Lock up your daughters and 'start living', it's Singled Out!

A nice gentle start this week for those recovering from the excesses of the weekend. ‘Drink to Moving On’ is a strangely summery but slightly melancholy offering from Grand National. The third single from the great ‘Kicking the National Habit’, the vocals are so whispery and brittle that you suspect the duo are still recovering from a severe bout of laryngitis. This is far from a bad thing though as it adds to the poignancy and fragile vulnerability of the tune. The simple, buoyant guitar chords that floats above the tune is also very nice indeed. Highly recommended.

Keep your daughters locked up! On ‘One Glass of Water’, The Bees’s singer Paul Butler casually proclaims: "I would like to dance with your daughter, I would like it if I would let me take your girl to a party". From the deep south Americana waltz of the tune you get the feeling that it’s not a night at a discotheque they’ve got in mind – rather a star-spangled knees up at the local barn’s line dancing club. It's all a very jolly affair – imagine Giant Sand on Prozac and you’ll get the gist of the frivolity of this breezy tune.

Not a week goes by on Singled Out! with an obligatory outburst of angst. This week it comes from the much lauded The Open with a re-release of their debut single. ‘Never Enough’ starts off calm enough, but it’s not long until the guitars kick in and singer Steven Bayley gets all stirring and fiery. The single is definitely at its best on the quieter bits – Bayley sounds melodic and genuinely affecting. When the tempo picks up a bit, the band are just not as convincing. However, it’s a decent enough offering and is worth buying if you didn’t manage to get your hands on it the first time round.

Supposedly spurred on to write music by the gloom of their self-confessed "pretty shitty" home city of Swansea, ‘Wow Machine’ is the debut single from The Caves. It’s the sound of a band not so much influenced by their home city, but a group trying to rise above the despondency of it all. Whilst they are hardly cracking new musical boundaries, The Caves have clearly got an eye for a fairly decent tune. However, clocking in at just two minutes it seems a bit too short and fails to amount to much. Despite the very promising title, the b-side ‘Simon’s Robotic Hand’ is pretty naff.

A hybrid of electronica and plodding guitars, ‘Germany to Germany’ is a tedious refrain from NYC duo Ratatat. The derivative synths are boring, the guitars are bland, it goes nowhere, it’s devoid of character – put simply this is a pile of toss and is best avoided. It leaves you wondering what such a prestigious label like XL ever saw in them. To make matters worse, the flip side ‘Noose’ sounds like an annoying polyphonic ring tone. Best shunned!!

Revolving round a damn funky riff and dexterous bass line, ‘If You Want’ is the down right brilliant new single from Tom Vek. For a man just in his early twenties, Vek’s nonchalant snarl and petulant deliverance is both refreshing and haunting. He truly is beyond his years – if you’d never heard of him before you’d imagine a man in his mid-forties with a gruelling life behind him, swigging on a bottle of Jack Daniels. It’s a stirring call to the disaffected to embrace what days you have, with Vek potently decreeing “If you wanna die, you better start living”. Wise words, inspiring stuff, eulogise him now before everybody else does.

The production leaves a lot to be desired and the vocals are a bit shaky, but Liverpudlian three-piece Voo’s debut seven-inch ‘Tree Filled Roads’ is a pleasant affair that leaves a warm glow in your stomach. The guitars sound like Pavement, the vocals are reminiscent of Evan Dando and it captures the spirit of Husker Du - they clearly have a penchant for all things lo-fi and Americana, which is hardly a bad thing. Fortunately, they sound nothing like Liverpool’s biggest current exports The Coral and The Zutons. Once they’ve been properly tweaked and honed in the studio, Voo will be a very promising prospect indeed.  

There’s clearly nowhere to hide from Hiding Place. Within seconds of ‘Cruel Kindness’ you’re confronted by a wall of cathartic guitars and feedback. It truly is a brainless and brutal assault on the senses – if you love all things RAWK!, then this will definitely float your boat. However, after a while the onslaught to the lugholes is a bit too much and it becomes very repetitive. It seems that Hiding Place are very much rebels without a cause.