Nerina Pallot
Everybody’s Gone To War
14th Floor
Nerina Pallot is a woman with balls. Her debut album never got released, but she knuckled down and went on tour with Bryan Adams anyway. She ran out of budget recording her second album, so she re-mortgaged her house to pay for some more studio time. Respect. And now she’s finally getting her just desserts: new single Everybody’s Gone To War is all over radio like Johnson’s Holiday Skin on an Essex wannabe’s décolletage. And rightly so, because it’s how Sheryl Crow would sound if she had a bit of grit – rather than Mac mascara – in her eye: equal parts spiky rhythm guitar, soaring chorus and a slightly lumpen lyric about the futility of warfare. How can she fail? Everybody loves a survivor. Especially one with an extensive TV advertising campaign behind her.
Here come another barrage of singles reviews from Matt Willis, Ordinary Boys and Lady Sovereign, Primal Scream, Sandi Thom and The Feeling, all after the jump…
Matt Willis
Up All Night
Mercury
Who is Matt Willis? Well, he used to be in Busted. No, he’s not the one with the cheekbones. Or the one who looks like a monkey. He’s the one who spent a bit of time in the Priory. Yeah, that’s right, the one who’s got a slightly shiny face. Up All Night, his debut solo single, is supercharged bubblegum rock with more energy than a tabloid columnist launching into a Heather Mills McCartney character assassination. Songs that end with guitar solos are rarely this infectious, and former boybanders rarely show this much charisma. Hurrah! It’s the pop equivalent of adding a few shots of neat vodka to your Smirnoff Ice.
Ordinary Boys and Lady Sovereign
Nine2Five
B-Unique
Take one Celebrity Big Brother survivor and OK! magazine staple. If he’s in a band, that’s a bonus. Add one “voice of the street” who’s better at racking up column inches in Islington’s favourite broadsheets than actually selling records. Don’t bother writing a new song; just get the band to give their usual sub-Madness treatment to a six-month old 'hit' from the girl who released a single about hoodies. Can life get any worse? Course it can, because the song’s all about how tough it is being a popstar, about the endless tedium of “staring out the window on the road” and the eternal hardship of filming “videos and TV shows.” Boo-hoo! Doubtless some will think a collaboration between a Grime MC from a London council estate and a Ska revival band is symbolic of the genre-busting, vibrant nature of modern British pop music; we just find it hopelessly contrived. Why can’t we have Geri Halliwell puncturing a pair of giant thighs to symbolise the 'Rebirth of Ginger Spice' anymore?
Primal Scream
Country Girl
Columbia
Big, dumb, summery rock: this is Primal Scream’s most accessible single of the Big Brother era. Country Girl is unashamedly seventies, from its bluesy riff to Bobby Gillespie’s drawled, Southern fried vocal to the mandolin solo that suggests someone’s been listening to a lot of early Rod Stewart recently. So what if your dad loves it too? “It’s just like the Stones, son” is probably what he says every time he hears it on Virgin FM. Just pop on Brown Sugar straight afterwards and call it an early Fathers’ Day present.
Sandi Thom
I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker (With Flowers In My Hair)
RCA
Now, colour us pedantic, but did punk rockers ever wear flowers in their hair? Wasn’t that the hippies? In our experience, punk ‘rockers’ tended to wear nose rings and bin bags and say things like “Vivienne Westwood should be Prime Minister. She should be Queen!” Anyway, back to Sandi Thom, the woman who caused a minor media furore back in March by broadcasting performances from her Tooting basement on the Internet via webcam. 180,000 people were watching at one point, apparently. I Wish is admirably simple: nothing more than Thom’s impassioned vocal and a We Will Rock You-style beat. It’s a nice novelty for the Katie Bailey-Blunt era, but what’s Thom going to do when the spark created by her ingenious marketing tactic begins to flicker out?
The Feeling
Fill My Little World
MCA
After storming the top ten with Sewn in March, The Feeling reissue their debut single Fill My Little World. It’s currently the theme to Chris Moyles’ Radio 1 Breakfast Show, you know. What’s more, it’s jauntier, more likeable Keane: piano-led indie pop with a pretty melody and an obvious debt to seventies soft rock. What’s that? You want more than a concise-yet-thorough single review with a side order of sarcasm? Fair enough, we’ll give you an interesting titbit of pop trivia too. The bassist from The Feeling’s married to Sophie Ellis-Bextor. Brave souls might like to request Murder On The Dancefloor during the band’s UK tour next month.
[reviews by Nick Levine]