PICK OF THE WEEK
Krishane ft Shaggy
Money Can’t Buy No Love (Atlantic)
Congratulations to Krishane, the 21 year-old from Manchester, Jamaica, for finally making a feelgood pop-reggae song that isn’t really annoying and lame. Money Can’t Buy No Love saves that ailing genre by injecting a heady dose of DJ Mustard tropes, including a brilliant chorus that’s just a vibrant bassline and a load of sampled “hey” sounds. You might not hear this at carnival this weekend, but it certainly represents the more sweetly jovial aspects of the festival.
Leftfield ft Sleaford Mods
Head And Shoulders (Infectious Records)
Looks like Bleak House isn’t just a Dickens novel but also a genre created by blending the “U WOT M8?” stylings of Sleaford Mods and the newly revived Leftfield. Their combined effort makes for almost painful listening, with Leftfield’s rumbling, bassy beat unceremoniously spoken over by Jason Williamson. It ends up sounding like a pilled-up divorcee telling you how well he’s doing at a rave while you’re trying dance, shouting right in your ear like it’ll get to your brain quicker that way.
Justin Bieber
What Do You Mean (Island)
Looks like Bugatti Bieber is back to being his usual sultry self after an EDM hiatus with his pals Skrillex and Diplo. It was interesting to see puberty whack Justin in the vocal chords and turn him from a door-to-door car washer into an abs and tats sex-man. This trend is continued in What Do You Mean, with its slightly shaky Auto-Tuned rap-singing and frequent use of the word “bitch”. It’s still a bit of an unconvincing transition though, like when a friend’s little brother starts smoking weed and taking webcam gang-sign selfies.
Alexa Goddard
We Broke The Sky (Roc Nation)
We Broke The Sky? More like, We Broke This Guy (me) With This God Damn Boring Song, am I right? I feel that calling this painting-by-numbers is inaccurate, because at least with that you can feign creativity by deliberately picking a different colour. This is just a woman singing nothing-y words over a slowed-down Amen break beat, like we’ve heard a million times before. Someone create a dark Shazam that removes these tracks off the iTunes store when they register in-app.
Public Service Broadcasting
The Other Side (Test Card Recordings)
This is what a vlogger’s brain sounds like when they’ve just filmed something “totally epic”. It’s a building, crescendo-ing emo-synth pop track that never quite turns into College & Electric Youth’s A Real Hero like you want it to. The pretty meaningless Houston ground control samples add nothing, they just sound like someone left a YouTube conspiracy doc about the moon landing on when they were recording. It’s not rubbish, but it’s not really something you’d actually want to listen to. Like, you wouldn’t listen to the tone-setting honking uber-horns of the Inception OST in your spare time, would you?
