05 May 2008

The Pigeon Detectives – This Is An Emergency
The Leeds band have marked down their signature territorial like a dog taking a leak around Northern Britain and so this sounds so wrapped up in their world that it doesn’t have the youthful bombast of 'I’m Not Sorry' which is a shame.

The Favours – One Up On You
The lead singer is a girl with inflatable lips who plays the guitar and although this image presents distraction her voice does echo The Cranberries which would be better suppressed, like the accompanying images of Ireland that fly with it, funny coins and people talking a lot.

The Outside Royalty – Falling
Hailing from music vortex of Pittsburgh parts of this single sound so quintessentially English that the band might as well be wearing tweed and sending their dogs out to hunt foxes to death. The lyrics discuss what it’s like to fall in love while plummeting to the ground in a plane in a very Pulp way.

White Light Parade – Turning All The Lights Down
The sound echoes like it’s been recorded in somewhere with acoustics more suited to the dreary goings-on in a village hall rather than something more conducive to a stereo. At least it has some verve and flailing enthusiasm.

James Pants – We’re Through
James is the arbiter of the genre “fresh beat” which is basically riding on his synths all around the 80s landscape and infusing the vocal distortion of LCD Soundsystem into his repartee. So laconic and Tom Vek that you can’t help but admire.

Cazals – Somebody Somewhere
They sound like a modern day The Jam if Paul Weller had that operation transsexuals have to lower the timbre of their voice. There’s a Bloodhound Gang lyric and it comes with a chorus that intelligent brutes could sing outside football stadiums.

Teasing Lulu – Waste of Time
If The Like started a scene then this band would be right at the back exhuming their tired pedestrian feminist punk schtick with a pop hook thrown in to convince middle aged men that this is how music should sound when they’ve been stuck reading Uncut for too long.

The Charlatans – The Misbegotten
Much has been made of The Charlatans piggy-backing on Radiohead’s spirit of freeness but when they make a genuine attempt to reinvent the sound, fail, and still come out without resorting to pushing lyrics into a Charlatans simulator, then this is the exact formula to get their career back on track.

Hot Chip – One Pure Thought
Incredibly tedious service station rest room piped music that echoes in your mind like a terrible soundtrack to a Michael Douglas film set in deepest Africa, or maybe a comic caper set to music with a wizened Danny Devito.

Hoover Manoeuvres – Meds
A band who have soaked up the hybrid dance scene that Groove Armada use as their calling card although at other times they sound like the house band put on in a deserted space by the Brand New Heavies.

Fleet Foxes – Sun Giant
Certainly a curious band mixing the celestial hymn like harmonies of the village choir with the meditative approach of Arcade Fire’s slower moments. This is all from a band who herald from home of crunching guitar Seattle.

The Steers – Julia
They worked through 12 band members before alighting on this line up suggests that they’re taking this seriously or they’re control freaks and tyrannical to work with. It results in a bright breezy pop indie sound with a sweepingly vocal from a time when you could hitchhike without fear of getting stabbed in the neck,

The Parlotones – Louder Than Bombs
There’s something grandiose about this South Africa band who aren’t afraid to explore the wide-open spaces of music rather than rein in their ambitions. How touring with Ocean Colour Scene will help is anyone’s guess.

Oppenheimer – Look Up
A plaintive version of Death Cab For Cutie may have worked a couple of years ago but now they sound like Canadian band Stars, all pearly white teeth and consciences that are so clean that you couldn’t dig up dirt on them if you transmogrified into a metal shovel.

Ned – The Message
It has taken close to ten years to get this release to rest against the ears of reviewers and when it does it sounds like the demonic soundtrack to a Pixies film with vocals that just suddenly arrive with a snarl like they’ve just raced out of a tunnel with flashing lights, startling.

Officials Secrets Act – Victoria
Old school gasping from the singer as if he’s trying to scrape his own throat free of detritus, mucus and lint while singing about breaking up with a betrothed and the catastrophic effect this would have on the kids. Fine, like shopping around Gap feeling nothing.

Not My Girl – Ejectorseat
Effervescent like an aspirin with lyrics that sound so upbeat, it’s like all the ersatz apathy has been lifted out of indie like a soul slowly removing itself from a body. What’s left is a whole set of twinkling synthesisers and what could be the new theme tune from Friends.