Singles
So 'quiet is the new loud' then? Some people clearly have no idea of trends or fashion though, because we have here two snippets of pure noise. Unfortunately though, just because it's loud doesn't actually mean that it's any good.
King Adora's single is catchy, but it's all been done before. Many times before. And better. Quite how they have the audacity to name-drop "the good Frank Black" and "the lord Lou Reed", I don't actually know, but you should just believe me that I doubt whether either of these luminaries would appreciate being linked with the Birmingham quartet. Plus, King Adora frontman Maxi really is too ugly for the make-up. Hmm.
The Cooper Temple Clause (catchy name; no idea what it means) hail from a slightly less rock'n'roll end of the spectrum. They're from Wokingham for fuck's sake. Anyway, the noise is less poppy, but loud and angry nonetheless. Tragically of course, this doesn't mean that it's remotely good, and to be honest it all just seems fairly irrelevant. I'm going to go and put Turin Brakes back on....
Richard Douglas
Undoubtedly, in life you should try and be fair, wise and just. By why the fuck does the title have 'no no no no' in brackets after the inimitable 'Just Can't Get Enough?' Honesty, or a Freudian slip whereby it actually tells you what you feel when you realise that this is tune is formula dance. Four to the floor, percussion rolls, quiet vocal fills, held strings. The vocals, from Taka Boom, are insipid and just a filler. The lyrics are empty. If words weren't invented, these people would invent them to cheapen them. You want to dance like a prick? Buy it.
Gurdeep Mattu
If a weekend of unrelenting hedonism sounds like an unlikely subject for Aidan Moffat, a man for whom tales of infidelity, paranoia and other complexities of copulation have become trademarks, rest assured, he approaches it with all the usual melancholy. It may be a song about partying and getting no sleep, but the languid vocals and sardonic suggestion that we "get dressed up and pull" convey a sense of unease and sheer boredom with the shallow social thing. The 80s synths added by remixers Bis don't attempt to make it upbeat, but work with and complement the slightly pensive mood. As usual, then, good for chilling out to.
Polly Dunbar
Eighties a-go-go 'round their way then, as synths, voice-effects, dirty guitars and an annoying chirping noise all meld into a tune which is slinky, but ultimately a bit unsatisfying. A New Romantics revival petered out a few years ago, and it's not difficult to see why: this is a decent enough effort, but it doesn't really take us anywhere we haven't been thousands of times before.
The Eighties did manage to yield a fair few classics in just this vein, but times have changed, and while "Monkey Girl" might have been great back then, now it's just another casualty of musical evolution.
Steven Tull
17th May 2001