ARCADE FIRE – Ready To Start

(Spunk/EMI)

ALASDAIR: So I’m thinking this new Arcade Fire song will be a brilliant one to kick off this week’s singles reviews – are you excited?

BOYFRIEND: I don’t want to do this. It’s past my bed time.

A: Come on, you love these guys. Don’t you remember listening to Neon Bible all the time back when it came out? I’m really excited for their new album. Having said that, this song doesn’t sound much like Arcade Fire, does it?

B: It doesn’t really sound much like a single either. I have no feelings towards it whatsoever. It’s all a bit blah.

A: I guess it’s kind of stirring in the way that their songs sometimes are. It doesn’t have an obvious hook, other than the synth bit that occasionally pops up in the background. It’s very atmospheric, and it has that certain autumnal thing that Arcade Fire do really well. I think I might like it eventually, but it’s going to be a grower.

B: If I heard this on the radio, I wouldn’t really pay attention at all. It would just be on. I’d switch stations without really thinking about it and end up listening to ads on B105. I’m ready for it to end now.

OPERATOR PLEASE – Like Magic

(Virgin/EMI)

A: Operator Please have moved away from the bubblegum punk thing they were doing and started making very slick electro pop. You know it’s them right away, though, because Amandah Wilkinson has that very distinctive, Minnie Mouse-ish voice.

B: This sounds like it’s been produced a lot more heavily than their older music. It sounds cleaner. That’s good though – I don’t know how much longer they could survive on what their old music sounds like. I don’t know how much longer Amandah could get by on her ‘I’m young and I yell into the microphone!’ thing.

A: I really like this. It doesn’t leap out at you or anything but it’s a catchy enough pop song.

B: There was nothing wrong with their last album, but if they just kept making the same music, people would have gotten pretty sick of them. Here’s question, though – if this was the first Operator Please song you’d heard, and you didn’t know their back story and that they came from the Gold Coast and whatever, would you really be that interested in listening to any more?

KLAXONS – Echoes

(Modular/Universal)

A: So the second Klaxons album is out soon and everyone’s nervous about whether or not they’re going to pull off something brilliant or make a really crappy comeback like MGMT did. I like this so far, though – it has a very epic, spacey sound, but it’s still a bit rough around the edges. The chorus reminds me a lot of Delphic’s Doubt though ... I think if I were them I’d be calling my lawyer.

B: This is a good song. It sounds like Klaxons, although everything of theirs does sound kind of the same. You know their film clip that has all those streamers and people getting paintballs chucked at them and flashing lights? Is that Klaxons? It makes me think of that.

A: NME’s review of this song said that it expands the band’s rave sound to “galactic proportions”, and that “Jamie Reynolds’ android double-singing takes in visions of alien landscapes [and] otherworldly messages”.

D: No it doesn’t, that’s a load of shit. You know what it takes in? It takes in every other Klaxons song. This is just what a lot of English music sounds like right now – there are a lot of bands from there who just make this very high-pitched, blah-blah-blah style music. I mean, they’re good for what they do.

SINGLE OF THE WEEK

HOT CHIP – Hand Me Down Your Love

(EMI)

A: Okay, here we go then – Hot Chip are an English band too, but their singles sound nothing alike. Every one of them is different – like, Ready For The Floor was electro pop and Over And Over was weird funk and this one has snare drums and piano [starts a dance that involves lots of complicated hand movements].

B: No! You’re not allowed to dance like that anymore. Don’t write this down, this is not about the single, this is about you! You’ve been dancing that way in my car lately and it looks weird. If I drove past a car and saw someone dancing like that I’d laugh at them. It looks really stupid.

A: I’ll dance how I want and you’ll like it. That’s one of the things I love about Hot Chip, though – even though they’re so nerdy and English, their singles are so incredibly good for dancing to.

B: You can’t dance to this. You could possibly dance to a remix of this. I mean, I wouldn’t, because I don’t dance, but you get my point.

THE COUNT & SINDEN FEATURING MYSTERY JETS – After Dark

(Domino/EMI)

A: This is a very upbeat, dance-y kind of track about going out clubbing and, um, waiting for your girlfriend to get out of the bathroom? It sounds like it should be fun but it’s not really. It has a bit of a calypso sound, maybe, like they found that preset on their keyboard then got really excited.

B: What are you supposed to do with this song? Nobody’s going to dance to this. It’s kind of annoying – you don’t want to hear it on the drive to work every morning, either. That’s what you want from a single. You want radio stations to play it so people look forward to it when they’re driving to work in the morning, when the announcers shut up.

MIDNIGHT JUGGERNAUTS – Lifeblood Flow

(Siberia)

A: Oh, that’s fun. I just slipped this Midnight Juggernauts single into my laptop, and my iTunes thought it was a song called Something Special by Dolly Parton.

B: I like Dolly Parton. Do you have any Dolly Parton? She should release a new single, I’d rate that one.

A: The press release for this one says that it’s “a dazzling lesson in how electronic pop should be made – like something out of a ‘70s sci-fi epic, walls of sound and all”. 

B: Oh bloody hell, first Klaxons and now this – why is everyone who writes these things so obsessed with sci-fi? Does everyone automatically connect it to that because of the synthesisers? WHY is this song sci-fi?

A: I don’t know, the synth bit in the middle sort of sounds like something that would play when a spaceship was taking off?

B: Have you ever heard music like this in an ACTUAL sci-fi movie? Like, have you ever heard something like this on Star Trek? You might come across it in a made-for-TV movie…

ALASDAIR DUNCAN reviews this week’s single releases, with his boyfriend, a sleep-deprived Triple J nerd, riding shotgun.

Be first to comment on this article

Write Comment
Comments are submitted for possible publication on the condition that they may be edited. Poster's IP addresses are logged.
Name:
Comment:
Code:*