Pick of the week
The Brownies, Means To An End
(NR One)
My discovery of the year was Keep Your Mouth Shut by Xerox Girls, an amazing demo from 1997 of bratty playground punk with teenage heavy metal guitars and a headkicking schoolgirl vocal. Going by this debut, the Brownies (who formed as part of their GCSE music course) could be Xerox Girls' attitudinal, imperiously cool nieces and nephews. Brilliantly out of step with current modish indie trends, full of heart-in-mouth moments and a hatred so finely tuned it's almost sexy, Means To An End is a handstand, a cartwheel and a kick in the nuts and it demands your immediate surrender.
Simply Red, The World And You Tonight
(Simplyred.com)
In a week where José Gonzáles' acoustic cover of Massive Attack's Teardrop sets a new low for recorded music, I wasn't anticipating the new Simply Red single. Cold blooded MOR production, grating faux-soul emoting, yep, the usual. But then, at about 2:15, it turns genius. The sound is stretched out into a seething metallic clang, Hucknell sings with the voice of a sad robot swept in the electric tide of a backwards datastream. This is AMAZING. Turns out my MP3 was just corrupt and misfiring in iTunes, but for those precious seconds this sounded as great as it does in Mick Hucknell's head.
Daler Mehndi featuring the Wolfmen, Two Eyes (Do Naina)
(Universal/iTunes)
Things this single could soundtrack: Delhi street gangs squaring up and backflipping across futuristic rooftops in cyberpunk parkour; camel-riding insurgents outrunning fighter jets, missiles and Airwolf in a desertscape; 1977 punk rockers bogling, breakdancing and krumping in Bollywood; afterburners igniting. Daler Mehndi is one of India's biggest musicians, the Wolfmen were once Adam's Ants, and this fierce bhangra-rock crossover rules. Fire up!
You Say Party! We Say Die!, Like I Give A Care
(Fierce Panda)
Some bands have names so great that they are actually physically incapable of being rubbish: Ninja High School, Gay Against You, Romeo Void, Death From Above 1979, Disco Inferno, Slayer. On the other hand, "the Beatles". You Say Party! We Say Die!'s full-throttle rail against despair, delivered in frantic girl-gang chanting and rocket-powered indie-punk keyboards and guitars is ace, and tenuously proving my point, scorches the pants off anything from The White Album. Oh yeah.
LCD Soundsystem, Someone Great
(DFA/EMI)
In a penthouse studio, peering over the twinkling lights of downtown Manhattan, Tubby Murphy polishes off another pack of Twinkies, gazes forlornly at beaming couples drifting by, and pushes another button on the sequencer. For someone who boasts an almost Brian Wilson-level of genius when it comes to kinetic beat-making, actual songwriting has always been a bit of a trial for James Murphy. Here, though, he's crafted something elegant and lonely and huge out of blocks of soft synth that bump together like awkward skyscrapers. A break-up song, it's again the music more than the lyrics that tap the emotions here ·