More Track Reviews!

Shocking Pinks - Emily
The latest single from their self-titled DFA compilation based on their last two native released albums from these electronic New Zealanders, centred around Nick Harte, kicks off with a snare-drum dance beat and bass fuzzier than the Dulux dog. When Harte's shoegazey vocals drone in, the lyrics of love lost about a girl called, you guessed it, Emily, emanate over the scene. However, way too soon, but mercifully lacking a Westlife key change, the song finishes as abruptly as it started. B-side "Nothing Matters When We're Dancing" is an acoustic lullaby that aims as to be as impossibly glacial as Leonard Cohen, but still ends up somewhere above Newton Faulkner. Also better than the A-side is the Expanded Head Band version of album track "Cutout" which is as close to labelmates LCD Soundsystem as they venture.

Released 3rd March via DFA/EMI. From the album "Shocking Pinks", out now.

Does It Offend You, Yeah? - We Are Rockstars
With an album track called "Attack of The 60ft Lesbian Octopus", it's fair to say that these guys don't take themselves particularly seriously. Which is fortunate for this tongue-in-cheek titled single, released a week before their debut album You Have No Idea What You Are Getting Yourself Into drops on March 17th, which lurks somewhere between previous single "Let's Make Out" and fan favourite and album opener "Battle Royale", complete with Discovery-era Daft Punk vocal sampling. A messy noise of bleeps of ancient synthesizers, bangs of improvised percussion and a bassline which holds the whole thing together between the assumingly momentous live breaks. Sound something like Holy Fuck and Animal Collective if they got drunk together and recorded their stuff onto an answering machine.

So, pretty awesome then.

Released 10th March via Virgin. From the album "You Have No Idea What You Are Getting Yourself Into", released 17th March.