PM is going on holiday. Bye.

Here:

Posts will still materialise across the week. People will continue to read with less-than-moderate interest. 
Have a productive week, see you a week Monday!

Malakai – The Ugly Side Of Love

Malakai – The Ugly Side Of Love (Invada/B-Block)
 
There is such tremendous potential for verve, humour, and pure exuberance when you work in a medium so nuanced and fragmentary as this, with samples and vocal hooks flying around like feathers in a fight. Malakai, the name plumped by two Bristol beat-suppliers, would have done well to [...]

Wrongs #1: Connie Talbot – Three Little Birds

In the first entry of a new category for PM (JESUS CHRIST etc.), there’s room for a truly boggling amount of inappropriateness. The seven-year-old (although probably now at least fourteen and in possession of a rapidly increasing chemical habit of some sort) runner-up of the Britain’s Got Talent mediocrity pageant Connie Talbot has recorded a [...]

Asobi Seksu – Shepherds Bush Empire 21/11/08

In a support role for Ladytron, Asobi Seksu showed that, still, they have incredible power. It’s easy to forget that they are a potent live act, what with their seeming inability to settle on a distinct line-up, but they show in abundance this evening why they really should be considered so. With their amps and [...]

Notes On The X Factor #5

It seems futile to continually harp on about how Rachel Hylton was literally incapable of delivering a thoughtful and appropriate performance of any of her songs, so these notes will ignore her from now on. She’s gone anyway, so we can all breathe out a little bit. News that she intends to fully capitalise on [...]

Seeland – Library

Seeland – Library (LoAF) 
 
 
 
 
 

 

For artists with such strong roots in significantly more difficult and cold acts like Broadcast and Plone, Seeland have certainly managed to lighten up. Library is warmly accessible, not fussy in the slightest and in possession of no more interlocking parts than are truly necessary to maintain interest. Not an awful lot [...]

Co-Pilgrim – Pucker Up Buttercup

Co-Pilgrim – Pucker Up Buttercup (Low Transit Industries)
 
The star of Pucker Up Buttercup is, quite irrefutably, Michael Gale’s elastic voice. This might seem a slightly silly statement to make regarding a solo artist (what else could the star be, save for the singer himself?), but the way in which Gale uses his own voice to [...]

What Is It About Leona’s ‘Run’ That Makes It So Good?

In a frankly lame week for The X Factor, by any applicable distance the finest performance and performer of the night was the only one that didn’t come from a contestant – Leona Lewis. Her incredible performance of Snow Patrol’s Run gravely showed where pretenders to her X Factor crown (we’re skipping Leon [...]

Various Artists – Be True To Your School (A Fortuna POP! Compilation)

Various Artists – Be True To Your School (A Fortuna POP! Compilation)
 
Fifteen years is a very long time to not make money doing something, so anyone who braves such an undertaking should probably be congratulated or committed (in the mental sense, not stick-to-itiveness). The legacy of Fortuna POP! records is far funnier than most, and [...]

Notes On The X Factor #4

It seems, as Daniel Evans finally takes his forced leave from the competition, that PM’s predictions are becoming slightly more destined. After a severe backlash (also predicted) that saw Evans fall from slight student joke to washed-up pool cleaner with dubious familial entanglements, the Great British Public decided that enough was enough. Speaking of enough, [...]