Mac Miller
Frick Park Market (Island/UMGI)
Now I've shaken my surprise that Frick Park Market is printable, let's compare Mac to Eminem! They're both white! They both have tattoos! Mac jigs about dressed as Professor Weeto! But similarities halt at the role Mac takes in his own video as a cheeky delicatessen barista – the real Slim Shady's most glamorous foray into fictional catering was working at a Burger King, spitting in your onion rings. What's that, you splutter through a mouthful of egg-white omelette: "Enough of this gentrification"? But what else is "I ain't a hipster but girl, I'll make your hips stir", about, if not the thrill of artisan breadmaking?
Pitbull
Back In Time (RCA Records)
Sylvia Robinson out of Mickey & Sylvia died last year. I worried that her legacy would be confined to the bit when Johnny and Baby lip-sync to Love Is Strange in Dirty Dancing. But now it extends to a man with a patch of facial topiary best described as a "flavour saver" sampling its overbite-inducingly perfect riff over a happy hardcore-meets-polka instrumental. That's not a dubstep breakdown, that's Sylvia's patience wearing thin.
Poppy & The Jezebels
Sign In, Dream On, Drop Out (Gumball)
Brummie-branded mockney caterwauls: "Sign in! Dream on! Drop out!" But what's this political message, ladies? A comment on the futility of Second Life? A tirade against the decision to use purple decor to allay tensions in job centres? Or is it about spaffing your student loans on Haribo, Panda Pops and Starburst? It's as uncouth to presume another's blood sugar levels as it is to ask an acquaintance to explain what his T-shirt says. But I'm confident that Poppy and her Jezebels – self-releasing on a label called Gumball – must remain in the kettle, pending arrival of insulin guns.
Spector
Celestine (Polydor)
I don't know Fred Macpherson. But If I did, we'd have met aged 16 in a park. He'd have pulled his cardigan around him to shield against gusts of swirling leaves. I'd have pulled my bobbly three-quarter leggings down over my pasty pegs. Who wouldn't want to be close to a boy who could procure 20 B&H simply by dropping his voice to the pitch of a yawn? He'd eventually shun me, wondering why he wasn't writing the best song of 2004 instead.
School Of Seven Bells
The Night (Vagrant Records)
It's not just Spring/Summer's insistence on foisting tropical patterns on to men's torsos that plopped Jim Carrey into my consciousness. When I listen to this, my brain spurts up the bit of the Dumb And Dumber road trip when Jim pretends the truck's disappeared and he's whooshing along the highway using leg-power alone. It evokes all the euphoria of a run that's so freeing that it will undo every urge to shower pavements with searing hot spittle.
