coming soon to airwaves near you

Noisettes-Wild Young Hearts

Mazda’s advert, the one that rips off that White Stripes video, featuring Don’t Upset the Rhythm has already ensured that The Noisettes are going to enjoy much more success this time around after the rather brilliant single Don’t Give Up in 2007 failed to bring staying power to the London trio. Hopes are high this time with an album of sweet and soulful pop largely accountable to vocalist Shingai Shoniwa’s clear-as-a-bell vocals and eccentric yet empowering manner.

The Perils-Good People Do Bad Things

Same old name, clichéd lyrics, overly familiar subject matter, worn-out melodic patterns…the old indie landfill’s really taken a hit this time. I’m warning you people, sooner or later it’s going to fill up and there’ll be no space left. Then what’s going to happen eh? Put down the guitars, remove the trilbies and step away from the recording equipment. It’s been eight years, move on.

Friendly Fires-Skeleton Boy

Anyone not lucky enough to have seen this band yet; get your greedy little fingers tapping away at eBay ASAP and pay whatever those penny pinching touts are charging for the upcoming tour. Playing recently at the NME Awards the reserved-looking threesome exploded in an all out, beautiful mess of funk, trumpets, confetti and of course, Rio Carnival dancers. Skeleton Boy continues the band’s triumphant rise to the top despite sharing an almost identical melody to 90’s club hit You’re Not Alone.

The Shortwave Fade-Deletia

A sort of psychedelic Keane, The Shortwave Fade are yet another midlands band with zilcho dress sense and even less talent for writing lyrics. Deletia consists of eleven tracks set to a non-varying electro-rock backdrop which vocalist Chris Holloway‘s weak voice contends with in a struggle to make heard their tired and unadventurous lyrics (and if we die right here without a sound/I just want to say/I just have to say/I knew you were right). At their age they were over before they began.

Asher Roth-I ♥ College

Considering some of the main consumers of hip hop in the United States are middle-class, suburban-grown college kids, it was only a matter of time before one of them decided to have their go on the mic. Asher Roth, plucked from his sophomore year of university, now signed to Universal, is a white kid from the ‘burbs of Philadelphia. Single ‘I ♥ College’ sees a refreshing take on a music genre monopolised by consumerism and sexism, and although it’s also a far cry from the intelligent rap of Lupe Fiasco and Kanye, (See lyrics such as ‘Chug! Chug! Chug!’) the single has a home-grown easy attitude clearly reminiscent of late nineties/early noughties college favourites Dave Matthews Band and OAR; discussing relevant subject matter with a laid-back, ‘it’s all good,’ disposition.

zoo reviews

Justice f. Uffie-TTHHEE PPAARRTTYY
Super-hot electro lovely Uffie helps the French duo craft the perfect antidote to those last stubborn strains of D.A.N.C.E. still going round your head.

Ashley Walters feat. Mutya Buena –With You
Former So Solid Crew member cashes in on Mutya's Celebrity Big Brother appearance. Good plan, rubbish song.

Lily Allen-The Fear
Gobby-mouthed Allen ditches the smart-ass lyrics and give-a-toss attitude in a satirical bid to come across all cute and naïve…and loses all her charm in the process.

Jay Sean-Tonight
No doubt the big hit in the clubs over the coming months, no doubt a lot more palatable with several beers down you. Instantly forgettable.

The Rifles-Fall to Sorrow
Lad-rock in a box. Paul Weller's latest favourites do exactly what it says on the tin, nothing more, nothing less.

The Airborne Toxic Event-Sometime Around Midnight
What with all the haunting violins and heartfelt emotion pouring out of this dramatic delivery from Los Angeles' hottest indie-rockers you'd be completely forgiven for shedding a very small, very manly tear.

not looking swell for 2009...

Cage the Elephant-Back Against The Wall
Former champions to the children of the NME, the madcap Kentuckians fail to top previous successes with their latest contribution of indefinable rock/pop/rap/blues/whatever. A darned shame after tales of rowdy live shows and what was shaping up to be a tasty back catalogue.

Tommy Sparks-I’m A Rope
Yet another Scandinavian joins the invasion reminding us of how precious few first-class musicians we’ve been producing on our fair isle of late. I’m A Rope sees a delicious mix of electro with it’s roots firmly planted in hip hop and all from a mildly geeky 31-year-old who reminds us distinctly of Russell Howard.

Skint and Demoralised-This Song Is Not About You
To go as far as to give the somewhat highbrow label ‘salt-of-the-earth, zeitgeist poetry’ to this northern lad struggling to manipulate syllables to fit in with his mate MiNI dOG’s agonizingly derivative music would require an intense stretch of the imagination. But then again, what are PR companies paid for?

Ida Maria-Oh My God
A sneaky shot at a re-release doesn’t detract from the upbeat, punching antidote this song, seen first time around in 2007, provides to all those starting-to-get-kind-of-irritating other female singers recently seen smeared over every ‘Hot for 2009’ list.


Kid British-Leave London EP
Note to a few narrow-minded critics: having a multi-racial rock band does not mean they’re The Specials. What Kid British actually are, although slightly more exciting than their indie-in-a-box peers with a dash of hip hop and just a smidgen of ska to warrant the comparisons, is sadly not enough to steer their destiny away from the inevitable finality of heading straight to the Skins soundtrack.

mr writer

Stereophonics, Decade in the Sun, The Best Of Album
The overused concept of a greatest hits album has always been confusing. Just who is it aimed at? One would believe that surely the biggest fans already own all the tracks on the album and then some, so it can’t be for them, and the recent release of the greatest hits of Craig David and Enrique Iglesias has proved that the genre is no longer a celebration of a lifetime achievement in music, so just what is it for? Hmm, quite a perplexing question. Stereophonics perhaps you can help us out?
The convenient Christmas release date of ‘A Decade in the Sun’ safely secured a million stocking fillers for dads around Britain and a nice, fat, end of year bonus for Kelly Jones and co. If there are still people out there without copies of ‘A Thousand Trees’ and ‘The Bartender and the Thief,’ although I really can’t think who, then who are we to judge what was actually a bloody good band for taking advantage and selling out just a little in these dark times of economic hardship?

emo no no

Boys like Girls-Thunder
No, don't do it. Please. Unless of course you are a fourteen year old girl with a penchant for polka dots and a black fringe which renders sight impossible, who just feels like, totally no-one gets you, apart from My Chemical Romance. And you live in Birmingham.

brian wilson would be proud

pacific! A Tree
So you have no job prospects, in all likelihood only got a bunch of IOU’s for Christmas and if you just turn your head towards the City, you’ll see a sky peppered with falling bankers as they plunge to their untimely but self imposed deaths, but hey! Enough of that worrying, pacific! are here! More blissful pop hailing from Scandinavia with enough of a Beach Boys/ Hawaii Five-O vibe to provide the perfect form of escapism. One listen and you’re reclining in a hammock, sipping mojitos whilst an impossibly beautiful island native massages your nether regions. Pure melodic delight.

i think i love her...

Ladyhawke, My Delirium-Remixes
Gee whizz-lucky me, a whole CD of the same song remixed in ten different ways. Not really necessary, but who gives a shit, Ladyhawke rocks, the song’s awesome and anything that can be done to keep her around as long as possible needs to be done, so go, buy, and enjoy, ten times over.

Asted-way Ittle-ay Eejays-day

The View 21st November, Astoria
It's easy to get complacent after a swift rise to fame. In a difficult music industry to crack, Scottish rascals The View, under 1965’s James Endeacott, went from drinking in bus stops to sold-out tours in what seemed like barely a few months. However, the band’s transformation from underground darlings of the fourteen year old Doherty-alike tribe to drug-addled, Radio 1 brown-nosers has given the quartet a frustrating arrogance of the kind that usually precedes a fall.
It is rare to find a crowd as excitable as dedicated fans of The View. The space in front of the stage is packed to the brim with sweaty teenagers, soaked from flying beer cans, (slightly annoying until someone catches a band member square on his head) they are literally dribbling with excitement. And for the first three songs, the band acknowledge this, for a brief moment it is clear why they garnered such a dedicated following. Their relentless energy on two new songs and old favourite ‘Wasted Little DJ’s’ creates a squirming mess of crowd surfing, fights, more airborne beer cans and strewn items of clothing. The band’s thick accents render their banter incomprehensible to the Southern crowd but to no matter; the teenagers have got their heroes back.
After this brief spurt of energy however, the two front men seem to give up. They stop engaging with the crowd, new songs have clearly borrowed chords from old ones, obscenities are shouted to get the rise out of the audience that their music no longer can. The band stumble on with their well known tunes becoming less and less coherent to the disdain of the crowd desperately trying to sing along. Suddenly after barely fifty minutes and an unrecognizable ‘Superstar Tradesman’ they mumble their goodbyes and slope off stage, leaving the crowd chanting for an encore that never comes.
Most exasperating about the experience is that it was clear from their opening that The View could have achieved the gig of their life. Halfway through a near sold out tour, with an audience of die hard fans filling the prestigious London Astoria and they just couldn’t be bothered. Well, unfortunately for The View, they return to a music world with a very different face than the one they left just over a year ago. The fast-paced, internet driven industry has only got worse, and the fickleness of fans, due to a plethora of free music has augmented tenfold. The View were lucky in that they already had a fan base to come back to, but several more gigs like this one and the Dryburgh boys are in for a rude awakening.

just for a tonight from several months ago

One Night Only; Push, Astoria 2
One Night Only, never before has a name encompassed so much interminable irony. Looking uneasy without their safety-net target audience normally composed of fifteen-year-old beauties of indeterminable sex and Hoxton haircuts, the Yorkshire band are out of their depth in this over-18’s nightclub. It is never going to be easy to win over a crowd of inebriated revellers on a Saturday night whose dancing tunes have been extinguished in an attempt to force them to watch you. ONO are painfully aware of this fact and the band’s jazzy attire and freshly buffed winklepickers do little to distract from the looks of panic, (or was that boredom?)on their faces as they take to the stage. Comprised of five spritely teenagers, with the preposterously beautiful lead singer George Craig perhaps providing a clue to the mystery of their 27,000 Myspace friends, the band stumble their way through their short set without an ounce of emotion; even after their first single Just for Tonight rewards them with several twitters of recognition from the dwindling crowd. Onstage there are no smiles, no outlandish stage antics, no light-hearted banter to do the job their music can’t. It’s worth mentioning that in consequence, the audience is possibly the most unresponsive ever recorded in history. There is not so much as a solitary mosh-pit aficionado to be seen, let alone people fighting for the coveted position against the front railings. Ah, so they’re only young, you say. Give them a chance? In today’s fast paced world of music there are not only a million bands that are doing it better, there are a million bands that are doing it better and are even younger. There is no room for error; it is no longer enough to be a sharply dressed, pretty face in the unforgiving milieu of new music. And, if they’ve any sense, the younger crowd’s opinion will soon echo the disdainful judgment of the audience members at Push. One Night Only? Here’s hoping.

control the noise

Noise Control-Steel
Top marks to the record producer who realised that electro was on the verge of taking over identikit indie bands; why not fuse the two together? Well, fuse he has in the shape of Dublin fivesome Noise Control who’s single ‘Steel’ serves to prove the unfortunate issue that the quality of music is no longer as important as the money that follows. The group that has been hailed as the love child of Underworld and The Prodigy is enough to leave music fans in a cold sweat about the future of dance. The harsh and confusing mishmash of ‘Steel’ is an obvious yet ingenious ploy to cover as many genres as possible to reel in the most gullible advocates of all scenes. Is it drum and bass? Is it rock? Who knows, but my god lets take MDMA, live for the weekend, chew through our own lips, and dance whilst looking like utter pricks.

WORSTival...ha...ha...hmm. sorry

Britain, ever the laughing stock of it’s European neighbours, is often mocked for it’s somewhat trying climate. The British have developed such a blasé attitude to their notoriously wet summers that rain is rarely able to spoil any event. Unfortunately for revellers headed southwards to the Isle of Wight’s Bestival, the tempestuous weather so far surpassed any expectations of an English summer that even the most hardened festival goers were tested.
For the past four years, Bestival, a product of DJ Rob Da Bank and his Sunday Best label has gone from strength to strength, earning it’s place among the top festivals in an increasingly full market. Small but significant touches keep the festival’s vibe individual, but even a breast-feeding area named ‘Breastival’ couldn’t cover up the grave oversights made by the organisers. By the time people arrived late on Thursday, hurricane force winds and torrential rain had already churned Robin Hill Park into a quagmire impossible to navigate, made less helpful by the confused stewards, seemingly unable to distinguish the whereabouts of any of the camping grounds, or more worryingly, the medical tent.
Those brave enough to venture out from the safety of their tents to catch the likes of their favourite lesser known or new acts such as Lykke Li or Metronomy on the BBC Introducing Stage were thrilled to find the stage had sunk into a watery grave rendering all acts cancelled until further notice. A similar policy followed on Saturday night when all acts past 7:30 mysteriously failed to materialize.
Disorganization of bands was a running theme throughout the festival. Saturday came with the slow realisation that someone, somewhere, had taken it upon themselves to move all bands on the main stage forward by an hour. Unfortunately for Bestival organisers, their foolproof method for enlightening people to this fact; one drunk pirate stumbling through crowds of thirty thousand with a sign, failed miserably, and resulted in many missing key acts they came especially to see.
Luckily on Friday night the rain held off just long enough for the atmospheric My Bloody Valentine to take the stage. A long summer of festivals had not affected the energy of the newly reformed band in the slightest and their fifteen minute wall of sound managed to excite even the most downhearted of the audience. Over in the Big Top tent the fantastic Ladyhawke and Santogold successfully flew the flag for those few female musicians left without a Brit School diploma and both delivered stunning sets. As evening wore on, the mud continued to rise and the rain again began to fall as the night descended into a filthy mess of fiendish electro courtesy of Erol Alkan and Chromeo.
To those who had survived through to Saturday morning after a night of Mother Nature’s worst it was clear from empty patches of grass around the campsites that Bestival had proved too much for many. However with the report (untrue) that the worst of the weather was over and with Saturday being Bestival’s famous day of fancy dress, things began to look up. The unfortunate irony of the theme, ‘30,000 Freaks under the Sea,’ was lost on no-one.
Saturday saw a big line up for the Main Stage. An erratic and frankly terrifying Gary Numan embodied the plight of an aging one-hit wonder clinging on to his last ounce of glory (with fabulous results) and brought a smile, albeit one of ridicule, to the mud soaked crowd. The mood only continued to lift as ‘Special Guests’ turned out to be The Specials, billed as Terry Hall and Friends in the absence of Jerry Dammers, who bounced their way through old favourites ‘A Message to you Rudy’ and ‘Too Much Too Young.’ Continuing along on the theme of comeback bands, The Human League, a vision of eighties pop in a whirl of pink and sequins, hairspray and inoffensive melodies proved that they still had it. And just in case anyone still cares, yes Amy Winehouse came, yes, she made everyone wait for over an hour, no, she didn’t complete a full set, and yes she snarled profanities at the audience before stumbling offstage, the end.
After an obscure and somewhat disappointing set by Aphex Twin and the chilling realisation that the campsite bore an uncanny resemblance to The Somme with people dropping like flies at every step, it became clear that things had gone too far. The momentary magic brought on by a single sighting of blue sky earlier in the day and an evening of nostalgic music was gone, and things again became unbearably hopeless. There were grim nods and looks of defeat; it was time to go home... And so, Sunday morning, ignoring the promise of Underworld later that evening, many began the long march home, back to a roof over their heads, baths, and warm beds; an untimely end to a potentially marvellous weekend.