A God-awful Small Affair

I'm sure that, had I started this whole album-reviewing malarkey in 2010 instead of 2011, I'd have gotten around to listening to Warpaint's The Fool because there seemed to be quite a bit of fuss built up about them over here in the UK (oddly, a bigger fuss than that they generated in their home country). Of course, post-HAIM, the idea of an all-female L.A. rock band might carry more weight but these four are distinctly less poppy than the Haim sisters. It may have subconsciously helped though: this self-titled sophomore slotted rather sweetly into the top ten right here. It may have only been four years but the formative years of Warpaint led towards a very different debut than this; latecomer and drummer Stella Mozgawa had the task of picking up already-written songs for The Fool , but here she's cowriter. It shows.   Intros that segue seamlessly into track two may well be one of my secret passions but the one with which Warpaint kicks off is so restraine...

For a few brief moments in 2012 the whole idea of an Azealia Banks/Angel Haze feud seemed exciting and worth watching. Then came the diss tracks, which seemed to just focus on each other's hairlines and who came first. Basically, it's been a long time since either of them put out an EP, mixtape or single that was remotely interesting, let alone good, and I'm now in the position where anything released by either of them is about as exciting as the prospect of an Ashanti album. Her stubbornness and steely grit has definitely made her an exciting prospect though, and while half of that attention will filter into the whole "leaking her own album" aura of petulance about her, some of it trickled into her music and the devastatingly personal cover of Cleaning Out My Closet - in which she details her sexual abuse at the age of seven - made listening to her an uncomfortable mixture of awe and awful. On Dirty Gold , unfortunately, the latter rings truer. The pr...