Today's featured shit

Guess what? It’s an EP. “Grass Is Glowing” is up first and reminds me of a less-sassy Sahara Hotnights. That’s fine. Maybe they’re young still, like Smoosh, or Ciara. “What’s Going on in Your World” has a very British feel to it, like early Doors, only, of course, with female vocals.
“Applesweet” has more of an early 2000s feel, along the lines of The Softies or Heavenly. In fact, if you grab an old Pipettes track from before they signed with a major, they sounded like this too, compelte with organ. This is what I expected the whole album to sound like, but I’m not exactly disappointed. The other tracks are awesome as well.
“Sunshine in Space” takes it a step further with the keyboard and reminds me of the Icicles, although the singing rocks a little bit more. “Technicolor Electric” is more psychedelic than the others.
Musically, the tracks are on the simpler side. It’s one step from being polished, and that might be the point. All the ingredients are there, and you can’t help but root the band along. If they release a full-length next, you can bet that they’ll be putting it all together.

This is kind of a neat album. For those of you who didn’t know, Richey Edwards disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle in 1995, and Manic Street Preachers has been a fraction of its former self ever since (literally). Well, all the songs in this 13-track effort were written by Edwards. How does that happen? Well, in what was some awesome foreshadowing to the unaware, he left a book of poetry with the band’s bassist, Nicky Wire. To complete this bizarre situation, Edwards should now emerge from the shadows and sue, saying he never wanted the prose to see the light of day, let alone be made into a record.
So how does it sound? Like old Manic Street Preachers. Nothing here is a surprise. “Me and Stephen Hawking” is a good example of the fun that can be had on this album. I really like the guitar. It reminds me of what the Posies were doing back then.
I’m also a fan of “Marlon J.D.,” so much so that I wish it had its own page on Facebook. “Pretension/Repulsion” sounds like a Scorpions song. Really. “William’s Last Words” sounds like a Lou Reed song.

More Apple-and-now-Droid advertising music. Just like Chairlift, Orba Squara, Mozella and countless others, it’s the kind of cheery winter music you listen to because it’s too cold to go outside. It’s a dream come true that such music is so popular these days, and I am not looking forward to the “what were we thinking” mentality that will no doubt haunt us sometime next decade, the same way we reflect on emo today.
“What I Wouldn’t Do” and “New Heights” are about what you’d expect and are more fine renditions of this subgenre. “Blow Away” has a little more pep to it and perhaps shows some evolution. I guess it’s hard to say, because some would classify this all as Rilo Kiley retread, but like with anything you can get as granular as you want.
“Happier” sounds like an old Paula Cole song. That’s tragically unhip.
And it goes on. The songs all sound a little different but have the same underlying theme of iPod music. I’m very happy with this record because it stays in my comfort zone but still manages to skirt the edges of what I want to hear in an album. Cheers to them.