Miss-Shapes: Playlist 27 April

Playlists have recently been replaced by real blogging!  Shocking. Anyway here's a bit of a miss-shapes update from our sets this week.  We played, amongst other more boring stuff...

Guess who’s back

Mutya! This could be real, could be fake but if it is real it
certainly looks like she's sat at home making it herself.  Love Song is a classy, sultry r&b ballad - it's nice to hear her without Keisha's warbling.

In other urban pop news the queen dawg Kelis is playing a low profile gig at  Hammersmith Apollo on June 28th.  How good is that going to be! If it's not sold out yet, get your tickets here.

UPDATE: There's a 2nd song from Mutya online now.  2 The Limit is less boring than Love Song and has a catchy little hook It could sound great when produced properly.

Frank

Anyone who's flicked channels on a Saturday morning will surely have come across E4's Totally Frank - kind of a more mature S Club series about a band and their lives.  It's always been quite fun in a trashy way, and the music has always been good pop.  Now they're set to release music themselves as Frank. 

Now let's flip back two years, when once upon a time there was a band called Mania.  Touted as the next big thing, promo material for these girls was everywhere.  There were big black boxes emblazoned with their name and cds everywhere.  Unfortunatly the public didn't bite, and their debut single Looking For a Place To Go limped in at number 29, despite Wes claiming it was the catchiest song in the world EVA!!!


Now here's the exciting bit - after gaining a bit of a cult following loads of unreleased Mania tracks have been re-recorded by, you guessed it, Frank.  The awesome I'm Not Shy on Mondays has become Complicated, and the brilliant Money In My Pocket, the never released 2nd single from Mania, is on their album.

You can catch them on Channel 4 on a Saturday morning, or brilliantly as support on Girls Aloud's UK tour next month.  This is going to be a time when showing up for the support act is essential!  With Xenomania & a TV show behind them, I see no reason why they won't be huge. But hey, this is a country that sends James Blunt to number 1 so who knows.  Helena from the band was in Ghetto last night, and being the hilarious DJ that I am, I played the original Money in My Pocket, which left her screaming and being very excited, before asking me how the hell I knew it.  Hehehe.  They're gonna be awesome.

Pre-Bandwagon but lazy : Lily Allen

I'm becoming a bit irritated at myself.  Blogging has picked up on here recently but there's been lots of gaps over the last few months.  This has led to me being sulky over the fact that everyone is raving about people I was raving about months ago, but never bloody wrote about.

Case in point is Lily Allen. 

I first heard her a few months ago as James from 9PR was pimping Nan, you're a window shopper on his myspace.  Fresh and summery, a light female vocal with witty/real vocals over a light ska track it was obviously going to be massive, and this would be obvious to anyone who heard it!  Then Popjustice wrote about her, she got signed by Parlophone, and I nearly chocked on my caramel macchiato when Reggie played another song, the ace LDN it on weekend breakfast a few weeks ago and now of course Whiley is all over it. We played it for the first time at Miss-Shapes last night leaving half the dancefloor standing grumpily cos they didn't know it, and the other half going MENTAL.

Anyway for anyone living in a box who hasn't heard this yet, or international readers (Bliss Will you so need this! ), then Lily Allen is going to be massive.  If you can find them I'd heartily recommend Smile as well the others mentioned above, in fact I'm sure they're all great I just haven't managed to listen to them all yet.  Get yourself over to her myspace for a start.

links for 2006-04-27

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  Who Needs Radio
  
  
  (tags: blog mp3 mp3blog music)
  
  


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  black country grammar
  
  
  (tags: uk mp)
  
  

Live Review : The Cardigans

Gran Turismo was probably the first non Spice Girl album that
made me squeal with delight and realise there was more to life that
bubblegum pop.  On Friday I went to see The Cardigans live at Shepherds Bush Empire and it made me use words like this:

abandoned, pulling, rapturous, pretty, bodice, elegant, sparkly, clogs, spell, dreamy, yearning, lost, crisp, underwhelming, underrated

If you want to see exactly how those words fit together then read my full review at Gigwise .

Buy Buy Buy!

Of course we know a lot of good music doesn't really chart, but oh my god Fischerspooner's 2nd album Odyssey so deserved to blow up last year.  I much prefered it to #1 and we chased them round the globe last year to see it performed live - we saw Casey DJ at Miss Shapes New York, the band live at the Scala, their bizarre show at Manumission in Ibiza, the band show at The Astoria and had their aftershow party at Ghetto.  It was ace.

Anyway just in case for some bizarro reason you don't have Odyssey or only know Emerge then I've just spotted that Amazon UK have it for the cheapness of £4.96! Seriously buy buy buy.  It's so good and I called it my 3rd album of 2005, after Rachel's Come and Get it and the Kaisers album. BUY!

The week…

After a bit of a drought i'm throwing myself headlong into trying to see as many gigs as possible, although this conflict rather a lot with the need to go to the gym and there is no way in hell I'm going to manage the gym before going to work in the morning. Bah.

Anyway as the blog has probably already told you, over the last couple of weeks I've seen the awesome Dead Disco, Antony & the Johnsons, Goldfrapp, The Organ, Mit, The Automatic, S Rock Levinson, The Knife, The Modern, New Young Pony Club, The Pipettes, Matt Willis and on Friday The Cardigans.

The Automatic at Camden Crawl was weird weird weird, as their fans were completely mental. We were in the G Lounge on Kentish Town Road which is SMALL, and people tried to crowd surf insanely which mainly involved them whacking the stage lights. Anyway they were a bit like The Rakes although noisier and Raoul sounds as great live as it does on record. I can't wait to see them on the NME tour.

Apart from my continual convulsions over the fact that I'm going to see George Michael live in December, today I need to write a review of the Cardigans for Gigwise this afternoon and then tonight i'll be going to the first Popworld Promotes gig at the Hard Rock cafe which could be good, annoyingly it means i'm missing lesbians on ecstasy at the garage though. If you can go you should, they are fun!  Tomorrow it's a meal with the Londonist writing gang, Thursday & Friday is DJing time, although we're not on till very late on Fri (in fact Sat morn at 3am) so I may try to blag some Kaisers at Brixton tix but its probably unlikely.  Then Saturday is what sounds like a brill day on Trafalgar Square at the  Love Music Hate Racism gig with Belle & Sebastian, Roll Deep, Boy Kill Boy, and The Paddingtons playing to name but a few.  Before that though at 11.30 I'm off to get on a boat somewhere on the Thames ( I currently have no idea) to see Boy Kill Boy play as part of Carling 24 so I can review them for Gigwise. Yes that's right, Boy Kill Boy, twice in one day.  Gimme a break though, they are both free, and I wouldn't be going to the 2nd one if B&S weren't there too. Ahem, can someone say fangirl?

Sleepy Girl

I'm double shifting on Spoony and Vernon this weekend and with 80 minutes to go, I'm tired, tired, tired. My future tiredness wasn't helped by being ill on Friday too after some dodgy food on the Camden Crawl.

It's always like this when I'm on breakfast. Work starts at 6, so I roll out of bed at 530 just in time for my 540 cab. Today though with 2 days of double shifts the tiredness has well and truly hit and I feel rough as a dog. Normally I'm home by 11 and go to sleep for a couple of hours. Yesterday I was in at 2 and slept til 6 which wasn't too bad, before we trialed our brand new BBQ and watched trashy TV as well as my recording of the brand new Popworld.

Now, even though we're playing the ace K-Klass - Rhythm is A Mystery I cannot wait for my bed!

YES!

FINALLY I will get to see George Michael on tour, originally uploaded by trixie.

WOOOO WOOO WOOOOOO

I *heart* Logan

Despite being about 40 episodes into the series, I've probably only mentioned my very favourite television show Veronica Mars very briefly on karinski.  Well you've been totally spared my normal bleating because I, like everyone who seems to be in the small minority of UK peeps who've discovered this show, go on about it to non-convertees at every possible moment.  Now it's your turn.

Airing on UPN in America on a Wednesday night, Thursday morning brings oodles of glee and a new episode to my computer.  I started watching during Summer last year, when I read that all time god of television, Buffyverse boy Joss Whedon called it the Best. Show. Ever. Seriously on Whedonesque.com.   Nearly at the end of it's first season, the Veronica marathon began and I was rewarded with a real replacement for Buffy.  Quick, witted dialogue, action, tension, a cute blonde lead, pain, hot boys and girls, high school - it had everything Buffy had apart from a supernatural element.  This time round the lead, Veronica, was the daughter of a private investigator who liked to get involved in her dad's cases.

I'm not going to go on about what it's like, you can read the official ronny website for that.  Just bare in mind that it is AMAZING and get onto it as soon as you can.  Seriously I cannot go on enough about how good it is. I believe it airs on Living in the UK, but if you have a good internet connection then I'm sure you can get it an easier way. 

The second season is drawing to a close with 4 episodes left - it's a good job Doctor Who has just restarted!

REVIEW: The Organ @ The Garage

A few weeks ago Kim sent me an email gasping 'have you heard the organ album? it's like blondie doing the smiths with some... um.... organs!'.  With slightly raised eyebrows over the place of an organ in 2006, I dutifully checked out this Canadian quintet's album Grab That Gun, and its quirky little melodies kept naggingly staying my head.

So hooray for them playing London so soon after first hearing them. Normally I have to email people far away, get ropey MP3s and then wait about a year, til I obviously gone off them, before bands come to London. But not this time, hooray!

Last Wednesday then, we went to see them play at The Garage in Highbury.  It was a fun night, mainly because we had rather a few free drinks, but the ladies in question were really good live.

If you haven't heard them yet then check out, you guessed it, their myspace page, in particular the single Brother and the Blondiesque Mesmorize This City.

Then head on over to Gigwise to read my review of the London gig and grow annoyed that they are now out of the UK for a while.  There'll be an interview I did with them coming soon also.

The scathing "Stupid Girls" certainly shows that P!nk feels more alternative than she actually is.

I can't wait for the P!nk fans to start slagging me in comments over giving I'm Not Dead a bad review.   While the 'ice-cream' bit of 'I'm Not Dead' is good, Fingers is probably a more consistantly good song.  Overall though, pretty poor. 

Read my review of I'm Not Dead at BBC Music Online.



Upon the release of Placebo's debut album in 1996, no one would have dreamed that the band would still be around ten years later.

It's always been fashionable to slag Placebo, but screw that.  'Meds' is brilliantly dark and nagging. Nothing much has changed though, it's just a solid Placebo album. Of course nothing really lives upto 'Nancy Boy' or 'Every Me Every You', but could it ever?

Read my review of Meds at BBC Music Online.
 

Laura Imbruglia

I've always been quite fond of Natalie Imbruglia.  Torn was overplayed but still sounds great now, and Smoke was breathtakingly beautiful.

Now she's got her very own Dannii, as her little sister Laura Imbruglia is out there with her own music.  Yeah I bet she hates that comparison.  This time round though it's not a watered down version of her big sister. Instead it's much rockier and thicker sounding.  Apparnatly she's been about for a few years though. Who knew? Did you?

Head over to her myspace page to hear two of her tracks.  Magical Washing Machine is cute, radio friendly and I can imagine a bit of twirly dancing at the start of nights to.  I Wanna Throw Stones is much more band based, with a strong guitar prescene and a much rockier melody.

Dead Disco

I've been going on about Dead Disco to anyone I can for some time now.  They posted on a forum I occasionally read last summer, I clicked through to their myspace, heard some tracks and was hooked.

I finally saw them live in Blackpool last month (bizarrely it turns the lead singer and I went to the same school for a couple of weeks) at Jenx live on a Saturday night at the liquid lounge.  It was pretty empty, but it was a relief to see that DD were brilliant live.  I was terrified they were going to be one of those, great on record, shit live bands.

Last weekend, they played their first gig in London at Club Motherfucker upstairs at the Garage.   In front of more people than when we saw them last time, and these people being a tough London crowd, they again performed brilliantly.

I reviewed the gig for Gigwise along with a review of their debut single, The Treatment.  There's also an interview up on Londonist with them.   Read them and check out their myspace to hear their tracks.  Think Blondie with a smidge of Elastica & Editors.  Think good.

Tigarah

Holy Shit!   You know when you hear a song and it excites you beyond belief - you want to play it to everyone you know and see their reaction, you play it about 10 times in a row to yourself, and you generally look flustered and wide eyed.

Well that's just happened.  Thanks to Arjan Writes I've just come across Japanese MIA-a-like Tigarah.  Now I'll happily admit I know *nothing* about Japanese music, absolutely zilch so I can't really garble on here with any knowledge.  I don't know if this is like a
lot of stuff coming out of the country, but I doubt it.

Girl Fight is the immediate standout WOW track.  It's grimey, funky, noisy and perhaps not as grating on the ear as M.I.A.   Lighter tracks such as Game In Rio have a kind of dark european 80s pop feel - i'm finding them quite hard to describe so it might just be best for you to listen to them on Myspace.

For now though download Girl Fight, check out her Myspace, and if you like what you hear buy  her album from her myspace page.

To The Haters

The greatest thing about djing is discovering a new song and getting excited about playing it to a dancefloor for the first time.  How will they react? Will they like it, or will you just see lots of blank faces.

As with anything though you get haters, people who will slag you off whatever you play.   People moan about hearing the same things every week, but then when you play new stuff they get pissed off that they don't know it.   Things aren't the same every week.   Of course some tracks will be and if they weren't then the majority who go to hear that stuff would leave.  That said, in any situation people are more likely to slag than praise

Here is what we played at Popstarz last night. It begins vaguely obscury but with plenty of high profile non mainstream stuff peppered throughout. In fact it's not even that obscure, it's just a little bit different.  Make up your own mind.

Doloroso - Radio Silence
Stellastarr - The Diver
Oppenheimer - Breakfast in NYC
Weird Sisters - This is Your Night
Belle & Sebastian - The Blues are still Blue
Farrah - Tongue Tied
Simian - Skin
The Organ - A Sudden Death
Metric - The Police & The Private
Rilo Kiley - Portions for Foxes
Apartment - Patience is Proving
The Presets - Are You The One
Protocol - Love is My Drug
Lesbians On Ecstacy - Pleasure Principal
The Kills - Love is a Deserter
The Gossip - Standing in the way of Control
The Like - June Gloom
Veronicas - 4eva
New Young Pony Club -  Get Lucky
The Zutons - Why Won't You Give Me Your Love
Panic! at the Disco - I write Sins not Tragedies
Fall Out Boy - Dance Dance
Delays - Valentine

and then the more interesting highlights of the mainstream bit..

Bloc Party - 2 More Years
Placebo - Bitter End
My Chemical Romance - I'm Not Okay
Dandy Warhols - We Used to Be Friends
Subways - Oh Yeah
Razorlight - Rip It Up
Blondie - Hanging on the Telephone
Dead Disco - The Treatment
The Pipettes - Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me