The Japanese House
Follow My Girl
The alt-pop treasure-trove that is the 1975’s Dirty Hit label stable keeps offering up pure gold. Its latest shiny gem comes in the shape of Amber Bain AKA the Japanese House’s gut-wrenching sadbop. She has taken her sweet time, with her debut album finally coming out in February, a full four years since her first single. All is forgiven, though, because if there is a better sorrowful synthy singalong this month than “Nothing feels good / It’s not right”, then we’ve not heard it.
Dido
Hurricanes
So the Stan cash has finally run out. Eighteen years after her tea went cold and she wondered why she got out of bed at all, Dido is back once again to breathily complain about stuff and show off about having got the first Alt-J album way too late. Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O’Malley Armstrong – for that is her full name and it would be a shame not to relay it in its wild entirety – has moved on from sulking about beverages to having a go at the weather. Bet the weather’s shitting itself.
Hozier
Movement
A fittingly glum bedfellow to Dido’s Hurricanes, Movement takes the usually joyous sound of gospel and sieves it through a pair of Richard Madeley’s old boxer shorts, stripping it of all its glory and rendering it fit only for being piped out of the PA in Stratford Westfield at 3pm on a Tuesday afternoon. Which means you probably won’t be able to escape it for absolutely ages. We can only apologise.
Serine Karthage
Ruler
Not a tribute to the most annoying item to try and fit into a Spice Girls pencil case, but a solid sub-three-minute example of why British female MCs should get way more attention than they do. With a slow-burning sound that takes her Tunisian heritage and stomps it down the Harrow Road in a vintage Kappa tracksuit, Serine Karthage’s debut pays tribute to the older guard of Ms Dynamite and Estelle, with bucket(hat)s of class.
Zayn ft Nicki Minaj
No Candle No Light
Why does everything still sound like this? Sure, Ed Sheeran wrote one passable acousto-electro-squall of sound three years ago but since then it has been rehashed until 87% of all pop artists in the western hemisphere have had a joyless bash. With every version it comes out weaker and sicklier, like a tuberculotic Victorian maiden on her death bed. Here’s hoping that No Candle No Light finally puts it out of its misery.
