Arctic Monkeys - Favourite Worst Nightmare

Just listening to this album as I'm writing this makes me want to be in the middle of a crowd of sweaty people, with four stick-thin, guitar-playing, British weirdos up onstage, waving my hands in the air and jumping up and down, standing on peoples' toes and really not giving a toss. Ok, reading all of that back makes me sound oh-so-very pretentious (and a little bit creepy) but hey ho.

The CD starts off with the incredible Brianstorm, which throws you straight in at the deep end with incredible drum beats and bass lines. The guitar is introduced only a few seconds later, and with it comes a change of rhythm, but the original tone of insistence isn't lost at all. In fact, it's only heightened when Alex Turner (swoon) comes in with "Brian, top marks for not trying...". Turner has the sort of voice that on first listen is the standard British-accented indie kind, but it gets more and more individual as the albums go on. By the time you get to Only Ones Who Know, you see that Alex Turner is in fact able to do melancholy and thoughtful; the particularly poignant line is "I hope you're holding hands by New Year's Eve. They made it far too easy to believe that true romance can't be achieved these days".

Arctic Monkeys really are masters of the tongue-in-cheek lyric: Brianstorm -  "we can't take our eyes off the t-shirt and tie combination": This House Is A Circus - "We're forever unfulfilled and don't know why, like a search for murder clues in dead mens' eyes": Teddy Picker - "Des
pair to the point where they provoke the punchline before they have told the joke". I could go on forever. Point being, their lyrics are pithy, thought-provoking and just a bit of a laugh.

The gorgeous Alex Turner

This is the perfect album for any self-respecting angsty teenager who feels as though they need to let their feelings out by headbanging and playing air guitar like a pro in their bedroom. Because trust me, it sure helps. A lot.

Recommended Tracks:
Fluorescent Adolescent
Balaclava
The Bad Thing

David Bowie - The Next Day

This is David Bowie's first album for 10 years, after the odd experience that was Reality, released in 2003. This is a distinctive throwback to his older stuff, sounding a bit more like Aladdin Sane and Diamond Dogs. He's retained his distinctive voice as well, which is more than Bob Dylan can say (don't get me wrong, I love Dylan to bits, but his gorgeous voice has become marred by the incessant smoking over forty-odd years), although he no longer does the beautiful soaring falsetto, which added a touch of the Bowie drama to his music.

The not-so-impressive album cover

However, he hasn't gone completely back to his old style, but adapted it to fit into today's music scene. The brass used on Dirty Boys, as well as the muted electric guitar, reminds you of some obscure Plan B song, and the very beginning of The Stars (Are Out Tonight) is reminiscent of Kings Of Leon's Use Somebody; for all of these slight hints, Bowie moves the song on to new places that are so distinctly Bowie they couldn't be anything else.

I'm in love with Where Are We Now?, the beautifully melancholic ballad that lapses into cheeriness by pointing out all of the good things in his life ("as long as there's sun, as long as there's rain...as long as there's me, as long as there's you"). And Valentine's Day, which manages to so perfectly avoid all of the cliches surrounding love songs by dashing them all down with the lyrics "Valentine told me who's to go, feelings he treasured most of all...it's in his scrawny hands, it's in his icy heart". It completely throws you when you hear it for the first time; in a song named after the day of love, he highlights the hypocrisy of it all. Oh David, you've done it again.

The Aladdin Sane days

One criticism I do have, though, is the album artwork. Trivial, I know, but everything plays a part in your experience of an album. And I do mean everything. They've used the cover for "Heroes" and just plonked a white square in the middle of Bowie's face, with The Next Day written on it in an awful typeface. The official campaign was something to do with "everyone having their own interpretation of the album that wasn't going to be dictated by the record company, blahdy blahdy blah", but frankly, it just looks a bit cheap and as though they haven't bothered to make the effort. Not quite what you expect from King Bowie of all people.

You can listen to the full album here

Recommended tracks:
I'd Rather Be High
If You Can See Me
The Next Day

Django Unchained Soundtrack

The D is silent. This listening experience won't be.

This was the first Tarantino film that I watched, and I love it. The clear distinction between the hero and the villain was so uplifting that I went around for days afterwards quoting Django and tweeting Jamie Foxx 24/7 with "AAAAH I LOVE DJANGO, MARRY ME?!" Needless to say, I got no response, but it was worth trying.

Anyway, this soundtrack completely embodies the spirit of the film. All of the tracks have something to say; Jim Croce's I Got A Name is pretty self-explanatory, and its message is particularly poignant in the context of the film. The whole concept of slavery was about de-humanising black people and taking their identity and freedom away from them, so this song epitomises what Django, as a character, is all about.

The choice of songs is also interesting, and at first listen, slightly random. After the second time around, though, they all fall into place and the soundtrack starts to make sense. You've got gritty rap, like Rick Ross' 100 Black Coffins, next to gentle, spaghetti Western-type songs like Nicaragua and I Giorni Dell'Ira. And yet they all work very, very well together. They all weave in together to represent the essential spirit of the film, which is the good vs. evil moral complex. They are much like Tarantino's film making style, which is to spin together different styles (or characters) which seem to be polar opposites, but in fact are much more similar than they first seem. It's also punctuated with recordings from the films itself, which help even further to fit the songs into the wider context of the film. It also means I can listen to Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz again and again without being creepy.

The man. The myth. The (chinny) legend.

In fact, this soundtrack has one silent thing that holds it all together: Tarantino's influences and vision. The film itself has undoubtedly been heavily impacted by the spaghetti Western style of film making, and yet it's added to by Tarantino's unique sense of what works. He couples a fantastic storyline and screenplay (Oscar-winning, don't you know) with horrendous violence and gore, and yet it all works. All of this has been influenced by the music he listens to, such as the rap and the folk. This compilation of music that Tarantino clearly listens to on a daily basis (he leaves a note at the beginning of the leaflet in the CD saying that he wants our listening experience to be exactly like his) is what makes it so personal and so incredibly addictive.

Buy it now. And then pre-order the DVD.

Recommended tracks:
Freedom
Who Did That To You?
Django

Pan Aurora

Source: Facebook

These guys are a French synth-pop band, based in Lille, France. The first I heard of them was on Twitter, but the love has steadily grown since that day. And they sing in English, so it's all good with me.

The deep, velvety vocals on Digital Bliss are twinned with a synth acting as a bass line, simple drum beats and a very good guitar riff. Although all of these are very simple, somehow, when they're all put together, it really does work. The chorus is especially catchy, with the overdubbed backing vocals adding another layer to the simplicity of the track.

Their Twitter feed also provides some entertainment to brighten up the dreary school days (follow them at @PanAurora) The typical post has something to do with alcohol, girls, flirting and general sex things. They're articulate in French and English (not that I understand all of the French, but I try my best. My good friend Google Translate assists me at times) which is always good in a musician.

Gouge Away is another of my recommended tracks for these guys. The vocals really do remind you of Grizzly Bear, and the dark, swelling synth makes you think of Utopia. The lightness comes at 1:19, where the high-pitched synthesizer line comes in, and the voice switches register a bit. The verses are scary, about a man's masochistic wish for his lover to harm him... Well, no one ever said it was cheerful. And they are French, to be fair.

These guys really are very good, and I thoroughly recommend them to anyone interested in synth-pop and French people. Gotta love the French.

The Technicolors

These guys are a relatively new discovery for me, but they're not half bad. Their album, Listener, was released late 2012, and they're currently touring the US of A.

The Technicolors are your standard indie rock band from Phoenix, Arizona, with big/floppy hair, and one even has a 'tasche. They wear black skinny jeans, denim shirts and novelty t-shirts. So far, so standard. In an era so flooded with indie rock bands, like Foals or The Black Keys or The Maccabees, it's difficult to make yourself stand out from the crowd. The Technicolors manage it by harking back to a slightly vintage rock sound, but adding a modern twist on it with the scratchy vocals of frontman Brennan Smiley. The guitar riffs do sound a lot like Led Zeppelin's, just because they are, undoubtedly, the masters of catchy guitar riffs, but the make up of the songs does manage to distinguish them from the crowd, although their influences are very obvious.

Their debut album, released in November 2012, is called Listener. Very aptly named, because many of the toe-tapping songs (excuse me for using that word, I feel middle aged already) have an incredible guitar riff, coupled with very meaningful lyrics. Take Sweet Time, for example: "I'm out here waiting to breath... So go and take your sweet time".

I very, very much recommend them; trust me, however generic they may seem at first listen, they get better and better with every hit of that replay button.

Recommended tracks:
Again
Listener
Fake A Smile