Blog: Misspeak Music

Well, Arctic Monkey's previous attempt at a 60s sound was an unqualified success, so I'm really excited at the prospect of another album's worth of that kind of stuff. MP3: Arctic Monkeys - 505

Eleven minutes long. MP3: Gang Gang Dance - Glass Jaw

A really gritty and genuinely classy take on the untouchable Smith's classic. It's not better and it's not radically different, so you shouldn't honestly be bothering, but there's something alluring about the song being treated a lot less delicately. That deadpan vocal and the crunchy guitars are winning. MP3: Dum Dum Girls - There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

MP3: Lady Gaga - Born This Way

The shape of the next Radiohead record was revealed in an interview for Familial, drummer Phil Selway’s modest acoustic side-project. The question: whether the album would be born from extensive touring and live experimentation as was the case with In Rainbows. ‘Uh, no’ was the chuckled reply. It’s easy to see what was so funny. Where In Rainbows was conciliatory and sensuous, Limbs heralds a return to their stark post-Kid A textures: a part-Jazzy, part –IDM inspired and introverted sound that dispriviledged the guitar at every opportunity. Take album-opener Bloom: Greenwood’s hollow bass punctuates an [...]

One of the prettiest tracks from last year's highly approved Swim finally gets a video. MP3: Caribou - Jamelia (Gold Panda Remix)

I feel like I should cover more London artists, being from London myself. So here's something I found on my travels by D. Paris who is someone I know nothing about apart from the fact that this track's pretty good and he's from London, according to his Soundcloud . MP3: D. Paris - 1954

Obtuse idealism from Lupe rendered palatable by healthy dose of humour amongst the references to slave ships, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King (Fred Astaire as a b-boy, Eminem as hip hop pioneer) and those schmaltzy, glistening Disney strings that ground it firmly in a wistful daydream rather than naive political statement a la Imagine. MP3: Lupe Fiasco - All Black Everything

A new 8 minute cut of Far Nearer got revealed when Jamie XX took over 6 music Sunday night; tropical steel drums, woozy, disfigured vocals and springy synths galore. Check out his whole set over at iPlayer if you've got a spare couple of hours for an impressive garage, grime and post-dubstep mix. Thanks to post-dubstep for the original rip. MP3: Jamie XX - Far Nearer

Some post-Dilla boom-bap doing more interesting things with voices, just got a shiny, kaleidoscopic new music video. MP3: Star Slinger - Mornin'

Missed this first time around, so here it is. A schmaltzy, if slightly absurd, way to close Valentine's week*. MP3: Cut Copy - Need You Know *That's a thing, right?

Though blurred, that James Blake on the cover doesn’t obscure the fact that the guy’s now a popstar of sorts. The album art isn’t new: we first saw the image, depicting Blake as a kind of split Jekyll and Hyde figure, on the cover of the Klavierwerke EP. The two records don’t share much in common, but it was obviously decided that it’d be silly not to have the boy on the cover for the main event. He’s pretty easy on the eyes, after all. And he sings. Compared to the Kelis-sampling, R&B-obscuring pseudo-dubstep Blake [...]

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy gets another lazy and unfinished music video. Rihanna's breasts do not a great music video make. It's a shame as there's not been an album by a big label megastar more deserving of a proper promotional victory lap in recent years. We're never going to see a finished video for Monster either. Also, I'm not sure if Hype Williams is paying homage to or just copying this: In non-music-related, but still Kanye news: I don't know anything [...]

Napoleon Dynamite, meet Charlie Chapin. MP3: Radiohead - Lotus Flower

MP3: Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie XX - I'm New Here

I think this is the closest thing they've done to a 'nice' love song. Happy Valentine's Day Love, Radiohead. MP3: Radiohead - All I Need

Better late than never. 1. Lykke Li - I Follow Rivers 2. Braids - Lemonade 3. Destroyer - Kaputt 4. James Blake - I Mind 5. Panda Bear - Last Night At The Jetty 6. Cut Copy - Strange Nostalgia For The Future MP3: Janbruary 2011 Mix

MP3: Tyler, the Creator - Bastard

They're back. MP3: The Strokes - Under Cover of Darkness

MP3: Toro Y Moi - New Beat