Fawn times with Metronomy

Metronomy have resurfaced with a video for the sublime Everything Goes My Way, off of their not-Mercury-winning album The English Riviera. This is the one featuring vocals from Roxanne Clifford, who spends the entire song flirting with a different tune in an alternate key. Somehow it works, though - giving a precarious sense of fragility to the song's story of a faltering relationship.

The video features the band walking through a park (Richmond Park, I think) and encountering some deer, for no immediately justifiable reason.

Metronomy - Everything Goes My Way


Rejected titles for this post included: Nearest and deer-est; Deer to dream; Metronomy watch your aunt elope; Stag night; What's this video about? I've no i-deer; Metronomy's en-deer-ing video; Bambi goes emo; Oh deer.

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Adele: Better late than never

It's only 35 weeks since Someone Like You first entered the UK charts, on the back of that amazing Brit Awards performance. In the meantime Adele has generated an incredible ginger barnet, lost her voice, found it again, soundtracked a royal wedding and been banned by cantankerous shop assistants. Now, finally, she's remembered to give Someone Like You a video.

The grainy Parisian visuals seem wistfully appropriate without detracting from Adele's performance, and it's nice to revisit the album version of the track (I'd almost forgotten the chorus's soaring high notes, which have been excised for her live performances).

Everybody sing along now: "Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it ursinstay"


Adele - Someone Like You"

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The Saturdays - coming soon to an X Factor montage near you

The stonking brilliance of The Saturdays' last single, All Fired Up, was something of a revelation. Suddenly, the quintet who became Britiain's top girl group by default (because the others all gave up) had raised their game with a deranged and distorted dance anthem. They're following it up - in pop's greatest tradition - with a ballad aimed at the Christmas market.

My Heart Takes Over isn't knock-you-sideways extraordinary but it's a competent 7/10 effort. From the croaky, string-drenched opening it picks up an uneven, proto-industrial drumbeat and builds to one of those moments where everything goes uncomfortably quiet for a little longer than is musically appropriate, before it EXPLODES INTO A HUGE FINAL CHORUS.

Of course, that moment of silence is specifically timed for Gary Barlow to say "it's four yesses, you're going to bootcamp!". Someone in The Saturdays team knew exactly what they're doing when they wrote that.

An audio preview of the song went up on YouTube this morning, and the girls are off to Iceland to film the video later today. I hope they've scouted this museum as a potential location.



The Saturdays - My Heart Takes Over

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How to graffitti a folk singer

Lisa Hannigan has got a ukelele and she's not afraid to use it... The 30-year-old, from Kilcooln in County Meath may be familiar to you from her six-year collaboration with Damien Rice, which produced classics like Cannonball and The Blower's Daughter but also this sultry, under-the-sheets version of Pink's Get The Party Started.

Damien Rice & Lisa Hannigan - Get The Party Started


Hannigan quit Rice's band in 2007, saying she had "become pretty outspoken about my frustrations at the direction the band was going in... I'm sure he was starting to find me a pain". If her solo material is anything to go by, her bugbear was having to be so bloody morose all the time. Freed from the shackles of Rice's incessant girly weeping, Hannigan's debut album See Sew was giddy, playful and open-hearted. Her new album, Passenger, promises more of the same - quaintly hand-stitched folk music with a sunny disposition. If you can imagine Laura Marling on poppers doing a comedy "top of de mornin to yer" Oirish accent, you'll be half way there.

In the video for the first single, Knots, Hannigan looks like the Rose Of Tralee, dusky of hair and rosy of cheek in a virginal white dress. She then spends four minutes trying to lip-sync while people throw paint over her. It's brilliant.

Lisa Hannigan - Knots


Passenger is out now in the US and Canada, but fans in the UK & Ireland have to wait til October. Which is rubbish.

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Wretch 32 and Emeli Sande on Jools Holland

Proof that UK hip-hop and soul is properly coming of age... The new generation of artists can genuinely "cut it" live (see also: Tinie Tempah, Labrinth and Jessie J). Here's a sublime selection of clips from Jools Holland's current series.

Wretch 32 ft Josh Kumra - Don't Go


Emeli Sandé - Heaven

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Holy Ghost's family album

Apparently the rest of the world has decided to ignore Holy Ghost on the grounds that they are too similar to LCD Soundsystem, while missing the point that they are better than LCD Soundsystem because they don't spend entire albums grumbling about being middle-aged and having osteoporosis.

Well, I applaud Holy Ghost for their carefree brand of dance-funk. Striding around in your disco slacks is 100% preferable to slouching on the sofa watching repeats of The Great British Bake Off, wondering where the years have gone.

Not that Holy Ghost are immune to sentimentality. Case in point: The video for their new single Hold My Breath. It's stitched together from personal photos and videos of the band grwoing up together, after they first met at elementary school.

“There were no trepidations about exposing our personal lives,” says singer Alex Frankel. “We literally handed over the archives in all their humiliating and sentimental glory.”

Give them 10 years and they'll be writing a song about rheumatoid arthritis and why they should bring back conscription "to teach the kids some discipline". Until then, enjoy...

Holy Ghost! - Hold My Breath

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