Home
sign up| features / music column |
 content by: editor |
 singles and downloads
 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.This week, haunted by house. Whilst the acid house revolution didn’t, as many predicted, manage to consign guitar music to the cultural dustbin, it certainly managed to leave an indelible mark on a generation of strummers. Take 90s comedown queen Beth Orton, for example, or Brighton-based troubadour Fink. While they may not pepper their introspective ditties with panel-beating kick-drums or tweakin’ 303s, there’s something about their work that’s haunted by the spirits of house, techno, jungle and trip-hop. Fink offers up a textbook example of a post-dance torch song this week in So Long (Ninja Tune). Think of it as the Jack Johnson single it’s OK to like. Belle And Sebastian boast a following so devoted that it’s hard to imagine any of their fans not having bought recent album, The Life Pursuit, on the day – nay, the hour – it was released. The vast majority of them, then, will already own Bowie-esque new single (and album highlight) The Blues Are Still Blue (Rough Trade). How to convince the Bellettes (as nobody calls them) to buy something they already possess? By including an astonishing, surprisingly reverent cover version of Thin Lizzy’s Whisky In The Jar on the B-side, that’s how. Cop hold it of now, or wait for it to appear on the B’n’S box set in 2012. There’s not a great deal else about to quicken the pulse this week, sadly, but there are a couple of jewels knocking about. We’ve already waxed lyrical to an almost embarrassing degree about potty-mouthed Baltimore electro-hoppers Spank Rock, so we needn’t tell you how ass-shakingly ace their new single, Sweet Talk (Big Dada), is. Suffice to say, if you like fun you’ll probably like this. Elsewhere, Wrexham hopefuls Crosbi (think a northern take on Hard Fi’s everyman indie rock) have handed over their new single, Sonny (Split), for a spiky dancefloor re-fix – as is the fashion these days – from Alf Alpha (aka Fila Brazilia’s Steve Cobbey). Highly effective it is as well, and it’s weirdly thrilling to hear an accent so militantly northern over robo-slinky electro beats. Finally, San Francisco’s Thee More Shallows offer a masterclass in lysergic, sad-faced songwriting on the Monkey Vs Shark EP (Monotreme), which sounds like the sort of record that gets bandied about for silly money on eBay a couple of years after its release. And you can get two free MP3s from Thee More Shallows by visiting their somewhat minimal official website. Isn’t the interweb marvellous?
Joe Madden
All singles are released on 03 April 06.
 comments
Read members' comments related to this music.
|
 |
related info
 useful linkswww.bigdada.com www.aircockthrust.com www.belleandsebastian.co.uk www.theemoreshalllows.com
note: The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
see also
 ninja label mixby fink  spank rocksingles #173  big dadalabel profile  belle and sebastianalbum review  belle and sebastianalbum review  singleslast week books  books and comics archive Author interviews and reviews from 2002 to 2008. |
send to a friend
access 1000s of articles