Features

Los Campesinos!, Errors, Dum Dum Girls, Courteeners, Rammestein - Singles Round-Up 15/02/2010

Simon Jay Catling 16/02/2010

“What's this!?” I hear thou cry “a singles round-up? On GIITTV?” Well, err, yes! So it would seem anyway; if not then I best stop typing, but as it would appear I haven't yet done, it looks like we're getting a GODDAMN singles round-up (sorry for the excitement, it's just Rammestein are releasing a new single this week.) For one time a week, whilst the rest of GIITTV towers are indulging in a game of haki-sak, or appreciating the incomparable masterpiece that is a Tim Miller mime performance (“awe inspiring” Miss Fliss allegedly claimed)*, yours truly will be sat amidst a pile of, err, Youtube videos, trying to work out what the bloody hell is going on. Would you like to take a deep breath or shall I? Ok, I will. BREATHE…

First into the fray this week are bitter-but-fun septet Los Campesinos! with their album title-track 'Romance Is Boring'(Arts & Crafts). Boring it may be, but it hasn't stopped Gareth and co. writing a whole (admittedly excellent) album about it. This is one of the more unremarkable tracks on the album though; the ramshackle cacophony of Campesinos! past when, as we all know, a lot of the third LP finds them treading comparatively new ground. Does that make it bad though? Heck no, in fact, given the competition this week, it's probably up there at the top end of the spectrum. Another shooting towards the 'good' end of the scale this week are Los Angeles scuzzy rockers Dum Dum Girls.'Jail La La'(Sub Pop) is all about the C-86 mixtape; muddy vocals, muddy guitars- strange coming from a place I imagine to have no mud. In seriousness though, it is a grand ditty- two and a half-minutes of bright and breezy pop- albeit wrapped in gristle- and I'm always a sucker for an ethereal female vocal.

I'm still drifting about in fuzzy reverie when those bloody Courteeners give me a hard firm shake. Good news nobody! They've decided to sound like Reverend & The Makers at a time when just one of those would be deemed “too much” by many. 'You Overdid It Doll' (Polydor) is grim by anyone's standards- even their own. If you think that's bad though (and don't tell me you don't know what's coming) then you ain't heard X Factor amusements-cum-serious thread to humanity Jedward's truly abhorrent re-work of 'Under Pressure' (Sony), and they've even roped in Vanilla Ice! Oh Vanilla…has it really come to this? Are you so poor that you've had to resort to being pushed out of shot in the video to YOUR OWN cover? Thankfully an unlikely saviour turns up in the form of Lemar's 'The Way Love Goes' (Epic), a really ripping so- nah, I'm joshing, it is of course rubbish.

What is sounding pretty excellent is Errors''A Rumour In Africa' (Rock Action); a marked improvement on their debut album, with a greater emphasis on broader atmospheres, the Scots still retain their eminently danceable mathy hooks. Good job! Worrying it is, though, that I seem to have shot my load with that, the best I can muster from here on in is Alkaline Trio's 'This Addiction'(Sony) and well…that's not great is it? For those of you still awake, it's the one who sounds like he's got a bubble in his throat singing, not the 'rent-an-emo' fella. In fact this whole thing is really coming off the rails- but HARK! Is that Rammestein!? Well they're not the Kaiser Chiefs' flaming cannons that's for sure (in fact, if Ricky Wilson ever came across one, he'd probably just holler at it repeatedly before trying to clamber up the thing, and then break his ankle- only to appear on Fearne Cotton's radio show the next week sounding wryly amused. Sigh.) 'Ich Tu Dir Weh' (spinefarm) is beyond rational analysis- as camp and ridiculous as ever; I tell you this though, it beats Jedward. Now then Tim, let me show you how to really perform a mime.

*some of that didn't happen