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Singles column 30 July 2012 - Tom Jones, Noel Gallagher, Chemical Brothers, Tame Impala, Dizzee & more
Jamie Skey @jamie_skey rounds-up all this week's most significant singles, plus the new songs that have surfaced online in the last seven days that you shouldn't miss...
Singles out today, 30 July 2012
Count it as a blessing Tom Jones has cast aside his predilection for legacy tarnishing trash, once happy as he was to shoot out ie. Sex Bomb. Now in Johnny Cash-esque, showbiz-pro-turned-flawed-blues-missionary fashion Jones recasts the
Leonard Cohen classic Tower Of Song. It's a serene, albeit not-too-dissimilar reproduction, carried off gracefully by Jones' resounding gravitas and "golden voice."
As we eagerly await the release of Noel Gallagher's collaboration with cosmic journeyers Amorphous Androgynous, your fevered anticipation might just be aroused a touch more by the intro to Everybody's On The Run (admittedly not the High Flying Birds' strongest track) - for it's climactic, cinematic and expansively choral. Disappointingly, however, the remainder of the track unravels drudgingly, pointing more towards "The Chief's" past with Oasis than his solo future. Still, better than anything little brother can muster.
Whether you born in the 80s or 1938 - you'll by now have undoubtedly caught wind of Calvin Harris; his bubblegum brand of house is as ubiquitous and as catchy as a cold on fresher's week and has done the rounds with everyone from Ne-Yo, Rhianna and Kelis. On We'll Be Coming Back he's partnered up with rapper-turned-po-faced-crooner Example, on the closest thing Harris has done to a regular song to date. The result: a flatly produced, compressed cut of cod rock, replete with tinny guitar arpeggios, that's unsure as to whether it wants to be dropped on dance floors or chanted on stadium terraces.
Like their elderly punk kinsmen Green Day, The Offspring are still, after all these years, hanging on in there. I expected Days Go By to be way more banally juvenile than this, but it actually motors along neatly, reminiscent of the Foo Fighters' steering wheel-beating anthem Times Like These - which isn't a bad thing.
The Chemical Brothers' official Olympics offering, Theme For Velodrome, has managed to capture a sporty zeal, as it will have going for broke in a spin class in now time with its futuristic, four-to-the-floor pulse and devilishly zippy synth riff. Which means the Brothers really worked it out, as it was commissioned for the cycling arena at the London games.
Frighteningly talented singer-songwriter Karima Francis - fresh from covering Amy Winehouse for Q's recent tribute CD - is making up for lost time, having not done her heart-stopping vocal abilities on her debut, The Author. However returning with Glory Days, as she re-asserts her self as one of Britain's brightest and most powerful forces. To really appreciate her in her element, best catch her live.
New online
Australia's Tame Impala are off their gourds again and zoning into all
that was mind-blowing about the 60s on the stompingly bong-friendly Elephant - taken from the their forthcoming album Lonerism out 8 October - a lysergically enhanced mash up of The Beatles, The Doors and Cream.
It's an Olympic bumper edition, with the release of Dizzee Rascal's new chart entrant Scream, featuring the Florence-a-like Pepper. For two-and-a-half minutes Dizzee compares his ascendency, in his signature tongue-twisting flow, with that of slurring Sly's hard-bitten Rocky - "I coulda drowned in the blood and the sweat/ But
instead I show the world I don't pet/ A world wide athletic champion on deck."
Temperamental techno terrorists Crystal Castles have returned with Plague which finds Alice Glass and Ethan Kath in a more subdued, dreamy mindset. Gone are the sharp, scream-y vocals and 8-bit modulations, making way for large, shadowy, breathless subterranean panoramas.
Join us next Monday for more singles and the latest online releases.
10:37 AM | 30/07/2012
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