PICK OF THE WEEK
Lianne La Havas
Unstoppable (Warner Music)
Unstoppable is a 2010 American action thriller film starring Denzel Washington and Chris Pine loosely based on a real-life incident involving a runaway freight train and the men who attempted to stop it. Lianne’s people haven’t emailed me back to confirm, but I’m almost certain this planetary pop ballad is an artistic recreation of what might have been going on in the freight train’s mind. An abstract narrative to get your head around, I know, but listen closely to the 25-year-old’s effortlessly futuristic and sophisticated songcraft and I think you’ll agree La Havas nailed it.
Pink Film
Gut Wrench (Pink Film)
Pink Film have a very similar name with popular male rock act Pink Floyd, who have been old for more than three decades. It’s about time, then, that we clear some space for the young bucks of the music biz! If you like your indie a little frazzled – think Pavement if Stephen Malkmus had spent his youth in a wet shed in Wales instead of in sunny Santa Monica – then it’ll push your buttons. Coming soon: Pink Film fly a gigantic (small) blimp (blown-up condom) across a skyline near you.
Charles Hamilton ft Rita Ora
New York Raining (Republic/Virgin EMI)
“Red wine and cheese before bedtime,” Charles Hamilton promises Rita Ora during this dulcet duet, sounding more Jilly Goolden than Jay Z. The duo are in tricky territory here: everything from the piano riff to the call-response rap vocal recalls the epic Empire State Of Mind. Sadly, with its Key Stage 2 rhymes and mind-numbingly unremarkable melody, this is less the soundtrack to the city that never sleeps and more the sound of being trapped in eternal cheese-dream purgatory.
KStewart
Keeping You Up (Cherry Jam)
The name recalls one of those electronic producers you tell your friends you went to see at a festival when you actually spent 2am tripping over guy ropes and eating the Alpen bar your mum shoved in your pac-a-mac pocket. KStewart is, in fact, a much more glamorous prospect: part of the new generation of British R&B club vocalists. Instead of just guesting on other people’s hits, she writes songs such as Keeping You Up, as much Genie In A Bottle-era Aguilera as it is a Claire’s Accessories Christmas party. Quick snog by the neon scrunchies?
O-Town
Skydive (All About The Melody)
15 years since they first formed on reality show Making The Band, O-Town are back! Again, after a comeback last year. For their new single they’ve honed in on heartbreak, using skydiving as a metaphor for how they’d like to penetrate their ex-lover’s soul. Should have warned her about those Liquid Dreams before she slept over, lads.
[Note to editor: Lianne La Havas’s people wrote back. Unstoppable actually about a bloke, not train. Please amend immediately before entire journalistic reputation is shattered].
