A parade of musicians you vaguely remember (and might wish you didn’t).

If you’ve noticed my absence this last week, it’s because I was down in the nation’s stinking hot capital volunteering with Pride. If you haven’t noticed my absence, that is still where I was.

It was a lot of fun, thanks for asking. It was heartening to see so many sides of the community represented, and it was wonderful to see littlegays taking their first tentative steps out into a world of men walking about in chaps blowing bubbles everywhere as well as parents bringing their children along to be indoctrinated with  our super secret and insidious Gay Agenda.

Storming about with my not very exclusive backstage pass, I saw more artists eagerly waiting in the wings than I did dancing about on stage. But I did hear them! Here are the highlights of what I heard.

Stop everything, it’s werewolf disco time.

If you’ve been following the bizarre She Wolf viral campaign, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s a reference to Billie Piper’s run on Doctor Who. Shaky Cloverfield cameras have been capturing footage of the infamous (not really) She Wolf, a primal popstar sex predator who’s been eating men’s faces all over the place while ostensibly promoting her new single. So is it a new Billie Piper single?

It’s not. Sorry, but we won’t be getting another Safe With Me or Day & Night any time soon. :(

Incoming – your new favourite band with boys who sing and do electronic stuff.

These gentlemen are Fenech-Soler:

They make very good new wave-y synthpop and at times might remind you of Friendly Fires – not that I want to start fights or am suggesting that there can only be one and that the two need to duke it out, because really I’d much rather they united to make Fenech Fires, perhaps for the release of a Run DMC/Aerosmith cover single.

Anyway. Their debut single, The Cult of Romance, came out last month (this is not exactly a scoop). It’s a fantastic slice of cool as fuck electropop on its own (it has BELLS), but it’s served well by an Alan Braxe remix that adds some lady vocals to the mix and makes the whole thing an even more laid back and effortlessly wonderful affair. Both the original and the remix have a brilliant “ee-yeah-ee-oh, oh oh” bridge which, I think you’ll agree, showcases the extent of Fenech-Soler’s lyrical prowess.

There also appears to be an EP, and they recently appeared in Mixmag. Brace yourselves for a “meteoric rise”, etc.

A quite alright pop comeback that we all missed.

In news from four months ago, Amy Studt is still around! Remember Amy Studt? She was the teen singer-songwriter who released the very good Just A Little Girl (thank Sophie Muller for the amazing video) and the less good Misfit. She wasn’t groundbreaking, but she was making serviceable pop that showed a lot of promise until she just disappeared after one album.

Fast-forward several years and she’s released a second album, My Paper Made Men (it’s a mixed bag but, again, shows a lot of pop potential), along with a string of quite good singles. The last single, released in March to little fanfare, was the amazing Nice Boys. Despite sounding a little dated, its poor performance and promotion may just be one of the big pop injustices of the year.

Here’s the video. It follows a flawless pop rubric – moody girl surrounded by pretty boys in formal wear who fawn over her, moody girl surrounded by pretty boys in formal wear who dance around her, moody girl surrounded by pretty boys who fight around her. It looks surprisingly glossy and made up for such a quiet little release.

Okay, so the single doesn’t exactly show much maturing on her part (the album provides a little more growth). In fact, some might say that it sounds a little bit like early Amy Studt, which sounds a little bit like Avril, Miley and Amanda Palmer (okay, 13 year-old Amanda Palmer) getting into an excitable scuffle. But it’s fun! It’s a fun pop song with a petulantly sung chorus. When she shouts “NICE BOYS FINISH LAST” in the background at the 0:40 mark, you’d be forgiven for thinking that you’re listening to Amanda Palmer’s Muppet Babies counterpart throwing her toys out of the pram. It may not be the best showcase of Studt’s growth as an artist, but it’s catchy enough that it probably deserved to create the same waves her initial string of singles did.

Poor Amy. She was last seen separating (i.e. being dropped) from her label and going on an adventure in NYC. Hopefully she’ll bounce back in some way, shape or form, because while Nice Boys isn’t the hallmark of a hard-hitting singer-songwriter coming into her own, it is an infectious little pop song that suggests that she may have some more guilty pleasures up her sleeve.

There was also an AMAZING remix doing the rounds.

TGIF: Giffing With.

Rising like a middle-of-the-road phoenix from the ashes of my now (hopefully) finished university career, No Ouais is ready to stop being dead! Hooray, right? Right. I return to you with an all new (“all new” unless you know me and my love for FourFour and ImageReady) weekly feature called TGIF. It is a thing where I talk about a music video or something with the help of gifs (TGIF, see), which happens on Fridays. Thank Gifs/God It’s Friday. See? Look, I’ll admit that it’s kind of a lackluster name but just wait for the gifs. The internet loves gifs!

This week I thought that it would only be right for our inaugural Friday gif-fest to focus on kooky chanteuse (I think I’ve got that tired descriptor out of my system now) Regina Spektor and her new single Laughing With. Because it’s about God, and thank God it’s Friday, and “oh God this is getting old already Andrew shut up.”

Album review: Filthy Dukes

Filthy Dukes – Nonsense in the Dark (Fiction)

Filthy Dukes are Tim Lawton, Olly Dixon and Mark Ralph, a trio of DJ/producers who sharpened their teeth commandeering Fabric’s Kill Em All club night. Nonsense in the Dark sees the Dukes residing as pop royalty, assembling a court from the many acts who have passed through their dukedom, and the result is a collaborative beast that runs the gamut of indie dance from krautrock to synthpop. And somehow a giant masonic eye figures into all of this.

Quick note – the pains of moving house.

Just so we’re all up to speed, I am aware that the old posts that I transplanted from Blogger don’t have videos anymore and no longer read properly. It’s a shame, but WordPress has some sort of vendetta against embedding certain video sources. Apologies!

What’s wrong with the Untouchable radio edit?

I’ll tell you what. With robots!

Exhibit A: beautiful robot

Girls Alouds’ Untouchable stands as one of Out of Control’s finest moments because of how it overcomes the silliness that should mar it. It’s melodramatic to the point where hearing the girls sincerely crying about “beautiful robots dancing alone” should be laughable. The lengthy intro should come off as an indulgent nod to Ibiza chillout compilations. And amidst the over-the-top Euro pop production there are wooshing sounds. Were the song four minutes long, I would discard Untouchable as a tacky, try-hard slice of pop schlock. But it’s not four minutes long.

I’ll admit: on first listen, I was a detractor. I thought the length was ridiculous and that I’d rarely sit through such a saga. Yet despite myself, I do. I sit through the wooshing and the guitars and the melodrama because the song earns it. The slow burn of the song’s intro, the bursts of energy, the exhausted lulls – they’re all worth it and work towards a heartfelt sincerity that keeps the song afloat.

Exhibit B: scary robot - welcome to the Uncanny Valley!

Cut down to under four minutes, the song doesn’t have enough time to stew. It’s not brought slowly to the boil and simmered, it’s flash-fried. It’s coming onto you far too quickly, so instead of a slow build that gradually tugs at you and draws you in until you’re completely entranced, you get a troupe of robots with boomboxes for heads grabbing you by the shoulders and shaking you relentlessly. And that’s not what Untouchable is about. These aren’t beautiful robots dancing alone, these are heartless T1000s. Where the album version was a daunting experience that earned its way into your heart and left you with a real Arnie’s thumb ending, the single edit is a terrifying chase through a parking lot that attacks your car with its liquid metal arms.*

It’s a cruel irony that a seven minute song should only sound unrelenting after it’s edited. Single edits can work very well, don’t get me wrong. This just isn’t one of those instances.

And don’t even get me started on Torvill and Dean.

*I might have taken this Terminator metaphor a little too far. If you’d prefer a more highbrow analogy, Popjustice have the Mona Lisa for you.

WARNING: Pussies hanging out ahead.

It’s been an amazing week for the Britney publicity machine after she accidentally announced to a Tampa arena that her lady parts were hanging out of her outfit. The video for If U Seek Amy, then, is like the icing on top of the wardrobe malfunction cake.

Important facts about the video:

• It’s framed by some very clever intertextuality. Media Studies students will be analyzing this for years.
• It subverts the American suburban idyll paradigm by juxtaposing racy dance routines with the nuclear family to suggest that the American dream is doused in artifice.
• All of the boys and all of the girls are begging to if you seek A her.

Watch the video here! I think you’ll agree it is rather good. You may even be shaking and crying.

WARNING: Interpretive dance ahead.

Bat For Lashes’ video for Daniel is out!

Important facts about the video:

• There is interpretive dance. It’s a bit like that scene in Silent Hill with the nurses attacking Radha Mitchell. Except the nurses are covered in balloons and Natasha Khan does a shit job of dodging them.
• It gets properly good when she gets into the car, because Two Suns is very much a ‘road album’ wherein Natasha and her alter ego drive through the desert and duke it out mystically, etc. etc.
• The end is hilarious/amazing. If you’ve seen the single artwork, you’ll probably be bracing yourself for the cameo that basically makes the video.

Click here to watch it (because WordPress doesn’t like MySpace embedding, apparently).

Wonderful stuff, but let’s be honest, it could be better (i.e. have more Karate Kid stuff) and it’s no What’s A Girl To Do.

Daniel is available for download now, and the album’s out next month. I’ll probably review it, and I’ll probably have a lot of nice things to say about it.