50 quid bloke

This year is going to be all about tunes for me. Or ‘tracks’ as the NME calls them. I’m getting slightly bored of buying/ downloading albums - I never quite get round to listening to them. From now on, it’s tracks first - and albums only if I really love it; or if I think the band needs the support (very magnanimous of me, I know)

Yes, I’m buying the NME again: a dead cert sign of a mid-life crisis if ever there was one. Actually, they’re more geared up to the whole ‘tracks/tunes’ thing than most. I like the way they do a ‘10 tracks from this weeks albums’ thing (which is similar to the way the Obs Music Magazine does ‘download tracks’ from each album they review.

That said, they do have an annoying habit of reviewing stuff before it’s released, or available on download anywhere, saying: ‘Now on Radio 1′. What? Tune into Radio1? I’m having a middle age crisis - but not a complete meltdown.

Anyway, some stuff I like from my latest NME-fuelled tune mining. All in all it’s a complete new wave frenzy at the moment. Everything sounds like it’s straight out of 1979/80. And no, that’s not a complaint. If the label Britpop hadn’t been pinched, someone would be inventing it right now.

Black Cab Casino: Sweets and Lead this is a demo on myspace, and it’s really quite nice power pop. Remarkably easy to listen to - which probably means they’ll go nowhere.

DirtyPrettyThings: Bang Bang Your Dead a video of the new single from Carl Barat’s new band. Not completely dissimilar to Brendon Benson, actually, which is probably sacrilege, but intended as praise. Punchy power pop - and thankfully less of an aural mess than babyshambles.

The Kooks: You don’t love me. I’d never heard of them, this fits completely into the new wave thing. Jaunty, choppy stuff. They had a single out called Eddies Gun that you can get on iTunes this is only on vinyl (why?) and maxi cd (why?).

Arctic Monkeys: When The Sun Goes Down: The new single from this year’s sweethearts, not out yet, but you can hear it on MySpace. Pretty much head and shoulders above everything else. Actually, I don’t think it’s quite as smart/ brilliant as some of their other stuff. And, as it’s clear that this is going to be played on the very rare occassions that I go out: could someone please tell me how to dance to it? Again, I quite like the b-side - which, i think it dancing shoes.

Bromheads jacket: What if’s maybe : I mentioned this before, but only just got round to listening to it. It’s like the arctic monkey after four double expressos. I can’t quite work out whether that’s a good thing, or just fast noisy nonsense.

The Long Blondes: Separated by Motorways (iTunes) actually - I’m not completely in love with this, but I thought I’d put it in as they’re very cool at the moment and I don’t want to look like I’m falling behind. I like the b-side: Big infatuation.

Brain food from Dan Hill over at City of Sound. To be honest, I’ve only just skimmed it - but it looks well worth a read (or at least a re-skim). [via Tom]

Alexis Petridis reviews  Fiona Apple, Extraordinary Machine and rather likes it (in a four star kind of way). Personally, I’m not convinced it was quite worth all the bother (it was neither bad enough to scrap, or good enough to fight for, IMHO)- but it’s nice to have her back.

iPod gloves, of course…phew thought I was going to have to go through the whole winter having to take my gloves off in order to skip a track on my Nano.

Apparently loud music has made Pete Townshend go deaf

Chris Anderson has been crunching some numbers on The decade the blockbuster died. I have no idea what they are/were as I was in a club at the time listening to things that go bleep. In fact, 1991 - 95 was in fact the golden period for big sellers. You would have thought it was the late 70s wouldn’t you?

Found myself listening over and over to Landed by Ben Folds today. Here’s the video (real video, other formats here). Yes, I know it’s old, but it’s lovely. Go on - treat yourself over on iTunes.

Do you ever buy an item of clothing then get it home, decide you don’t like it, keep it in your wardrobe, until a year or two later when you suddenly take it out, and for no reason whatsoever, it suddenly becomes one of your favourites?

Don’t worry - this isn’t turning into a fashion blog. But, exactly the same has just happened to me with Bob Scheider’s I’m Good Now [Amazon]. Can’t remember who recommended it to me, but it’s never really found a place in my life. Then all of a sudden, the iPod is on random play and up pops ‘God Is My Friend’ and I (and my 10 month old daughter) absolutely love it. And for some reason it’s proved the perfect background album for the bank holiday weekend.

I think on first listen it was just a little too straightforward semi-acoustic singer songwriter stuff. But, you know what - this weekend, I just fancied a bit of straightforward singer songwriter stuff.

Bromheads Jacket anyone? More new, new wave Northerners with jagged guitars and ‘observational’ lyrics. NME is raving about their new single, What If’s and Maybes (which I can only seem to find here on 7″ vinyl, which might be very cool, but is frankly worse than useless). There’s a couple of downloads on their site from an earlier ep called Surrey Girls and Samsung Ringtones -( which, incidentally, has exactly the same meter as my favourite Arctic Monkeys track: Bigger Boys and Stolen Sweethearts.) Lots of fun, if you like that sort of thing.

Well, it was time for a change - and I’ve become a complete Wordpress addict; and for some reason while I was on Typepad, my domain never really appeared on Google; and I really want to put all my blogging effort under one roof; and and and…Will be sorting the design of this page out in the coming weeks…