Big names (that's Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Glasvegas, the Noisettes) dominate this week's flavoursome broth of singles/tracks/stuff we found on the internet, but the real winners are smaller, more delicate affairs...
SINGLE OF THE WEEK!
Lissy Trullie 'Self-Taught Learner EP' (American Myth)
Gender's not a genre and all that, but Lissy Trullie might upset this perspective just ever so slightly, because what makes her so intriguing is that she's doing a lady take on NYC black leather jacket swagger rock. And it works. Maybe it's the cut-glass, simple production, or the flat, deadpan Adam Green-style drawl, or that the lyrics have a sharp ear for observation, or maybe it's all three. Either way, it takes a tired old template and gives it a thorough scrubbing down.
The Virgins 'Teen Lovers' (Atlantic)
The Virgins are responsible for surely the least Google-able track since Goatse released Screech From Saved By The Bell's Sex Tape (please note - this is a fictional band and single, admittedly a poor excuse for a joke and is certainly not worth trying to Google). Talking of tired old templates, as Vampire Weekend-lite scruffy rock with added 80s, it's pretty much made for Gossip Girl. Still, at two minutes long, they at least seem aware of their own deficiencies.
The Noisettes 'Don't Upset The Rhythm' (Vertigo)
Don't Upset The Rhythm is a plain stab at following the Ting Tings trajectory from indie mediocrity to bouncy pop stardom, only without the pesky name change in the middle. And though there's nothing wrong with getting your exposure from an advert on the telly, this is less single, more jingle - it sounds like it was written with nothing but adverts in mind. Don't be fooled by the jaunty chorus, for this is dead behind the eyes.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs 'Zero' (Interscope)
Since Show Your Bones, all Karen O and co have been doing is biding their time, luring young upstarts into the trap of making barely alright electro pop on GarageBand, and then BAM! coming back with a patient blueprint of how it's actually done. This is amazing. stream
It Hugs Back 'Now + Again' (4AD)
There's a surprising ferocity in those guitars, and they make this more than a simple relic of a time when being wet was a badge of honour, not an insult you lobbed at landfill indie.
Higamos Hogamos 'Major Blitzkrieg' (DC Recordings)
There's a reason for that title, alright - this is the noise of soldiers marching through your brain, driven along by an unnerving psychedelic guitar loop. It would make a good choice for an anti-drugs advert, were they to ditch the whole "talking dog" idea, what with it being the actual sound of impending doom.
Esser 'Work It Out' (Transgressive)
"Ma fuuut, stok in ma mouf..." pines chirpy young cockerney Esser in this tale of love lost and won and quite possibly lost again. But sticking his heartache to the oh-so-now sounds of a Commodore64 at the disco doesn't take 'Work It Out' far away enough from its real identity - it's an Oliver! number in hi-tops.
Glasvegas 'Flowers And Football Tops' (Columbia)
Though Glasvegas made themselves look a bit twatty by refusing to take off their Ray Bans for the best part of a year, 'Flowers And Football Tops' - all moody chords, cloudy sounds and bleak, sad lyrics - is here to remind you that there's substance behind the shades. YouTube
Thunderheist 'Sweet 16' (Mansion Remix) (Big Dada)
It doesn't matter which way you choose to take it - straight or remixed - the lyrics to Sweet 16 are pure filth. But while the original bounces along with gentle disco jollity, the Mansion mix takes it down an alleyway and gives it a ruddy good seeing to. Rhyming "barely legal" with "Evil Knievel" is genius, also. Free on RCRD LBL
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