Title: Hands
Artist: Little Boots
Label: Warner
Release Date: 2 March 2010
In One Word: Contrived
By definition pop music is “commercial popular music, in particular accessible, tuneful music of a kind popular since the 1950s and sometimes contrasted with rock, soul, or other forms of popular music.” (Credit to the trusty dictionary on my MacBook.) For an actual...
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Title: The Haunting
Artist: Black Soul Strangers
Label: Squeek Records
Release Date: 14 March 2010
In One Word: Fetching
When you search for ‘haunting’ in a dictionary, what seems to be a re-occurring definition is ‘remaining in the consciousness; not quickly forgotten’ and that is exactly what Black Soul Stranger’s latest single, “The Haunting”, is; its certainly not quickly...
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Title: Here’s the Tender Coming
Artist: The Unthanks
Label: Rough Trade/EMI
Released: 2 March 2010 Canada and US (UK 14 September 2009)
In one word: Shinemuck
This album is one of the more lovely things I’ve ever tried to appraise. The Unthanks manage to pull off the most well-worn melodies and unsurprising cadences and make them dreamily compelling where...
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Title: One Life Stand
Artist: Hot Chip
Label: EMI
Released: 2 February 2010
In one word: Vocals
One Life Stand is an album made to be listened to in Aberdeen, Scotland. It is icy yet warm and familiar, with a sense of being frozen and timeless, as if it could belong anywhere. It’s also comfortingly monochrome; the songs all...
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Title: Ups and Downsizing
Artist: The Swellers
Label: Fueled By Ramen/WEA
Released: 23 February 2010 (Canada/US)
In one word: Adequate
Flint, Michigan four-piece The Swellers deliver their fourth album in Ups and Downsizing. With their late 90’s skate-punk influences worn proudly on their sleeves, what results is 11 relatively solid, if by-the-numbers tracks that conjure images of summertime loves...
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Title: Hypergraphia
Artist: Chokeules
Label: Backburner Recordings
Released: Out Now
In one word: Fresh
Batten down the hatches, pull down the shutters, say your last goodbyes…I think the apocalypse may be coming. No, I didn’t just get my hands on a DVD copy of that hopeless disaster-of-a-disaster movie 2012, instead, I’m listening to the album Hypergraphia from Chokeules. So...
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Title: The Random Humans
Artist: The Random Humans
Label: Random Human Records/Reversed Records
Released: 23 February 2010
In one word: Promising
It’s always a tad difficult to make a fair assessment of an artist on the basis of a debut EP, and even harder when said EP comprises only three tracks! Deep breath, here goes…
So okay, I may not...
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Title: Black Noise
Artist: Pantha du Prince
Label: Rough Trade
Released: 9 February 2010
In one word: Lucid
The pace of life seems to get faster all the time, as the modern age becomes more modern with each new day, and we are forced to keep pace with it all. We hustle, we bustle, we tweet, we download. We...
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Title: Screamworks: Love in Theory and Practice
Artist: HIM
Label: Sire / Warner Bros.
Released: 9 February 2010
In one word: Limp
I once drove a roundtrip of over 800 miles in one day from North Scotland to the Lake District in England just so that I could have lunch with a girl I was particularly fond of. We...
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Title: I’m New Here
Artist: Gil Scott-Heron
Label: XL
Released: 9 February 2010
In one word: Intriguing
If you were to ask those closest to yours truly to describe me in one word, in the way in which we infamously like to sum things up here at Music Vice, chances are the word “adventurous” wouldn’t pop up much. Take...
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