Good Stuff Release on or before 25th October 2010
Best Coast – “Crazy for You”
If you haven’t heard Best Coast yet I really advise you to check out their new release below, and then track down their other stuff asap. Best Coast are really rather bloody good, and so totally hip and now, so you really have no excuse. The hype for these guys in growing within circles in the know, but for those of you who have not yet been blessed, let me sum-up their sound for you right n-n-n-now. Best Coast create Lo-fi, fuzz-based garage pop, with surf influences, a sunny disposition, cute lyrics, and an even cuter female vocalist. With a bit of the Beach Boys, a bit of The Drums, a bit of Stereolab, and Au Revoir Simone, they are upbeat and dreamy, with short but sweet songs. Find them at the till at Urban Outfitters, or else do the smart thing and get it for the half the price on Amazon.
White Rabbits – “Percussion Gun”
Fair enough, the percussion style in this track, though very interesting and engaging, is a blatant rip-off of the Burundi beats used in the 1980s by groups such as Bow Wow Wow and Adam and the Ants. But, as the original usage of this percussion style was also a blatant rip-off of the original African tribal music technique, I don’t really want to criticize White Rabbits too much, especially when they pull off both the Burundi beat themselves, and the whole track in general incredibly well. This track has a really cool, curious vibe, with a fantastically melodic bass line, which works perfectly with the sparse guitars, and jagged piano parts. The vocals are really interesting too, and add well to the subtly passionate, yet collected feel of this track. A really good new release from White Rabbits, do check out the video below.
Bad Stuff Release on or before 1st November 2010
Ne-Yo – “One in a Million”
Errggh. Yet another offering from ladies-man Ne-Yo, and what an awful offering it is. Here, Ne-Yo offers more of his own personal brand of Ken doll-smooth R&B, and my god it is just awful. The music in itself is fairly uninteresting; essentially it is typical R&B pop style timbres and production, with an over produced sound, a sparse yet polyphonic rhythm section, and very basic synth bass and synth-pad accompaniments. What is really stomach churning though is the narrative concept and lyrics of the track. It is pure, featureless, unrealistic idealism. Women who naively subscribe to Ne-Yo’s overt romanticism - I can tell you categorically that no man in the world honestly subscribes to this approach to love and relationships. Sure, they may feel/say that they love you and that you are very special to them etc., and I obviously don’t want to put a sunder on that, but such an earnest dedication of love as “One in a Million” only has one purpose – to get you into bed.
