A God-awful Small Affair

As far as album titles go, this is worryingly indicative. The New York indie gods' return in 2011 with the at-best mishmash Angles was effectively torn to shreds by the music press and whilst the furore was slightly exaggerated and undeserved - Under Cover of Darkness was beautiful - it was a large step down from the three records which made their name. Whilst the die-hard fans bicker over which album is best, we all know that it's Is This It , and therefore any attempt by Casablancas and co. to deviate from the lo-fi, chirpy indie line is unavoidably going to be met with tentative displeasure. Certainly, their numerous side projects - solo (Julian, Albert) and otherwise (Little Joy) - weakened down the culture shock, and the electronic elements of Angles were accepted as progress. Yet, to begin experimenting always risks the songwriting side of things suffering. The first cut released from Comedown Machine was 'One Way Trigger', the wildly eccentric series of...

The polarising career of Kate Nash is rather testament to her individuality. In 2007, atop the crest of the whole Myspace-indie pop thing going on in the UK (that ignited such predictably shortlived bandwagons as Klaxons, the Pigeon Detectives and Jamie T), Nash's debut Made of Bricks smashed its way into #1 on our album charts and made us all forget about her counterpart Lily Allen. Similar to Allen was that backlash - but rather than a purist whinging over her celebrity parents' riches, a lot of Nash's hate was directed purely at the musical output: her colloquial vocal delivery, her dear-diary confessional and crude lyrics, and her overtly simple production values. It certainly made her stand out, but sadly pissing people off is part and parcel of making it in music today, and a lot of extremely good songs - Pumpkin Soup, Mouthwash, Merry Happy - were overlooked because of that "fitter/bitter" line in Foundations . But the release of 2010's My Best Fri...

Everything about Bastille should read as irritating: the use of the triangle in their band logo, the use of their music in the ads we skip before YouTube videos, frontman Dan Smith's hair. They've even got that token new-cool-thing about them that the UK gets behind in their droves to give a debut #1 (see: Ed Sheeran, Emeli Sande). Let's not even touch naming yourself after the pinnacle of the French Revolution on the whim of sharing a birthday with it. Wisely starting on their strongest merit - the single 'Pompeii' - they immediately unleash about three simultaneous hooks. The most obvious is their chanted vocal refrain, a sort of Lion King homage that, if anything, sticks in the head. Lyrically, the song suffers a lot from cliches ("the walls kept tumbling down/ grey clouds roll over the hills") and a touch of megalomania (comparing a romantic turmoil with the explosion of Vesuvius? See the music video for more ridiculousness). Smith's vocals...

It is now common courtesy for the music industry to conjure at least one new artist per year that adheres to the whole Best Coast/Cults cute-girl vocal over lo-fi indie pop angle. It should be common courtesy that such ventures are executed with clever, or catchy, or in the very least intriguing results. What made Asobi Seksu and Cults and Best Coast's debuts (or sophomore, in the case of AS ) so engaging were their takes on garage, Motown and surf-rock respectively, and all of them being from the US may have at least exposed them to such varied sounds early on. But for UK band The History of Apple Pie - and yes, it is an awful band name - British indie rock classics are pretty hard to come by. I discovered the band by accident: they were the iTunes free single of the week a while back. The London fivesome are as close to the dreampop line as it is possible to tread, and given all of these minor complaints you'd be forgiven for thinking I had something against them. They ...

It's not a secret any more that Timbaland has a tendency of late - and by 'of late' I mean anything after 2007 - to rather over-egg his production duties and leave his work with the trudging monotony of a uniquely Timbaland variety. Madonna's Hard Candy , Bjork's Volta and Jay-Z's third Blueprint were all testament to a hit-and-miss, uninspired detour that the man had taken not months after M.I.A.'s excellent Kala or Nelly Furtado's single-handed greatest hits Loose . One such artist that remained firmly rooted in Timbaland's list of successes due to a musical hiatus was Justin Timberlake. 2006's FutureSex/LoveSounds was that rarest of albums: a massive commercial success and simultaneously an artistic, slick masterpiece of pop music. It's conjured all sorts of contemporary assertions that 2006 was a better time for music than today (conveniently ignoring, of course, McFly covering the Beatles, Akon's apex and the fact that Mariah Ca...

Okay: first shock out of the way. That's not a woman's voice. The pearly-loveliness that poured out of my headphones one day as I listened to 'The Fall' is none other than one-half-of-Rhye Mike Milosh. I initially wondered if they'd gotten a hold of UK Moyet-revivalist Clare Maguire, or perhaps Sade to do it, but no, Rhye can now be added to that list of gender-bending vocal lushness in dance music that currently houses Hercules and Love Affair, Toto's Steve Luthaker (on I Won't Hold You Back , later a hit for DJ Roger Sanchez as Another Chance ) and Washed Out. The Canadian Milosh already has two solo albums in the mid-noughties under his belt, but has now teamed up with Danish Robin Hannibal (and at this point you may too be asking why 'Milosh and Hannibal' wasn't the name of choice), also of duo Quadron , whose other half's currently gallavanting with Baz Luhrmann's Gatsby soundtrack and Tyler, the Creator tracks. After a br...

Those of you who are thinking folk might have realised by now that I'm a bit of a Bowie fan. On January 6 this year, I was one of those clichéd giddy young folk reacting to a Twitter buzz at about 7am with far more energy and excitement than is required for such an early hour. Then, of course, came Where Are We Now? and its will-it-won't-it charting kerfuffle, and it was all a little bit too good to be true. A whole decade had passed since the admittedly average Reality , and whilst the die-hard fans have been slightly quelled by appearances in The Prestige and Extras, and some background musical work with Arcade Fire, Scarlett Johansson and TV on the Radio, there was indeed the growing fear that the Thin White Duke had retired for good. The album's artwork has been the focus of much of the buzz around The Next Day : a cheeky wink to his classic albums, and somewhat of a visual reminder that David Bowie himself doesn't exactly show his face a lot anymore. Absence...