Robbie Williams… Music-slayer (Img: catzi)
Singles: Stranglers, Robbie, Adele, Passion Pit and some others!
Published on October 31st, 2012 | Jonny Abrams
BOO! Mwahahahahahahaha! etc.
Rocksucker was going to bring you a Halloween-themed edition of Singles Clubbed, but unfortunately Halloween has been cancelled due to the mounting hysteria surrounding the new James Bond film.
So, you know, (insert famous Bond quote in here) and all that!
Happy Halloween everyone,
Rocksucker
xxxx
Oh yes, those singles…
Adele – “Skyfall”
“When you crumble / Will you stand tall?” – well, James Bond? Will you? This sounds a bit like a Bond song, even if the intonation of “when you crumble” sounds like All Saints or some such. They (the Bondmakers) could have saved themselves the trouble by arbitrarily picking something off the new Muse album and going out for a Chinese.
Want crumble now. Not sure if want apple or rhubarb, but definitely want crumble.
Rocksucker says: Two Quails out of Five!
Johnny5thWheel&thecowards – “Mad Monster Party”
If Halloween were a street, Johnny5thWheel&thecowards would be the campy yet sinister, Pythonesque house at the foot of the haunted hill, inside which everyone is wearing nightmarish animal masks and chuckling along to loopy circus organ. Except instead of loopy circus organ they’d be listening to Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci and The Kinks, and they wouldn’t be evil because their record collection wouldn’t stand for it.
This cover of a song from 1967 comedy Mad Monster Party comes twinned with an hilarious Muppet-starring video which is so simple and so gosh darn compelling aligned with its musical backdrop. It could have fit snugly onto their splendid recent second album Music To Shake’n’Shuffle To, and frank(enstein)ly that’s all the recommendation it needs.
Rocksucker says: Four Quails out of Five!
Paloma Faith – “Never Tear Us Apart”
Blimey, everyone’s turning into sodding Shirley Bassey this week. “I was standing” Faith informs us, crumble-free, like the mildly impressive cabaret/warehouse party performance she would undoubtedly be. Does the world at large need her? No.
Rocksucker says: One and a Half Quails out of Five!
Passion Pit – “Take a Walk”
The opening track of their splendid Gossamer LP, our review of which talks about this song at a certain amount of length. No point reviewing it again, although it does require its own individual quailing. As one of the standout tracks, it out-quails its own album; how about that?
Rocksucker says: Four Quails out of Five!
Robbie Williams – “Candy”
Good news, everyone: everything that’s ever been annoying about Robbie Williams has been condensed into one three-minute horror show, and just in time for Halloween! The “hurricane at the back of her throat” line is unlikely to be the spontaneous cash-in we’d love to accuse him of – and what a week for cash-ins it would have been if this had gone toe-to-toe with Paloma Faith’s – but “Candy” manages to appall in many other inventive ways, such as basing the verse vocal on “Ring a Ring O’Roses”. Genius, evil genius.
In the video, a halo-topped Williams punches an old woman in the face, and this strikes as an analogy for his whole career: cheeky chappy grin masking dire artistic abuse. He had a couple of good songs when he had Guy Chambers (and indeed John Barry) writing them for him.
Oh look, Gary Barlow’s on the writing credits, along with some chap named Terje Olsen. Pats on the back all round, chaps.
Rocksucker says: Have a Dead Quail!
The Stranglers – “Mercury Rising”
In our review of The Stranglers’ utterly superb Giants album of earlier this year, we referred to a “Mercury Rise” not once but twice. Inquests will be made, don’t you worry.
In that review we said of “Mercury Rising”, as it is really called: “This is a proper party tune; sleazy, stomping, disorienting and a whole heap of fun, placing it alongside ‘Boom Boom’ in the ‘imagine the fuss if a young band came out with this’ stakes.” We stand by that.
Funnily enough, it ends with a guitar riff that would make for a better Bond theme than Adele’s.
Rocksucker says: Four and a Half Quails out of Five!
Wiley feat. Skepta, HME & Ms D – “Can You Hear Me (Ayayaya)”
Yes, this will work well in an expensive London club night setting. A quail apiece for a decent flow and using the word ‘earlobe’, but almost everything else about this is formulaic drivel; we went there, drank this, nobbed that, yadda yadda yadda. Why do people so enjoy hearing others bragging about their VIP lifestyle in this manner? We could understand if it was at all artfully handled, like on Nas’s latest for instance, but this is just an overexcited musical equivalent of a child’s essay on what he did this summer.
Thinking on, the presence of ‘earlobe’ is better than Wiley’s flow, so we’ll issue one quail for the former and just half of one for the latter.
Bet you didn’t realise how scientifically we work these things out.
Rocksucker says: One and a Half Quails out of Five!
Bye bye everybody!
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About the Author
Jonny Abrams Editor of Rocksucker and the website's founder, Jonny is passionate about the music he listens to, both good and bad, as well as interviewing his favourite musicians.
