Singles

Shuffle - An Old Uprising

Emily Tartanella 18/10/2006

Rating: 3/5

Shuffle recently walked away as winners of the Diesel-U-Music Awards, but as much as they're keen to tout this, awards are generally no indication of musical talent - M People? Please. Awards are self-congratulatory trivialities, but pop music lives and thrives on the strength of its players. Thankfully Shuffle rely on their ingenuity rather than their accolades, and they've come up with this upbeat, scratchy blend of ska-meets-jazz pop, something that looks pretty atrocious on paper but sounds relatively agreeable on record.

Still, something's ultimately lacking here - “An Old Uprising” is by far the more interesting of the AA-side, with vaguely Eastern beats and vocals reminiscent of Bloc Party leader Kele Okereke, assuming he ever deigned to smile, but “My Friend's Girlfriend” is pretty standard fare with a lukewarm jazz sheen that pulls everything possible to avoid being pigeonholed - and that's not always a good thing.