The Whole Night Through

Kelley Polar, "Here In The Night" - It's really going to be a shame when the general buying public ends up passing over Kelley Polar's debut album Love Songs of the Hanging Gardens, but sometimes the world can just be a bitch to some music that really does deserve better. Probably the most conspicuous strike going against Polar's album has to be that it's, well, an album; the stormdrain of history is clogged with the corpses of a thousand beautifully-executed vaguely-dance-and-electronic-in-equal-measured albums, their major sin simply being an inability to demonstrate their usefulness (or in other words, it's not an accident that Erlend Oye rose to prominence on the basis of a mix CD). It's also worth pointing out that, for an album produced by Morgan Geist that puts the day's leading disco cellist front and center, this album probably won't scratch your itch for nu Metro Area or Arthur Russell hottness; it is a pop album in the same way that Off The Wall was a disco album, by which I mean "only intellectually". And worst of all, that's what makes it so fascinating. The best parts of Love Songs of the Hanging Gardens tend to be aimed squarely at the floor with a glorious lack of regard for subtlety, be it the drums' invigorating crispness on "Tyurangalila", the Timberlake-worthy stutterbeat on "Ashamed Of Myself", or for FUCK'S sake, the handclaps on "Here In The Night", which are so charmingly aneimic that I'm willing to admit to the whole world that I clap along in my car (and that are so perfectly cocksure that they always make me think the spiraling cello outro goes with another song). Maybe it's best sold as the other side of the Arular coin, an album for people who love to hear musicians fetishize stuff that's as non-wild-and-crazy as Maya's was wild-and-crazy. Of course, Arular sold about twenty copies (and I know ten of the people who bought 'em), so there you go I guess. (Click here to buy Love Songs of the Hanging Gardens from Environ Records)

Tiga, "Far From Home" - Ultimately, I think the unavoidable thing about Tiga's album is that nothing on it can possibly be as ceaslessly entertaining as the album's title. I actually don't mean that as a put-down; the album may not be setting my world on fire (I'd call it a gentleman's three-out-of-five, a grade I'd give to more albums put out by Those Paul Epworth Bands than you might think), but some of the tracks sure are, "Far From Home" first among them. It reminds me a lot of all those songs on the Scissor Sisters' album like "Tits On The Radio" or "Lovers In The Backseat", songs that definitely had their merits but couldn't possibly hope to compete against absolute monsters like "Comfortably Numb" or "Better Luck". I guess that'd make it pretty ironic if this song got crushed under the weight of the album's title, but then again that's why most people don't completely seriously name their album "Sexor". ("Sexor" is unavailble for preorder at the moment, but you can order the single for "You Gonna Want Me", the album's lead single featuring the Scissor Sisters' Jake Shears, conveniently enough, from Amazon.co.uk by clicking here)