Game, set and match

The most immediate track from Vampire Weekend's recently released Contra album, 'Giving Up The Gun', has rightly been chosen as the album's second single. Seeing as the band are now a number 1 selling act in America, they've clearly been given a bigger music video budget and this new five minute clip is pretty special. Directed by The Malloys and featuring guest spots from RZA, a drunk Jake Gyllenhaal, a French Lil Jon and a dorky Jonas brother, it's a veritable tennis-related feast for the eyes.



Nice blistering forehand at the end there, although her overhead needs some work.

New Musick Monday

Well, what a start to 2010. Last week we took absolutely no risks whatsoever with our album selections and we were rewarded with two top 10 albums. Delphic entered at no. 8 with their debut - fresh from finishing third in both the BBC Sound of Poll, the Brits selection for Critics Choice and Auntie June's Top Ten bands who sound a bit like New Order - whilst Vampire Weekend crashed in at number 3 with Contra. The latter has since gone from 'very good' to 'officially amazing' over the past seven days so anyone who hasn't brought it bloomin' well should. Charlotte Gainsbourg's single with Beck did diddly squat, but that's OK, we forgive you.

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Hidden by These New Puritans



Thanks to the fact that HMV no longer seems to stock CDs, we were thwarted in our attempts to listen to this second album from these pasty faced young whipper snappers. From the reviews we've read - and we understand that's not the same as hearing the music, but it's the best we've got - it's a massive creative leap from their whiny debut and it will need to be seeing as they came across as repellent little twerps in nearly every interview we read last time round. The clips available online suggest the band have taken a shining to Liars, Massive Attack and Bjork and somehow found a way to weld them together. This is clearly a good thing. The first single, 'We Want War', is pretty darn good and can be heard here.

ADD THIS TO YOUR EELS COLLECTION

End Times by Eels



Poor old Mr Eel. First his Dad dies of a heart attack, then his sister commits suicide and finally his mum dies of Cancer. How do we know all this? Not only has he written a brilliant book about it all, but Mr Eel also has a penchant for documenting his life via his music, usually in heart-breakingly detailed fashion. So it is with his new album, End Times, which deals with the ashes of a dead relationship. 'A Line In The Dirt' is a fragile, piano lament, whilst 'Gone Man' is a sweary hoedown, E's vocals delivered in that trademark deadpan manner that somehow makes the whole thing even sadder.

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'Norway' by Beach House



Oh, you're going to be hearing a lot more of Beach House because they're soon to be released new album is, and you heard it here first, one of the best albums of 2010. Yep, already. This single actually came out as a free download a few months ago but it's now available to buy. That's right, you can choose to pay 79p for a song that has actually been available for free since November. And they say the music industry don't know how to deal with the popularity of digital music. Anyways, the song is amazing, the band are amazing and the forthcoming album, entitled Teen Dream, is very much amazing. Enjoy.

New Musick Monday

As 2010 begins it's slow descent, it's heart-warming that some things never change. With that in mind, we've decided to keep on going with our only regular feature, the hugely successful, New Musick Monday. For those of you who are new to Musick, we basically scour the internet (i.e. go on nme.com and check their weekly new releases page) and bring you all the details about three exciting bits of music. These are usually in the form of two albums and a single, but we have been know to mess with the formula, usually with pretty exciting results. So, who is on our first rundown of 2010?

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Contra by Vampire Weekend



It's strange that these four young men from New York can cause such rage in certain sections of the music press. Is it because they're intelligent? Or that they show off that intelligence? Is it their love of African music and the way they interpret it? Is it because they have a tendency to comes across as smug? Would we rather all our bands were stupid and arrogant? So many questions, and yet, in reality, they're a band that have made one very promising album of catchy, guitar-based pop and are now about to follow it up with another one that expands slightly on their sound without scaring the horses. They're perhaps not worth all this fretting, and yet at the same time are really very good and jolly well deserve the success that will come their way with Contra. This is a brilliantly tight run through of new single 'Cousins' on Letterman.

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Acolyte by Delphic



It is a lovely cover isn't it? This is the debut album by Delphic, who are three criminally serious young men from somewhere in the UK. They finished third on the BBC Sound of 2010 poll and have been tipped for big things by just about every publication under the sun. So, what do they sound like? Well, they're a little bit Bloc-Party-meets-Klaxons-meets-Cut-Copy-meets-Hot-Chip and the album is produced by Ewan Pearson who has twiddled knobs for people like The Rapture, M83 and Gwen Stefani. As with most debuts it's a little patchy, but tracks like 'Doubt' prove they know their way around a dance/rock hybrid.

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'Heaven Can Wait' by Charlotte Gainsbourg



The song with the amazing video gets it's UK release and what a lovely little ditty it is. Produced by Beck, and featuring the diminutive fellow on backing vocals, it's all gently rattling percussion and warm organ sounds. Gainsbourg's sweetly fragile vocals work well with Beck's only mildly more robust croon and it's enough to make you forget the dual horrors of Beck's love of Scientology and Gainsbourg's recent horror show in Antichrist.

Kissing Cousins

This is the video for Vampire Weekend's new single 'Cousins'. It turns out that this was just a 'teaser' or 'taster' for their new album, Contra, which is a shame as it's far more interesting than this. When that familiar guitar figure kicks in at the 45 second mark we felt a strange sense of sadness and disappointment, like when Bambi's mum died.



The video is much more interesting, what with all the camera work and face-changing technology (well, they use masks, which is probably the least technological aspect about the video, but it sure is fun). It was directed by Garth Jennings, one half of Hammer & Tongs.

Something from the Weekend

Well, this is a lovely surprise. Those kind folk over at Vampire Weekend HQ have decided to allow their fans the chance to download their new single, 'Horchata', for free. All you need do is part with your email address. BUT if you'd rather not get lots of emails you'll never read, why not just listen to it below in this rather handy player type thing.



EDIT: the pissing thing isn't working! Click here instead.

It's certainly a bit of a departure, although the basic elements are still in place; lots of love for African rhythms, Ezra Koenig's slightly befuddling lyrics and a canny way of not really having an obvious chorus but somehow having more than one. Also, there are no guitars, which is hardly experimental, but weird when you think about the debut's reliance on those spidery guitar lines. It's also about five songs in one and has clearly been influenced by their keyboardist having a little dalliance with electronica via Discovery. It's a thumbs up from us!

The Very Best a man can get

As with a lot of new bands these days there's a very interesting story behind how The Very Best came to be. A few years ago European producers Radioclit were browsing around a second-hand furniture shop when they bumped into Malawian singer Esau Mwamwaya. (It's weird, we were in a second-hand furniture shop this afternoon and all we bumped into was a mounted deer head - true story).



Anyway, their chance meeting has lead to creation of a very interesting trio, whose new album (out next Monday), entitled Warm Heart of Africa, is a wonderfully sprawling mess of steel drums, big beats, synths and Mwamwaya's distinctive vocals. Guests include fellow lovers of all things African M.I.A and Ezra Koenig from Vampire Weekend.

This is the M.I.A collaboration, 'Rain Dance':



We're not going to call it 'world music', because all music is for the world...ha, ha, can you believe we actually wrote that!?

What about the elephants?

The death of Michael Jackson seems to have brought out the worst in some people. Not only do we have to endure rolling news coverage in which Jean from Tescos gets asked what she thought were the reasons behind his alleged addiction to prescription drugs, but there's also the tabloid headlines ('Jackson buried without his brain' was the low point of today's coverage). What about the music, man? Well, thankfully Jackson's hits are still taking up a fair amount of space in the UK top 75. Unfortunately, the great British public chose to buy the new single by Cascada as opposed to 'Man In The Mirror', preventing Jackson from having a posthumous number 1, for now at least.

But, what does this magnum opus sound like I hear you cry? Surely, it's some kind of pop classic to deny 'Man In The Mirror'? Well, it's not, it's this:



It's Lady GaGa for people who find the real thing that bit too complex. Cheers guys.

To make matter worse, one of Vampire Weekend and some other dude have joined 'forces' as Discovery. It's basically a way of creating modern-day R&B but in an ironic, too-clever-by-half kind of way. You probably won't understand it to be honest. Anyway, they've covered the Jackson 5 classic, 'I Want You Back'.



It's too early for Jackson to be turning in his grave, surely?