My mind starts to go

Speaking of songs that make sense after a week of driving around and lying on the beach...



Before I left, I was one of those people complaining about the auto-tuning that makes the words in the chorus of Alex Gardner's new single "Feeling Fine" incomprehensible. The highly processed sound was a sudden shift from the "Xenomania does singer-songwriter with some synths" of before and hid what many saw as Alex's main asset, his soulful voice. Don't summer singles largely live and die on the ability of a group of people to sing along with them? It's impossible to do that here--well, impossible to do in unison outside of a phrase here and there, since we're probably all just making up our own words to go along with three-fourths of the chorus.

A few days of lakeside towel residence bookended by drives past empty fields and creatively named fishing shops has a way of doing funny things to your music perception, though. A song that previously seemed like the throwing away of a vitally important second chance for a struggling singer to establish himself suddenly becomes the song that makes you wish your increasingly sand-filled headphones hadn't become so tinny that using them is like listening to a thirty-year-old cassette recording of a song's radio debut. Blame the sun, blame the company, blame your cliché-filled brain--but in the end, you can't even blame the great quicktalking middle eight for your newly developed love of the song: that chorus, that darn gibberish-filled robotic chorus, has managed to burrow its way into your brain and, like the sand that a week later seems to have also found its way into every corner of your suitcase, refuses to disappear.

British singer Alex Gardner's second single "Feeling Fine" is released in the UK on September 27 and should eventually be available for purchase here (physical).

Give you love in America

Twitter-worthy newsbites, some of which actually have appeared on Twitter:

EDITED! Clips Full versions (I'm listening to them as I write this) of several Le Kid songs previously unheard by everyone outside of a select few--"Escape," "America," and "We Are The Drums"--are streaming here full versions here (as well as one full new song, "Seventeen"). The poppy technicolor Swedish group's upcoming debut album is one to watch out for in a big way this year. These new songs are...dreamier than I expected, but in a good way. My guess is these are still demos, but they could very well be the final versions. In other Le Kid news, it looks like "Mercy Mercy" was at some point set for a release late this past December but then canceled--pushed back, I presume. Embedded below are the lovely clips of "Escape" and "America," which I cannot wait to buy and hear in their full versions (edit: you can stream the full versions here, as I said above); in terms of music tone, they kind of remind me of Gwen Stefani's "Cool" and the restrained disco princess side of Kylie, mixed with the best parts of the radio edit of MissMatch's "Breathe In Breathe Out" (which members of the group wrote). Edit: I couldn't help myself--I'm also embedding the clip of the somewhat spunkier "We Are The Drums." The verses kind of have a RedOne-meets-the-Ting-Tings feel, but the song is much better than that makes it sound. Could summer get here quickly, please?

"Escape" (it sounds like this cuts out just before the song fully takes off)



"America"



"We Are The Drums"


(If you haven't listened to swooshy, harder-hitting dance-pop "Telephone" or summery "Mercy Mercy" yet, this is definitely the time to do so.)

Via the latest issue of QX (via in turn Schlagerprofilerna), Linda Bengtzing's upcoming single "Victorious" is a Melodifestival reject and features Velvet. To be honest, as "oh my gosh, Swedish pop princesses colliding!" as that news is, I'd kind of prefer an all-Linda single, but that's just being picky.

As covered by Planet Salem, Chart Rigger, and Scandipop, I'm enjoying Staygold's new single "Backseat Love." The Prince-reminiscent song mainly features vocals from future Melodifestival contestant Salem al Fakir (disguised and under the alias Damien Adore), but in the live performance at the P3 Guld Awards, Robyn stepped in to provide the female vocals usually done by Lady Tigra.



We've finally heard a couple of songs from the reformed-and-featuring-in-a-reality-TV-series Swedish girl group Play. Modern sounding pop, insistent single "Famous" and its sparkly b-side "Girls" have caught my ear, although we'll see if they have lasting power; the problem with much of the output of Janet Leon (one of the artists featured in last year's season of said show) was that, though it took its leads from where pop is at now, many of the songs sounded anonymous over the long run.

In belated news, I've only just noticed that "DESTROY! DESTROY!", just possibly Swedish group DYNO's best song from what we've heard so far, is streaming in a quality better than what you can hear at MySpace over on their Facebook page, accessible whether or not you have an account. Synthy pop-rock that is very much worth your time on every level. Go over the #1 Hits From Another Planet to hear "Above & Beyond."

Speaking of synths, Xenomania-backed British singer Alex Gardner debuted the soulful singer-songwriter over synths sound via the full version of his debut single "I'm Not Mad" getting played on the radio recently; check out Xenomania News for instructions on listening to it or here for a clip. I've been a bit nervous about this project living up to this potential and now find myself in the strange situation of feeling unsure that "I'm Not Mad" is all I wanted it to be while simultaneously playing it much more than I expected. I've been wondering recently if Xenomania's output in the past year or so has always succeeded as matching up a great instrumental to a great vocal part (with, in general, the instrumentals exceeding the vocal melody, but at least not really fitting together), and "I'm Not Mad" kind of enhances the differentiation even more. Still, the song has gone straight into frequent rotation on my iPod, so I must really like it.

There's a low quality recording of Nanne performing her new single "I Natt Är Jag Din" here. The song sounds to have the production style you'd expect from Nanne (flirting with electro-rock), but I'm still not totally convinced. Sanna Nielsen's mid-tempo Celine Dion-like "Devotion," meanwhile, is proving with time to be more enjoyable than my original "OK" rating would indicate. It could still use a better ending, though.