en http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/ Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 60 http://www.audioscrobbler.net/data/webservices http://www.last.fm/user/GregKNicholson/journal The Last.fm journal for GregKNicholson. Last.fm journals are a place to talk about all things music. http://www.last.fm/user/GregKNicholson/journal/2008/02/14/2jr1_the_2008-02-14_roundtable_round-up Thu, 14 Feb 2008 23:58:34 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/GregKNicholson/journal/2008/02/14/2jr1_the_2008-02-14_roundtable_round-up Hey, folks, it's another round-up of the week's Roundtable:

R.E.M. sound exactly like R.E.M. on Supernatural Superserious, which, depending on your opinion of R.E.M., is either good, bad or indifferent—it's inextraordinary college rock, the like of which R.E.M. have been making for ages.

Similarly, Run by Gnarls Barkley is something of a non-entity of a Motown-style soul record. It's immensely passable, but could be supplanted for any conceivable use by a well-placed Stevie Wonder record.

I expect Billy Bragg's I Keep Faith will get on the Radio 2 playlist—it's very gentle easy listening, without any of the political edge of much of his earlier music. It's quite reminiscent of the corduroy-fondling stylings of Adele and Duffy that've been popular of late. I doubt it was Bragg's intention to aim for commercial success, but this is what he'd sound like if it were.

Anyone Else But You by The Moldy Peaches (not “Mouldy”, apparently) sounds like a mobile phone advert. It consists only of a lo-fi acoustic guitar, a couple of shakers and two singers (one male, one female). It's almost excruciatingly folksy and—incongruously—ends up sounding like its near-total lack of polish was done very deliberately.

No Lucifer by British Sea Power falls somewhere between Embrace (Ashes), Arcade Fire (No Cars Go) and The Automatic (Raoul): up(-ish)-beat, wall-of-sound–type indie rock with a few shouty background vocals. I don't think it differentiates itself well enough—both from their previous output and from a multitude of other bands—to earn BSP any plaudits.

Enfant Terrible by Enfant Terrible is glitchy electro-dance-pop with broken vocals; it reminded me of the Riot in Belgium remix of À cause des garçons by Yelle.

Sensual Seduction is deceptive: it starts out all legato swirling synths and tweeting woodwind; but then a five-years-ago-ish American boyband-type vocal (sort of Justin Timberlake-y) comes in (ruins it, of course); apparently (and surprisingly) this is actually Snoop Dogg—turns out he can actually sing (albeit cheesily). It's about four-fifths of the way through before he starts doing his usual rapping shtick. It'd make a reasonable (though naff) instrumental.

...aaand relax.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/GregKNicholson/journal/2008/02/07/2jr0_the_2008-02-07_roundtable_round-up Thu, 7 Feb 2008 20:25:06 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/GregKNicholson/journal/2008/02/07/2jr0_the_2008-02-07_roundtable_round-up This week's Roundtable featured panellists David Quantick, Daniel Miller (boss of Mute Records) and Martina Topley-Bird.

Judging by Get Over It (played on the programme), Kriss Kross (which you can download at the moment from Polydor's website), Big Dog and Standing On The Last Star (both of which have been floating around on YouTube for a while); Guillemots' second album—Red (more on which at Drowned in Sound)—is rather more poptastic than Through The Windowpane. There's a lot of gospel and R&B-pop type influences, and it's seemingly more in the vein of Trains to Brazil and Annie, Let's Not Wait than Little Bear and We're Here. Topley-Bird's right—this gallops.

The Bears Are Coming by Late Of The Pier sounds like an electro-indie band doing an impression of Timbaland. It's energetic and has lots of “squiggly noises” (Lammo's words). It seems a little bit forcibly quirky, as if they're trying too hard to put as many weird noises as possible in there, but it's still fun.

Funplex, from The B-52's' new album—also called Funplex—eschews Ricky Wilson's post-punk guitar-wielding from The B-52's & Wild Planet, and Keith Strickland's lazy hillbilly rock from Cosmic Thing in favour of overproduced Bon Jovi-esque stadium rock. (Quantick (I think—it might have been Daniel Miller) describes them as a “gay Bon Jovi”.) The B's' lyrical interplay's still there, but their vocal harmonies are a conspicuously absent. It seems to be lacking both a sense of playfulness musically (Wig, Quiche Lorraine) and the abrasive punch of songs such as Give Me Back My Man and Hero Worship. (Can you tell I'm familiar with these guys' output? (Ditto Guillemots.))

Chromeo's Needy Girl marries Daft Punk-like electronic squirming to a very-'80s Baywatch-soundtracking synth-'n'-guitar rhythm that fails to be funky. Sounds a lot like a forgotten Lionel Ritchie record in which he tries to use a vocoder.

Patty Lee by Les Savy Fav is straightforward indie rock: drums, guitar, bass, slightly-shouted vocals. The tune and the rhythm are nothing that hasn't been done before. So while it's not at all bad, it's pretty unremarkable.

The backing in Honey by Erykah Badu sounds like it's coming over a tinny radio (even when it isn't, if you see what I mean). That and the rhythmic hand-clap combine to make a solid—though unremarkable—R&B/soul song.

Bob Mould is purportedly very good and I enjoyed the songs played from District Line (whichever ones they were). Though the rich, resonant indie-guitar styling isn't at all original, it's a style I enjoy that is ably realised here. Bob Mould's voice is pleasant and complements the instruments well, despite itself not being all that marvellous.

Barring cataclysm, the Round-up should be back to its usual weekly self. Do go and nab Kriss Kross from Polydor while you can: it may be the effect of having heard it several more times than Get Over It, but I prefer the former as a pop rollicker. Stay tuned.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/GregKNicholson/journal/2008/01/10/2jqz_the_2008-01-10_roundtable_round-up Thu, 10 Jan 2008 20:13:04 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/GregKNicholson/journal/2008/01/10/2jqz_the_2008-01-10_roundtable_round-up Roundtable is a new-releases–reviewing–type programme on 6 Music on which songs are played and discussed. Songs! This week, they played and discussed the following songs, which I shall also discuss here. Because “why not?”:

We Are Scientists's After Hours has a chugging '80s-pop-ish beat. As far as I can tell, it's nondescript pop music, equally suitable for synopsising highlights-montages on Match of the Day as it is for emotional departure scenes on Hollyoaks. The production is polished to the extent of being shiny and it doesn't assault the ears as it should.

Dig Lazarus Dig by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds is largely spoken-word, backed by Fun Lovin' Criminals-like thriftily-strummed guitar. It'd suit a beer commercial set on a highway on a hot day—maybe I'm just thinking of an advert that used Loco. So, a bit like that, but less catchy: there's no discernible hook. It also suits the image of blokes in shorts reclining in a back garden with feet in a paddling pool, again on a hot day, and again with beer—American beer. Evidently, and this is as bewildering to me as it is to you, this song is the musical equivalent of a hot day with lager.

Death To Los Campesinos! (by Los Campesinos!, of course—it'd just be rude otherwise) is indie disco fodder. Upbeat, danceable pop with chug-and-squawk guitars and fifth-sung, fifth-shouted, fifth-spoken, fifth-croaked and fifth–massive-chorus-singalong vocals. It's the soundtrack to a group of happy sixteen-year-olds jumping about with ice pops on a bouncy castle. Dirty great big smiles on their faces—they've just finished their GCSEs. Captain Chatroom (that's “someone from the 6 Music chatroom”) says it sounds like “Broken Social Scene gone bad”; Dave Newfeld is producing this album, though I disagree with the “bad” part—more like fifteen years younger and on a sugar rush.

Vuju De by The Orb reminds me of Just Give 'em Whiskey—there's sampled speech flying about all over the place, above a Groove Salad-y rhythm plus a passable but unremarkable sung melody.

Broke Up The Time was a fine fast-paced head-nodding–type indie rock tune; it even made a couple of people's “best/favourite song of 2007” lists, despite just being chucked online rather than “properly” released. See how removing barriers to distribution removes the distinction between “any random song” and “full-blown single”? The Beginning of the Twist, then, is the latter—the first proper single (the lead single, even) from The Futureheads' forthcoming album. The vocals are still Mackem and yelpy, but there are fewer harmonies than their début album. (I keep banging on about vocal harmonies and multi-part vocals with the 'Heads, but really they did have it down to a fine art in Carnival Kids etc.) This song suffers from having a straightforward stomp-clap–stomp-clap breakdown instead of either a proper middle 8 or a proper progression. In all criteria apart from “being the new single”, Carnival Kids is superior to this. Having said that, I'm fairly certain this will grow on me like “The Futureheads” did.

50 Souls & A Disco Bowl by The Lionheart Brothers is zany pop, The Wonder Stuff-style. It would suit a mobile phone company advert, for the “everybody's happy and twirling around each other in a circle” “after” “yaaaaayyyyy!” shot.

Some of the tracks on Lupe Fiasco's The Cool sound like a succession of “yo momma” jokes set to generic hip-hop music. In fact, that's what most hip-hop sounds like to me. High Definition would be better as an instrumental—the backing is actually quite good; I'm just irretrievably put off by the pronunciation of “their” as “dey”. Indistinguishable, to my admittedly hip-hop–reticent ear, from Kanye West.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/GregKNicholson/journal/2007/12/13/2jqy_the_2007-12-13_roundtable_round-up Thu, 13 Dec 2007 19:27:18 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/GregKNicholson/journal/2007/12/13/2jqy_the_2007-12-13_roundtable_round-up Round-bloody-table!

(Those stupidly–brief-and-to-the-point intros are really much easier to write—there are only so many sensible ways of introducing a round-up of this week's Roundtable. (Hey, look what happened there: meta-intro.))

Homecoming was on Roundtable before. I wrote things about it then, a month ago. It's still by Kanye West, still features Captain Coldplay & still sounds a bit daft. It sounds like Noddy playing the piano—it's a bit too plinky to avoid making Kanye sound ridiculous. And Chris Martin's “oggy-oggy-oh!”s make me laugh. So, giggle-worthy once or twice, but nowhere near on a par with DVDA's Jungle Bookleg of If I Can't in terms of comedy rap. ...& I'm fairly certain this is sincere—!

The last time Those Dancing Days were on Roundtable they were playing their self-titled song from their self-titled album. The self-titledness of the song made me not like it. This time, though, the song is called Hitten, and is thus not self-titled. This is better. The vocals remind me very much of Tegan & Sara—very earnest; sweet, but still with a bit of force. The instruments' synth stylings are fairly simple and quiet and light: in my mind they're a light, slightly-faded lemonny yellow. The tune, though, isn't that memorable, so it doesn't really stand out from other Swedish pop.

Wax Simulacra by The Mars Volta is a big splurge of loud rockiness. Very spandexy, playing-one's-leg-like-a-guitar–y, hair-flinging and screaming. Sounds a bit like a record of ten thousand screeching cats scratching loudly.

Ghosts by Laura Marling is a piano-and-vocals–led singer-songwriter–type song. Though I didn't catch most of the lyrics, those I did hear seemed to be intricately constructed. A kit of drums joins in towards the end, as the song grows to its climax. I think this is one of those that'll require several listens, during which period I'll be slightly ambivalent about the song, but thereafter will immediately be an old favourite.

here come the girls by Ernie K Doe is off an advert. I thought it was a little-known 1960s Motown-type soul song that had been–rightly–forgotten due to being pretty mediocre. Maybe it actually is.

Jack Johnson's song If I Had Eyes isn't strictly about that eventuality—it's about if he had eyes in the back of his head. This much I garnered from the first few lyrics. The rest of the song is a moderately-paced—actually it's just a little bit ploddy-slow—anyway, it's an only-slightly–jaunty piano-and-singing–along. Like Paul McCartney, only crap.


Do You Like Rock Music? is the featured album this week, by British Sea Power. Now, Steve played a song on the programme, and I heard it. But I wasn't really listening, and it didn't make me. (I even forgot to check what the title of the song was.) It washed over me: generic “alternative” “indie” rock music with very little to differentiate it from other similar bands. I think I thought it sounded like some The Killers song, but I forget which one.

Waving Flags was also played, and I paid a little bit more attention to this. It certainly is “anthemic”, and the singer's voice is distinctive—kinda breathy—but I wasn't moved. Maybe it's because despite the amount of musical noise going on behind him, the singer still seems separate from it: his voice floats over the top, or in front of the wall of sound, if you will.

Though I failed to do a proper review of either of the last two Roundtables, I did listen to the one from two weeks ago. There was little of note, except that I wanted to mention We're All Going to Die by Malcolm Middleton (who I've recently realised is not Malcolm McLaren), which has been bouncing around my head for the last two weeks. Maybe it's Malcolm's strong, distinctive and sardonic Scottish accent. Or that combined with the chugging electro-rock backing, much like—in fact near-identical to—Wig. Its bouncy refrain “you're going to die / you're going to die / you're going to die alone / all alone” seems particularly prone to popping up immediately after a piece of forced-seasonal-jollity–imbued commercial dross; it would hardly be insightful of me to label “We're All Going To Die” the antidote to such things, but it does seem to be fitting. Stay tuned.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/GregKNicholson/journal/2007/11/22/2jqx_the_2007-11-22_roundtable_round-up Thu, 22 Nov 2007 19:36:51 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/GregKNicholson/journal/2007/11/22/2jqx_the_2007-11-22_roundtable_round-up Today is Saint Cecilia's day, nominally the patron saint of music. More importantly it's also a Thursday, so here's a quick round-up of this week's Roundtable:

Adele's sounding increasingly easy-listening-radio-friendly on Chasing Pavements. Her voice is distinctive, but if it's continuously paired with mediocre songs like this it'll become tiresome quickly. The panel says this song's had a “bucket of chorus” poured over it.

U.R.A. Fever by Kills wouldn't sound out of place on the Mighty Boosh—it's electro-pop with an attempted sense of humour.

Darling by Sons and Daughters is more jaunty than their previous stuff; Bernard Butler is allegedly to blame for this. Where they used to sound like a group of musicians thrashing instruments and microphones in rhythmic unison, Sons and Daughters now sound as if they've been dressed up in matching white cowboy outfits and shoved onstage.

We Know All About You by Ebony Bones sounds like a ghost train at a south London carnival, surrounded by lots of people (zombies perhaps) hitting glass bottles with spoons. And then it carries on for a while. Eventually, it stops.

The accompaniment on Lyra by Kate Bush is distinctly in the style of Vespertine, with a few hints of the tail end of Hounds Of Love. Probably the musical equivalent of having a bath with lots of bath salts in it; although I don't really know what bath salts are supposed to do, them seem necessary for this simile. Kate Bush's voice is Kate Bushy, as usual: perhaps more Wuthering Heights than Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)—as if she's just discovered a pixie at the bottom of her garden and is conspiring to tell you so.

At first, Have You Seen In Your Dreams by Miracle Fortress stands out a little bit from the other songs—probably due mostly to their general inability to excite me rather than this song's genius—but it gradually fades back into the background. Like everything else this week, it's largely forgettable.

The album this week is “X” by Kylie Minogue. (It's her tenth one. Clever.) All I See sounds like all R'n'B-soul-pop-lite from 2001: Jennifer Lopez, Janet Jackson—anything with a J; and 2 Hearts is fake Goldfrapp circa Supernature, which was itself largely derivative of Black Cherry. Originality does not appear to be in abundance on this album.

As is often the case, the band in live on Marc Riley's Brain Surgery are rather more interesting than all of those pop records put together; tonight it's Thomas Tantrum. So there's some consolation. (I'll also be recommending a song for you to fetch tomorrow, and though I'm not sure which song it'll be yet, I can tell you that it'll be good.) Stay tuned.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/GregKNicholson/journal/2007/11/15/2jqw_the_2007-11-15_roundtable_round-up Thu, 15 Nov 2007 19:22:56 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/GregKNicholson/journal/2007/11/15/2jqw_the_2007-11-15_roundtable_round-up This week's Roundtable! This week's bloody Roundtable!! There were songs on it! These ones:

Waving Flags will come as little surprise to anyone already familiar with British Sea Power. In fact it will come as no surprise to people unfamiliar with them too: this type of anthemic, grand, melodramatic rock has been done before—and arguably better—by other, more commercially successful, artists, and BSP themselves.

The Futureheads' new song, Broke Up The Time, is a return to the energetic, upbeat, jumping-about-like-a-loony rock of their self-titled début, after the slower, more-thoroughly-considered style of News And Tributes. It's still not as good as Decent Days And Nights or Meantime—no weird time signatures or sideways shifts, and the vocal harmonies are a bit thin on the ground. It's a bit like a livelier version of Help Us Out (an Area B-side).

Ohhh! Waiting For by Peter Gelderblom is that generic nightclub remix of By The Way. (Can you guess which lyric features the most heavily?) The original track didn't do anything for me (and I can't tell Red Hot Chili Peppers apart from Foo Fighters); this is equally bland. Red Hot Chili Peppers fans will probably hate it vehemently, until they figure out that the original version is still so well-known that this can't possibly taint the song's memory.

Love Is A Losing Game will continue to endear Amy Winehouse to Radio 2 listeners, and will probably gain her fans at Magic Radio. It's a slow, sixties-pop-style ballad with very little apart from Amy Winehouse's name to set it apart—her voice is less distinctively weird than in some of her other performances (particularly live ones). Any stragglers still considering buying the album may even be put off by this, though only for a few weeks, after which this will be forgotten.

Drive Away My Heart by Ida Maria is largely a conventional pop/rock song. The vocals are imperfect and a bit distinctive, though not really comparable to Björk as one of the panel suggested. I thought of Regina Spektor in terms of vocal style, but the composition is rather more usual.

The Was by Make Model fits roughly somewhere between New Young Pony Club and I Was a Cub Scout amongst all the other electronica- and twee-influenced pop about at the moment. And they're from Glasgow: twee bullseye. I was tenuously reminded of the celebratory climax of It's All Gonna Break.

The Carnival II: Memoirs Of An Immigrant is this week's featured album, from Wyclef Jean.

Fast Car featuring Paul Simon and a flurry of automotive sound effects, is a relaxed, gentle, hip-hop pop song (and not a Tracy Chapman cover). It's kind of like Fugees. It's bland, inoffensive and sounds pretty dated (it could have been made ten years ago). Nonetheless, Wyclef's probably still cool enough to pull it off with his street cred in tact.

What About The Baby is in much the same vein, but with Mary J. Blige instead of Paul Simon, and no car noises.

Bit of an anticlimax, isn't it? Stay tuned.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/GregKNicholson/journal/2007/11/08/2jqv_a_great_big_mess_of_nat_jm Thu, 8 Nov 2007 20:34:17 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/GregKNicholson/journal/2007/11/08/2jqv_a_great_big_mess_of_nat_jm A while ago (at least three months now), musician and fellow-penguin-fondler Nat JM asked me to do a review of her then-new single Manager. Pretty quickly, I decided I was rubbish at reviewing individual songs, or that any comments I'd make would be superficial if I didn't consider them in the context of the rest of her work. So, I took it upon myself to review her entire back catalogue, which is only about a dozen songs but, unfortunately for me, is increasing at a rate of two a month (which puts me to shame: I'm lucky if I manage to produce two crappy lumps of prose in a month).

It occurred to me yesterday that, since Nat's style of music is pretty unpolished, it makes little sense for a review of her music to consist of endlessly-polished prose. And so I decided to post my notes in their entirety, from which I had (eventually) intended to produce a “proper review” of some sort. There's a fair chance that, if I didn't do it this way, said proper review would become increasingly mythical.

These are completely unedited (apart from adding links to songs and artists where appropriate), so they contain several wanky turns of phrase I would have made less crap. I also didn't write these linearly, which is why “again” appears prematurely.

So, Nat, this is late, incomplete, untidy, ugly, devoid of pithy quotes, rich in unfinished sentences and in many places doesn't actually make any sense; but it's as close as possible to what went on in my brain when I listened to your music (in my mind everything's one giant nested list):

• Manager
  • Love Und Romance
  • You Don't Know What Love Is (White Stripes) middle 8
• All change
  • flits between a marching 6-beat rhythm and a 7-beat
  • bouncy synth stabs
  • Mega Bomberman again
• No chains no ties
  • this one has a definite verse / chorus / middle 8 structure
  • most accessible (!)
  • chorus is synth-led, a building riff
  • it's still a mess of loads of different copies of her voice
  • small-sounding synth chords going off all over the place
  • somehow the feeble synths and the tune's righteousness combine to produce grandeur
• You wanna be a man
  • frenetic
  • 16-bit, synth-led
  • Mega Bomberman
  • starts with Nat playing a riff that sounds like it was intended to be played on a grunge guitar to a packed arena, on four squelchy synths at the same time, using just two hands
  • spends too much effort with her vocals on hitting the right note, and so they lose some guttural strength
  • the lyrics tumble out, slurring and (to my ear) mostly indecipherable, mixed in a bundle with their stabbing synth-riff counterparts
  • but the song sounds much the same at 2:30 as it did at 0:30
• Balls of fire
  • smoulders
  • slurred vocals
• The Whole Way
  • (“Is this our future”)
  • strong bass
  • weird melody on the chorus
• Closer to You
  • pounding, broken rhythm (3½/4)
  • vocals are very very Slits / Ari Up
  • wander almost atonally around the melody
  • less outwardly aggressive
  • fans of The Slits' low-key grooves...
  • occasionally sound a bit limp
    • need more shoutywatts
  • often slurred, incomprehensible
• makes Fall Out Boy look like Stock, Aitken and Waterman
• completely unsanitised
• Liliput!
• not ramshackle
• not unconsidered
• often unmelodic
• dissonant
• voice lacks the outward power of Siouxsie
• passive aggressive (?)
• quietness of voice invites you closer
• dissonance of instruments
  • pushes you away
  • demonstrates the tumultuousness of herself
• her quiet, reserved voice invites the listener into her world while the dissonant, harsh instruments simultaneously
  • make you want to run away
  • make that world uninviting
• lays bare the tumultuousness of her world
• what melodies exist
  • seem more like the rhythmic marching of demons than an expression of joy
  • sound like they're coming from outside her
• I would enjoy these more if she sang more loudly
  • at the expense of hitting the right note all the time
• The Slits playing Mega Bomberman

And here's what prose I did manage to come up with:

Once upon a time, a long time ago (now measurable in decent fractions of years), Nat JM asked me to review her then-new single, Manager, likely because I'd recently been caught listening to a lot of The Slits and/or Siouxsie and the Banshees, and she's often been compared to them musically.

I must confess, I'm hardly an expert on this genre of music—my knowledge of the Slits consists of their excellent cover of Grapevine and the songs from Cut, though I think some of those recordings are non-album versions; and my extensive Siouxsie appreciation comprises Happy House, and more recently Into A Swan.

I usually like to become a bit familiar with an artist's other work before examining a particular song; so, I delved into Nat's other work, in search of musical reference points, trends, comparisons and review-juice.

The first thing to note is that Nat's music is raw (I'm going to reserve some synonymous adjectives for use later on). Nat's vocals are rather reminiscent of Ari Up (of the Slits) in that they wander almost atonally around the melody. But they do so very deliberately, kind of like a dry stone wall—each piece is irregular, but the !!!!!finished thing!!!!! is constructed carefully.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/GregKNicholson/journal/2007/11/08/2jqu_the_2007-11-08_roundtable_round-up Thu, 8 Nov 2007 19:29:28 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/GregKNicholson/journal/2007/11/08/2jqu_the_2007-11-08_roundtable_round-up Last week's Round-up didn't happen very much, primarily because I was on my way to see ¡Forward, Russia! at Fibbers. Tiny venue + The Russia = believe the hype.

Tony Blackburn (on the Roundtable panel this week) is spot on when he describes Long Road To Ruin by Foo Fighters as “acceptable”; it's generic mainstream rock music.

Nas is the only thing wrong with Less Than An Hour: there's also that bloke from Gnarls Barkley (Cee-Lo) singing over the sultry rhythm, and an anonymous, close-mic'ed French-accented woman introducing the song. The music is filmic (it's for Rush Hour 3); it reminded me of a semi-noir-ish lone cop (Hack, perhaps) on a nocturnal street. But Nas insists on borrowing Kanye West's (and presumably innumerate other rappists') habit of gulping “yih!”; fortunately, his (vocal) contribution to the song is relatively limited.

Duffy's voice is, in Rockferry, reminiscent of Adele in Hometown Glory. The music, though, is slow, sweeping and grand—perhaps a little too much so: this doesn't have the same momentum as (say,) Speed; in fact it transpires that Bernard Butler produced this.

Granite by Pendulum is undoubtedly “new rave”. It sounds like they're trying to be noisy and engaging; it's not really either.

Again, Foals have got all the ingredients for being exciting and innovative in Balloons—twitchy, high-pitched guitars and an electro-dance rhythm—but somehow the song just isn't. The Automatic could have made this two years ago.

[track artist=[Kate Walsh]Tonight[/track] by Kate Walsh is a slow, languid ballad made of pianos, guitars, strings, vocals and gentle drums. It's Sunday-afternoon-on-Radio-2 fodder but, oddly, isn't as distasteful as the last two. Perhaps it's because I'm half asleep. Let's be clear, though, it's thoroughly unremarkable and artistically pretty void.

[track artist=The Killers]Leave the Bourbon on the Shelf[/track] and [track artist=The Killers]Sweet Talk[/track]—both from The Killers' new compilation and this week's featured album, Sawdust—are both fairly typical of The Killers' music: Brandon Flowers's strained voice backed by enthusiastically profound guitars.

The Roundtable Round-up should be appearing with more regularity over the coming weeks. Stay tuned.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/GregKNicholson/journal/2007/10/25/2jqt_the_2007-10-25_roundtable_round-up Thu, 25 Oct 2007 18:27:58 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/GregKNicholson/journal/2007/10/25/2jqt_the_2007-10-25_roundtable_round-up Oh, hey—two-week gap there. Wow. Tonight's Roundtable, then:

Staring At The Rude Boiz by Gallows and Lethal Bizzle is shouty rock with a bit of shouty rap shouted over some of it. Rooaaarrr!!! (Scary.)

Wait A Minute by Estelle starts promisingly enough with an unusual syncopated beat, but quickly degenerates into ploddy, bog-standard hip-hop-pop. By the end of the three and a half minutes it's clear there were no more ideas to be had.

Judging from The Box, Johnny Flynn is a jangly singer-songwriter type. The song's pleasant and upbeat enough to survive repeated radio plays without grating too badly, but that's about it.

So, erm... Spice Girls. They have a new song! It's called “Headlines”. This week's panel comprises three Kaiser Chiefs and, all of a sudden, Everything Is Average Nowadays is musical genius. As ever, Mels C and B are listenable, but the other three (yes, Geri also needed the money) are still a bit crap. 7-year-olds will love it (which is probably about right since it's for Children in Need).

Paul McCartney is less dull than Kaiser Chiefs. Ever Present Past is actually quite good. Some of those guitar noises in there don't sound like any of the other pop nonsense about at the moment. Sure, he may be a big evil empire conspirator and sell-out, but he can still write a fine pop tune.

Pint Shot Riot are really trying, bless 'em. They've drunk duckloads of Red Bull, eaten buckets of Skittles and been exposed to many, many volts of enlivening electric shocks, and then they produced Punches Kicks Trenches And Swords. The Red Bull wears off half-way through the first verse, so at the start of the chorus, they snorted a line of sherbet. Or perhaps they receive a shot of adrenaline every thirty seconds, but only enough of it to last twenty seconds. Actually, “Pint, Shot, Riot” summarises the response to this that you'd expect from an assembled throng in a nightclub... only it's not a real riot—it's a crowd of boys pretending to riot to look cool.

The Wombats—whose album A Guide To Love, Loss And Desperation is the featured album this week—play Buzzcocks-pilfering four-to-the-floor rock topped with Arctic Monkeys/Reverend and the Makers/Jamie T/etc.–like wryly-sung mundane-dressed-up-in-grandeur lyrics.

To this potent combination, Moving to New York adds “ooo-ooh la-la-la” backing vocals (à la Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me)) and a Nada Surfish lush guitar bed.

Despite being oft-repeated on the radio, Let's Dance To Joy Division is still fun, though by now quite unoriginal. In the future, I suspect, lots of people will be accused of stopping liking The Wombats when they became hugely popular—as I suspect they will—because, much like Arctic Monkeys and The Kooks, they are quite good, but not as good as they'll inevitably be made out to be by the mainstream pop media lot. How's that for a sentence? Stay tuned.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/GregKNicholson/journal/2007/10/04/2jqs_the_2007-10-04_roundtable_round-up Thu, 4 Oct 2007 18:13:50 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/GregKNicholson/journal/2007/10/04/2jqs_the_2007-10-04_roundtable_round-up This week's Roundtable came from Bristol University, with 6 Music's breakfast show presenter Shaun Keaveny, a person from The Cribs calling himself “Ryan”, and Jakobínarína-member Gunnar (try saying that quickly).

Lord Don't Slow Me Down by Oasis has a pounding verse reminiscent of The Importance Of Being Idle, but lacks a strong hook or even a discernible chorus. Noel Gallagher sings it mostly on one note.

Fruit Machine, like Ting Tings' last single That's Not my Name, blends ever-trendy hip-hop-type pop with recently-ubiquitous electro+guitar stylings. This is more the latter than the former, and chucks in a little bit of South London-type half-spoken vocals for good measure. It's easy to call it pop music by committee—it's an amalgamation of two or three usually-disparate styles that have been popular recently—but it does hang together well as a single song. In the end, it doesn't actually sound like they've crammed in as many popular styles as possible, though the broad range of sounds implies that they have. If this comes within a mile of E4, it'll sell millions.

Leap of Faith by Hadouken! is primarily pop-friendly light-heavy-metal grunge—like Breaking the Habit by Linkin Park—punctuated by electronic-y beeps and boops every so often. It's like Kraftwerk for fourteen-year-old emo boys—they'll try to play it on their Casio pocket calculators. Keaveny mentions Linkin Park; Ryan Cribs mentions emo and video-game music; Gunnar Jakobínarína mentions nu-metal and electronica; I am right!

The earnest vocals; warbling guitars; lyrics about sleeping; that bit where the guitars kick in that's supposed to send a shiver up your spine; and the resolved, celebratory guitar solo at the end of Is There a Ghost by Band of Horses guarantee its inclusion in an American drama at a particularly poignant moment. The montage will start right when the guitars kick in. The vocals have a distant feeling to them; it sounds like they were recorded on a soaked beach with the singer about ten metres from the microphone—so in the video for Yellow then. Gunnar says Grey's Anatomy; I am right again!

Dance by Justice is electro-dance, much like Junior Senior: the vocals are positively falsetto; but with more weighty instrumentation—yes, Keaveny, like Daft Punk. It's danceable and, as background noise or (as a miscellaneous Bristolist says) while ironing, grooveable.

Is it just me, or does Sara Gilbert have the same smile as David Cameron? Which is weird, 'cos she's hot and he really isn't—maybe it's the whole politics thing. Anyhow, I was going to say that I was unable to like anyone who looks like David Cameron, as Tom Chaplin from Keane rather does, but then thought of Sara Gilbert. Anyhow: The Night Sky is a Keane song; it sounds like Hopes and Fears—slow, schmaltzy and deliberately inoffensive (which is offensive), but this time it's three years too late; it finishes very ponderously. It's as if their second album never happened. Or music. Ever. Bet Cameron does drugs too.

Jack Peñate is a jaunty bastard. His album, Matinee inhabits the overcrowded space between Arctic Monkeys, Lily Allen and The Kooks along with (almost) every popular British musical act of the last year. It's as if someone made a backup copy in March 2006 of the UK's musical creativity and has been dishing it out to everyone who's gone near a recording studio in 2007. This is worthless pop; I bet it's already in Woolworths' top 40 album chart. Like Gunnar says, it's not even inoffensive enough to be offensively inoffensive like Keane—it's just mediocre. Offensively so. He does have a song called When I Die, though, which is hopeful. Stay tuned.]]>