PICK OF THE WEEK
Brandon Flowers
Lonely Town (Island)
Earlier this year, Killers frontman Brandon Flowers revealed that he’d spent seven years hoarding his facial hair shavings and storing them in a Ziploc bag, for no apparent reason. In many ways, this song equals that rock anecdote for silliness. It has a vocoder segment that sounds like Drake set to Full Mope. And a gospel choir with added banjo-plucking. And, er, a lyric about the Gravitron fairground ride. So winningly daft is it that if Fetty Wap turned up to guest-yodel about the Chinese stock exchange you’d barely notice.
Meghan Trainor ft John Legend
Like I’m Gonna Lose You (Epic)
Cars have a long and illustrious place in pop mythology. In 1968, Keith Moon drove a Lincoln into a hotel swimming pool. In 1995, Noel Gallagher was gifted a chocolate brown Rolls-Royce by his label boss, despite the fact he couldn’t drive. And now we arrive in 2015, where Meghan Trainor is wimping through a sadsack ballad while inviting a Fiat 500 to guest star in her video. A Fiat 500! And one that, along with John Legend, somehow manages to convey embarrassment at being associated with Trainor’s overwrought love balladry. Go home pop culture, you’re no longer drunk.
Kenton Slash Demon
Harpe (Future Classic)
Denmark has undergone an impressive cultural renaissance of late: crime dramas, restaurants that serve delicacies dredged from the beach and a vibrant alt music scene, from Yung’s shoegaze punk to Liss’s soulful nu-pop. Kenton Slash Demon are two electronic chaps from Copenhagen and this track unfurls beautifully: there are string washes, fuzzed-out drum crashes and what sounds like guest vocals from a mewling baby. All of which transform what should be a monotonous house banger into something with feeling.
Kavana
Deja Vu (St Anthonys)
“Cooler than a Polar Bear’s toenails!!!” is the assured opinion of one of the YouTube commenters underneath the video for this, the return of 90s pop star Kavana. Although, let’s be honest, if we took the opinions of BTL commentators seriously then you’d currently be reading the words of “a talentless, spam-for-brains prick who spells his name like an idiot”. We know that’s not true, and that’s how we also know that this retro-soul affair is about as cool as deep-fried Olly Murs, served with sriracha.
Zedd ft Jon Bellion
Beautiful Now (Interscope)
Reviewing the singles for the Guide might look like fun,but what you don’t see is that, to get to this advanced stage of musical criticism, one must wade through every track released next week, most of which sound like life sentences in EDM purgatory or the sound of that fairground you went to aged 14 where your mate puked White Lightning on your Huaraches. To illustrate the horror: this sounds like both, played simultaneously, at triple speed.
