A God-awful Small Affair

I'll keep this brief because I'm just sulking over the absence of any Catch You or Get Over You pop majesty. This is the most tolerable bit of mediocrity one can expect from any popstar. I can't remember any of the songs but I think I recall them being 'quite nice'. Oh and don't think using Cyrillic fonts because your last album charted well in Russia has gone unnoticed, either, Sophie. Very canny. Rating: 5.5/10 Highlights: Young Blood; Birth of an Empire; Wrong Side of the Sun; Until the Stars Collide Avoid: The Deer and the Wolf; Interlude; 13 Little Dolls Artwork Watch: Is that a chalet? Up next: Bombay Bicycle Club

The last time I took a crack at reviewing someone whose debut LP was but the folky, quiet preamble to a stunning, electronica-infused sophomore it went and got my second ever 10/10 rating (and also contained a stand-out track called Glacier ), so it's looking at least a little tough for Mr. McMorrow to compare. His 2011 effort Early in the Morning was a real slow-burner with British fans, but he managed to make an impression on the singles chart with a charming cover of Steve Winwood's Higher Love (possibly because it was doing the rounds on The Voice at the time). Chunks of tracks have also been popping up on BBC trailers out of nowhere, so despite that #68 album chart slot he's not really been forgotten. Hopping up forty places three years later only proves that. It's an unnerving challenge though, going up against the likes of Passenger, Ed Sheeran, Bon Iver and James Arthur and all of those other chart-dominating gentlemen. What, exactly, raises him above th...

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...

So another Christmas has just passed and with it another Rebecca Ferguson album cycle; but does her sophomore effort offer any more than Heaven did when it comes to sustaining us for the rest of the year? Well, no, but it comes a lot closer. There's always going to be a cosy element about Ferguson that prevents her from setting charts alight during the summer months, and that's fine: her voice is so distinctive that trying to grab a spring dance hit or an autumn hip hop feature would be bizarre. The problem is that last year's (and the year before that's) charts were dominated by someone with a very similar-sounding album to this. The Sand é . For now, Ferguson doesn't have the ubiquity to turn her into the UK's most defiant television-guest-with-shit-hair, so she wins that battle by default, but it's a risk to play it safe today and there were fears she'd blur into the background after this. What Ferguson has in her favour though is that voice,...

Where does one start with introducing this one? 2013's standout pop event was the sudden release of Beyonce's fifth studio album, hands down. Not that there was much competition: Lady GaGa was at a creative nadir, Katy Perry was borrowing Sara Bareilles songs and Britney might as well have thrown herself in a blender, it would've made a better noise (and impression on the charts) than Britney Jean. Aggravating three very strong online fan communities out of the way, and over a month after the release, it's probably time to tackle this review. Production-wise, there's a stellar lineup as usual. Pharrell, Ryan Tedder, The-Dream and Timbaland all make reappearances, whilst new talents to Beyoncé's roster include Sia, Boots, Justin Timberlake and Miguel. Her music has always come under scrutiny for having so many helping hands but with such a talented collection it's hard not to get excited; but at this stage in her career it's actually what's so u...

Whether or not this actually is their third studio album, it feels weird that an act as new and fresh as Death Grips are already at that third stage. Following their progress since The Money Store (and I'm sure that's far too late on for me to have an opinion, for some people) has been entertaining to say the least: whether acting like dicks or photographing them, the band are probably the most talked-about right now. They've always had the material to back it up, though: The Money Store is by far their strongest album, and NO LOVE DEEP WEB had plenty of stand-out moments that make it more fun to listen to than the debut. A year on from that, though, and the usual downward spiral of backlash, trend-followers finding other new flavours, and label complaints has left their second surprise release greeted a little lukewarmly. In a 2013 Autumn that was all about sudden releases (behave) - a month exactly before the Beyoncé spectacle - perhaps the biggest talking point ...