This week on Stylus

Jeff Siegel writes about Broadcast's new LP Tender Buttons in a way that makes me keen to hear it - "On its surface, it seems like such a simple little curlicue, all Mother Goose coos, descending-scale melodies, and no-wave screech over dinky drum-machine patters. That's really it; no mucking around in different time signatures, no showy genre fusions, just a single idea, explored at every conceivable angle over the span of a full-length. It reads like a dearth of ideas, but sounds like the product of single-minded, laser-sighted focus. Most acts would falter here, but Broadcast pull it off with an easy grace and breezy elegance that belies its surface tension of noise vs. melody, and a lot of that has to do with the combination of its essentially aleatoric nature and its hypnotic sense of developed repetition".

I know of at least one other person who's got Tender Buttons and likes it (looking forward to reading a gig review, Mike - nudge nudge...)

Nick Southall gets to grips with albums from rising Brit jazz outfits Acoustic Ladyland and Polar Bear - "both fantastic records, easily two of the most enjoyable I’ve heard all year".

Acoustic Ladyland are playing the Bar Academy on 15th November - having seen them on 'Later With Jools Holland', I'm very tempted to go along.

And now for some acerbic single reviews...

Dom Passantino on The Go! Team's 'Bottle Rocket': "Because, you know, restraint sucks doesn't it? Can you imagine anyone in 2005 actually turning around and saying 'You know what? Considering how well the recording history of The Avalanches has held up, wouldn't it just be the 'bomb diggity' if there was an indie band version of them?'. Like one of those pizzas at the bottom of the takeaway leaflet that just appear to be the chef clearing out his cupboards of all his unwanted ingredients".

Alex Macpherson on Andy Bell's 'Crazy': "Distasteful and slightly unclean in exactly the same way as feeling someone's hand on your arse in a gay club and turning round to find not a buff young 19-year-old but a sweaty, balding fortysomething man with eyes crazed by desperation and a lifetime of too many poppers".

Of course, Dom's dead wrong about The Go! Team, but his review's so sharp it deserved to be reproduced...