That don’t impress me much: Shania Twain was wearing a Bullet Boys T-shirt on TOTP2 last night. I had to watch the whole show to make sure it wasn’t The Quireboys. I have finally seen the point of her new single (ie it *does* have a tune)[…]

“Blame Jim O’Rourke” says Philip Sherburne. Which is not exactly germane to the arguments he puts forward about electroclash and about techno going pop here, here and here, but is a catchy hook for a blog entry. So, yeah, electrocla[…]

This seems reasonable but I wonder how much I actually agree with Douglas Wolk’s Village Voice analysis of what we might have called, if someone hadn’t thought of this a few years ago, the new wave of new wave. Wolk says that he ‘ca[…]

Pete Waterman OTFM: Punk RoXoR.[…]

Self Indulgent? Never… Moderately amusing review of last night’s Manitoba / Four Tet date at Edinburgh’s Belle Angele venue. Notable mostly for classic local paper take on contemporary electronic music, complete with awful puns (&#8[…]

Who’d have thought it. My standard test for detecting top-notch music writing, and I’m sure it’s a common one, is whether or not it makes me want to hear the record under discussion. In this piece for Village Voice by Frank Kogan my[…]

The end of the single? Yes, yes, we’ve heard it all before. Andy Gill, writing for The Independent marks the fiftieth anniversary of the British pop charts by charting its supposed demise. There are some interesting points made here, but the ov[…]

It must have seemed such a good idea: “I know! How about a TV show in which we get bands on to play one of their own songs and then a cover version of their choice!” You see — their choice, BBC choice — it all makes a horrible[…]

DEMPSEY — “ODB on the run”
OK, so this is a novelty single. While Russell Tyrone Jones languishes in chokey the smart-arse undie-ground are partying up a storm on the back of another tragi-comic hip-hop legend in process. Like the r[…]

Is it bollocks. ‘Tacky, camp and glamorous, ‘Sunglasses At Night’ is the perfect antidote to dad house, flu rock, ‘Pop Idol’ and every other blight on the current pop landscape.’ Or so says NME.
Spurred on by simi[…]