EOIN BUTLER's guide to downloads, singles and free audiostreams
RADIOHEAD
Lotus Flower
XL***
The King of Limbshas divided critics, but Thom Yorke certainly deserves props for his Lotus Flowerdance. Is it satire? Is it performance art? Is he a drugged-up space cadet looking for one more drink on a Saturday night? (The bar staff aren't ignoring you, Thom. It's 5am – you're in a bus shelter!) Superior YouTube mash-ups already have him performing said routine to Beyoncé's Single Ladiesand, naturally, the Benny Hilltheme.
THE SCRIPT
If You Ever Come Back
RCA **
“There’ll be a light in the hall/And a key under the matt.” Poor Danny O’Donoghue is always so unlucky in love. What’s the problem, ladies? Is it the keffiyeh scarf? The ill-advised rapping? The bizarre attempts to instigate a tabloid beef with Jarvis Cocker? Danny can change, ladies. Well, the scarf part at least.
AKRON/FAMILY
Silly Bears
Dead Oceans Records****
Taken from the album Akron/Family II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT. It's silly. It has bears in it. What more could you ask for?
RUBBERBANDITS
Roisin (I Want to Fight Your Father) ***
The inevitably anticlimactic sequel to Horse Outsideconcerns a girl named Roisin, whose father is convinced the Rubberbandits will break his daughter's heart. "If your Daddy had a busted mouth," conclude the Limerick Lotharios, "then he wouldn't be so smart." The video was shot in Dublin's Arbour Hill Boxing Club.
TYLER THE CREATOR
Yonkers
XL ****
"I'm a walking paradox/No I'm not/Threesomes with a fucking triceratops." The dazzling first single from the LA rapper's Goblinalbum contains retching, beetle- eating and violent threats against Bruno Mars. One to watch.
BEN FOLDS NICK HORNBY
Your Dogs + Claire's Ninth
Nonesuch Records ***
This collaboration between the music-obsessed author and the bookish piano player is a predictably whimsical affair. Not a whole lot for the rest of us to get excited about, but for angst-ridden fortysomething men this is probably on a par with the moon landings.