New Releases: Girls and Girl Bands plus more

ALBUMS

Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport
Wanked over everywhere from Drowned in Sound to the Daily Mail, here's the second album from everyone's favourite asterisk-friendly band. It's deserved though, there's some great moments and wonderful, gradual, crescendos on this album. It follows the formula of Street Horrrsing so to the bone that I actually expected to hear the opening of 'Ribs Out' through the end of 'Surf Solar'. This is the only drawback, as the album delivers moment after moment of musical majesty. It's Tarot-ally great and I'm looking forward to seeing it played out again and again at the next twenty ATP festivals.

thumbs up


Girls - Album
Hyped, hip and happy - one of Girls spent their early years in a cult where good music was banned and he seems to have applied it literally to their debut album as a goodwill gesture. It's mediocre, radio-friendly indie-pop that I'm sure your girlfriends will love and your co-worker with long hair will crack one off over but at the end of the day, it's another album to throw in the bin with that Raveonettes album you once bought because the chick was fit (I bought two). Great album title too, dickheads, took me a fucking age to find it on Mediafire.

thumbs down


Pens - Hey Friend, What You Doing?
Pens aren't just any shitgaze band, they have vaginas. Plus, they have a great set of tracks in 'Freddie', 'Networking' and 'High in the Cinema', before deciding that three was enough and to make a bunch of empty, boring, repetitive jams to fill up a debut release. They are ace live though, and if the music doesn't thrill you then just try and have sex with them all.

thumbs down
 

Vivian Girls - Everything Goes Wrong
It's less than a year since I got their debut album, but this new release is still enjoyable, fresh and it sounds like Vivian Girls have more to give rather than being low on ideas. The middle tri-force of 'Tension', 'Survival' and 'The End' is terrific, and the rest of the album surrounds these tracks with a brilliant testament to the possible end of the shitgaze movement (I sense an upcoming backlash over the next year). Plus they're fitter than Pens (even the one that looks like Roland Browning from Grange Hill).

thumbs up


No Age - Losing Feeling EP
The track 'Losing Feeling' is probably the best thing No Age have laid down since the first half of Weirdo Rippers (par 'Teen Creeps'). It's a call-back to the best moments on that compilation after No Age have just tore the fuck out of your eardrums and then drop a gentle tipple of a track to calm you down. The rest of the EP follows suit, and the lovely feeling at the end of listening to this record is one of better enjoyment and satisfaction than Nouns. Great cover shot too - the melting vinyl pretty much sums up the uncomfortable sweatiness of No Age's sound.

thumbs up


The xx - xx
Listening to xx -  it's kind of good. I suppose I could compare it to Silent Shout with all the great bits vacuumed out and replaced with a bass guitar (not necessarily an insult). My below rating reflects the fact it sounded a bit void and shit when I drunkenly drove to work and needed something to perk me up, but it sounded pretty good when I waltzed home drunk one night and spent twenty minutes trying to work my key while listening to 'Shelter' on repeat. It's probably a grower, I think it has at least on the intoxicated version of me.

thumbs down on sunny, sober days, thumbs up on winter, drunk nights