DiS Predicts: The Mercury Prize 2012 nominees
Drowned In Sound's writers and board members select what they'd like to see on the hallowed shortlist come this Wednesday»
Articles
rleedham has written the following articles:
David Byrne, St. Vincent - Love This Giant
Distinctive enough to be a new entity, smart enough to fall back on a few familiar charms. St. Vincent and David Byrne have brought out the best in each other - they should do this more often.»
DiS Does Pop #9: The Top 10 girl bands of all-time... ever
This month we’re running through the 10 best girl bands of all-time because someone needed to step up to the plate and decide whether TLC are better than The Shangri-Las. There’s also the usual Baromenter of Pop and Made For TV features for regular readers of this near year-old bastion of Top 40-related nonsense.»
Blur - Think Tank ('21' reissue)
If Think Tank is to be Blur’s final LP, then ‘technically brilliant, occasionally inspired’ is not the unfeeling epitaph they’d want. »
Conor Maynard - Contrast
Conor Maynard is not shy about dropping the phrase “peel my banana” and we’re inclined to let him get away with it.»
The Gaslight Anthem - Handwritten
With four albums in the can, The Gaslight Anthem hardly seem the types to change their tune. Rousing themselves to rock’s high table requires breaking the mould they so desperately seek to emulate and what’s the point in that when you’re content to wash the feet of your heroes?»
DiS Does Pop #8: Is retromania ruining pop?
Hello, and thanks for tuning into the eighth edition of DiS Does Pop. The pop column which judges Cheryl Cole on a purely musical basis, only to be pissed off with yet another shite solo album. This month we were reading Simon Reynold's Retromania and thought, 'There's far too much here on Throbbing Gristle and far too little on Take That'. So we decided to investigate the wave of pop nostalgia that has arguably reached its peak in 2012.»
Saint Saviour - Union
Ultimately, Union is hamstrung by its fear of straying from an overwhelmingly dour comfort zone. »
Usher - Looking 4 Myself
Strip away four or so tracks of pure fat and what’s left of Looking 4 Myself is a trim and proper album. »
"Call the people who can lose you a million pounds, there’s a credibility there" - DiS meets Pete Waterman
Pete Waterman is a lot like John Lydon... to interview at least. Just as with the former Sex Pistol, chatting to the hitmaker-in-chief behind Kylie Minogue, Steps, Bananarama and many, many more is a noticeably combative experience. »
DiS Does Eurovision: A blagger's guide to the 2012 Song Contest
Bonjour. Guten tag. Ante gamisou. Welcome to the second edition of DiS Does International Pop and what a column we have in store for you. With the 56th Eurovision Song Contest about to reach its climax in Baku, Azerbijan this weekend, we’ve pulled out all the stops to honour the symbol of European unity that spawned Lordi, ABBA and a Scooch reunion.»
Scissor Sisters - Magic Hour
Scissor Sisters would be infuriating if it weren’t for the force of their full frontal charm offensive.»
"So I jumped and landed on my head on some concrete" - DiS meets The Hives Pt.II
The concluding half of our in depth interview with The Hives sees us cover frontman Howlin' Pelle Almqvist's hospitalisation from concussion last year, bad Hives songs and Barely Legal.»
"We're punk rock aristocrats" - DiS meets The Hives Pt.I
The Hives are a rock and roll band. This much the Swedish five piece were very clear about when they sat down with DiS a fortnight ago in an opulent London hotel. What follows is both a revealing and hilarious insight into one of the few remaining loud and proud guitar bands.»
Best Coast - The Only Place
To its credit, The Only Place avoids dragging Best Coast into ‘diminishing returns’ territory. Instead it’s the sound of a group ably treading water while its scars are glossed over with a Golden State tan. »
My Bloody Valentine - Loveless (remastered)
To claim that My Bloody Valentine went in pursuit of perfection and found it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of this immense band. It’s their flaws which make them so transcendent.»
Mystery Jets - Radlands
An initially promising album that loses its lustre the longer it sprawls onwards.»
DiS Does Pop #7: The 10 Commandments of Teen Pop
Hello! Welcome to the seventh edition of DiS Does Pop where the Top 40 is placed under a microscope of revelatory declarations and humorous asides. Like the search for Sean Paul’s dignity, it’s tough going at times but we’ll plough on nonetheless. This month with One Direction having conquered America, Conor Maynard riding high in the UK charts and Justin Bieber still very much in existence, there seemed no better time to write the 10 Commandments of Teen Pop.»
DiS Does Pop News Round-Up: 1st Quarter 2012
Three months is a long time in pop music. Long enough for Gotye to still be clinging onto radio playlists everywhere. To draw a line under this unfortunate occurrence and highlight the biggest pop stories that emerged from January to March 2012, we’ve only gone and done a bloody news round-up.»
Labrinth - Electronic Earth
Britain’s less mopey version of Drake has more than enough ideas to make a properly good stab at decent LP.»
DiS Does International Pop: The 10 biggest singles you’ve never heard
Hello and welcome to a brand new spin-off from the commercially ignored and critically underrated DiS Does Pop. In the innovatively-titled DiS Does International Pop column we’ll be turning our ear for a Top 40 smash abroad and shining a light on the biggest hits from foreign lands.»
M. Ward - A Wasteland Companion
Like all M Ward’s best records, his eighth solo album plays like an intimate knees up. You’ll swoon. You’ll smile. You’ll give it a spin over and over again.»
Mike Wexler - Dispossession
Easy to appreciate, tough to love. While there’s plenty to admire from a distance here, those who get in close will find little to cling onto.»
DiS Does Pop #6: Is Madonna still the Queen of Pop?
This month's pop column is a Madge-tacular affair which investigates whether the Material Girl is still top dog of the Top 40 brigade. There's also a Spotify playlist of her best bits plus our usual Top 40 Watch and Made For TV features. What are you waiting for? Go on and dig in.»
Madonna - MDNA
Where Gaga’s crazy got the better of her, it’s Madonna’s conservatism that drags her latest record down to the status of a ragtag collection.»
First Listen: Madonna - MDNA
"I've been to a couple of playbacks," comments one journalist after hearing Madonna's MDNA in full for the first time. "The louder they play the album, the more worried the record label tend to be about it." 'How loud was this particular listening session in the bowels of Abbey Road?', you ask. In a word, earsplitting.»
Tall Firs - Out of It and Into It
Dig deep enough and you’ll find a sketch of significance, a glimmer of greater worth but it’s too ill-formed to really make out meaningfully.»
DiS Does Pop #5: In search of pop's biggest sell out
This month DiS Does Pop is cracking open the old ‘sell out’ chestnut to find, well frankly, a lot of super-rich musicians at its sickly sweet core. Read on to discover how much money there is to be reaped from over-zealous corporate sponsorship deals, who is pop music’s worst offender and whether we should be that bothered about the whole shebang.»
Azari & III - Azari & III
With six months worth of perspective since their debut album’s first release, Azari & III didn't quite create a storming LP to match the promise of those early singles. »
"I mention a lot of Jesus and faith in my songs but also a lot of drinking & drug use" - DiS meets Craig Finn
Great lyricists are a rare breed amongst the modern alt-rock pantheon and it’s an even smaller collective of these who are immune to clamming up in interview. With a brand new solo album to promote, Craig Finn lacks the opportunity to ‘do a Turner’ and let his drummer do the talking but we suspect this Boston-born motormouth is rarely short of a word or two.»