[Nacional: recipients of August's single of the month award. But there is no award... more like an accolade actually.]
Punk is all the rage - on the evidence of the first two singles this month anyway. The King Blues are a London act who project a renagade, guerilla-gigging image. Let’s Hang The Landlord (*, 4 Aug), [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘singles round-up’
August 5, 2008
August in singles: Punks, divas, has-beens and a will-be
July 8, 2008
July in singles: a bored actress, Pammy’s ex, and the next Arcade Fire?
[Attic Lights: recipients of July single of the month]
To look at bespectacled Glaswegian Ross Clark, you might expect him to be a modest, sensitive, home-spun folkster. But, au contraire, Silversword (****, Out Now) is a raucous, joyous, full-band-with-horns blitzkrieg, taking the populist bent of The Fratellis and filtering out all the bad stuff. Paul [...]
June 5, 2008
June in singles: reviewed by The Twilight Sad
[Images: John Lewis]
Instead of my usual ramblings on the month’s singles for The Skinny magazine, this time we decided to let someone else do the slagging. The Twilight Sad are one of my favourite bands of the past year, and even produced The Skinny’s album of 2007. I met them before their gig at Tigerfest [...]
May 5, 2008
May in singles: new music from New York, Norway and… Dundee
Most agree that the indie-fication of pop has been a change for the better. Except, that is, when bands like The Pigeon Detectives bring their knuckle-dragging post-Libertine shtick to the table with new single This Is An Emergency (**, 5 May). A rush of equally naff computer beeps heralds the debut single of Philadelphian electro-rock-bots [...]
April 9, 2008
April in singles: beatniks, soulsters, the usual fluff
Pitched somewhere between O Brother Where Art Thou? and The Pogues, The Ballad of Bess Houdini (***, 7 Apr) by Paul Vickers and The Leg is nothing if not intriguing. Which means it is, by the way. So we’ve established that SL Records have an ear for quirky, beatnik troubadours. Thomas Truax is further proof: [...]
March 2, 2008
March in singles: the good, the bad, the Blunt
Attention all you closet Bryan Adams fans: was Everything I Do the soundtrack to your first game of school disco tonsil tennis? Then I’ll be kind. I Thought I’d Seen Everything (**, 10 Mar) heralds Adams as the new Bob Dylan. In a parallel universe where Dylan wrote infantile, wuvvy-duvvy swill, that is. On that [...]
February 6, 2008
February - A month in singles
Joe Lean & the Jing Jang Jong may have a ridiculous name, but they’ve already been tagged as a band on the rise in 2008. No surprise on the evidence of Lonely Buoy (***, 18 Feb), with its Bloc Party pace and Cribs-y guitars. [Although they fairly divide opinion, as Ally shows in his hilarious [...]
January 7, 2008
A month in singles: January
Plenty of new music to sample this month, but before the young pretenders come the old-timers. But you could hardly apply that moniker to Sons And Daughters. I have to declare an interest: I’m a fan, but Darling (14 Jan, ****) is still another winner from the best exponents of Spector-meets-Cave pop. The Kills were often [...]
December 2, 2007
December singles round-up
(Originally for The Skinny magazine)
Part I – Indie.
Maxïmo Park switch down a gear from their usual breakneck post-punk for Karaoke Plays (***, 3 Dec), another razor-edged but same-y track from Our Earthly Pleasures. Next it’s down to Alan Partridge country with Norwich’s Bearsuit: Foxy Boxer (***, 3 Dec) is a bit of fun - nothing [...]
