Charlotte Hatherley: Alexander (Little Sister)

It must be difficult attempting to stand out as a female singer/songwriter at the moment, what with Flo Mo stealing the limelight and La Roux and Lady GaGa jostling for position. Taken from her album New Worlds, Alexander has soft plucked guitars, pure ethereal sounding vocals, light tinkling keyboards and a chorus which packs a bit of a punch too. It’s lovely. But that’s just it, you think, “ah, isn’t this lovely”, but then it’s forgotten too easily. A failing which I suspect the rest of her album may fall foul to.

Lostprophets: End Of The World (Visible Noise)

Now I’ve never put myself in the ‘fan’ category of this bunch of Welsh grizzlies. And whilst there’s nothing essentially wrong with the way this track kicks off in its own dirty rock club dancefloor riff way, there’s nothing essentially right with it either. The shouted frat-style “It’s not the end of the world now baby” chorus is just woeful and dated and then there’s a dodgy guitar solo half the way through, plus the rest of it… I mean, is it just me or is this the same track Lostprophets have been releasing since 2000?

Kill It Kid: Heaven Never Seemed So Close (One Little Indian)

The sliding guitars, clapped beats, loud and raucous country-influenced vocals should be about as palatable as salty porridge, but at the start for some unknown reason you start thinking, “no hold on, give it a chance”. But the screechy female harmony, violins and thigh slapping all get a bit much and suddenly the layers and layers of messy instruments and lyrics get upsetting.

Zico Chain: These Birds Will Kill Us All (Degenerate Music)

There’s no light at the tunnel yet kids. This half screamed/half sang wrist slitting rock is all a bit much. I’m sure a lot of people understand the whole vocal chord-stripping thrash genre, but I don’t and I’ll put a disclaimer here for that reason. To me, this is the musical talent equivalent of papering over old crumbling plasterwork to avoid it falling off the walls, instead of just re-plastering the lot. A big fat wall of noise slapped over the top may hide the lack of quality, but sooner or later it’ll become glaringly obvious. Even if its years down the line when someone picks up the CD/decides to rip the wallpaper off and cries, “Oh God what the hell is this I’ve just found?!”

Johnny Foreigner: Criminals (Best Before)

Ah Johnny Foreigner you shine like a diamond in the rough, showing that heavy (ish) doesn’t have to mean Strepsils, gargled TCP and a desperate hunt for a melody. This has all the JF hallmarks – double tapped and insistent guitars, bashed out vicious drum beats, clever pass the parcel style harmonised lyrics and a clever tail of a town which becomes so infiltrated by criminals that it sells itself out and loses its lively club scene. This feels like their most coherent offering to date and bodes well for the next album.