they're far from the actively explorative, innovating days of 90s Madonna, they sound infinitely more confident and grounded than anything on Hard Candy.

Psychedelic party records is what Madonna is all about, and this kind of throwing-cares-to-the-wall and drinking a load of fizzy pop good-times stuff is such a refreshing return to form for her your only hopes are that the rest of the album matches up to the promising standards set by these two short snapshots. Because when Madonna is on-form, no-one else can touch her.