Single Of The Week

LANEOUS & THE FAMILY YAH – I Am Dog

(Bird Fire)

With their second LP Found Things ready for release, our very own West End-raised Laneous and his band of misfits continue to be the quirky indie-funkster’s best friend with the launch of this first single, I Am Dog – a swinger of a track where Laneous dreams of sniffin’ crotch and not givin’ a toss. On the flip, Deserve colours the The Family Yah in more Motown shades – and with a groovy hip hop low-end to boot, it’s a bit more in line with what we’ve come to expect. With the way his home suburb is being ‘planned’ for though, give it another album cycle and Laneous might be living next to a brand-new 20-storey complex full of yuppies and making a slightly less-funny track called ‘I Am Developer’s Cum Rag’.

THE MISSION IN MOTION – New Skin

(Taperjean Records/Shock)

Poppy post-hardcore is a very safe location to be in these days – like, have you seen the bottom 50 bands on the Soundwave line-up? That’s the kind of sound The Mission In Motion carries, sans the mascara and good cop/bad cop vocals. To their credit, New Skin is catchy, with a few lines of the song more than able to get throngs of fans singing along at all-ages shows. Rather than Brett Islaub trying to sound like a girl squaring up to Chris Barnes in a musical duet, he and the band have enough smarts to make rock the main part of their lexicon, rather than any other made up bastardized flavour-of-the-month-core suffix subgenre you’d like. Cheers to the boys for not following the crowd; it gives this track plenty of playability, as it will probably give the upcoming album.

THE HUNDRED IN THE HANDS – Pigeons

(Warp/Inertia)

Now an established act amongst New York City’s current (or rather, revived) obsession with electropop and disco psychedelia, Warp-signed The Hundred In The Hands have a bit of a tune on their hands with Pigeons; tight and funky breakbeat percussion set the pace, as Eleanore Everdell’s pretty-yet-disinterested vocals share the melodic space with light, airy sidechained pads – and a bit of obligatory square-wave action chucked in the centre to give it that retro touch all the kids are after. A bit of advice on pretty-yet-disinterested girls though: you can change their view by becoming their lapdog. Dude, you’ll totally get there in the end – and if you practice for a while, you can make that throwaway phrase ‘I like you, but I’m not ready for a relationship’ sound like white noise.

DUCK SAUCE – Barbara Streisand

(EtcEtc/Universal)

Now this is the kind of thing you pull out an alias for. A-Trak – and particularly Armand Van Helden – are no strangers to hooky house. They’ve struck gold with a hook here that will drive you crazy – and if you’re the kind of person who loathes the fact the work radio dial is permanently set to Nova, probably in the bad way. Armand’s Brooklyn funk vibe is interrupted when all channels are ducked (no pun intended) for two spoken words – Barbara Streisand – that’s when the questions flip over in your mind: Why did they do that? Are they insane? It’s something you’ll think about every time you hear it over the radio or in the next batch of dance compilations; through every commercial house club, and several times at each dance festival until the end of the summer. Probably won’t hurt if you don’t listen to it straight away, then.

THE WOMBATS – Tokyo (Vampires And Wolves)

(14th Floor/Warner)

I’ve never seen a wombat, but I don’t imagine they have pasty skin, wear bright sweaters and have just recently abandoned their guitars to play synthpop. But like it or not, Tokyo is indeed a different sound to the previously very British single-coil rock sound carried through on A Guide To Love, Loss & Desperation, as The Wombats have chosen to run all sorts of cool electronic gizmos all over the new track. I like it, but then again I wasn’t a great fan of them beforehand; call it creative growth, bandwagon jumping or just a need to piss off their existing fans, but the urgent retro synth rhythms in Tokyo alone is probably going to net the band a whole new swag of followers anyway.

JAMIROQUAI – White Knuckle Ride

(Universal)

All I can think about Jamiroquai since becoming a fan of Top Gear is, ‘Jay Kay, you rich bastard – is there a supercar you don’t own?’ I suppose the title of this track has something to do with his love for cars – the ones that have brakes made out of the same material as that casserole dish you have hiding in a dark recess of your bottom kitchen cupboard, except 5000 times more expensive to buy. The track itself hides no surprises; it’s a disco affair, with trademark slap basslines and a Pryda-styled synth set, all wrapped up with Jay Kay’s smooth croons. You know, if the album follows a similar path, it might get him over the line to buy that second Veyron Super Sport he was after.

T-REK – The Devil Claps

(Hussle/Universal)

Melbourne’s T-Rek is one of the few local talents pushing the envelope of a well-worn electro house genre. His ability to not only show restraint in the studio simultaneously shows creative innovation; the saw bassline here in The Devil Claps is crafted with filters so that sounds more like a live P-Bass, with a bit of distortion on it just to break up the sound a bit. With a fairly authentic guitar track following the groove, you’d swear you were listening to some sexy southern rock if it weren’t for the four-to-the-floor kick. Although Bodyrockers were trying to do it a few years ago, T-Rek is getting much closer to blurring those lines between the traditional and the digital; while I’m sure this will get ruined by radio soon, for now it is forward-thinking mainstream electronic music – bet you’d never hear me say that one.

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