Mumford & Lies

So what happens when Shout And Twist's favourite band of last year cover a song by Shout And Twist's eighth favourite band of last year? This is what...

DL –
Mumford & Sons 'Unfinished Business (White Lies cover)'

... Yeah They Were All Yellow

I may or may not be thieving a BBC headline here. And I don't even watch The Simpsons. But this is truly awesome...


DL –
Coldplay 'Yellow (The Alpha Remix)'

Album Of Last Month

Vampire Weekend 'Contra' (XL)

The trouble with assembling a great debut album is that ensuing the sell-out academy jaunts, afro-pop-enriching delirium and total sovereignty over untold end-of-year lists, the follow-up must be no less than equally significant. For NY's Vampire Weekend, anticipation is loftier than Burj Dubai - and they've only themselves to condemn.
Now, it should be warned that such distressing shivers of panic do present themselves following the first few spins. Nevertheless - and thank fuck there's a nevertheless - what originally sinks in as unsociable beat reggae and awkward blistering is in actuality newfangled Crispy M&M's pop cradling subtle nuances of utter indie sunniness, all of which happen to fashion 'Contra' into one of the year's very best efforts. Yes, already.
'White Sky' jounces like a Disney-up'd Carrie Bradshaw, all honeyed "aaaahhhhhhoooooooo"ing and Manhattan office observations. Frontman Ezra Koenig's fixation with the English speaker's syntax displays itself further in the instro-bolted friskiness of 'California English'. Though only he can make sense of his PDQ yammerings through 'Cousins' - but a euphonically advanced piece still and all. The twinkle-toeing 'Giving Up The Gun's plying of choristers to mark its end reminds you that 'Contra' is indeed a second album. And 'I Think Ur A Contra' - as they've saved the best 'til last - transmutes in character of Bright Eyes-era Conor Oberst attempting a Talking Heads chanty, with Koenig still talking the "You wanted friends with pools" but via a more "But I just wanted you" intimate anguish. Heck, it's as close to a love song these'll get.
See, 'Contra' so differs from 'Vampire Weekend' that it doesn't even feel like a sequel, yet it's so familiar that it just couldn't be anyone else. Squirrelly guitar lines and umpteen glitterati dissections of course, but this time they're even sweeter.

Best Track –
I Think Ur A Contra, though go to iTunes if you want it!

Hello, Goodbye, Hello?

Reality truly is smothering primetime television for all we know it more than ever these days. Heck, I catch up on most of my TV via my computer, yet it's still staggeringly tough to snub. I mean, Popstar to Operastar? What kind of schlemiel thought of that tosh? And what sort of schmuck at ITV1 cleared it?! Probably the same schmo that greenlit This Is David Gest, come to think of it.

So we've Operastar come Fridays, So You Think You Can Dance doing Saturdays and Dancing on Ice closing the weekend on Sundays - all while The X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing are off on their hols. Inordinate doesn't do it justice.

Still and all, this season's Celebrity Big Brother has been little less than tremendous. Its ample assortment of housemates, shrewd editing of its highlights and gosh-darn addictive viewing have jerked it right back to its glory days. Stephen Baldwin steadily converting Alex Reid to Christianity was about the best thing on British TV since David Brent went on a blind date.

With all that in mind, I'll be sorry to see CBB decamp. Well, until about 2014 when it returns in the company of next year's Strictly winner and an extra-disgraced Chris Brown.

DL –
Kanye West 'Big Brother'

We're In This Together

Football fans. AKA idiocy at its most idiotic. The lowest of the low. Well, the latter may be stretching it a smidgen, but as one who goes and sees his favourite team every other week (often even away from home), it's fair to say a good deal of these species are in actuality quite vomitous beings.

Namely, the 'supporters' of my club, Manchester United to the rest of the globe, often chant "murderers, murderers" to a local rival over their scandalous past. They throw homophobic remarks to the same rival's (straight) star striker. And they've wished death upon their own side's owner ever since he plunged them £600m in the red when he took over in 05.

Of course not all who visit Old Trafford are like this. I'm lucky enough not to sit in the Stretford End, where the lion's share of these putzes and their beer-noxious breaths are situated. "Glazers out, Glazers out", "We love United, we hate Glazer" and said-death rally explicit in actual slaying method reared their ugly tunes around the stadium last weekend. It was embarrassing at the very least.

Sure, recent reports of the club's economic woe are worrying. But Manchester United are Manchester United for a reason. Not only by way of their riches on the pitch, but as a business they are one of the best run corporations in the West.

They were once a public limited company, so someone was always gonna snap 'em up off the market. So that someone is a New Yorker and put them straight into a big fat debt in the process of acquisition. So in the first few years Manchester United win everything under the sun and bossman Sir Alex gets as much £ as he wants for improvements.

So into 2009 and the world's in financial meltdown, the Glazer family opt to pay off their debt by raising a 'bond' issue. And so it continues, United looking ahead to more success and more improvements if Fergie sees fit, still run on absolute stability.

Is playing the Grim Reaper to Mr Glazer really gonna file in harmony with this plan of financial restoration? Or is it gonna spawn total chaotic division a la Newcastle/Liverpool and fund the latter and co (and the press) with a nice bit of ammo?

"The danger, as I see it, is that we could be presented as being split which would be harmful and inaccurate because I believe the vast majority of Manchester United supporters are behind us," says Sir Alex. "That is what we are about - or at least what we should be about. We must remain loyal to the cause of Manchester United."

I don't wanna have to go to Old Trafford every other week and shut my ears to the ignorant, foolishness of the many thousands' sick little chants. I mean, I get that football fans as a specie won't change until civilisation itself grows up. But it'd be nice to believe that these morons are intelligent enough to realise that by accepting and getting behind the wholeness of Manchester United (including Mr Glazer), there will only be one winner.

DL –
Nine Inch Nails 'We're In This Together'