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 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.This week, Matt avoids mentioning Abba. First up is The Radio Dept, who take their name from a petrol-station-cum-repair-shop called Radioavdelningen. They’re Swedish in case you’re wondering. However, the Why Won’t You Talk About It? EP (Rex Records) is a Swedish take on a very Manchester sound. There are traces of Joy Division and The Boo Radleys (before the Wake Up Boo fiasco), with seriously fuzzy guitars and vocals that waft out of the bowels of an analogue toilet. Somewhere there’s a grumpy drum machine pounding away. It’s all rather fine. The lead track features on their debut album, out in a couple of weeks, but the other three don’t and they’re certainly worth hearing.There’s yet more Swedes in the form of The Concretes, who give us some good advice in You Can’t Hurry Love (Licking Fingers). Unsurprisingly, there are rather a lot of girls in this band who obviously think men are best educated via the medium of pop. They’re probably right - the way to a man’s heart is often through his iPod. Following on from their Say Something New EP, it’s the first charmingly quirky taste of their Scando-pop debut. Lovely. This week also sees the beginning of Twisted Nerve’s Weekly Adventures, a new series of downloads from the Manchester label. It’s certainly worth a look, not least because this first “Adventure” is free (they’ll normally be £2.75). There are four typically offbeat tracks from Hassel Hound, Alfie, Team LG and Planningtorock just waiting to be harvested from their website.  download free sampler The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites. Back on traditional formats, The Bees release the second single from their forthcoming second album. Horsemen (Source) again displays their new Beatles-inspired direction, favouring the energy of good ol’ rock’n’roll rather than the more dubby moments of their superb debut. It’s still great though, featuring a particularly bombastic guitar solo – you can hear the band grinning throughout. Six By Seven also sound like they might be grinning on their new single, Ready For You Now (Saturday Night Sunday Morning), which is backed by two new tracks produced by Death In Vegas’ Tim Holmes. They’ve got his grubby - and I mean the deep down and dirty sort of grubby - paw prints all over them, which to my mind is a good thing. And then there’s little Charlotte H, who’s escaped from those nasty Ash boys’ grubby paws long enough to record a solo album. Kim Wilde (Double Dragon) – that’s the title of the single, not an unexpected collaboration with the frizzy-haired 80s popstar turned TV gardener – is the first fruits from it, and you can download it free from her website. It’s better than you might expect. A bit Elastica-like, but it’s essentially bubble-gum indie. And you know what your mother told you about swallowing bubble gum… download free track The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites. You maybe asked for you personal details to download this.
Matt Walton
All singles released 14 June 04.
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related info
 useful linkswww.theconcretes.com www.twistednerve.co.uk www.thebees.info www.sixbyseven.co.uk www.charlottehatherley.com
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