It’s been suggested that the single is a dying artform, and although I’m a firm believer in the format, there are some weeks where it is hard to argue its case. Disappointingly for me, embarking on my maiden run at our Singles of the Week column, this week is one of those weeks. Still, there are one or two diamonds buried in the rough, so onward we go...
This week sees releases from more of pop’s luminaries than usual. Firstly, Christina Aguilera is back, and it would appear she has decide to reprise her filth-pop heyday, when she used to go around calling herself X-Tina. Sadly for pop’s yummiest mummy though, ‘Not Myself Tonight’, is a forgettable slice of “If you don’t like it, fuck you” –themed bluster, which sounds a little hollow now that we have far more interesting pop stars like Lady Gaga. A slightly better attempt at urban pop comes from little Alexandra Burke, whose ‘All Night Long’ at least has a more memorable chorus which is likely to go down well with Radio 1 types. She’s definitely one of the more worthwhile of the X Factor ‘artists’, but that contest is a bit like trying to decide what the best type of skin disease is. Completing the trio of pop giants releasing records this week is the wonderfully batshit Shakira, who at least deserves our admiration for gaining such prominence by embracing her lunacy rather than allowing herself to be buffed into radio-friendly generica. Her song ‘Give it Up to Me’, however is no ‘She-Wolf’. It’s a bit too straight, doesn’t really play to her eccentric strengths, and ends up sounding kind of like something Timbaland would have chucked at Nelly Furtado a few years ago.
While we’re on the subject of female pop solo artists, this week also sees the release of Ellie Goulding’s latest effort ‘Guns and Horses’. The song is perfectly pleasant, inoffensive and quite catchy (though not quite ‘Starry-Eyed’ catchy), but it’s difficult to take her seriously. It just feels like she’s been vacuum-packed in the lab which produces BBC Sound of 20xx candidates, with this year’s vintage requiring liberal splashes of baggy checked shirts, leggings and kooky vocal tics. You’d like to think there’s some irony present when she sings “It’s time that we found out who we are”, but there probably isn’t.
A far more enjoyable effort comes from Swanton Bombs (apparently it’s something to do with wrestling). Their single ‘Wasteland’ is a beautifully shambolic chunk of messy guitar pop. It has that fantastic grubby sound of Let’s Wrestle and the energy of Dananananaykroyd, but amid the murkiness, a tune is buried, and a surprisingly catchy one at that. Competing with Swanton Bombs for this week’s best single are Wild Palms. ‘Deep Dive’ is comprised of equal parts ominous portents of doom and driving power-pop, and is an all the more interesting proposition for its identity crisis. The singer might want to tone down the affectations just a touch though.
Also out this week is Camera Obscura’s cover of Richard Hawley’s ‘The Nights Are Cold’, which I would have loved to have told you all about, but as there seems to be an implausibly wide online exclusion zone around it, I’m afraid that’s not possible. The original is a lovely example of gently bouncing acoustic songcraft, so I expect the cover is kind of like that, only a little bit twee-er. They’re a lovely bunch, so you might as well just buy it and let me know what it sounds like.
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