Music Blogs

Welcome to Yahoo! Music's whistle-stop guide to what's happening in music this week. Every seven days in Recommenders we check-out the latest tracks, downloads, leaks, links and video clips from the corners of every genre and let you know whether they're worth getting out of bed for. Today, JAIME GILL puts the microscope up to THE BIG PINK, THE RUMBLESTRIPS, JORDIN SPARKS, ANIMAL COLLECTIVE, KINGS OF LEON and YEAH YEAH YEAHS.

Michael Jackson plastered across every tabloid, Bruce Springsteen double spreads in the broadsheets, tinny synth-pop at Number One: anyone just stirring from a coma might think they'd woken up back in the ‘80s. THE BIG PINK add to the confusion by pitching their tent in 1988, fusing My Bloody Valentine drone rock, Pixies bass bounce and Jesus & Mary Chain mumbling on their terrific third single "STOP THE WORLD". Murky, ragged and yet oddly poppy, it will add to their growing reputation, even if the charts are unlikely to be trembling.

THE RUMBLE STRIPS' "NOT THE ONLY PERSON", on the other hand, sounds very much like a hit, which is surprising from a band who just two years ago seemed to be the definition of agreeable but middling indie pop, doomed to an eternity of number 47 hits. Mark Ronson presumably thinks so, giving the song a sprightly ‘60s sheen which showcases Charlie Waller's wide-eyed, soaring vocal and bright, memorable chorus. Loveable and warm-hearted as a basket full of puppies, "Not The Only Person" rather brilliantly recounts Waller's wife taking on a gang of muggers and comes complete with a lo-fi, high charm video.



For a long while it seemed that after mainstream US pop imported the clipped beats and sonic edginess of hip hop, the era of the brooding power ballad was over. Ryan Tedder guessed otherwise, and, picking up Diane Warren's rusting crown, launched pop panzers like "Apologize", "Bleeding Love" and "Halo" on an unprepared world. "BATTLEFIELD" is proof that he's perfected his monster melody + sledgehammer vocal = hit formula, with "American Idol" winner JORDIN SPARKS providing the quivering lips and leathery lungs. Don't bother resisting.

"SUMMERTIME CLOTHES" would normally seem an odd choice of single for ANIMAL COLLECTIVE, with its fuzzy, bric-a-brac production and Flaming-Lips-in-a-washing-machine vocal, but in the middle of the fiercest London heatwave in years, its dazed, dozy descriptions of beds like swimming pools, squeaking air conditioners and loved-up fun in the sun seems perfectly timed. As lazy, unfocused and carefree as the hot days it describes, and a welcome reminder that their excellent "Merriweather Post Pavilion" is in all good record shops right now.

As, of course, are KINGS OF LEON (pictured), as well as - it sometimes seems - in every pub, on every radio station and in every clothes shop across the country. Quite how this earnest, southern clan of hirsute FM rawkers so completely conquered the UK is something of a modern mystery, though songs as stupidly catchy as "Sex On Fire" are probably to blame. "NOTION" isn't in the same class: Caleb Followill turns in another tremendous, throaty vocal, but the pace is sludgy and the music as rustily unattractive as a derelict scrap metal yard.

YEAH YEAH YEAHS' "HEADS WILL ROLL", on the other hand, is as sleek and shiny as a sci-fi spaceship, thanks to some crystalline synths and propulsive guitars from the ever brilliant Nick Zinner. On first listen, the tune itself seems thin and insubstantial as spider silk, but then you get caught in its web and can't break free from the relentless rhythms and simple but fiendishly sticky Karen O melody. Not only the best song of the week but also the best video, a luridly cool creation which references Michael Jackson's "Thriller", a neat and timely reminder of what a visionary Jackson truly was.