Phew… Jesus, just listened to the album and now I need a lie down before I start this…

‘Deep Fantasy’ is an awesomely abrasive album, a brilliant screech of anger of what it’s like to be female in 2014. And it’s very angry. Why wouldn’t it be though? The patriarchy has somehow convinced people that ‘feminism’ is a dirty word, in 2014 we don’t just reject the ridiculous calls for equality from women, we laugh at them. Ha! Feminists! Too ugly and fat to get a boyfriend so they try and take away my page 3! The fact that someone could still write a song about rape and conceivably call it I Believe You is a damning indictment of a hideous issue in today’s society- about one in 30 woman who accuses someone of rape can expect the accused to go to court- despite what ‘Gone Girl’ may put across do we really believe that 96.6% of women…? Actually that’s a bit of a spoiler isn’t it? It’s not all japes about sexual abuse- Mish Way’s lyrics, which should perhaps be taught in schools, cover subjects as broad as depression, body image and disparity of employment pay and generally stoke the feeling that perhaps she wouldn’t be Dapper Laughs’ biggest fan. I better stop now actually, starting to sound like a fucking fat lezzer feminist.

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Ah jeez, there’s far too much going on in this cover, and I just know there’s about a thousand profound political statements being made that are just flying over my head.

I can’t take it all in! Can’t it just be a photo of the band standing against a wall or something? Holding your instruments so I can identify you?

2/5

‘Green Language’ starts so wonderfully. After about 4/5 tracks you’re absolutely hooked, you’ve heard the awesome collage of sounds Russel Whyte throws at you, you hear musical stabs that really shouldn’t work piercing areas that have no business existing, you laugh at the little trick he plays at the start of A Glimpse when he throws a guitar solo in and kids you into thinking for a second that the album’s going to morph into some sub-Pendulum dance rock. You’re converted. This is the best dance album of the year. No, the best dance album ever. No, the best thing ever. You take your clothes off, and throooooooow them in the lake. Yes! Yes! Give me more! Then… It stops… Or rather the album badly loses momentum around the time guest vocalists are invited and Whyte obviously become more concerned with making his big club hit- Danny Brown’s Attak is pretty Ok, but D Double E’s Up Down stalls the album badly, almost critically. The album slightly peters out with occasional highs and the whole experience ends up feeling like a blast on a laughing gas balloon- an initial blast of elated jubilation that dies off and quickly turns into a something close to confused embarrassment.

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The two embracing flamingos beautifully capture the euphoric feelings of the album’s opening. The back of the CD more represents the second half of the album however, and instead shows the two flamingos awkwardly avoiding each other at work and one flamingo unfriending the other on Facebook after the fucker never calls back

4/5

Aaaaaaah bollocks, I really wanted to hate this, really. Damon Albarn has transformed into such a critics’ darling that if ‘Everyday Robots’ consisted of nothing else but a 25 minutes recording of the singer rhythmically slapping his buttocks while occasionally shouting ‘PEANUTS!’ it would still be acclaimed as a work of artistic genius and absolutely every review would include some snide comparison to Beady Eye (though Albarn has still to release a solo song as fun as The Roller). Annoyingly though ‘Everyday Robots’ is very good. Albarn now wishes he were as old as, say, Leonard Cohen so that maybe his tired and brow-beaten persona might fit better. The whole concept of technology begatting isolation and loneliness seems an extremely tired idea now, but Albarn explores it nicely nonetheless. And besides when he tries to go off message he ends up writing a jumpy ditty about a fucking baby elephant called Mr Tembo which is laughably out of place here and couldn’t have sparked more controversy if it tweeted a photo of a white van man’s England flag, and yet the song iss still agonizingly brilliant.

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Albarn’s new sound encapsulated, the singer slumps dejected in the corner.

‘Damon! Damon! What’s the problem??’

‘I dunno…’ he sighs ‘It’s just… people…’

‘Jesus… Anyone fancy a pint?’

4/5

Listening to ‘Shriek’ it’s difficult to comprehend how Wye Oak were right up until this release a pretty standard guitar band. The sheer wall of sound created by the synths on this album suits the band’s sound so perfectly that it’s almost unimaginable that they ever managed to do things differently. A fair comparison would be how Tegan and Sara tried a similar jump to electronic sounds last year and instead sounded rather forced and artificial. Here Jenn Wasner’s voice glides within the electronic sounds so perfectly that rarely since ‘Superman 3’ have we seen a woman so exquisitely intertwined with a machine, only this time obviously it’s less likely to be so horrific it completely traumatises your childhood and mean that more than twenty years later you still can’t bring yourself to kiss a robot. If I were to describe the album in five words it would be lush, lush, lush, lush, lush, lush. Wait, how many words was that…?

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The sad denouement to this tale is that the wind changed and Stuart’s face really did stay like that.

Ah shit, I can do better than that.

That was rubbish wasn’t it? Can I try it again?

4/5

Timothy Showalter has created 2014’s best album about being a teenager. The fact that he’s in fact 32 makes him all the more qualified to do so- the last people you should talk to about being a teenager are teenagers themselves, they’re absolute idiots so in thrall to their hormones that they’d either be Earth-shatteringly depressed by the request or attempt to somehow have sex with it depending on what time of day it was. Everyone below the age of, say, 29.5 is an entirely useless human being and their opinions should be aggressively discounted. ‘Heal’ looks back on Showalter’s teenage years and reflects on how much he is ashamed of himself, yet still mourns the fact that such shame and sadness has continued into his adulthood rather than ebbed away like he’d always hoped it would. Yet still the album reflects on how music got him through these difficult times, perhaps in the hope that it becomes some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy and some lonely Pennsylvania (other places are available. I think) teen will pick up ‘Heal’ and experience similar epiphanies. The music itself harks back to 80s pop and grunge, echoing the contentious nostalgia of the lyrics. A superior achievement. Maybe should be higher…

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Timothy Showalter is a wonderful exponent of facial hair, his locks here are something we should all aspire to. Yes, you too women- the bearded lady look is definitely gonna be big sometime in maybe 2016.

There’s also evidence of how Showalter’s beard is quickly helping him out with the other sex

4/5

Hmmm, say how good the album is, or just a massive spiel about how much I love Robyn? Let’s see if we can combine the two: ‘Do It Again’ is technically an EP, but it works brilliantly well as a long player and if this team up ever decide to continue onto a full record it’s hard to imagine them bettering these 5 tracks and 34 minutes. If there’s one tiny gripe it’s that the record never quite repeats the majesty of opening track Monument, but there’s certainly no shame in that as the song is an absolute knock-down-slap-face-kick-my-balls classic. Even if the set only existed to act as a presentation of how masterfully Robyn can underplay a vocal then it would be massively worthwhile, the fact that the album is such a wonderful collection is just an added bonus akin to realising the restaurant forgot to charge you for that seventh bottle of wine that last time you went out for a meal by yourself (an apppointment you made with the express intention to simply weep miserably into the gazpacho starter). Perhaps it’s less interesting when it seems to be playing exclusively to Robyn’s strengths, but that doesn’t make something like Say It any less enjoyable. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m off out to have it large listening to the title track. Now where did I put my whistle? And that MDMA I had?

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Oh this is quite horrifying, it seems Röyksopp are actually some ISIS-type terrorist group from the not too distant future and have pushed Robyn in front of the camera to read out their demands less she lose that beautiful head.

I can’t approve of this

1/5

Originally from Rhode Island, band leader/pretty much only constant member Joel Thibodeau obviously felt he needed to record the band’s third in the new capital of music, so off he flew to Reykjavik. The idea of Iceland certainly comes to mind more when you listen to ‘Island Intervals’ chilled and blustery glacial rhythms, or perhaps it’s simply the album’s massive similarities to a slightly more folksy Sigur Ross. Simply read the lyrics to the songs and you will quickly decide that you absolutely hate the band- I’m surprised such sickening Tolkeinesque whimsy wasn’t recorded in Elven and I can’t be sure but I swear I heard a ‘hey nonny-noo’ somewhere- this is music seemingly designed to be played by wandering minstrels as they fiddle from town to town, and its ridiculous descriptions of rustic nature frequently renders the whole exercise simply silly sounding. Just listen to the music however, and it’s absolutely glorious, reaching an apex with the absolutely stunning Loom.

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Ok, this one is definitely some kind of Rorschach test isn’t it?

Unfortunately I can still only see someone bending over and exposing their anus.

I need help.

2/5

The Roots’ eleventh album has been criticised in some corners for it’s lack of content, with some complaining that its 34 minutes and maybe 8/9 true songs constitutes something of a cop-out. It seems that hip hop artists can’t win- produce a 28 track behemoth including no less that 12 skits about your voyage to Burton’s to cheekily change back the trousers you soiled yourself in the night before and we complain about the ridiculous excesses of the art form and ask why can they not simply be a little more harsh with their editing (track 18 Attikus Funk Be-Donk-A-Donk ft. The Wheezy & Sickly Geoffrey should really go for a start) yet when the brilliantly succinct and wonderfully named ‘…And Then You Shoot Your Cousin’ arrives we complain that it should be longer. What a World. The album is certainly not perfect (try not to cringe when The Roots go off on one of their trademark toe-curlingly self-important sermons in The Devil, go on I dare you) but the highlights are so high that it can’t fail to be one of the year’s best listens.

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You’re fixed with an angrily accusing glare.

Some guy just turned up and completely Picassonated the two of them and you saw the whole thing.

And yet what did you do? Nothing…

3/5

Aha! Now this is more like it! Brian Eno and Karl Hyde didn’t really feel they got their first collaboration quite right, but everyone was nice enough to give them another shot at it mere months later. They straight away noticed the principle problem with ‘Someday World’ and smacked away Hyde’s hand with a cane when he tried to reach for the microphone again- naughty boy!- Eno’s voice rather predictably suits his music far better, and the previous album’s slightly jaded aimlessness is barked back into being ship shape again. ‘High Life’ consists of six wonderfully looooooooooong songs (taking up 45 minutes in total) that despite their length never outstay their welcome and even sound rather succinct. Opener Return (I see what they did there) is what U2 sound like in some bizarre and frightening parallel universe where they’re actually as good as they believed themselves to be, while Time to Waste It- with it’s heavily treated vocal samples and Afro-beat rhythm- might be the most ‘Brian Eno’ song Brian Eno’s ever done.

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Hmmmmm….

Is that…? No…

Got him!

Phew, I can normally find Wally a lot quicker than that

TV On the Radio have gone through some difficult times since releasing the stone cold classic (and winner of the 2008 Palmers of course) ‘Dear Science’- they split from their long time label Interscope and the release of the brilliant follow up ‘Nine Types of Light’ was somewhat overshadowed by bassist Gerard Smith dying days later. It’s perhaps unsurprising that ‘Seeds’ doesn’t find TOTR in an especially inventive and experimental mood- it’s like right now they’re simply desiring simplicity, a deep need for things to just be a bit more boringly, wonderfully normal again. So this is Tv On the Radio merely trying their best to sound like Tv On the Radio, which though of course means you might miss some of their usual boundary-pushing ambition, TVOTR operating in maybe 2^nd gear is still a beast capable of some wonderful music.

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I don’t even know what that is. Get it out of my face

1/5