Ever since we heard Jessie Ware’s mournful guest spot on SBTRKT’s ‘Right Thing To Do’, we’ve been watching the South Londoner like a bunch of hook-thirsty vultures (or… eh, something less creepy), gladly helping ourselves to her sultry debut single ‘Running’ and anything else that followed. New track ‘110%’ combines the soulful R&B of the aforementioned with the less dramatic vocal fluttering of ‘Right Thing To Do’, all masterfully laid over some darting, mid-tempo electronic beats. Yup, this is one Barbra Streisand-obsessed Sade-soundalike we’re very excited about. Posted 16 May
JUNAH
FEEL SAFE
[Self-Released]
It doesn’t exactly thrill me to see that any band with the audacity to release a folk pop record these days instantly gets compared to the colossal Mumford & Sons, but on ‘Feel Safe’, Dubliners Junah, with their charging melodies and complex harmonies, bear an undeniable resemblance to the young Brits. Elsewhere on their debut EP On Waves, their cleverly-placed Irish accents save them from getting lumped in with the Billboard chart-toppers, but for these two-and-a-half minutes, it’s a very distracting comparison. Posted 16 May
There’s something mightily sinister about ‘Thirteen’, the plundering third track on Melodica Deathship’s new EP, the first since their critically-rated debut album Doom Your Cities, Doom Your Towns. A bravely inventive journey through hip hop, folk, electronica and a dozen other genres, this number is all at once totally surprising and precisely what you’d expect from a band who count “piracy” among their many interests. Posted 16 May
A taster for Mark Geary’s latest opus, ‘Get Here’ is pimped out with a rousing great chorus of tambourine-shaking, merrymaking backing singers, making it one of the jolliest tracks the Dubliner has ever come up with. Taken from his fourth album Songs About Love, Songs About Leaving, it sees Geary take a dip in honky tonk territory, all the while evoking those rare-but-wonderful upbeat Dylan moments. Posted 16 May
The lush Celtic lilt in Roisin O’s voice was almost certainly inherited from her rather famous mum, Mary Black, but there’s nothing remotely copycat-ish about ‘Here We Go’, the ballsy lead single from her forthcoming debut album. With Grammy-winning producer Dave Odlum pressing all the important buttons, Ms. O has come up with a stirring, confident piece of folk pop that instantly brings to mind the event which inspired it – none other than our very own Electric Picnic. Posted 16 May
PATRICK KELLEHER
GHOST WOP TAPE
A selection of classic doo-wop covers is not something every Irish singer-songwriter will attempt, but then again, era-hopping crooner Kelleher is not every singer-songwriter. This six-track EP, spookily titled the Ghost Wop Tape, includes a heart-stopping cover of ‘Eddie My Love’, originally by The Teen Queens and a seriously lovely version of ‘Angel Baby’ by Rosie And The Originals, which first hit the charts in 1960, where it promptly became John Lennon’s favourite song. Released on cassette in connection with Record Store Day, the mini-album is available to buy online for a price of your own choosing. Dig deep, folks. Posted 16 May
NEW TOWN DISASTER
INTO THE ASYLUM
[Self-Released]
Dublin quartet New Town Disaster deal mostly in moody, vintage-sounding rock, but rather than putting them at risk of blending in with the crowd, the simplicity of the songwriting does far more good than harm. ‘Into The Asylum’ is not half as melodramatic as it sounds, and is all the better for it: rather, it’s a rolling guitar number that needs absolutely no gimmicks. Posted 16 May
We don’t hear quite as much about terminally hungover-looking rapper Wiz Khalifa over here as they do across the pond, but the sharp-tongued Dakota boy is easily the healthiest thing about this catchy-but-highly annoying Maroon 5 number, on which Adam Levine casually croons, “I’m at a payphone trying to call home…” Look, I know it’s near impossible to come up with an original concept for a pop track these days, but the day we decide that it’s okay to pluck a random inanimate object out of thin air and write a lovesong around it is the day I personally break into UMG corporate headquarters in Santa Monica and, if you’ll pardon my French, tear the place up. Also, nobody’s used a payphone since 1998. If it were a suitable setting for a feelgood summer anthem, someone would have thought of it long before the wretched things became obsolete. Posted 16 May
FOREIGN SLIPPERS
AVALANCHE
[Izumi Records]
Foreign Slippers is the brainchild of singer, songwriter, illustrator and all-round creative type Gabi Froden, an ex-choir girl and cover band frontwoman who’s decided to turn her many talents to thoughtful, avant garde pop. ‘Avalanche’ is the lead single from the London-via-Sweden outfit’s forthcoming debut album Farewell To The Old Ghosts, and thanks to Froden’s earthy growl, debuted splendidly in a great sweeping chorus, it’s spooky and sweet in all the right places. Posted 16 May
RIHANNA
WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN
[Def Jam/Island]
I think the real question here, Rihanna, is where have you been? Seriously. It’s been at least ten weeks since you released a single and in the meantime, we’ve all been listening to Jessie J and Cheryl Cole like idiots. We even started watching The Voice, and against our best efforts, found a contestant that we like, effectively putting an end to our hopes of leaving the house on a Saturday night for at least another month. Clearly, we’ve grown accustomed to your repetitive Barbadian twang, but actually, we reckon it’s been used to pretty good effect on ‘Where Have You Been’, pushed to its limit with an uncharacteristically melodic chorus and expectedly enough, layered over a mass of whopping techno beats. Welcome back. Posted 16 May
SPECTOR
CELESTINE
[Polydor]
As well as being a name that medieval popes seemed to like, ‘Celestine’ is the fifth single from London rockers Spector, and the fifth single to be released without so much as whiff of a debut album. Still, the BBC ‘Sound of 2012’ nominees are well capable of prolonging the hype for another couple of months, as long as they keep churning out brooding indie stompers like this. Posted 16 May
POP ETC
POP ETC [FREE MIXTAPE]
I was wondering how a bunch of D’Angelo-obsessed California boys got my email address (apart from, perhaps, all those D’Angelo fan fiction websites to which I regularly contribute), when someone kindly pointed out that Pop Etc. is simply the new name for The Morning Benders, who have decided to swap their sweeping, sun-drenched baroque pop for ultra smooth R&B jams, pumped up with the occasional cartoonish electro beat. If YouTube comments are to be trusted as an accurate measure of public opinion, TMB fans are up in arms about the switch in name and sound, but I can selfishly declare that I’m loving the material that has come out of this untrendy shift in direction. Plus, it takes a lot of balls to write another ‘Hungry Like The Wolf.’ Get the introductory 11-track mixtape for free at the below address. Posted 16 May
GIRAFFAGE AND XXYYXX
EVEN THOUGH [MUSIC VIDEO]
Another spectacularly trippy short from the magic-makers at Cork video haus Feel Good Lost Films, this four-minute marvel, which accompanies a collaboration by dream poppers Giraffage and Orlando beatsculptor XXYYXX, is inspired by the kaleidoscopic artwork on the cover of Tame Impala’s Innerspeak. We’ve been a fan of Feel Good Lost’s visual style for a while now, but with the video for ‘Even Though’ they’ve really outdone themselves, literally recreating the fictional in front of our eyes. You’ll see what I mean when you’ve watched the glorious thing 16 times in a row and you can no longer focus on inanimate objects. Posted 16 May
WE COME IN PIECES
SEXY ROUGE [FREE MP3]
There’s no holding back for Limerick-based math rockers We Come In Pieces, who I can confirm, having heard their second album Night Of The Living, fully live up to their name. Boasting demonic percussion, breakneck riffs and some high-energy vocal melodies, free single ‘Sexy Rouge’ is a great big slice of modern, freewheeling punk. “This has all been done before,” vocalist Kieran Hayes hollers, “there’s nothing new to create…” and he’s right… well, about the first part at least. Snap up his not-totally-original-but-still-pretty-great number from the below site. Posted 16 May
