Alt-J's matador metaphor and five other songs you may have missed

A semi-regular round up of the songs I didn't have time to blog about this week.

Today's selection includes...

1) Alt-J - Something Good
Restrained but beautiful, the new single from Mercury nominees Alt-J is one of their more straightforward songs... musically, at least. On their Soundcloud page, the band say the song "documents the death of a matador", which in turn is "an analogy for the slow mending of a broken heart through fun distractions". Taking that into account, the video is both gory and meditative.



2) Missy Elliot - Triple Threat
Followers of Missy Elliot's twitter account won't have missed the fact she's got a new single out because she spent the start of the week retweeting every person who mentioned it in an unrelenting, 48-hour egowank. Fun for her, trying for the rest of us. A bit like the single, in fact.

Triple Threat is the better of two songs on the double a-side single, even if you have to slog through an entire minute of Timbaland "rapping" before she turns up. Love the string sample.



Nelly Furtado - Parking Lot
This is one of the stand-out moments on Nelly's sadly-underwhelming new album, The Spirit Indestructible. Gritty and funky, it's a tribute to her mis-spent youth, hanging around in shopping mall parking lots listening to hip-hop. If the piercing car horn sample doesn't give you a headache, the video will...



4) Chvrches - The Mother We Share
Chvrches (try typing that on an iPhone) are a synth-pop trio from Glasgow, who have stockpiled more tunes than a newsagent during a flu epidemic. You know, because of the cough sweets called Tunes? Oh never mind...




5) Bobby Womack and Lana Del Rey - Dayglo Reflection
Earlier this week, Lana Del Rey put out a cover of Bobby Vinton's Blue Velvet this week - but even her sultry black magic can't improve that damp towel of a song. Instead, here's her duet with Bobby Womack, which is getting a single release next month. Atmospheric.



6) Carly Rae Jepsen - This Kiss
Carly Rae Jepsen has daintily dodged the one-hit-wonder bullet by following up Call Me Maybe by releasing This Kiss, a perky pop song that is approximately 500% better than anyone was expecting - especially after that awful duet with Owl City. Nicely played, Carly. Nicely played.

Tweet

New Gorillaz: Stylo

Rushed out onto Youtube after the promo CD was leaked on the Russian equivalent of Facebook, here's the first single from the new Gorillaz album (you have to watch it surrounded by adverts on Youtube, I'm afraid, because the record industry is ON IT'S KNEES).

Gorillaz - Stylo (album version)

As you can see, the song features vocals from Mos Def and the legendary Bobby "Across 110th Street" Womack.

If you can't be bothered to click on that YouTube link, but you're still interested to find out what Bobby Womack would sound like singing a track written by pasty white men posturing as hip-hop demigods, here is the masterful Get A Life, which he contributed to Rae & Christian's Sleepwalking album a decade ago.

Rae & Christian feat Bobby Womack - Get A Life


Both songs are, of course, amazing.

Tweet