Not Many Experts

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.