A Year In Pop: 22

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Into June we go with nine new hits, but a bit of a motley crop.

[Poll #997442]

Here's the May results! (As ever, all these polls are perpetually open so results are - kind of - provisional)

1=. Rihanna ft Jay-Z - Umbrella (Overall Position: 1st=)
1=. CSS - Let's Make Love And Listen To Death From Above (OP: 1st=)
3. McFly - Baby's Coming Back/Transylvania (OP: 6th)
4. Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Me And My Imagination (OP: 7th)
5. Dizzee Rascal - Sirens (OP: 18th)
6. Booty Luv - Shine (OP: 21st)
7. Mutya Buena - Real Girl (OP: 23rd)
8. Hellogoodbye - Here (In Your Arms) (OP: 28th)
9. Maroon 5 - Makes We Wonder (OP: 31st)
10. R Kelly ft TI & T-Pain - I'm A Flirt (OP: 48th)

May was the first month in which every single got at least 1 tick.

Sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

( Take a hint of M.I.A. Add a splash of CSS silliness. Drop in a handful of Brazilian beats. Open a tin of Peaches (see what I did there?!!) and use two or three. Stir vigorously with lasers and heavy guitars. )

Video Club: Ghosts

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Watch on YouTube

The new Ghosts single, "The World Is Outside". I like this a lot. U2-esque anthemic guitar pop (maybe a bit of Keane in there too?). I particularly love the bridge between the verse and chorus - gives the song just the extra kick it needs. This hasn't troubled the singles chart so far on download sales, but I have fingers crossed it might do something this week on its full release. (Their last single, "Stay the Night" was great too, but that only scraped into the lower reaches of the Top 40 despite a fair bit of radio play.)

The audio quality on this YouTube clip is not great - too quiet! But it's the only clip of the official video I can find.

If you hate the song you can have fun hoping that one of the heavy falling objects will eventually land on the band.

REcent Rekkids

[mippy.livejournal.com]

Another Sunny Day in Glasgow - 5.15 Train
A gorgeous sunny wash that sounds like My Bloody Valentine frottaging Foxbase Alpha; sunlight through leaves and days where sunglasses cross-process everything. The soundtrack to pointless walks down unfamiliar streets. Sometimes to exist is more than enough.

Broadcast - Echo's Answer
I listened to this a couple of weeks ago while walking through Primark. A mysterious bundle of electric strings and old doorbells with something mysterious being sung over the top, it made the scramble for the last size 8 oddly atmospheric. The soundtrack to escalators up to Bedding.

Charlotte Gainsbourg - Jamais
Can she actually sing? I'm not actually sure. You can get quite far on Gallic charm - just ask Ms Tautou, who made her name on getting impressionable young indie girls to the cinema and saying 'You know, I'm a little bit like Amelie...' on the way out. But this is nice. The repeated motif of the 'never' 'jamais' pairs, and the swirly chorus, and the way the tune is a nod to Lola. The soundtrack to walking down the flyover at night while the traffic goes by and the wind lifts skirts just slightly...

Prefab Sprout - Bonny
As part 362 of my Everyone Really Ought To Be Owning Steve McQueen By Now soapbox, I'm going to write me a post about how even though the accents remain firmly in Consett, Ver Sprouts are so clearly influenced by Springsteen and Prince. How amazing would When The Angels Take sound covered by P.Rogers Nelson? Come to think of it, Little Red Corvette and Cars and Girls should go on a date together too. I'd like to know whether Thomas Dolby also produced Swoon (I don't have my copy to hand) and if Trevor Horn or the NPG produced an unassuming little album about male failings by throwing enough money and ideas at it that it wouldn't sound remotely dated twenty-five years on, would it fit together as incongrously yet nicely as Dear Catastrophe Waitress did? Would someone have made them put Walk On on the album? Would this song still have a spoken word line at the end that it took me months to work out exactly. I don't know. I'm being a geek. Anyway, everyone really ought to be owning Steve McQueen by now.

The Housemartins - Build
A rather gorgeous ballad about, um, urban redevelopment, this really needs a BBC Sessions releasing; the punchier production on those recordings is such an improvement to the wimpy tones of most 1980s UK indie records, sounding a little flat now through earphones instead of off vinyl. After years of The Beautiful South being a by-word for the bland, it's easy to forget that along with crisp-packet collecting and obsessive list-writing, Paul Heaton can actually carry a gospel tune. Build borrows from that period where gospel turned into soul, or maybe soul turned into pop - the twinkly piano motif, the call and response chorus, a middle eight which is just the song's title held for longer each time. The best bit, of course, beign where Heaton aims for the high note and just glances off it. Eventually someone's going to claim this for a novelty Live Lounge cover.  Housemartins fact: they were actually socialists, but they weren't actually Christians.

Smog - Let Me See The Colts
The soundtrack to walking down deserted alleys in East London; the sun's going down, you;ve been here before, but can only just remember when. Strings. That's what they're there for.

Sugarhill Gang - Apache
I'm going to form a SG tribute act. There's only two takers so far - a mate of mine who can play the bass-line to Good Times 'for about three hours without getting bored', and me, because I just want the opportunity to should 'Apache! Jump on it! Jump on it!' repeatedly to people other than the cat. I feel the cat relates more to the gritty urban realism of The Message.