Angry French women attack

The Plastiscines are furious. Why? Because they've come to England, the home of punk and rock and the Beatles and the Libertines and football hooligans, and everybody is just standing there staring at them, politely holding bottles of beer.

"This isn't a jazz club," scolds Marine, the band's toussled, tattooed guitarist. "Make some noise! Shake your fuckin' pussies!"

The Parisian pop-punk quartet continue to be quite cross for the rest of the show, cajoling the audience in between numbers for not providing sufficient applause. Then, abruptly, lead singer Katty Besnard decides she's had enough.

"Stop!" she screams, and her band-mates shudder to a halt. They watch, bemused and intrigued, as Besnard prowls over to the side of the stage, singles out two cowering punters and starts screaming in their faces for not joining in with the show. Strands of her I Dream Of Jeannie beehive work themselves loose as she turns on the rest of the audience. The gig will not continue, she pouts, until everyone is on their feet.

I've never seen the Plastiscines before, so I've no idea whether this sort of teenage tantrum is de rigeur - but, hell, it's exciting. And, to my great astonishment, it works. By the time drummer Anoushka Vandevyver (great name) counts the song back to life, the venue is, in the words of Destiny's Child, Jumpin' Jumpin'.



Leaving the show, I have no idea what the Plastiscines will sound like on record. Live, the best comparison I can make is Elastica covered by the Hives - an exploding supernova of white noise and bratty riffs. But if the evidence on their MySpace and Youtube pages is to be believed, this cacophony has been given a glossy coat of pop varnish in the studio, turning them into a sort of Brigitte Bardot Go-Gos (The Bardot-Gos?)

Here are their first two singles... What do you think?

Plastiscines - Barcelona

Plastiscines - Bitch


Earlier in the night, we were treated to a small dose of Daisy Dares You, who proved similarly spunky, albeit with a bit more British reserve (and a strange tendency to work creaky old Led Zeppelin riffs into her songs).

I'm a bit worried about her fan-base, though. Rather than a horde of screaming teenagers, Daisy's audience consisted mainly of sinister middle-aged men, several of whom looked like they should be on some sort of police register. Creepy.

Daisy Dares You - Number One Enemy

A man dressed as a parrot

Here's Jonsi, lead singer of Sigur Ros, with the video for his debut solo single, Go Do. Like the "teaser track" he put out two weeks ago, it gets good around the 2'00" mark. Expect twittering flutes, elegaic strings and a man with luxuriant plumage.

Jonsi - Go Do

Runcible Spoon

Sometimes, it is worth paying attention to ropey US teen dramas just for the soundtrack. The OC was a good example - interspersing its interminable "I have just smoked a cigarette and it has given me issues" plotlines with some truly tasty alt-rock.

Spoon, a Can-inspired quartet from Texas, were one of the bands to get their big break from the show's music supervisor, Alex Patsavas. The ragged piano groove of The Way We Get By soundtracked one of the big Seth / Summer moments, propelling the band's next album, Gimme Fiction, into the charts.

Since then, they've gone from strength to strength in the US, hitting the top 10 twice, most recently with their seventh studio album, Transference. It's a superb record, combining 70s MOR harmonies with shambolic, rickety grooves that constantly teeter on the brink of collapse. It's the sort of thing that comes in handy for awkward white men at indie discos, allowing them to give the appearance of dancing by simply flapping their elbows around like a penguin with an aneurisym.

First single off the record is called Written In Reverse. The video has been rendered in black and white, so that you know Spoon are a serious rock band. They are also playing live, so that you know they can "cut it". And the camera is frequently out of focus, so that you know they got their dad to film it when he got home from the pub quiz last Thursday.

Spoon - Written In Reverse

Laura Marling sex conundrum

Yesterday evening, I listened to Laura Marling's new single, Devil's Spoke. It is pretty much what you'd expect: Husky, folky, sensitive, haunting, beautiful. Great stuff, but unremarkable... Until the end, that is, when Laura gets a bit frisky and sings: "Eyes to eyes, nose to nose, ripping off each other's clothes in a most peculiar way".

Since then, I have been trying to imagine a couple might achieve the act of distinctive denuding. So far, my ideas include:

:: Lick each other's clothes until they dissolve.
:: Place partner in suit of armor, operate industrial-strength magnet.
:: Use vaccuum cleaner to suck off socks, etc.
:: Attach bungee cord to partner's trousers, push them off bridge.
:: Cover each other in moths, wait for larvae to eat off bra and pants.

None of these are entirely satifactory, and Ms Marling gives no further information about her undressing protocol within the song.

If you have any insight or, for that matter, practical experience of how to rip off clothes in a most peculiar way, please contact me at the usual address. No videos, though. That would be weird.

Laura Marling - Devil's Spoke

Terrible song, great rap

If you are a collossal hit-making R&B superstar like Mariah Carey, you will sometimes find yourself with a song that needs a bit in the middle. The problem is that middle bits are really hard to write. You have to introduce a new melody, deliver a cunning lyrical twist, or develop an existing musical motif in an unexpected way. And then you have to resolve that modulation by coming crashing back to the chorus for an epic finish.

Such a mammoth task can derail even an accomplished songwriter - the syncopated orchestral phrases that appear out of nowhere in The Beach Boys' God Only Knows are mystifyingly bad, for example.

So what are the Mariahs of this world do? In the "olden days" you could get away with a blistering axe solo, or a massive freak-out on the drums. Those things are considered passé now, so in their place we have the laziest idea of all time: the guest rap.

On occasion, this can be a great thing: Kanye blabbing on about Ribena and "Lan-dan blokes" like he's Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins is a fantastic addition to Estelle's American Boy. At other times, a rapper will fill up the required 16 bars with some old nonsense about his "massive gun" and excuse himself politely, with little or no impact (hello, Busta Rhymes).

But what happens if the rap turns out to be better than the song its part of?

This is, sadly, what has happened to Mariah on her latest single - Up Out Of My Face. It is a complete disaster until we hear from up-and-coming Motown signing Nicki Minaj (that's her above, telling you how many donuts she'd like you fetch from the shops).

She sounds deranged. She looks deranged. Her rhymes are deranged... and clever, and sharp, and funny. She totally upstages the megastar standing next to her.

Well done.

Up Out My Face

Up and away!

I'm a huge animation fan, so I was over the moon when Up got an Oscar nomination for best film on Tuesday. Even better, it's also in the running for best animated feature, so the talented geeks of Pixar are practically guaranteed a statuette (unless the dual nomination splits the vote...)

Anyway, this gives me a timely excuse to post some of the film's amazing production art, which was first showcased on animator Lou Romano's blog last year. The images illustrate just how much care and attention is paid to the tiniest of tiny details on Pixar's films. The animators test everything from the the shape of cloud formations, to the exact complexion of their protagonist. Here's a selection:









If you like these, there are tons more on this page, along with some stunning Youtube clips of the animation tests.

Best of all, the DVD is out in 10 days - and it's a steal at £9.99

*ALL ARTWORK PROPERTY of PIXAR/DISNEY*

New Passion Pit video: Sleepyhead

For reasons I don't quite comprehend, Passion Pit are not yet a massive pop sensation. Let's just run down the checklist to see if we've missed anything:



Nope, that all seems to be in order. Maybe they'll just have to be content with the status of underground pop heroes. Which is fine by me, as long as they keep making quirky, characterful videos like this.

Girls Aloud on American Idol

Whoever thought this would happen? A contestant auditions with Girls Aloud's Something Kinda Ooooh on American Idol. Simon Cowell's response is priceless.

Vicky - American Idol audition


I wonder if any British tabloids will claim this segment is part of Simon's grand plan to put Cheryl Cole on the US version of X Factor, despite the fact the average US citizen has never heard Something Kinda Ooooh before in their lives?

Lock up your daughters: It's the Jedward video

When Ice Ice Baby came out 20 years ago, thousands of irate Queen fans complained that Vanilla Ice had desecrated the memory of a classic.

Today, music fans across the country are bemoaning John and Edward's debut single, on the grounds that it has spoiled a seminal rap anthem.

And that, readers, is progress.

Jedward - Under Pressure (Ice Ice Baby)


What an insufferable pair of pointy-haired, uncoordinated, dipshit cunts.

Dwight and Germanotta

It might sound like a gardening company, but it's actually the combustive combination of Sir Elton and Lady G, performing together at the Grammys.

Advice: Skip Poker Face and the irritating ringmaster twerp and head straight for the good bit at 3'20".



Is it just me, or at 4'30" does GaGa look directly at Sir Elton and sing "Oh, Fred, you've left me speechless"?

Lazy Journalism vs New Young Pony Club

When you read interviews with pop stars, one of the most frequently asked questions is: "How would you describe the sound of your new record?"

Why? Because it means the journalist doesn't have to go to the effort of thinking up flowery adjectives and eovcative descriptions of their own. They can just say, "Tom from Kasabian describes his new album as 'very normal'" (note: this actually happened). That way, the musician sounds dense and ineloquent, not the writer. Clever, huh?

Anyway, to get to my point, I recently wrote on Twitter that New Young Pony Club's new material showed not one iota of musical progression from their debut album (not in a derogatory way, for I love their first album). The band's petulant reply is one of my favourite tweets of all time. Here it is in all its technicolour glory.



See if you agree by listening to their new single, Chaos.

New Young Pony Club - Chaos

Parp! Cheryl Cole has done a new video

Hooray! Cheryl Cole has finally gotten round to releasing the "good" song off her 3 Words album. The other ones are good, too, but this one is especially good. They should have a special word for that. Goodplus, or something.

The video takes its cue from the performance on Cheryl Cole's Night In last December, which itself took its cue from Strictly Come Dancing. In the clip, she is thrown around a dancefloor by a "hunk" and does a particularly impressive lay-out, where the "hunk" holds her by the neck (this is a technical term we learnt off Nigel Lythgoe on So You Think You Can Dance).

There is also a bit where she grabs her boobs.

Cheryl Cole - Parachute

An honest mistake

When I was a kid, I believed that Chevy Chase was Paul Simon for about five years, only realising my mistake when BBC One showed National Lampoon's Vacation one Friday night.

Paul Simon - You Can Call Me Al


I wonder how many of today's children will suffer a similar confusion after watching the new Mumford and Sons video?

Mumford & Sons - The Cave

A fine four-fendered hip-hop band

Chiddy Bang - great name, great band. They're so street, they eat pavements for breakfast. They're so hip-hop, they only have one leg. They're so rap, they deliver rhythmic rhyming couplets over a mid-tempo drum beat.

The four-piece hail from Philadelphia. This time last year, they were in their first year of college (that's US slang for "university") - and then the music industry came a-knocking.

It's not hard to see why. Their catchy, indie-sampling hip-hop is an invigorating breath of fresh air at a time when the genre seems to have stagnated so much that Mr Hudson seemed like an appropriate and innovative collaborator to every A-list rap star who released an album last year. That's Mr Hudson, a man with so little personality they didn't give him a forename.

For their next single, they've pinched MGMT's Kids. I don't mean they've sampled a bit of it. They have literally taken a huge great chunk of the song and surrounded it with their "flow". You could compare it to a sausage roll, but that would be weird.

It also contains the worst hip-hop brag of all time: "When I park cars, I don't pay for the meter". Hark at Al Capone, there, readers.

Chiddy Bang - Opposite Of Adults


PS: As you may have guessed, Chiddy Bang are named in tribute to children's film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang because one of the group wanted to be an inventor like Caractacus Potts when he was young.

Caractacus Potts would have been a better band name.

Marina Diamond and the fluttery eyelashes

Marina & The Diamonds' big make-or-break single Hollywood is finally out next week. It's a great big whirling dervish of a pop song, with - as a better writer than me points out - at least three sections that make your tummy go all funny. In short, it is brilliant.

To celebrate the upcoming release, Marina has made a remix video featuring oddball Canadian artist Gonzales (check out his utterly bonkers single "Take Me To Broadway" from 2001).

The flickery, black-and-white footage is, allegedly, recently discovered archive tape from an Estonian pop show. I'm not sure I believe that. But I do believe in Marina's awesomely crimped tresses.

Foxilicious.

Marina & The Diamonds - Hollywood (Gonzales mix)


As an aside, I asked Marina to name her three biggest influences last month. Her answer got cut from the reasulting BBC Sound of 2010 article, but I thought it was an interesting insight. So here it is:

Q: Who are your three musical heroes?
A: Brody Dalle from the Distillers – she’s very strong and has probably the best voice I’ve ever heard. Very, very rough and masculine.

Daniel Johnson, because he’s schizophrenic but he still manages to tour. He has very sweet, innocent, childlike songs.

And Madonna because she has achieved the pop dream, which is to create your own art, to be popular on a mass level, and to do something for feminism, even if it's not in a very obvious way.

Hollywood is out next week, and Marina's debut album, The Family Jewels follows on 22nd February.

Not new music: The Swell Season

I love it when, after listening to an album for several months, a previously unremarkable song suddenly catches your ear. I don't know what causes it - maybe the track was buried at the end of the record, maybe my ears needed time to adjust, or maybe I'm an idiot who wouldn't know a good song if it bit my ears off.

Whatever the reason, it has happened again. This time, it's a track from The Swell Season's second album, Strict Joy.

The Swell Season are Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. They won an Oscar in 2008 for the folksy soundtrack to small-budget indie romance Once - which they also starred in. You may remember that Irglova was bundled off-stage before she got to say thank you, but was asked back later to give a beautifully demure speech.

The song that has so belatedly caught my attention, I Have Loved You Wrong, is similarly humble. A delicate plea for forgiveness, its haunting piano refrain and simple, unadorned vocals are dangerous territory for those of you in the middle of a break-up.

I warn you now: If you're feeling a bit weepy this morning, the closing harmonies will literally tear you apart.

The Swell Season - I Have Loved You Wrong


The rest of the album is worth a listen, too. It's been out for ages, and you can buy it here. And if you've never seen Once - sort it out now!

Hope For Haiti: I watched it so you didn't have to

"Hold up, hold up, hold up," shouted Wyclef Jean five minutes before the end of the Hope For Haiti Now telethon on Friday night. "Enough of the moping, let's rebuild Haiti now!"

If only he'd thought about that message two hours earlier, we'd have been spared some of the music industry's most recognisable names putting on their "serious face" and singing their most po-faced, turgid songs at a funereal pace. If it wasn't Shakira murdering I'll Stand By You, it was Justin Timberlake playing a drowsy version Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah that lasted seven whole years.

Surely the point of these fund-raisers is that the juxtaposition between great, uplifting music and the horriffic human tragedy compels us to pick up the phone and do something. If the stars just sit there sobbing into their mineral water, then the viewers at home will just feel miserable and helpless. (I could be wrong about this, of course, because the televent has raised an encouragingly robust $57m so far).

The only person who seemed to have realised this was Madonna, who judged the mood perfectly with an acoustic choral version of Like A Prayer.

Madonna - Like A Prayer (Hope For Haiti Now)


If you have the stomach to endure the rest of the performances (U2 and Rihanna is particularly bad), there's a helpful Youtube playlist here.

And you should definitely donate to the relief effort if you can. The Disasters Emergency Committee page is a good place to start.

Sigur goes solo

The frontman of Icelandic quartet Sigur Ros is called Jónsi Birgisson. That's him warbling away in a completely made-up nonsense language on tracks like Starálfur and Hoppípolla. With his delicate, lispy falsetto, he sounds like a children's TV presenter during the rapture.

With Sigur Ros taking a break in 2010, Jónsi has recorded a solo album. To my ears, it sounds almost exactly the same as the material he records with his bandmates - orchestral, celestial, spiritual, elegiac, exhilirating, uplifting and warm. In essence: distinctly non-rubbish.

The main difference between Sigur and Jónsi is that he's supposed to be singing in English. In principle, this means that every so often you catch a snippet of a syllable that you think you might recognise. He might be saying something horribly racist, or claiming to have shagged your dad, or be advocating something really offensive - like imagining Mika naked, or imagining Mika clothed, or imagining two Mikas (*shudders involuntarily*). But we will never know.

No matter what he's saying, the music is wonderful and joyous. The first taster is a song called Boy Lilikoi, which saunters along prettily for three minutes before bursting into a great big sonic hug of strings and harmonies and rolling drums. You can listen to it below, but beware - it'll make you want to do back-flips around the living room.



Right-click here to download the track [link fixed 25.01.10]

Welcome back, Goldfrapp

Here is everything you need to know about the new Goldfrapp single, Rocket:



And here is a 30-second clip of the new Goldfrapp single, Rocket:



Things you will not experience via the medium of a 30-second preview clip:
1) Rocket sound effects
2) The opportunity to dance like a lunatic for 3'49"
3) More rocket sound effects
4) Alison doing a countdown - in the sense of a Space Shuttle Launch, not in the sense of Richard Whitely
5) Although that would be incredible, obviously

The full track was on Youtube earlier, but it has been removed by the record label. But, if you happen to live abroad, you can buy it right now (Australians click here and Germans click here).

New Gorillaz: Stylo

Rushed out onto Youtube after the promo CD was leaked on the Russian equivalent of Facebook, here's the first single from the new Gorillaz album (you have to watch it surrounded by adverts on Youtube, I'm afraid, because the record industry is ON IT'S KNEES).

Gorillaz - Stylo (album version)

As you can see, the song features vocals from Mos Def and the legendary Bobby "Across 110th Street" Womack.

If you can't be bothered to click on that YouTube link, but you're still interested to find out what Bobby Womack would sound like singing a track written by pasty white men posturing as hip-hop demigods, here is the masterful Get A Life, which he contributed to Rae & Christian's Sleepwalking album a decade ago.

Rae & Christian feat Bobby Womack - Get A Life


Both songs are, of course, amazing.