A God-awful Small Affair

So the little old girl with the guitar grew up pretty fast. What can now only be described as the biggest American success since McDonalds, Taylor Swift's fourth studio album racked up a mightily impressive 1.2 million first week sales, and sits comfortably behind Adele as the biggest selling album of the year. You could take something out of it being the most successful 2012 release, I guess. Therefore I should probably get around to reviewing it - at least before she puts out a rerelease or whatever all the kids are doing these days. I never really cared much for her beyond You Belong With Me and Love Story - like the rest of the UK - until recently, I must admit. But for album #4, she's drafted in British support in the forms of Ed Sheeran and Snow Patrol's Gary Lightbody - whether her final nabbing of a UK top spot is thanks to this or other exposure remains to be seen. She inducts us to her Red phase with some U2-borrowed riffs on 'State of Grace', ...

Looks like Miles Kane. Sounds like a male KT Tunstall. Sorry, I've drifted into the NME pattern of things by reviewing an album by referring to seven other existing acts (I counted them all in their review of this! Yay me). It's getting to the stage now where I look up the ages of new artists and recoil in horror. Jake Bugg was born in 1994. I remember that year. I'm only 22, I shouldn't feel like this yet. Fuck. So, the old "I've been busy" excuses aside, I avoided reviewing this around the whole Leona Lewis/Jake Bugg 'credibility' debacle because it was incredibly embarrassing and made me a little more wary of Bugg and his credentials. No one likes a blabbermouth, and bragging that it's time to knock the X Factor from the top spot is just sad. A noble ambition, indeed, but one that should be left unsaid. Opener 'Lightning Bolt' is essentially the album's radio earworm, and with good reason. A quickfire rockabilly rhyth...

Some things are really worth the wait. The noise around the Bat for Lashes camp kind of died down after the release of 2009's Two Suns , a faultlessly beautiful album from one of the UK's most wonderfully gifted women. Probably because where most attention has diverted to the unusual, the quirky and the relevant, Bat for Lashes' only ever real selling point to the masses was her knack for classic songwriting, and without any overwhelming desire to slag off her contemporaries or wear controversial costumes, Natasha Khan doesn't quite command the attention she so deserves. Sure, the UK music scene is pretty saturated with talented female artists at the moment. We've got M.I.A., Paloma Faith, Florence + the Machine, Ellie Goulding, Jessie Ware, PJ Harvey, Kate Bush, Laura Marling, Kate Nash, Lily Allen and then a bunch of popstars thrown in all fighting for survival, but for me, at the right time, Bat for Lashes trumps all. Sure, PJ and Kate own the weird and the ...

For all of the arguments that Leona Lewis may be dull or a touch on the irrelevant side of UK pop music, there's a pretty hefty figure of sales and chart positions that can prove that she's anything but. Since storming to an X Factor win all the way back in 2006, Lewis has been hesitant to go all-out with the albums and singles, with this being only her third so far. Maybe it's refreshing to see a UK talent that isn't plastered all over the tabloids, and maybe it's her recent revival as a bit of a dancefloor queen, but my initial indifference towards her is slightly tipping in her favour. Because what was once a safe, routine power-ballad belter filling her albums with covers of songs I cherished has become a pretty interesting performer: the voice hasn't gone away, but thankfully the non-stop string arrangements and sombre piano tones have. 2011's first glimpse of this album - the legally disputed Avicii collaboration Collide - invited the idea of Lew...

Some albums are so good that it's just a struggle to explain why. This is one of those albums. I dunno, man. Listen if you like anything remotely psychedelic and shit. Also: for fans of Pet Sounds . Really. Rating: 8.5/10 Highlights: Elephant, Why Won't they Talk to me?, Mind Mischiefs, Be Above It, Feels Like We Only Go Backwards, Keep On Lying Avoid: n/a Artwork Watch: Why can't anything I ever snap on Instagram ever look that pretty? Up next: Leona Lewis

If I say this is a milestone review for me it should: a) give away the score I'm going to give it, and b) detract from the quality of the album. So, spoilers aside, let's delve in. The Compton-raised twenty-five year old Kendrick Lamar has already built up enough of a reputation prior to this release: he's been signed to Dr. Dre's Aftermath label, - working with the man himself on the long-overdue but still quite exciting Detox album - he's worked with Wu Tang Clan legend RZA on his own debut Section.80 last year and has already put out six mixtapes since he was sixteen. So although this doesn't quite feel like the breakthrough some might sell it as, good kid, m.A.A.d city has enough about it to generate more than a little excitement. It's something of an odd coincidence that two of the greatest albums of 2012, and indeed probably the two contenders for the year's accolades (not my personal two favourites - Perfume Genius just pips Frank O...

You've heard the story before: DJ slowly rises to a B-list level of music fame. Has loads of small hits, is a bit of a favourite of all your dance and D&B friends. Pop world notices him. Gives him about thirty different guest singers in an increasing scale of star-power. Everyone goes off the DJ. And it says a lot really that the one breakthrough hit that made him a name - 'Gold Dust' - has been polished off and given a reworking with a much more famous vocal, that of Ms Dynamite, and for what? More star appeal? Because there's no other need for it. Or this album. Just stick to the singles, okay? Rating: 3/10 Highlights: Louder, The Power Avoid: Skyhighatrist, The Feeling Artwork Watch: Well I suppose even the Illuminati need to drop the bass every now and then. Up next: Kendrick Lamar  

Let's pretend the Elton John cover never happened. 2010's Lights was received with all the excitement and furore of a plate of asparagus. Yet, despite all of the backlash against what was that year's BRIT Critic's Choice recipient, Goulding's debut was quite convincing in showing us her abilities. She'd issued her obligatory synth-pop tracks and singles in the form of Under the Sheets and Starry Eyed to varying success, and the album also featured maturer, sweeter pieces in the way of The Writer and Guns and Horses . It wasn't a phenomenal breakthrough, but it had enough charm for me to care even an ounce about a follow-up (but that's not really a compliment from someone still willing to review Alphabeat). This time around? It's a bit more tribal and anthemic; a bit more piano and vocal than anything. The last album was very electronic, but it was tied in with my voice; this one, to me, is way more of a pop record.  YAY. But wh...

Forget the Monsters, ignore the Beliebers; Muse fans are the worst fans in the world, at least this side of the pond. I'm not sure if this is because my awareness of them and their determination to prove that Muse are THEBESTEVA correlates with the band's obvious decline in quality, or the fact that they'll vote in their droves to give the band just about any award going - including the highly dubious 'Sexiest Man in Rock' title to Matt Bellamy, who more closely resembles a vole than anything close to a hottie. Yet it seems to me that the backlash directed at the band by some is equally unjustified: this is a band after all that's put out albums as excellent as Origin of Symmetry , Absolution and Black Holes and Revelations . If the band are guilty of trying to appear eccentric with Bellamy's conspiracy theories and their supposed inspiration of their latest material, then that's fair enough, but Muse are pretty far from the worst thing in rock mus...

please stop everything's sugary it's giving me diabetes please stop 'Love Sea' is a shameless rip-off of Whitney Houston's How Will I Know there's one photoshoot for this campaign and it made the album cover, clearly no one cares any more i'm sorry denmark but it's true Rating: 2/10 Highlights: Vacation, Mad About You, Express Non-Stop Avoid: Younger than Yesterday, Love Sea, Since I Met You, Brand New Day Artwork Watch: Leave the Weeknd's format alone please Up next: Muse  

As is customary with alternative musicians suddenly faced with overwhelming success, the UK critical press and online community tore into the Mumford & Sons' debut Sigh No More . Recoiling in horror at their absence of cool and their history as somewhat privileged gentlemen dressed in tweed, one half of us dismissed them as poshos with banjos. The more articulate criticisms came from their simplistic songwriting and abundance of love and romance in folk music, a genre taken to far more political and weighty extremes by other contemporaries that your average Pitchfork-reading Guardianista would much prefer get the success (Look, guys, Laura Marling won a BRIT award so let's all just show some bloody solidarity okay? Baby steps.) So the Mumford and the Marshall and the Dwane and the Lovett buggered off to America. Fair dos. Since, they've performed with Bob Dylan at the Grammys and achieved the fastest-selling album of the year. It wasn't even close: their 600,0...

Okay, so, lacklustre and frighteningly poor performances on the UK television shows The X Factor and The Jonathan Ross Show aside, the news that No Doubt had finally gotten around to a proper comeback album - after the teasing and brilliant cover of Adam and the Ants' Stand and Deliver back in 2009 - was just about one of the few legitimate buzzes I've become involved with. The two Gwen Stefani solo albums, as well as her guest spots on some great ( Let Me Blow Ya Mind ) and some...eh ( Can I Have it Like That ) singles, were a rough little endurance test of obnoxiousness and fine pop songs. She nailed some greats, too - What You Waiting For?, Cool and Early Winter were all necessary reminders that Stefani wasn't actually that annoying (since Wind it Up, Hollaback Girl and Rich Girl seemed desperate to persuade us she was). A band now in their 40s, their heyday is worryingly long ago. But what a heyday it was, right? I don't think I've ever met anyone tha...

Okay so chances are, like me, you've been every so slightly but repeatedly irritated by the 15 second clip of 'Guardian' before every other YouTube video so I'll keep the introduction brief and just try and replace that chorus in my head with something else. Ah, drats. It's the first track. Basically: the best album since Under Rug Swept . But then that's not saying a lot, is it? Albums from Morissette have now taken the mantle of being that of someone regarded by most as past-it; an unfair statement and rather indicative of the pop world's swelling necessity to be young, pretty and cool. Sadly, Havoc and Bright Lights will fail to garner new fans, but it should go some way to quash the fears of her old ones. The production's a little too shiny and fake for any real punches to be thrown (although Woman Down is her best attempt), but she sounds mature and at peace here. So that's nice. Rating: 5.5/10 Highlights: Woman Down, Empathy...