My first concert was a Westlife one. I even have a commemorative 2001 bean filled bear to remind me of the occasion. It wasn’t something cool like Arctic Monkeys or a hazy recollection of Greenday at my first Reading festival. I was a full-blown, annual Wembley-stadium-gig-attending Westlife fan until the age of 12. So you can imagine my distress when, in 2011, they announced it would all be over after a Greatest Hits album and farewell tour. What a way to go.

However, the boys haven’t completely slipped through the dazzling net of stardom. Nicky and Kian became celebrity C-Listers with the former’s performance on Strictly Come Dancing and the latter’s win on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here!

Alas, it has not been a happy ending for all. Frontman Shane announced almost immediately after the split that he was 18 million pounds bankrupt. But he’s bounced back with a solo career and appearance on X Factor, so there’s no stopping him now. That love for the music; sometimes you just can’t fight it.

It’s the third full-length release from experimental music project tUnE-yArDs, AKA Merrill Garbus. It’s a deliciously confusing and messy mixture of squeaky synths and world music drums.

From the dictaphone and GarageBand history of 2009’s BiRd-BrAiNs to the success of sophomore effort w h o k i l l in 2011, Garbus has never been one to shy away from exploring new sounds and layering them with commercial melodies. Nikki Nack is no exception.

On this record, Garbus drops the music completely on ‘Why Do We Dine On The Tots’, for a spoken interlude about Grandfather Lou and a Tupperware dish (and eating children.) Two tracks later, she’s deployed a pseudo R&B beat that quickly becomes overtaken by barking sound effect samples. It’s like listening to a vocoder wonderfully explode and the result being converted into a DJ set. It may not be catchy, but it’s certainly a party.

Yet, for the lack of obvious catchiness and powerful lyrical content to fill the gaps, Garbus tells us “we wouldn’t let them take our soil,” on ‘Left Behind’ in a defiant message amongst the musical madness. It’s high energy fun and fearlessness that is at the core of this record, but there’s no compromise on sophistication as a result.

It’s the question that’s been on everyone’s lips since the late nineties. We all know they got knocked down, but did they really get back up again? Did Chumbawamba’s ‘Tubthumping’ just get to number one with big chat? The answer is, as you’d expect, yes. They maintained their position on the ground through the noughties, then broke up.

That’s not to say they haven’t tried. They attempted to fight the inevitable “One Hit Wonder” label with a plethora of invisible records, but everyone seemed to forget Chumbawamba’s existence after about 2000. Naturally, they had their memories jogged in 2007 when the song featured on the Alvin and the Chipmunks video game. It was a seminal reemergence for the anarcho-punk band, to be rivalled only by UKIP’s use of the song at the 2011 party conference.

Sadly, it all came to an ‘official split’ end in 2012. It was a travesty, but luckily 2013 brought the release of In Memoriam: Margaret Thatcher, an EP ode to the great leader recorded in 2005 to be released upon her death. Rumour has it David Cameron ordered a copy back in ‘07.

For those of you who haven’t yet encountered Bo Ningen, let me present to you the (highly pretentious) opening line from their website’s bio page as an introduction: ‘Enlightenment activists from far east psychedelic underground’. Yeah.

Japanese-born but Hackney-based, they’re not ‘60s psychedelic’; more like a sometimes funky, sometimes punky metal band filled with noise and harsh vocals. In fact, the only quality that could qualify them for psychedelia is that they’re incredibly boring. Seemingly unable to decide upon exactly what type of music they want to play, on III they meander around the metal end of the musical spectrum, leaning towards prog, ultimately accomplishing little. They can’t sit still on any good idea they have, and most of the things they try out can be (and have been) done better. Pantera are funkier, Dream Theater are more interesting, and as far as inspired experimental metal goes, I really can’t recommend Thought Industry’s album Mods Carve the Pig too highly.

What you get on III is a lukewarm mixture of half-baked ideas, that goes on for way too long. If it was condensed to half the length, leaving less room for musical waffling, maybe it’d be a better listen. But it’s not, and I’m sure you’ve got better ways to spend an hour.

This is an album you can love. The Black Keys have occasionally felt like an NME band: musically weak, sunglasses indoors, happy to play to a crowd of twenty-five. However, Turn Blue feels like real music, like something you could reminisce to in your dotage. The problem is that Arctic Monkeys blew the roof off rock and roll this summer with AM, and it will now forever be nigh on impossible for guitar swindling bands of the ‘10s to match up. To The Black Keys’ credit, the opening three tracks of Turn Blue manage to resuscitate the in-the-room feel of a Hendrix album: there are accidental twitches of imperfection, subtle fault-lines in his voice.

The guitar solos feel spontaneous (a rarity), the deep bass is a welcome heaviness in the age of ukuleles, and the xylophone fl utters are suitably experimental. Even easy plodders like the second track ‘In Time’ have a real thud-in-the-stomach, a disturbing funk. Listen to either this second song

or ‘10 Lovers’ and sit still – I dare you. Perhaps Turn Blue’s greatest asset is its sheer confidence. There’s a pirate’s nonchalance all the way through, and you feel brilliantly talked-down to. The fi rst three songs demonstrate that you don’t need ‘Lonely Boy’ pace and ‘Gold On The Ceiling’ riff s to get your dance on; the ‘less is more’ cliché is really appropriate here. The bass line to ‘10 Lovers’ – despite being washed away by the irritating synth melody – is absolutely amazing.It suffers from ‘Foster The People Syndrome’, a terrible disease – clean and excellent bass lines are vomited-on by idiotic major chords or patronising synth riffs (as a reference, listen to Foster The People’s ‘Best Friend’ from their new album Supermodel, and compare the dire chorus with the excellent breakdown).

Yet, somehow, it unexpectedly, yet brilliantly works. The lyrics are fairly plain, and obviously derivative. Title track ‘Turn Blue’ features lines like, “when the music is done and all the lights are low” that lack originality, and make the duo feel more like an Arctic Monkeys tribute than ever. ‘‘Bullet in The Brain’ should be a killer, but the lyrics, ironically along with the title lack sophistication. But so what? You don’t sing along to this album: you dance around in your pants to it.

So you may well ask, who are these orange, topless, tools with the peroxide hair and shitty ink? The answer, dear friends, is Crazy Town, of ‘Butterfly’ fame. “Come my lady, come come ma lady, you ma butterfwy, suga, babey.” Now you remember! Yep, it’s them, that hideous off spring of the ‘rapmetal’ genre, a time in the 2000s everyone would rather forget. Crazy Town, formed by Bret Mazur and Seth Binzer, shot to fame after supporting the Red Hot Chilli Peppers on tour. However, they split up after the largely unsuccessful release of their second album, Darkhorse.

The band announced in 2007 that they were working on a new album creatively entitled ‘Crazy Town is Back’, but alas, the record has never come to fruition. 2010 saw the band play SRH FEST 2010, where they debuted new track ‘Come Inside’. They didn’t specify to where. One might have hoped this would be the end of Crazy Town, but in 2013 they announced a new album, The Brimstone Sluggers, was in the works, and released a free download single called ‘Lemonface’. Perhaps ‘Orangeface’ would have been a more apt title.

Since forming in Maghull, Liverpool in 1978, the New Wave veterans have had their fair share of ups and downs, including the death of their drummer Pete de Freitas in 1988. They are now reduced to just two members of their original line up: lead singer Ian McCulloch and guitarist Will Sergeant. The eponymous opening track of Meteorites atmospherically opens with the line “Hope, where is the hope in me?”.

Reflection and melancholy appears to be the premise to the album, as demonstrated by its opening song, but the band’s characteristic brand of new wave rock and neo-psychadellica (epitomised in their 1984 hit “The Killing Moon”) is also evident. “Constantinople” avoids what could have been a patronising, cliched guitar riff with eastern influences by adopting the characteristic heavy feedback and trance-like reverb. “It’s so Cold in Constantinople” – a theme seems to be forming here, and is perhaps a little to intense for what should, in some ways, a more enthusiastic return to the studio for the first time since 2009.

Fortunately, the run of self pity is brought to an end with “This Is A Breakdown” where a key change and the repeated lyrics “I don’t think so” ensure that the the rest of the album takes a more positive direction. “Holy Moses”, a track basking in anthemic glory, introduces a more biblical theme which is developed more closely by “Grapes Upon The Vine”: “The devil in you, The devil’s in you” is bittersweetly juxtaposed with upbeat strings. Things take a dramatic turn with “Lovers on the Run” and its acoustic melodies treading the boundary between hope and regret, while “Burn It Down” and “Explosions” have the air of being straight out of the britpop era. The crooning “No survivors will be found” in “Market Town” instead employs lyrics to convey the same characteristically melancholic themes with relative simplicity. The closing track, “New Horizons” goes full circle and is more slow and reflective while sounding altogether more hopeful.

The layered vocals consisting of a low growl and higher pitches along with more upbeat orchestral tones present an ethereal darker presence below the surface of the songs. And this makes it all the more profound.

It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for. The Streisand of our generation, the great Cher Lloyd, has released a follow up to 2011’s Sticks + Stones. Cher Lloyd would probably be a better fit for the Where Are They Now? column than a weekly review. Her career was launched off the back of coming fourth on X Factor and a track called ‘Swagger Jagger’ that had literally everything sonic and visual that it is possible to despise in ‘10s music. But on Sorry I’m Late, Lloyd has tried to reinvent herself by swapping ship-sinking bling and ASDA for black blazers and Sainsbury’s Taste The Difference (it’s not quite Waitrose). 

Opener ‘Just Be Mine’ features a wailing “uh huh ahh” that is so autotuned it sounds like a pink Dell laptop having an orgasm, but it’s undeniably catchy, in a sort of middle-of-the-road, I-really-don’t-want-to-like-this-but-I’m-finding-myself-singing-along kind of way. Unfortunately, any enthusiasm, enjoyment or belief one might have originally felt for the album has well and truly died by track three, ‘I Wish (feat. T.I)’. Ballad ‘Sirens’ is a wishy washy attempt to create something heartfelt, but the dull and predictable melody make you switch off within the first minute. Sorry I’m Late may be a definite step up from Sticks + Stones, but I can’t help thinking that ASDA swag Lloyd was more entertaining.

Take this album out of my computer’s shitty speakers and put it on in Babylove Club on full blast, pronto. Hercules and Love Affair’s new album, The Feast of the Broken Heart, may be a bit of a mouthful, but it’s one of the best toe-tapping provokers we’ve had all year, with irresistible beats, and the right measure of disco deliciousness to be effortlessly enjoyable without stinking of the cheese floor. Oh, and it’s accompanied by some banging animated looping pictures of broken hearts, cocktails and pink boom-boxes that look like they’ve been drawn by Nick Sharratt for The Story of Tracy Beaker TV show.

The Feast of the Broken Heart opens on ‘Hercules Theme 2014’ with a heavily vocoded voice spelling out the letters of the artist, getting wound up in a mess of layers over the steady, synthy bass beat. A falsetto, nasal voice cuts in to repeat the words in full. It’s followed by a message to “let yourself be” on ‘My Offence (feat. Krystle Warren)’, and the sound of games whistles as bananas fl y from the screen animations. Piano loops intermingle with synth riffs, vocal top layers, and consistent, tinny beats. Hercules and Love Affair, AKA New York DJ Andy Butler, has created something that’s not technically brilliant, but bloody good fun.

Alex Zhang Hungtai handles every aspect of his music project Dirty Beaches: performance, production and even PR. Born in Taiwan and raised in Canada, he has spent the past decade releasing a mixture of EPs and full length albums. “The best cities are where you can hone your craft and work minimum hours per week, Iike Montreal, Berlin, and Lisbon” he says, commenting on his own wanderlust. “They are all different and bring forth different qualities in me as a person”. Having joined his first band at 19, he started Dirty Beaches “probably around age 25, after I quit working in real estate”, although it only became a full-time job in 2011 when he was able to support himself. “It requires a lot of backing, and dedication and passion, to sustain itself as an operation,” he says, regarding his decision to run an entirely independent operation. “But I’m not in a hurry, I’m slowly learning the ins and outs of the business, but there are many things waiting to be learned.”

Dirty Beaches’ signature sound is quite unlike anything else. The characteristic combination of loops, samples, distortion and guitar riffs is an experience in itself. And it is an experience which is meticulously crafted – “A lot of research goes into the albums,” he laughs, “anything from fi lm to dance, personal experience, literature, life and love”, but his live performances are “like a revolving evolution that change with time, and have to be sharpened and maintained”, while the records “a frozen documentation much like the idea of a time capsule that is set in stone”. His influences are similarly drawn from a diverse pool – “Films and auteurs have the capability of creating a world in which viewers can dive into. I find that aspect very inspiring.”

Profound indeed for a musician who has a reputation for not caring about perceptions or pretence. “It’s as important as you let it be,” he says when I ask him about the importance of image. “It’s man made, so it can be sculpted. It’s important to remember that when constructing one’s image to remain human. Aesthetics are just like fashion, they are the surface. They all expire over time. Not everyone looks good in a leather jacket, it’s the man that makes the jacket. A snake might shed its skin, but it will always be a snake.” As well as his sophistic insights into essence over superficiality, he doesn’t mind other artists imitating him. “They say imitation is the best form of flattery: what other people do is not my business, and I have no right to judge them, as I’ve imitated other artists before me.” However, regarding DRM, he says that while he wants things to be as open as possible, there is a fine line, citing a fan who had crossed the line by “improving” one of his tracks.

It is his nonchalance, genuine character, and honesty about his past and future which mark him out. “For people like us sent away as kids overseas, the idea of a country can seem severely distorted, outdated even. I’m learning more and more of my own culture and history as I grow. I hope to make films one day, or just write film scores as a living, to be a loving husband and father, son, brother, friend to the people I love, and to support them. I’m not too greedy, that’s all I want in life.”