There have been such a lot of highly anticipated albums in the last few months that I have been complete let-downs. I’ve been all childishly excited about at least half a dozen albums, mostly sophomore efforts, and they have proved to be almost without exception to be massive disappointments:

Bloc Party – Dismal
The Killers – Predictably shit
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Tense & nervy
The Good, the Bad & the Queen – Patchy
Willy Mason – Just not quite there
Andrew Bird – Struggling, but growing on me, so I may end up changing my mind

Fortunately, The Arcade Fire is excellent and Grinderman is absolutely blinding, or I’d be crying into my cornflakes like a 5-year-old girl wondering why Flopsy has decided to go to Wabbit Heaven and doesn’t want to play with her anymore. Surprisingly though, after being let down by the high-indie-cred sorts such as Bloc Party, it looks like the year for the big boys might be rescued by a couple of highly unlikely sources: Maximo Park and Art Brut.

As much as I liked their debut, I pretty much wrote off Art Brut as being a borderline novelty act. Lines like ‘we’re just talking to the kids’ seemed so hackneyed that either they were shit or the levels of archness were just unbearably high – I’d always imaged poor old Emily Kane cringing into a grotty glass of warm pub Chardonnay whenever her song came on the jukebox. And as for Eddie Argos’ singing voice, well it just never seemed serious. Amazingly though, despite my assumption that they would promptly vanish without trace, they are back and looking in the rudest of health. The knack for a tune that brought us gems like ‘modern art makes me want to rock out’ has been refined a little since we saw it last, and a couple of the pre-release tracks have been seriously, seriously good. Direct Hit isn’t great, but when you aren’t expecting anything at all, who cares? Nag Nag Nag and Pump Up the Volume are excellent, catchy, bouncy and infectious and, better still, they are about people who love listening to music. Art Brut are one of us, people!

Art Brut – Nag Nag Nag Nag
Art Brut – Pump Up the Volume – Sorry guys, verboten. But the record company asked me to remove them in such a nice way that I think it needs to be mentioned, given what a bastard I am to record companies most of the time. Basically I got an email with a pleasantly worded request and a tip off about another new band, Assembly Now, who I’ll post more about later in the week. Dear Record Industry, please see ReverbXL for tips on how to interact civilly with human beings.

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Then there’s Maximo Park (no, I’m not even going to bother with the stupid fucking typography) whose debut, A Certain Trigger, was so infectiously enjoyable that I just lazily assumed they’d be a group who captured the mood of the time and made a successful album because of that rather than any merit of their own. A little like The Killers. That was a bit casual, it seems. I was first tipped off that they might actually be good when I saw them live and they were absolutely smoking. I’ve subsequently heard reports of posturing and faffing about, but when I saw them they were great, and that is always a really good sign for a band. Listening to their own pre-release leaks it seems their infallible knack for an irrepressible tune is completely intact, their sound is becoming slightly more aggressive (Mr. Toad always likes this.) and if they serve up another helping of songs as infectiously hummable as the last lot then I think we might be in for a surprise treat.

Maximo Park – Girls Who Play Guitars This one is really, really good. We all used to talk about girls who play guitars.
Maximo Park – Our Velocity

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