New Musick Monday

OK, we're back after a well-earned break to bring you some more essential purchases for this week...only, it's not really us doing the recommending, you'll see. Last week we urged you to purchase Mpho's brilliant 'Box N Locks' and you know what, no-one did. Well, some people did seeing as it crawled into the chart at no. 49, but still, it hardly seems worth it. Shame on you all.

This week is another pretty barren week for albums, but there was one that caught our eye. Normally we'd fudge it, pretend we'd heard it and judge it based on the specific act's back catalogue. This time, however, we decided to get a real journalist involved, one that has actually heard the album. Ladies and gentleman, we introduce Jake Kennedy...

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Judy Sucks A Lemon For Breakfast by Cornershop



Eight years – eight long years since the last Cornershop album. Don’t giggle – lots of people have missed them, this writer included. Here’s a a duo with an ethos that hasn’t changed in the 18 years they’ve been together. To make boundary-free good time music – and Judy has it in spades. Their fifth album isn’t so much eclectic as schizophrenic.
There’s the usual T-Rex riffing 'Who Fingered Rock’n’Roll?'/'The Roll Off Characteristics', Rowetta-tinged funk 'The turned On Truth' and plenty of sweet ass little segues that make it feel more than just a 12” remix spread over an hour. A cover of 'The Mighty Quinn' sticks out as one question mark – at least when they did 'Norwegian Wood' it was in Punjabi – 'Quinn' here sounds a little bit like a step backwards. But everything else is vital sounding (although 2004’s 'Topknot', would have fitted well) – so yes, they’ve still got it.
There. I didn’t mention “Brimful” once….

Jake has a blog, which will one day house his stories. For now it's got some lovely photos on it. It's called Rubber Echoes.

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The Best of Sandi Thom



Stretching the concept of a 'best of' to its absolute limits. Popjustice.com sum up the ridiculousness of it all better then we can so click here.

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'Heartbreaker' by MSTRKRFT feat. John Legend



We nearly managed to palm the entire section off on to other people, but we thought it best to do some actual work of our own. This is a rather nice electropop ditty by two men who don't like vowels and who used to be in other bands but aren't anymore. The singing is done by a certain John Legend who has thus far failed to live up to his surname. This isn't going to change that, but it certainly is a diverting four minutes and that's probably all we can hope for right now. This is the video. We think the guy with the sunglasses on has taken some drugs, so don't let anyone who is easily offended walk down Camden High Street.

New Musick Monday

The tired edition.

Oh dear oh dear. Sun burnt of face and smelly of pits we have returned just in time to bring you a decidedly truncated version of everyone's favourite weekly guide to what's 'hot' and what's 'not' in the world of music. Last week wasn't exactly a corker in terms of sales with V.V. Brown's album entering at number 30 and the Arctic Monkeys single plummeting about twenty places.

There aren't really any albums out this week that make us think "we should really tell our loyal readers about these works of art". So, there's just this...

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'Box N Locks' by Mpho



We thought this had already been released but it hasn't, hence it's appearance here. Mpho is from London, she's got oodles of 'spunk' and 'Box N Locks' is a very good summery pop single about 'real issues' (black musicians feeling pigeon-holed by mainstream media and record labels). If you don't believe that politics has a place in pop then you could always pretend it's a song about key cutting and general masonry.

Fo sho Mpho

There's a lot of waiting around in music these days. New acts come along with their impossible to find taster singles, then they take up acres of space in magazines and broadsheets and then before you know it, six months later, their album drops. Brixton-born Mpho is being talked up by those in the know as something quite special and whilst rooting around in someone else's box (!) at work we found a 5-track album sampler, an amuse-bouche if you will, prior to the main meal (the album, Pop Art, is out in October).

This is her face:



Here's an in-depth track-by-track guide to the sampler:

'See Me Now' - Lyrically it's all "you didn't think I'd make it, well look at me now", whilst musically it's got some real nice beats, chugging guitars and some sweet "ah ho, ah ho" bits. Very good.

'Box N Locks' - The first single. It samples this, and can be seen below.



'Fix Ya Face' - Features the worst 'robot' voice effect in musical history and is very obviously the least inspiring thing on the sampler. It does features some nice synth effects, some odd whooshes but it's a bit dull to be honest.

'Hips Go Pop' - Now this is more like it. MASSIVE beats, a juddering synth line, some orgasmic breathlessness and a lyric about loving your ass and shaking what ya mumma gave ya. Or something. It even features a conversation with God about how He made her with a "whip in her hips".

'Paranoid Type' - More familiar territory here, with Mpho stalking her boyfriend via myspace and getting jealous and paranoid that he might be cheating on her. It's a funky little ditty to be sure, with lots of squelchy beats and it rattles by in less than three minutes.

Overall, a very promising start Mpho.