Shake It Off by Taylor Swift - Reviewed

No time like the present eh? So I see this come up in my twitter feed...

Taylor Swift actually has a long history of trying to rap... http://t.co/xsAqovBmxo pic.twitter.com/w5JBwBMCTC

— Huffington Post (@HuffingtonPost) August 19, 2014

I thought 'oh, ok' out of morbid curiousity I have to have a look at this: Taylor Swift's new song; and lamentably there will be no hipping and hopping on this sick beat.

In spite of not only being a Taylor Swift song, but also being possibly the most obnoxious song I've heard in a good long while; I really like it. It's uptempo, in-your-face and ridiculously catchy and that's about all there is to it; I'm a little apprehensive of saying this, but I think it's the case that the catchiness that gets Taylor off the hook for goofy lines like: 'The haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate hate'. To criticise the outlandish lyrics would be to completely miss the point and take the song too seriously; this is a song that falls into the same category as Happy by Pharrell Williams and Friday by Rebecca Black: infectiously memorable and simply about having fun.

The only thing I'm going to say holds the song back is the uncomfortable talking part in the middle: very reminiscent of Girlfriend by Avril Lavigne and Hollaback Girl by Gwen Stefani. In fact, I'd go as far as saying the ostentatiousness turned up to 11 feel was what Gwen was going for, but it fails as a song by not being playful at the same time. And I'm not sure what it is about awkward mini-monologues mid-song that Taylor insists on, I've already mentioned this on the blog before here. Nonetheless it's good to see Taylor not taking herself too seriously and laughing at herself as opposed to whining about various subject matter in frequently insecure appearance.

It's already got well over 13 million views and it was uploaded under two days ago at time of writing, my hope is it doesn't suffer the dreaded death by overplay, I fear this song may become inescapable and wear thin fairly quickly; at the moment though I am hopeful that this song will have a pretty good lifespan.

Portishead, Sonic Youth, Cherry Ghost, Delphic: More Album Reviews

Third - Portishead
So for the sake of completing my triumvirate of reviews for the Bristol group's three albums, my thoughts on Third. Compared with the other two LPs this has a much more varied, experimental theme; particularly producing more industrial feeling sounds. For instance if you like beeping to introduce a song (which I'll accept won't be found be melodic by everybody) you'll love 'We Carry On' and 'Magic Doors'. At only 93 seconds long, the folkish 'Deep Water' is certainly an odd fixture in the album in between 'We Carry On' and the anthemic 'Machine Gun' but such variety is idiosyncratic of Portishead, who with all of these boxes ticked still find time to close with a return to classic trip-hop form with closer 'Threads,' which could be a James Bond theme in my opinion, but having said that there's a litany of things which would be better than Adele's and Jack White's recent attempts. 'Silence' introduces the album with an immense buildup moving from drums to an alarm like eeping into strings and guitars. This progressive sound creates a spectacularly ominous atmosphere, nearly everything drops for the desolate and shaky vocals of Beth Gibbons for a verse until the two duel for the rest of the song.


Goo - Sonic Youth
It was always going to be difficult to follow up one of alternative rock's most esteemed albums in 'Daydream Nation' but to me, 'Goo' surpasses it, channelling longer songs like 'Teenage Riot' rather than the short, impactful songs like 'Silver Rocket.'
If Thurston Moore would have died after the recording of this album I have no doubt he would be the revered icon that Kurt Cobain is in alternative music (particularly having married Kim Gordon as opposed to Courtney Love), but like Stewart Lee discussing Bill Hicks: the hardest thing is to put out new stuff every year, gradually decreasing the quality of your own obituary.

Having said that there's shorter cacophanous interludes like 'My Friend Goo' and 'Scooter + Jinx' that are just odious and don't connect the more moderate, tolerable noise rock moments that make up the fabric of the longer tracks. The first two tracks sound really sweet; the delicate opening riff from 'Dirty Boots' and 'Tunic (Song for Karen)' which despite opening with a stabbing guitar vibe winds down into a settled song with Kim describing Karen Carpenter in Heaven with Elvis, Janis Joplin and Dennis Wilson. My pick of the album is 'Mote' which has a wonderfully intense atmosphere and is one of the rarer moments when Lee Ranaldo leads; an anthem in its first half and a descent into a chaotic noise rock instrumental in its second.


Beneath This Burning Shoreline - Cherry Ghost
The second album from the Boltonian band led by Ivor Novello award winner Simon Aldred, 'Beneath This Burning Shoreline' revisits the feel of the tenebrous Northern town that made 'Thirst For Romance' a success. Again Aldred has an effective poetic style and unusual imagery such as in 'Black Fang' the lyric 'Be my backstreet kisser and I will be your Golden Mile' is not only evocative, but conveys something ineluctably Northern also(the Golden Mile being part of the beach front in Blackpool to those eluded by that reference); the inertia in life's progression being an essential trope in the fabric of the LP. 'The Night They Buried Sadie Clay' paired with the next track 'My God Betrays' is the most caliginous corner on the album, describing the eponymous woman being found cold with a bottle by her bed, in dire contrast to the titilation experienced from the briefest intimate encounters experienced in youth and the 'done for dream' mentioned later on again touching on the near-futile attempts to escape isolation heard throughout the album.


Collections - Delphic
Delphic's debut 'Acolyte' is an album I very much enjoy, so when I got 'Collections' I had high hopes and was lamentably disappointed. To me the energy that characterised their first LP just isn't heard here, the longest song (Atlas) is only 6:05 and doesn't build up to anything; when the lyrics aren't too strong, they really haven't given much to carry the album and this happens far to many times. There are still some cool sounds to be found listening to this, 'Baiya' being a cool pop track, scratching the itch that 'Doubt' did last time around.
'Memeo' is easily one of the most pleasant things I've heard in recent memory and ought to be longer than three and a half minutes.

2013 Reviews: Foals, Everything Everything, Editors and Boxer Rebellion

So here's my views on the work of four bands whose 2013 releases I have been anticipating keenly:

Arc - Everything Everything
Arc is a fantastic development upon their debut Man Alive showing greater consistency throughout maintaining the verbosity, harmonies and catchy riffs that have brought EE success. While I think individual songs like My Kz Ur Bf, Suffragette Suffragette and Schoolin' are all better than any individual tracks are better than the best moments on Arc there's not nearly as many mistakes made. The content still makes great use of an elaborate lexicon and is fit very well to keep up a good flow. Cough Cough is a fantastic example of them using many an unorthodox image in quick succession along with prominent drums throughout to make a fetching number.


Holy Fire - Foals
Now I was expecting a lot from Foals new album after how much I enjoyed Total Life Forever, but there's a number of things I think let it down. For one, when the opening lyrics of the album (and lead single) are "Sticks and stones don't break my bones" it doesn't scream of creativity, rather it makes it sound like a twelve year old wrote the lyrics, that or Rihanna. Nevertheless both Inhaler and My Number have proven popular with many an indie clubber so in that sense they have been a success. As well there seems to be a loss of the knack for intros that they had throughout their last album, which is a problem when one of the greatest strengths in their past work is their ability to build. Providence is a splendid example of this: the first 25 seconds are wasted diving straight in only to start again from scratch, nonetheless its climactic instrumental which completes the song, capped by an even more spectacular drum fill than on After Glow is proof positive that they are still able to construct an excellent song even though it basically has to be compacted into three and a half minutes.


The Weight of Your Love - Editors
So I've already given my take on the albums's first single A Ton of Love and was apprehensive of the level of quality that they would display. Having owned it for two weeks now, the album for me starts at track five. The first four tracks appear to be the band trying to show that they've matured, in reality it comes across as the soporific, saccharin spewing of middle-aged men; In all honesty how can songs such called Sugarand What Is This Thing Called Love be anything but insipid? Then again Editors show they are far from losing their intensity on Two Hearted Spider and their pensiveness and passion on The Phone Book and the string heavy Nothing . The Special Edition came with a second disc which featured two acoustic covers and three extra songs which should definitely have been on the album: The Sting is definitely worth a listen and having been one of the first new songs to surface after In This Light and On This Evening and capturing many a fans imagination, it surprises me it's relegated to b-side status.


Formaldehyde is a vivacious rocker and will be the second single released from the album. I have to say that it should have been the lead single, as it'd be much more likely to get attention than the foray into sounding like U2 that is A Ton of Love. The final thing to say is while hugely approve of the song, the lurid cover art doesn't do anything for me.


Promises - The Boxer Rebellion
Diamonds is a great opener to the album with a terrific guitar riff and a lively beat, in a similar manner to the earlier single Step Out of the Car. On the flipside this is a potentially solid album let down because of the majority of its tracks having terse, incongruous lyrics. For instance, in the track New York the brief utterance "In New York" is repeated apropos of nothing we've already heard or go on to hear on the track or the album. Moreover the naming of a number of tracks, including the title track, come across as McGuffins, and doing this with Promises watermarks the other tracks as somewhat ill-conceived seeing as this is the name they want to be indentified as epitomizing the LP.