Separating the sweet, juicy flesh from the stone and skin of this week?s major label releases.
Planes are falling from the skies, the government is shrivelling up like a salted slug, and Brangelina are rumoured to be living separately. All unmistakable signs of an impending Apocalypse. But fear not: hecklerspray presents the music which this week will be arriving to make your lives wonderful. Better. Marginally more bearable. Slightly less of an endless dreary drag towards the inevitable end, and eternity spent in a pauper’s grave.
It’s the Monday Music Mango! Whoot!
As usual, each of the musics will be represented by a thought.
Firstly, The Eternal, Sonic Youth, Album. Nearly 30 years after their birth, the legendary “noiseniks” (TM) are about to release their 16th studio album. We’d like to believe that Placebo, who also release a new album this week, will have been sent a copy with the words “Real Music” scrawled across the cover.
Because, you know, Sonic Youth are ace and Placebo are a bit shit.
Featuring the beautifully emotion-filled vocals of Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon, the rumbling tumbling drums of Steve Shelley and more weirdly-tuned guitars than you can shake a plectrum at, courtesy of Lee Ranaldo, it’s a return to their peak. Kudos to the the Youth, by the way, for being incredibly zeigeisty and including what must have been a very hastily written song about Susan Boyle (Anti-Orgasm). You’ll like this album.
Trust us, we’re hecklerspray.
This album is represented by the thought:
“Okay, got the new Sonic Youth album, the Converse sneakers and an awesome pair of secondhand courduroy trousers. Time to head head home and write some material for tonight’s poetry jam.’
Secondly, The E.N.D., Black Eyed Peas, Album. Starring pants-wetting, formerly-ladylumps-loving singer Fergie, bandwagon-chasing-then-catching-then-singing-about shouter Will.I.Am., and two other blokes with even more ridiculously self-absorbed pseudonyms, the BEPs have been producing their catchy pop-hop since 2003. And more power to them, for what the world absolutely needs right now is more songs about boobs. Despite the video for I Gotta Feeling, which seems to have been directed by Abercrombie & Fitch‘s advertising agency, we have a soft spot for this sugary little album.
Standout track is Party All The Time, which we’d like to see subtitled as “When Kylie Met KISS“. This album is represented by the thought:
“Ladylumps! She means her tits!! LOLZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Thirdly, 20, Orbital, Album. 20th anniversary retrospective roundup by the overlords of intelligent electronica. Orbital make us want to cut our ears off and replace them with iPods playing Chime on an endless, uplifting loop. They make us want to tattoo the words “Orbital Exist As Gods Upon Earth” on the insides of our eyelids. They…we love Orbital, okay?
Go and buy this, listen to it in its fancy, dancey, feelgoody glory, then come back here and try to claim you haven’t just had your mind opened, probed with a lightsabre and stitched back together. Because you have. Just not literally.
This album is represented by the thought:
“Are We Here? asked the song. Who are ‘we’? And where is ‘here‘? Oh bollocks, here is the Ozric Tentacles tent, and our acid-soaked selves are missing Orbital at this festval which we are currently at. Shitwanks.
Farewell, good folk, until next week’s Mango.
gilbert wham says
Personally, I find the B.E.P. trigger an oft-used phrase of mine; “Why aren’t these people already on fire?”.