Author: tom

Jippu – Eva (Nukutaan Kielletyllä Iholla)

Isn’t that just glorious?

Tim: In English, this is Eva (We Sleep On Forbidden Skin), and blimey is it a builder. I was almost quick to dismiss it, but don’t do that.

Tim: Isn’t that just glorious?

Tom: Good grief, yes. That’s a textbook build; instrument after instrument slowly, beautifully layered on top of each other. You scarcely notice what’s going on until the percussion kicks in. Something I’ve never done before: I started to mock-conduct during that middle eight, and my jaw actually dropped a little when that final triumphant chorus arrived.

Tim: Quick background to the lyrics: it’s a generic ‘you’re the only one who understands me’ type song, with a twist of ‘no-one else approves’ and then an oddity or two thrown in for good measure – the repeated line at the end of the chorus, for example, talks about braiding each other’s hair. The buildup in the middle eight repeats the main message: you see everything that no one else loves, basically.

Tom: Aww, that’s lovely.

Tim: Isn’t it just? And that music, well, like you say, plays a blinder. Yes, it starts off slow and a tad dull, but that’s only natural and proper when it’s destined to build up like it is, because otherwise it would blow out the speakers and that’s not right for a song with this sort of message. She has a lovely voice to send it out, and whoever he is he’d do very well to heed her advice and ignore other people’s views, and just sit there and listen to her sing. Whilst braiding her hair.

It’s not flawless: the middle eight goes on for one repetition too long, I reckon (although if they’d added another layer of instrumentation on the fourth go that would also be fine).

Tom: I think there is one – there’s some extra percussion that comes in, but by that point it’s busy enough it’s difficult to notice.

Tim: Perhaps, but what I’d really like is a repetition of the final triumphant chorus – somehow even at four minutes long this song doesn’t overstay its welcome (and that’s high praise indeed from me).

Tom: Agreed: and I’d almost like to hear it stepped up one more notch, just to see what a wall of sound that extra chorus would have been. Can’t ding it any points for that, though – it’s beautiful.

Eric Turner vs Avicii – Dancing In My Head

Count The Typos! (Contains masterful but truly appalling pun.)

Tim: You may remember Eric Turner as the guy who added excessive inhalation to Written In The Stars a couple of years back.

Tom: Oh, but what a voice he had – if you ignore the inhalations, it sounded beautiful.

Tim: Now, he’s breathing less, but to compensate for losing that annoyance he’s got a whole new one. So let’s have a game of Count The Typos!

Tim: It doesn’t get off to a good start – a misspelling in the first line is hardly what you’re after – and then we have missing apostrophes, question marks in silly places, and all sorts of other stuff to irritate the pedants.

Tom: I actually switched to another tab – the bouncy hyperactive camera movements and graphics were a bit too much. I couldn’t properly listen to the music at the same time.

Tim: I quite liked that part of it, to be honest.

However, we’re not here to criticise that (not that that’s ever stopped us before, but anyway), we’re here to do the music. Which is good.

Tom: It is, although crikey, it does seem to go on a bit. The melody is something that a primary school kid could sing easily – perhaps a bit too simple, instead of soulful.

Tim: Simple, perhaps, but that does make it a catchy chorus with a great backing to it (though that was probably a given).

Tom: True. It sounds like Aviici’s regular style, and that’s a good thing. Eric Turner’s voice is lost among the instrumentation though.

Tim: The lyrics of said chorus work well as a slightly weird metaphor to the ex and proper instructions to the crowd in front of him when he’s doing this live, which is presumably the point. The only thing that I don’t like (well, why? wouldn’t we finish a positive review with a negative point) is the ‘cursed’ bit – if he let her go, as he tells us, then as far as I’m concerned he’s only got himself to blame. Foolish man.

Tom: You know what I’d like to see? A concert with Eric Turner, Frank Turner and Tina Turner singing together. I’m not sure why.

Tim: That would be interesting, but what I’d really like is a week of X Factor dedicated to those artists, because that way Bonnie Tyler could come on at the start and introduce it as the Turner Round.

Bim – Lights Out

“That is something, isn’t it? What exact thing, I’m not sure”

Tim: I’m not sure I’d know how to introduce this, so I won’t try.

Tim: Now, that is something, isn’t it? What exact thing, I’m not sure – heavy dance or emotional ballad, upbeat with hands in the air or downbeat with head in your hands, or maybe just one big mess.

Tom: “You know that sound Ellie Goulding’s got? Yeah, turn it up to 11 and mix in a bit of Pendulum.”

Tim: But it’s a very good mess, at that – it all comes together, without much structure to it, but with fantastic instrumentation and wonderfully emotive voices.

Tom: Can’t argue with that.

Tim: Speaking of structure, that second verse cause me no end of trouble. It seems to sound massively out of place (though not in a bad way), and so the first couple of times I heard it I thought it was the middle eight, so then the next chorus was logically the final one, so the “I will me you see…stars” was the end.

Tom: My brain went the same way – I reckon that the track possibly overstays its welcome a bit, but that’s not much of a criticism to make. That “stars” would seem a natural end of the song.

Tim: It would, but it doesn’t overstay its welcome – after all, ending it there would leave us barely two and a half minutes of it, and that would be a shame. It just seems like it does, so my brain started hurting. But soon felt better, because this track’s just great, messy as it may be.

Also note: fans of this may wish to check out their track Scream1, which for some reason we unfortunately missed. Because that one’s good as well.

Saturday Flashback: Sash – Stay

“I had a dream last night.”

Tim: There’s nothing to say about this track, decent dance track and all, so you might wonder why I want to put it here.

Tom: Well, I have one thing – even now, the “tear down these walls” section stands out as a rarity for me: a lyric in a dance track that actually seems to contain a big pile of emotion. Something about how it shifts an octave (and, I think, into an odd key) gives an effect you don’t normally find.

Anyway: what was it you were wanting to say?

Tim: Well, you know how ages back we said we’d like a thing where you could push a button in response to someone saying “it’s all about you” and a snippet of McFly would play? I have another one, and yesterday I remembered what song it was from.

Tom: Wait, what would this be in response to?

Tim: It would be in response to “I had a dream last night.” Aside from amusing me somewhat, this would also have the effect of possibly stopping their probably fairly dull dream story before it got started, which would be handy.

That’s all I have to say, really, expect that I’ve just realised that some of the shots in the Jason Bourne films seem to be frame-by-frame copies of parts of that video.

Tom: I’d be willing to bet that’s not deliberate – they’re just “generic action movie” shots. Decent budget and quality for a video like this, though.

Tim: Yes, but despite what you say I do hope Sash got royalties or something. Maybe a mention in the film’s credits.

Parade – Light Me Up

Unexpected drum and bass backing!

Tim: The Saturdays have just celebrated their fifth birthday; here’s a fairly new girl group that are presumably hoping for the same sort of success (perhaps even with a number 1 thrown in for good measure).

Tom: Unexpected drum and bass backing! Genuinely surprised by that – and it’s a sign of how that particular backing has become almost old-fashioned in pop music. Things move pretty fast.

Tim: They do, which is often nice, unless it’s something you’re particularly attached to. Oh, Flip & Fill.

(just having a moment here)

Tom: Do you… do you want to be alone?

Tim: Err, no, I think I’m done now. Right, this song. Verses: standardish, but not at all bad. Pre-chorus: a tad dull. Chorus: amazing, and to be honest it wouldn’t surprise me if it turned out that the pre-chorus was toned down deliberately just to highlight this. Dubstep breakdown: simultaneously came out of nowhere and entirely failed to surprise me.

(Sidenote: I like the way this lyric video demonstrates the visual difference between genres; I’m not sure it’s been done before.)

Second part of the middle-eight: lovely, gently bringing us back to the aforementioned amazing chorus. Which is amazing. Isn’t it?

Tom: I wouldn’t go so far as “amazing” for the chorus, but it’d certainly keep me dancing, and I can’t ask for more than that.

Underworld – Caliban’s Dream

“Wait – when did you stop hating everything Olympic?”

Tom: I’m slightly behind the times here – I’ve only just realised that the Olympic opening ceremony music has been released as an album. And I know this doesn’t count as any kind of pop, really, but damn it, I’ve fallen in love with the flame-lighting music.

Tim: But…but wait – when did you stop hating everything Olympic?

Tom: During the opening ceremony – when it stopped being about corporations, sponsorship and travel disruption and started being about people, history and achievement. Not a flippant answer, I know, but true.

Tim: True for you and also, I reckon, about another 62 million people.

Tom: There are quite a few “featurings” here, more than enough to fit in our title: Alex Trimble from Two Door Cinema Club, Only Men Aloud, the Dockhead Choir, Elizabeth Roberts, Esme Smith and – amazingly – Dame Evelyn Glennie.

Tim: Don’t forget the demons and Satan himself.

Tom: What?

Tim: You know – like Trevor Nelson said in the commentary, how Danny Boyle worked hard with the boys from the underworld. I liked that.

Tom: Bloody Trevor Nelson.

I think partly the reason I like this so much is because of remembering what went with it: sitting in a house party, all cynicism having been melted away by (Sir, surely?) Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony, and then being gobsmacked by the actual torch lighting.

Tim: A very impressive moment, that was. I actually missed the ceremony live because I was in a pub, but I did watch it on a train on the way to Leicester the next day, so that counts.

Tom: I remember wondering what this music was – and now I know. Specially composed by Underworld. Yes, it’s a piece from a soundtrack rather than an actual pop single, and yes, it defies all common structure and reviewing methods – but that hasn’t stopped it being being in the iTunes Top 10 all week.

Tim: Deservedly so, because it is lovely. Not necessarily to pay attention to constantly, but to listen to while you’re relaxing or reading or something, and you can sit up and pay attention every now and again when choirs come in and sing or at that bit five minutes in. Lovely for that.

Tom: And then Paul McCartney turned up to sing “Hey Jude”. It can’t all be perfect.

Saturday Flashback: Kate Winslet – What If

“I feel like I should apologise for subjecting our reader to this.”

Tom: Wait, what?

Tim: Oh yes, you read that right. Now, I will happily admit this is a fairly awful song (despite my continuing view that nothing is definitively good or bad), but it honestly is one of my favourite songs ever.

Tom: I feel like I should apologise for subjecting our reader to this.

Tim: It’s just SO CHEESY it’s not true. If we were to imagine a scale of cheese, we might have something like Wings as a tuft of mozzarella, My Love as a gentle cheddar, while this is way up there as a proper gorgonzola. And, for precisely this reason, I love this so much.

Tom: It’s the cash-in Oscar Bait soundtrack hit from a Christmas movie. It was always going to be on the cheese scale, but oh bloody hell that key change. I mean, you know it’s going to have one, but that is a humdinger.

Tim: Isn’t it just divine?

Here’s an anecdote you probably won’t believe is true: I was having a fairly important conversation with someone at work, and this song came on. Whatever he said, I couldn’t stop a huge smile coming across my face.

Tom: No, that sounds about normal for you.

Tim: When the chorus hit, I swear to God I started swaying gently. It’s probably a good thing we turned it off before the key change hit, because I don’t think I could have resisted singing out loud to it. It’s awful, and I LOVE IT.

Tom: I’m not sure I can bring myself to dislike it. I wish I could.

Tim: EMBRACE IT.

Belle – Sisters Anthem

Bloody hell, that starts as it means to go on.

Tim: Part of me can’t help feeling that they left an apostrophe out of the title of this because no-one was entirely sure where to put it. Anyway, some feminism for you.

Tom: Bloody hell, that starts as it means to go on.

Tim: Let’s get through the annoying parts first: the camp voiceover bloke, the existence of ‘anthem’ and ‘women’ as three syllables and aforesaid apostrophe absence. Any others that spring to mind?

Tom: The camp voiceover bloke is a new way to avoid YouTube ripping – and it’s going to be effective, although I’m not sure if annoying the hell out of your audience is the right way to go.

Tim: I really don’t think it is, but I suppose time will tell. Anyway, of those three, only one is actually present in the music, and that can be sort of vaguely justified what with rhythm and all that, so first glance: this is okay. Second hearing, though, it’s actually a bit dull, and I’ve realised that not only are lyric videos a cheap way of getting on YouTube but still looking professional —

Tom: Mind you, it’s not even a particularly well-designed lyric video; whoever’s put it together could use learning how to ease movement.

Tim: — but they can also be a way to distract the listener with pretty effects, a fact which had somehow passed me by until now. It’s not a bad song; it’s just that the lyric video’s more interesting, which I suppose can hardly be construed as heavy praise.

Tom: It seems almost robotic and mechanical; maybe it started too hard and had nowhere to go from there.

The Storm – Raver

“I’m expecting Scooter levels of intensity here, albeit with a bit less SHOUTING.”

Tim: With an act called The Storm and a song entitled Raver, you’ve probably got a few expectations about this track, and while I won’t spoil anything before hand, I will say that anyone with photo-sensitive epilepsy may wish to turn away before pushing the play button.

Tom: Let’s put it this way: I’m expecting Scooter levels of intensity here, albeit with a bit less SHOUTING.

Tim: And be honest: that met them, didn’t it?

Tom: I’m not sure my headphones could cope with that. I’m not sure YouTube compression can cope with that. I’m not sure speakers can cope with that. They’ve thrown everything at that chorus – it’s a shame they couldn’t have dipped the verses by a couple of decibels so it wasn’t all so distorted, but that’s not how music works these days. That’s a minor technical complaint though: it’s not like I’d notice that in a club. I’d be too busy danc– WHOA! dubstep out of nowhere!

Tim: It has everything (everything) a modern dance rave number needs, up to and including the dubstep breakdown. Wonder if we’ll ever stop mentioning those?

Tom: Not when they’re as startling as this one. Dubstep breaks your dance up like very little else – you can’t just put your hands up in the air to it, it’s too rhythmic for that, but it’s too slow for club dancing. I’m sure people manage it, but I can’t think how.

Tim: MOVEMENTS. As in, hands up and sway with occasional sudden sweeps, almost interpretative dance style. At least, that’s how I do it.

And even the video sets the scene nicely, going with the lengthy post-chorus thrash-your-head-around-until-your-neck-hurts. And of course there’s the chorus, which starts off on a triumphant note and then brings in a great melody and lyrics that just sound great.

Tom: And the last chorus in particular is gorgeous – how the piano synth is still audible under that wall of sound, I’ve no idea.

Tim: PURE VOLUME. But actually, those lyrics only really sound great provided you don’t listen too closely, because if you do you’ll find out that this beat-heavy jump-all-over-the-place number is in fact a fairly soppy “I’m leaving you” track in very heavy make-up, and to be honest I don’t know if that spoils it a bit or makes it even more awesome. I think it’s the latter, so super.

September – Hands Up

Still not up there with the tracks from her first album.

Tim: So this is the new one from September, last seen with the distinctly disappointing Me & My Microphone. Is this track, also from the Love CPR album, any better?

Tim: Well, sort of. Still not up there with the tracks from her first album, unfortunately, because there’s still not a lot going on in the chorus. Compare the chorus here with this one, and there’s just no contest at all. I wouldn’t mind the gentle chorus if it was actually building to something, but here there’s nothing, really, before we go back to the verses, which are weirdly the most interesting part of the song. The towards the end it picks up, admittedly, but then it finishes on that annoying repetitive bit that really doesn’t do anything for me. I don’t know – I want to like it, but I just don’t feel enthused by it.

Tom: Like a lot of the tracks coming from the ‘old guard’ – there’s an odd name for acts that are less than ten years from their first album – it’s just not all that special. And we’re expecting something special.

Tim: We are, and this just isn’t it. One particular reason I want to enjoy it is that this may be the last we heard from her, at least in this form.

Tom: Interesting. Unlike some Eurodance “projects”, September refers to the singer herself, rather than a collective of musicians co-ordinated by a record company – so it really will be the end for it.

Tim: Well, not entirely – according to PR stuff that’s been sent out, back in Sweden she’s now recording under her actual name, with a new sound that’s apparently a mixture of Coldplay, Florence & The Machine and Depeche Mode. Though I suppose that does sound more interesting than either this or her last one.

Tom: Agreed: at first, I thought “ah, it’s a shame it’s over” – but I’m remembering the cracking early tracks. Perhaps something new is a better idea.