Another one of those bands that are getting the full benefit of the Radio 1 hype machine are Biffy Clyro. I’d never heard of them before Edith Bowman started ranting on about them incessantly.

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I found this track on YouTube a couple of months ago. Tin Pot Operation are a band from Belfast. I’ve known the lead singer, Anto O’Kane since back our university days, so it was a pleasant surprise to come across the band (and a bit weird seeing him in a music video!)

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Worried about Ray? The Hoosiers should be worried about their drummer – that’s one seriously dodgy moustache!

About the song: a large part of me wants to hate Worried About Ray. It’s irritatingly upbeat, the video’s hugely geeky and the lead singer, Irwin Sparkes, is extremely cheesy.

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Maximo Park seem to be having a great run of singles at the moment. They also seem to be the darlings of Radio 1, which never seems to hurt sales of their singles.

Girls Who Play Guitars is yet another song in the band’s winning streak. It’s an uptempo number with tight, punchy guitar and drums that punctuate the intro and verses. The choruses are relentless, the lyrics being beat into your head by a pounding snare drum.

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I hear Girls Aloud have a new single coming out called “Sexy No No No”. I could review that song. But I don’t want to.

Let’s go on a little journey into the annals of history and review Sound Of The Underground instead, their debut single. It was back in the heady days of 2002 when Girls Aloud won Popstars and released this just in time for Christmas.
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Welcome to the second carnival of music! Today’s carnival was a themed set. You could write about:

1. Reviews of records (singles or albums acceptable!)
2. Posts about unsigned bands, and
3. Tributes to artists you admire

Here we go….

Record Reviews

• Mark Rayner’s back. And he’s brought some more of those godawful album covers. You’ve got to wonder what store he gets his music from…
• Jon sent in his latest shotgun rock and metal reviews. Can’t say I’ve heard of any of the bands, but it would be nice to see some links to the bands’ MySpace/Virb/whatever pages so we can check them out. Whaddaya say Jon?
• This looks like it might be worth a listen – a collection of surf guitar tunes from back in the day. As reviewed by Richie.

Unsigned Artists

• This post from Adam Pieniazek falls into two categories, as it is a review of the self-titled debut album of Ronald Jenkees, an unsigned artist. Ronald has quickly become an internet phenomenon through his YouTube videos and has recently released an album after a lot of encouragement from his fans.

Tributes To Admired Artists

• This submission is from the suspiciously named Tom Jones with a set of mural tributes to the rapper Mac Dre found in San Francisco.
• New blog on the block, Daily Guitarist has a list of links to great guitar tablature resources. Needless to say, if you want to salute your favourite artist, the best way to do it is by mangling their songs on guitar. For extra back catalogue destruction, try singing at the same time…

You’d have to be blind lately to have missed the tabloid coverage over Amy Winehouse and her self-destructive behaviour.

I’m not sure what to make of it all: is Winehouse simply tabloid target of the month, of is there something deeper going on here? Part of the attraction of Amy Winehouse – both as a tabloid ‘character’ and a singer/songwriter – is her emotional turmoil. The heavy makeup and towering beehive seem to accentuate her bizarre persona.

However, the tabloids seem to take exceptional glee in watching Winehouse self-destruct – look at the cutting incident during an interview with Spin magazine. But if you look at the video of that footage, both Amy and her husband Blake seem to be laughing off the whole thing. So is the whole thing being blown out of all proportion? I think maybe so.

Maybe it’s that Amy’s style conjures up memories of an era where pop stars regularly became overwhelmed by fame and it was commonplace to find overdosed celebrities dead in their beds the next morning. But we’re living in a far more media-savvy generation. Is Amy:

• immune to the tabloid coverage
• more likely to act up to get more of this type of attention, or
• is she in serious danger of hurting herself (or someone else)?

I’m not pretending to know what the answers are in this case, but I do worry about this constant hounding of and artist by the same press that frequently decry the death of their “Princess Of Hearts” at the hands of the paparazzi. What do you think?

I wrote back in April about Stuart Revnell – an unsigned singer/songwriter from London who’s got a great pop rock sound.

Well, Stuart has released another song on his website and on MySpace. The new song is called Off My Mind. Having listened to Stuart’s other material, I can say for sure that Stuart has his own distinctive style.

Once again, in addition to writing and performing the song, Stuart engineered and produced it himself.

He has also – in his generosity – made the MP3 available on his personal website. If you loved Stuart’s material after my initial interview, you’re bound to enjoy this track.

One of the most hotly anticipated albums this year was Linkin Park’s latest, Minutes To Midnight. Tipped as a new direction for the band, there’s noticably less rapping from Shinoda. So, naturally, Chester Bennington features more prominently on this album.

Rather than doing a straight review, I’ve trawled the web to bring you some of the best reviews of the new album.

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Just for a change, I’m gonna review the live version of Kings Of Leon’s storming new single, Fans. And I’ll be putting on my novice hat again, because somehow I’ve been blissfully unaware of Kings Of Leon until lately…

Well, until this track, to be honest. But what a track! Fans has all the hallmarks of a classic.

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