Damme it!

Band: Lightspeed Champion
Title: 'Madame Van Damme'
Album: Life Is Sweet! Nice To Meet You



This is going to sound mean, but we're saying it for his own good; Lighstpeed Champion's videos are usually more interesting than the songs. There, we said it. It's us being cruel to be kind, because we've seen him at work with acts like Solange and Theophilus London and he's clearly super talented, but his own stuff seems to be a bit, well, disappointing. The above video for 'Madame Van Damme' is bright, funny and self-referential, whilst the song is a bit of a plodder.

New Musick Monday

Here at Musick Towers our internet connection appears to currently be powered by two mice, running furiously on tiny wheels, so this edition of the award-winning New Musick Monday may be cut short at any moment. With that in mind, let's cut the crap and get right to the good stuff; Rufus Wainwright was last week's real winner, entering at number 21, whilst She & Him and Darwin Deez both bowed at number 62, the former on the album chart and the latter in the singles version. So, who's stepping up to the plate this week?

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Congratulations by MGMT 

This is fast becoming one of the most over-analysed albums in recent years, with every critic worth his salt mewing about the fact that the band have ditched their sound in favour of eighteen minute long impressionist soundscapes. In reality, Congratulations is a brilliant mix of English psych rock and a very peculiar sense of humour, one that finds them crafting a song about how Brian Eno is responsible for just about every sound we hear. Sure there's a twelve minute long song that sounds like a brief run through of popular music and a fairly odious instrumental called Lady Dada's Nightmare, but it's on the quieter moments that you realise how well-crafted it all is. I Found A Whistle and Someone's Missing in particular are both quietly devastating, whilst the closing title track tells you all you need to know about why they've 'ditched' the sound of old.

DON'T BUY THIS

Everybody Wants To Be On TV by Scouting For Girls

Seriously, if you've got a spare tenner and you're thinking of buying this album, then don't. Instead, why not donate the money to any of the causes below, thus helping your fellow man and giving you the warm glow inside that only comes from hindering a band as loathsomely inept as Scouting For Girls (what is that name about!? Isn't that the name that three serial killers would come up with if they wanted to form a band in order to lure people to a den and murder them?). Anyway, here are the links:
Amnesty
NSPCC
NSPCA
Cancer Research
The Music Therapy Charity (for the future!)

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'Acapella' by Kelis

Christ knows we've gone about this a lot already, but it's out to buy on iTunes now so we thought we'd mention it again. It's always nice to have pop stars like Kelis around and she's been off the radar for too long, so rejoice with us that she's back, making slightly off-kilter dance tunes like this one. One, two, three, "Huzzah!".

jjoin the jjoyride

Swedish duo jj were shrouded in the kind of mystery that can only be perpetuated by music blogs, so it's telling that by the time we get round to doing something on them the mystery has vanished (you can see them below) and Pitchfork are calling their new album "not very good" (or something a bit more wordy).

It's hard to describe the music jj make - balearic beat or dream pop seem the most appropriate - and there's an air of dissaffection and general inertia that's quite appealing, as if it's not really terribly important what you think of the music, it's just there. To emphasis the point, all three of their releases so far have just been ascending numbers, so their new 'full-length' (it's 26 minutes long) is called, simply, jj n° 3. The follow-up to the breathtaking, jj n° 2 (obviously), it's not the musical shit heap that Pitchfork makes out, but rather a slightly more formless and downbeat affair. As with recent tour campanions (and fellow fans of letters), The xx, jj's music is simultaneously vaporous and compelling, loaded with emotion but barely breaking a sweat. They also share a love of hip-hop, with jj choosing to seak inspiration from current jailbird Lil Wayne on the opening track, 'My Life'.

Below is the first single from jj n° 3, 'Let Go', and it features a nice dog, the two band members and a recurring visual theme, blood.



jj n° 3 isn't officially out until May but you can buy it from Rough Trade as part of an exclusive deal that also means you get jj n° 2 included. It goes without saying that you should buy these two albums right now!

It's the Friday catch-up

Time to catch up on some admin and bring you, dear reader, up to date with some songs we've been enjoying recently, but that we haven't actually got round to sharing. There are many reasons for this - the weather, laziness, the impending elections, EastEnders - but here at Musick we figure that telling you about them late is better than not telling you at all. Besides, nobody likes a know-it-all.

First up is Sia with 'Clap Your Hands', the first single from her new album, We Are Born. Sia? Isn't she that bird who sang on all those dreary Zero 7 singles? Well, yes, this is true, but she also had a pop career before that and has worked with people like Beck since then so we can forgive her. Plus, We Are Born is shaping up to be something quite special and 'Clap Your Hands' is the kind of 'carefree summer jam' we just don't hear anymore.



Another person with breasts is Sunday Girl with her debut single, 'Four Floors'. There's the faint whiff of mid-nineties trip-hop about it, which may not be a bad thing, and the chorus and the vocal performance more than makes up for it if it is. It also has a lovely middle eight bit that makes us feel a bit funny. She's also had a re-rub by Diplo, but the original version is much better.



We end, as ever, with a club banger. This is the new single from Outkast's Big Boi and it's called, rather wonderfully, 'Shutterbug'.



That's all folks.

The Sky's the limit

If Ke$ha has the whole LOL-OMG-my-knickers-just-fell-off thing down for the chart pop market, then 17-year-old Sky Ferreira is the more Dazed & Confused version. She goes to parties, sure, but she seems to go to ones that are in basement clubs and frequented by all the moody intellectuals at school and not the desperate frat boys and cheerleaders that make up the imaginary world of everyone's fourth favourite Britney.

Having worked with a plethora of pop producers for her soon-to-be-released debut - including Greg Kurstin, Bloodshy & Avant, The Teddybears and Paul Epworth - the buzz around Miss Ferreira is pretty loud. This is her debut single, '17', complete with a 'racy' video that would have got everyone all hot and bothered about ten years ago, but now just seems pretty tame.

Time will tell whether the whole package is just that bit too cool for school to sell a shed load of albums, but for now it's quite some introduction.

Fight for this love

Wildbirds & Peacedrums are that odd thing; a band who make pretension sound uplifting as opposed to knuckle-chewingly awkward.

Having tackled steel drums, every kind of percussion available and cryptic lyrics about snakes, they've decided to throw choirs into their already burgeoning mix of sounds and will release two vinyl-only EPs (Retina and Iris) later this year before slapping them together for an album in August. As a taster for what to expect they're giving away a new song, 'Fight For Me', and it's one of the best things you'll hear all week.

You can download the track from here or listen to it on this widget thing we stole.

New Musick Monday

We trust you've had your fill of Easter and are now settling down to read this with belly full of chocolate and mind full of tales of men on crosses, caves and Mel Gibson's idea of what it all means. But, dear reader, it's the fiery depths of hell for our three brave entrants from last week as Erykah Badu and Dum Dum Girls both missed the top 40 on the album charts and, most surprisingly, The Drums did the same on the singles chart. All this despite blanket music press coverage and the fact that 'Best Friend' is literally a million times better than the current UK bestseller (we can't bring ourselves to mention them here, so if you do wish to know who we're on about then pop over to google and do some searching yourselves). Anyway, force down another Wispa bar and read this...

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All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu by Rufus Wainwright

Not, as the title might suggest, a homage to the short, flame-haired Scottish singer, but instead a tribute to the death of his own alter-ego and the death of his beloved mother (it says something about Rufus Wainwright that those two things should be mourned on the same album, but there you are). Gone are the orchestral flights of fancy and instead it's just Wainwright, his piano and his musings on family ('Martha'), America ('Who Are You New York?') and the loss of his mother, who died shortly after the album was completed but who Wainwright was already mourning. There are also three Shakespeare sonnets put to music, which should push the pretentious quota off the scale but somehow he manages to pull it off.

BORROW THIS FROM SOMEONE KOOKY

Volume Two by She & Him

Zooey Deschanel is one of the most beautiful women on the planet and the mere mention of her name causes young men of a certain age to stop breathing and collapse in a heap of corduroy and plaid. With M.Ward she's managed to carve out a successful music career to go alongside her acting one and this second volume of songs is as lightweight, breezy and downright cute as the first one. Don't buy it expecting searing emotional terrain or ear-bleeding noise, but do buy it if you're feeling a bit bummed and, like, you know, just a bit 'meh'.

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'Radar Detector' by Darwin Deez

On the surface there's much to hate about Darwin Deez. For one, his hair is appalling, a strange mix of corkscrew perm and footballer's hair band and for two, this song is so naggingly catchy you might need therapy to have it removed from your brain. But, we're here to celebrate music and this is music and it's mindless but it's fun and sometimes, especially at Easter, that's all that matters.