A God-awful Small Affair

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...

Few albums have come with more of a mountain to climb than this. The 2010 release of former Czars frontman John Grant's debut Queen of Denmark was met with a small but certain universal acclaim. It was my second favourite record of the year (after the slightly more overstated My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy ), and in a year that boasted Janelle Monae, Arcade Fire, Sleigh Bells and Robyn that's no small feat. That debut was pretty stripped back in terms of its musical arrangements and an attachment to sweet, melodic ballads was certainly one major element of its appeal, but it was Grant's twisted (Jesus Hates Faggots), sometimes silly (a song about Sigourney Weaver?) sense of humour, and an underlying sense of loneliness and vulnerability, that made it so compelling. The release of 2013's title track back in the dying months of 2012 brought with it news that Grant had decided to, like so many others, give synthpop a (stronger - there were elements of it on QoD) g...

Few artists touch upon the essence and vitality of life as successfully and intrinsically as Lil Wayne. Since 1999's The Block Is Hot , Wayne has coined some of the noughties' most enduring anthems and proved time and time again that his witty lyricisms and ear for fine vocals. Some might call him a great rapper: I call him a great. The New Orleans genius is back in 2013 on the back of a highly-publicised health problem that saw TMZ reporting him dead. That such a talent can command the entertainment media to fear the worst at the smallest hiccup should illustrate his legacy and impact upon the music industry. Not since Michael Jackson has the music world stopped and stared with bated breath. I Am Not a Human Being II makes a convincing argument for its title; surely such an awareness of the human condition as displayed in the album's lyrics and nuances has to be observed from an outsider perspective? The attention to detail and connection to the human soul ...