mixtape maestro (2.0)

After bringing about more than a few scratched heads over recent track “I Just Love You More”’s polarizing attempt at a punk chick makeover, Kate Nash makes the world right again with the welcomed return-to-(snarky/ perky)form that is new single, “Do Wah Doo”.

Helmed by producer, and former Suede guitarist, Bernard Butler (Duffy, Black Kids), “Do Wah Doo” buzzes with a playful jumbling of familiar ’60’s pop conventions (radiant girl group harmonies, handclaps, zinging surf guitar, blaring horns) all congealed into a thickened Wall of Sound.

Beneath the happy-go-lucky framing, however, things aren’t as sunny, as Kate is heard spewing all type of “hateration” towards a girl hogging the secret object of her affection’s eye. “Everybody thinks that girl’s a lady/ But I don’t, I think that girl’s shady,” Nash pouts on the sidelines, even going so far as to tag the crush-stealing cow a “bitch”.

Interestingly enough, just when you think she’s about to fight for her man “Jerry Springer”-style and get this fizzy pop confection the happy ending conclusion the upbeat arrangement all but demands, Nash opts to give him up, resigning to “read a book instead” because “I can hang out with myself”.

Hmmm…it’s not the most sassiest way to go out, but whatever, jerk’s loss; we’re just happy to have the undeniably catchy nugget-crafting Kate Nash we love back.

From her April-set second LP, My Best Friend Is You.

Uncategorized 60's, bernard butler, girl group, kate nash, my best friend is you, singer-songwriter, UK, uk pop

With most of the appeal of Ellie Goulding’s current UK smash “Starry Eyed” lying in the sonic dramatics of producer Starsmith’s slathering of dance-tronica sparkle, we didn’t think there would be anything remotely interesting about a stripped-down version of the tune that completely does away with his toilings…that is, until we heard this acoustic take Ellie brought to the BBC Live Lounge studios last week.

Aiding in quieting critical murmurs that she’s somewhat of an inconsequential vocalist, Goulding takes hostage of your full attention from the first moment she opens her mouth here and never lets go, exposing striking, quiver-and-rasp nuances in her child-like coo that could be barely heard underneath all of the studio version’s production pizazz.

We get why her industry backers would want to push Ellie as the “new La Roux” for the moment (with electro-pop being all hot and whatever right now), but hearing her in folksy singer-songwriter mode here as us thinking it’s a style she should be relying on more for future albums.

Lights, Goulding’s debut, drops in March.

DL: “Starry Eyed (Acoustic ‘Live Lounge’ Performance)” (alt)

Uncategorized acoustic, ellie goulding, live performance, singer-songwriter, UK

On her critically acclaimed 2007 debut Made of Bricks, indie-pop singer-songwriter Kate Nash got plenty of mileage out of her winning, Lily Allen-esque mix of the sweet and the sour (the sweet being her cutesy, sing-talk delivery and the album’s surplus of perky, piano-pop melodies; the sour being colorful lyrics anchored in titles like “Dickhead” and “Shit Song” that called out sucky boyfriends).

For “I Just Love You More” though, an early taste of her forthcoming sophomore effort My Best Friend Is You (and an obvious by-product of her days playing bass and singing in the punk-based side project The Receeders), there’s little traces of sugary sweetness found in it’s initially shocking riot grrl assault of thrashing guitar and screaming yelps.

As feedback-clouded axe work paint a dark and Hell-ish ambiance around her, Nash spews “I just love you more/ I just love you more…than anything” over and over, her vocals growing more and more intense in each repeating until she reaches an orgasmic peak of furor, her obsessive adoration far too powerful a force to keep bottled in any longer.

A bit creepy? Yes. A little too unrefined? Sure (it registers more as a sketch of a tune than an actual full-bodied song). But if judged without taking into consideration the far different sound of Nash’s previous album (as difficult as that may be), it actually works, sufficiently handling the riotous, Karen O-inspired mood it’s obviously going for. We just don’t know if we could handle an entire full length of such an extreme about-face, if that’s indeed what Kate has planned.

We’ll see when the rest of My Best Friend Is You arrives in April.

DL: “I Just Love You More” (alt)

Bonus DL: Kate Nash “I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You (Black Kids Cover)” (alt)

Uncategorized female rock, kate nash, singer-songwriter, UK

Since catching our interest months ago with his highly addicting singles “Hurtful” and “Don’t Bring Flowers”, ginger-domed singer-songwriter Erik Hassle has become big stuff in his native Sweden, collecting not only a Top 10 album and two Top 40 singles, but the Swedish equivalent to a Best New Artist Grammy Award as well.

This year, the much-buzzed-about pop-soul-ster will finally steer his focus towards puncturing the US and UK markets with a re-packaging of his debut, now entitled Pieces; but for those not quite sold on why this guy is being touted amongst blog circles as one of music’s next breakthrough star, check the impressiveness that comes forth once Hassle’s silky blue-eyed-soul pipes are attached to pop faves both old and new:

“I Walk The Line” (Johnny Cash Cover)”

“Someday (The Strokes Cover)”

“Russian Roulette (Rihanna Cover)”

Good stuff, no?

Hassle’s Pieces drops in the UK/ USA in March. Here’s the newest music clip take (his fourth!!) for future smash “Hurtful”:

DL: “Russian Roulette (Rihanna Cover)” (alt)

Uncategorized blue-eyed soul, erik hassle, singer-songwriter, sweden

Even if you know nothing about the tragic reality that lingers beyond it’s script, “I’d Do It All Again”, the lead single from multi-Grammy nominee Corinne Bailey Rae’s second set The Sea, still manages to pierce your insides with it’s arresting balance of melancholy gorgeousness and lump-in-throat-conjuring honesty.

Penned following an argument with her husband (who would, sadly, end up passing only months later), “Again” starts off dripping in tear-stained wistfulness, precious acoustic guitar licks supporting Rae’s delicate crooning of “You did it all again/ You broke another skin”.

But just as you begin to settle with the idea of this being nothing more than a woeful lament to the dark lows of couple-dom, the subtle weaving in of other instrumental elements (drums, organs, strings) start to push the arrangement to a skyward swell, beautifully illustrating the bubbling forth of Rae’s personal epiphany: Yes, “someone to love is bigger than your pride’s worth”, she realizes, and in a breathtakingly climactic moment, she also reaches the conclusion that no matter how much pain it occasionally triggers, when it comes to their union, she’d “do it all again”.

Sigh. If your eyes don’t get at least a little misty after hearing this (now even more poignant) happy-sad gem for the first time, make sure you immediately check your pulse, cause odds are you have no soul.

The Sea drops January 26th.

Corinne Bailey Rae “I’d Do It All Again”

Corinne Bailey Rae | MySpace Music Videos

BONUS DL: Corinne Bailey Rae “SexyBack (Justin Timberlake Cover)” (alt)

Uncategorized corinne bailey rae, singer-songwriter, the sea, UK soul

Australian chanteuse Sia has attached herself to so many different musical styles over the years (whether it’s the jazzy diva stylings of 2002’s quirky Healing Is Difficult or her many Zero 7 collaborations; the seducing, adult-pop melodrama of her Six Feet Under-featured breakout “Breathe Me”; or the more straight-forward, blue-eyed soul tinges found on her solid 2008 triumph Some People Have Real Problems) that if one was to try to absorb her entire back catalogue all at once, they might find it impossible to grasp that it all emerged from one artist.

New single “You’ve Changed” once again finds the singer shattering expectations and taking on an entirely different sonic realm: this time, mainstream-glossed disco-pop. And while it’s definitely an initially jarring new route for Sia to conquer (and will likely garner it’s share of “sell-out” balks), it’s also one she aces spectacularly, her pipes gelling perfectly with the track’s funky Studio 54 jubilance, while commanding your attention from gleeful note one as she soulfully celebrates the way her love has transformed a man who was, up-to-this point, widely known for his heartbreaking ways.

You’ve changed Sia, and moreso than your previous about-face reincarnations, this Robin S./ CeCe Peniston-reminiscent makeover absolutely feels for the better.

Sia’s fourth album, We Are Born, is scheduled for an April 2010 drop.

DL: “You’ve Changed” (alt)

Uncategorized australia, blue-eyed soul, disco, diva pop, sia, singer-songwriter

On “Marlene”, the first single off of Devonte Hynes aka Lightspeed Champion’s forthcoming sophomore LP Life Is Sweet! Nice To Meet You, the Texas-born/ England-raised singer-songwriter is heard lunging all kinds of cold jabs at the object of his frustrated affection: “Stick a spoon into your heart/ And eat away all your deutsche marks/ You’re money don’t mean a damn thing/ I’m wearing everything I own”; “Stop being cool”; “You’re in my room and still won’t leave”.

Yeah…we won’t even try to figure out if this is really some kind of weird ode to Marlene Dietrich or not, but we will admit to completely digging LC’s latest wacky stab at romance woe, it’s kitchen sink production recipe of a crunchy rock groove, masterful guitar solo and a grand, strings-enhanced chorus making for quite the excellent musical frame to his heartache-fueled lyrical stings.

Single drops January 25th (pre-order here); Life Is Sweet! Nice To Meet You arrives February 1st.

Bonus DL: Lightspeed Champion “Back To Black (Amy Winehouse Cover)” (alt)

Uncategorized lightspeed champion, singer-songwriter, UK

If Emmy The Great’s fall of ‘08 gem “We Almost Had A Baby” had been delivered by some R&B diva-to-be, the ’50’s-flavored ball of melodic sugar in which she narrates a twisted revenge fantasy of getting pregnant by some heart-crushing ex simply so she “could have something above (him)” would have been answered back via numerous rapper-laced remixes by now, with many emcees excitedly competing to see who could drop the cruelest rhymes about how she’s nothing but a loony groupie chick.

Alas it wasn’t, so the only response Emmy’s awarded arrives from this year-later semi-cover by Micah P. Hinson, a crit-approved, indie-rock singer-songwriter who spends the first half of the song gruffily mimicking the original’s lyrics from the opposite perspective.

Mid-way through though, Hinson changes course, running off on his own tangent to flesh out the male perspective. Unfortunately, he can’t really match the colorful kookiness of Emmy’s pen, only able to contribute a half-hearted semi-apology about how he was “only a kid” when they had their fling and really hadn’t even thought of her at all after they went their separate ways.

Boo. Micah’s rendition may still be one of the highlights of his latest album, the excellently titled all-covers set, All Dressed Up and Smelling of Strangers (featuring compelling takes on overly-familiar tunes from the likes of The Beatles, Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan and Frank Sinatra), but as far as creative input goes, if he wasn’t going to deliver a straight-forward remake, he could have repped for the fella’s a lot better than he does here.

Hopefully some other indie dude, hungry mixtape rapper (or, hell, R. Kelly) will one day come across the Emmy original and give it the true juicy soapy response it begs for.

DL: “We Almost Had A Baby (Emmy The Great Cover)” (alt)

Below, catch the video for Micah’s cover of “Are You Lonesome Tonight”:

Are You Lonesome Tonight

Micah P. | MySpace Video

Uncategorized cover song, emmy the great, indie folk, micah p. hinson, singer-songwriter

The go-to gal when it’s odes of heartbreak and loneliness dressed in twinkly, melancholic arrangements you crave to help get you through a gray-skied afternoon, Swedish songbird El Perro del Mar keeps chugging out that depressing bewitch-craft on “Change of Heart”, the first single off her latest collection, the recently-released-in-the-States EP Love Is Not Pop.

A bit musically denser than the twee orchestral seasonings that framed her previous works (yet still somehow still able to grasp her signature stamp of weightlessness), “Change” rides along a ’70’s rock-inspired soundbed of thickened bass grooves and echo-y guitar curlicues that drift in and out of a dream-like haze as Mar’s forlorn chirp mourns yet another dead-end romance.

It’s gorgeously transfixing stuff, an aesthetic brilliantly matched in it’s accompanying clip featuring the mesmerizing visuals of two golden-hued bodybuilders doing some amazingly slo-mo’ed performance art choreography.

El Perro Del Mar “Change Of Heart” from The Control Group on Vimeo.

Uncategorized 70's, el perro del mar, indie pop, singer-songwriter, sweden

Fresh from penning Whitney Houston’s surprisingly irresistable “don’t call it a comeback” entry “Million Dollar Bill” and co-celebrating the Big Apple on Jay-Z’s anthemic Blueprint 3 highlight “Empire State of Mind”, Alicia Keys steers the focus back to her own solo career with the newly leaked ballad “Doesn’t Mean Anything”, the first taste of her as-yet-untitled upcoming fourth album and one that’ll surely garner her some more award gold come 2011 Grammy night.

Built on a steady drum/ piano pounce that initially hints of a “No One” re-do before evoking more of a Fray/ OneRepublic adult-pop feel, “Doesn’t Mean Anything” presents Keys growing even more comfortable in her position as one of today’s most reliable timeless pop creators, delivering a moving “true love > material things” lyric that pierces the soul in all the right ways and an utterly gorgeous musical arrangement and poised diva vocal performance that both slowly swell upward until they seem to break through the clouds above.

Some may balk at the track’s decidedly non-urban stamp (and to be honest, we might not be fully on-board with this project, if we start to get the gist that the rest of the album will follow this somewhat VH1-ish formula), but it’s hard to easily deny the level of class and universally-appealing popcraft on display here.

Consider her “can’t do any wrong” streak extended for at least another year with this one.

Uncategorized alicia keys, diva pop, piano-pop, singer-songwriter