Wot's Hot-To-Trot On The SWSL Stereo

The Strokes - Room On Fire

So, my thoughts - only about three months after everyone else in Blogworld had the brief affair with the album, stubbed out the post-coital fag and moved on to the next musical one-night stand. Well - it's The Strokes, isn't it? There are enigmatic and uneasy lyrics all over the place, choppy guitar patterns and pretty simple drum lines. Perhaps the reggae influence is more apparent than it is on Is This It, I'm not sure, and it's certainly a bit more aggressive in places. So far I've found it hard to get really excited about, having been subjected to all that absurd hype. But there's no doubting it's a very good album - they know how to craft a corking tune. A message, though, for those who think 'Under Control' is the best thing they've heard all year: get out more.

Explosions In The Sky - The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place

Like Nigel, I'm not sure whether the standard post-rock comparative touchstones of Mogwai and Godspeed! You Black Emperor do Explosions In The Sky any justice. There isn't the grandiosity or emotional and apocalyptic gloom familiar to Godspeed! fans; and they might only be a guitar / bass / drums fourpiece like Mogwai, but there's an extraordinary level of intricacy and complexity about the songs on this five-track album. Plus, as song titles like 'First Breath After Coma' and 'Six Days At The Bottom Of The Ocean' would suggest, they're a hell of a lot better at putting a name to the musical pictures they paint - you wouldn't catch them calling a song 'Secret Pint'.

(Thanks to Ian for showing me the light.)

The Raveonettes - Whip It On

Compared to this year's debut LP proper? Noisier, grubbier, blacker, more dead-eyed, less flush with love and lust. If Chain Gang Of Love is The Raveonettes' final answer to the mathematical quest to write a perfect set of pop songs, then Whip It On is them showing their workings - not the answer itself, but worthy of bonus marks anyway.

Yo La Tengo - 'Today Is The Day!' EP

I think I might at last be beginning to get Yo La Tengo. For ages the terms they're spoken about by the indielligensia had baffled me. Now the lead track of this EP might have helped me to understand. A reworked version of a song from their last LP Summer Sun, 'Today Is The Day!' is gloriously fuzzy - listening to it makes you feel like you've taken a load of tranquillisers and you're sinking into a warm bath. It also gives me the chance to mention Urusei Yatsura - incidentally, in connection with the post below, another fine Glaswegian band, only this time undervalued underachievers.

Razorlight - 'Rip It Up' (single)

If The Libertines listened to a lot of Television and were ever clean enough to record a song without everything going to pieces on tape (see Up The Bracket...), then it might well sound like this. In the meantime, I'll take Razorlight. And it doesn't bear thinking about what Bernard bloody Butler might do to Pete 'n' Carl.

Stellastarr* - 'Jenny' (single)

Alert! The following statement is akin to alt-rock heresy! But, as with Yo La Tengo, I've never quite understood what all the fuss about The Pixies was. After all, aside from a handful of classics early on, isn't their most acclaimed LP Doolittle rather weak? Yeah, OK, shoot me now. Anyway, the point is that Stellastarr* sound a lot like them, and to these ears it's not really that impressive. Although the single itself has the same sort of structure and sound as 'The Wagon' by Dinosaur Jr, it all seems a bit lifeless and, for reasons I can't explain (I mean, I'm a connoisseur of Kim Gordon's vocal "style"...), I can't abide Shawn Christensen's voice. Somehow live it didn't come across as being half so irritating.