This week's releases reviewed
HOCKEY Mind Chaos
There’s plenty of eating and drinking to be had on the debut album from this Portland, Oregon quartet. Initially released by Hockey under their own steam last year,
Mind Chaos
now comes back to market with a bit of spit and polish – and a few extra tunes – thanks to a hook-up with a major record label. Hockey’s best songs (
Song Away, Work
and, especially, the truly champion
Too Fake
) are built on deceptively simple but hugely robust arrangements, which explains why Hockey can put funk and electronics under the same bonnet without deviating in any way from the momentum or direction of the tune. Indeed, such attributes only serve to enchance the nagging hooks and infectious swagger. An album that is quite a statement of intent. www.myspace. com/hockey
JIM CARROLL
Download tracks
:
Too Fake, Song Away
THROW ME THE STATUE
Back when Scott Reitherman ran Seattle’s excellent Baskerville Hill Records, his own solo output consisted of sparse, scuzzy pop. Moving from bedroom noodling to bulked-out band status can add or subtract from a band’s hard-won sound, but TMTS maintain their early chutzpah while recognising there’s nothing wrong with a little polish. Production props go to Phil Ek (Built to Spill, Fleet Foxes), who welds together the specific talents of Reitherman and his crew to create a constantly shifting sound. Reitherman favours background vocals over guitar-fuzz and stuttered electro beats on highlights such as
Snowshoes
and
Hi-Fi Goon
. He’s also prone to flag-waving US indie (there’s a ton of influences on here), as on
Dizzy from the Fall and Noise. Creaturesque
is clear-cut pop with chameleon tendencies. If it’s hard to keep up with the shape-shifting, there’s much to like. www.throwme thestatue.com
SINÉAD GLEESON
Download Tracks
:
Shade for a Shadow, Snowshoes
KID BRITISH
It’s not just the reformed Specials and recessionistas who are heading back to 1979/1980. Manchester’s Kid British have the pose and platitudes from a time before they were born down pat (and they’ve got the thumbs-up imprimatur from Specials guitarist Lynval Golding), but that’s as far as they’ve gone with their masterplan. Unfortunately for the band, it’s the music that really scuppers them. All surface and no substance, their alleged unique selling point is a karaoke-like smattering of choppy ska sprinkled like raisins over a stodgy, murky mix of lightweight, inconsequential indie delusions, as if the Ordinary Boys or Hard-Fi discovered some porkpie hats and two-tone braces down the back of their wardrobes. Like all of us, producer Stephen Street obviously had to pay the bills. Sadly,
It Was This or Football
shows that Man U’s loss wasn’t really rock’n’roll’s gain. www.myspace.com/kidbritishmusic
JIM CARROLL
CALVIN HARRIS Ready for the Weekend
Calvin Harris strutted on to the scene in 2007 with an album called
I Created Disco
and a chestbeating attitude more suited to rock’n’roll stars than dance-pop ones. Egotistical he may be, but the 25-year-old is undoubtedly talented at what he does. Just ask Coca-Cola, which commissioned him to write a song for a new ad campaign. The Scotsman has already scored No 1 hits with two tracks from this album (
I’m Not Alone
and
Dance Wiv Me
), and his flair for eminent electropop sees him effortlessly spit out bouncy club tunes packed with soulful skitters and lashings of Ibiza sunshine. Several lulls mar the album’s consistency, but
Burns Night
and
5iliconeator
demonstrate both Harris’s ambient aptitude and, crucially, his forward-thinking ideas within the boundaries of mainstream dance music. www.calvinharris.co.uk
LAUREN MURPHY
Download tracks
:
Yeah Yeah Yeah La La La, The Rain
CORNERSHOP
Ample Play
Corner who? Their last album,
Handcream for a Generation
, was released in 2002. Seven years is a long time in the quick-pick world of rock music. We remember Cornershop for the still bouncy
Brimful of Asha
and its cheeky lyrics of “everybody needs a bosom for a pillow”. The sitars and the tambouras remain, perhaps unsurprisingly, and even
Brimful of Asha
gets something of a groovy, gospel rerun in the lengthy closing track,
The Turned on Truth (The Truth Is Turned On
). The primary focus, however, is on rewarding tunes of deftness, simplicity and brevity, the best of which are the brilliant neo-Rolling Stones swagger of
Who Fingered Rock’n’Roll
, the sitar-psych of the title track, the rolling gait of
Soul School
, and the Indian spick’n’span spice of
Free Love
. Cornershop? We still need them; start writing the petitions now. www.cornershop.com
TONY CLAYTON-LEA
Download tracks
:
Who Fingered Rock’n’Roll, Free Love
