Even though 99.9% of our time is spent listening to metal, sometimes we need a break. And this is a celebration of everything we’ve been listening to but wouldn’t admit it to our mums (this is a lie, we’re not sorry about any of these).
PVRIS – White Noise
Merlin Alderslade: “Whatever you want to label them – electro-rock? dance-pop? alt-indie?! – PVRIS have managed to produce a debut absolutely brimming with heartstring-tugging melodies, sumptuously infectious hooks and smartly crafted lyrics. Genres be damned: this is one of the best debut full-lengths to land in a long, long time.”
Peter Hammill – All That Might Have Been
Dom Lawson: “Peter Hammill is 66 years old and has been making music since the mid-‘60s, and yet his work still crackles with a heartfelt devotion to creating something vital, challenging and new. His 32nd – yup, 32nd! – solo album is simply one of his greatest creations; a fearlessly bewildering and amorphous collage of sound, melody and elegant invention that demands total immersion and surrender. My fucking hero.”
Billy Idol – Can’t Break Me Down
Vanessa Thorpe: “Pure freaking cheese. YES!”
Tegan & Sara feat. The Lonely Island – Everything Is Awesome
Lewis Somerscales: “Cause everything is awesome right?”
**Alexander Milas: **“I’m not sure you can call this a pleasure so much as it’s a disease. You really need to see the Lego Movie to comprehend just where this bizarre, incessant and ridiculously infectious piece of pop-heroin is coming from, but months on and it still hasn’t failed to bring a smile to my face.”
H.E.A.T – Tearing Down The Walls
Jonathan Selzer: “AOR heaven and H.E.A.T’s utterly uncynical approach wasn’t trying to leg-hump the short-circuiting corpse of a once-glitzy genre like the vast majority of their peers, this was a bunch of young Swedes touching down on a lurid new planet, running rampant, swinging through the trees, and gorging themselves on nectar.”
Taylor Swift – Shake It Off
Luke Morton: “Tay Tay has come a long way since her country music origins and is now a pop music behemoth who loves nothing more than kicking the charts up the jacksie. It’s infectious, it’s happy, it’s fun – it’s all you need from the multi-award winning Pop Princess. All hail Swift!”
