Single of the month: Trailer Trash Tracys ‘Candy Girl / Strangling Good Guys’
Florence and the Machine, Arctic Monkeys and more also reviewed
Music snobs love to flame Florence and the Machine these days. But as ‘No Light No Light’ (Island) ●●●● proves, Welch does epic, pagan pop pretty much perfectly. Her only crime is that lots of people now like it. They’d no doubt sneer at the recent success of Yasmin, The Subways and Arctic Monkeys too. But they’d be right this time. The former’s bland, bastardised drum’n’bass track ‘Light Up (The World)’ (Ministry Of Sound) ● features Shy FX and Ms Dynamite – surely nothing to boast about … The Subways’ ‘It’s A Party’ (Cooking Vinyl) ● is a must for ‘rock’ fans who thought Ash’s Meltdown was a little on the heavy side. And remember when the Arctics made thrilling guitar music? ‘Black Treacle’ (Domino) ●● is a pedestrian plodder that barely sounds like the same band.
We should probably be kind to Various Cruelties who’ve just come off tour with Kasabian, poor lambs. But we’ve listened to ‘Great Unknown’ (Hideout) ● a few times now and we’re still no wiser as to where they’ve hidden the melody. Just as forgettable is The Big Pink’s rather sedate sounding ‘Hit The Ground (Superman)’ (4AD) ●●. Thankfully things soon pick up with the Four Tet-esque Deco Child’s ‘Pray’ (Ninja Tune) ●●● and Tall Tales’ gloriously poetic ‘Windows 98/All The Things You Read To Me’ ●●●●. Similarly impressive is the swoonsome ‘Sun Is Going Down’ (Almost Musique/Hardly Art) ●●●● by noiseniks Shimmering Stars, Dan Sartain’s thoroughly scuzzy ‘Now Now Now’ (One Little Indian) ●●●● and François & The Atlas Mountains’ dreamy dual language number ‘Les Plus Beaux’ (Domino) ●●●●.
But it’s Trailer Trash Tracys who top the bunch and score Single of the Month. ‘Candy Girl/ Strangling Good Guys’ (Double Six) ●●●●● is all Twin Peaks riffs, rhythmic stomp and breathy vocals. The Sofia Coppola movie they should one day soundtrack is already flashing before our eyes as we soak up their Warpaint meets My Bloody Valentine schtick.