42 MusicWeek 30.03.12
PRODUCTRECOMMENDED ALBUM OF THE WEEK
www.musicweek.com
TRACK OF THE WEEK
NICKI MINAJ Pink Friday:
Roman Reloaded (Cash Money/Island)
CARLY RAE JEPSEN Call Me Maybe
Nicki Minaj’s statistics are highly impressive: debut LP Pink Friday went multi-platinum, sold 3 million and includes the most charted singles by any female rap album in Billboard history. She sold more than a million singles in the UK and has clocked up over a billion aggregated online video views. Add to that 15 million Facebook likes and 10 million Twitter followers. Her second album is a highly-anticipated hip-pop hit in the
making with a whopping 19-track standard edition and 22-track deluxe edition. At the time of writing she has two singles in the top 10 of The
Official UK Chart – her own Starships and the David Guetta- created Turn Me On. Following support slots with Cash Money labelmate Lil Wayne
April 2 INCOMING ALBUMS
MAC MILLER Blue Slide Park (Island) Pittsburgh native Malcolm ‘Mac Miller’ McCormick is one of the most popular young
emcee’s of the moment. Named after the food store where Mac once worked, the album’s lead single track Frick Park Market has racked up 18 million YouTube views and is taken from the No.1 US debut album Blue Slide Park that will reach the UK in May. Miller was signed independently to
Rostrum Records (also home to Wiz Khalifa) in 2011 and Blue Slide Park became the first independently distributed debut album to top the US charts in 15 years. The 20-year-old has been selling out shows across the US and Europe, which included a sell-out Shepherds Bush Empire gig last year. He will return to the UK in May for the European stretch of his Blue Slide Park Tour.
HONEY RYDER Marley’s Chains (Oceanic Music/EMI) British music trio Honey Ryder are Lindsay O’Mahony (lead vocals), Jason Huxley (guitar)
and Matthew Bishop (guitar). They self- released debut album Rising Up in 2009 to widespread critical acclaim, spawned two Top 40 UK singles and supported Will Young on a 19-date UK arena tour. Their second album’s title track is set
for release on April 30 and has already been signed up by hit US TV series Body Of Proof that will air throughout the US in April. It was co-written by lead singer Lindsay in Nashville with Emerson Hart, the frontman of multi-platinum selling, post-grunge group Tonic. The album has been described as
MAY 23
‘a pop record with its feet in folk and country that sounds both classic and contemporary’.
JULY 2
LEE RANALDO Between The Times And The Tides (Matador Records)
Ahead of its release, former Sonic Youth co-founder and American musician Lee
Ranaldo has made his new solo album available to stream in full at Drowned In Sound. This offering from the formerly-ranked
33rd Greatest Guitarist of All Time (by Rolling Stone in 2004) has been described as “rich and varied” by Q and “ethereal and magical” by Mojo. NME claimed the record contains ‘a wealth of rock gems that shine with a warm- hearted, Neil Young-like intensity’. This summer he will embark on a
European tour, stopping off at London’s Scala and Leeds’ Brudenell Social Club. Additionally he will appear at both Primavera Sound festival weekends in Barcelona and Porto.
and pop icon Britney Spears, and a guest slot alongside Madonna at the Super Bowl, Minaj will perform her own headline shows on UK shores in June in Manchester Birmingham and London.
April 22 (Schoolboy Records/Interscope)
This Canadian singer- songwriter is the first signing to Schoolboy Records – created by Scooter Braun that he runs with Justin Bieber. Call Me Maybe has been
No.1 in her native country for several weeks, has been certified double-platinum and at the time of writing is No.11 on the US iTunes chart. An unofficial video for the
song that features Bieber has racked up more than 22 million YouTube views and counting – the official video has some 4.5 million views. Jepsen may be a newcomer
in the US but is an established artist in Canada where she placed third on the fifth season of Canadian Idol.
STAFF PICK: ED MILLER, SENIOR DESIGNER
THE WEDDING PRESENT Valentina (Scopitones) Their ninth full-length studio album (though David Gedge’s
MARCH 26
discography stretches to an awful lot more than that), The Wedding Present have been belting out fast, furious and bittersweet indie laments for 25 years, give or take the seven years Gedge spent on side project, the equally bittersweet but less fast and furious Cinerama. Shorn of their classic line-up for quite some time, the Weddoes are essentially Gedge writ large and on Valentina, the core elements of love, heartbreak, acid-tongued asides (“You appall me… / okay, call me”) and kitchen-sink drama are all present and correct, together with the signature edgy guitars played to within an inch of
their lives. Valentina’s first offerings are You’re Dead and You Jane, feisty, immediate tracks that recall signature albums Bizarro and Seamonsters. Back A Bit… Stop!, Deer Caught In The Headlights and Stop Thief are classic Wedding Present sonic assaults where feedback is juxtaposed with gentler bassline arrangements, while the skittish The Girl From The DDR is a grower. Familiar, fun and entirely predictable, Valentina is nonetheless another winner from a
man who John Peel once said “wrote some of the best love songs of the rock‘n’roll era” and who encapsulates the aching bewilderment of heartbreak perhaps better than anybody since a youthful Morrissey. On this evidence, Gedge, even 25 years on, is still in love with love. And still in love with music. It’s a heady combination. OUT NOW
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52