Tom: Comeback album after a “hiatus”. Third single. Pretentious concept video. To repeat some shtick from yesterday: it’ll be awful, right?
Tom: NO. It’s a great song. Whatever genre they’re in now — alt-rock? emo? Who knows — they’re nailing it.
Tim: They really are, its great. Strange how there are some bands that I like even though if they were just a tiny little bit elsewhere musically I’d hate. My Chemical Romance is the same – emo-rock that’s got just the right small degree of pop to it that makes it work really well for me.
Tom: The album’s been well received — it made it to number 1 on the US album chart. Given the troubles they’ve had in the past (do consult Wikipedia), I’d say this is one of the most triumphant comebacks of recent years.
Tim: High praise indeed, but you may not be far off.
Tim: This is the necessary single release that accompanies any new Greatest Hits compilation; it’ll be awful, right?
Tim: NO. It’s actually really really good, and that’s not something I thought I’d ever be able to write about a new Cascada track. Recently, the output’s sounded like the energy’s drained somewhat from the first couple of albums, and she’s really just jumping on whatever everyone else is doing.
Tom: Particularly after Eurovision, where her song sounded like it was the previous year’s winner changed just enough to avoid lawsuits.
Tim: But this – this is back on top. It’s no Eurovision clone, it’s not a track with an idiotic title (why would you want a crowd to evacuate?). Instead, it’s original, it’s her own sound, and best of all it sounds like proper effort was put into it. I’m very, very happy with this.
Tom: I wonder how it would have done at Eurovision?
Tim: Probably quite a bit better. Eh, well. Too late for them now.
Tim: The third single, and second best track, from their latest album, with one of the most pretentious titles a song has ever had.
Tom: That is an astounding title. And bloody hell – is that a “6” I see in the “minutes” on the video?
Tim: Oh yes – strap yourself in.
Tom: Oh my word, that opening. That first minute. And then… oh wow. This is classic Pet Shop Boys. It’s amazing. And as I write this, I’m only three minutes into it.
Tim: What I like about this is the way it goes pretty much everywhere, with long, slow introduction than standard synth pop in the way that they do it, heavy beats later on through the chorus, and a breakdown near the end that sticks way out from the rest of the song.
It never really settles down into one thing in particular – even when you think the heavy chanting at the end is a fabulous way to end it, it suddenly goes all dreamy and elsewhere.
Tom: I do wonder if that’s there deliberately to make it “loop” in folks’ heads. After that outro, I want the main hook to come back… and so I hit play again.
Tim: Wonderful consequence of that: even at nearly seven minutes, the song doesn’t sound like its going on too long.
Tom: In a song like this, there are always going to be sections that don’t seem to work as well — and for me, they’re generally the bits where it deviates from “normality”. That glitchy middle eight seems wrong to me — but then, it does make that final chorus just glorious.
Tim: It also helps that the hook is fantastic. It seems really familiar – I don’t know if I’ve heard it before elsewhere or if I’ve just been listening to this a stupid number of times, but either way I like it.
Tom: Also, I have to mention the ludicrously pretentious lyrics. I’m not sure what else you could put there, though; somehow, I think generic lyrics about love would be worse. The fact the song works as an instrumental, though, is a testament to its strength.
Tim: Fans will be pleased to know that it’s been put right at the top of the Radio 2 playlist – quite how they’ll chop it down into a sensible-length radio edit I have no idea – so it’ll hopefully get quite a bit more attention than their other recent ones have, because it really deserves to.
Tim: You may or may not recall this band’s hit from 2008, Shake It, which was really rather successful. It was followed by a very listenable album, and then a somewhat hostile break-up.
One of them (the oddly named Mason Musso) has decided to start making music again, and has seen no reason why he shouldn’t keep the band’s name going, so here we are.
Tom: Which will no doubt cause some disputes down the line, but never mind. Also: why the abbreviation? Because I’m just pronouncing it as “E-titty”. I… I don’t know what that would be.
Tom: Bloody hell. That’s an astonishing video.
Tim: Isn’t it just?
Tom: I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything on YouTube quite as intense, as startling, as fast as that — particularly not with as much artistic merit behind it either. Absolutely amazing. And as for the song…
Tim: This is electropop at it’s poppiest, and it’s great. Don’t really know what to say beyond that, because it just pushes all my buttons almost perfectly. The two-step pre-chorus is a tad unsettling when it first strikes, but once you know it’s there it becomes alright and blends in fairly well.
Tom: I can only agree. This is brilliant electropop.
Tim: I like this a lot, I really do, and I hope he doesn’t fall apart with himself this this time.
Tim: The new single release from Melodifestivalen finalist David Lindgren, here, and a healthy dose of EDM for you.
Tom: Crikey, that kicks in hard.
Tim: With the plethora of tracks that get released every month, it takes a lot these days to stand out with tunes of this genre, and to be honest I kind of think this has it. Not enough to be an international breakout, mind, but good enough to get heard on the dance floor fairly regularly. The title on its own, or at least the repetition of it in the chorus, is probably good enough to get some people dancing, and if not then the decent tune underneath it all should do it.
Tom: I’d say it risks getting a bit too repetitive: the trouble with starting off with that level of intensity is there’s not really anywhere for the song to go. Even at three minutes long, I felt it was starting to outstay its welcome. That said, what a welcome.
Tim: The only thing that’s bad is the awful autotune near the beginning; that aside, I rather like this, and would happily RAVE to it.
Tim: Last Saturday, a track from Eurovision 2012 that didn’t do anywhere near as well as it should have done. This week, a track that was my third favourite that year but didn’t even qualify to the final. I present to you: Belarus.
Tim: Yes, it’s basically a Nickelback track popped up slightly, and I suppose hits roughly the right level of mediocrity to garner nowhere near enough votes, but I really like it, and I do wish it had done better.
Tom: Oh my word, you’re right. He’s even got some of the same vocal inflections, where he doesn’t quite get the right note to start, and then rolls his voice towards the right pitch.
Tim: They didn’t wear the best outfits on the night – mostly chain mail, which hasn’t really worked as a fashion choice for at least half a millennium – but that shouldn’t be a reason for them to be knocked out, surely? Oh well, Europe’s loss.
Tom: It is generic, it is a bit Nickelback, but it’s not inherently a bad track. It is, as you say, just a bit generic.
Tim: I like the literalness of the video with them being actual heroes, and I particularly like the woman who’s just pulling at her seatbelt wondering why it won’t fall apart. Clearly an overconfident flyer who didn’t pay attention to the flight crew’s instructions. Also the explosion that hits with the second chorus is wonderful, and almost as good timing as another Belarus music video, from three years back.
Tim: Okay, I know that’s a serious article, and I read that Pat Stanley is from Leicestershire, but I can’t help but read “next year I’m going to have dead cows” in a Somerset accent, and now I’m giggling stupidly. SORRY PAT.
A decent dance beat, and a melody that’s varied and pleasant.
Tim: “Deeper is a song about helping someone who has reached the bottom – because you believe in them,” says vocalist Kenneth Gutterup, 25% of this Norwegian band.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ8uCpcc1W0
Tom: What an odd video. I wonder how many of their younger fans recognise what analogue film is?
Tim: Oh, let’s not go there. They’ve previously been doing mostly rock stuff, but this seems to be their first ‘proper’ single, for what that’s worth, and it’s fairly dancey instead. By and large, I really like this – I doubt you’ll need me to specify the bits I don’t like, but since they’re not a massive disjoint that spoils the rest of the song I can live with them easily enough.
Tom: I know the bits you mean — the not-quite-dubstep, almost guttural sounds — but I thought they worked rather well, myself. As, indeed, does the rest of the song: a decent dance beat, and a melody that’s varied enough and pleasant enough that I find myself nodding my head along.
Tim: Hmm. I might not choose to play it all that often, mind, but based on this I can imagine them bringing out a decent album, and if they did I wouldn’t skip over this.
Tim: The Dolly Rockers, for those that don’t know, are a girl band that have been around about seven years now, first appearing in the audition stages of X Factor 2006. A mere three years later, they came out with Je Suis Une Dolly, a lovely track with lines like “we flash our pants when we Can Can” and “I’ll voulez vous you by the Chardonnay”.
Tom: Blimey. I dislike them already.
Tim: Yep, figured. That was quickly followed by Boys Will Be Boys, and four years later, here’s another track.
Tom: Ooh. Okay, perhaps they’re forgiven.
Tim: I know, right?
Tom: That, Tim, sounds like a Vengaboys album track. Listen to it. The woah-oh-ohs, the occasional creak in the main vocals, the theme being about love and alcohol. The odd first half of that middle eight doesn’t match, I’ll grant you, but other than that it’d sit quite nicely next to “Uncle John from Jamaica”.
Tim: Hmm, you’re not far wrong there. But you know what I really reckon? Replace the first half of the middle eight with a copy of the second half, cut the final couple of choruses, maybe stick a key change in there, and you’ve got yourself a bloody fantastic Eurovision song. I don’t know what it is that provides that quality, but I press play, and I start smiling. That’s it.
Tom: Hmm. I don’t think it’d be popular at Eurovision — I’d be surprised if it survived the semi-finals — but I agree with you about the feelgood factor.
Tim: It might be the way it kicks off with a bit of the chorus, Wings-style, which immediately lifts the mood; possibly it’s the contrast between the pre-chorus and the chorus; may also be the intense short and repetitive melody of the chorus. It’s probably all of those things added together, really. It’s great girlband pop. I love it.
Tim: Monsieur Adi, a French DJ who likes his synths with a big helping of strings, as heard on this remix of Pompeii. A*M*E, a London-based singer who pretty much all pop music blogs have been championing and who is best known for being on Duke Dumont’s Need U (100%). Together, this.
Tim: A bit of backstory: the vocals are a cover (ish, sort of, vaguely) of Soul II Soul’s Back To Life (However Do You Want Me); that got significantly remixed by Monsieur Adi a few years back into something similar to this, and that’s now been re-fiddled with and tidied up a bit, given new vocals and will shortly be released as an actual single.
Tom: Familiar enough that the audience will like it; not familiar enough that this’ll be called sacrilege. It helps, of course, that’s it’s a damn good remix.
Tim: It is good; I’d go so far as to say very good, in fact. The strings work very well for me – under the verses they’re almost what makes the song, and their near ever-presence provides something to hang onto as the rest of the song mutates around them. From the beginning of the singing we go from high-pitched keyboards synths, a basic drum beat, then a combination of the both in what would be called the chorus if there was any semblance of a regular structure to this. For the later instrumental section we pay a brief visit to the Tron soundtrack, and then coming back for the closing part we get everything thrown in at once.
Tom: When the sixteenth-note drumbeats kicked in — the Tron bit, I think, by your definition — I actually muttered “bloody hell” under my breath.
Tim: It’s all rather brilliant, and while the vocals are perfectly good, it’s the production which really makes this, and on those terms it’s one of the best we’ve heard all year, I reckon. This deserves to be huge; I really hope it is.
One track comes on and you suddenly realise that everything’s brilliant.
Tim: Tom’s away at the moment, unfortunately, so it’s just me, but hopefully I can cope. You know how sometimes you’re out for an evening, and it seems a bit iffy, but then one track comes on and you suddenly realise that everything’s brilliant?
Tim: Well, I didn’t really mention it, but I went to see the truly wonderful Hera Björk performing in a club last Friday, and I never had that feeling at all, because this Eurovision track was playing as I walked through the door and I instantly had confirmation of what I’d already suspected: the night was going to be utterly fantastic. And it really, really was.
Sadly, that night in Baku wasn’t really The Night for Kurt, as this only came 21st out of 25, but as for last Friday – that really was the night. Hera is ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT.
