This week, Matt takes you to a gay bar, GAY BAR!

The Go! Team – Junior Kickstart (Memphis Industries)

Junior Kickstart: explosive horns aplenty and banging drums. It’s a party tune and if somebody bet you a tenner you could keep your arse still while this was playing, you’d end up out of pocket. The Brighton collective are named, quite aptly, after the guys whose job it is to clean-up plane crash wreckage. Their debris includes banjos, harmonicas and Speak & Spell. The two tracks on the flip are equally great in a funked up Why Don’t You?/Sesame Street style. Go buy it.

Electric Six – Gay Bar (XL Recordings)

So I said they were one-hit wonders. I was wrong. They’re two-hit wonders. In a couple of weeks the album comes out and we’ll see if I’m right. This is the second ludicrously fast single from a band who still think it’s funny to say the word “gay”. You can practically hear frontman Dick Valentine guffawing after each chorus. Still it is quite funny to hear, much like a fart in front of a grown-up.

The Hidden Cameras – A Miracle (Rough Trade)

In terms of personnel and over-the-top stage presence, Toronto’s The Hidden Cameras give The Polyphonic Spree a run for their collection-box money. Fortunately their music is a little less twee and a little more varied. Ensemble leader Joel Gibb describes they’re music as “gay church folk music”. Gay in the non-Electric Six sense of the word. He’s pretty spot on.

Medium 21 – By My Side (Temptation Records)

Signed to Fierce Panda offshoot, Temptation Records, Medium 21 blend upbeat melodies and melancholic vocals with the kind of panache you associate with a band from Manchester. Reference points include The Super Furrys, Elbow and The Flaming Lips. They’re debut album, Killings From The Dial, sneaked quietly onto the shelves a couple of months back and I for one will be checking it out.

Barth – I Got You In My Dreams (Boss Music)

Barth is a 26-year-old ex-anthropology student who lives in Paris. He’s been involved in making experimental movies and writing musical skits for television. His debut album, released last year, was called Essence Of Giraffe. All of which makes for an interesting, if somewhat odd, proposition. His new single is an Eels-y slice of catchy twisted rock ’n’ roll and comes backed with two other tracks which embrace Coral-esque dub and subdued electronic atmospherics. Weirdly good.
Matt Walton 30 May 03

All singles released 02 June 03.