Gorillaz
Kids With Guns/El Mañana
Parlophone
Normally a double A-side single suggests one thing: neither tune is really capable of carrying a release on its own. But since when did Gorillaz (CDs) conform to what we’ve come to expect from the music industry? Both halves of this single are blessed with the sort of skewed pop genius that Gorillaz clearly have oozing out of their strange, pixelated little pores. Kids With Guns, as its title would suggest, is darker than Anne Rice nibbling on a 70% cocoa chocolate bar at a Transylvanian street cafe. Its bass line manages to be both thunderous and elastic – no mean feat – and it ends with an utterly jarring burst of white noise. Most impressively of all, it evens finds time for Neneh Cherry to purr a few lines from Salt N Pepa’s Push It in deliciously lascivious fashion. El Mañana is more wistful, but its stuttering beat, acoustic guitars and mournful strings still create an eerily claustrophobic listening experience. Pushing the boundaries of mainstream pop is one thing; but doing so whilst resurrecting eighties hip-hop icons who’ve been AWOL from Planet Pop since 1996 is really quite special.
More juddering pop music from Shayne Ward, Jamie Foxx, Lorraine, The Randoms, King Furnace, Hard-Fi and Studio B after the jump…
Shayne Ward
No Promises
Syco Music
It starts off quite encouragingly. The first few bars are minor key, and sound almost melancholy: is this really a single that’s being released on Simon Cowell’s record label? But then its early promise slowly unravels. The rhythm track is horribly dated, and hecklerspray start to wonder if we’re actually listening to a Blue B-side from 2002. And the chorus, when it finally comes, is about as inspiring as an evening spent discussing the minutiae of metaphysics with Rachel Stevens. By now things are so bad the ‘spray hardly even notice the horribly manipulative, sub-Westlife key change and the fact that the singer is rapidly becoming a charisma vacuum. Shayne Ward’s (CDs) first single was always going to be characterless and mediocre: it was, after all, contrived in full knowledge that anyone from a gay public schoolboy to a twenty-one stone Scotswoman might be required to sing it. But No Promises, the X Factor winner’s second single, could have been so much more than this predictable, utterly vapid wet fart of a tune.
Jamie Foxx featuring Ludacris
Unpredictable
RCA
Like Cher, Jamie Foxx (CDs) is an Oscar winning actor who seems intent on pursuing a parallel career in music. And with similar levels of success – his upcoming Unpredictable album’s already topped America’s Billboard 200 chart. Foxx proved his vocal abilities on Kanye West’s stunning Golddigger single, but is his new tune, Unpredictable, really deserving of its title? Well, if mid-tempo R&B jams with anorexic melodies, cameos from rent-a-rappers and excruciating lyrics – “Regular ain't in my vocabulary; when it comes to love makin’ neither is missionary” makes the ‘spray want to maim Foxx’s gold-plated britannium* statuette- capture the essence of the unexpected, it certainly is. At least Cher’s got her wigs to hold our attention when the single’s a stinker.
*a metal alloy, apparently.
Lorraine
I Feel It
Waterfall Records
Though touted as “The New Pet Shop Boys!!!”, Lorraine’s (CDs) debut single actually sounds like an elegant hybrid of A-Ha and New Order. hecklerspray were never very good at Maths at school – we were too busy trying to work out if Mrs Jeffreys did indeed have a third nipple – but we’d estimate that I Feel It is 25% cascading keyboards, 25% propulsive bass line and 50% all-consuming chorus. It’s more eighties than an evening spent in an Essex wine bar moaning about Maggie Thatcher with the cast of the A-Team, of course, but there’s a special place in the ‘spray’s heart for melancholy Scandinavian pop sung by men with cheekbones sharper than the first wasp sting of Summer. And, guess what, Lorraine are filling it.
The Randoms
Two Stripe Trainers/Taking Your Best Mate's Girl To The Pictures
Back in our day, things were different. All this was fields, for instance, and you could buy a house with a shiny new pound coin. And indie music was proper indie, not this weird "Ey oop" Arctic Monkeys guff. The Randoms (CDs) remember what we're talking about, because things haven't changed in the slightest for them. Their single Two Stripe Trainers would have easily fit on one of the Shine compilation albums, in between tunes by Cast and Ruth. And no amount of sly Xbox references can disguise that.
King Furnace
Crash!
Akuaba
King Furnace make pretty good noises, but we'd hate to put them in a box. Not a metaphorical genre box, an actual box. For one, they sound mighty pissed off about something in Crash! Possibly a crash. To further compound our 'putting King Furnace into a box' efforts, the band sounds as if they'd wriggle about a lot, and leap out of the box before we could seal the top up. Does this mean we like Crash! by King Furnace or not? It means we really like them, in a 'first onstage at Glastonbury' kinda way. But we really, genuinely, wouldn't ever like to ever try and literally put King Furnace in a box. Good drumming, though.
Hard-Fi
Better Do Better
Atlantic
Enough already! Better Do Better is the fifth – yes, fifth – single to be released from Hard-Fi’s (CDs) chart-topping, double platinum Stars Of CCTV album. How many bands from Staines can brag about success like that? But, here at hecklerspray, we reckon something personal is inspiring this chart-hogging frenzy. Richard Archer – the ‘Fi’s lead singer – clearly needs to get something off his chest, as Better Do Better is an exceptionally bitter, vitriolic single about a former girlfriend who wants him back. And we reckon the poor love’s not going to have much luck. “Girl you damaged me,” Archer reveals, “I don’t forgive so easily.” Think there’s still hope? Well, Archer’s got this lovely little lyric to ram his point home: “Your face wants me to be sick”. Charming. And then there’s the final nail in the coffin: Better Do Better’s ska-tinged, gathering storm verses lead into a truly explosive, rage-filled chorus. Honey, we’ll see you at speed dating at the Cock and Bull this Thursday.
Studio B
C’mon Get It On
Loaded
HOW TO MAKE A DUMB AS CHANTELLE HOUGHTON DANCE SMASH:INGREDIENTS:
1 70s rock guitar riff (well, it worked for the Bodyrockers, didn’t it?)
2 crowd-pleasing raps (more Kings Lynn than Brooklyn, preferably)
1 all-consuming chorus nicked from 90s house
A generous sprinkling of eighties-style keyboards for added retro appeal
1 'tongue-in-cheek' video in which nubile young ladies fondle their breasts
Cooks’s tip: if you follow the recipe closely, the tune is sure to devour the freeview music channels like prickly heat on a seven year old’s back and chart comfortably within the top 16.
[reviews by Nick Levine]