downloads
Joseph Walsh
The world might have changed drastically in the wake of Covid-19, but thankfully those hyperactive, candy-coloured Trolls haven’t. Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake are back as the delightful odd-couple, Poppy and Branch, for round two of pop-infused peppy animated adventure in the land of felt and feelings, where music can solve a myriad of problems. The first movie was a gleeful delight. Yes, it was slight on plot, but it possessed an infectious optimism and a message of love and acceptance. It wasn’t going to have the bosses at Pixar quaking in their boots, but it was an undeniable Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
At one level the day of the single is gone - the 7-inch, the CD, the physical format - and yet, at another it's more relevant than ever. Sure, any track can now be downloaded from an album and hit the charts but singles, downloads - chosen representative songs - still give the best snapshot of what an artist is capable of. With this in mind, theartsdesk gleefully tucked into the latest batch of releases which includes Depeche Mode, Arctic Monkeys, pop, rave, folk and a whole lot more besides.Wiley, Numbers in Action (Big Dada)
Sometimes it's hard to separate tracks by the jester-king of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
This month, what's on offer in theartsdesk's Singles and Downloads veers towards the fresh and new rather than the tried and tested. We'll always chew over whatever's out there and right now these nine tunes speak loudest. Starting with carefree New York electronic punk frollicking, we also take on violent grime, Sixties-style guitar pop, Brit-pop hip hop, uncategorisable grunge cabaret and multifarious flavours of dubstep. Dive in.The Death Set, We Are Going Anywhere Man (Counter)
How could anyone not love the motherfuckin' Death Set, as they gratuitously refer to themselves in song on a Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
What's weird about the reams of commentaries that have already sprouted around The King of Limbs is the way they try to tell you what it resembles, but not what it actually is. Apparently it's like Miles Davis, Foals, Autechre, dubstep, Talk Talk, Philip Glass and Charles Mingus, among others. But is there an essential Radioheadness at its core?Perhaps what says most about its authors is its method of delivery - by digital download now, followed by a plush multi-format "newspaper" version in May. Audio-wise, its unifying characteristic is Thom Yorke's voice, a baleful and fragile Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The last album from Brighton’s The Go! Team, 2007’s Proof of Youth, followed the template set by Thunder, Lightning, Strike, their 2004 debut. AD-HD sample-driven songs met Northern soul and hip hop with call-response vocals and melodies that could have graced any Sixties girl group. All at 80 miles an hour with xylophones and brass. Third time round, Go! Team mainman Ian Parton has stretched out without sacrificing what was great in the first place. Rolling Blackouts is The Go! Team’s best album so far.This might be due to a change in Parton’s approach to songwriting. He’s written from Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
This month we have some unjustly hyped rubbish electro-pop, some unjustly ignored brilliant eletcro-pop, some postmodern retro-disco, some dubstep, some grime, some sampledelic New York punk, and, at the top of the pile, one of Britain's brightest young actors proves he's equally adept on the microphone. Thomas H Green and Joe Muggs plough loudly through the lot with glee and the odd barbed word.Riz MC All in the Ghetto (Confirm/Ignore)
So actors shouldn't try to become hip-hop MCs, right? Remember Warren Beatty in Bulworth? Riz Ahmed, however, was an MC long before he made his name with a Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Mark Ronson & The Business Intl, The Bike Song (Sony Music)
There are ways and ways to make novelty retro-pop. Mark Ronson, for example, has absolutely nailed it here. This song, with its almost unbearably sunny Lovin' Spoonful-styled harmony vocals slathered over an early-Nineties pop-hip-hop breakbeat with jaunty raps from Spank Rock, should be awful – should be so calculatedly faux-naif it makes you hurl – but it's just done with so much invention, so much out-and-out glee and such great hooks that it's completely irresistible and delicious.
Two entirely demented remixes from Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Wiley, Electric Boogaloo (Back Yard) Erratic and spiky where his old mucker Dizzee Rascal has been slick and unerring in his rise to the top, East Londoner Richard "Wiley" Cowie has managed several massive pop-dance hits while remaining thoroughly entangled in the edgier, more aggro grime music scene which he helped to invent. This is very much on the pop-dance side of his output, with every mid-1990s club-energising trick in the book thrown into the mix - but it is done with huge élan, and there is enough of Wiley's wildcard persona audible in his raps about getting stuck into the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Lady Gaga featuring Beyoncé, Telephone (Polydor)Lady Gaga is gradually wending her way to the position Madonna held for 20 years, punching through pop into the wider cultural consciousness, a superpopstar for whom the sky's the limit. Gaga arrived from the same cultural milieu as Madonna, the performance arty New York club scene. However, whereas Madonna very much played up the disco end of things, Gaga, at least visually, screams art attack.Her latest single arrives with a Jonas Akerlund-directed video, a bizarre amalgam of prison exploitation flick and Thelma & Louise co-starring the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Zinc ft Ms Dynamite, Wile Out (Zinc)It takes a lot for an artist to admit they've taken a wrong turn and return to what they do best. So kudos to Ms Dynamite for ditching the dreary, wholemeal attempts to become a British Lauryn Hill and taking her rightful place again as one of this country's best rave MCs. With the irresistible electro-house beats and bouncing bass of DJ Zinc, she's turned up the attitude and created a very British twist on dancehall that almost, but not quite, betters her 2001 debut "Booo!".In slang terms, "wile" means "wild", thus "wile out" means "go wild"; the intimate Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Rihanna, Russian Roulette (Mercury)
I strongly suggest anyone who believes the sound of US mainstream pop is somehow homogenised and safe take another look at the current charts. Standing over them like android colossi are Lady Gaga and Rihanna - who not only look exactly as pop stars were always going to look "in the future", but sound apocalyptically insane. This song is in the standard melodramatic modern power-ballad style of writer/producer Ne-Yo, but the combination of Rihanna's piercing voice and the lyrics that circle in the non-specific manner of nightmares around death, obsession, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Slagsmalsklubben, Sponsored By Destiny (Zarcorp)When white 7" singles drop though my letter box with commercially suicidal band names, they're usually from artists just starting their career, boutique vinyl being cannily collectable in our MP3 age. Slagsmalsklubben, however, which means The Fight Club in their native tongue, are a six-piece from Norrkoping in Sweden who have three albums under their belt.I don't know what they usually sound like but "Sponsored by Destiny" is a cracking combination of bass techno throb and a ridiculous catchy arcade game motif. It shouldn't work but it Read more ...