EOIN BUTLER's guide to singles, downloads and free audiostreams...
Blood
****
A friend tipped me off about these Australian neo-folk space cadets as a thank-you for helping him move house. (He claimed poverty.) Strange, but I think I may actually have gotten the better end of that deal. Blood is a sprawling, ramshackle masterpiece. And, er, I may have chipped his coffee table. www.myspace.com/visitthemiddleeast
Cheryl Cole
3 Words
Fascination
**
Three words? Underwhelming. Solo. Album.
Rihanna
Russian Roulette
Def Jam ***
It must have been tempting for Rihanna to use her well- publicised split from Chris Brown as fodder on this comeback single. A thinly veiled excoriation of her abusive ex, say, with some trite message of survival and self-empowerment tacked on, would surely have gone down well with her record company. Instead, the Barbadian r’n’b diva goes somewhere much darker and stranger on this impressive effort from her Rated R album.
LCD Soundsystem
Bye Bye Bayou
DFA Records
***
Funky, eight-minute-long cover of a track originally recorded by Alan Vega of Suicide. James Murphy & co have already confirmed that Bye Bye Bayouwill not be appearing on the band's untitled third album, due early 2010. So snap it up before it goes bye bye.
Florence and the Machine
You Got the Love
Universal
***
On the fifth single from her hugely successful Lungs album, Florence Welch extracts no little amount of emotion from a track which, lest we forget, was originally written to soundtrack a documentary about the world’s fattest man.
Paolo Nutini
Pencil Full of Lead
Atlantic
**
According to the chorus here, cleancut Scottish troubadour Paolo Nutini rates having a television licence ahead of having heat, shelter or companions (or, indeed, an actual TV set) in terms of his priorities. He’s also just written a track called Pencil Full of Lead that has absolutely no risque subtext whatsoever. So much for sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, eh?
