Busy...

Posting will be light in the next few days as I finish a long sophisti-pop essay and introductions. There's also the matter of a book proposal.

In the meantime read this for reviews of current singles. Here's a sample:

Take That
"Shine"

Over a piano hook and harmonies yanked from a Spoon record, Take That make like what’s-his-name from Maroon 5, complete with vocal grit for authenticity’s sake. Now that Robbie Williams has proven to be a failure at selling superficiality, his former mates have a chance to settle the score by selling authenticity. The results prove that winsome and arch are adjectives best suited for a Pet Shop Boys record (hey, didn’t Robbie hire them too?). [2]

M.I.A.
"Bird Flu"

This isn’t so much a song as it is a racket, but not a charmless one. Outkast’s “Morris Brown” killed marching-band drums so decisively last year that M.I.A. making like Gwen Stefani is going to have work doubly hard to convince fans that the follow-up to Arular deserves a 1000-plus thread on ILM. [6]

Bloc Party
"I Still Remember"

I must admit: this acquired poignancy upon reading Kele’s it’s-so-hard-being-a-homo interview in The Guardian, but his heavy breathing has never been put to lovelier use. When Kele sighs, “You could have asked me for it” while a guitar chimes and curls like it’s 1991 and The Ocean Blue’s puritanical primal urges represented the golden mean of adolescent longing, I wish I could lend him my copy of The Line of Beauty. Despite the necktie and his friend’s name carved on the park bench the lack of details on a track almost as hortatory as Silent Alarm’s vague manifestos indicate a band ready for arenas in the expected manner: getting anthemic without anthems. In short, either this is either a band ready for the big time or a band sufficiently confused about it to avoid humor as strenuously as the lyrics avoid specifics. [7]