"They dream about being Mumford and Sons"

Odder than a teapot full of spam balls, here's a 22-minute performance video from Arcade Fire.

Shot by Roman Coppola in Montreal's tiny Salsatheque venue, it features three new songs as well as a lounge version of Wake Up, for which the band dress up as Duran Duran. No, really.

Superbad star Michael Cera cameos as the venue's barman, who'd rather be watching Michael Buble and says Arcade Fire will never be as good as Mumford And Sons.

There are further guest spots from James Franco, Ben Stiller, Bono and an irate Zach Galifianakis. "I went to one of your first shows," he shouts at Win Butler in a video link from 'outer space'.

"There were more people on stage than there were in the audience. YOU DON'T NEED THREE DRUMMERS."

Well, quite.

Incidentally, the new songs - Here Comes The Night Time, We Exist and Normal Person - sound fantastic, incorporating new styles (reggae! new wave!) into the band's arsenal of anthemic indie rock.

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The many faces of Cher Lloyd and six other songs you may have missed

A semi-regular summary of songs that almost slipped through the net, and the reasons why they shouldn't be ignored.

1) Cher Lloyd - I Wish
Believe it or not, all those screengrabs at the top of the post come from the first 60 seconds of the video. Nice chorus, though.




2) Chase & Status - Count On Me (ft Moko)
AKA Blind Faith part II, Count On Me is the best song the 1990s never had. Featuring the drum loop from Back By Dope Demand, and a diva with bigger pipes than a storm drain, this should come with a free Global Hypercolor t-shirt.




3) Rizzle Kicks - Skip To The Good Bit (lyric video)
Because what EMF's Unbelievable was missing was a trumpet.




4) Mooli - Automatic
Endorsed by Sir Michael Caine (really), Mooli are Ben Copland and Kristina Smith. In a previous life, Ben wrote songs for Liberty X and Aaron Carter, but don't hold that against him. His new project is all spangly synthpop with a droopy sadface. And, as any fool knows, that's the best sort of synthpop there is.




5) Hugh Laurie and Jools Holland - Piano duet
The excruciating boogie-woogie piano interludes are generally the low-point of Jools Holland's Later show (unless the Stereophonics are on it again) but this quad-handed blues duet with Hugh Laurie is guaranteed to put a smile on anyone's face. Better than a cat video, and that's a guarantee.




6) Chvrches - It's Not Right, But It's Okay
Out this week, Chvrches debut album is a splendiferous affair (although you can totally skip the ones where the bloke sings). To cap it all, they've been in Radio 1's Live Lounge, covering Whitney Houston's second-best song after My Name Is Not Susan.





7) Kelis - Been Given A Morning
Kelis's husky, dusty voice is clearly suited to ballads, so it's a shame that she's never been given a decent one to sing... Until now. Culled from her recent sessions with Dave Sitek, Been Given A Morning is a sombre, jazzy torch song, doused in kerosene and set alight in its dying moments.

On the evidence of this and Jerk Ribs, which came out in April, Kelis's forthcoming album is going to be the reinvention of the year.

And that's it for this week... See you on Monday for more.

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Cheque this out: A high interest rate in Banks*

"The most plainly obvious pop star you’re ever likely to see."

That's how Vice Magazine described Banks, within 10 seconds of meeting her earlier this year. The LA singer-songwriter is certainly rather special: The sort of person who who puts her actual cellphone number on her Facebook page (it's really real).

Banks is her surname - her friends call her Jillian. She started making music aged 15, when a friend gave her a toy keyboard to distract her during "a tough time" with her family ("parents fighting, being alone in the house"). Expressing her fear and loneliness through music helped her cope. "I became addicted ever since," she told Billboard.

For years, she kept her music private, "because it was such an outlet for me". She enrolled in university, earning a bachelor's degree in psychology. Then she took a deep breath and uploaded a song to Soundcloud.

Brooding and bruised, the darkly dealt R&B of Before I Ever Met You ("I never knew I could be broken in so many ways") was played a quarter of a million times before it got an official release at the start of the year.



Banks has put out a couple more tracks since, of which the seductive Warm Water is the definite highlight. People have compared it to Lana Del Rey - and the two artists certainly share a femme fatale quality, but there's also a fragile intimacy to Banks's music that Del Rey never quite achieves.

"I definitely want [my music] to be really cinematic; I want you to be able to visualize things while you're listening to it," she told Interview Magazine. "I just want everything to be moody — I want it to affect people."

The 25-year-old spent the summer in the UK recording new music (and performing her first ever gig), which resulted in the London EP, which was quietly released onto iTunes a fortnight ago.

The lead track is This Is What It Feels Like. Understated and beautiful, it's the sound of the ghost in the machine - if the machine was Frank Ocean's laptop. The video ("made possible by Garnier Fructis") was premiered on Noisey's YouTube channel last night, and finds Banks loitering in a kitchen during a calamitous storm. At least, I think it's a storm. It might just be Joey's rainy window from Friends. Either way: Brilliant.

Banks - This Is What It Feels Like

* sorry

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Charli XCX has a new single and it's a bloody good pop song

Remember what I was saying on Tuesday about pop stars needing to be likeable? Well here's Charli XCX, an artist who's sometimes come across as distant and cold, throwing caution to the wind with a breezy, accessible new look. She even smiles in the video.

Superlove is "a completely new vibe," the singer admitted to Digital Spy earlier this month. "I wrote the song the same week as [Icona Pop's] I Love It. Let's just say I was in a similar mind frame!"

If you liked Charli's debut album True Romance, which came out earlier this year, you're going to love this: From the sugar-spun chorus to the gratuitously stupid "in da club" reference. And if that's not enough for you, Charli deploys pop's secret weapon: The double handclap. Amazing.

8/10

Charli XCX - Superlove

Superlove isn't out until 1 December, which seems mad, but there you go.

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Haim cover Miley Cyrus in the Live Lounge

Five days before their debut album comes out, Haim paid a visit to Radio 1's Live Lounge for a timely spot of promo. They were tweeted live on air by Isaac "Mmmbop" Hanson, prompting Este to disclose the fact she and Taylor Hanson share a birthday: 14th March, or 3.14 if you're American.

"It's Pi day," she noted. "And I do eat pies on my birthday." Maybe you had to be there.

Getting down to business, the trio knocked off their current single, The Wire, before ploughing headlong into a jittery cover of Miley's Wrecking Ball. "We're not afraid to say we love Miley," noted Alana.

It may not be perfect, but it's a hell of a lot of fun. Listen below.



PS: There are loads of shots of the session over on the Radio 1 website, including this one of the band's lyrics cribsheet.

EDIT: Here's the video.

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Drake unveils shooty bang bang Hold On video

Drake's Hold On We're Going Home is by far the best thing he's recorded, which is a strange thing to say given that it sounds exactly like every other Drake single ever released. But there's something about those dreamy synths and barely-there vocals that just works this time around.

The video popped up online last night, and it's a seven-minute, Miami Vice-inspired, crime-ridden, gun-toting kidnap-and-revenge tale [that's quite enough, hyphenation ed]. Drake, who started off his career in Degrassi Junior High discussed the clip with MTV News thus:

"Bill Pope, who directed The Matrix¹, directed the video. Basically it's a video full of acting² because I'm dying to get back into acting.

"I based it off of some of the old Michael Jackson videos like Moonwalker³. So it's sort of exciting, violent a little and scary a little⁴."

1) The Wachowski Brothers directed The Matrix.
2) Mostly people firing guns.
3) Moonwalker was a film, not a video.
4) About as scary as a Calippo.

Petty gripes aside, this is a visually-stunning mini movie. Worth watching full-screen with a bag of popcorn.

Drake - Hold On We're Going Home

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