Available for free from their website – value…

[Website]
[7.22]

Dave Moore:Phoenix seems to have that Benjamin Button disease/gimmick — they started with slick sell-out crossover floor-fillers, moved into accomplished indie pop by album three, and now simplify and reduce that into less accomplished (but promising for the imminent sophomore effort) indie pop, with about half as catchy hooks as they usually manage. Luckily, half what they usually manage is still pretty good — they have a bright future behind them.
[6]

Keane Tzong: There’s pretty much nothing to dislike here- then again, Phoenix have been turning out effortlessly great pop songs like this for long enough now that that shouldn’t be a surprise. “1901” moves confidently and smoothly from verse to chorus and back again, anchored by repeated phrases disappearing into wordless vocalizations and a wonderfully crisp guitar. No big surprise there. But there are additions, too: fuzzed-out New Wave synths, subtly applied vocal effects, ever-so-slightly more insistent drums. They’re by no means indicative of major changes to the Phoenix sound, but they’re there, they’re awesome, and the result is that it is almost impossible to dismiss “1901” as just another great Phoenix song.
[9]

Edward Okulicz: The first time in ages that they’ve captured that neon-hued longing that made “If I Ever Feel Better” one of the best songs of the last 10 years. I found their last album rather colourless and stodgy, so this is immediately comforting. Here, the beat is galloping and danceable, keyboards are klaxons and hooks abound. There’s a jerky energy in the way the lines spill over into each other that reminds me of The Cars, too. Happiness-inducing.
[8]

Martin Kavka: Phoenix have released two great singles: “Too Young” and “Everything Is Everything.” This is great too, in part because they’re beginning to plagiarize themselves. But even though the chords in the verses to “1901” are a bit too close to “Too Young” for comfort, the fascinating construction of the song – lots of cool key changes and rhythmic permutations – ends up making this their third, and best, great single.
[10]

Martin Skidmore: Immensely undistinguished French pop-rock, shambling on purposelessly for what seemed like ages but is actually only 3:13. The singing is strained and weak, the playing basic, the use of dance sounds perfunctory. I wouldn’t want to pretend I could write decent lyrics in French, but I can’t make anything of interest from these, which are in English. I find quite a few things forgettable, but it’s rare to be unable to retain it in your mind while it is actually playing.
[1]

Iain Mew: Love the fuzzy synth sounds, but the voices are way too weak to command attention and the whole thing seems really disjointed. Every time either the song or (more often) the kinetic instrumental starts to gain momentum the other one kicks in and doesn’t quite gel. Essentially they’d have been better off sticking to the latter, and maybe the whole thing could be as good as the last thirty seconds are.
[5]

John M. Cunningham: “1901” hews closer to the bright, stripped-down guitar-rock of It’s Never Been Like That than to the schizophrenic yacht-pop of Phoenix’s first two albums, but they’ve also slipped in some buzzy synths here, which nicely complement and fill out their current sound. I’m amazed that this is enough to warrant a Saturday Night Live appearance this weekend (maybe Sofia Coppola pulled some strings?), but it’s a remarkably solid single nevertheless, full of sparkly hooks and unabashed Gallic swagger.
[8]

Jordan Sargent: “1901” strikes me as the first Phoenix single to go straight for the jugular— or, at least, it sounds to me like the first Phoenix single with unabashed swagger. And for a band who jumped in the game doing (really good) lithe lounge-disco, it signals a sort of organic growth borne out of the confidence they’ve displayed in subtly reinventing themselves over the course of four albums. The most notable part of “1901” is its centerpiece, a huge (for these guys) distorted guitar riff, and for a band usually so delicate, it could’ve been a disaster. Naturally though, it’s the best hook on a song stuffed with them.
[8]

Ian Mathers:Maybe I’m just the right demographic (straight white male, single, filled with pointless ennui) but Phoenix’s last album really hit me at the right angle, and while I’m still getting used to most of Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, “1901” is a perfect example of how these opaque, post-Strokes and post-Daft Punk French hipsters manage to make my exceedingly mild inner turmoil seem both significant and kind of lovable. It’s 20 seconds to the last call and we’re all going “hey, hey, hey, hey, hey” because we can’t think of anything better to do. Thank God these guys know how to turn that feeling into a great pop single.
[10]

Defeated Swedish Eurovision contender, but still pretty popular over there anyhow…

[Video][Website]
[4.86]

Iain Mew: I never really got behind the standard boyband pop model of the late nineties at the time. So an inferior and barely updated version (check out the paper thin electro wrapping!) complete with obligatory painful key change is really not my idea of a good thing.
[2]

Jessica Popper: It’s amazing that Sweden never had a boyband until E.M.D., and still they’re not a particularly great one, considering all of the fantastic boyband songs written and produced by Swedes in the ’90s. E.M.D. have had some OK songs, nothing incredible, but they’ve done very well anyway, because all 3 members were popular contestants on Idol before the band. Perhaps their success means their next album will be better. This is more poptastic and less wimpy, almost *N Sync-ish, so I hope it’s a sign of what’s to come.
[8]

Martin Skidmore: Slick teen boy-band fare, with a brightly lively production and okay singing. The whistling is a welcome flourish on what is otherwise solidly professional and skilled, but uninspired.
[5]

Martin Kavka: Sweden, a nation of popbloggers turns its lonely eyes to you. Why do you excuse crap like this, perhaps the worst Swedish pop since ABBA’s “Rock Me”? It makes us wonder why we ever loved you.
[2]

Hillary Brown: While this harks back to the mid-1990s boy band era, it doesn’t have the snap and quirk of the best of those songs, and its content explicitly calls to mind a much stronger version of the same, “Bye Bye Bye.” Where are the harmonies? Where’s the step beyond aerobic dance? Not here.
[5]

Ian Mathers: Maybe it’s because they’re Swedish instead of American or British, but “Baby Goodbye” has two traits that set it apart and above from the boy band fare I’m used to: The massively stomping production which actually gives the chorus vocals some major support, and the blessedly brief running time. The lyrics are either gibberish or pabulum, the sentiment nonsense, the vocal harmonies anodyne. But however much I want to dislike it, “Baby Goodbye” is a ruthlessly effective piece of pop machinery – you try listening to it 3-4 times and not humming that chorus to yourself. If we have to have boy bands running around, we could do any awful lot worse than this.
[7]

Joseph McCombs: The dial-tone beat and circa-2000 vocal arrangement are fun enough to bounce along to as background music, and I’m a sucker for a modulation to the final chorus. But it’s kind of mean, after that chipper whistling, to tell someone who was presumably once loved that “you’re not even on because you’re gone, gone, gone” without even hinting at why. Baby didn’t do anything wrong, as far as I can tell, to deserve the most flippant kiss-off possible.
[5]

Injection of horsepower propels indie footnotes to #2 in the UK…

[Video][Website]
[6.00]

Jessica Popper: I thought the last Noisettes single, “Wild Young Hearts”, was brilliant, but this one is even better. It’s super-infectious and sassy, with fun lyrics, and I have to stop for a little dance every time the advert comes on TV. If the rest of the album is like this, it’ll be one of the best of 2009 without a doubt. I chose the Noisettes as one of my ‘ones to watch’ in 2007, and was slightly embarrassed by their lack of success, but it turns out I was just ahead of the crowd!
[10]

M. H. Lo: Aside from placing the song in the Mazda ad, the canniest move made by the Noisettes is to fashion “Don’t Upset the Rhythm” into one of those songs that is about nothing more than itself: “It’s the rhythm you’ve been waiting for/Pure delight, kick snare hat-ride!” But such meta-songs work best when they interpellate the audience, commanding us to help realize the vision: hence, the awesomeness of something like the Pipettes’ “Pull Shapes” lies in how we have to help the song become what it wants to be, an irresistible dance stomper, by dancing. Here, in contrast, after the build-up on the verses, we are only asked to…not upset the rhythm. Which presumably involves…sitting back and letting the band do its thing?
[7]

Frank Kogan: Well, the rhythm upsets me, reduced funk with no roll to it, rigid and sexless. For a moment the melody seems to be working its way towards the floating sadness of Gnarls’ “Crazy,” but it doesn’t achieve much of a mood one way or another.
[4]

Doug Robertson: No matter how good a song might be, very few can survive being heard every twenty minutes on commercial telly and this, frankly, isn’t anywhere near good enough to cope with the overexposure, and the nagging suspicion that it was deliberately written with this sort of commercial intention in mind doesn’t help.
[6]

Keane Tzong: They will be, and have been, crucified for making this song. Of course they would be; it sounds nothing like any previous Noisettes song. Hell, it probably sounds nothing like any future Noisettes song. But this is easy, featherweight fun and Shingai Shoniwa’s voice is better suited to this polished electro-disco sound than it was to at least half of What’s the Time, Mr. Wolf?.
[8]

Martin Skidmore: I was thinking how well she would have worked on old disco records, and this very much partakes of that, the guitar line especially. It’s not so far from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs single we loved last week, and though it certainly suffers from that comparison, this is still pretty good.
[8]

Alex Macpherson: Cheap, rinky-dink keyboards and an amateurishly half-assed vocal – I feel we have been here before – are the hallmarks of any incompetent indie band attempting a pointless disco pastiche, and the Noisettes come through on both counts.
[3]

Dave Moore: “Don’t upset the rhythm” scans way too literally here – they’re dancing on eggshells; it’s almost comically uptight. This might actually be the ultimate soundtrack to NOT dancing, or at least to standing still and holding in a fart at an indie dance club while quasi-rhythmically bobbing your head.
[2]

Rodney J. Greene: The disco gallop and chopping punk guitars are all passable, but the singer needs to take her own titular advice. There’s nothing resembling a song here, and the vocals take an occasionally overwrought turn as the frontwoman tries to create a melody where none exists.
[5]

Additional Scores

Martin Kavka: [6]
Ian Mathers: [6]
Edward Okulicz: [7]

They might not photograph that well, but the video’s certainly pretty…

[Video][Website]
[6.09]

Joseph McCombs: I haven’t heard from Doves since “Black and White Town” in ’05. It would seem at some point in the interim they decided to become Calexico, only with a little more kick to their shuffle. Haunting, melodic, poetic, engaging: I really dig this.
[9]

John M. Cunningham: Like other Doves songs I’ve happened to hear, “Kingdom of Rust” is impressively arranged – a quick-paced shuffle with some Morricone-like cinematic flourishes and a twinkly riff that’s easy to sink your teeth into – though as a result I appreciate it more textually than as a well-formed song.
[6]

Martin Kavka: There’s a certain subtlety woven in to the typical Doves epic scale here; I imagine that it requires you to be in motion in order to really appreciate it. For example, if I were listening to this while on a long drive (perhaps to scatter someone’s ashes at a shore, as in the video), I’d no doubt think this was the Most Meaningful Song Ever. At a laptop, it’s not nearly so extraordinary. But perhaps this should be a point in the track’s favor; it calls you to live.
[7]

Doug Robertson: Right. I don’t “get” Doves. They seem to have a special place in a lot of people’s hearts but I just can’t understand why. They always plod where they should soar, collapse where they should connect and drag their knuckles like Neanderthal man where they should – well, you get the idea with that. I want my iPod to blast my ears with excitement and adventure and sounds that take me away from that, not music that hammers home the sheer pointlessness of existence. This is music for people who don’t dream, who don’t imagine, and who don’t care about anything other than the four walls that make up their little world. This is the sound of concrete; give me a wrecking ball.
[2]

Martin Skidmore: Second single in a week to remind me a little of “Ghost Riders In The Sky”, except here it’s as if it has been remade by Coldplay in their sleep. I guess it’s looking for a dreamlike swoony sound to go with the nonsensical (some might describe them as poetically surreal, but these bozos are no Marc Bolans) lyrics. I guess people who like Coldplay, Keane and so on will like this too, but I loathe the bland, safe, gutless style.
[2]

Ian Mathers: “Kingdom of Rust” kind of putters along, with a nice enough melody, but it sounds like the middle eight to one of their old songs stretched to five minutes. I don’t want Doves to be pleasant. I want them to be grandiose.
[5]

Alex Wisgard: A strange choice of lead-off single from a band who normally charge back into the public consciousness with all guns blazing – let’s not forget quite how astonishing (and fun) “There Goes the Fear” sounded on first listen. “Kingdom of Rust” is hardly a failure – it swells in all the right places, an expansive country shuffle, laced with sweeping Morricone strings. It’s just hard not to feel like they’re trying to catch up Elb*w in the epic stakes, and this is no “Grounds for Divorce”. Still, maybe it makes more sense in context of the album…
[6]

Colin Cooper: References to moors, power stations and dreary northern ‘city’ Preston betray this otherwise curiously cowboy indie; Doves are doing the Wild (North) West. It’s augmented by pretty glockenspiel figures, singer Jimi Goodwin’s gruff tones and soaring, almost filmic strings and…does any of this sound at all familiar? Don’t get me wrong, I feel sorry for Doves. Usurped once and for all by younger cousins Elbow, the remarkable (though Christ, a little overplayed now) comeback that band made now facilitates Doves’ return. Both bands specialise in what this single ostensibly does quite well; emotive, highly-textured indie-rock by men who could just as easily be gravediggers or construction workers or bears. The difference is, of course, that one’s always had a bit more delicacy about them, and are now reaping the rewards of an album they could only just afford to make. This single blazes the trail for a similar return from a band who must have been thinking about chucking the towel in too, but thanks to Mr. Garvey and co., can hold it off at least a little longer.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: This is how you do an epic. This song is fantastic and enormously so, and it is this because it’s not just long, it’s longing. It eschews the obvious quiet/loud-verse/chorus juxtaposition in favour of interesting dynamics – a little chug, a little country, just a touch of desolation. There are strings and there is jangle and these are intelligently placed. The chorus aches, it doesn’t whine. The arrangement and production are clear, not muddy and you can hear all the buzzes and hooks perfectly. Reminds me of the Blackeyed Susans, a band I adored in the 90s. It’s a relief to know I’m not so jaded that I can’t be moved by you know, a rock band.
[10]

Iain Mew: Subtlety has never been Doves’ strong point. The big stuff though, a KINGDOM of rust, an OCEAN of trust, that they can conjure up. So massive washes of strings and distorted guitar, and a beat that just unstoppably ticks away time in the background all back up ‘myyyyy GOD!’ in a way that takes full advantage of Jimi Goodwin’s voice having no setting bar maximum deep world-weariness.
[8]

Dave Moore: Shambling “can your brother do the shaker and the tambourine on this one”-style two-step shuffles along for five minutes as what starts as a Nick Cave hoe-down becomes the Waterboys fronted by Chris Martin. And hey, I kind of like the Waterboys.
[5]

Possibly the weakest web presence of anyone we’ve reviewed thus far – her official site still has a “MAKE POVERTY HISTORY” banner on it…

[Fanmade video][Fanmade site]
[7.29]

Ian Mathers: I don’t remember Ms. Dynamite being quite this patois-heavy, but it suits her. “Bad Gyal” doesn’t seem as socially concerned (or as heavy-handed) as parts of A Little Deeper were, but with that slow-burning chorus it’s hard to care too much. “Bad Gyal” also features a surprisingly apt use of strings, and the rough/smooth feel of those strings with her voice elevates this above just another fiyah-spitting single.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: The first time I listened to it, it was pretty much just a disorientating, overwhelming collection of sounds – “Toxic” string sweeps, folky Eastern strings, sirens, fierce beats. But these are all sounds I love – a succession of fantastic what the fuck? moments. The second time, I could see them all coming but it didn’t diminish the thrill one bit.
[9]

Hillary Brown: Clever samples, and she certainly has a near-auctioneer’s patter, but the song doesn’t push any of my buttons, perhaps because it’s got a distinct lack of melody. That said, it’d make quite the theme song for a Hot Cheetos commercial.
[4]

Alex Macpherson: Would that all comebacks from the pop grave sounded as vital as this! Eschewing the standard UK pop act tactic of playing their return as safely and conservatively as possible – Alesha Dixon, I’m looking at you – Ms Dynamite seizes the opportunity to re-hook up with Sticky, the producer on whose 2002 single “Booo!” she first came to prominence, to make the kind of track she should have been making all along. It’s a welcome return to MCing, for one thing, and as ever Ms D utterly slays the beat – witness how she repeatedly speeds up to a near-impossible pace before pulling back, switching the tempo, reminding us that no matter how bewilderingly frenetic she gets, she’s always in control. And then there’s the beat itself: a galloping rhythm which would fit neatly into any UK funky set without ever doing anything as vulgar as bandwagonning, constant switch-ups which pull the rug from under your feet again and again, sirens and smashing glass and completely insane, distorted violin motifs which go off in all directions like fireworks. It’s breathtaking stuff, both due to its audacity and the way it never lets you stop dancing, and it deserves to catapult Ms Dynamite firmly back into the limelight.
[10]

Hazel Robinson: The problem is, Ms. Dynamite’s so much better when she’s doing underground tracks like this (& whether it should be huge or not, there’s a certain snarl to Sticky’s stuff that would make it sound like an underdog if it was going triple-platinum) but at the same time, she’s so good at them you want her to get gigantic again. The sweep of the strings here, combined with that muffled bassline and her addictive, machine-gun rapping has “MASSIVE SUMMER ANTHEM” written all over it.
[9]

Additional Scores

Martin Kavka: [5]
Martin Skidmore: [8]

And this week’s token T-Pain guest spot goes to…

[Video][Myspace]
[5.67]
Al Shipley: Last year, rap’s least radio-friendly super producer, Just Blaze, came out of the woodwork to score his first #1 with T.I.’s “Life Your Life,” a shameless pop smash that actually retained his boom bap sensibility. But the problem with an artist coming off of a successful reinvention is that they’re all too happy to keeping riding that high with a virtually identical follow-up.
[2]

Alex Macpherson: I always suspected that there was a great song somewhere in T.I.’s ‘Live Your Life’, smothered in ear-bleedingly terrible MAIIAHIIII samples and unwanted, over-Autotuned Rihanna. And this is it! Similarly triumphalist, but with space for the ingredients to breathe as well as surge irresistibly forward. T-Pain’s chorus is one of the biggest he’s done recently and the introduction of the treated guitar in the closing half minute is a touch of genius; unlikely as it may seem, the hitherto unremarkable Maino may have just delivered his second unstoppable anthem in a row.
[8]

Ian Mathers: This, this is why T-Pain has a career – the smooth, thundering hook practically oozes triumphalism and between that hook, Maino’s ingratiatingly hungry verses and the surprisingly compelling production (pizzicato strings on a rap song are almost always good, especially when paired with thickly buzzing synths), “All the Above” is one of the few “look at me, I’m awesome and I’m going to be rich and also you can’t judge me” songs that actually kind of makes you root for the guy.
[8]

Jordan Sargent: Maino had a hit last year, the great “Hi Hater”, that by all accounts dominated summer in New York City. It never really popped off nationally though, so it’s pretty rich to see this grimey, archetypal NY rapper coming back with a T-Pain chorusingle co-produced by the Atlanta duo Nard & B. The other producer is Just Blaze, which makes sense seeing that “All the Above” sounds like a “Live Your Life” demo. Even T-Pain’s chorus is lazy and uninventive, which makes Maino’s stock verses about perseverance and triumph even funnier.
[4]

Rodney J. Greene: Epic doesn’t work for Maino. Despite styling himself as closely to an ornery Southern rapper as is possible for a Brooklynite, fellow stylistic carpetbagger Just Blaze’s giant trap-rap synths and busy Runners drums do him no favors. Whereas “Hi Hater”‘s sparse NY beat allowed plenty of room for Maino to get straight up goonish, he sounds trapped inside the production here.
[5]

Martin Kavka: Hip-hop is essentially about posturing; when it’s successful, there’s evidence that there’s substance behind the posture. Maino claims that he deserves wealth, which is a bit cheeky for a track so soft and string-laden that it seems to be modeling for Victoria’s Secret. But there’s one good reason to believe him: the line “the new Benz is all white, call it John McCain.”
[7]

Hillary Brown: See, he gets a 6 because he’s a survivor and deserves something for all the pain he’s been through. That’s how this works, right?
[6]

Additional Scores

John M. Cunningham: [4]
Martin Skidmore: [7]

We’ve heard they’re big in Spain. We don’t have any actual evidence for that, but we’ve heard it…

[Video][Website]
[6.50] 

Hillary Brown: Oh, goody, more of the same! An unconventional sentiment, no doubt, but a heartfelt one. I’m a big fan of this vein Camera Obscura’s been working in (sparkly, 70s-Nashville-influenced/Phil Spectory songs), and I won’t complain about a lack of variation.
[7]

M. H. Lo: What about this is not PERFECT, I ask you? Obviously not that dramatic beginning, BOOM BOOM! Certainly not the way Tracyanne sings “criticized” twice in rapid succession, or her wry intonation on the euphoric line, “You make me go oooh-ooh-ooh…” Just when you think you’ve got those drums sussed, they break away and open up into a more relentless, pounding Motowny rhythm, which paves the way for the melody to correspondingly BURST FORTH into its gorgeous chorus (“I wanted to control it! But love I couldn’t hold it!”). Which leaves me just enough uppercase letters to exclaim about the HORNS, and the STRINGS, oh my god the STRINGS! She may be “waiting to be struck by lightning,” but I’m totally electrified.
[10]

Ian Mathers: Their last album was essentially 8 depressive ballads and 2 burnished, invincible pop songs (about being depressed, but still!). It was and is brilliant. “French Navy” has shockingly bad lyrics, none of the locked-in-a-room intensity or languor of Let’s Get Out of This Country‘s slow songs and certainly doesn’t have anything approaching the hooks or melodies of the title track and “Lloyd, I’m Ready to Be Heartbroken.” A major, major disappointment and one severe enough I’m worried that My Maudlin Career is going to be as crap as its title.
[5]

Martin Skidmore: The big beats are looking for that Spector “Be My Baby” sound, which does go some way to disguise the band’s fundamental nature. The drums and lively strings on this make it far more palatable than most of its ilk, but the singing isn’t strong enough to stand comparison to Ronnie Spector or Darlene Love, so it falls kind of flat for me.
[4]

Iain Mew: Classic swooning romanticism very much in the vein of “Lloyd” gets undercut by an ill-fitting string arrangement, a rubbish fadeout and the fact that it sounds like they ‘met by a trick of feet’. Survives barely intact.
[5]

Martin Kavka: If you’re the type of person who wants a love song with a gorgeous string line and not too many guitars, and that contains the words “dietary restriction” and eloquently describes the topsy-turviness and ephemerality of passion, this is for you. If you’re not that type of person…what’s wrong with you?
[9]

Additional Scores

Edward Okulicz: [8]
Hazel Robinson: [4]

Video features horse racing, DJ Khaled…

[Video][Myspace]
[5.11]

Martin Skidmore: Lush music (produced by the J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League), rather too smooth and laid back to suit Rick I think – our editor points out that it sounds kind of like PM Dawn, and that isn’t really the right backing for a tough gangsta, and John Legend’s slick blandness doesn’t help either. It sounds the kind of thing that could have been excellent with the right rapper, but it just highlights Rick’s ordinariness.
[5]

John M. Cunningham: The key line is “I can show you better than I can tell you,” because while Rick Ross as a rapper is not particularly charming or nimble, the opulent instrumentation and the classy John Legend’s creamy voice fit the subject perfectly. Another highball, please.
[7]

Martin Kavka: “When I decorate a home, marble flooring like the Nile.” I’m shocked to discover that Rick Ross does his own interior design. Perhaps, once this album flops – this ode to materialism is wildly out of place in the current recession – he should replace Ty Pennington as host of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition?
[4]

Dave Moore: Another surprisingly enjoyable track from Rick Ross, who glides through a Biggie-esque smooth jam with slick John Legend chorus. But his mind’s on his money to a fault (he’d rather do accounting than take pleasure in the company of his veritable ocean of women). He’d be better off as a CNBC analyst than a rapper: “I’m a CEO which means I profit offa me.” Just don’t tell your shareholders, or the government.
[6]

Jordan Sargent: Officer Ross obviously seems himself as a post-Biggie corner hustler cum kingpin superstar, and “Magnificent”, the lead single off of his positively buzzed about third album, flaunts a luxurious instrumental that wouldn’t sound out of place on Life After Death. But obviously Ross can’t even hold Biggie’s cigar box (even though the former will have much more of a lasting [non-cop fiasco] legacy than some think), and so “Magnificent” doesn’t do much to hold attention, especially considering that “Mafia Music”, the song that leaked before it, is one of the better rap songs of the year. And even on the chorus, which could be a small oasis, John Legend is swallowed by the monstrous beat – which is probably best for all involved, come to think of it.
[5]

Jonathan Bradley: He doesn’t actually expect us to take him seriously, does he? Apart from a “It’s the boss!” intro, this has the pungent whiff of a grab for respectability. It’s not just the delicate, almost tasteful, R&B instrumental from The Justice League. There’s also a bland hook from John Legend who, this time round, deserves all the charges of dullness with which he’s usually unfairly saddled. I’d even swear Rick Ross was trying a bit harder with his lyrics, though I can offer little in the way of direct evidence for that. Amazingly, Ross has suggested he can do this kind of grown man shit well, with another Deeper Than Rap leak, the surprisingly well-executed “Cigar Music (I Do It).” But if he truly is trying to class up his career, he’ll need to do better than “Magnificent.” My advice would have been to go in the other direction: call up Andy Samberg and see if it were possible to out-stupid “I’m On a Boat.”
[4]

Additional Scores

Hillary Brown: [3]
Alex Macpherson: [7]
Ian Mathers: [5]

Difficult third album, difficult second single…

[Video][Website]
[5.00]

Alex Wisgard: As far as I’m concerned, the Comic Relief special edition of Top Of The Pops was the moment the charts died for good; obviously they’ve been rendered irrelevant at least since TOTP was taken off air, but this was the first moment it hit home quite how boring and safe the charts have become (see also: Lady GaGa’s two number one singles). And sadly, sandwiched between “Islands in the Stream” and the new Oasis single (probably) was this latest effort from Franz; while “Ulysses” swaggered and strutted with purpose (ie: we’ve been away for ages, and look what new and exciting developments we’ve come up with in our big pop lab!), “No You Girls” is more of an undetermined plod. For all the talk of shunning choruses, the hooks are in just the right places and the eyebrows are raised at the perfect level. “No You Girls” is the sound of Franz Ferdinand on autopilot, and thanks to TOTP, I can no longer listen to it without imagining a white-suited David Tennant twatting around with a guitar. Bugger.
[5]

Renato Pagnani: Alex Kapranos translates one of Lil Wayne’s recent go-to lyrical techniques to rock on “No You Girls”: Instead of purposefully mispronouncing words so he can correct himself in the next line, he retracts entire phrases. Love you? Pfft. He’d love to get to know you. Sometimes he says the stupid things that he thinks? Er, he thinks the stupidest things. When Kapranos comes full circle, admitting that he and his sex are (at least) equally to blame for the mixed signals, misinterpretations and dick moves, the song shifts from sexist to clever in one of those a-ha! moments that feels gloriously triumphant. And somehow the band manages to stuff all their previous hits into a blender and end up with something that avoids sounding like any of them. I mean, too much like any of them.
[8]

Ian Mathers: At 3:42 it actually feels a bit overstuffed – that louche intro, which they smartly replicate later on, and the surging chorus are both nice, but they should be able to hit the high points and get out after, say, roughly 2:15, instead of ploughing over the same old ground. Although I guess that length lets the track go from “you girls don’t know how you make us boys feel, with your pouting and breasts and such” to “you boys don’t care how crappy you make girls feel, with your objectification and not calling the next day and such.” Advertizing is killing our attention spans!
[7]

Iain Mew: Franz Ferdinand long tried to present themselves as something a little more unsual and ambitious than the ordinary, and as long as they were producing startlingly great singles it just about held water. Now they seem almost reduced to self-parody, choosing the most obvious option at every point on a retread song that never does anything to justify its existence.
[3]

Edward Okulicz: It’s as if the scruffy and dirty but oh so taut disco stylings of their earlier work has been rendered impotent. The bassline does not jump, the lyrics do not exhort to dance or delight and its sleek tidiness could less charitably be seen as a lack of depth. The song isn’t too bad but it demanded a nastier, fuller production rather than this empty gleaming which is hookless, safe and sterile.
[4]

Keane Tzong: I like to think that were it not for Apple’s helping hand, people would have noticed that Franz Ferdinand have been peddling this one song since 2004, and shut their wallets accordingly. After all, they most likely own Franz Ferdinand already- is there any real need to spend any sum of money on the “privilege” of owning this song? No. But here we are. Another pick as disastrous as this and I’ll buy a fuckin’ Zune.
[2]

Additional Scores

Hillary Brown: [7]
Martin Kavka: [7]
Martin Skidmore: [2]

We will cover other French songs, but they’ll have to go some to be as French as this ‘un…

[Video][Website]
[7.14] 

Martin Skidmore: Only the French sound like this: there’s something about the clearly enunciated chanson style of this that could be from nowhere else. I have a bad feeling that she might easily be aggravatingly quirky and too pleased with herself, but I’m suspending that suspicion on the basis of too minimal evidence, so this is currently okay and sort of cute.
[6]

Alex Wisgard: Sounds like France Gall being given the Mark Ronson treatment. Awful on paper, wonderful on headphones.
[8]

Ian Mathers: I liked “J’Traine Des Pieds” mostly for the digital twinkle underlying the song, which gave it “a starry, floaty feel it doesn’t really earn otherwise” (thanks, 2007 me!). Yes, Ruiz’s delivery was a crucial part of that song’s greatness, and it still sounds nice today, but without that kind of atmospheric backdrop she just sounds… well, like someone singing the words “elle panique” a lot, quite frankly.
[5]

Hillary Brown: Hark. An autoharp? Olivia Ruiz’s tune is almost twee as possible but not uninteresting, with her sweetly nasal Parisian vowels honking along cutely to a background of plucked and strummed strings that has enough backbeat in it to propel things along to the quickly arriving conclusion.
[7]

Martin Kavka: How lovely. An autoharp, horns, pizzicato strings, surf guitar, and handclaps. No, not all at the same time, silly. But there’s a lot of wonderful parts to this beautifully arranged song, which commands you to listen to it again and again, and to renew your awe at its accessibility and complexity. It’s also a beautiful narrative about a woman intervening on a friend’s behalf with Mr. Wrong, who is such a bad boyfriend that the friend is now afraid for many things…including her ass.
[9]

Dave Moore: A slight charmer that’s sweet, brief, then vanishes like a palate cleanser.
[7]

M. H. Lo: The magic of this track, endearingly, lies in all the moments in-between. The melody of the verses, for example, is a bit fussy and complicated, while the primary chorus is a tad too simple. But the instrumentation that conveys us from part to part is unceasingly fascinating – like how she sings “derriere,” and the horns go “blah rah blah rah blah lah BLAT!!!” in response while the plucked strings swoon along. If only that happened each time someone around me said “ass”.
[8]