Indie Pop Destroys Stadium Rock - It's Singled Out!

Without prior warning Every Move A Picture’s debut Double A-side single ‘Chemical Burns/Signs Of Life’ blew away the Gigwise office several weeks ago and has been on high rotation ever since. This San Francisco band have produced two of the sexiest indie pop tunes of 2005 that should see them filling dance floors everywhere. Taking their lead from the current vogue of 80s leanings both songs are a mixture of infectious guitar driven rock, synthesized electro beats and front man Brent Messenger’s cool-ass delivery. A cut above the rest and not an ‘Oooooo’ or ‘Na Na Na’ in sight.

Beaten into a very close second place, and only because if you’ve got the album you’ll have been dancing round your bedrooms to it for months, is LCD Soundsystem's ‘Disco Infiltrator’. James Murphy, the proverbial Midas of the music world, releases yet another nugget off his eponymous debut album. Stripped down to a funky beat and the occasional cut and paste electro interlude, then intertwined with Murphy’s high pitched yelps and closing monotone repetitions this is a laid back, hypnotic and cool as **** slice of DIY indie-dance. If Murphy keeps churning out the goods as good as this everyone else may as well give up.

Every summer you get the customary Ska/Reggae single that storms the charts for a couple of weeks after the music buying public get carried away during the one sunny day of the year, but who’d have thought that this year it would be The Ordinary Boys. It seems the Surrey wide boys have a penchant for early 80s acts such as The Specials and Madness and want us all to know because new single ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ is a mashed-up direct descendent of them. Full of Up-beat and pop driven baselines tinged with a mixture of ska and punk beats like a two-tone revival, helped along by the ragamuffin rap of Rankin Junior. The soundtrack to the summer? For one day in August maybe.

Like a precious gem in a sea of dull, disingenuous rocks The Departure’s ‘All Mapped Out’ entered the Top 30 last August – now with the band about to release their debut album its time for the customary re-release. As angular as their hair cuts and skinny trousers, as cool as every indie kid dreamed they could ever be and full of more pomp and posturing than a catwalk show another journey into the charts is a certainty. Listeners be warned – razor sharp guitar riffs are likely to leave deep cuts.

St Etienne, they of amiable 90s indie pop tunes, return with new single ‘Side Streets’. Light as feather easy listening with soft focus vocals and beatnik bongos, it’s like the soundtrack to an Ikea advert, and about as interesting as soft furnishings too. Like your dad trying to put up one of those flat pack wardrobes, maybe they should just admit defeat and give up. Destined for one of those free easy listening albums you get with the Sunday morning papers.

Sidelined briefly by an appearance on a BBC2 drama Neils Children follow up last years ‘Change/Return/ Success’ mini album with new single ‘Always The Same’. While hardly breaking the mould of their previous releases this is a yet another indication that the Children are heading in the right direction to a cracking debut long play release. Demonic baselines, thrashing machine gun guitars and pounding drum beats once again appear aplenty. For something a bit different check out the acoustic and madly psychedelic b-side ‘Run Before We Can Walk’.

Gratitude have a lot to thank Jimmy Eat World for, without them they wouldn’t exist. Their debut single ‘Drive Away’ is like a covers band playing the emo kings album ‘Bleed America’ but changing the words along the way. Heartfelt emotional hardcore with driving guitars and an uplifting anthemic chorus. the only problem being that there are a million bands across America producing identikit music like this. The whole thing just makes you wish Rival Schools would get their arses into gear and produce some new material.

Lou Barlow is in a reflective mood, still lo-fi but now a bit more country. It’s hard to keep up with him these days, what with solo records, Sebadoh tours and Dinosaur Jr reunions but he’s somehow found time to produce this short and stunning release ‘Holding Back The Year’. Four songs full of dark tales from the deep recesses of Barlow’s mind backed by simple but beguiling acoustic guitars - heart warming, original, addictive. Barlow’s typically honeyed vocals melt your heart over and over again. Acoustic indie-pop simply doesn't get better than this.

Benjamin Diamond was the force behind Stardust’s ‘Music Sounds Better With You’ but he no longer likes to twiddle his knobs and drop commercial house beats, now he’s a full time indie-pop lover. New single ‘There Is A Girl’ is a dreamy, laid back tale set against a rather twee but pleasing melody which seems to have been filtered through liquid sunshine. Similar in many ways to fellow Frenchmen Air but not quite hitting their heights, still the perfect song to lay back in the grass and dream away a summer day to.

Is it blasphemy to say all U2 songs are starting to sound the same? Don’t all their releases just seem to blend into one big stadium rock anthem these days? New single ‘City Of Blinding Lights’ is a case in point, it’s not a bad song, it just follows the same formula they’ve been pedalling for the last few years. Maybe all the many meetings with the Pope, George Bush and Tony Blair have stunted the creative process and while the band is away talking world poverty they have a super computer at home churning out the next batch of monster hits. Maybe in a few years it’ll have enough brain power to create a new ‘Achtung Baby!’

It appears that while U2 were away Audioslave broke into their house and used the bands super computer for the creation of new single ‘Be Yourself’. For a band that consists of 75% of Rage Against The Machine and the front man of Soundgarden this is pretty inane stuff, a downright average attempt at stadium rock that in a past life they would all have been throwing up at the thought of. A lazy, turgid excuse of a song which will leave most fans who have worshipped these guys for the past decade thinking why they wasted their money.

Turkey Of The Week: Oh we pity the The Black Velvets, they really want us to like them. But how can we when they produce stuff like latest single ‘Glamstar’. We know there’s an 80s revival going on at the moment but do we really want to hear rehashes of bad hair metal songs? Pedestrian and plodding guitars, even more pedestrian drumming and lyrics from the ‘My first glam rock poetry book’ even make Audioslave sound exciting. They’re supporting Motley Crue soon, hopefully Tommy Lee will scare them with his humongous schlong and they’ll run away never to be heard from again.