Monkey makes music

I thought I’d posted something about this several weeks ago but it turns out I was wrong: There is a new song by Arctic Monkeys’ frontman Alex Turner and some bloke from the Rascals called Miles Kane – and it is an absolute belter.

Together, Turner and Kane are The Last Shadow Puppets, and they sound a bit like the Walker Brothers crossed with Arthur Lee’s Love. Only, you know, good.

NME readers will be aware that they have a whole album coming out and, if it’s all as good as The Age Of The Understatement, The Kooks et al will be going home looking very foolish indeed.

The Last Shadow Puppets – The Age Of The Understatement

PS: Are the lyrics to this song brilliant or the sort of terrible nonsense that novelists imagine pop songs to be like? I can’t decide…

And she was walking on the tables in the glass house
Endearingly bedraggled in the wind
Subtle in her method of seduction
The twenty little tragedies begin

The Brits, then

Irony alert

The Arctic Monkeys have done a video for their new single Fluorescent Adolescent. It features a bunch of clowns and isn’t as funny or clever as it thinks it is.

Insert your own joke here.

Arctic Monkeys: Fluorescent Adolescent
(warning: contains violence and a really terrible song)

Click on this

We’re currently in the process of ripping up Discopop Towers and moving it somewhere else. As a result, the blog might suffer a little. Especially as it looks like we’ll lose our internet connection for three weeks (makes sad face).

Anyway, here’s a quick rundown of some things on the fabulous magical interweb that have made me chirtle and, indeed, chortle.

:: Apologies to anyone who read my review of Spider-Man 3 and felt it was missing phrases like: “You bet your ass!“, “Dude nails it,” and “Spider-Man 3 is off the chain!“. This is the review for you. Moron.

:: Just Jared has the first shots of Heath Ledger as The Crow The Joker in the new Batman film. And yes, he is holding an humungous Rubik’s Cube.

:: Gwen Stefani’s tour rider includes the following non-calorific treats. Water, some more water, plums, bananas, a little bit more water, parsley, 2 AC power outlets (?) and some more water. Note to Gwen: A chicken sandwich won’t kill you.

:: Here is Bjork doing her mad-as-a-box-of-hats thing on Saturday Night Live. Except it’s recorded, and it’s now Monday evening. Freaky.

:: While I’m talking about Bjork, here’s her Rolling Stone Cover. Brilliant, no?

:: The ever-amazing Zeon’s Music Blog has MP3s of Arctic Monkeys covering Amy Winehouse and The Strokes on Radio One. I am so over the Arctic Monkeys, by the way.

Please don’t do the one about the boat

Hooray! I actually managed to get two tickets for Take That’s Beautiful tour this morning, despite every website and “hot”line in the country crashing under the sheer weight of Thatties (or, more likely, ticket touts) trying snap up all the precious seats.

The gigs-and-tours.com website was so stressed by the whole process that it omitted to tell me what date my tickets were for, or where in the so-called “02” arena I’d be sitting.

No doubt that means I’ve got to watch the gig from a burger van in the car park. But, hey, at least that improves my chances of bumping into Gary Barlow…

The concert’s not til December, so in the meantime why not download an MP3 of that Arctic Monkeys’ single I was talking about yesterday [via zshare] and tell me what you think about it?

Also, to round off the utter random-ness of this post, here is a gratuitous picture of George Clooney with a brolly.

Please don’t do the one about the boat

Hooray! I actually managed to get two tickets for Take That’s Beautiful tour this morning, despite every website and “hot”line in the country crashing under the sheer weight of Thatties (or, more likely, ticket touts) trying snap up all the precious seats.

The gigs-and-tours.com website was so stressed by the whole process that it omitted to tell me what date my tickets were for, or where in the so-called “02” arena I’d be sitting.

No doubt that means I’ve got to watch the gig from a burger van in the car park. But, hey, at least that improves my chances of bumping into Gary Barlow…

The concert’s not til December, so in the meantime why not download an MP3 of that Arctic Monkeys’ single I was talking about yesterday [via zshare] and tell me what you think about it?

Also, to round off the utter random-ness of this post, here is a gratuitous picture of George Clooney with a brolly.

Arctic Monkeys – the people speak

So last night on Fabulous Rrrrradio One Eff Emm they played the new Arctic Monkeys single. Taken from their forthcoming sophomore album, Favourite Worst Nightmare, it’s called Brian Storm (do you see what they did there?). It has since been played on the station every two hours or so. There’s a law about it, apparently.

As we all know, Arctic Monkeys are the biggest band on the planet. “They’re like this generation’s Oasis” is what well-known rock critic Dizzee Rascal said.

We also know that Arctic Monkeys are popular because of the internet, which allowed their fans to come together and say “crikey, I quite like this music”, except using typing and modems.

So the online response to this hotly anticipated new record is bound to be stellar, isn’t it?

Erm… no.

A total of three (count ’em) bloggers have written about the single. “I heard it. It’s good, yeah”, says Imdagger with unique insight into the creative process. Meanwhile, Pillaged Prose is more effusive, but slightly more cryptic: “Damn what a follow up”, he writes. “But not the sort of thing to listen to when trying to do finicky seam work”. An important health warning for all of those kids listening to the Monkeys in a third-world sweatshop, there.

And what of the response on the group’s fabled myspace page? Similarly poor,I’m afraid. Just five of the band’s 62,989 “friends” felt moved to make a comment. One of them, Mikey, wrote “your new song is the sex”, which makes me wonder if he has ever actually had sex (hint: no). But, apart from Mikey, no-one seems to be wetting their pants over this much-feted record.

Come on, guys, the song’s not that bad. I mean, the words are clever. And the guitar riff is pretty ferocious. Yes, the tune just repeats itself every two bars and there’s no chorus – but what do you expect? They are this generation’s Oasis, after all.

Superficial

You may not have noticed, but I’ve been trying to increase the volume of original writing on the site over the past month. The idea is to create a flurry of opinion, criticism and erudite discussion, rather than just a bunch of links.

So far, it’s been going rather well – that Nelly Furtado review from last week has tripled the number of visitors to the site. But sometimes there just isn’t anything to get me fired up.

Perhaps that’s because I’ve been listening to the Go! Team album on repeat. Its so relentlessly upbeat and bouncy that I can’t help but walk around with an uncharacteristically sunny disposition. Even the rumour of Mariah Carey duetting with Janet Jackson isn’t enough to wipe the smile off my face, even though the resulting song is sure to make dogs claw out their own eardrums in an attempt to make the high-pitched whining stop. Not to mention the video, which will be like witnessing a slow train crash.

Anyway, even if Jermaine Dupri manages to finally put an end to Janet’s career there’s plenty of other good music on the horizon. Radio One have been putting their Live Lounge to good use once again, getting those Arctic Monkeys in to perform their number one single and (taste-makers look away now) a cover of Girls Aloud’s Love Machine.

This is good news. If Arctic Monkeys are to claim Oasis’ crown as the biggest rock band in the UK, it can only be a positive development that they love pop music and don’t throw a big girly tantrum every time someone else comes up with a good tune. Yes, Liam, we’re talking to you. You twat.

Meanwhile Radio One’s less hip uncle, Six Music (or “BBC we only allow songs by white men with guitars plus the occasional bit of Stevie Wonder if you’re very lucky” as internal memos probably don’t refer to it) has put Belle and Sebastian into the studio to go wild – albeit politely and within tolerable noise levels. They perform an acoustic version of their new single, which is fantastic and should be bought in actual bucketloads.

You can hear both the Arctic Monkeys and B&S on the ever-fantastic Mr Red Penguin’s MP3 Heaven.

Finally, something I never thought I’d see, or be interested in seeing: One-hit-wonder Lisa Loeb prannying around in a thong. She looks surprisingly young and pert for someone who had a hit single 12 years ago… But knowing that fact makes me feel ridiculously old, which has put the dampener on my rosy disposition.

I must head off and listen to the Go! Team again…

Click on these

The sit-com is back from the dead (again) claims the New Yorker. Try telling that to anyone who’s sat through Scrubs, Weeds or Two-and-a-half Men recently.

Get your MP3’s on:
1) Mr Red Penguin has Mylo and the Arctic Monkeys from last week’s Jools Holland
2) Sufjan Stevens and Arcade Fire sessions over at The Torture Garden
3) Fluxblog have the double-whammy of Girls Aloud’s superb new single Biology and the classic Dolly Parton Baby I’m Burning (as they suggest, mix it with the White Stripes “My Doorbell” next time you DJ. It rocks).

Rate Celebrity plastic surgery if you dare.

How Stuff Works have posted an article on Nintendo’s revolutionary wireless pointy, clicky, wave-it-about-your-heady game controller. It’s mostly guess-work, but quite informative nonetheless.

Finally, Mike “Austin Powers” Myers is directly responsible for ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway?’. Are there any crimes against comedy he isn’t guilty of?