The Singles Bar - 11th December 2011

Season's greetings!

That's probably enough festive cheer for now - best save some for the glut of Christmas songs at the end of this week's column. Joe's still putting the list of the year together so he's currently buried in statistics and spreadsheets (the only word he's sent so far is that somehow Lulu hasn't been crowned album of the year), although I do wonder if it was merely a ploy to avoid having to review this year's X Factor winner's single.

Little Mix - Cannonball

Not that there's really much to review. The X Factor is almost entirely incompatible with the notion of music criticism as any releases related to the show exist more as a souvenir of the TV show than as actual music. Just about all I can manage to say about this year's winner's song is that it's positively stuffed with saccharine, treacle-thick harmonies and going by this evidence I'd be surprised if the girls will still be around by this time next year, despite them being styled as the next Girls Aloud.  But, to be fair to them, Damien Rice's acoustic sensitivity/dirge was a poor choice of song in the first place, fingers crossed that the second single is a more appropriate one. 2/10

Cee-Lo Green - Anyway

Anyway will come as a delight to Cee-Lo fans, as it's ever so slightly rubbish, which means that it's another compelling reason to not buy the cynical "deluxe" edition of The Lady Killer that it was taken from. Technically, the song itself has its moments (although I liked it better when it was Kylie's I Believe In You), but it's very strange that Cee-Lo seems to have been autotuned on it: if there was ever an artist who didn't need to use the technology, it's him. 5/10

Coldplay - Charlie Brown

I'm not sure what we did to deserve two Coldplay singles in as many weeks (or what I did to have to review them). Fortunately Charlie Brown is much better than last week's offering, and ironically actually a much better Christmas single thanks to the rousing melancholia that has become Coldplay's stock in trade actually having a sort of carol-esque to it. Actually the song's even quite adventurous (by their standards), featuring an intro that manages to reference both Happy Hardcore and Wild Beasts. Shame that it then succumbs to the not-quite-definable dourness that marks most of Coldplay's output (at least since the second album). 4/10

The Naked & Famous - No Way

Somehow No Way manages to tread a very thin line between boredom and exhilaration. The first verse is only marginally more interesting than Coldplay's effort, but about a minute in the song reveals its jagged heart (although not its 'heart' - the closest that the song comes to actual warmth only occurs in the dying moments). For the most part it's stylish, elegant, and, in its waves of pulsing electronics, very cool, but there's also the niggling feeling that it's not particularly nourishing in the long run. 7/10

Frank Turner - Wessex Boy

Frank Turner has been getting a lot of love from the music press over the past year, and I'm at a loss to explain why. Wessex Boy's faux-folk whimsy, awkwardly scanning lyrics and misplaced passionate yelling would all be fine if performed by a guy in the corner of the local pub, but how he's managed to make the leap from that to a devoted fan-base and critical plaudits is anyone's guess. 4/10

Steel Panther - Just Like Tiger Woods

I'm almost certain that nobody asked Santa for a new The Darkness, and yet we've somehow got one anyway. Intentionally comedic music is a hard thing to get right and, going by this evidence, Steel Panther have absolutely no hope, they can't even get any laughs out of the easy target of Tiger Woods.  

And if spoof hair metal's not your thing, this week also offers equally terrible spoof funk in the form of Doctor P's Superbad, and wonky chillwave in Caged Animals' Piles of $$$ which sounds like a joke even if it probably isn't. 0/10

The Rapture - Sail Away EP

The Rapture have gone up and down in our collective estimations more times than I can keep track of, though I expect Sail Away will send them all the way back down again. Their rhythm section's as tight as ever but the vocals' uneasy mix of equal parts Harry Belafonte and Mika adds up to little more than a cacophony of irritations. 1/10

Phenomenal Handclap Band - Unknown Faces At Father James Park

Unknown Faces At Father James Park is an spectacularly weird song, although fortunately not in the forced, slightly twee way that the name suggests. Rather it's an aggressively strange jumble of 60's girl group pop and psychedelic rock (music which was strange enough to start with) with a chorus that sounds just like a cheerful version of Warpaint. It's both unseasonably sunny and delightfully curious. 8/10 - SINGLE OF THE WEEK

Drake Featuring Nicki Minaj - Make Me Proud

As with Frank Turner I still don't quite get the love that Drake's been getting this year, although in his case I'm putting it down to the fact that it's 'an American thing'. Anyway, this is much better than his last single, even if it does seem a bit lke it's deliberately trying to irritate with Drake's motormouth flow. Somehow he's hit on a previously unknown middle-ground between My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (an easy comparison to make due to Nicki Minaj's guest vocals) and Zomby's Dedication. It's debatable as to whether the end results are actually pleasant, but unlike Headlines, at least they're sort-of interesting. 5/10

Mick Hucknall - Happy This Christmas; George Michael - December Song; Gruff Rhys - Atheist Xmas EP; The Wombles - A Wombling Merry Christmas

I could, but won't, use this review as an opportunity to go into one of those "how come nobody does proper Christmas songs anymore" rants as it's less than two weeks until the big day and all we've been given is two re-releases, one rather unfestively minded EP and Mick Hucknall. Although to be fair to Hucknall he does go the whole hog and get the sleigh bells out, not that it's enough to enliven such a leaden song though. 2/10 

Michael's festive effort is thankfully much better, being almost endearing in its self-conscious smallness and how it seems to be about how he just wants to sit down and watch the telly. What's less endearing is that he's released it for three years on the trot now, as if to try and create a new Christmas tradition, which is honestly never going to happen. 5/10

People who proudly announce themselves as Atheists are second on my list of annoyances to those who go on about how they don't watch TV. Both groups may have a point, but their tendency to proclaim it even when unprompted makes me want to ignore them in favour of those Evangelical channels you find buried in the upper reaches of the cable channel guide. On the other hand Gruff Rhys is a general all-round top bloke who I can never bring myself to dislike even when I don't care much for his music, so I suppose that there was the potential that the Atheist Xmas EP would make question at least one of my beliefs. Listening to it though reveals that it's pretty much business as usual; Rhys isn't really trying to do a Dawkins, instead he's just written some amusingly cynical songs with a loose seasonal theme (the best of which is the last track, Slashed Wrists This Christmas) and accompanied them with more bright but inessential, and slightly atonal, melodies. 6/10

Finally, I was going to write that it's at least nice to end the review on a proven classic, but in truth I think the version of A Wombling Merry Christmas that exists in my childhood memories is actually much better than the real thing. Much like the holiday itself. 5/10

. . .

And on that downer, that's it for this week. Merry Christmas.