Josh T Pearson
Sorry With A Song (Mute)
It's worth catching the 14-minute plus version on his album Last Of The Country Gentlemen – but this shortened take will do. The ex-Lift To Experience man is in acoustic mode here, but his is a uniquely trickling, irregular, melodic style, lyrics and notes spilling down his chin like burbled bourbon down the hairs of that beard. His apology is a cleverly detailed reconstruction of country and western cliches, barfights and all, but for all its cap-in-hand, shambling abjection, Sorry With A Song is brilliantly turned, postmodern yet pulsatingly sincere, pick of the week by a strange country mile.
Blawan
What You Do With What You Have (R&S)
Mary Anne Hobbs fave Blawan turns this whole neo-acid thing on its head and inside out here, pulling out all the right buttons and pushing all the stops. With its overbearingly charismatic, slo-mo vocal, chomping techno stabs and Roland 303 squiggles twisted into tight new party balloon shapes, this is raw, unbridled fare from a label that's kept up the dark, crunching, nasty end of the dancefloor spectrum for over two decades.
The Magician Feat Jeppe
I Don't Know What To Do (Kitsuné)
The Magician is one half of DJ duo Aeroplane, here joining up with Danish vocalist Jeppe Laursen for an 80s anthem to trump all predecessors. Think early house and new romantic, big hair and 1989, Tears For Fears and Jack Your Body, all boxy, epic backbeat and a bit of Simple Minds glitter-pop, a song that wears its heart on its sleeve and its sleeves halfway up its arms. Back in the day, this might have sounded formulaic and tiresome; yet now, shrewdly refurbished, it abounds with shine and a new car smell.
Eddie Vedder
Without You (Monkeywrench/Island)
Pearl Jam were always an earnest proposition, with Eddie Vedder wearing his superstar angst like a lead overcoat. This is taken from Ukulele Songs, which is, as advertised on the tin, an album of ukulele songs. "I'll fly when you cry/ Lift us out of this landslide", he groans, but somehow, even free of the surly bonds of grungy, guitar gravitas, he still feels earthbound, gravelbound, lacking in quicksilver inspiration. You're hoping he'll take flight, take you higher – then, alas, the fadeout and that familiar, close-but-no-cigar Vedder feeling.
Evanescence
What You Want (Virgin/Wind Up)
Feels like aeons since last we heard of Evanescence but they're back, in full regalia, so histrionic they make Bonnie Tyler sound like Dido with the sniffles, with a hairdryer intensity that could coiffure an entire herd of mammoths, emerging like PVC-clad warrior kings and queens amid snow and dry ice into the Valley Of Pomp/Goth/Pop Destiny. Behold, as Michael Winner raises a hand and warbles "Calm down, dear!", only for Amy Lee to hurl a decapitating lightning bolt that leaves but a stump of frothing blood between his shoulders. Now, it begins.
