SIMPLE MINDS
Stars Will Lead The Way
Universal
There’s something quite likeable about Simple Minds – the fact that they are not U2. Yes, it’s true their head-held-high, arms-aloft Messiah rock is just as overblown, e-bowed, and reverbed, their lyrics just as cod-meaningful and their performances as excruciatingly serious and lifeless. But thankfully all the global-brand, meet-the-Pope, save-the-world bullshit has alluded them and they just remain, well, a bit silly. I find all this very comforting and I’d like to buy Jim Kerr a pint to commiserate.
6
SADDAM CLAYTON

YUSUF
Roadsinger
Polydor/Atlantic
The Cat is back, having “rediscovered his muse” after nearly 30 years of absence, and he sounds… exactly, precisely, scarily like he did before. It’s all so familiar you’ll have to double-check to make sure it isn’t a re-issue. The verdict? Comforting, like rubbing your face in his soft white beard. A soft white beard wet with the blood of Salman Rushdie, that is.
6
BARRY BUDDHISM

WHITE LIGHT PARADE
We Start Fires
Split Records
This bunch of knuckleheads have written the worst example of boorish, unimaginative, straight-down-the-line indie rock that I’ve heard all year (and I have heard the last Enemy single.) It’s kind of like Oasis if they listened to Sham 69 when they grew up instead of the Beatles and had an added mob-like, totally naive political agenda.
0
THE REVEREND

THE RAYOGRAPHS
Francis
Everyone We Know
I was pretty set up to hate on this song. For a start, I don’t really like their name. Secondly, because all-female bands tend to suck. But, as it happens, it rules. It’s smashy and thrashy, but not too abrasive, and their name sounds like a cute running joke in Ray’s family, like, “Ray, that was a bad joke. Alfie, break out the Rayograph because I think that was a Richter five!”
8
HERMAN GERMAN

GARY GO
Engines
The Canvas Room
The video for this song involves a group of people putting Gary together piece by piece, in what could be construed as a comment on manufactured artists. Gary Go may not be manufactured in that way, but “Engines” does share many of the traits of manufactured artists, i.e. he’s released a boring song with a reasonably “big” chorus aimed at people that think V festival is Woodstock 2.
3
JOEY JO

FIGHTSTAR
Never Change
Island
Can someone explain to me what purpose Fightstar serve in this day and age? Formed solely to prove to the world that the moody posh one from Busted with the whiny voice was a proper songwriter, the world shrugged and washed its hands of them at least two albums ago, surely? But here they are, helping Charlie Simpson on his never-ending quest to be taken seriously as he warbles the melody from “In Bloom” whilst some rejects from a toothpaste advert prance around him before drowning him in a vat of milk. Think I’m joking? Check the video. Seventeen thousand other people wasted three minutes of their pointless lives doing exactly that.
2
TED WONG

D.I.M. & TAI
Lyposuct
Boys Noize
I spent last night in a Soho karaoke bar screaming and drinking. Listening to this song is making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up with a growing sense of general dread. And that was before it started speeding up. It’s like falling into the Matrix. It’s not these guys’ fault I feel like shit, but the way I am right now, this is the last thing I want to listen to in the whole world.
-29
SUNSET BITCH

REAL ESTATE
Fake Blues
Half Machine
Melancholy sun-kissed Americana with a ton of reverb thrown all over it, this record would be perfect for the sunset slot at a festival near the beach, i.e. Primavera (because Benicassim’s full of dicks). Someone sort that out.
9
JOELSTOCK

CHIEF
Mighty Proud
Domino
The trouble with aping songs in the manner of a 70s blues/rock group is that it tends to sound pretty contrived. Wearing cowboy hats, scruffy beards, and pretty-boy beanies definitely doesn’t help purge the air of something just a little bit sanctimonious about these guys. This whole song feels like an episode of the OC is about to come to an end, or that you’re being preached to about some lame moral or other by a clean-cut bad-boy like Colin Farrell.
2
BUZZ CAULDRON

PETER, BJORN AND JOHN
It Don’t Move Me
Wichita
“So, what do you think of the new Peter, Bjorn and John song?”
“Ooh, it’s not as good as that one they did a few years ago, is it? And it’s definitely not as good as the new Magic Numbers song.”
3
VITO SPITORI

THE STONE ROSES
She Bangs The Drums
Silvertone
This re-release is profoundly depressing. Firstly, the 20-year celebration of something so central to my late teenage development and halcyon days brings me over all maudlin and prematurely nostalgic like an aging queen in a Virginia Woolf novel. Secondly, it forces us to acknowledge this simple truth: that British pop music has not scaled these dizzy heights in the past two decades. Thanks, then, for simultaneously making me feel old and reminding me that this modern world is botched, redundant and hollow. Call me in another twenty years.
8
MAUL POORLY

SHIT ROBOT
Simple Things (Work It Out)
DFA
This is like being in a gay club playing some pounding bass-y Eurodance. But this time at the gay club there is a scary man whispering profound truths and cryptic prophecies into your ear all night. He seems to be getting more and more worked up as the evening goes on. Until it is just a bit intimidating and is kind of ruining your evening.
6
GUESTLIST AT HEAVEN

GOD HELP THE GIRL
Funny Little Frog
Rough Trade
This sounds like the intro score to the sort of American semi-comedy drama show from the 80s that plays on Channel 5 at about 3.30 PM on a Wednesday. I don’t really like Belle and Sebastian, but I am aware that some people do. Surely even those people don’t need this though?
0
TWEE MOLESTER

FEVER RAY
Triangle Walks
Rabid Records
Fever Ray has so much talent on her own that it’s hard to imagine what him out of the Knife ever actually did. He was probably in charge of cleaning the masks and sending false but exciting stories about the band to the music press. Which is an honest living, no shame in that.
9
LARS VON TEARS