Singles: Maroon 5, Flo Rida, Stooshe, Spiritualized and some others!
Published on June 20th, 2012 | Jonny Abrams
Singles! Getchasingles! Threeferrapahnd!
2:54 – “Creeping”
Nice sort of Elastica-y slow-burner, driving, pulsing, minor-key intensity and all of that, passes by relatively uneventfully until the storming PJ Harvey chorus. The video certainly matches the song, all watery, wintry and meticulous, but it’s overall a bit too much on the subtle side of an overly familiar sound. Nevertheless…
Rocksucker says… Three and a Half Quails out of Five!
Flo Rida – “Whistle”
Remove Flo Rida from the equation completely and this suddenly becomes both a less rotten song and a really rather enjoyable video. This kind of thing requires absolutely no thought whatsoever, so who better to be at the fulcrum of it all than Flo Rida?
Rocksucker says: Half a Quail out of Five!
Maroon 5 – “Payphone”
A truly remarkable single insomuch as everything about it – absolutely everything – is utterly dreadful, from the jarringly squawky lead vocal to the polished boy band fluff of a backing track, while the Wiz Khalifa guest rap that begins “man, fuck that shit” – as if this song’s audience isn’t primarily comprised of 12-year-old girls – made Rocksucker burst out laughing when we first heard it. Even Maroon 5 themselves get in on the currently all-the-rage swearing-in-a-pop-song act with “All those fairy tales are full of shit / One more fucking love song, I’ll be sick”, tragically unable to see the implicit irony in this unintentional self-laceration. Oh, and the Michael Bay-esque action movie video is stupid too. One more Maroon 5 anything and we’ll be very fucking sick indeed.
Rocksucker says: Have a Dead Quail!
Oresteia – “Helen”
Brownie points for the bizarre, slapstick video, and even more for the Franz-Ferdinand-hallucinating-with-The-Zutons song itself, taken from the recent Rocksucker interviewees‘ debut EP Romancing the Damned. Worth checking these guys out, and indeed the rather splendid roster of their Southampton-based label Sotones. They should stop strangling each other and start patting each other on the back for a job well done.
Rocksucker says: Four Quails out of Five!
Purity Ring – “Belispeak”
Glitchy, vintage-synthed, pleasingly odd electro from Montreal – a sultry, hiccupping robot of a track, the very Welsh-named Megan James putting in a smooth and stylish vocal performances that merits forgiveness for its foray into autotune at the end. And after Maroon 5 it sounds like the bloody White Album.
Rocksucker says: Four Quails out of Five!
Spiritualized – “Little Girl”
In Rocksucker’s review of parent album Sweet Heart Sweet Light, we described “Little Girl” as “introducing an attractively restrained verse to a big old singalong chorus, in which the perspective-reinforcing lyrics “Here today and then we’re gone / Before we ride into the sun / Get it on” leads into the album’s most satisfying chord change. We liked it, basically.
Rocksucker says: Four Quails out of Five!
Stooshe – “Black Heart”
Amy Winehouse minus the talent and voice but plus the aliveness. And if you think that sentence was in bad taste, you should listen to this warble-a-thon. Don’t be fooled by the pleasant-enough Motown-lite backing track – the existence of Stooshe is of no benefit or consequence to anyone bar those who make money out of them.
The Fresh & Onlys – “Yes or No”
The very ‘now’ sound of this cut from the band’s forthcoming Long Slow Dance album might tug at the old cynic-strings at first, but this is good fuzzy fare with an agreeable absence of showiness and a way with a lyric. Could be worth keeping an eye on this bunch.
Rocksucker says: Three and a Half Quails out of Ten!
Wot Gorilla? – “Snow White”
“I am the opposite of you / Don’t try to make a connection” sing the Halifax maths-rockers on this cut from their penned-in-for-August-release album, and they sure go some way towards severing any kind of potential comparisons by sounding as if they’ve stitched about a dozen different song ideas together on this delightfully tangential number. One quail deducted for the lyric about being “dragged down”, though. We have to be super-vigilant if we’re going to stamp this sort of thing out.
Rocksucker says: Three Quails out of Five!