Short Cuts! New Releases 18/01/10

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*** Digestible run-downs of this week’s new releases, including track recommendations from THE POPSCENER***

Note: Eels to follow shortly...

These New Puritans - Hidden

At the very least a startling achievement in genre dynamics, asserting that Hidden successfully melds Hot Chip glitchery with drum ‘n’ bass aggression and schizophrenic world-rhythms damns it with the faintest of praise. True, it does all of the above, but offers a far richer aural tapestry – namely funereal organs, forlorn horns and chillingly sinister operatic backing vocals. Indeed, songs like ‘Attack Music’ and ‘We Want War’ are not alone in harbouring a kind of unrelenting dystopian menace, while the incomprehensible, juvenile closing chant of ‘Orion’ should bestow the shivers on anyone with a pulse. As intelligent and progressive as it is unsettling: demands to be heard.

Choice Cuts: ‘We Want War’, ‘Orion’, ‘Hologram’, ‘Drum Courts – Where Corals Lie’

8.5/10

Lostprophets - The Betrayed

Lostprophets’ flirtation with the mainstream means they’re perpetually doomed to suffer from a self-inflicted damned-if-they-do/damned-if-they-don’t syndrome. Accordingly, here they can’t decide whether they want to play the puffed up nu-metal (‘DYSTRYR’) of their debut, or the studio-softened emo-pop (‘Darkest Blue’) of their more recent efforts. They’ll get over-criticised for both, but more worrying is that the band thought it wise to sneak the pomp-rock power-balladry of ‘Where We Belong’ and ‘Dirty Little Heart’ on – I can almost taste Steve Perry, and it tastes like 1981. And all the while my dream of a full album of new wave rockers like Start Something’s ‘Last Summer’ seems ever more distant. Sigh...

Choice Cuts: ‘Darkest Blue’, ‘Streets of Nowhere’

5/10