Alexi Murdoch - Some Day Soon, out March 14th

This is a little different from our usual posts - the video below is a live performance - but it's worth bending the rules from time to time. Alexi Murdoch's appearance at New York's The Mercury Lounge on February 7th is hopefully not the last we'll hear of this guy.

Some Day Soon, the song performed here, is released as a single on March 14th, while Murdoch's album Towards the Sun offers more astonishingly simple music which continues the back-to-basics trend that saw Mumford & Sons claim Best Album at this year's Brits.

Love it or hate it, this kind of thing is gathering momentum in the face of over-produced, manufactured pop. I actually love both, so it'll be interesting to see what happens in the months to come...

Wye Oak - Civilian, out March 7th

If you're eagerly awaiting the March 7th release of Civilian, the new album from Wye Oak, we have a sneak preview for you. This is an acoustic performance of the haunting title track, which cuts to the very core of the album's themes of aloneness and letting go. Take a look at the video below and crank up your excitement about the impending release of Civilian by one more notch.


For more about the album itself, check out our full review here.

80s Movies: Week 4

Our month-long special look back at some of the greatest movies of the 80s comes to a close, but there's still time for a carousel of the past seven days' cinematic heroes, if you've got a spare fiver burning a hole in your Amazon account...

80s Movies: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

It's the end of the road for this month's 80s movies series... and we're rounding things off with a sequel, which is a little out of character. It's a good one though, as we're ending with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

There are inevitable comparisons between Star Trek and Star Wars. I've always been more of a Trekker - I really don't like Star Wars at all. Sorry about that. But it's worth noting the importance of Wrath of Khan in the history of Star Trek.

Where the first Star Wars trilogy stands as a single entity now - albeit with the benefit of hindsight - the Star Trek movies were never so cohesive. The show and its big-screen spin-offs have always been primarily a series of separate stories, rather than being split into chapters or volumes.

In Star Trek II, however, we have the first in a three-film story arc that remains probably the biggest tale the Star Trek world has ever told without distraction or interruption.

80s Movies: Gremlins (1984)

Gremlins is yet another fine example of a standalone 80s movie. Sure, they made The New Batch in 1990, but that wasn't planned from the outset. Gremlins was never the 'first' film in a franchise (as far as I know) - it was just a one-off, cute comedy-horror movie.

It stars Gizmo, the wide-eyed mogwai who pretty much personifies the concept of Pandora's Box, along with his human friends, Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates, who play Billy and Kate. This is Gizmo's show though, along with the eponymous Gremlins who later emerge - the humans are basically cattle waiting to be slaughtered.

This movie pushes slapstick to its acceptable limits - if it's Christmas and the protagonists are puppets, is it OK to fire an old lady through her own skylight on an overclocked stairlift? The answer, happily, is yes. I was one when Gremlins was released so can't have been more than four or five the first time I watched it on TV. I don't remember ever actually being scared of the Gremlins - but then, I may have been too busy thinking Gizmo was awesome.

Dragon Age 2 - Preview

Though sadly unlikely to reach the heights of the original Baldurs Gate, at least in my head (hey I was 13 when it came out and it blew my mind), a new Dragon Age game is the next best thing in my gaming world. I spent something like 90 hours game time on Origins, and actually, I haven't even completed it yet (must get round to that).

In any case this sequel promises to be even more epic, more exciting, more challenging, and looking at the concept art even more beautiful than the first. The full game doesn't drop until March 11th, but I have played the PC demo which Bioware posted online this week, and very encouraging it is too.


The demo lets you play through the prologue, and will probably take you around an hour to complete. Your reward if you do so is a free (virtual) sword, and if the demo gets 1 million total downloads Bioware will release another two extra in game items.

Let's Dance for Comic Relief 2011

Let's Dance for Comic Relief 2011 pitted a whole new cohort of celebs against each other. The real question was, could anyone other than a male comedian in drag ever win this title? Robert Webb's Flashdance... What a Feeling won the 2009 series, Let's Dance for Sport Relief 2010 was won by Rufus Hound's Fight for This Love and Russell Kane proved a popular option in week one of the 2011 contest with his take on Beyonce's Crazy in Love.

Singles Round Up: Dum Dum Girls - He Gets Me High

So Adele stormed both the singles and album charts this week following her remarkable performance at the Brits, and it looks like she might well stay top again tomorrow. There are no big challenges to that dominance coming out this week, but there are a one or two very good smaller releases. Dum Dum Girls are our pick of the lot.

Dum Dum Girls - He Gets Me High
Dan: He Gets Me High is a 4 track EP in truth, but we'll treat it as a single here. The title track is a really nice piece of Spector-esque indie girl-pop, all swirly blustering guitars and sweet underlying melodies. Dee Dee's clear vocals have a very 80s sound to them, she's often been compared to Susana Hoffs of the Bangles, but she sounds a lot like Blondie on this track. Also on the EP is a cover of the Smiths classic There Is A Light That Never Goes Out.
» Dum Dum Girls on iTunes

80s Movies: Weird Science (1985)

If you watch just one 1985 teen sci-fi movie this year, make it Back to the Future. But if you've had enough of paradoxes and jigowatts and you'd much rather see Kelly LeBrock in her prime, watch Weird Science. She pretty much single-handedly carries this movie in the way that, for example, Liz Hurley doesn't quite manage to do in 2000's Bedazzled.

So much happens in Weird Science that it's hard to know quite what to say about it. This might be one of those movies that you just have to watch - otherwise it's like saying Ferris Bueller's Day Off is about him 'not going to school'. It just doesn't quite encapsulate the full story, does it?

Also, just the briefest of mentions here for Bill Paxton - a muchly undervalued actor who pops up in quite a few of my favourite movies (Twister, in particular) but is often given fairly one-dimensional characters. As Chet in Weird Science, he doesn't exactly buck that trend, but it's still fun to see him playing that numbskull role for which he's become so well known.

Dananananaykroyd - E Numbers

Bored on a Friday afternoon? Jump-start your weekend with a play-through of E Numbers, the new track from Dananananaykroyd. It's also a glimpse of what to expect from their upcoming second album, which any of you who bought debut effort Hey Everyone have no doubt been hotly anticipating.

It's a rowdy, high-energy affair, and borders dangerously close to that I'm-going-to-play-my-instrument-fast-and-loud type of music that I'm not totally enamoured with, but E Numbers manages to escape falling completely into that trap. Instead, there's a fine balance between the frenetic parts and those that are perhaps a little more carefully considered. Not a bad effort, by any means... your guess is as good as mine when it comes to the last 11 seconds though.