Weekly Column - The Hot Five
- Written by Tom Fake
The Hot Five – My views on five tracks that have attracted my interest in any given week, usually with an older track thrown in the mix for something a bit different. Tracks usually concentrate on pop/rock releases, but really focusing on anything and everything that comes my way.
Track of the week: Everything Everything – ‘Duet’
Once again this track was released a few months back, but in honesty it’s taken me a while to get into Everything Everything. However, this really has to be one of my favourite tracks at the moment, Everything Everything are fantastically clever musicians who produce a sophisticated pop/rock style with electronic undertones here. There are also strings throughout that are so subtly written into the song and give it that uniqueness from so many other, for want of a better phrase, indie-landfill bands. It also seems that they’ve got the knack for writing catchy melodic lines that will no doubt be bellowed by thousands at their numerous festival appearances this summer.
Cold War Kids – ‘Jailbirds’
I featured Cold War Kid’s ‘Miracle Mile’ in an earlier column, and it is one of my favourite tracks of the year so far. I must admit though that Dear Miss Lonelyhearts, the album from which both of these tracks are taken, is something of a disappointment. However, album track ‘Jailbirds’ is yet another glimpse of what Cold War Kids are capable of. Okay, so maybe it’s not as catchy as ‘Miracle Mile’, but the track has some great lyrics and is a great arrangement. I hope that Cold War Kids fulfil their obvious potential and produce a consistently good album in the future, because there’s something really likeable about their music. It’s just a shame that they don’t consistently deliver.
Ghostpoet – ‘Plastic Bag Brain’
Okay, so have to admit, I know nothing about Ghostpoet. Apparently he is a former Mercury Music Prize nominee and a producer as well as an artist. I normally wouldn’t go for this sort of music, but there’s something about this track that I like. The guitar riff accompanied by the drum creates a fantastic foundation for Ghostpoet to lay down his rap/performance poetry lyrics that help the track to create a feel that is different to a lot of current music.
Steve Jons – ‘Die Dumb’
This track was written and recorded by some friends of mine for a university project, but turned out to be a really great track. The song tells of singer Steve Jons hoping that he doesn’t ‘Die Dumb’, with some rather amusing references to instances of people dying peculiar deaths. Some interesting instrumentation, harmonies and clever production techniques along with Steve’s fantastic vocal make this folk track sort-of irresistible.
Hidden track of the week: Chamberlin – ‘Jealousy’
Typically enough I stumbled across this track by accident, but sometimes the best tracks come to you like that. This track comes from last years Look What I’ve Become EP, and soon came to the attention of Rolling Stone, who gave the track away as a free download (HERE). It is ironic, they admit, that a band writes an EP about jealousy and cheating when founding members Mark Daly and Ethan Westtold their fellow band-mates that they were not needed to record this new EP, at which those members were replaced. The story, which you can read in full on Chamberlin’s website, does have a happy ending though, as all original members are working together on a full length follow-up to Look What I’ve Become. I look forward to it.