My Maudlin Career

Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career
released 20 April 2009 on 4AD

There’s an awful lot of music out there; too much music in fact. Seeing as albums are currently released at a rate roughly equivalent to three a day, it’s impossible to listen to and digest them all. This is clearly a shame as it means that the album that could change your life will never reach you or what you would deem an absolute, undisputed masterpiece will forever be consigned to the bargain bin. So, it’s important to start your album well, to have something that will grab the listener’s attention and make them want to revisit your set of songs again and again until they’re fully embedded in the consciousness.

On My Maudlin Career, Camera Obscura set out to achieve this in the best possible fashion. It takes around three seconds to be utterly transfixed by opening track, French Navy: a song built on irresistible hooks and perfectly complimented by a gorgeous string section. Producer Jari Haapalainen is clearly picking up where he left off on Camera Obscura’s last long player, 2006’s Let’s Get Out Of This Country.

Repeated listens to My Maudlin Career reveal that Camera Obscura completely inhabit their own universe. Despite their Glaswegian origins, their sound is so packed full of vintage Hollywood glamour that you’d think they were from California were it not for Tracyanne Campbell’s Scottish burr that occasionally creeps in undetected.

The high standard set by French Navy is maintained throughout the album; Careless Love has a sweeping key change and a beautiful middle eight, while The Sweetest Thing is just as catchy as Let’s Get Out Of This Country’s title track. Camera Obscura - and lead singer Tracyanne Campbell in particular - are a sensitive bunch and have clearly loved and lost. The lyrical content of My Maudlin Career heavily reflects this whilst also hinting at a vulnerable naivety and an optimistic streak that suggest that they’ll always believe in true love, no matter what.

While French Navy is all pomp and vigour, subsequent tracks gradually become more steeped in the painful side of love, best symbolised in the title track. Delicate piano octaves frame Campbell’s laments: “I’m not a child, I know we’re not going steady” and “They say I’m too kind and sentimental, like you can catch affection.” Following track Forests and Sands would be whiny and indulgent in the wrong hands, but Campbell’s heartfelt vocal transforms it into something genuinely affecting.

Unfortunately, all this heartbreak does become kind of wearing. Individually, each track is musically superb (although Swans sails pretty close to the wind with its twee guitar and glockenspiel twin assault), but a continuing feeling of despondency means My Maudlin Career can sometimes be difficult listening. Album closer Honey in the Sun is fantastic, but a case in point; its outwardly cheery demeanour and horn stabs recall ABC at their peak. However, its refrain (“I wish my heart was a cold as the morning dew / But it’s as warm as saxophones and honey in the sun for you”) which would be a paean to love on any other album, sounds tinged with forlornness and regret thanks to the theme of the preceding ten tracks.

Whilst we’re being critical (as is the record critic’s lot), a change of pace here and there wouldn’t go amiss either. Whilst Let’s Get Out of this Country featured the zip and bombast of If Looks Could Kill and the languid Country Mile, everything on My Maudlin Career remains frustratingly mid-tempo. There’s nothing wrong with this on a track-by-track basis, but it means the album lacks a certain something.

These are minor quibbles though, as My Maudlin Career is a wonderful set of songs and can deservedly sit alongside Let’s Get Out Of This Country while showcasing how far Camera Obscura have come since their patchy yet charming début, Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi. Album making isn’t a precise science (it’s not really a science at all, for that matter), but a couple of slower ones, a couple of faster ones and a couple of happier ones would elevate My Maudlin Career from a good album to a sensational one.

Art Brut vs. Satan

Art Brut - Art Brut vs. Satan
released 20 April 2009 on Cooking Vinyl

Art Brut frontman Eddie Argos must be sick to the back teeth of Lily Allen. She cooks up half-baked rhymes about what it’s like to be in your twenties in the UK and thanks to a wave of patronage and suspicions of nepotism, she’s on magazine covers the length and breadth of the country and sells albums by the bucketload. Argos performs the same trick with more wit, insight and humility and could barely get arrested in his homeland.

Strangely for a man whose lyrics, singing style and arsenal of cultural references are so utterly British, Art Brut have had a fair amount of success in Germany. There, Argos is revered as an intellectual; so much so that a lecture was once given at Berlin University entitled The Depressive Dandy: The Lyrics of Eddie Argos.

When there’s one part of the world that holds you in such high regard, it must be hard to take when another part doesn’t. Art Brut left EMI just over a year ago and the fallout from that split is evident in the lyrical content of the Black Francis-produced Art Brut vs. Satan.

It all starts out so well. With Lily Allen misfiring, Jamie T AWOL, The Streets seemingly too successful to maintain the position as “geezer poet” and Kate Nash just plain irritating, the stage is set for Argos to become to lead voice of 21st Century Britain. On the first five tracks, he does this with aplomb. Only perhaps Jarvis Cocker in his Britpop heyday could tackle these subjects so well: the joy of childhood memories on DC Comics and Chocolate Milkshake ("DC Comics and chocolate milkshake/Some things will always be great/DC Comics and chocolate milkshake/Even though I’m 28!"), one-night stands on What a Rush ("Under the covers, both naked/I hate to see an opportunity wasted") and the morning after the night before on Alcoholics Unanimous ("So many people I might have upset/I apologise to them all with the same group text").

Unfortunately, Argos and Art Brut can’t keep up this level of quality for long. If the first five tracks represent the beginning of a happy relationship, the next three are the messy break-up replete with insults, squabbling and name-calling and the final three tracks are the reconciliation; while everything is fine from the outside, the memories of the break-up linger, souring the relationship forever and meaning it will never be as good as it was.

Admittedly, this is an unusual analogy and one that clearly needs expanding upon. Track six, Demons Out!, is a vicious attack on the state of the music industry. We’ve all heard songs where artists moan that, believe it or not, record labels are just money-making machines run by ruthless businessmen with no scruples - quelle surprise. However, the refrain of “The record buying public - we hate them/This is Art Brut versus Satan” means this may the first instance of an artist directly insulting the listener in verse. As a member of said record-buying public, it’s hard to feel any compassion or warmth towards Argos after that. He doesn’t do himself any favours with the next two tracks either (Slap Dash for No Cash and The Replacements) where Argos’ primary concern seems to be to prove he’s more indie than you and has a better taste in music too. It all smacks of immaturity and pettiness; after all, it’s only rock n’ roll.

The last three songs bear the hallmarks of something good, but there’s an unshakeable feeling that something’s missing. In theory, they should be just as enjoyable as the beginning of the album, but are overshadowed by preceding events. The joy and energy that was so evident at the beginning of the album has turned into cynicism and sluggishness. Plus, for a band who are suited to little more than the three-minute verse-chorus-verse pop song, closing the album with a track that clocks in at over seven minutes (Mysterious Bruises) signifies a dearth of ideas (despite the inspired line of “I can’t remember anything I’ve done/I fought the floor and the floor won”).

As yet, nothing has been mentioned here about the music itself and that’s with good reason. Art Brut the band are nothing more than an average pub-rock band straddling the divide between pop-punk and Oi!. They’re nothing without their leader but despite their limitations, their sub-Green Day power chords are the perfect foil for Argos’ arch, ironic delivery. There’s little more to write about them than that, other to say that after three albums, you’d think it wouldn’t be too much to ask for at least some ambition or a sign of progress.

Début record Bang Bang Rock & Roll fizzed with glee; the sound of a band barely believing they’ve been given the opportunity to make a record while follow-up It’s a Bit Complicated was - with a couple of notable exceptions - a deflating disappointment. Art Brut vs. Satan is somewhere in the middle; good enough to be worth a couple of listens but enough bad at times to frustrate and make you wonder what might have been.

Dark Days/Light Years

Super Furry Animals - Dark Days/Light Years
released 13 April 2009 on Rough Trade

It’s rare to find a critic who doesn’t like Super Furry Animals and it’s easy to see why. Since their first release in 1995 (the Welsh-language Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (In Space) EP), they’ve given us eight studio albums full of invention, hooks, catchy melodies, experimentation and downright weirdness. Not for nothing are they sometimes referred to as “the Welsh Beatles,” although giving SFA such a title is setting them up for a fall somewhat.

With the release of album number 9, Dark Days/Light Years, SFA look to follow the road well travelled. For most artists this would be a criticism, but since fashioning genre-hopping, innovative pop songs is SFA’s raison d’être, more of the same is by no means a bad thing.

So, it seems if you’re a fan of Super Furry Animals, Dark Days/Light Years will be right up your street and if you’re not, it’s hardly likely to win you over. Perhaps mindful of this, the album opens with Crazy Naked Girls, a six-minute psyche wig-out with two false starts, heavy prog leanings, manic guitar solos and a chorus of "Crazy, crazy naked girls/With nothing on.” To be honest, it’s unlikely to get playlisted on Radio 2 any time soon and fantastic fun as it is, it’s a peculiar choice for a first track.

Just to confuse the casual listener even further, the second offering is completely different in every way. It’s a bass-heavy glam stomp of a track entitled Mt and is the cousin of 2003 single Golden Retriever. It also has an opening verse that straddles the fine line between genius and idiocy ("I wasn’t looking for a mountain/There was a mountain/It was a big fucking mountain/So I climbed the mountain").

As if to prove their acumen at as many distinct genres of pop music, SFA next throw in some swaggering funk (Moped Eyes) and follow it with some tight Krautrock featuring some spoken German (Inaugural Trams). Around this point, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Dark Days/Light Years is simply a collection of disparate songs, rather than a cohesive album. In the age of single-track downloads and the iPod Shuffle, whether that’s a good thing or not is down to you but essentially, Dark Days/Light Years is far more than that.

Things begin to make more sense and fall into place as the album progresses and repeated listens reinforce that further. The eight-minute epic, Cardiff in the Sun, begins with guitar horribly reminiscent of The Edge at his most clichéd, but evolves into a gorgeous, shimmering, hazy dream, full of sha-la-las and warmth. White Socks/Flip Flops is elevated by beautiful harmonies and the irresistible sunshine pop of Helium Hearts is among the best songs SFA have ever recorded. Penultimate track Lliwiau Llachar is so catchy you’ll be trying to sing along despite the fact all the lyrics are in Welsh (good luck with that, by the way).

Due to awkward, clunky sequencing, Dark Days/Light Years takes longer to reveal its charms than maybe it should. Despite this, it’s still a marvellous record and evidence that despite their increasing years, Super Furry Animals are a long way from being out of ideas. Most bands would do well to create something this accomplished on their second album, let alone their ninth. Yet again, Super Furry Animals have raised the bar and shown the young upstarts how it’s done.

Rex Records

To celebrate Record Store Day, No Ripcord ran a piece where contributors wrote about their favourite indie record stores. I wrote about Ipswich's much-loved and much-missed Rex Records...

As a teenager at the turn of the century, there were only two oases of salvation amongst the cultural abyss of Ipswich: Vagabonds Café and Rex Records. Vagabonds was a relaxed haven and a perfect meeting place and happily, Rex was opposite. In those days when iTunes, Amazon and their ilk were still yet to make their mark, a store where you could discover new music and people had conversations about the latest Sparklehorse record seemed impossibly exotic. This shop was listed in the back of Mojo and everything!

The assistants occasionally strayed onto the arrogant side of hipster cool, but their knowledge of music and their shop could only be described as encyclopaedic. Take any empty album case to the till and the guy behind the till would turn to a wall consisting of a seemingly infinite number of - to the untrained eye - identical blank cardboard CD holders and find your chosen disc almost instantly.

They’d play obscure indie releases, spoken word albums, forgotten classics, local demos, anything. They sold older albums for £6 when you couldn’t buy anything in the high street chains for under a tenner. It was the kind of place in which you could lose an afternoon poring over racks and racks of discs, the kind of place every town centre would benefit from.

Vagabonds is now named Central Canteen and is run with a soulless, military efficiency and Rex Records is now Urban Vintage and sells derivative T-shirts for around £70 a pop. Ain’t that always the way though?

Kingdom of Rust

Doves - Kingdom of Rust
released 6 April 2009 on Heavenly

There’s an unwritten rule in this business that we call show, that once you’ve released a couple of albums, you fit into some form of “rock hierarchy” where climbing the ladder can prove almost impossible. At the top are your million-selling stadium rockers: a select band of artists whose every move is reported and could release an album consisting entirely of guitar feedback and the mating call of the sperm whale and would still sell millions. We’re talking U2, REM, Bruce Springsteen. Below that, there’s the widely-popular bands who practically everyone has heard of, followed by your cult concerns with their devoted fanbase and slot halfway through the day at the summer festivals. Below that, your indies and your unsigneds make up the structure and once you’ve found your level, you’re pretty much stuck.

What it takes to move up is a fantastic album, a huge slice of luck and serendipity or most likely, both. The last band to obviously make the move is Elbow, whose most recent long player, The Seldom Seen Kid, launched them from a band who sell around 100,000 albums to household names and Mercury Prize winners. As good as the album is, being in the right place at the right time was also vitally important for Elbow. Releasing their album in March 2008 meant there was enough time for it to creep into the public consciousness before heavy promotion across the festivals took them into the big time.

It’s a neat trick, and on this evidence, one that Doves are keen to repeat. Unfortunately for them, it looks unlikely on this showing. Whereas The Seldom Seen Kid was inventive, gripping and featured the superb lyrics of Guy Garvey, Kingdom of Rust is simply drab in comparison.

Take opening track, Jetstream, for example. It builds and builds nicely; it races along on a steady beat and expert guitar licks, but that’s all - it’s functional rather than extraordinary. It’s also devoid of any detectable chorus; the track seems like it’s heading towards an almighty climax and is just crying out for a crunching riff or all hell breaking loose, but it never does. It’s the equivalent of a football team putting together a fantastic multi-pass move and every time they close in on goal, they pass back to midfield and eventually the referee just blows for full time. So, rather than be impressed at the technical ability and build-up, you’re just left feeling disappointed that the satisfying ending never came.

Current single, Kingdom of Rust, however, is better. Chiming guitars and racing percussion reminiscent of a locomotive engine make it a joy to listen to, yet this proves to be the exception rather than the rule. As the album progresses, Kingdom of Rust resembles second-rate, dour bands such as Embrace and Snow Patrol. It suffers from the same disease that affects far too large a proportion of 21st Century music; the belief that sincerity is everything. Thus, Jimi Goodwin pulls the right poses and emotes as he feels he should, but it’s just empty gestures. It seems Doves have been listening to commercial radio too much and have lost sight of what sold them records in the first place; there’s nothing here to rival classic singles like There Goes The Fear or Black And White Town.

Perhaps this approach, where the tracks bleed into one another and sound as if they were recorded underwater, is just a cunning ploy to deter the casual listener. After two thirds of Kingdom of Rust, Doves loosen up and really hit their stride. Spellbound is a soaring epic of the quality Doves have failed to attain on the previous tracks. Compulsion is a revelation; a funky, disco bassline gives way into a swaggering track which sounds, fantastically, like a re-write of Blondie’s Rapture. Closing track, Lifelines, is by far the most uplifting and ends the album on such a positive note, you’d be forgiven for forgetting what went before and proclaiming this as a great album.

Make no mistake though, this clearly isn’t a great album. However, following the model that Elbow and several others before them have used, this will probably be a success. Doves are hitting the festivals in 2009 (including Latitude and a second-stage headlining slot at Glastonbury) where a decent performance will have Kingdom of Rust flying off the shelves. For the most part though, it adds little to a genre that’s already saturated and is disappointing from a band whose past evidence has shown can do better.

Top Ten UK #1 Singles of the Last Ten Years

This is the second of the two list articles to celebrate No Ripcord's tenth birthday...

When No Ripcord first launched in April 1999, sitting at the top of the pile in the singles chart was the début release by Westlife, Swear It Again. Well, here we are ten years later, No Ripcord is thriving and Westlife... well, unfortunately they’re still going too, and the talentless Irish chancers have in fact had 14 UK #1 singles to date. We all know that the singles charts aren’t what they used to be (especially since the demise of Top of the Pops) and that the best songs never make it to the summit. However, over the past decade, there have been enough diamonds in the rough to ensure that the charts are worth checking out of a Sunday evening. So, here are the best ten:

10. Michael Andrews feat. Gary Jules: Mad World (2003)

Haunting, ethereal, sparse; a song like this would barely get in the charts these days, let alone make it to number one. Taken from the soundtrack to the film Donnie Darko, this song was a complete word-of-mouth hit. It took the much-coveted Christmas Number One title in 2003 following various campaigns in the media. It also represented a sea change for the UK charts, as this was the last Christmas Number One not affiliated with a charity or television talent show. This was the last occurrence of when being at the head of the charts over the festive season still held some prestige. Since this hit, both Andrews and Jules have faded back into obscurity, with neither making it into the UK charts since.

9. Eminem feat. Dido: Stan (2000)

If we can conveniently forget the fact that this song lead directly to Dido’s brand of aural wallpaper being an enormous success, we can begin to appreciate this track. An obsessive fan who kills himself and his girlfriend in a car crash is not a typical subject for a hit single but then again, Eminem was never your typical pop star. His latter efforts may have simply been either cartoon hip-hop-lite or angry, bitter diatribes, but Stan is his masterpiece. A genuinely harrowing tale that was never intrusive, insensitive or sought to gain humour inappropriately from its dark subject matter, it’s a story more than a song and remains far and away his best work. It was deposed from top slot on the charts by Bob the Builder with Can We Fix It? It didn’t seem right, really.

8. Beyoncé: Crazy In Love (2003)

This isn’t really a song, it’s more of a riff – that riff. The pounding drums are the perfect foil for the brass hook that makes Crazy In Love so memorable. The riff in question isn’t even original; it’s taken from Are You My Woman (Tell Me So) by The Chi-Lites. Whoever spotted that and came up with the idea is a genius. It’s easy to forget that before this song, Beyoncé wasn’t quite the all-conquering star she is today and her first single (Work It Out) had under-performed. This transformed her and it’s easy to see why. We don’t care about the lyrics, the melody, the sentiment, hell, even Jay-Z’s rap is fairly lacklustre in comparison. You just need the “oh-oh oh-oh” part before each verse and the riff... that riff.

7. Robyn with Kleerup: With Every Heartbeat (2007)

Robyn was actually around making records in the 1990s, and she was rubbish. That may seem a tad harsh, but her songs were anodyne, ‘nothing’ songs that left your head as soon as they’d entered your ear. For those of us with long memories (and a slightly unhealthy interest in pop music), it was a surprise to have her back a couple of years ago. The real surprise though, was that she was capable of a shimmering pop classic such as this. It has electronic bleeps and exudes a certain cool that only the Scandinavians seem to be able to pull off. It appears restrained, but repeated listens reveal the yearning behind each word. With Every Heartbeat may have not been a worldwide smash, but it showed that the UK record-buying public do occasionally know what they’re doing.

6. The Streets: Dry Your Eyes (2004)

Before the release of Dry Your Eyes, Mike Skinner was just a Brummie chronicling the life of a geezer. The release of his second album, A Grand Don’t Come For Free, had garnered much critical acclaim but the masses remained resistant to his charms and he seemed destined to remain that bloke who talked over music. This all changed over the summer of 2004 – after England were dumped out of the European Football Championships, Dry Your Eyes played over the closing credits and gave football fans a soundtrack to their anguish. (For those of you reading outside the UK, this really happens. Twenty stone men with tattoos on their neck break down and weep when England lose at football). A poignant lament to a lost love, what really makes this track is the keen observation of the minutiae and the sense of loss and despair. It proved to be the tipping point for The Streets, as Skinner has struggled to repeat the success of his defining moment, but it could be worse... c’mon, dry your eyes, mate.

5. Gnarls Barkley: Crazy (2006)

Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo made chart history with Crazy, their début release and the biggest selling song of 2006 in the UK. It became the first single to reach the top of the charts on downloads alone and still remained number one even after having been physically deleted. However, such feats are no guarantee of quality, as the successes of singles by Bryan Adams and Wet Wet Wet prove. Luckily, Gnarls Barkley had produced a cracker. Cee-Lo had been a moderately successful solo artist and Danger Mouse was producer du jour but still, no-one could have predicted this. Built around a sample of Last Man Standing by Gian Franco and Gian Piero Reverberi, Crazy is everything a good pop song should be: direct, energetic, catchy and not too long. Simultaneously haunting and invigorating, Crazy was pretty much universally adored and like several others in this list, the authors have been victims of their own success, with Gnarls Barkley struggling to repeat the sales or levels of critical acclaim since.

4. Girls Aloud: The Promise (2008)

At the risk of alienating the entire readership of No Ripcord, this song fully deserves it place on the list. Girls Aloud have proved since their inception that their songs are a cut above other girl groups (who wrote the songs themselves is a moot point) and this is the best of the lot. Now, unless you grew up in a hippie household where your parents played Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica over Sunday lunch, the chances are the first music you loved as a child was what is known as manufactured pop. However much your tastes change and develop, there’s always a part of your brain susceptible to the pull of this sort of music. Admittedly, it’s normally more prevalent with the influence of alcohol, but there should be no shame in holding your hands up and proclaiming you like this song. And really, what’s not to like? There’s shimmering harmonies, shades of 60s girl-groups, touches of Spector and a chorus that sounds like the theme tune to Blankety Blank. Go on, treat yourself.

3. Dizzee Rascal featuring Calvin Harris and Chrome: Dance Wiv Me (2008)

It would appear that despite the flagging singles industry, last year was a pretty good one for chart-toppers. Like The Streets, Dizzee had always been more popular with the critics than the public, and had struggled to convert his Mercury win (for début Boy in Da Corner) into actual sales. This is his finest moment so far though, effortlessly providing a perfect mix of grime and laid-back dance that it’s hard to resist. Maybe Dizzee’s gritty rhymes about urban life were too unpalatable for the music-buying public at large, but on Dance Wiv Me, it’s fun-time Dizzee as he just focuses on having a good time. Trying to chat up a girl in front of her boyfriend has never seemed so attractive or enjoyable.

2. Manic Street Preachers: The Masses Against the Classes (2000)

Hey, remember when MSP were angry and overtly-political? Well, poster-boy of that era, Richey Edwards, may have disappeared in 1995 but The Masses Against the Classes proved that MSP still had the edge that made 1994’s The Holy Bible so brutal and compelling. The whole story behind the song is trademark Manics: no promotion and deletion of the single on the day of release, yet it was the first #1 single of the new millennium. As for the track itself, it starts with a quotation by Noam Chomsky and ends with one from Camus. It’s abrasive punk rock, it’s thrilling, it’s exciting and it reminds you of the sheer power and influence that popular music can have. In retrospect, this may have been simply a token gesture, as MSP have never released anything like this as a single since, and have slowly transformed into a fairly sedate AOR band. But these three and a half minutes are a clear indicator of how important the Manic Street Preachers have been over the last twenty years.

1. Arctic Monkeys: I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor (2005)

A cursory glance at the singles chart will tell you that – with a few notable exceptions – pop music is a young person’s game. Artists can never quite recapture that moment when they burst onto the scene, and that “shock of the new” is none more clear than on this single. Regardless of your age, this song can instantly transport you back to being 16 and full of hormones and let’s face it, regardless of your age, your memory will tell you that the best pop music was made when you were in your teens. This song is dripping with yearning and lust and beneath it all hides the promise of something more sinister. There hadn’t been regional accents in successful pop for a while, but Alex Turner’s rich Sheffield brogue changed all that. The sub-3 minutes of pop heaven is best described by the 21st Century’s most exciting lyricist himself: “There ain’t no love, no Montagues or Capulets/Just banging tunes and DJ sets and/Dirty dancefloors and dreams of naughtiness.” That is all that’s good about pop music encapsulated in just a few simple lines – will a number one single ever be as good as this again?

Top Ten Musical Fantasy Partnerships

The following is an article written as part of a series to celebrate the 10th birthday of No Ripcord magazine...

Here’s a game everyone can play. Take two bands or artists with a common word or syllable, mix the names together and hey presto! – you’ve made a brand new fantasy band. Think something along the lines of Faith No Doubt or perhaps, more ambitiously, Sly and the Family Stone Temple Pilots. Somewhere in a parallel universe, these collaborations could well exist. Here, in no particular order, is the No Ripcord Fantasy Musical Partnerships Top 10 (with thanks to Patrick Crowther at www.patrickcrowtherphotography.co.uk for the inspiration).

10. Death Cab for Q-Tip

Q-Tip released his album, The Renaissance, to widespread critical acclaim last year. Known for his versatility and ambition, working with one of the music scene’s most inventive pop groups could lead to a match made in heaven. Hot Chip and Wiley came together to make one of the singles of 2008 with Wearing My Rolex – probably the best indicator of what Death Cab for Q-Tip would sound like. Who wouldn’t want more tracks like that?

Runners-up:Death Cab for CuT.I., Q-Chicory-Tip

9. Tori Amos Def

Is there a precedent for this sort of thing? Bonkers singer-songwriter with fairy preoccupation and ground-breaking hip-hop star may not be the most obvious of bedfellows. Mind you, once you’ve breastfed a pig in the name of your art (Tori, not Mos Def), you can probably take anything else in your stride. It’s difficult to see the middle ground where these two would meet; would we get rhymes over Cornflake Girl or pianos and pixies over hip-hop beats?

Runners-up: A New Found Tori, Mos Def Leppard

8. Adele La Soul

Continuing the female vocalist/hip-hop theme comes this collaboration. Stage-school alumnus Adele has a touch of R&B and soul in her voice as it is, but tends to be more successful on slower tracks. An injection of female attitude could work wonders, assuming she didn’t tread on their laid-back, breezy toes. Let’s face it, a vast number of hip-hop tracks have ‘proper’ singers guesting in the chorus as it is, so maybe this isn’t a ridiculous idea.

Runners-up: Adele Amitri, De La Soul II Soul

7. Smogwai

Probably not too likely to trouble the charts this one. Bill Callahan and his band could benefit from some livening up at times and the Scottish rock troupe could provide that. Certainly, the Zinedine Zidane film would have a different mood if Smog had provided the soundtrack rather than Mogwai. Maybe Smogwai (it’s not a band name for a band, actually) could rope in Callahan’s better half, Joanna Newsom, as well. Fancy a bit of harp on top with child-like idiosyncratic vocals? No, thought not.

Runners-up: Bonzo Smog Doo-Dah Band, Mogwiley

6. Yo La TenGo! Team

Now this would be interesting. Brighton-based cut-and-paste merchants meet New York alt. rockers in a tantalising collision. Seeing as Yo La Tengo hop from genre to genre laughing in the face of those who can barely master one, a smattering of cartoon hip-hop and dance should be a walk in the park. A Yo La Tengo release is always something worth listening to, and adding a DJ and the rapping of Ninja would add an extra dollop of intrigue to the mix.

Runners-up: Yo La Tengotan Project, Go! Team Waterpolo

5. The Barry White Stripes

Again, two artistes who you wouldn’t traditionally expect to record together (due to mortality issues, if nothing else). The laid-back, soulful croon of The Walrus of Love may not sit too well on something like Seven Nation Army, but perhaps Jack and Meg could add some garage blues to Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe. It wouldn’t be the first time Jack White’s worked with a soul star (though the theme from Quantum of Solace with Alicia Keys wasn’t exactly what you’d call a success), so perhaps this partnership is the dark horse of the lot and would produce the best work over time.

Runners-up: Barry White and the 2 Unlimited Orchestra, The Whitest Boy Alive Stripes

4. The Norah Jonestown Massacre

This could well be a disaster waiting to happen. Daughter of Ravi Shankar and creator of incredibly wistful and chilled-out music paired with Anton Newcombe’s motley crew of unpredictable, self-destructing rockers. While anybody who’s seen DiG! can testify that BJM could clearly do with a calming influence, a petite jazz pianist is probably not the best course of action. Mind you, with Newcombe’s revolving door band member policy, it’s debatable whether he’d actually notice some extra personnel.

Runners-up: Norah ‘Jones’ Jones and the Joneses, The Mick Jonestown Massacre

3. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah Yeah Yeahs

An all-New York affair and a clash of indie rock and sleek electro-pop. Some CYHSY tunes with Karen O’s frenetic yelp rather than Alec Ounsworth’s thin and reedy voice would certainly preferable, and YYYs would finally get round to having a bassist (not that they really miss having one in truth). In fact, this could be a step too far, as YYYs make enough of a racket for eight people already, without there actually being eight of them.

Runners-up: Clap Your Hands Say Air, Polar Bear Yeah Yeahs

2. The Last Shadow Pipettes

Alex Turner’s 60s revivalists get some much needed sass into their line-up with the addition of the Brighton pop-punks. This collision would quite possibly be too retro for its own good, and does bubblegum pop really need James Bond-style strings all over it? One thing’s for sure, it’d certainly be entertaining to hear Turner’s Sheffield burr telling stories of useless boys and school uniforms.

Runners-up: The Last Shadow Be Your Own PupPETs, The Pipet Shop Boys

1. TV On The Radiohead

Arguably the most popular alternative band in the world join forces with the young pretenders - who would be the lead vocalist is anyone’s guess. A mixture of OK Computer and Return to Cookie Mountain would certainly be intriguing; it really could go either way. It’s debatable what this band would sound like, but knowing how Thom Yorke runs the good ship Radiohead, it’s most likely the TVOTR guys would just end up learning new instruments and working on his vision for the follow-up to In Rainbows.

Runners-up: TV on the RadiOMD, Radiohead Automatica