A God-awful Small Affair

Releasing an album every year is a rarity nowadays, and given the change of perspective that 2011's Bread and Circuses produced for me, a risky endeavour indeed. In them good old days it was common of course for bands to showcase multiple albums a year, but then the commercial aspect of it wasn't too taxing, and promotional deals and touring demands were fewer inbetween. For the View, however, this is their fourth album in five years, and whilst they've never really pulled off a classic, the quality remains consistently good (odd blip Which Bitch? aside). Being a UK indie band of course the claims and brags are equally persistent; lead singer Kyle Falconer described Cheeky for a Reason's sound as "Fleetwood Mac's Rumours done by The Clash". A far more apt description may be "Oasis's songs done by not-Oasis", but then again Beady Eye were just terrible weren't they? 'How Long' gets the album going with gusto and a bit

An online contact who's more than a little enthusiastic about Christina Aguilera gave me the link to a weirdly briefly-titled YouTube video of a woman dressed as a tree, claiming there were rumours that it was her comeback material. The most intriguing online music campaign since forever, it was a really fun time to speculate just who it might be - Lady GaGa? Madonna? Bat for Lashes? Bjork? Goldfrapp? It turned out to be a Swedish bitch no one had heard of. Major sad face. Jonna Lee might well have the misfortune of being pit against all of those far more well-covered and talked-about females and bands, but when dressed in black glitter and contorting about like a twat you're basically asking for attention. Hopefully the songs have improved now that she's stopped giving them single letter titles, and given Sweden's recent history with weird pop artists, I'm cautiously optimistic. From the get-go there are still echoes of her more mysterious and ethereal em

2009 was an odd year for me. I was digging up the discographies of artists as far and wide from Bob Dylan to the Beastie Boys; from Tears for Fears to Joni Mitchell; from Big Brother & the Holding Company to Neutral Milk Hotel. All the while I was trying to keep up with one of the most exciting recent years for breakthroughs: the year saw debuts from Florence + the Machine, Paloma Faith, Empire of the Sun, VV Brown, The xx, Mumford & Sons, Miike Snow, Noisettes, Bombay Bicycle Club and the Leisure Society. So for me, it was rather lucky that Passion Pit were another such band to catch my attention. Manners , packed to the brim with indie-pop hits that dominated virtually every night club I went to at the time, was so strong and consistent that it surprised me when it failed to even enter the UK top 40. Stateside, their impression earned them a #4 slot this time around with Gossamer , but the UK still fail to give them the attention they deserve. Granted, they aren't ho

When a musician is open with his or her sexuality there is a tendency in the pop world for it to be at the waning end of their career.  There's a worrying urge to suppress anything remotely divisive or controversial within mainstream media and it's troubling: in the UK, winners of television contests Pop Idol and The X Factor - Will Young and Joe McElderry respectively - only felt comfortable coming out of the closet once they had won. Whether this was their own decision or not was speculated - more often by themselves than others - because the impression loomed that they were rather coerced. So what is it about sexuality that's still so taboo? Following the Tumblr post uploaded by Ocean himself with the intended sleevenotes to his debut album, shockwaves were sent around the music industry. "At last!" some seemed to cry, "a gay artist in hip hop!" It was an incredibly moving piece of writing and revelation that, at the time, reduced me to tears. So

More often than not I miss the debut of someone genuinely exciting or interesting - I can't keep ahead of everything by myself. So I'll treat this as I treat debut albums (with a "for fans of" spot at the bottom), since I suspect there're more than just little old me with the same predicament. Twin Shadow, stage name of George Lewis Jr., a Dominican Republic-born, Florida-raised, did technically breakthrough in 2010 with his debut album Forget (which I'm told is rather brilliant, but haven't got around to listening to yet). A mere year and a half later, Confess emerges on the wave of Florence + the Machine support slots, and (perhaps with her influence) a whole new range of 80s sounds. Persisting throughout the entire listening of this album there's a nagging feeling that you've heard a certain chord or instrumental inclusion somewhere else. It's unexplainable. But opener 'Golden Light' is one such moment, a synth-powered g

Somewhere along the line I mistook R. Kelly for Shaggy. That's the only explanation I have for completely ignoring everything since Ignition (Remix) . Maybe it was the insanely over-the-top Trapped in the Closet operetta, maybe it was the lavish lifestyle, maybe it was the horribly overplayed and schmaltzy I Believe I Can Fly but I completely shut the man out. That is, until I heard the rather excellent first single of this - Kelly's 11th solo album - Share My Love . A delicious throwback to disco and soul music, it signalled a new prospect for me. To most, though, it apparently isn't a surprise: 2010's Love Letter was met with rave reviews. Just let me have my moment, please. The cheese hasn't completely died though: 'Love Is' comes with a spoken intro that begins "they say that love is blind, but I can see clearly when I make love to you". A real classic disco beat is bombarded with Barry White pianos and trumpets, and the end result s

Friends of mine can vouch for the fact that I've forever been one of Cheryl Cole's most vitriolic critics. Looking back on her career beginnings, though, and the frantic pop majesty that was Girls Aloud, it's a little difficult to swallow, but then the X Factor came along like a giant turd at a picnic and transformed the bloody woman - by far not the strongest vocalist of the band - into a national sweetheart. Skip forward a couple of media and romantic turmoils, and a painfully shit debut album, and you get some level of understanding as to where I am with her. Dropping the surname now in what's certainly not another PR move to grab newspaper pages, Cheryl returns with album #3 and further pisses on the progress of a Girls Aloud reunion. I'm told it's coming in 2013. That's five years since The Loving Kind . I can't wait five years for separate The Loving Kind moments. It's just not what we penis fans do. Our Xenomania-free substitute come

After all of the costumes and eccentricities hammered to death towards the media by the likes of Lady GaGa and Nicki Minaj I suppose it was a matter of time before the fellas followed suit. Luke Steele, of Empire of the Sun fame, stands out as one rare recent example, but now Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs - real name Orlando Higginbottom (I know) - is ready to carry that...admittedly unimportant torch. I just need to write about something that separates new artists from the rest. It's tough work sometimes when their music is...this. Following a handful of remixes of pop songs, this son of an Oxford choir conductor is now ready to stand on his own two feet, and, odd fashion choices aside, I'm a little stretched as to identify something uniquely interesting about the man. His debut opens with a song called 'Promises', and it's a bleak opener. Cold, brisk and shallow it attempts some dewy atmospheric sequences but never fully paints an inviting picture - i