Holy Ghost! Holy Ghost! DFA
It’s been a long, slow process for NYC disco dudes Holy Ghost! to get this far, with their first single ‘Hold On’ having been released way back in 2007. It wasn’t a mammoth hit, but it got them noticed well enough for the duo to embark on a prolific remixing career while they worked out how best to write and record some more songs. The care taken paid dividends. Drawing mainly from disco and shiny Eighties synth-pop, their debut album is more than a collection of dance tracks, as although the lyrics are often relatively banal, the songwriting is sharp. Hooks and energetic choruses come thick and fast, while you never forget you are listening to live musicians. Touring partners Cut Copy are a clear comparison, but while their Zonoscope was bloated and overlong, the likes of ‘Wait And See’, ‘Slow Motion’ and ‘Do It Again’ positively sparkle. And they can do poignant, too – ‘Jam For Jerry’ is a fitting tribute to the late Jerry Fuchs. As mentors LCD Soundsystem fade into retirement, Holy Ghost! have graduated with honours. Chris Jones
KEY TRACKS: ‘HOLD ON’, ‘JAM FOR JERRY’, ‘SLOW MOTION’. FOR FANS OF: LCD SOUNDSYSTEM, CUT COPY, CHROMEO.
Cashier No. 9 Goldstar CN9 RECORDINGS
Cashier No. 9’s Goldstar EP showcases the band’s penchant for slurrily-sung, slow-paced indie with a Nineties twist. The vibe is not so much reminiscent of Oasis or Blur as it is a dabbling in Pulp’s mellower moments, blended with Bobby Gillespie on chill pills. The title track is a stand out moment – melodic and riddled with clever musical interludes – while the verses in ‘Oh Pity’ have a summery glow that edges into a darkly tinged, cluttered chorus. It’s well worth a listen or three if only to revel in the nostalgic Britpop glory of a male vocalist belting out lines like “I look better with my high heels on.” James Hendicott
KEY TRACKS: ’GOLDSTAR’, ‘OH PITY’. FOR FANS OF: PRIMAL SCREAM, DAVID HOLMES.
Panic! At The Disco Vices & Virtues ATLANTIC
Las Vegas duo Spencer Smith and Brendan Urie return with Vices & Virtues, the first release from Panic! At The Disco since chief songwriter Ryan Ross and Jon Walker controversially left the band. Predictably, they’ve set out to recreate the superproduced, emo sound of truckload selling debut A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out. Problem is that, even by their standards, Vices & Virtues is seriously low on quality songwriting. With the exclamation
mark reinstated into the band’s title, drama-king extraordinaire Urie has sought to turn back the clock to their theatrical days of yore. The blackfingernailed, teeny angst-fest begins with lead-single ‘The Ballad Of Mona Lisa’, which is slick, glossy and utterly banal. It’s all produced to within an inch of its life, but no amount of over-dubs can compensate for the complete absence of worthwhile material. Not so sure the kids will fall for it second time round. Eamonn Seoige
KEY TRACKS: ‘THE BALLAD OF MONA LISA’, ‘LET’S KILL TONIGHT’. FOR FANS OF: MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE, FALL OUT BOY.
Hunx And His Punx Too Young To Be In Love HARDLY ART
“I feel like I’m a girl group,” Hunx revealed in a recent interview. His music is a scuzzier, more garage-infused version of female girl group music from a more innocent age. With an all-female backing band and liberal use of classic tropes, they re-weave Letterman jacket and hair band romances into leather jacket and leopard-spotted legging romances. It works. Hunx And His Punx actually fit really well into the US west coast lo-fi scene despite literally being hairdresser music (they run a salon). With wantonly naïve lyrics on tracks like ‘My Boyfriend’s Coming Back’ and lovely off-key oohs on almost everything, they do a pretty good job of reconstructing the pieces of a nostalgic genre into something it never really was. Karl McDonald
KEY TRACKS: ‘MY BOYFRIEND’S COMING BACK’, ‘BLOW ME AWAY’, ‘LOVERS LANE’. FOR FANS OF: NOBUNNY, GIRLS, THE SHANGRI-LAS.
The Human League Credo
Pharoahe Monch W.A.R. (We Are Renegades) W.A.R. MEDIA
Pharoahe Monch is a good example of someone who practices what he preaches, standing outside commercial hip-hop and sticking to subject matter he cares deeply about. But that might be why he’s falling behind. He’s got an impeccable flow, rounded out since his Organized Konfusion days in the Nineties, but it’s hard to stay interesting by simply being good at rapping like a Nineties rapper. Featuring a substratum of post-apocalyptic spoken word intros, Monch unleashes his “vernacular original miraculous spectacular flow” over staid beats with more than the desired amount of Eighties lead guitar and churchy organs. Though Monch has high points, Jean Grae’s guest verse on ‘Assassins’ probably marks the high point on an album that’s never bad per se, but not exactly enrapturing. Karl McDonald
KEY TRACKS: ‘ASSASSINS’, ‘EVOLVE’, ‘LET MY PEOPLE GO’. FOR FANS OF: Q-TIP, KRS-ONE, MOS DEF.
Times New Viking Dancer Equired MERGE
While there will never be a shortage of artists trying to recapture the sound of times past, there will always be those going about it in an uncannily convincing way. Take TNV’s third attempt at taking on another era altogether; a record which faithfully embodies a sense of starry-eyed simplicity and disaffected charm the likes of which wouldn’t sound out of place on mid-1990s Midwest college radio. Standout track ‘No Room To Live’ sums up the whole: sugarcoated, semi-retrospective romanticism à la Best Coast and No Age meets the lo-fi power-pop surge of Girls In The Eighties and Vaselines - the musical equivalent of discovering a long-lost Polaroid in the attic of yer imagination. Stevie Lennox
WALL OF SOUND
Back in 1979 Bowie called The Human League ‘the sound of the future’. And with Phil Oakey’s curious side-swept fringe, the avant-garde Sheffield trio were the most forward-thinking musical combo to come out of the grim north. The band’s isolated electronica had a robotic darkness which seemed curiously absent from their best-known hit ‘Don’t You Want Me’, but three decades on they’re still throwing shapes at the discotheque. Single ‘Night People’ may be the easy entry point for new fans, but it sits at the weaker end of the record. ‘Single Minded’ shows Oakey at his most louche, while there are flashes of the old greatness on ‘Into The Night’. But really, there’s little here that hasn’t been brought to life recently by La Roux. Kirstie May
KEY TRACKS: ‘NEVER LET ME GO’, ‘INTO THE NiGHT’, ‘BREAKING THE CHAINS’. FOR FANS OF: HEAVEN 17, LITTLE BOOTS, GARY NUMAN.
50 AU72
KEY TRACKS: ‘NO ROOM TO LIVE’, ‘IT’S A CULTURE’, ‘DON’T GO TO LIVERPOOL’. FOR FANS OF: GIRLS IN THE EIGHTIES, BEST COAST, NO AGE.
King Creosote & Jon Hopkins Diamond Mine DOUBLE SIX
This is what music is about - two friends getting together over the course of a few years to write and record songs as and when they can. Instead of rushing something out, King Creosote and Jon Hopkins took their time, paying due care and attention to the craft of songwriting. The result is seven tracks of whispered beauty – sparse washes of fragile sound designed, apparently, to be one single listening experience. As such, the only gap between songs comes between ‘Your Own Spell’ and ‘Your Young Voice’, two slowmotion expressions of abject melancholy. Everywhere