The Hot Five - October #2
- Written by Tom Fake
The Hot Five – My favourite new tracks of the week, usually rounded off with a classic, obscure or alternate track from my music collection.
Track of the week: Southern – ‘Where The Wild Are’
As with a number of fantastic tracks that I’ve reviewed in my time with Muso’s Guide, ‘Where The Wild Are’ took my by surprise when it came on randomly after the Ting Tings’ track you’ll hear below. The Belfast trio, who are based in Liverpool, consists of brother and sister Thom and Lucy Southern, and drummer Eoghan Clifford. The bluesy slide guitar riff that you hear in the track is fantastic, and the arrangement and sound of the song is absolutely spot on as it stomps its way into your life. The southern style blues that these guys are creating is mature and clever; this is exciting new music from an exciting new band. Southern are currently touring, and you can see them across the UK and Ireland this month.
Note: If you like this track, check out ‘World Don’t Shine’ here.
The Ting Tings – ‘Do It Again’
The Ting Tings – one of those bands that you either love or hate. The duo are set to release their third album, Super Critical, at the end of the month and have released the track ‘Do It Again’ in the run up to the album release. ‘Do It Again’ contains the funky guitar rhythms that featured in some of the more successful tracks in The Ting Tings’ back catalogue (I’m thinking ‘Shut Up and Let Me Go’), whilst the vocals of Katie White and great work from producer Andy Taylor also help to make the track a captivating listen. You can catch The Ting Tings live in the UK at the end of November.
New Build – ‘Look In Vain’
A Fantastically catchy dance track, ‘Look In Vain’ is taken from Hot Chip offshoot New Build’s new album Pour It On, which is set to be released on October 20 via Sunday Best. Directed by Jason Bradbury, the unsettling new video for New Build's second single explores themes of religion, retribution and idolatry worship. 'I’m an extremely lapsed Catholic and a literature student, so inevitably a lot of the King James Bible gets mixed into my socialist-secularist thinking' explains vocalist Al Doyle.
Bass Drum of Death – ‘Left For Dead’
Any band that calls themselves Bass Drum of Death deserves three minutes of my time to listen to their latest track. It turns out that the attitude-filled garage rock of John Barrett’s project was well worth investing time in. Yes, the video is a little weird, but the track itself is filled with great guitar riffs and a great, punky vocal performance. ‘Left For Dead’ is taken from the new album, Rip This, which was released on Monday.
Hidden track of the week: Thom Yorke – ‘House of Cards’
It’s Tuesday as I’m sat here, so here’s my happy birthday to Thom Yorke: ‘House of Cards’ taken from the band’s fantastic 2007 album In Rainbows. The video for ‘House of Cards’ was filmed with no lights or cameras, but instead utilised 3D plotting technologies to collect information about the shapes and relative distances of objects. The video was created entirely from visualisations of that data.
Any excuse to play a bit of Radiohead.
You can follow Tom on twitter @tom_fake.