Category Archives: Music

Mostly Pop – May 2011

Mostly Pop, Music

by Mr Moth

"Hey, good looking"
"Chris Brown warms up for a date"

Charlie Simpson – Down Down Down


Oh, Charlie Simpson off of Busted. You broke my heart when you left Matt and James, you really did. Why did you split up the band, just when you were reaching your peak with “Thunderbirds Are Go!”, from Thunderbirds Official Soundtrack? To form Fightstar? Really? No, really?

Anyway, now you’ve put Fightstar on hiatus – literally tens of fanboys will no doubt be rending their clothes as we speak – to, in that dread phrase, “pursue solo projects”. And this is yours. Well done, you. You sure showed us you’re a true renaissance man. Why, this sounds like.. god, Charlie, it sounds like soulful Busted. You can’t help it. Bit of acoustic strumming. KNOT THOSE BROWS. OK, Busted after having listened to a bit of Noah and the Whale or whatever, but still. There’s something inherently naff about all the ex-Busted members – something which Matt Willis has worked to his advantage, but which works against Charlie every time he tries to be A Serious Artist.

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Odd Future

Music

by Alex Hartland

Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All (more often known as Odd Future) are a group of ten or so foul-mouthed young rappers and musicians based in Los Angeles but incorporating members from New Orleans, Florida and Canada. Judging by their prodigious recorded output of 12 albums in 14 months, they spend most of their time making music but there are also videos of them skateboarding and goofing around on YouTube.

In February Hodgy Beats and group leader Tyler, the Creator made their TV debut on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. For the previous 12 months they had been steadily building an underground following through free albums and mixtapes of innovative, profane and often profoundly unpleasant hip hop via their tumblr site. But after the wild performance of these two then-19 year olds, backed by the Roots and, apparently, Sadako from Ringu, the profile of the group was raised beyond all measure. Following sold out shows at South By South West and much media hype, Tyler will tomorrow release “Goblin”, his second solo album and the group’s 13th in total. But how did these apparently repulsive records made by a bunch of upstarts build such a following in so short a time?

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Mostly Pop – April 2011

Mostly Pop, Music

by Mr Moth

Britney Spears – Till the World Ends

Britney! Yeah, Britney’s back again. Hurrah! There’s something fascinating about Britney Spears; the self-destructive bête noire of the glossies never seems to connect to the airbrushed dolly of the videos. She’s fat! She’s a terrible mother! She’s bald! She has terrible skin! She’s losing it! Yet put her on a set and she’s the most professional, presentable pop star on the planet. This disconnect keeps people coming back to her, whether she turns out something perfunctory (Circus) or revelatory (Blackout). How long this can last is uncertain, but here we are in 2011 still excited for her return so she’s doing something right.

Comeback single Hold It Against Me, sadly, fell into the perfunctory category for me, being immediately forgettable and weak in the chorus. Even the video, directed by Telephone and Smack My Bitch Up auteur Jonas Åkerlund, had little to say for it beyond high production values (woah, really?) and, again, the appearance of Robo-Britney where you might expect a broken husk. Second single Till The World Ends is slightly more interesting but, you know, only just. With a video which on first glance appears to be a low-rent Black Eyed Peas clip (I mean that to sting), but on repeated viewings shows itself to be even less than that, the song chugs along without ever becoming something more than album filler. A wordless chant of a chorus lifts it slightly out of the mire; it’s not enough. Britney needs to get way crazier to come back with something this ordinary.

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Mostly Records – April 2011

Music

by Jim Eaton-Terry

Elbow – Build a Rocket Boys


Perhaps the most perfect example of an adult rock album I’ve heard since Pulp’s We Love Life, Build a Rocket Boys transcends being a comfortable prog-inflected set of elegantly nostalgic songs about aging, family and regret.

Lippy Kids is the centre of the album and the video above shows everything there is to know about the record; elbow look and feel like a group treading water, but inject every song with enough passion and craft to lift it.

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