I think we can all agree that Kelis Rodgers is undoubtedly A Good Thing, reliably producing fantastic and fantastically cutting edge pop music for more than 15 years now. Yet there’s always been the strange and nagging feeling that she’s never been anyway near as successful as you’d think should be her absolute right- even her commercial peak 2003’s ‘Tasty’ never broke the album chart top ten and nobody even bothered releasing her 2001 second album ‘Wanderland’ in her native US. It seems with her fabulous sixth album she’s going all out in pursuit of the massive hit her talent and fame seems to demand. The only real gripe you can have with ‘Food’ is that it’s by far and away the most conventional and ‘normal’ release of her career, and a second may be that that her amazing voice can sometimes disappointingly sound like it’s pushed a little too low in the mix in thrall to the general tunes themselves. But when the tunes are this good it’s hard to muster up much in the way of complaint. ‘Food’ absolutely detonates out of the traps with an almost dangerously exhilarating opening five of Jerk Ribs, Breakfast, Forever Be, Floyd and Runnin and although the album then catches a small breath out of fear of any coronary risks it never truly lets up over 51 minutes and you can easily imagine any of its 13 tracks being number 1 for weeks. The results? A number 20 in the UK and the dizzy heights of 73 in America. Fuck ’em Kelis, they’re not good enough for you.

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Hey! It actually says ‘Food’! This is literally the first time I’ve noticed and the record came out in April.

Come on Kelis- how are people supposed to buy it if they can’t read the fucker?

2/5

Are Elbow now a victim of their own continued brilliance? Of course ‘The Take Off and Landing of Everything’ is wonderful, but you just expect that don’t you? We don’t just believe and assume every Elbow release will be fantastic, it’s now such an anticipated event that we simply take for granted how fabulous it is. The album was released, received rave review, then was swiftly forgotten. Perhaps Elbow have simply settled into a groove now- content to forever release great music though never really challenging their sound. At least their latest release doesn’t contain a shameless One Day Like This ape akin to ‘Build a Rocket Boys’ Open Arms. As fabulous as the album is, you can’t help but dream that they’d let loose a bit more and throw off the self-imposed shackles of their sound a little more frequently, the absolutely fan-fucking-brillaintly-awesome-tastic Charge is a small hint of just how amazing Elbow can be when they think slightly more outside the box of their own conventions.

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‘What do you ponder child? Are you already at such a young age wary of life’s eternal struggles? Yet you see in the distance some great beauty and are still in thrall to the delightful possibilities of human condition?’

‘No, just wondering when you’re gonna clean up that crap I’ve just done’

‘Jesus… Anyone fancy a pint?’

3/5

When you’re told openly gay house musician Drew Daniel is releasing an album of electro covers of black metal standards (well, some of the tracks are ‘standards’ apparently, although I’m told that some of the tracks by such luminaries of scene as Venom, Darkthrone, Sarcofago and- oh yes- Impaled Northern Moonforest are slightly more ‘obscure’ cuts) you immediately assume it’s going to be some hilarious work of cutting satire, exposing the genre’s occasional (frequent??) brushes with gruesome homophobia, alongside its forays into sexism, racism and just good old fashioned hatred. In fact it’s almost the opposite- Drew Daniels has in fact long been a committed black metal fan and instead uses the record to try and highlight just how brilliant some of the music can be– ‘Why Do the Heathen Rage’ is actually an attempt to show that the genre doesn’t just deserve to be solely associated with Norwegian murders and church burning. While I can’t say the record has convinced me to rush off to Our Price and purchase a few choice efforts from the Hellhammer back-catalogue, the album is nevertheless a resounding success aurally- 10 brilliant songs that you approach first as a curiosity and soon grow to appreciate as work of uncommon genius. Ready To Fuck probably best encapsulates the record’s mission in every sense, while Satanic Black Devotion throwing in a sample of Snap’s The Power illustrates how the project never completely jetisons an underlying sense of humour, because really how could you approach such a thing completely straight faced??

So AN really did a song called Let There Be Ebola Frost?? Brilliant…

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Brilliantly captures the record’s spirit with graphic, grotesque yet intensely humorous images of men getting up to all sort of grot. Includes the record’s sub-heading ‘Electronic Profanations of Black metal Classics’

4/5

Blimey…

Ben Frost’s eleventh record is precisely the kind of challenging and uncompromisingly dark experience many people expected Aphex Twin’s (more on him later. Or maybe not. No spoilers here) record would be. ‘A U R O R A’ is an almost maliciously difficult listen, aggresively intense and the kind of record that would snap your neck for even suggesting in passing that it maybe crack a smile. It’s very possible that Frost was so uncomfortable with the general happy-go-lucky disposition of his native Australia that he simply had to decamp to Iceland to find surroundings that better suited his music’s wrought intensity. Jesus Christ- has there been any decent album recorded the past few years that hasn’t got some link to Iceland? I can only assume the entire country is just some floating Studio 54 that any musician worth their salt simply has to frequent. Ben Frost’s ideal location wouldn’t be Studio 54 of course- in his perfect World he’d be convulsing on the pavement outside the Viper Room, choking painfully to death on his own vomit. ‘A U R O R A’ demands to be listened to as a whole, and when I say ‘demands’ I mean you worry that if you were to break the record down at all it would actually leap from the speakers and throttle you to death with the extension cables. Perhaps the record’s deep sense of dramatic dread can get a little overwrought at times, but it’s such a threateningly wonderful experience that you dare not complain.

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What… is… that…?

Is it… some guy being electrocuted…?

Ah shit, this is like Ringu isn’t it? Now I’ve seen that I’m gonna die

4/5

Sky Ferreira was signed at 15 in the hope she could perhaps become the next teen pop sensation, general commercial failures and disputes with her record company together with the odd occasional run in with the law means that her debut finally arrives when she’s a grizzled and hideously disillusioned veteran of this scummy business at the practically pension age of 23. ‘Night Time My Time’ isn’t shy about laying out just quite how horrendous and difficult life as Sky Ferreira is, she leaves you in no doubt that she has pretty much has the worse life ever. It seems in every song she’s forever beating off or holding back ‘the hounds of hell‘, like one of the biggest draw back of her early record company support has been the constant interference of Cerberus. If you want an album to take the piss out of in 2014 (actually released way back in October 2013 in the US) then this is absolutely the one. The whole Sky Ferreira mystique is almost beyond parody. The music however is fucking brilliant. ‘Night Time My Time’ is absolute pop/punk-perfection, such a wonderful blast of bubblegum ridiculous that the whole persona simply works in as a package making the album a brilliant pop thing, regardless of how intentional the effect is. Ferreira’s deep disillusion with the business gives her a voice a wonderfully bored and jaded sound that underlays just how fantastic the pop songs are– Selena Gomez would kill for tracks this joyously good.

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Boooooooooooooobs!

Actually, there actually exists a widely held theory that the only reason this album’s been in any way successful is because she shows a nipple on the cover, so to be honest I can’t really be arsed making any effort here while such beliefs seriously exist.

3/5

On his debut Eric Bergland referred to himself as ‘ceo’ but now on this sophomore effort he feels confident enough to use to name ‘CEO’. If someone has such a shockingly casual disregard for the standard use of capitalisation you can only imagine what kind of crazy music he’s capable of. ‘Wonderland’ does not disappoint thankfully, painting with musical ribbons that often sound like you’ve violently thrown a packet of Crayolas hard into the face of the craziest guy at the asylum and angrily barked the instruction that you need a picture drawn of a clown riding a stegosaurus. Only, you know, in a good way. You’ll even forgive him naming a song OMG when the results are quite so fantastic and I can state with some confidence that there has been no song this year quite as well suited to whoop-whoop-a-whooping along to as Harikari. The only real problem with listening to Bergland’s second is that any record you listen to after it is going to sound ridiculously slight and undercooked in comparison- every wonderful song here (and they all are wonderful) is a gloriously bonkers kaleidoscope of sounds that frequently introduce noises you’d never previously known existed never mind not considered them songworthy. Well that’s not the only problem- I suppose I can imagine extended listens could possibly send you insane, but Jesus Christ what kind of nanny state is this?

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If you find this cover in any way slightly ridiculous there’s a big chance this album isn’t for you.

4/5

Death, death, death, death, death, if George RR Martin picked up a guitar he would be more than likely to produce an album like ‘Benji’, where Mark Kozalek introduces and deeply maps out intriguing and likable characters before killing them off about 3 minutes in. Usually by an exploding spray paint can strangely enough, this whole album is almost a PSA announcement on the safety of pressurised gas cannisters. ‘Benji’ is definitely the record to go for if you really fancy a good hour of facing up to your own mortality and how life is essentially so dispensable and easily removable. If these tales are true, while being meaningless to the record’s essential power, it’s hard to think of any recent record so doused in personal tragedy other than Eels’ ‘Electro-Shock Blues’ Oh yeah, and it’s very, very good too. Brilliant in fact. Despite the record’s general moroseness it’s also frequently hilarious, almost counter-intuitively life-affirming and the fact that it’s almost 60 minutes of unstopped lyrics means there’s no other album this year that will possibly reward repeated listens. Sadly there’s nothing here that can quite match War On Drugs: Suck My Cock.

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This isn’t the real cover is it?

Nope, what I’ve done is made a joke there.

Not a very good one either…

1/5

Nobody likes the Wild Beasts, they don’t care. Actually that’s a ridiculous exaggeration, many people are now coming round to how Kendal’s Beasts are actually one of the country’s greatest bands and in a perfect World they’d be receiving the kind of adulation that far lesser bands like Kasabian bizarrely receive. There are little moments of frustration at Wild Beast’s position in the rock hierarchy on the band’s fourth, from Wanderlust‘s brilliant ‘Don’t confuse me with someone who gives a fuck/In your mother tongue what’s the verb ‘to suck’?’ to Nature Boy‘s assertion that country bumpkins Wild Beasts can teach the girlfriends of these city boys a thing or two (and yes, the title is a Rick Flair reference and the inclusion of the Jack ‘The Snake’ catchphrase ‘A little fun for me and none for you’ shows that the band don’t demand to always be taken completely seriously). From their beginnings as a type of sub-Coral bonkers indie-rockers Wild Beasts have since entered that sweet spot where their r’n’b meets funk meets 80s indie sound means they sound like nobody apart from themselves. Perhaps they’re actually Kate Bush’s closest modern aural relative, or perhaps I’m just saying that because it’s a rather timely reference. You know me- a good pop culture reference is worth far more than any decent content. Vaping! True Detective! Guardians of the Galaxy! Can I still get away with Miley Cyrus…?

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Boom! A Wild Beast explosion!

Suits the music about as much as a photo of goatse girl, but oooooh look at the colours!

Goatse girl isn’t a great pop culture reference is it?

4/5

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Now this.

Is what.

I’m talking.

About.

Prince’s solo 2014 release ‘Art Official Age’ was pretty much a damp squib, suggesting and threatening that Prince was going to fuck up this opportunity to get back in the game presented by the increased media attention. His record with his new band however is an almost unqualified (almost– there’s certainly one or two duff tracks) success, his best and most consistently excellent record since 2006’s brilliant ‘3121’ and perhaps his best album with a band since way back to 1991’s ‘Diamonds and Pearls’. In fact the stripped down nature of ‘Plectrumelectrum’ (maybe 2014’s most fun album title to say out loud- it simply dry humps the tongue it passes up from your voice box, go on try it) makes it almost unique in Prince’s behemoth back-catalogue- just bass, two guitars and drums, why hasn’t anyone thought of that before?– and you can only assume 3rdeyegirl (Princehasdevelopedadeephatredofthespacebar) have become some much needed muse (‘A girl with a guitar is twelve times better/Than another crazy band of boys’ Why ‘twelve’ specifically?). Even the tracks where one of 3rdeye take the mic- Whitecaps a particular highlight- work wonderfully. Believe the hype- this Prince fellow’s aaaaaaaaaaaaaalright.

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If Prince ever took you back to his place after a night out (we can but hope) then you’d dearly wish he would light a similar looking candle to ‘set the mood’.

3/5

Yes, another EP, but so what? This list isn’t a simple measure of how many minutes a record passes you know? And anyway as we all know it’s not how long it is but what you do with it that counts and a woman’s G-spot is only two inches inside her vagina (ah crumbs, I think I took that analogy a step too far). In fact the brilliant ‘Time of Dust becomes even shorter when you do the right thing and skip the drab and aimless first track Come Into My Dreamland. The remaining five tracks though are a near-enough perfect collection, a thrilling combination of Nick Cave and Jeff Buckley that’s darkly Gothic in parts but nearly always crescendos into grandiose wonderfulness. There’s also BIG brilliant choruses and hooks so pronounced Dustin Hoffman is portraying them in a 1991 film. Also on the 100^th anniversary of first World War the fabulous We All Went Down With the Ship couldn’t be more timely.

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‘Oooooooooooh, very evocative, yes very good Ed, can we all go home now?’

‘Just there… That’s where I dropped the body…’

‘Jesus… Anyone fancy a pint?’

3/5