That pony tail HAS to go

We cannot be fucked with awards ceremonies right now. This time of year is usually the period when they all seem to take place - do we see some correlation? The Oscars are next week, the BRITs are tonight, the BAFTAs were Sunday night... boring nominations, boring egos and boring self-applauding all around. However, with mind-numbingly dull winners comes hand in hand hot mess performances, red carpet dresses and the Grammys seem to consistently come out on top of Hottest & Messiest Music Awards Show Evah.

Because we know you want the facts and the facts fast, we've prepared a fabulous little list of the five finest moments of the 2011 Grammys...

5. Nicki Minaj's barnet

Would it be inaccurate of us to assume Mademoiselle Minaj has decided Lil' Kim isn't a suitable role model for her anyway, and Elsa Lanchester is more up her street. Well, Elsa and Mel B. Leopard Bride of Frankenstein fire.

4. Arcade Fire winning Best Album

It's not our favourite Arcade Fire album, but it's still fucking amazing and we're so proud of Canada's finest band for beating Justin Bieber. It seems not everyone feels the same though :(



3. "Born This Way"
It's a mess, it's terrible, it's brilliant, it's horrendous, it's fantastic, whatever. Naturally, people were disappointed by this very-basic-by-Gaga standard, although a world in which being wheeled on stage in a plastic egg and emerging from it wearing the yolk as a chapeau is considered basic is a tad scary, but we slightly appreciated the lack of gimmicks. It was straight up singing and dancing. Well, and she got wheeled on in an egg.


2. Ricky Martin introducing "Born This Way"
"You can love who you want!" Yeah! Why does it sound so much more since being echoed by a gay man?

1. Christina Aguilera's chin, bingo wings and vocal cords
All absolutely fabulous.

Roll on the BRITs!

Albums of the Year '10!

Originally this was printed in our INCREDIBLE ZINE (that we had many more orders for than we anticipated - thanks for that) but we thought for those of you who were too busy/forgetful/shy/lazy/stupid to order a copy, we'd let you browse our albums of the year anyway. We're nice like that. So here goes:

Swanlights - Antony & The Johnsons
If you thought it was impossible for Antony Hegarty's music to grow even more beautiful, you were wrong. Swanlights is so fragile, so delicate, so threaded through with a bittersweet despair, you find yourself unsure whether you should cry, smile or do both. The lyrics are especially and charmingly oblique, the album is like nothing else.

Flesh Tone - Kelis
A brave new direction from an artist previously well established in a rather rigid set of genre constraints, Flesh Tone reflects a desire for experimentation and new tastes… things we love. The music is certifiably incredible, with the very best producers in the field of dance moulding their sounds to fit Kelis‟ rather spectacular personality. The music is glorious, the imagery is exciting, the segues are wonderful. A brilliant album.

All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu - Rufus Wainwright
Wainwright may be one of the cleverest people in pop but occasionally his music is overcomplicated and his voice flat when set against his rich, ornate arrangements.
Not on this album, a pared down masterpiece borne from Rufus' grief at his mother's death. His piano playing is both modern and timeless, his songwriting: frenetic and heartbreaking.

Pink Friday - Nicki Minaj
We may still be a lil' biased due to this being the only thing we've listened to for a fortnight, but this was the biggest fresh breath of hip hop air we've taken in a very long time. Her raps are intelligent, funny, bossy and have something to actually say, while we must admit we're more than taken with her ridiculously trashy look. Her singing voice is pretty-bordering-on-quite-good, and her knack for sampling fucking good songs is more than endearing. The best vocal riff from “Don‟t You (Forget About Me)” (The Breakfast Club anyone?) is used to magical effect on “Blazin”.

Have One On Me – Joanna Newsom
How do you follow up arguably one of the greatest albums of all time? Triple it, apparently. This 3CD extravaganza is so expertly wrought it leaves you (literally) breathless. How does Newsom fold such spellbinding interlocking rhythms and melodies into eachother? How does she weave stories so meandering and heavy with meaning? An incredible achievement.

Head First - Goldfrapp
While (unusually for such musical innovators) appearing at the tail end of the brief but blissful resurgence of 80s synthesised dream pop at the end of the decade, Head First still manages to spin something new from used yarn. The soundscapes more than meet the expectations laid down by Goldfrapp's preceding reputation and body of work, with truly uplifting tunes being welcomed into their impressive canon. And the artwork is fucking gorgeous.

The Suburbs – Arcade Fire
Nostalgia for a simpler time is the theme for Arcade Fire's third album and it says a lot that it speaks so directly to someone only 20 years old. It says a lot about how fast our rapidly-developing world has changed. And it says a lot about the skill of Arcade Fire‟s songwriting – turning a semi-cliché subject from something potentially trite into something sumptuous and heartrending and bleak.

Here Lies Love - David Byrne & Fatboy Slim
We weren‟t especially knowledgeable about the work of David Byrne, Fatboy Slim or Imelda Marcos, but if you put them in a food processor (not literally lolz) and an incredibly captivating concept album featuring a plethora of fabulous all-female singers (just what we like) pops out, maybe they should work together more often. The insufferable Florence Welch becomes mildly likeable, while Martha Wainwright, Cyndi Lauper, Róisín Murphy and Tori Amos form just some of the remarkable vocal talent. “Solano Avenue” featuring the previously-unknown-to-us Nicole Atkins is a highlight.

The ArchAndroid (Suites II and III) - Janelle Monáe
Janelle Monáe careened into our lives with her stunning and effortlessly inventive EP, Metropolis (Suite I – The Chase Suite), particularly on the track “Many Moons” – a song so jampacked full of energy and a seemingly boundless set of ideas, it left us literally breathless the first time we heard it. Ohhh, we thought, what the hell was that?! It was like André 3000 had had a sex change and decided to cover Madonna's “American Life”, produced by Missy
Elliott and coached in vocal acrobatics by Kate Bush and Erykah Badu. Actually, we hate those sorts of descriptions, so totally ignore that and bear in mind that if you're not already familiar with Janelle Monáe (you should be), she's unlike anything else. Ok, one last comparison: imagine if Janet Jackson had 10 times the vocal range she does, was capable of orchestration, lyrical dexterity and obsessed with science fiction – then you might be able to picture just how incredible The ArchAndroid is…

That's the thing… Ms. Monáe is so inventive, her palette of references and influences so delightfully varied, and her voice so dextrous and skilled, that it's hard to find the words to do her work justice. This album is truly, something to savour (although not perfect, we hope future works might be shorter, with one or two filler tracks cut). The tracks blend into each other effortlessly, and especially since some of them are very long and contain many changes of pace, sometimes you don't know whether you've moved from one song to the next, or not. You enter an endless dream-world where symphony orchestras loom out at you, only to be replaced by punky guitar riffs (“Come Alive: The War of the Roses), hazy 70s prog-like ballads (“Mushrooms and Roses”) and futuristic funk.

Some believe that great music is music that does the un- expected: music that surprises. And nothing is more surprising than this album. One moment you're drifting away on a 50s “Tears on my Pillow”- style doowop ballad (the stunning “Oh, Maker”) and the next you're bobbing and writhing about to an almost pop-rock, uptempo (“Cold War”) . The album's crowning glory is its closing number, “BaBopByeYa”, the must sumptuous, stunning, sensuous, involving, dark, shudderingly good 8 minute track you'll hear all year .

There's supposedly a concept here, but as is often the case with superior concept albums, it's kind of besides the point – the music takes precedent here. Janelle Monáe's debut album is a work of such raw genius, it's hard to talk about without getting passionately speechless, it's the kind of thing you have to experience for yourself. Perhaps it'll date badly, perhaps it'll stale quickly, but one thing we know for sure: Monáe is an artist to watch and whose every move and experiment we will savour and salivate over. If you listen to only two albums from 2010 make it Robyn's Body Talk series, and this.

Body Talk - Robyn
Robyn has undoubtedly been the artist of the year, and unquestionably produced the single of the year (in the shape of “Dancing On My Own”). She's also released, alongside Janelle Monáe, the finest body of work in 2010, but her unconventional release strategy has put us in a quandary. You see, we have a chronic case of iTunes OCD, at Shiny & New towers, so Robyn's epic (in the traditional sense of the word) Body Talk series has caused us no end of grief - are they EPs? Is there an album? Is there a compilation? *head(s) explodes*

With the final, 3rd, instalment finally released, we thought that Body Talk could stand as one of the albums of the year. We wanted it to, so that we felt we had a big overarching cohesive body of work to tie 2010 together, but the officially released 15-track album didn't sound right – partly because almost every song is a heart-stopping, foot-stomping, pulse-quickening, euphoria-inducing, hip-shaking sobathon and 15 of those in a row is enough to send anyone over the edge (one needs light and shade lols)… but also because we had gotten used to each individual instalment, released as an 8 track mini- album, and their individual… erm… flavours. So this article is praising our preferred mode of listening to the Robyn songs released this year: the three separate EPs – Pt. 1, Pt. 2 and the digital-only 5-track Pt. 3:

Pt. 1 is the eclectic, masterpiece-riddled introduction to the series, veering wildly from disco (“Dancing on my Own”) to robopop (“Fembot”) to queeny reggae (“Dancehall Queen”) to dark electro (“None of Dem”), all deranged and knowing. Pt. 2 is
more cohesive, but with fewer standout highlights (although the incredible “Include Me Out” and “In My Eyes” are nothing if not memorable), much more sinuous and glitter- ing, like a gay James Bond's collective expeditions, at once dark, dangerous and intense (“Love Kills”) and then on the incredible “Indestructible (Acoustic)”, both melodramatic and romantic and yet somehow ice cold; Then the shorter and sweet(er), Pt. 3 is the poppiest, the most upbeat, jubilant , brighteyed, hopeful, not a mournful or self-pitying moment in sight – from the stompathon “Time Machine” to the heartbreaking pseudo-stalker anthem “Call Your Girlfriend”, via the über-romantic “Stars 4-ever”.

These 3 EPs may seem like they'd all slot together, but somehow, they work best (in our humble opinion) apart. Body Talk may not represent a complete or coherent album, in the traditional sense, but that doesn't matter because it's an incredible achievement. The sheer quality here is outstanding! Which other artist could expel 20 pop masterpieces in 12 months across 3 mini master- works? No one. We make the rules, so we can just as easily break them. This may not be your typical album – it may be 3 separately released ones – but that;s what makes it great. It's one of our albums of the year: a glittering abundance of tracks.

Ooooooh... political.

Spike Jonze off-of loved-by-hipsters and Great Björk Videos has done a music vid for Arcade Fire, in thanks for their rerecorded version of "Wake Up", what appeared in the trailer for Where The Wild Things Are.

Maybe we're thicker than our sophisticated writing style might suggest, but we didn't totally get this. It seemed more of a 'mood' piece about violent/disillusioned teenagers with a very vague and loose plot, than something distinctly narrative. But then are so tired we're propping our eyelids open with kirby grips ('bobby pins' as les Americans say) so maybe we just fell asleep for most of the video and woke up unaware of what had actually gone on.

This theme, of teenagers bored, lustful and angry, trapped in hot suburban sprawl, desperate to escape, and lazy with summer, is so ridiculously up our street we feel a bit sick with excitement, just considering it, but it seems to have been pulled off only semi-spectacularly. Maybe we're just impossible to please, but it didn't set our world alight, and, dare we say it, felt just the tiniest bit 'seen it before' (don't ask us where, we can't remember, 3G internet killed our braincells).

Anyway, it's an enjoyable enough watch and certainly more though-provoking than the recent Keri Hilson debaucle (more of which later)... Actually on second thoughts...

Inneresting... *strokes chin*

People love to bang on about new mediums and new media platforms that'll help resuscitate the stale ol' music industry and its set-in-its-ways dinosaur-aged business models but most supposed innovations are either tedious, cynical or unsuccessful. Here's something intriguing and bizarre. Arcade Fire have made a video for "We Used To Wait", not in and of itself a strange or odd thing to do, but the video they've created is unlike anything we've seen before. At the start you type in the address of the place you grew up, and then using Google Streetview, some sophisticated technology (or something) creates a set of a constantly opening and closing windows that depict running, birds, birds-eye views of your hometown, trees springing up in its city streets etc. etc. There's even a section in the middle where you can draw and/or write a postcard to your younger self.

Now I'm sure there are readers who've experienced the aforementioned video and thought "that's been done". Perhaps it has. If you know of an interactive video similar to this that we should know about, then let us know so we don't look like TOTAL fools for proclaiming this groundbreaking. But to us, it feels like new and fresh ground. Sure, it isn't perfect. Technically it could use some honing and fine-tuning, and we can only imagine what wonders could be created as the technology develops, but for now it's an intriguing experience and not one that feels gratuitous or for-'innovation's-sake. Arcade Fire's latest album, The Suburbs, is a love-letter to youth and nostalgia and vast and frightening change and using 'footage' of a viewer's unique hometown as a starting point for an interactive video seems inspired.

Things we are excited about: this.

You can listen to (and you have been able to listen to) two new Arcade Fire songs right here, right now. They are the 1st and 10th tracks from their new album, The Suburbs, and they are called "The Suburbs" and "Month of May", respectively.

You know, it's very easy to complain when a [beloved] band have undergone a minor or drastic sound change or sound progression, but the important thing to remember is that not only is this inevitable, but it's also necessary. If you like it, you should carry on listening and not worry about 'the old sound' or 'the minor shift in sound' as if your life partner has just had a sex change. And if you don't like it, well, get the fuck over it, because the old music still exists.