Sunday, November 20, 2005

In shops tomorrow: 21/11

Singles

  • Antony & The Johnsons seem to have dropped back below the radar they/he briefly vaulted with the Mercury win, meaning you could easily miss this week's release of You Are My Sister. Maybe they really were too off-kilter to be taken in a pop context, or maybe it was all frightened off by the 'but he's American!' backlash. None of those people complained about American acts in the UK Music Hall Of Fame, we bet. Antony is supposedly in the video to Devendra Banhart's Heard Somebody Say too. What would the Star make of him?

  • Hard to tell what more the Dead 60s can do without following supposed bretheren Hard-Fi into the top end of the charts. It's not as if Ghostfaced Killer isn't an immediately obvious slice of ska greatness. A dancer, perhaps?

  • We've yielded to few people in our admiration of the Decemberists' Picaresque album, which really should have picked up more than a small cult following by now. It's all those long words! 16 Military Wives has a shot at becoming the big pop hit, coupled with perhaps the video of the year.

  • Pitchfork recently fell into the good old North Eastern trap of placing all emergent artists from the same town, coupling Field Music, the Futureheads and Dave Stewart in with Newcastle's Maximo Park and Washington's Bryan Ferry. It's the former, in at least their third recorded incarnation, who are active this week with If Only The Moon Were Up.

  • That Gorillaz 3D hologram performance at the EMAs was a bit of a letdown, wasn't it? We wanted them to appear in the middle of the stage and be viewed from all angles around, not images that looked like balloon animals on a screen. Dirty Harry, anyway.

  • Even Peelites such as ourselves are beginning to feel this is all being overplayed a bit, and it seems the public agree if Margrave Of The Marshes' 22nd place in last week's Waterstones chart - behind Jeremy Clarkson and Sharon Osbourne, for lord's sake - is anything to go by. Do get it, it's great. This week's addition to the proto-legacy is the Ever Fallen In Love tribute single. How come people are more willing to question the appearance of the Datsuns, who Peel played incessantly during their summer of mild success, than Elton John's?

  • We're getting worried about Lady Sovereign, who seems to be being pitched as a one-woman sidebar to GLC as the comedy rapper with the clothing stance to match, even if it does get her places...

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    But Basement Jaxx don't just choose to produce anybody, their hands being behind Hoodie, but the attendant Save The Hoodie campaign is getting us nowhere.

  • Paul McCartney will always be our foremost melodysmith, as Blackbird part two manque Jenny Wren proves.

  • We're sure Schwab were briefly around a couple of years ago, but this is the time if any that DJ's In A Row's soul breaks cop show mix should be successful.

    Albums

  • We'd wondered the other day if there was going to be a proper Johnny Cash single disc retrospective covering his whole career soon, and of course if we missed this one there'll be another one along by Christmas 2008. Beat the rush with The Legend of Johnny Cash, excellently including the live San Quentin version of, well, San Quentin.

  • Speaking of overanthologised bands, this year's Madness Best Of is actually a remaster of Divine Madness with the video compilation DVD tacked on. Waiter!

  • We're sure 4AD were talking about fans being able to put their own label compilations together to celebrate their 25th anniversary, but 1980 Forward - 25 Years Of 4AD is fine enough for the time being, from Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares to the Mountain Goats. This Mortal Coil are being revived next year, we hear.

    DVDs

  • The final Guided By Voices show last New Year's Eve didn't scrimp much - 63 songs in four hours, an onstage bar, assorted ex and wannabe members onstage, Robert Pollard writing another two solo albums (not visible, but can't be ruled out). Guided By Voices : The Electrifying Conclusion is just that, and you might want to also pick up the retrospective book Guided by Voices: A Brief History: Twenty-One Years of Hunting Accidents in the Forests of Rock and Roll, complete with foreword by Steven Soderbergh.

  • If that's not long enough for your rock demands, the three volumes of Old Grey Whistle Test DVDs have been boxed up into one nine-hour set of everything from the Edgar Winter Group to the Jesus & Mary Chain.
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