In life, we all have to take risks from time to time. But the risk we're about to take in bringing you this week's Single Reviews is sure to lead to disaster, if not certain death. Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to slag off Embrace.So ready the stocks and the rotten veg, for we are about to take the beating of a lifetime. You heard right - we’re going to slag off Embrace (*ducks flying cabbage*). Danny’s voice is close to the point of collapse on the watery England choon World At Your Feet, the most ill-selected track since Gypsy Woman was used on a Matalan advert. Which it wasn't. While it’s not quite bad enough to start crying treason, it’s not quite the terrace-stirring, flag-waving anthem they could have produced. Now stop with the gimmicks and release Sainted or Exploding Machines.
We’re slowly adjusting to a post-Mutya Sugababes, helped largely by Follow Me Home, a classy ballad with added accessible panache. Not exactly suitable for the time of year, but “Go Amelle!” all the same. An even riskier foray into balladville comes from The Streets with Never Went To Church – essentially a desperate pursuit of another Number One in the form of a poor man’s Dry Your Eyes. Pleasant, heartfelt, but wholly clichéd.
After making an entire album of middle-of-the-aisle apron music, Nelly Furtado has grown a pair and returned with a formidable, creative experiment that could well put her back in the spotlight. Maneater is a forceful fiend of urban beats and oestrogen, and proves Canadian female singers are capable of more than willowy trilling or pre-menstrual angst.
Finally, we come to our Single of the Week, courtesy of The Automatic. Their debut Raoul caught our attention a few months back, but it’s Monster that’s got us even more excited than Kerry Katona on a Poundstretcher trolley dash. Good stuff, this.
3 comments:
dear sir
Following your decision to slag off the quite brilliant and catchy Offical england song, World at your feet by Embrace "IT CAN BE DONE", i will no longer be reading your hotch potch of a blog. I deplore your dislike of such a wonderfull record. I will now go and read something by Peter Robinson.
This song is ace, i think we should leave it to the great british public to make there decision, as you got it wrong with that girl sandi toxfig and her song i wish i saw a punkrocker that was top of the hit parade was it not.
A disgruntaled reader.( A reader no more)
Loving your choice of The Automatic as Single of the Week. Must disagree with your comments about Embrace single though. Although they are usually pants, they have done good this time. Song brought a tear to my eye the first time I heard it on the radio (the fact that I poked myself with my mascara brush when the number 3 went over a bump in the road going through Herne Hill only had partial input into teariness). IT CAN BE DONE!
Dear Reader-no-more,
Please re-read our review of the aforementioned 'anthem'. We think you'll find it's a rather accurate description of a somewhat lacklustre song.
It's good, sure, but it's not Embrace good. Although, in fairness, it's just the one syllable in the chorus that sends Danny's voice into a mild stroke. He otherwise sings like an angel.
...with a Huddersfield accent and autotune.
As for Sandi Thom, we got it completely right. The Sloppy Dog said it would be big, and it is. We said it was a fucking disgusting stinking pile of wet uncomfortable diarrhoea, and it is. Even more so than the first time we saw it on TMF and thought it was a Coca Cola advert.
Please feel free to post an apology.
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