Pick of the week: Groove Armada Ft Mutya Buena, Song 4 Mutya (Out Of Control) (Columbia)
As far as pop collaborations go, you're unlikely to shoot up in your chair and scream "Yes please!" at the mention of Groove Armada and yet another Sugababes refugee teaming up. Which is why it comes as a surprise that such a yawn-inducing union has produced the greatest retro-future-pop record of 2007.
Splendid remixes by Kissy Sell Out and Linus Loves only serve to further underscore how brilliant, how incorruptible, the core concept behind Song 4 Mutya is. Show me a man who hates this, and I'll show you a man with doo-doo in place of a soul.
Dragonette, Take It Like A Man (Mercury)
Like Kylie waking up one day and deciding that cribbing some of Different Class-era Pulp's arch pop nuance is the next direction she need take her career, Dragonette are the band we've be waiting, oh, for about five years now, to happen.
Between squelched-mud Moog plops and a lost Duran Duran riff, Martina Sorbara coos things like "Yeah, I get a bit crazy with the razorblades/Go on and call your mama if you need a band aid". A song about wrong sex has never sounded so angelic, so danceable. Ever fallen in love with someone you've never met?
Shirley Bassey, Get The Party Started (Lock Stock & Barrel)
A Linda Perry-penned song about (whisper it) ecstasy, subsequently handed off to Pink and marketed to MTV-fed tweenlings, whichever advertising bod envisaged Dame Bassey covering this for M&S's 2006 Christmas campaign is a twisted genius.
So successful is it in bringing out the inner diva in all of us, the native population of drag queens has probably tripled in recent weeks. Either that or DVD sales of classic Bond films have surged. In fact, if Sean Connery ever puts a piece of music on to have a long, luxurious wank to, he could do worse than this.
Alterkicks, Cannibal Hiking Disaster (B-Unique)
Pity the one-hit wonder; pity the one-song wonder more. Unlikely to trouble the charts, the otherwise lacklustre Alterkicks seem to have swindled a boon from some dark god, having been granted such a terrifyingly gorgeous song. It's easy to sing about a broken heart; we've all been there.
But to deliver a song about, in a desperate act of survival, eating your best friend ("I took a strip above his thigh ...") with such pathos that the tale is almost scarily believable is no mean feat.
The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, In The Garden EP (No Death)
Ah, the triumphant return of Brighton's favourite psychobillies. Shorn of their original guitarist, they lack something in structure, but now appeal more to that which was set out in their original, unspoken mission statement: psychosis.
With a title track sung from the perspective of The First Man, another detailing the death of a Parisian diving horse, and another simply entitled You Say You're The Doctor, But I Know You're The Mister, it's clear that they've succeeded. Downloadable today, you might wish to wait for the physical release next week. It comes with a ouija board.