Category: Dance
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Metronomy: Metronomy Forever
Gone is the wonky synth and in its place highly catchy and slick pop tunes and (to our ears) an album-long tribute to the band’s Ferdinand Mount’s influences over the years. He recorded his early albums on his own and this sounds like it’s just him, too. The result is some of his best songs…
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Caravan Palace: Chronologic
Caravan Palace is a French electronic music band based in Paris. They play electro-swing, which is as it sounds; possibly more popular on the Continent than this side of La Manche. Electro-swing combines swing and jazz mixed with modern dance. It can be an acquired taste; Mr Scruff and Jurassic 5 have written electro-swing tracks.…
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Shakespears Sister: Singles Party (1988-2019)
Everyone knows Shakespears Sister, though you might struggle to remember a song. “Two girls, dancy pop, something to do with Bananarama and Dave Stewart, fell out ..?” Well that’s all we remembered. Marcella Detroit and Siobhan Fahey formed the band in 1988 after Fahey left Bananarama. They split in 1993 after Detroit was sacked in…
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Holy Moly and The Crackers: Take A Bite
This lot are one of those bands that are fundamentally a live band, playing raucous (but tight) gypsy / dance rock. Imagine Mumfords with a brass section and disco high-hats. And personality. Regulars at Rode Hall’s Just So festival will have seen many such a band — indeed, Holy Moly and The Crackers were on…
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Sparkling: Felonious
We thought this lot to be a US hip hop group — that’s what the title puts us in mind of — but it’s not: it’s vintage 80s synth pop delivered to a high standard. We’ve been playing the new Foals album a lot, and it’s a bit Foals, 80s style. Sparkling are Danish —…
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David Guetta: 7
Older readers will remember a Foster’s lager advert, in which a silver fox rolls up at a bar in a Ferrari. “Don’t you want a man like that to a real potato-head” says the bartender, followed by, “I’ll settle for stupid”. (“Ah, professor!” calls out a drinker). “Most unpopular man in town!” (“Bob! Bob!” cry…
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Metronomy: Nights Out
If success is sounding as fresh as a decade ago, this reissue of the Metronomy break-through album is one of the best. The sound of what the band’s mainman Joseph Mount said was a bad a night out (maybe more than one, looking at the title), we found it too weird to like when we…
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Rudimental: Toast to Our Differences
It’s hard not to like this album, in the same way it’s hard to dislike beans on toast or any buddy bromance cop movie — they’re just products, meant to be consumed by the masses. Gone are the days when you’d turn Rudimental up loud for a shot of euphoria … but then this is…
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Tea Street Band: Frequency
The Press release for this claims the band follows in the wake of “tunefully idiosyncratic” Liverpool bands like The Coral (partly true) and are closer to artists such as Tunng (not really). The partial truth is that they are tuneful but it’s not really idiosyncratic and Tunng would not readily spring to mind —…
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Clean Bandit: What Is Love?
Clean Bandit fall in that category of bands who surprise us by getting very famous (when much better bands do not). They’re as brainy as the lovechild of Brians May and Cox: some band members met at Jesus College, Cambridge, while another member was at Westminster School and in a string quartet with the…
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