Writing

Purveyor of quality pop that I am, I feel blessed to have been given the chance to review Duncan James’ debut solo album. Jeez, I inexplicably used to fancy this man. He had the hilariously same hair as he did in 2001 on Top of the Pops (sob) the other week. Bravo. It’s not bad, it’s just uninspiring, y’know.

If you’re missing Darius and you’re after a bunch of mid-tempo pop songs to ease you through the day, then this might just be it.

What a sell! How could you refuse! Read the whole thing online at BBC Music.

It’s not often I go to a gig that completely blows me away, but New York band Morningwood
playing their first UK show at Club NME left me somewhat stumbling over
my words.  First discoving them via essential US music blog Arjan Writes, their self titled album stayed on the stereo for a few weeks with Jetsetter and Nth Degree finding their way onto our playlists.  Not having looked at their myspace page
for a while, I was delighted to see them booked in at Koko for a night
in mid-May and swiftly added them into the diary on a night that was to
become ‘the night of 4 clubs’.

‘This is a band who aren’t afraid to talk about sex, and during the dance rock ‘NY Girls’
Chantal gets a girl up on stage to dance with her. This is evidently
staged though, as they dance with more familiarity or intimacy than any
strangers should.  In any case, this display of girl on girl groping
certainly wakes up any Camden boys sulking in the corner.’

Read the rest of my rather excited and garbled review of the gig over at Gigwise and good god, make sure you can see them live as soon as you can.

There’s no big secret that I’m rather a large fan of Boy Kill Boy.  I wrote about them at Islington Academy earlier in the year, and I got chance to see them live on a boat on Saturday. We were pretty tired, having been djing Popstarz till 4am the night before but the music was good, and the sun was shining so we ended up having a lovely Saturday and it gave us a great excuse to get out of the house early!

You’re probably already singing the catchy hook of Suzie to yourself regularly but try catching the band live on the NME new bands tour if you can or buy their debut album Civilian when it’s released in a couple of weeks.

In the meantime though, you can check out my words and Millys photo at the review of the gig over on Gigwise.

Boy Kill Boy  are one of the bands that I really think are going to be huge in 2006.   Monday sees the release of their first major single with Mercury and fingers crossed it’s going to set the charts alight.   

A couple of weeks ago, James, Tommy, Sandra & myself took ourselves over to Islington to see them live at a secret gig, and you can read exactly what I thought about it at BBC London.

What’s this?  Hilary Duff then Ashlee Simpson? Oh dear, I appear to have become the BBC’s reviewer of mediocre American actress’ singles.   I don’t know why I didn’t slate this really.  It’s not bad, it’s just not good either. I must have been in a good mood (and very excited by the actual goodness of L.O.V.E)

My BBC review of Ashlee Simpson – I Am Me

Wow at this photo of Girls Aloud.  Just how unstyled do they all look?

And how reminiscent is it of this Spice Girls shoot.

Girls Aloud 3rd album Chemistry came out on Monday…

GA have resusciatated pop’s corpse by wedding chart-friendly melodies to experimental avant-garde sounds, particularly on the sublime Swinging London Town.

Read my full review at BBC Music Online.

                                                   

On Monday evening, Shall, James & myself headed down to LSE to see Sons & Daughters. 

After confusing various students with the building we were after we realised we were actually meant to be at Kings College.  Thankfully that was only 5 mins walk away.

Clor were meant to be supporting.  They weren’t there though and thanks to a dippy receptionist telling me the wrong time earlier in the day, we had to stand through the frankly diabolical VV & the Villains.

Anyway, Sons & Daughters themselves were TOTALLY awesome.    Find out how awesome at CDUK Online.

"Will’s voice lends itself to the bossanova beats of this song brilliantly: you can picture him bursting into song, tap dancing down the street and twirling round lampposts.  Clocking in at rather long five minutes, 20 seconds, it ends with a fancy organ breakdown followed by dazzling Spanish guitars."

Read my full review of Will Young’s 3rd album keep on here.