Monkey business

We knew they had their fans, who apparently all chose purely at random to visit the downloads on their website nine months ago, but the Arctic Monkeys are number one in the midweek chart, a decent amount ahead of the Sugababes. It's preposterous mostly because we can't recall any other band of their ilk in recent times being actually top halfway between Sundays. Can't wait for the 'demos were better' brigade to emerge, although we'll lose hope if this and Franz Ferdinand's success turns Domino's Lawrence Bell into Alan McGee at his most shades-indoors Blessed Leader-like.

Also of note, new Busted - But Girls! the Love Bites, who as far as we're aware are unique in having no offspring of late 70s pop-experimentalists in their line-up, are at 7. We wonder how long it took the video director to come up with the idea of the girls hassling a single bloke, and by 'how long' we're counting in seconds.

Sweet neo-con

Sometimes a story seems so outlandish that the only possible immediate course of action is to close the paper/browser, take a moment's pause and open it again. Even by these standards, however, the news that former male Tracy Shaw Adam Rickitt is on the shortlist for potential Tory parliamentary candidates is staggering. Can you imagine Rickitt passing a public speaking test? Would his political enemies be within their rights to bring up that video where he was in a clear plastic box in the nude? What if he was put forward as a stalking horse candidate against the party leader? Should David Cameron get worried this early about a threat to his telegenic reputation?

Steady Gallup - the top 40 explained

1 Sugababes - Push The Button
Also number one for albums, downloads and airplay. When did they get so popular? Oh, we know they always had number one singles, but nothing spanning all media or so long-lasting - probably four weeks, looking at next week's contenders - as this. Note to Stevens, R: maybe an underlying hint of hatred of everyone around you might help.

4 U2 - All Because Of You
This entered the top 75 on import last year and rounds off their most successful set of singles from one album. And you thought this release had passed us all by.

5 Friday Hill - Baby Goodbye
Well, that's any hope they had of having Blazin' Squad retrospectively assessed as a proper street R&B concern gone. Appropriately it sounds like an East 17 ballad. OK, you name the two that aren't Kenzie.

8 Daniel Powter - Bad Day
Drivetime! Back up two places in its twelth top ten week, just to prolong the agony.

11 Feeder - Shatter
Who knew Feeder had such a devoted fanbase? This is the second time they've re-recorded an old B-side for a single release, which suggests they don't have much of a grasp of their best songs.

12 Lee Ryan - Turn Your Car Around
Sorry, is this a new song?

13 Lisa Scott-Lee - Electric
Many have said this being so low is the record buying public's attempts to damn her for her brazenness in the wake of Totally Scott-Lee (awful title, isn't it?), but then how high would this have got without it? Famously the basis of the promo was that if you didn't make it top ten she'd retire - who says the charts don't matter any more? - which at first seemed very "yeah, you're saying that, are you? Not your label?", but then her label for this single is a Dutch dance imprint that Andy Scott-Lee's already on. Everyone's backtracking hurredly, of course, but without this masterstroke of... something, what's the purpose of having Lisa Scott-Lee still releasing singles to supposedly act as anything more than shelf filler? Written by Guy Chambers and Ben Adams, possibly under hypnosis. She's beaten Jenny Frost by 34 places, mind.

24 Roll Deep - Shake A Leg
Younger readers may recall Wiley was last year at the forefront of grime's cutting edge, so much so that he had to invent his own genre, Eski, just for himself. There are worse things to be than a British De La Soul (come on, tag team rapping plus dayglo samples is pretty much 3 Foot High And Rising right there), but it's not going to get style mag fawning. Speaking of which, looking further down the list (bloody hell, Delirious? are back!), we see that almost ridiculously for the amount of press attention and ILX discourse she gets, MIA has missed the top 75 again, Galang 05 matching the original mix by peaking at 77. Someone get Maya a 80s One Hit Wonders complilation pronto, would they?

In shops tomorrow - 17/10/05

Singles

Plenty this week, not least the eventual arrival of the Arctic Monkeys. Whether you like them or not, there's something about a non-manufactured band whose first single might get to number one, isn't there?

The great thing about Ring A Ding Ding by Brakes is that it's 80 seconds long and isn't even their shortest single to date.

Nobody appears to have noticed dEUS are back with new single 7 Days 7 Weeks. They appear to have merged with fellow Belgian eclectics Evil Superstars somewhere along the line too.

John Cale's new single Perfect seems to have come out of nowhere too. Oh, but you'll jump to attention when the far less worthy new Lou Reed material comes out, won't you?

Did Peel go for Laura Veirs, whose new single is Galaxies? She'd fit in well with his latter day Laura Cantrell, Nina Nastasia and Neko Case tendencies.

Albums

They're Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Geologist and Deaken - and whoever is eventually voted favourite of the four will be managed by Sharon Osbourne! Not really, this is Animal Collective, whose Feels adds an electronic element to their psych-folk. Meanwhile former collaborator and great lost English folkie Vashti Bunyan releases Lookaftering, her first solo album in - eat shit, Kate Bush - 35 years, featuring Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom.

Yet another singles chart failure for Rachel Stevens, who also has an album out this week, reminds us that this chart lark really isn't as easy as we like to make out. Consider Annie, whose two singles and Anniemal album featured credible, inventive pop fronted by someone with proper personality. Single chart positions: 25, 50. Back to the DJ booth, then, with her DJ Kicks compilation.

Malcolm Middleton's solo work, Aidan Moffatt working under his L Pierre alias and most of the live band ending up in Sons & Daughters might have suggested last orders for Arab Strap, but almost quietly The Last Romance is turning them into a pop band. On their own terms, of course.

As mentioned earlier in the week, Bloc Party's Silent Alarm is back out with Two More Years added, as well as Little Thoughts and a DVD disc featuring a documentary, videos and live tracks. Weren't they talking about having a new album out for this current semi-arena tour?

A new Boards Of Canada album is as big an event to what used to be called the underground, The Campfire Headphase turning them into - oh, let's say it - a new My Bloody Valentine.

We always felt the Cardigans are continually weighed down by Lovefool, their least likeable single and therefore their most successful. Super Extra Gravity won't return them to the top ten but at least they're thinking about where to go now.

We can't quite believe that Dangerdoom's The Mouse And The Mask, the spot-on collaboration between Danger Mouse and MF Doom, is retaining its inserts from Adult Swim, the US Cartoon Network offshoot, for the overseas market. Who's going to get those? There's a track called Vats Of Urine. It's about vats of urine.

The American Rakes, anyone? That's the unfulfilling pigeonhole we'd unthinkingly place We Are Scientists' With Love And Squalor in.

Alright, John Peel - A Tribute doesn't contain any dark drum'n'bass, ancient Irish reels, death metal or scrappy indie poorly recorded in a bedroom. Is that technically the point? Why it features the Doors, Van Morrison and Song 2 we're not as sure. Speaking of the subject...

Books

At the point at which John's contribution to Margrave Of The Marshes trails off he hasn't even got behind a mike yet, but such is its attitude to chronology that he still works in the famed Mallory Park Radio 1 Fun Day Out/Bay City Rollers/BBC Sub-Aqua Club/speedboat/Tony Blackburn/Womble anecdote among others. Unfortunately the story of how Sue Cook broke the family waterbed will remain merely an unexplained footnote.

The Weekly Sweep

The Decemberists - 16 Military Wives
Cat Power - The Greatest
MIA - Galang
Architecture In Helsinki - Do The Whirlwind
Elbow - Leaders Of The Free World
Futureheads - Area
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Is This Love?
Maximo Park - Apply Some Pressure
Wedding Present - Ringway To Seatac
Pipettes - Dirty Mind

Looking in on wonders

Surely we're not alone in being fascinated by VH1's 100 Greatest One Hit Wonders, a US production which turns up whenever the UK version has five hours (!) to fill. Firstly it's presented by William Shatner, which is actually not as bad as it sounds as he holds back on the knowing irony, even if his style does take pregnant pausing to new heights. Also it's fascinating to see which bands are regarded as one hit wonders for Billboard, from huge British acts (Soft Cell, Spandau Ballet) to oddities such as Quiet Riot's version of Cum On Feel The Noize, an electro cover of Putting On The Ritz and Thomas Dolby's She Blinded Me With Science. Have fun explaining Magnus Pyke to Americans. Then there's the talking head quotient, none of whom are captioned so we don't know the name of the even smugger looking Alex James-alike to look out for for future avoidance. You have to wonder why Henry Rollins said yes, though. And Starsailor! Only to 'discuss' Edwyn Collins admittedly, but were this repeated in America that audience would be clueless. Actually, the UK audience might well be struggling.

In a completely different vein, an attempt to list every notable musician with their own blog. Pop by Dan Treacy off of the Television Personalities' diary and wonder at the entry that combines a rant against bands from the indie sphere who are still going long after their time with a plug for a forthcoming gig.

Sometimes tours are fated to fail

Cat Power doing a solo tour? Will they get a single complete song out of her all night? Follow that link for an mp3 of the title track of The Greatest, released in January.

Sink that (graveyard) shift

Truth be told, we've been neglecting Mark Radcliffe of late, we suspect because the live guest quality seems to have either dipped or got trapped in a small pool of guests (ah, KT Tunstall and Aberfeldy!). Monday's show seems to be a must-listen, though, as he'll be job swapping with Ricky Wilson. Throw in Danny Baker's return to BBC LDN on the same day and everything will truly be for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

Just waiting for that

It's not every week that Dermot'n'Natasha on BBC Breakfast are found interviewing Laura Cantrell, but this is the much-vaunted John Peel Day. For all the idea's faults, and there are many - let's get it straight after yesterday's post that an all-star single really is pushing our collective luck, although even here you could hardly state "this Tom Ravenscroft knows nothing about John Peel!" - surely for the BBC it was damned if they do, damned if they don't, and by the way how do you know exactly what John would have thought? In one of the autobiography extracts in the Telegraph this week Sheila noted that friends and family were worried about the late starts that came for cynics to symbolise the end of his Radio 1 tenure but he, after seeing the likes of Walker and Kershaw be moved aside, was just happy to still be on the station. (We'd argue, by the way, that even this wasn't the worst slot he'd ever had, if you discount the thought about what time a 65 year old with diabetes should be working - it's easily forgotten now that in the mid-90s, a time on Radio 1 now cemented as Matthew Bannister's new broom bringing in a new music ethos across the network, the arbiter of the new did a total of four hours a week on Saturday afternoons as the dance warm-up and a dead slot on Sunday evenings.) We're fairly sure unknown bands play gigs most nights, however.

Further scheduling news - Tom Robinson chats to Sheila on Home Truths on the 22nd, with Margrave Of The Marshes as Radio 4's Book Of The Week for the following week, with Michael Angelis (Chrissie from Boys From The Blackstuff) and Carolyn Pickles (Emmerdale chiefly, but she's been in all sorts) handling the readings. BBC4 have a special night on the actual death anniversary, mostly repeats - their own Fall documentary, Peel's own Beefheart documentary, the live archive clips from their special night last year, PJ Harvey live and Peel's Undertones documentary.

Go on then, commenters, where were you when you heard? We, for no good reason, turned Radio 1 on during Colin & Edith and wondered why they were reading texts and emails from people who'd met John in a shocked, low tone.

Peel Eve

The accepted line about John Peel Day seems to be that he'd be acutely embarrassed by it. Given he seemed acutely embarrassed by the idea anyone liked his shows this seems a touch churlish, and what would be his problem with knowing people were remembering his musical impact anyway? Full Peel Day gig details and a wealth of information on the Radio 1 site, while the Cuban Boys want you to play their The Nation Needs You at midday tomorrow in tribute. It's better than the Ever Fallen In Love? all star cover, which isn't as bad as it initially sounds (although, we think, Robert Plant adds an unneccesary vocal ad-lib about halfway through, and apart from Barry Hyde at the start we can't make out who's who properly) despite Tom Ravenscroft's declaration in this week's NME that invites were sent out to new bands based on who he would have loved. Futureheads, Datsuns, Soledad Brothers - well, he played them both first. El Presidente? Seriously, Tom? Hear Phill Jupitus debut it on 6 Music on Monday via the wonder of RealPlayer or see the video exclusive on Channel 4 on Thursday at 11.05pm. Meanwhile the Guardian have revisited his top 20 album list, including Neil Young's famous Arc disc of live feedback.

Background reading: his last Radio 1 playlist which you'll note wasn't actually a year ago tomorrow; clips from his pirate days; Sonic Youth's Fall covers Peel session; Radio Rewind gets some mp3s up; tributes from Spike, TV Cream and, after a fashion, Wikipedia.

Scraping the barrel

You know you've got a decent bandwagon growing when you get your own compilation, and thus among this week's Various Artists new releases we find Howzat! The Unofficial England Cricket Album. Each disc starts with good intentions - Jerusalem, Soul Limbo, Mambo No.5 - and then suddenly realises that, actually, there aren't 42 songs related to cricket. So we get very little actual reggae (not even Victory Test Match, although that's about an England defeat) but the 'someone didn't check the lyrics' likes of Mirror In The Bathroom, Police & Thieves and Friday Night Saturday Morning, plus Fit But You Know It for the lads, the Undertones' It's Going To Happen for the title and the Subways' Oh Yeah because, erm, someone in the office was listening to Young For Eternity, probably. How did Buster Bloodvessel get involved enough to contribute both Bad Manners' Can Can and a song of his own? Who are the St George’s Brass Ensemble? Who is going to listen to this by the time the Pakistan tour starts next summer?

Ono soul

Somewhere among the nine - nine! - special awards at the Qs yesterday, the type of thing which makes you wonder why the music media continually takes them so seriously, Yoko Ono revealed John Lennon worried that nobody covered his songs. Because obviously nobody's ever attempted Imagine. Or All You Need Is Love. No. And McCartney wrote all his songs on a child's xylophone.

The report goes on to state Yoko "delighted Liam Gallagher by anointing Oasis as the keeper of Lennon's spirit in modern rock". Good to see Lennon's legacy is being upheld by a band nobody likes now, then. You know, Noel must always think he's over the unthinking Beatles comparisons by now, and then...

This week's top 40 - what we've learned

1 Sugababes - Push The Button
Note how everyone's quoting that line about multi-dimensional asses without pointing out how overly hard it's trying despite that on record it sounds about as as sexy as David Mellor, which for all we know might be the intention. For one of the bands at the forefront of The New Proper Pop this does sound like something that might have come out at the end of the 90s, or at a pinch an Ann Summers Kosheen - the first time we saw the video we thought it was one of those workaday dance acts because nothing about it suggested the Sugababes - so how this one's become the popular one we're not totally sure.

2 Robbie Williams - Tripping
It was reported at the weekend that Robbie and Guy Chambers have patched up their differences, which isn't before time given that with Stephen Duffy he's so far come up with an Ultravox offcut and an attempt to cut and shut his own Supreme, the Police and Ja Rule's lyric book.

6 Kanye West Ft Jamie Foxx - Gold Digger
Funny how Minnie Driver and Juliette Lewis get stick for being film stars imagining this will make them successful in all forms of art whereas Foxx has virtually been ushered into a studio.

7 Bloc Party - Two More Years
Kele reassured fans last week that this is a standalone single that won't be used to shore up their next album. No, because it's been stuck on the end of Silent Alarm for its Deluxe Edition re-release next week. Oh, Wichita, Wichita, Wichita!

11 Ricky Martin - I Don't Care
Now there's a hostage to fortune title. The problem with Martin, as evidenced by the type of promo he's been doing, is that he now needs to be aimed at an older audience because he's been so long away kids are going to go "sorry, Livin' La what?"

12 Rachel Stevens - I Said Never Again (But Here We Are)
And so the universal music blog gnashing of teeth continues. It's been argued that people have turned against Stevens because of her image as someone who doesn't have a personality and would quite like to keep it that way - never mind going on Dick And Dom In Da Bungalow not expecting to be covered in muck muck, how do you fall out with a TV show (Popworld) made by a company co-owned by your manager? - but as we've seen, people have hardly fallen out with the notoriously prickly Sugababes. Instead we'd suggest that Polydor need to realise that Rachel's audience is divided into the people who buy and admire the records and the people who perv at the pictures when they'd spent a couple of years believing both to be indistinguishable.

16 James Blunt - High
Meanwhile You're Beautiful starts going back up, which is something of an own goal by Atlantic's radio pluggers. Gee, we wonder if Wisemen will be the next single?

23 Bratz Rock Angels - So Good
Bratz as in the dolls, yes, this being the spin-off of their straight to DVD film. Not enough session musician money in the world, we're saying. A few years ago the whole music industry seemed to be banking its future on virtual bands - Tom Watkins wouldn't shut up about his surfer cyberbabe at the turn of the century - but given not even Damon's pretending any more that Gorillaz are nothing to do with him it's boiled down to spinoff records. What happened to the Archies revival?

32 Schnappi - Schnappi
Originally scheduled for late August when it might actually have caught the returning from holiday market. As it was, not even JK & Joel could be bothered to launch an ironic campaign.

35 Bedouin Soundclash - When The Night Feels My Song
Sod off.

In shops tomorrow - 10/10/05

Singles

Not a lot all round this week, although this is the week when Lisa Scott-Lee's single comes out, and she says she'll quit the music industry if it doesn't go top ten. Who says the chart doesn't matter any more, eh? And yes, that's her saying that, not her label, oh no. Elsewhere Louis XIV re-release their one good song, Finding Out True Love Is Blind, unencumbered by making a right mess of it on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross.

The Andes-worth of press mountains regarding MIA all seem to miss out one crucial detail, that being that nobody actually buys her records. Arular and all three singles all missed the top 75, which explains why Galang's being given another go. This confused the hell out of the 6 Music Roundtable panel the other week, most giving it low marks on the basis that they couldn't work out the song's political message. Maybe it doesn't have one?

Get behind Adam Buxton in the queue for Spoon's new single Sister Jack.

Albums

Actually, when we wanted new Gang Of Four material we didn't mean a set of re-recordings and remixes in the shape of Return The Gift. Some of the re-recordings work better than others, and getting T*e O***rs to rework the original master tapes sounds much how you'd expect. Entertainment! must be going cheap somewhere.

Books

There's a few new books out in the last couple of weeks that deserve Amazon links. Fool The World - The Oral History Of A Band Called Pixies by Josh Frank and Caryn Ganz spun out of the Frank Black musical that was talked about a couple of years ago and derives new interviews from all four members and assorted sidelings and hangers-on. Word is it's hugely detailed and pretty much the last historical word on them.

Bob Dylan's Chronicles, Andrew Motion's book of 2004, is out in paperback and still doesn't make a lot of chronological sense. Imagine John Steinbeck gone folk...

Richard White's Dexys Midnight Runners: Young Soul Rebels should, if the publishers had a proper sense of humour, have been advertised with full pages in the NME. It's a complex story, and White seems to have done a decent job on it.

Also, don't forget to get your orders in early for Margrave Of The Marshes (Peel/Ravenscroft), the serialisation of which starts in today's Telegraph. Speaking of which, the Radio 1 Keeping It Peel website has now officially launched. Look at that sessions detail!

The Weekly Sweep

Metric - Poster Of A Girl
Arab Strap - Dream Sequence
The Crimea - White Russian Galaxy
Brakes - Ring A Ding Ding
Chris Mills - Chris Mills Is Living The Dream
Jesus & Mary Chain - Just Like Honey
James Chance - Designed To Kill
Broken Social Scene - Fire Eyed Boy
Kate Bush - King Of The Mountain
Velvet Underground - Sister Ray

Just laziness this time, we're afraid

In the meantime, congratulations to the Mystery Jets for making a £92 profit on their guitarist. Further investigation reveals Blaine Harrison has bought a Fender Rhodes (fair enough), synth drums (crikey), Stylophone (inevitably), Cajun Washboard Necktie Wearable Percussion (it'll blend nicely with the colanders) and detachable hard drive (mmm) and sold Stooges tickets (bloody major labels, eh?), which we'll assume clashed with the shooting schedule for their recent video.

In shops tomorrow - 3/10/05

Singles

Labels looking for decent placings for their new signles are pretty much screwed tomorrow as the great Robbie/Rachel/Mariah/Blunty/um, Schnappi fight for number one kicks off. Come on, the Stevens single only proves that her producers are getting even quicker at ripping off Goldfrapp, doesn't it? So good luck to Wichita in finding room for Bloc Party's Two More Years. Anyone got a spare for the tour?

Dig a bit deeper and find perennial UK tourers and MTV2 eaters We Are Scientists' The Great Escape

Albums

We were slow to take up with the Beta Band bandwagon when they were being hailed at the end of the 90s as the future of everything, possibly as much due to how every major British band around then were supposed to be having 'a Beta Band phase', but it's now evident that they never matched the early acid-madrigals. We will now sell five copies of Music - The Best Of The Beta Band.

With the onset of time comes an appreciation of bands like Cream, whose Royal Albert Hall reformation gigs documented here do feature ten minute drum solos but also the kind of ensemble playing people are too scared to do now. Excuse us while we get a Mojo subscription...

Debate still rages about the veracity of the Mark E Smith Classified Check story, although the Fall's official website has it and Steve Lamacq read what he said was a press release from them. We'll have to wait and see, in the company of Fall Heads Roll's maintaining of the full-on charge plus irascible drunk winning formula of recent years.

Actually, You Could Have It So Much Better With Franz Ferdinand is all that - there's a couple of moments where you wonder if this couldn't have been left for a B-side and it's more 'fuck dance, let's art!', but the songwriting and riffing standard is still high and there's actual emotions too. Don't bother with the limited edition DVD, it looks rubbish.

Reissues with extra tracks should be smited as a matter of course, but it's hardly as if everyone has the Go! Team's Thunder Lightning Strike as it is, and the two new tracks fit right in.

With all these sales nowadays you can probably pick up Never Mind The Bollocks and Metal Box for less than John Lydon's Best of British £1 Notes Best Of for much the same effect, but neat enough to have a lot of it in one place. Try and get hold of the limited edition set of the even darker, dubbier PIL 12" mixes on CD for the first time.

How come New Order never turn up in lists of great singles bands? New Order - Singles adds another disc's worth to 1987's Substance, which means the under-rated Republic cuts, Fine Time and, well, World In Motion.

We slagged off Pure Reason Revolution once as part of a general Poptones moan, more generally because their first single was a perfectly good song subjected to self-indulgence beyond its means. We were too hasty, it turns out, mini-album of sorts Cautionary Tales For The Brave showcasing odysses of sound and musical fields of vision, generally the sort of thing you would never have expected from ex-members of Gel and Period Pains.

Deluxe reissue time for Siouxsie & The Banshees' The Scream accidentally inventing post-punk and plenty besides through John Mackay's guitar sounds and Siouxsie'n'Severin's malevolence. An extra CD brings with it alternate versions and Peel sessions.

DVDs

New Order release DVDs at the same rate others buy lottery tickets, the typically gnomically titled Item being one disc of videos, including a couple of new versions for old songs, and one comprehensive documentary with live footage.

The Pixies reunion has gone better than anyone expected, which is to say Frank and Kim haven't had an onstage brawl yet. They sound good too, Pixies Sell Out being the set from France's Eurockeennes festival that turns up every so often very late at night on VH2 plus plenty of other filmed material.

The Weekly Sweep

Franz Ferdinand - The Fallen
Kubichek! - Nightjoy
Joanna Newsom - This Side Of Blue
Go! Team - Bottle Rocket
Mew - A Dark Design
Dangerdoom - El Chupra Libre
Bloc Party - Two More Years
We Are Scientists - It's A Hit
Sufjan Stevens - Decatur
Wolf Parade - You Are A Runner And I Am My Father's Son

Could have done it so much better

Everyone knows that Western stars do ridiculous things in the cause of Japanese adverts knowing that over here we'll never see them. Course, the advent of the Internet means this isn't the case any more, and you'd think a band as smart as Franz Ferdinand would know this, but no, click on the big central advert on this, then on 'TVCM' and admire those meaningful looks to camera in the cause of the new Walkman.

Did anyone remember to wake Billie Joe Armstrong up?