Liz Green
Bad Medicine (Play It Again Sam)
Liz stands out from the current crop of solo artists like turning the page of a book of moat-brown carpet swatches to find a pop-up of a giraffe, dressed as Evel Knievel riding a hovercraft over a canyon full of exploding dinosaurs. Unfortunately, that's only a slight exaggeration. With vocals like a phantom gramophone, almost ethereal brass sections and bleakly glorious lyrics, this eerily eccentric lump of assured blues chanteusery is definitely worth pointing your ears at.
The Maccabees
Feel To Follow (Fiction)
Auto-Tune can be a fickle MihiihEEsteResseSSeSS at times. You've written a pretty good song, but not great, needs more ... something. What to do? Cowbell? Ill-advised rap verse? Drown it in dubstep? So many choices. Here, the Maccabees have attempted to rub Bon Iver all over themselves like a thick musky cologne, one that reeks of corduroy and beard detritus. Sadly, they just ended up making the opening vocals sound like Herbert the Pervert from Family Guy gargling a jar of pickled walnuts. Which is a shame, as it merely distracts from what turns out to be a rather nice and pleasantly swirly indie pop wobblealong.
Katie Melua
It's Better Than A Dream (Dramatico)
Katie Melua's back after two unfathomably short years away. So, what treats does nobody's favourite mimsy-jazz squawker and haunted meringue have in store for us? It's standard Melua, a melody as banal as cardboard mist, chewy rhyming couplets, and endless fauxmantic wurbling about doors and illusions and Indian braves, and … lumme, turn it off! It's like someone opened a sodding Hotel Chocolat inside my mind.
Paul Weller
That Dangerous Age (Island)
Paul recently described his new sound as "groundbreaking, maybe, possibly", the important words there being "maybe, possibly". As in: whatever it is that's currently residing on top of Mr Weller's head is "maybe, possibly" a haircut. This isn't entirely terrible. It's nothing new, essentially a blue-eyed soul, Motown, Bowie, Style Council smoothie. Exactly a smoothie, in fact: something your dad might think is bewilderingly modern, but is actually just a load of old smashed fruit.
Birdy
1901 (Atlantic)
OK, enough is e-bloody-nough. Can we put a lead-lined, torpedo-proof moratorium on tempo-ed down, wibbly-lipped clench-fisted earnest cover versions of, well, anything? It's beyond tiresome now. Here we see internet sensation and relentless caterwauling karaoke foetus Birdy "strip back" Phoenix's jaunty boingabout summer-of-2009 anthem 1901 into a clammy-palmed piano ballad so preposterously bland that, after five seconds, it becomes almost impossible to tell you're listening to music at all. It's bromide for the ears. It's saltpeter for the senses. It's awful. Pack it in.
