Arcade Fire Save The World - It's Singled Out!

Arcade Fire are a scary band. Their videos are eerily scary; there a bit scary to look at and their songs are scarily good. What other band can make a song about the cynicism, manipulation and the end of the world sound so mind bogglingly joyous and superbly good. In the course of one song, their latest single ‘Rebellion (Lies)’, that’s full of the usual off kilter screeching violins, tumbling glockenspiel notes and the crazy bloke wailing away up front they once again prove that they’re the stand out band of 2005.

The current king of acid folk Devendra Banhart returns with ‘I Feel Just Like A Child’ that starts off at a whisper with a country drenched piano solo then breaks out into a mixture of hip-shaking folk and funky blues that shimmies its way along for nigh on five minutes. Banhart croakedly wails on about being treated like an infant rather than the man he is, with a little help from his friends. You can just imagine this being recorded on a moonlit night around a camp fire rather than the confines on the studio.

Ah, the exuberance of youth, everything so simple and straight forward; especially being in love. The Subways’ Billy Lunn is young enough not to have been corrupted by the darker sides of life and doesn’t he show it as he sings ‘Cos when I’m with you/It seems so easy’ standing alongside his blushing bride to be Charlotte Cooper. ‘With You’ has the lyrical complexity of a toddlers first poem plus the riff from Muses ‘Plug In Baby’, so not a great combination. Someday they’ll grow up and wonder what they ever thought they were doing.

Maybe Coldplay should release a cover version of ‘Nobody Does It Better’; it could become their signature tune because quite frankly ‘Fix You’ proves that when it comes to touchingly simple but beautifully melodic anthems nobody does. The usual two tiered guitars are stripped away to leave Chris Martin, his piercing choir boy voice and skin tingling hymnal pianos on a song that’s already destined to become a leviathan of a torch bearing set closer. Baby you’re the best!

Who’d have thought that one day Foo Fighters would die on their arses?! Well that’s what they’ve done on ‘DOA’ which is about as lifeless as the title suggests and takes us into a new era of Foo-lite releases. Blander than bland, sell it to the masses rock with the kick of a crippled nun. Talk about scraping the barrel, it looks as if Dave Grohl has been raiding the last ‘Worst Stadium Rock Anthems Ever!’ compilation for musical inspiration lately.

The Scandinavian indie pop embassy has once again decamped to our shores and this time they bring us even more beautifully crafted melodies in the form of Shout Out Louds. ‘The Comeback’ is part Cure style tortured melancholy brilliance, part optimistic rock opus and a slice of shimmering Swedish musical bliss. The fact that front man Adam so desperately wants to be Robert Smith still doesn’t take away from the fact that this is achingly good.

Being a comedy act with only one joke severely restricts your career, just ask Peter Kay. Not that Newport rap collective Goldie Lookin’ Chain give a shit, they’re gonna ride the bastard till its dead. ‘Your Missus Is A Nutter’ is ‘Your Mother’s Got A Penis’ with added cheesy rock riff and a tale of binge drinking gone wrong. Not quite up there with trackie clad MCs best moments but you can’t really find fault with a song that contains the lines ‘Last week she ended up on the binge/She got off her tits and showed the bouncers her minge’. Safe as ****!

The pied piper of Madchester gets all serious on our asses as Ian Brown hits back at organised religion on new single ‘All Ablaze’. He’s obviously got serious beef with the church as he gives them a good tongue lashing with the lines ‘Masqueraders painting pictures flip the scriptures/ Don’t even know his name’.  Mixing pulsating electro beats, an incessant baseline and drifting eastern sounds plus Brown’s classic laid back delivery, the delicate feel masks the true undercurrent of the thought provoking lyrics. The monkey man is on the attack!

The Upper Room are the newest kids on the block when it comes to middle of the road anthemic indie rock. If your gag reflex is currently straining at the leash due to the last sentence then 'All Over This Town' ain’t for you, but for the hordes who help sell out Coldplay, Keane and Athlete gigs in seconds will love it! First up there’s the uplifting, driving guitars, then there’s the lighter moment sing-a-long chorus and finally the Martin/Chaplin-esque vocals just for good measure. Pass the sick bucket I can’t hold out any longer.

The Black Velvets continue to fight against the tide that is constantly rising against them, new single ‘Once In A While’ is a vast improvement on their unreleased last effort ‘Glamstar’ but that’s not saying much. Once again they break out the supercharged, over the top stadium rock riffs and anthemic chorus like the bastard child of Bon Jovi and a zimmer frame carrying Who. It’d all probably go down a treat if it was released sometime in ‘87 but we’d still all want to forget about it eighteen years down the line.

In years to come when music historians wish to prove that Emo was quite possibly the worst musical genre of all time they will hold up Fall Out Boy’s ‘Sugar, We’re Goin Down’ as their prime piece of evidence. It sounds as if it was written by a bunch of fourteen year olds in the Mid-West who’d just bought a rock by numbers book with added teach yourself guitar free CD from Wal-mart .
1. Loud pop-punk guitars
2. Quiet bits
3. Heartfelt melodies and lyrics
Add it all together and you get pile of formulaic, clichéd shit!

Turkey of the week: Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse The Rasmus rear their immensely ugly faces yet again! ‘No Fear’ is more insipid power rock from the Finnish band who listening to is something akin to having root canal treatment. To be quite honest Turkey is too tame a description of it, in fact using most of the expletives in English language in one sentence wouldn’t describe how bad it is. Be warned, don’t waste four minutes of your life listening to it, you’ll be desperate to get them back at the end.

Best Of The Rest

Reuben - Keep It To Yourself
A prime slice of ballsy, thunderously loud riffage that bludgeons the brain for two and half minutes with its ceaseless pounding beats.

The Priscillas - All My Friends Are Zombies
Driving, hundred mile an hour bubble gum punk psychobilly with cartoon ghost effects and shouty ear piercing vocals. These girls are not for messing with.

Dolium - She’s The Pill That Makes Me Want To Stay
Restrained, filtered vocals drone and mesmerise  on a bed of energetic kicking beats and ferocious razor edged guitars on the single with the best title of the week.

Ciccone - My Summer Never Comes
Typically whimsical and down to earth English lyricisms with a punk edge. A Parisian melody intertwines itself with urgent drums and non-stop baseline.