New Musick Monday

What an unmitigated disaster last week was. For a start, the Marina single is actually out on the 16 November (yeah, thanks nme.com!) and the much-touted and intermittently amazing Julian Casablancas album only went and missed the top 40 altogether. Just goes to show that oodles of 'proper' music press coverage (Musick included, naturellement) and a killer first single means diddly squat when your fanbase are only interested in the next album by the band you're meant to be fronting. The Nirvana reissue didn't shift many units either, but there was also a live album out at the same time and that managed to sell quite well, so we're claiming a small victory. Hurrah! This week's a bit of a struggle to be honest...

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Harvest Festival by Joe Goddard



Joe Goddard is the bearded one from Hot Chip. Not the singer, but the one who sometimes wears those retina-destroying woolly jumpers and worked on some of the early (and best) stuff by Little Boots. Harvest Festival is a diverting, kind of enjoyable slice of warm electronica that isn't exactly light years away from his day job, but does miss the pop sensibilities of their best bits. So, when we say 'buy this' we kind of mean 'buy this if you've got some vouchers left over or your Gran has found a fiver down the back of the sofa and given it to you thinking it was a tissue'.

DOWNLOAD THE CLUB BANGERS FROM THIS

In Love & War by Amerie



For those not on top of who's who in the great post-Beyoncé feisty female R&B challenge that took place about five years ago, Amerie is the woman that made this piece of perfection. She then went on to release some more songs but everyone just wanted to listen to '1 Thing' so nothing much ever happened career-wise. This is her fourth album and though it's not exactly trying new things, it does feature some pretty special moments, not least the first single, 'Heard 'Em All'. Again, you might not want to actually buy this. Oh, we don't know, just do what you want.

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'Laura' by Girls



Girls are that band with scraggly hair and the backstory that everyone from Pitchfork to, well, other similarly minded music websites are calling 'the greatest thing of 2009'. This is the second single from their new album, Album, and it's a rather lovely concoction, all jangly guitar and little boy lost lyrics. The singer sounds like Elvis Costello, but looks like one of Hanson had they turned to crystal meth after 'Mmmbop'.

New Musick Monday

Mmm, so we're going through a bit of a barren spell. Not only did the amazing 'Islands' by The xx not dent that charts, but the band have had to cancel a number of shows due to exhaustion. So, they're putting in all this work, schlepping about the planet to play their music in tiny clubs and what do you do to thank them? You conspire to dump them in the black hole that is 'not inside the top 40'. As for the others, Devendra missed out altogether as did Hudson Mohawke, who should console himself with the fact that he's not Mr Hudson, who a friend of Musick had him confused with. Every cloud...

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Phrazes For The Young by Julian Casablancas



What a very odd record. Taking in everything from '80s synth-pop to country melancholia, Phrazes For The Young finds Casablancas at a bit of a crossroads. With The Strokes on hiatus (although a new album is in the works), the guy that writes all their songs has decided to take eight new compositions and bolt on some new instrumentation, mess around with song length (nearly all of them are over five minutes) and generally try and confuse us. THIS IS A GOOD THING. Single 11th Dimension is the obvious highlight, but the giddy rush of River of Brakelights and the closing Tourist - complete with horn blasts - run it close.

DON'T PLAY GUITAR HERO, JUST LISTEN TO THIS

Bleach (Deluxe Edition) by Nirvana



Back in 1989, before 'Smells Like Teen Spirit', and before 'grunge' became the new fashion, Nirvana's Bleach was just another album on Sub Pop's roster. Slowly, it sold 30,000 copies, enough to warrant a follow-up, and the rest is history. Twenty years later (twenty years!?) Sub Pop are releasing this deluxe version, complete with rare live recordings and new artwork. The original album is a template for what Nirvana were about to become, featuring caustic shards of rage and frustration mixed with melodic moments such as the sublime 'About A Girl'.

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'Mowgli's Road' by Marina & The Diamonds



EDIT: This isn't out until 16 November...we can only apologise. Not to pass the buck, but it was all NME's fault.

Cuckoo! When exam results are released there are usually headlines screaming things like, "Boys results decline as girls catch them up" or some such. The implication being that girls are only doing better because boys are doing worse. This trend seems to be moving to music, where certain parts of the media seem to be under the impression that the recent glut of talented female singers is only happening because the boys have either been off chasing spaceships (Robbie) or venturing into films (Justin). What's really happening is that these women are just making better music at the moment, and 'Mowgli's Road' - all jaunty piano and skyscraping chorus - is leagues above anything made by someone with a penis this week.

It's not just a Phraze

A little while ago we did a thing about the return of Julian Casablancas following a few years hanging out in New York generally avoiding doing any new stuff for The Strokes. The album Casablancas has made is called Phrazes For The Young and we were all warned it was a bit of a departure. Basically, guitars were out and keyboards were very much in.



Well, the first fruits of his labour have emerged in the form of new single, the brilliant '11th Dimension'. WARNING: Do not listen to this expecting to hear something like 'Last Nite':



Woah. It's a multi-layered, synth shagging, processed-guitar type pop behemoth and will no doubt split fans of The Strokes right down the middle. We especially love how it ends up being a completely different song at the end to that which fizzes into view at the beginning. Most importantly, it sounds like Casablancas is having a ball too, his voice more strident and engaging then he appears on some of The Strokes latter material. There's even a bit where he just goes "woah" for no reason! And a keyboard breakdown!

You can't please everyone though. This was left under the video on youtube:
"what the hell is this scandelous (sic) peice (sic) of crap"

Phraze out

Hands up who remembers The Strokes? OK, hands down. Hands up again if you can name their second and third albums...ah, I see. Well, just when we all thought it was safe to assume the band had reconvened to record their fourth album, news emerges that Julian Casablancas is to release a solo album this autumn.



The bizarrely titled Phrazes For The Young was written and arranged by Casablancas, produced by Jason Lader and Mike Mogis (the latter of Bright Eyes and The Concretes 'fame') and comes with this early-graphics-were-cool-in-Tron-type teaser trailer thing:



The music that accompanies the trailer is probably not what your average Strokes fan was expecting, but given the fact that Casablancas has recently been moonlighting with everyone from Pharrell Williams to Danger Mouse, it can't have been that surprising to find a dearth of rock guitars. Instead there's some vintage synths, a lovely noodly keyboard motif and some polite beats. There's a bit near the end where Casablancas steps up to the mic, a scene which caused the following comment from a youtube patron: "Julian.. you beautiful sonfobitch!" Sonfobitch indeed.