THEOPHILUS LONDON ft KANYE WEST

Can’t Stop

Warner

Theophilus London is Trinidadian rapper with a smooth flow, a major record deal and a name like a Victorian antiquarian. London’s debut album is executive produced by Kanye West, who contributes a verse here. The verse has been praised for being in the “classic Kanye” mold. (The latter a rather unfair new shorthand apparently encompassing West’s entire musical oeuvre, excepting his most recent album.)

OUGHT

New Calm, Pt 2

Constellation Records

Excuse me, haven’t we met before? For this track, a diplomatic reviewer might suggest that Ought frontman Tim Beeler “pays homage to” or “borrows stylistically from” Mark E Smith of The Fall. A more candid one would remark that, not since comedian Dennis Leary helped himself to large chunks of Bill Hicks’s act in the early 1990s, can I recall one performer replicating another’s entire shtick quite as faithfully, or as shamelessly.

SLEATER-KINNEY

Bury Our Friends

Sub Pop

1990s alt.rock stalwarts Sleater-Kinney are reunited. What’s more surprising, they sound even tighter and more fired up than they did the first time around. Fuelled by a glam-rock riff from guitarist (and

Portlandia

star) Carrie Brownstein,

Bury Our Friends

is the first single from the band’s forthcoming album,

No Cities

to Love,

which is due for release early next year.

LIL’ DICKY

Lemme Freak

Dirty Burd

Lyrically dextrous, sonically smooth and compulsively self- deprecating, Philadelphia’s David Burd seriously threatens to usurp Rubberbandits as the internet’s funniest comedian/ rapper. The highlight here is Burd’s valiant attempt to navigate a conversation around his girlfriend’s thorny office politics in order to initiate sexy time. He fails, naturally.