Single of the Week!

Everything Everything - ‘Cough Cough’ (Columbia)

Forced to choose a concept whose importance supercedes all others when it comes to the creation of pop music, I would definitely settle upon 'effort'. I mean, I could care less for 'meaning' or 'cleverness'; could honestly take or leave 'being really good at instruments'; and think 'earnestness' can take a long walk off a short thing. And so, when you come across a band like Everything Everything (regardless of whether you like their sound) - you have to admit, they have been vigorous, they do not believe in half measures. Gratifyingly on 'Cough Cough', too, there is a singular vision, and it is crisp and unpixellated at the edges, an idea in high resolution - with care, precision and time, spent on all it's many darned and dashed parts. So that's why they're brilliant. Also: I don't think you could name another band this joyful, who you could confidently claim would whip you at Scrabble. Fabulously determined, they are.

Jessie Ware - ‘Night Light (Wild Beasts Remix)’ (Universal / Island)

Sometimes juxtaposition is just the very thing, which is why it is nice to see the towering glamour of Ms. Ware pared with the louche, dark-borne terrors of Wild Beasts. It's not one of those remixes that sounds like it was tossed off five minutes in Reason, it's a PROPER REMIX with ACTUAL WILD BEASTS VOCALS. And it's perfect, and perfectly strange, and insanely smooth.

Villagers - ‘The Waves’ (Domino)

If there was a competition to find the most pained white man in all of indie, Conor O'Brien would prolly take the cake; you won't find anyone else who means it (man) this much, or this hard. That's certainly true of the first verse of 'The Waves' - which starts out all Kieran Hebden Pretty Wibbles, with Conor actually and in all seriousness singing about 'the fear, and the guilt, and the pain, and the trace of the honeybee jealousy, of well insulated bigotry' [eh?]. Then, at about the four minute mark, it all kicks off and he has a proper skinny boy-strop, and it sounds ruddy immense. In the nicest possible way, it makes me want to poke this man with a stick, to make him get all eggy more often.

Mosca feat. Katy B - ‘What You Came For’ (Rinse)

What I like about Katy B's career to date is that it has been built around a reasonable dancefloor manifesto. Disco truisms, about how a) you must carry on dancing after the sticklers have turned the lights on; b) when you are 'in the club' you should not ever never be found by the bar; c) any young person who does not spend all their money at the weekend (thereby rendering themselves skint for the rest of the week) has no business being young; and of course d), that all the best people do not go to clubs to shark, but to dance. I also like how, even if the lyrics are simple to the point of being rubbish, each track sounds like a prayer, except that instead of God, they are said to the cove in the booth. "If you ain't moving, tell me what you came for," sings Katy. Which, when you come to think about it, is actually quite bossy.

Fossil Collective - 'On and On' (Dirty Hit)

Becuase I would take a cosy, hot-soup of a band over some weak-squash shoegazers any day of the week, I am inclined toward 'On & On'. I mean, it's mum-friendly as a tiny supermarket bottle of beer, yes. And it's autumnal rock in the manner of Fleet Foxes, so inevitably the comments section is made of arse, with people saying all manner of insufferable things like "autotune and party house tunes must die" (oh, do fuck off, joy-allergics). Even so and even then, I rather like it.

Fun Adults - ‘Sap Solid’ (Tough Love)

Though I'm not desperately keen on the drift of vocals on 'Sap Solid', it does have production as intricate as filigreed tissue paper. And sometimes, just occasionally, that's enough to swing it.

Also out this Week!

LULS - ‘Swing Low’ (Paradyse)
Marc Carroll - ‘(It Was) Lust Not Love’ (One Little Indian)
Creatures Of Love - ‘Boy Crimes’ EP
Cody Chesnutt - ‘Don't Wanna Go The Other Way’ (One Little Indian)
Shinies - ‘Ennui’ (Dirty Bingo)
The Invisible - ‘Generational’ (Ninja Tune)
Bleech - ‘Break My Nose’ ()
Thomas Azier - ‘Hylas 002’ EP (Hylas)
Wave Machines - ‘Ill Fit’ (NEAPOLITAN / PIAS)
Between You & Me - ‘Crystal Aquarium’ EP
Dizraeli & The Small Gods - ‘Never Mind’ (ECC Records)
PVT - ‘Nightfall’ (Felte)
The Swellers - ‘Running Out Of Places To Go’ (Xtra Mile)
Louis Barabbas & The Bedlam Six - ‘Three Down, Four To Go’ (Debt Records)
Stumbleine feat CoMa - 'The Beat My Heart Skips' (Monotreme)
Towns - ‘Sleepwalking’ (Cartoon / Howling Owl)
Woman's Hour - ‘Our Love Has No Rhythm’
Last Harbour - ‘Replacements’ (Little Red Rabbit Records)
Frost - ‘Something New’ (FrostWorld Recordings)
I Am In Love - ‘Palms’
Still Corners - ‘Fireflies’ (Still Corners)
Ned Collette & Joe Talia - ‘Long You Lie’ (Fire Records)
Blacks& - ‘The Race Is On’ (Hey Moon)







Wendy is on the internet, here.