I’m really worried that the extent to which people enjoy music is affected by how much praise a particular band is getting in the press – is it really the case that the same artists get a lot of attention from blogs simply because of the quality of their music, or is it more a case of latching onto a bandwagon and liking music simply because other blogs been venting verbal spleen about how good it is?

The reason that I ask is because, as far back as last November, I read about a band called My Gold Mask on Pretty Much Amazing. I downloaded the song, and whilst Luis couldn’t have been more enthusiastic about it during his article, the song just sort of passed me by.

Fast forward a couple of months and the band are starting to get a bit more attention. After a couple of posts by The Blue Walrus and The Recommender, I decide to have another listen. Nothing has changed. It’s still the same band, the same song (“Violet Eyes”), the same mp3, but this time I’m ready to proclaim that My Gold Mask are the best thing to happen to music since Joe Lean & The Wiff Waff Whatever were tragically dropped by their record label. That’s a claim I’d stick to, by the way.

I’ve got to admit that I’m pretty uneasy about this… I had always thought it was a good song, but did it really just take a couple of positive reviews for me to be able to like them? Of course, I hope not, I hope I’m generally a lot more honest about music than this, but I can’t help feeling that it may have been a factor in this one particular case. The thing is, I’m almost sure that a huge number of people are excessively affected by music criticism, but I don’t think that they can bring themselves to honestly admit that they’re not being as subjective as they could be.

In a wider sense, though, is this how blogs work? Does influential blogs posting material cause a flurry of fumbling posts by less read publications because the bigger blogs have such good music taste, or is it merely because if something has got a Gorilla vs. Bear stamp of approval then people are willing to admit that they like it? As always, I’m likely to conclude that the answer lies somewhere in the middle; bigger music blogs definitely know what they’re talking about musically, but that doesn’t mean that some other blogs won’t post things just because it has appeared on the latest PMAcast.

To be honest, I’m still unsure as to where I stand on this, and I’m going to have to spend some more time thinking about this, and hopefully arguing about it with you in the comments section (always helps me form my opinions), but, for now at least, I’m happy to conclude that in the case of My Gold Mask, the situation is solely down to an error of insane laziness and sloppy listening on my part, because “Violet Eyes” is impressive not only for it’s visceral power, but because it’s backed up by a whole EP that ranges from raw to vulnerable, but never stops being simply a brilliant piece of music. Perhaps there’s now a bandwagon, and perhaps I might have just jumped on it, but there’s definitely substance behind the hype and cynicism about blog buzz is no good reason not to get involved.

My Gold Mask – Violet Eyes

I do believe that this constitutes almost conclusive proof that signing to a major label (Atlantic in this case) does not make it necessary to turn to shit and spend the rest of your career pumping out whatever “sound” it is that your record label is telling you to follow.

Furthermore, I think that the fact that Atlantic have signed Wolf Gang can be taken as scientific evidence that the depression has ended. This time last year, those being signed were people like La Roux who were 100% guaranteed success. Wolf Gang, however, despite being ridiculously more talented than La Roux, is not so sure of success. Therefore the recession has ended. Hooray.

Wolf Gang – Back To Back

This song also conveys almost exactly how I feel now. But that’s kind of irrelevant. Which is why I wrote it all the way down here. If you’re still reading, that’s just dedication – well played.

We’re looking at "the death of blogs”. At least, that’s if you believe an article posted on The Guardian’s web site last month. Their “evidence”, if you can call it that, seemed to hinge around a completely fucking ridiculous statistic; a few years ago 28% of teenagers considered themselves bloggers, and now far less do. Even ignoring how blatantly incorrect this is (over 1 in 4 teenagers ran blogs?!?!?!) using this statistic to predict the death of blogs is to completely ignore adult bloggers and suggest that all blog owners are sex-hormone filled teenagers. Like me.

Even if this unlikely statistic is correct, all it suggests is that bloggers are becoming older, or kids are spending more time playing COD and masturbating, and less time writing about their boring lives. However, what really annoyed me about this article (yes, if you hadn’t noticed, I guess I am quite annoyed) is that it suggests that a decline in the numbers of bloggers could spell out the end for blogs in general, as if the only thing keeping blogs going is their abundance. In reality, the complete opposite is true and it’s not only the case that a wealth of badly written and poorly maintained blogs help to give all blogs a bad name, but that the enormous volume of these “publications” makes it near impossible to divert traffic from all the other dotblogspotdotcoms out there. More importantly though, they are completely missing the point that it is blog readers that keep blogs going, and not the other way around. At the very least, blogs will continue to exist for as long as the demand is there, and, according to my traffic stats, the numbers of blog readers are only increasing.

In actual fact, not only is it the case that blogs  aren’t “dying out”, but that they are rapidly becoming more and more prolific and branching out into PR, live events and record labels. Of course, it would be almost impossible for me not to mention Neon Gold, who have seemed to lead the way in the new blog-turns-record-label trend, but it’s the latest pioneers Big Stereo who have really caught my ears.

Their first release is by Baby Monster, a band that I have previously written about here. The single is called “She Comes Alive” and swops the dirtied MGMT of “Super Violence & Beethoven” for a sound that feels slightly less instantaneous and hard hitting, but proves to be every inch as amazing as that chorus arrests your brain within a few listens.

I previously said that the band may be looking at “superstardom”, and whilst this may not be the release that does it for them (only 350 7” are available, and I would seriously recommend pre-ordering one; these are going to disappear), the quality of the EP is effortlessly causing the press to fall for Baby Monster, and record label attention is bound to follow. I would be far from surprised if these 7”s were selling for $50+ on eBay this time next year, so get pre-ordering. It’s more of an investment than a purchase. And if you’re not investing for personal gain (very noble of you), you will at least be investing in the future of music blogs; a future that it seems, if this quality release is anything to go by, we have very little to worry about.

Baby Monster – She Comes Alive

I felt the need to flog this dead horse just a little more. As has been painstakingly recorded, “Lights” is nothing special. In short, yeah, it’s a decent pop album, but the trouble with investing in a very precise and unvaried (perhaps gimmicky) style is that, in effect, you end up with 10 songs, 4 of which are very good, and the other 6 won’t be given the time of day by anyone with two ears connected to a brain. That said, this approach is bound to bring Ellie Goulding enormous success beyond anything that even the most optimistic bloggers imagined early last year. Bit of a depressing paradox; banality = success.

There’s a slightly uneasy feeling throughout that the whole electro-pop cliché has become far too forced. Ironically, it also brings the album some of its more original moments thanks to the exceptional production of Starsmith (see new version of “Wish I Stayed”), but it slowly becomes tired when laboured over the entire album.

Without sounding too presumptuous, “This Love” is going to destroy this year in commercial terms, “Wish I Stayed” and Starsmith’s stuttering chorus production has similar potential, and we always knew that “Starry Eyed” and “Under The Sheets” were decent pop songs, but…. beyond that? Quite literally, beyond that there’s very little to waste your seconds on, except 6 slightly inferior, but never bad, variations on a theme du jour.

I wouldn’t call it a backlash… In actual fact, all anyone really predicted was that Ms Goulding has a lot of talent. And she does, you’d be a fool to argue against that, however the emphasis of “Lights” is clearly fixated on commercial success over a full realisation of her enormous potential, and for that reason, “Lights” is bound to be forgotten. The debut album that never happened.

Adapted from something that I wrote here. Yes, I really am that lazy, and no, I wasn’t joking.

By the way, I hope you appreciate that I avoided the two stock introductions to Ellie Goulding reviews:

1. “I am very very clever and first wrote about Ellie Goulding in the year 150BC, here.”
2. “Due to recently being named the BBC Sound of 2010 and winning a Brit Award, there was always going to be a lot of hype surrounding Ellie Goulding. The question is, though, has she lived up to the hype?!?!?!?!?!”. Cue disappointing review in which they will probably conclude that, no, she has not.

If you are very well mannered, old fashioned or intrigued then you can buy the album here. I’ll be honest, I can think of a lot worse ways to spend £10 and at no point did I say it was a bad album; just disappointing. But you know… music’s subjective and all that so part with your cash and see what you think.

Foals flung out an announcement today that second album “Total Life Forever” will be released on May 10th, and also premiered on radio the first track from the new record, accompanied by the inevitably agonising jingles and Zane Lowe declaring that it’s “just awesome, man”. Well, he may be right, but more importantly “Spanish Sahara” suggests that Foals may have distanced themselves from the slightly frenetic sound that made them the favourite band of every irritating 15 year old. Faultless as their sound was, having an innocent enough but cringingly excitable teenager going through puberty next to you at gigs was always the worst thing about being a Foals fan. The fact that this is coming from someone who has only just turned 18 can probably only suggest just how excessively testosterone filled / Topman plaid-shirt-wearing their fan base was.

“Spanish Sahara” sounds far more self assured and assertive, wholly uninterested in NME chart placings and sales numbers. In fact, “Spanish Sahara” is almost completely guaranteed to entirely fail to bring Foals to a wider audience (although perhaps it will encourage a more mature one), but there’s no way that that was ever their intention. If there’s any consolation from this, though, aside from it being one of the most brilliant things that they’ve written, it’s the knowledge that if they have even remotely sustained this sort of focus and maturity throughout the whole album, they could be onto a bit of a classic, not simply the fleeting and forgettable sales success that has become quite common (hello, The Wombats; we haven’t forgotten about you yet, unfortunately). Actually, Zane said it all: “Just awesome, man.”

Foals – Spanish Sahara (Mount Kimbie Remix)

PS: You’ve no idea how hard I had to try to not mention the xx (woops). Oh well, hopefully you’ll see why I tried.

PPS: For the exceptionally organised, May 3rd will see the release of “This Orient”, the first single from the album. As if you’re going to remember.

Let’s face it, tinnitus is just another encouraging sign that you’ve really enjoyed your life (other positive signs are bad teeth and a negative bank balance) instead of having spent it swathed in bubble wrap and surrounded by health and safety officials. In fact, if I’m going to be honest, it seems that people these days are spending far too much time fussing over whether their earplugs are sitting at the right angle, and checking decibel levels at gigs, before adjusting themselves to a suitably quiet distance from the speakers.

Japandroids’ critically fawned over “Post Nothing” is the complete antithesis of this, which is partly why I placed them at #16 in my inevitable “Albums of 2009” list. Made their year, I heard. Thank the lords, then, that similarly adored Liverpool tastemakers Evol & Meshuggy have lured Japandroids over from their native Canada to recklessly abuse the cochleae* of Liverpool’s music lovers this Saturday.

You can buy tickets here, or, for those of you with little money, no conscience, or who simple enjoy free stuff, we are giving away a ticket for the gig at Korova. All you need to do to win is follow us on our brand new twitter and re-tweet the few words we put down about Japandroids. We’ll then pick a random winner and get in touch with you. *We should probably point out in the interests of the naive that going to this gig is not going to damage your ability to hear noises with your ears.

Japandroids fans will also be pleased to hear that the band are going to be hitting the studio in the short gaps on their current tour and releasing a slew of unreleased Japandroids songs on 7”. The first in this series is “Art Czars”, which you can hear above and buy here.

Hype. Terrible thing, really. In fact, it’s almost become a derogatory term. The thing is, hype can make you so appealing to professional journos flailing around in an overcrowded sea of “music critics” (let’s face it, having the intellectual athleticism to make a few clicks on blogger.com does not make you Pete flipping Paphides) that they are driven to fling out record reviews earlier and earlier, attempting to beat the keyboard wielding masses. Unfortunately, though, this culture of desperation breeds only a tendency to fling out shittier and shittier malformed opinions of records that they, often, have yet to get their heads around. So be this the case with Marina and the Diamonds, who, as it is mercilessly intoned in review upon review, is from Abergavenny, not that 99% of the population actually know where that is, nor that it reveals the mysteries of her debut album, “The Family Jewels”. They must get paid by the word, these days. Perhaps obscure Welsh villages come with bonus points.

Some of these early reviews came with a general air of derision and disappointment, yet failed to properly articulate where the problems lay. This led to a blanket complaint of Marina’s apparent “grating voice” (The Times, BBC, The Guardian) , an excuse that seems to serve as little more than a vague attempt to explain why these critics and their sensitive (and now grated) ears weren’t happy. Though it is, of course, a matter of taste, the suggestion that her vocal delivery is offensive is absolutely ludicrous; original, different, slightly appealingly masculine, yes, but “grating”? Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that banality is the unchallenged norm in popular music, when a sly trace of originality is treated like a venereal disease by professional critics.

The Times’ Mark Edwards goes on to suggest that Marina’s song writing lacks innovation, whilst X Factor puppets and auto-tuned R&B ironically climbs the charts in the background, and singles out “Are You Satisfied” as a “potential hit”. If nothing else, this alone constitutes enough evidence to convict the reviewer of a little too much haste; “Are You Satisfied” is unarguably streets behind “Oh No”, “Girls” or “Shampain” in terms of commercial appeal.

The BBC doesn’t start off promisingly by opening with berating Marina for being “not weird”, and then labelling her “insane” in the following paragraph. After the customary mentions of this mysterious “grating voice” and the token reference to Abergavenny, Marina is then accused of having a “massive ego”, thanks to the first line of “Oh No”; “Don’t do love, don’t do friends / I’m only after success”. The BBC clearly didn’t notice that this line was delivered uncharacteristically po-faced, yet the following line of “Don’t want money, don’t want cars / want it fast, want it hard” emerges from an explosion of those “grating”, ballsy Marina vocals. Now, call me presumptuous, but my GCSE in English Literature suggests to me that it is the second of the two couplets that is Marina talking… Of course I am not an internet-naive caveman and understand that a BBC journalist is going to get the album even before it leaks online, but the fact that the review was delivered on 12th February (after editing) can only indicate that the journalist was strangely interested in getting one up on those shit munching bloggers waiting for a leak.

The Independent’s review, meanwhile, put to bed these infantile suggestions of a “grating voice” and instead approached the record from a very different perspective. Unfortunately, this perspective was to talk about The Dresden Dolls for as long as legally possible, then reluctantly making some disinterested comments about “The Family Jewels”, before, presumably, finishing the irksome work of reviewing new music and returning to ploughing through The Dresden Dolls’ back catalogue. When not talking about other bands, though, the review is once again pioneering in the nature of its criticism, choosing to approach the album by ignoring irrelevant musical content and, instead, evaluating the obscurity of each song title. Our reviewer observes that a song about feeling numb is called “Numb”, and that another about being rootless is called “Rootless”, quite shockingly, before concluding with the opinion that a song about being guilty is called “Guilty” and, therefore, this album can only be shallow, unintelligent drivel. If we don’t take these “criticisms” at face value, we can assume that he seems to think that a lack of subtlety is the album’s problem. Yet he complete fails to either listen to or understand the irony of the song “Hollywood”, and instead complains about the obviousness Marina “wearing stars and stripes” in the song’s video… Apparently, it is not Marina who lacks the intellectual depth, but this particular reviewer who is in need of picking up on some of the record’s subtleties. It’s going to take a fucking lot of tedious su doku to exercise that grey matter, Simon Price.

Ultimately, “The Family Jewels” has been somewhat shunned by a select section of the professional press who seem diametrically opposed to pop music of any nature, only willing to praise a succession of bookish acts with the intellectual stamina of Radiohead or Battles.  Fortunately, there is a large contingent of the press who are not embroiled in a restless search for the musical equivalent of a PhD dissertation on the thermodynamics of a lump of metal (ie, fucking boredom), and instead can do nothing but commend Marina for bringing a conscience back to a pop music landscape that was quickly becoming a succession of vacuous noises devoid of any sincerity or intelligence. Thankfully, these reviews appreciating the album for its importance to pop music far outweigh this limp dicked micro-cosm of reviews who seem to have convinced themselves that Marina has vocal chords capable of damaging ears, and that you’d be better off listening to The Dresden Dolls. I stated quite unpoetically back in January that “we need a pop star like Marina”, and whilst Dickens might have delivered it in a more, well, Dickensian manner, and Wilde would have found it easy to spin this truth out into a cunning epithet, sometimes subtlety and spin are far less important than the hard-hitting, straight-talking facts.

PS: You can, and should, buy the album here. Illegal downloading is so not fashionable anymore, but you can stream a few tracks above.

At once drawing together the synthetic beats of The xx with Dirty Projector’s heavily hazy vocals, “Icarus” is spaciously spun out (quite like The xx, though I hesitate to mention them twice in one sentence) into a song that stumbles along quite contentedly understated and lethargic. It is quite right to bumble along at this pace, though; “Icarus” doesn’t vainly attempt to grab your attention with stabs of so-2010 (and so-boring) synths, rather it allows you to gradually fall back into its beautiful fragility, listen upon listen.

White Hinterland – Icarus

“Icarus” is the first track that’s been thrust upon me from White Hinterland’s new album, “Kairos”, out March 8th in the UK. If you rate this song anything like as highly as I do, then you’d be parting with your cash now for the pre-order.

By the way, not that it’s my place to make slightly insulting but shrewd observations like this about the users of hypem.com (though that group does include me, of course), but I couldn’t help noticing that an incredible amount of blogs have been putting their megabytes where their keyboards are and posting about White Hinterland. Though… the audience response has not just been understated, it’s been pretty much completely absent. We can only assume, and hope,  that the majority of White Hinterland fans are either far too trendy or environmentally concerned to own computers. But if it was a dubstep remix (generally by an untalented, undubstep-literate bandwagon crasher)… maaaan. 1000 hearts for you.

Got to say that I think “Rad Pitt” is the absolute worst way you can introduce yourselves to the incredibly talented Egyptian Hip Hop. Not that it’s a bad song, and it’s perhaps purposefully laid back, but it does drift from being lazily brilliant to just sluggish, in parts, though it’s easy to see bags of potential if it’s tightened up, and we should remember that we are just listening to early demos. To be fair, I think I’d almost be more disappointed if their early demos were strangely polished, finished pieces of music; the possibilities with this band are endless.

If anything, that early potential has already been realised in their first release, which you can exchange your meaningless human pounds for on 1st March. Far from the languid stroll through their own musical ability that “Rad Pitt” was, “Heavy Heaven” and “Hazel Groove” nail down a complete and confident sound without forcing themselves into a constraining pigeon hole too early on in their very young career. From this incredibly textured foray into subtly electronic tinged indie, not only does further success beckon, but, most importantly, almost anything is possible. It’s almost that lack of knowledge of which way the band are going to turn next that marks them out from their contemporaries, and possibly explains why so many people are beginning to have their heads turned from this extraordinary young band.

Egyptian Hip Hop – Hazel Groove by Pure Groove

Egyptian Hip Hop – Heavy Heaven (Demo)

Pre-order the EP from Pure Groove here, could be worth a lot of money in a year’s time!

I’m pretty sure we didn’t forget to mention this, but we’re now on Twitter so follow us for extra news and information!

It’s more out of incredulity than necessity that this post has been forced to be written. Of course, Ellie Goulding is about to be tipped from the spongy environs of being everyone’s “next big thing” to the terrifying reality of actually being that big thing, which, as always, leads to an enormity of superfluous remixes. And how the blogs love them. Free music that they can legally share, all with names attached that will make the numbers on their traffic counter a bit bigger. But “Starry Eyed” is one piece of incredible pop music that doesn’t need to be poked around with by anyone who does not happen to be Ms Goulding. So far we have had efforts Penguin Prison, Theophilus London, Jakwob, Monarchy, Monsieur Adi, Max Vangeli, and Russ Chimes. Whilst many are “good” (is “good” good, or good enough?) and several of these artists are fantastic, I can’t help but feel that each has received a level of attention that is completely out of proportion. Ironically, “Starry Eyed” itself has been relatively cold shouldered by blogs in a culture of hype that is more interested in getting hits than playing the music that you love. Bleh…

You might be able to tell that my musical emotions are pretty pissed off right now. However, I was happy to quietly simmer; this is nothing new. Again and again tracks are over exposed and a naive public are tricked into thinking they are worth listening to. All that has changed is that, in this particular case, there is one remix that far exceeds all those named above (trust me, I have had the soul munching job of being sent and listening to all of them). I gather that it has been posted once before on hypem.com, but has now mysteriously disappeared, so I make this post half expecting to have the Web Sheriff knocking my door off its hinges tomorrow morning (oh yeah, forgot to apologise for the downtime in the last two days. I got well and truly legally-fucked by the Web Sheriff, not a fantastic experience). We’ve already bitten your ears off about Velo a little bit here, but I must admit that I didn’t suspect for a minute that their musical genius extended to remixes. Quite simply, this whole “Starry Eyed” remix recycling is getting excessive, yet Velo’s effort loses none of the warmth of the original track, and in doing so effortlessly surpasses any of those mentioned above. Finally a remix worth downloading, let’s just hope that the Web Sheriff is busy being sanctimonious somewhere else to actually give you the time to download it.

Ellie Goulding – Starry Eyed (Velos Wild Eyed Remix)

Oh yes, whilst we’re on Ellie Goulding, I shouldn’t have to remind you that “Lights” will be released on 1st March and you can and should pre-order it here. If you are starting to get worried that Ellie won’t live up to the cavernous hype that she has been thrown into, then have a gander at this live version of album track “This Love”. Terrible sound quality, but the song-writing genius is still evident.

Ellie Goulding – This Love (Live)

PS: You know what, we decided to give in to culture and join 2010 properly. We/I now have a twitter account that you can follow us at. We’re not going to brag but… You know, it’s rather good. Please follow us here or we will look unpopular.

PPS: Just a note, not only has the lack of posts been down to the Web Sheriff actually shutting down notmanyexperts.com for over 24 painful hours of e-mails, but I’ve been in Marrakech for the past 5 days, leading me to submit to my default of laziness. However, we are now back, unexcitingly legal, and slightly less lazy than usual.

Recently was on the receiving end of a mysterious e-mail from a PR that was completely empty, save for an attached mp3 from a band called The Shimmer. If anything, the absence of a laboured description was far more interesting, and didn’t run the risk of pissing me off within three stubbornly contrived sentences. Taught me a couple of things really. Primarily that mystery is preferable to bad English, but also that this accidental form of music PR is, actually, far more effective than throwing the dictionary at music. I guess that this could be why music journalism is far more effective online, where you can listen to/download whatever is having the thesaurus poured out onto it.

Unsurprisingly, turned out that it was a mistake, but the unpretentious “No Surprise At All” had stirred my interest enough to reply to said e-mail, and I eventually received the usual sentence or two. Ironically, although the lack of wording had initially interested me, the paragraph that I eventually received was equally intriguing; not only is “No Surprise At All” unhinged rock & roll to overpower bland and heartless radio fodder, but the single was likely to actually be appreciated, as it turns out that the song will be released on Hit Club (Wolf Gang, Egyptian Hip Hop, Is Tropical, May 68) in the near future. Stumbled across the future of both ecstatically sincere rock & roll and music PR in the space of a couple of e-mails. Efficiency.

The Shimmer – No Surprise At All

The Shimmer – Lovers Void

Try reading an article about new A&M signees Chapel Club without tripping across a careless mention of White Lies. As I seem to have inadvertently proved, it’s pretty much impossible. Yet why should it be? Ultimately, the comparisons between these two bands should both begin and end and at the fact that they are both on the pay of Universal, both use guitars to create a tempting sort of gloom, and Chapel Club seem poised for the same sort of success as White Lies have squeezed out of a fruitful relationship with the NME and Radio 1. Even having said that, where they get their money from cannot define them nor greatly affect their sound; there is enormous scope for diversity amongst the band of groups who use guitars to spread melancholy over their listeners; and it’s entirely possible that they both achieve success without mirroring one another.

Even in having refuted these claims, I have not done Chapel Club justice. The fact is that it’s tempting to look cynically at the scepticism that many critics have regarding White Lies as retrospective criticism. This is far from the case for many, though. Even back in those promising days where only “Death” had appeared, there were many who were calling for investigations into whether this was really…. a real band?! The way that they jumped from upbeat indie in their previous incarnation as Fear Of Flying to a fully formed aesthetic product and playing a sold out gig to industry heads without having lifted a finger… Even back then it was thought to be slightly disconcerting, if exciting and full of possibility.

And what of Chapel Club? The same cannot be said for the roots of their hype. Where White Lies were conspicuous for a seeming absence of any reason for the industry to be getting excited about them, and thus the blank was filled in by many as the shadowy movements of major label money, that which has got people talking about Chapel Club is not just entirely lucid, but laudable as well. The story, if you choose to believe it (and only the most dedicated cynic wouldn’t) is that Chapel Club cut their teeth on the grindstone of self-arranged gigs in disused warehouses around London last summer. Following a string of well attended gigs, demos began floating around the more perceptive blogs – all the usual contenders. Is it really surprising that A&M, who actually do this for a living, managed to pick up on the beginnings of Chapel Club’s hype? The quality of the early demos are certainly sufficient to encourage this sort of response from a label.

But the music… White Lies, though we enjoyed building them up, were ravaged upon the release of their debut album in early 2009 for what many critics believed to be a lack of soul. “To Lose My Life” was, for many, a hollow shell that superficially displayed real heart, but was found to be completely without substance after more than a couple of tepid listens. The same cannot be said for Chapel Club. I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t approach them with some suspicions après “the White Lies debacle”, but the three demos that have so far surfaced are heart warmingly genuine – far from the obvious and portentous emoting that White Lies were fond of. The finest example of this is recent single “O Maybe I” that fumbles along unselfconsciously on the back of enormous drums, and recedes back into lead singer Lewis Bowman’s heart bursting vocals.

Genuinely aorta stretching, hard working, and song-writing geniuses, it’s not only unfair and lazy to compare Chapel Club to White Lies, it’s an insult to their superiority, in every way possible.

PS: You can now follow Not Many Experts on Twitter. Life is good.

Damn. Miike Snow are making the lives of the many lazy/talentless/lazy & talentless journos painfully easy. Their insistence on wearing white masks during the performance bears, of course, little relevance to the noises that Miike Snow will joyously suffuse their audience in during their (far too short) hour–long set. That said, a worryingly large number of reviews are centred around stomach-burstingly hilarious one liners, sometimes originally suggesting that Miike Snow are “fucking ugly” (haw haw haw) or merely laughing at their “faux Daft Punk-ism” (couldn’t be further from the truth). Let’s just get over it.

The reality is that, masks or not, Miike Snow couldn’t be more in touch with their audience. When I say “in touch” I don’t mean some journalistic bullshit that is invented to critique bands, but that their physical presence and music is watched or appalling danced to by a completely rapt audience. Again, live reviews often centre around how good a band’s “stage banter” is, and yet Miike Snow don’t say a single word onstage, save for a muffled “thank you” that might occasionally escape from beneath lead vocalist Andrew Wyatt’s mane of hair. All I can do is thank them for it. If I had wanted to see grown men skip gaily across the stage and collapse the entire audience into uncontrollable laughter, I would have gone to see Michael McIntyre, cheers. If Miike Snow’s silence tonight shows anything, it’s simply how absorbed by their own music they are.

A bold move for most bands might constitute playing around with one of their less appreciated album tracks, but Miike Snow are intent that those faithful many who have turned out to pack out the Liverpool Masque on a sub zero Tuesday night will not hear a band turn up, play their album, and leave. As a result, not only is crowd favourite “Cult Logic” stripped to pieces, built up and stretched out into their epic opener, but many other tracks receive the same treatment, not least the pulsating “Animal”, which only hit #98 on the UK singles chart, yet is received like it kept Jedward off the top spot for an entire month.

Although jibing Daft Punk comparisons may seem strangely founded if you had seen the girl in front of me who seemed near to climaxing throughout most of the gig, and equally intent on swinging around her inexplicably enormous handbag, Miike Snow regularly manage to lower the pulse of their live set, without losing momentum or interest. In fact, the introspective “Sans Soleil” was the undisputed highlight of their set. If I had been nearer the back, a tear would have been shed (keep it on the QT, mind).

Ultimately, coupled with the fact that they were preceded by the intriguing Run Toto Run (who I have been monitoring for a while, so now would seem the perfect opportunity to finally mention them), Miike Snow have mastered the rarely perfected art of playing a proper live gig, not simply playing your songs in a live setting. Those who were there will know exactly why it’s hard to stop me enthusing about their live set, and those who weren’t there need to go and experience it first-hand. Just don’t laugh at their masks.

Run Toto Run – Catchy My Breath

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Frontman Jack Barnett will breathlessly tell anyone who will listen that he can’t stand unlistenable experimental music, yet “Hidden” is a record that keeps it’s alluring dark heart very well concealed. It’s far from an obvious album that will relinquish itself to you; if you’re going to enjoy it, you’re going to have to get your hands dirty. Given the time though, “Hidden” gives itself up as a record with more than its fair share of familiar pleasures. In fact, once past the early awkward stage and being slightly terrified by the mammoth drums that cave in from every song, “Hidden” appears incredibly listenable, catchy even, and seems to prove all of Barnett’s philosophies. Sorry for doubting you, Jack – not only were you right, but you seem to have made the first great album of the year, as well.

Buy from Rough Trade.

Technoir MA have only been together since last summer, but already sound like the noise-pop band that I wish Bloc Party had turned into after Silent Alarm. Sceptical of presumably far-too-early Bloc Party comparisons? Grab “Roundabout” below and try telling me that those guitars aren’t ridiculously reminiscent of A Weekend In The City’s best B-sides.

Having just self released debut EP “2/B”, they are about to set out on their first US tour, which is the only place that you can get your hands on their toe-gazing post punk. Until they (hopefully) blow up and are able to release their music on a label, you can download a short EP of demos here. Two songs are also available below, apparently designed to make you wonder how two people and a drum machine can emerge with such a complete sound within 6 months.

Credit to This Music Wins for the tip.

Technoir MA – Roundabout

Technoir MA – Return

If you can make grainy, speaker-splitting demos sound just inches away from air-wave humping singles within a year of forming, then you might just be a couple of lucky breaks away from success. You might just be Is Tropical as well – the latest Londoners to lift themselves out of their squats (without correcting stylishly messy hair) to carve strangely accessible tunes out of noise-covered creativity. Got to apologise for the sound quality of these demos, but the bit-rate really is irrelevant; the tunes are there, so if a wise A&R decides to chuck some notes at them, then who knows what could come of them.

Is Tropical – I’ll Take My Chances (demo)

Is Tropical – I Think We’re Alone (demo)

PS – If you’re around the Liverpool area then you can catch them without digging into your pockets for any shrapnel (ie, free) at Mojo next Monday, 8th Feb. And if you really like them, or their hair, or both, then you can watch it all over again after you’ve forked over a tenner to the good people at Evol to see them with New Young Pony Club on Friday, March 26th.

Genuinely depressed that the top 3 selling singles on the UK iTunes at the time of writing are the atrociously flaccid and characterless “Fireflies” (written by the equally beige and appalling Owl City, who also wrote an entire song about a trip to the dentist – no joke, unfortunately), the debut single from the fucking irritating teenage sensations Jedward (who only became famous because even the undemanding X Factor audience realised that they didn’t possess a single piece of laudable musicianship between the brain-dead two of them )  and a ridiculously obvious single from the cast of Glee; yet another example that youth culture is seriously and extremely fucked.

I really shouldn’t care. I should be used to this – lots of people enjoy exceptionally tired and mundane music, and that should be fine. But it’s not fine, at all. Put simply, it’s not fine because if you bother to even scratch the surface of what’s beneath the vapid layer of shit that Simon Cowell (don’t get me started on him, that would require another post) et al have spread over the charts, there has arguably never been more of a wealth of fantastic music, of all genres. It’s not a case of being a fan of pop music, or being a fan of alternative music; there’s mounds of insanely brilliant and affecting pop music out there, it just tends to get ignored because they don’t have EMI’s chequebook behind them.

What has made this dire situation even worse (if that was possible) is that Miike Snow released “Silvia” last week – to general disdain and lack of reaction. I’m not going to argue that “Silvia” is their strongest single; it’s not, but it had more than enough instant appeal to scratch the charts. Here we have a group of super-producers who between them have written hits for Kylie, Britney and Kelis, have released a hugely critically acclaimed album within the past year, and yet when they release just one of these agonisingly perfect pop songs onto the shit munching public, the reaction is just…. non existent. It’s clear that something’s wrong. The great music is there, and it’s being recognised more and more by a music loving community that, ironically, barely buys music anymore, whilst meeting nothing more than indifference from the record buying public. The trouble is that, as fun as ridiculing the indefensible Own City is, it’s going to make next to no difference, and that if we genuinely want things to change, then we’re going to have to do something about it. I’ve no idea how this is going to happen but… you know… if I find the answer I’ll let you know.

This is really more than convenient, because in the past 24 hours I stumbled across this Netksy drum and bass remix of “Black & Blue”. I’ve also been completely hammering their debut album for next to no reason in the past week – and here’s my album highlight that I have somehow not managed to mention yet.

Miike Snow – Black And Blue (Netsky Remix)

The trusty BBC say in the opening salvo on the seven-years-in-the-making “Heligoland” that:

“While an army of griping fans and sniping critics will argue that Heligoland doesn’t match their early triumphs, or break as much new ground, there will be younger listeners who hear it as something entirely new and recognise it for the gloomily, beguiling beauty it is.”

And so, seeing as my knowledge of Massive Attack doesn’t extend beyond a few fleeting moments of “Teardrops” that my parents used to play from time to time, I genuinely feel quite privileged that I’m so ignorant to Massive Attack’s past that I can approach “Heligoland” almost entirely objectively, with little or no expectations, and so appreciate it for the sparsely alluring record that it is.

Massive Attack’s influences, or, so I am told, those who have been influenced by Massive Attack, emanate from every other song. TV On The Radio, Burial, Radiohead and Portishead are all obvious reference points, but “Heligoland” is so expertly spun out that it doesn’t come close to sounding like a diverse collection of plagiarisms. Instead, it rings of a subtly original and carefully pieced together album; very much a proper record that was meant to be heard as a whole.

In fact, though I gather that “Heligoland” does little to break away from Massive Attack’s back catalogue, its gaunt mix of shadowy beats and casual lyrics effortlessly capture the paranoid spirit of today. From small beat pioneers to the dubby zeitgeist of murky modern day life; Massive Attack have stopped short of breathless originality, but “Heligoland” remains an enormous, funereal achievement that should be appreciated without any unrealistic expectations.

Sigh. “MEN is a Brooklyn-based band and art/performance collective that focuses on the energy of live performance and radical potential of dance music. MEN speaks to issues such as wartime economies, sexual compromise, and demanding liberties.” Oh. Lord. Thank God I didn’t read anything about MEN before I was completely won over by their stomping mélange of The Rapture, Friendly Fires, New Young Pony Club, Hot Chip and just about any other band from the past 5 years who have strayed dangerously close to the notoriously unsuccessful rock/dance cross-over.

The thing is, despite their biography pretentiously claiming that they are slowly solving the world’s biggest problems one by one (as a zany art collective, of course), “Off Our Backs” just sounds an outrageously catchy ode to sex that should be shaking the walls at Radio 1. Misleading press release aside, though, “Off Our Backs” is a completely essential foray into treacherous rock/dance territory, and its strength is solidly backed up by two other tracks that are currently circulating; “Simultaneously” and “Credit Card Babies”. They keep knocking out tunes like these, and they’re going to have to put saving the world on the backburner for a minute so that they can lay down an entire album of this completely undeniable brilliance. Count us both converted sceptics, and insanely excited too see how this unfolds.

MEN – Off Our Backs

MEN – Simultaneously

PS: Apologies for the short absence – I had to turn 18 and then put myself through a Chemistry exam. Painful.

PPS: In other vaguely related Not Many Experts news, I got interviewed by Stylish Kids In Riot about the music industry/blogs/“the future” etc etc. You can read it here, if it so tickles you.

Toro Y Moi’s “Causers Of This” is far from a classic, with a couple of tracks lapsing into the dangerous territory of being little more than vaguely chillwave-ish, yet when he gets his hazy beats just right, “Causers Of This” is completely unmissable. Worth your attention for the many moments of brilliance studded throughout an album that, if nothing else, promises much more from Toro Y Moi.

Sorry to be so concise, exam in a few days!

“Causers Of This” is out on February 23rd on Carpark and you can pre-order here.