Not Many Experts

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.