EOIN BUTLER's guide to downloads, singles and free audiostreams
JUSTIN BIEBER
BoyfriendIsland ***
Bieber’s latest single is a dancefloor filler about getting the party started. You know, just once I’d like someone to do a song about winding the party down: “Let’s get this party ended/ Everybody get their coats/ Those Finnish dwarves we befriended/Are asleep in one of the flowerbeds . . . Er, does anyone know where they live? I’d like to call them a taxi.” Something along those lines.
ADVANCE BASE
Summer MusicCaldo Verde ****
Owen Ashworth is the Velvet Underground minus sex, sleaze, hard drugs, paranoia, drag queens, animosity and electric guitars. Summer Music is what the Velvets’ What Goes On would have sounded like if the protagonist had literally never left the house. A Shut-In Prayer, the former Casiotone for the Painfully Alone man’s solo debut, is due May 1st.
GOSSIP
Perfect WorldColumbia **
If Perfect World is anything to go by, Beth Ditto co’s fifth album (A Joyful Noise) will represent about as clean a break from the band’s punk roots as is possible to imagine. Produced by Brian Higgins of Xenomania (Kylie, Girls Aloud, Sugababes), this is a slick pop number with a charistically overblown chorus. The jury is out.
MIREL WAGNER
No Death ****
It would not be stretching things much to say that 23-year-old Mirel Magner is Ethiopia’s answer to Leonard Cohen. It should go without saying, therefore, that No Death is a fully fledged barrel of laughs.
ENGELBERT HUMPERDINCK
Love Will Set You Free *
The former Gerry Dorsey will become the oldest Eurovision contestant ever when he takes to the stage in Azerbaijan. Novelty value hardly explains the 76-year- old’s selection. (This is Eurovision, perish the thought!) So maybe it’s Engelbert’s uncanny ability to sing in English as though it wasn’t his native language.
