McFly
Please Please
Universal
McFly’s cheeky chappie amiability has taken them a long way. Two chart-topping albums, eight top ten singles and a role in a Hollywood film isn’t bad going for a band that’s never come close to matching Busted’s charisma and ear for melody. New single Please Please namechecks the boys’ Just My Luck co-star Lindsay Lohan – well, you gotta keep that Did She Really Shag The Drummer rumour alive somehow, don’t you? – and wears its 50s rock ‘n’ roll influences on its sleeve. It’s as pert and perfectly-formed as Lohan’s buttocks but, unfortunately, as memorable as her role in Herbie Fully Loaded. Next time around, boys, why don’t you try writing something that doesn’t sound as though it belongs in a Happy Days prom scene?
And after the jump, more singles reviews from Rihanna, Gnarls Barkley, She Wants Revenge, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Performance, James Morrison and Gary Numan. You're welcome…
Rihanna
Unfaithful
Def Jam
Now here’s a nice surprise to rival "Jade Goody Wins Mastermind!" or "Alex Curran Denounces Capitalism!" Rihanna’s decided to follow the frothy electro-R&B strut of SOS – the one with the killer Soft Cell sample – with Unfaithful, a haunting piano-led ballad. The lyrics are as black as Nancy Dell’Olio’s well-coiffed mane (though perhaps not quite as black as Sven’s job prospects) and Rihanna plays the guilty adulteress ("I don’t wanna hurt him anymore… I don’t wanna be a murderer") with relish. All in all, a bit of a revelation.
Gnarls Barkley
Smiley Faces
Atlantic
For Gnarls Barkley, success has been a double-edged sword. Their debut single Crazy topped the charts for nine weeks but was swiftly deleted after its omnipresence began to overshadow not only parent album St Elsewhere, but also Gnarls Barkley itself. So you gotta feel for Smiley Faces, Cee-Lo and Dangermouse’s follow up single. It’s the golfer who steps up to the tee after Tiger Woods, the actress who arrives at the premiere after Nicole Kidman, the member of the Essex literati who publishes her life story the week after Jordan’s latest opus has been unleashed. This is a bit of a shame, because Smiley Faces’ Motown beat, gospel backing vocals and seventies organ chords add up to another soul-pop stormer.
She Wants Revenge
Tear You Apart
Geffen
Well well, this is dark. Good dark, though – it's not about dragons and goblins – instead, Tear You Apart by She Wants Revenge is, we think, a creepy tale about a stalker. We can't tell, since singer Justin Warfield intones the words like a nagging paranoid voice in your head you can't shake. Musically, too, Tear You Apart is all insistent beats, clanging one-note guitars and uncomfortable throbbing. It's not a tune you'd want to play on your own in a big dark house, or to put on a mixtape for a girl you've just met, but it's pretty impressive all the same. We hear Joaquin Phoenix has directed the video for this – and if it's good enough for Johnny Cash it's good enough for us.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Tell Me Baby
Warner Bros
The Red Hot Chili Peppers have been proper, unit-shifting rock behemoths for 15 years now. Their current album Stadium Arcadium is a double-disc, twenty-eight track monster that’s the musical equivalent of shrugging and saying: "So, if we can’t get better, we might as well get BIGGER!" Tell Me Baby, its second single, is standard fare for California’s leading funk-rockers: there’s lots of frenetic slap bass; Anthony Kiedis spews out some nonsense about "Chitty chitty baby, when your nose is in the nitty gritty" and the verse sounds a bit like Can’t Stop from By The Way. But, hey, if you must retread old ground, you might as well sound like you’re having this much fun doing it.
Performance
Short Sharp Shock EP
There aren't many bands who we'd like to dislike more than Performance – they're the kind of ironic 1980s disco-pop outfit that you can imagine strutting down Brick Lane kitted out in ridiculous ironic mullets and ridiculous mirrored aviators listening to Neu! on their iPods. So imagine how much it kills us to say that the new Short Sharp Shock EP by Performance is actually pretty ace. From the frenzied yelp of the title track, to the Pet Shop Boys-y throb of I Want Out to It's Bad And It's Just Begun's SAW pounding to Architecture And Police's computosleaze, Performance rarely make a duff move. In fact, Performance remind us a lot of Tiger Tunes – and that's one of the biggest compliments we're able to give. The bastards.
James Morrison
You Give Me Something
Polydor
James Morrison is the latest British solo male sensation. You wanna know who his target audience is? Well, the fact that he recently supported Corinne Bailey-Rae on her UK tour tells you everything you need to know, really. Debut single You Give Me Something certainly shows off his soulful pipes, and we’re all in favour of using Bacharachian horns to add a nice touch of class. But unfortunately its tasteful drum loop, mellow piano chords and cringe-inducingly romantic lyrics – "I never thought that I’d love someone; that was someone else’s dream" – make it archetypal bubble bath music. Watch out Bluntie, there’s a new troubadour in town.
Gary Numan
In A Dark Place
Mortal
It’s quite comforting to know that Gary Numan can release a single in 2006. He spent most of the nineties (and most of the eighties, for that matter) in a state of terminal unhipness, but thanks to kudos from Marilyn Manson and Dave Grohl – not to mention samples in recent(ish) Sugababes and Basement Jaxx smashes – he’s now revered as some kind of Electropop Institution. In A Dark Place careers from minimal verses built on industrial beats to widescreen, synth-drenched choruses and showcases gloriously overwrought lyrics like "So I beg God for salvation, for an angel". A nice single for what our nan likes to call "the gothics".
[reviews by Nick Levine]