Singled out
Adele – ‘Cold Shoulder’
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Perhaps the only track on Adele’s debut album 19 that doesn’t tempt you to shout “Clear!” and reach for the defibrillators, this is nevertheless a fairly anaemic slab of white funk. You’d almost compare it to Jamiroquai, if you didn’t suspect it would represent a career high for the car-collecting buffoon. So, it’s an inoffensive mediocrity, featuring some soulful yelping from Tulse Hill’s golden girl and a beat that somehow escaped the jazz-funk cull of the mid-‘90s. We’re sure there was one.
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Watch video: Broadband
Hadouken! – ‘Declaration Of War’
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If it seems this bunch of ex-Leeds University students have been hanging around – in hoodies, presumably – on the fringes of the mainstream for the last year or so with their “grindie” (grime and indie, see) sound, that’s because they have. Now on a major label, and with their first album proper Music For An Accelerated Culture (remind you of any Klaxons or Prodigy album names?) ready for release, they’ve miraculously hit the button marked “proper song”. So the shouty vocals are still there, as are the Nintendo games samples, but this is a pure unadulterated pop song with – gasp – verses and choruses. Not sure the hardcore will like it, but we think it’s a rather tidy piece of electro-punk.
Watch video: Broadband
