PICK OF THE WEEK

Django Django
First Light (Because Music)

As someone who heard Django’s first LP and was struck by an urge to plunge their fist through a thousand panes of glass, it was a pleasant surprise to discover First Light is actually a good track. The irritating, quirky harmony of tracks such as Default has been replaced by a smoother, easier, Brian Wilson-ish type of vibe. The whole song treads the line between an angry protest march and a pleasant breeze, the percussion offering a crunch of pugilism while the vocals try to calm it down, like a pleading girlfriend outside a nightclub.

Bear’s Den
Think Of England (Communion)

Here’s another bunch of lads getting scotch egg in the matted fibres of their facial hair while on a smelly tourbus. Bear’s Den’s Think Of England is exactly what you’d expect from a band who look as if their girlfriends have left them for not showering. It sounds a bit like all of Biffy Clyro’s mid-album ballads about death: a sad, drab experience reminiscent of watching the doors shut on the last tube.

Donae’o Feat Lumidee & D Double E
I Want Your Love (Zephron)

This is odd. The UK funky vocalist has joined forces with Spanish Harlem’s largely forgotten daughter Lumidee and the strange cadences of grime MC D Double E to create a kind of bastard spiritual successor to Robin S’s Show Me Love. The track combines a slew of things that, in unison, don’t really work: Donae’o’s hook isn’t memorable; Lumidee’s bit feels like a last-dash attempt to lob in a recognisable name; and, no disrespect to D Double, but his voice doesn’t exactly lend itself to sexy lyrics. A strange song that probably shouldn’t exist.

Sam Feldt
Show Me Love (Spinnin’ Deep)

And, bizarrely, here’s an actual cover of Robin S’s Show Me Love. Sam Feldt is a young Dutch warbler, and here he gifts us one of the most unsettlingly anodyne things I think I’ve ever heard. He has that peculiar Passenger-eqsue mealy mouthedness, but with a load of ambient birdsong and eerily playful MIDI-harpsichord bunged in as well. I can imagine a couple of teenagers listening to it on a coach, sharing earphone buds, looking out of the window at the trees and fields, and hoping for a summertime school-trip adventure. Absolutely hellish.

Si Cranstoun
Never Gonna Let You Go (Warners)

Si Cranstoun is a busker from Caterham to whom Tony Blair once gave 30p. He now has a “million-pound record deal” because some intern at Warners got a bit above their station in a meeting, adding another cash siphon to its already shaky roster. Never Gonna Let You Go is essentially a carbon copy of Cee-Lo Green’s Forget You. The video is filmed in noted London shit hole the Café De Paris, so you know they’ve pulled out all the stops, and definitely won’t be pulping the promo CDs until at least April.