Archive for February, 2010
Music Alliance Pact – February 2010
Monday, February 15th, 2010
Some people do their good worldly deeds by tirelessly seeking out the truth among the lies, or by turning their carbon footprint into a tiptoe, or making asylum seekers feel welcome.
As much as The Pop Cop aspires to make a difference, to be something better, for now you’ll just have to content yourself with the Music Alliance Pact, which takes you on a 35-stop journey through six continents on the 15th of every month, bringing music from the untapped reaches of Estonia to the beach fronts of Copacabana and the back alleys of Beijing.
The text you see below is written by the blogger who chose the song and then replicated on each website, with all of our selections free to download – individually or in one zip file – by our readership (that’s you!).
Enough talk, it’s showtime.
SCOTLAND: The Pop Cop
Werd – Breakdown
Even if you’re just a casual hip hop listener, you owe it to yourself to give Werd a spin. The 22-year-old’s rhymes are as cunningly creative as they are uncompromising and he executes them with such furious, stylish precision. You can (and should) download everything the Edinburgh rapper has done for free from his Bandcamp page. In the meantime, the irresistible force of sub-two-minute track Breakdown will leave you wanting more… which is the point, yes?
March 6, The Flying Duck, Glasgow (2pm)
Popout
Posted in thepopcop | No Comments »
Happy Valentine’s Day… here’s your present
Friday, February 12th, 2010
Forget the jewellery, walk away from the crotchless panties, put down the designer wallet. The best Valentine’s Day gifts are the ones where clearly some deep thought has gone into it, an original idea, that special personal touch.
Unfortunately, this requires two qualities that not everyone acquired in the gene pool – imagination and creativity – so the next best thing is the trusty custom-made romantic mix CD, which we’ve just gone and made for you to download and burn onto a single CD-R.
As you will no doubt have already noticed, the first letter of each beautiful song we picked magically spells out your greeting. Just make sure your other half doesn’t read The Pop Cop and you can happily pass it off as all your own work. Job done!
Hey Rabbit (Fionn Regan)
About Today (The National)
Please Be Kind (Beerjacket)
Past Through (Ronnie Day)
Your Heart Is An Ocean (Dotjr)
Valentine (The Wallbirds)
Along The Run (Art Of Fighting)
Let’s Make T-Shirts (State Broadcasters)
Everyday (Rogue Wave)
New Slang (The Shins)
The Humpty Dumpty Love Song (Travis)
I Will Follow You Into The Dark (Death Cab For Cutie)
Nantes (Beirut)
Essential Wear For Future Trips To Space (Ballboy)
Samson (Regina Spektor)
Distant Sun (Crowded House)
Ain’t That Enough (Teenage Fanclub)
You On My Mind In My Sleep (Richard Ashcroft)
Download the full Happy Valentine’s Day compilation album here.
Posted in thepopcop | No Comments »
Attack of the clones
Thursday, February 11th, 2010
The “customers who bought album X also bought album Y” recommendation model tends to work a treat with music consumers because most bands sound like the bastard child of their influences. However, there are three acts currently enjoying healthy popularity who must have been let out of a padlocked room after being forced to listen to one album on repeat.
What’s most strange, though, is that when you hear these clones you will soon discover that this is not a bad thing.
OWL CITY (record collection = Give Up)
The brainchild of American poster boy Adam Young, Owl City’s second album Ocean Eyes boasts the sort of slick production you’d expect from a major label debut. As easy as it would be to dimiss as teen fodder, it really is an incessantly irrepressible and enjoyable listen. And if you had never heard Fireflies on the radio before, you could have singled out any one of about seven tracks on Ocean Eyes as a potential hit.
But could anyone have predicted that The Postal Service, a band as geekily indie as they get, would be the inspiration for the biggest chart sensation of the year so far? Owl City is effectively a rip-off of Ben Gibbard’s iconic synth-pop project, albeit one marketed at the Twilight demographic.
Confirm or deny, Owl City: “The more I hear people relating the two, the more I realise they are pretty similar. I had some friends in high school who would have it playing in their cars and stuff. It was cool, but it never really caught my ear.” (full interview)
VERDICT: Liar!
Owl City – Hello Seattle
Popout
The Postal Service – Such Great Heights
Popout
May 8, Barrowland, Glasgow (tickets)
SHOUT OUT LOUDS (record collection = The Head On The Door)
For the past decade, Shout Out Louds have been doing a very decent impersonation of The Cure, and a spin of their tremendous forthcoming third album Work shows the Swedes haven’t felt the urge to change that fact.
Perhaps they get away with it because they’re so shameless. While plenty of other bands have been, and will continue to be, heavily influenced by Robert Smith and Co, few actually run the risk of being mistaken for a Cure tribute band.
Confirm or deny, Shout Out Louds: “None of us are real big Cure fans.” (full interview)
VERDICT: Liar!
Shout Out Louds – Tonight I Have To Leave It
Popout
The Cure – In Between Days
Popout
PLAN B (record collection = Greatest Hits Of Smokey Robinson & The Miracles)
No-nonsense London hip hop star who raps about anal sex with corpses on his debut album reinvents himself on his second record as an angel-voiced, soul-singing Smokey Robinson wannabe – and pulls it off with more style than you could imagine.
From the depths of the Big Smoke comes the classic sound of Big Smokey – that’s who Plan B has to thank for what is destined to make The Defamation of Strickland Banks one of the biggest albums of 2010.
Confirm or deny, Plan B: “My godfather taught me Smokey Robinson’s The Tracks Of My Tears. That song taught me everything I need to know about song structure.” (full interview)
VERDICT: Honest!
Plan B – Hard Times
Popout
Smokey Robinson & The Miracles – The Tracks Of My Tears
Popout
April 23, Classic Grand, Glasgow (tickets)
June 12, RockNess, Inverness (tickets)
Posted in thepopcop | No Comments »
