This week we introduce our new weekly column of reviews, please welcome to the Strictly team Joe Hill. No need to clap, Okay please clap and high five the computer screen.

All the latest releases, as well as the old school worth a listen to albums from the acts playing this years Reading and Leeds. Joe is our man.

 Blast from the past

2 many djs – As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2 (2002)

The Dewaele brothers might just be Belgium’s greatest contribution to pop culture since Tintin and breakfast waffles. It’s anyone’s guess as to how they haven’t already collapsed under the weight of their own schedule. They’ve been touring, both as dance-rock duo Soulwax and bastard-pop cut-n-paste collective 2 many djs, almost non-stop since 2005; still, though it’s hard to see how they can keep up with this lifestyle without developing narcolepsy, it doesn’t take a genius to see why they’re so in demand.
‘As Heard on Radio Soulwax pt. 2‘, their only official release under the 2manydjs moniker, is not only one of the most party-ready records on the market, it’s also superbly creative. Pretty much the whole concept of “bastard-pop” is layering one or more songs over another, an idea that, on paper, might sound overly simple and unremarkable to the uninitiated. Even so, they found a way to make it, not only work, but practically explode off the disc. Who would have thought that a prog-rock cover of ‘Peter Gunn’ was a perfect match for an a cappella version of  Basement Jaxx’s ‘Where’s Your Head At’? Largely intact snippets of pop songs – old and new, well-known and obscure, timeless and disposable – are blitzed together, bending the logic of good taste to breaking point, but it’s far greater than the sum of its parts.
I’ve tried to slip this on the stereo at every party I can and it never fails to turn heads and move feet. The debatable highlight is the Sid and Nancy pairing of The Stooges’ ‘No Fun’ (a grumpy hymn to sexual frustration) and Salt N Pepa’s ‘Push It’ (effectively the battle-cry of women on the pull). While it’s an enormously fun and unusually interesting record, it’s even more noteworthy due to the fact that the most impressive thing about it isn’t the ingredients that go into it, it’s the glue holding them all together [4/5]

Beady Eye – Different Gear, Still Speeding

Yo-yoing between blood lust and brotherly love, the Gallagher’s‘ instability had become so predictable that hearing that they were refusing to work together, for me at least, was like hearing about the cancellation of a long-running sitcom that I got bored of watching years ago. Even so, one thing few people saw coming was Liam getting his own side-project off the ground before Noel. Beady Eye consists every member of Oasis at the time of the split – bar Noel – and barely before it had got off the ground, Liam set up a soapbox on the top of a pyramid of high horses to declare that it was brilliant; so brilliant in fact that he claimed that people will be naming their children “Beady Eye” before the end of the year (that’s not some lame joke, he actually did say that).
I almost wanted it to be possible that Liam would somehow turn out to be some deceptively brilliant (but still obnoxious) songwriter who hadn’t been allowed to show his flare because of Noel hogging the limelight. Unfortunately, this is more Oasis… but not as good. The songs are frustratingly formulaic; it’s as if they wrote them with the sole intention that they be sung by a crowd holding aloft cans of Stella. It sounds compressed, wafer-thin and even less original than the bands who are actually branded Oasis imitators. Lead-off single ‘The Roller’ is the archetype of a sneery Brit-pop throwback, oblivious to the fact that the glory days are behind it. Perhaps the worst offender though is the six-and-a-half-minute ‘Wigwam’ which tries to make some euphoric epiphany anthem in the vein of Elbow’s ‘One Day Like This’, but is so devoid of passion, originality and enthusiasm it makes every Keanu Reeves performance look practically hysterical by comparison. Its saving grace is unfortunately the shortest track: ‘For Anyone’ is actually a really great short-n-sweet pop song that temporarily does away with the boring caricatures that have, up until then, been the order of the day and instead doesn’t try too hard or pretend to care too little.
You could argue that it’s quite nice being a fan of a notoriously unpleasant artist. It gives you the opportunity to say to people “Yeah, he/she may be like that but listen to this great stuff he/she’s made!” Unfortunately though, this time, the haters take home the bragging rights, due to the fact that Gallagher Jr. and co have churned out a record so shallow and generic it’d still be hard to enjoy if it spat out fivers every time you sat through it [2/5]

                  Seasick Steve – You Can’t Teach an Old Dog New Tricks

I’m not even sure that Seasick Steve actually knows that he’s famous. He plays festival after festival, sells album after album, and yet he still talks to the crowd as if he’s sitting in a pub and dresses like the truck-stop jumble sale. He’s probably the most defiantly down-to-earth person in music (which, to be fair, isn’t the most difficult title to attain). His records sound at once cleaner and grimier than other blues-rock peddlers; the production is thickly-layered and muscular, but his voice and his roughly-sewn guitar lines are pure grit.
His latest record ‘You Can’t Teach An Old Dog New Tricks’ is less murky than his previous full-length album ‘Man From Another Time’; the straight-up rockers are more of the same (really damn good) but the record really stands apart when it digs under its seemingly armoured skin. The opener ‘Treasures’ starts with Steve letting out a deep breath that makes everyone listening hold theirs, then snakes into one of the most earnest and tender songs he’s written. Elsewhere you’ll find more of his desperately infectious rock songs (the title track, ‘Back In The Doghouse’) semi-acoustic ditties to women and beverages (‘Don’t Know Why She Love Me But She Do’, ‘Whiskey Ballad’) and unpretentious love-songs (‘Underneath a Blue and Cloudless Sky’, featuring the line “I’ll be there when your hair turns grey” which, strangely enough, seems like one of the most sincere ways of saying “I love you”). Calling your record “You Can’t Teach an Old Dog New Tricks” is a bit like saying “rest assured, it’s more of the same”, but this record runs deeper than anything he’s made in quite a while. While it’s less earthy and slightly more polished than ‘Man From Another Time’, in terms of song writing, this is up here with his very best. Maybe he’s not learning new tricks, but he’s certainly doing the old ones in new ways [4/5]