No Ten Out of Ten I'm Afraid... - #46 Paulo Nutini - Sunny Side Up

Right, here we go. Procrastination is no longer upon us. What is upon us is a hell of an effort to look at 15 albums by Monday.

First up... Scotland's very own Mr Nutini.

Now my main problem with this album is that Paulo seems to use up all of his fun-song making skills on track one. Now I've got no issues with getting things off to a 'flying start', which Ten Out of Ten certainly does, but it just seems that he gave us the wrong impression somewhat by starting things with such a fun, upbeat song.

And that's obviously not to take anything away from Ten Out of Ten. It's a great track. His vocals combine with the beat and the, in my opinion, criminally under used brass section to make a fantastic song to sing and dance along to. Have I got a video for you? Yeah, of course I have.

The thing is really about this album is that Paulo kind of lets himself down after that song. Almost all of the rest of the album is a disappointment after that track. Not quite all of it, but almost.

Pencil Full of Lead is another song that is absolutely jam-packed with fun and optimism. Our favourite Scot, well actually he's not mine, Frightened Rabbit are my favourite Scottish band, but here he just sounds happy about life in general. He has a pencil full of lead, and a whole host of other things that young men like.

After that though, I'm struggling to find many more tracks that I like. He might be a good looking young chap, and almost look as if Julian Casablanca's brother has escaped from a Strokes tribute band, but in my opinion, he has spoiled himself by popping these two fantastic tracks in.

Some of the other songs are that bad, but while music that isn't that bad is bearable, it doesn't make me want to miss some other fantastic act to take the time out to see Mr Nutini. If he wasn't billed so highly, I certainly would have considered it, but sorry Paulo, not this time. Maybe the next time I'm here, yes?

This wasn't very long was it? Sorry about that. Short, but not particuarly sweet.

Hopefully something a little more entertaining will be up next.

Special Guest Number Three - #45 Pendulum - In Silico

Morning all. So yesterday we had two entries on the challenge, and that's something that's going to have to run all the way up to the festival if I'm going to get this whole thing done.

With that in mind, I offered this album up to Twitter, see if I could get a guest reviewer to do it for me. Not being lazy, I just wanted someone who likes Pendulum to write it. So a big thanks goes to Paul Smiles find him on Twitter here for stepping forward and taking it on. 

Anyway, enough of me muttering on. Here we go...

When your first album is titled Hold Your Colour, it's a statement of intent and it bleeds dedication. Laying roots exclusively in the ever evolving animal that is drum and bass, Pendulum announced themselves to be people capible of rocking their beats.  

In May 2008 the band had the huge task of making the dreaded second album. When Pendulum were charged with task they chose not for adaptation but evolution. Taking their insane tempo and jaw breaking beats from their original album and force feeding it a blend of rock and symph. The name is a tip of the hat to Nirvana's In Utero. The hardcore amoung the fans may not look favouribly at the new offering but their inclination for change helped break them into a much bigger audiance and on release of their second single from In Silico which was aptly titled Propane Nightmares this is the perfect example of how the inlflux of a new sound can help the band produce a more refined record. 

Picked up and pimped from everything from movies to computer games the song shattered charts and people preconceptions on drum and bass. The songs now hard a guitar edge other than the heavy drum and bass, it allowed them onto festival stages to share their songs. 

The songs on this album are born festival winners. Fans get injected with energy and the music gets movement in even the most jaded of viewer.  Still present though on songs like Granite, Visions and The Other Side these songs still have in their DNA the origins of what brought them to the dance. These songs beats are so heavy with the right earphones you can do some serious damage. Its a true homage to their origins and shows that no matter how different hardcore fans believe the second album to be its still a drum and bass record. 

The album starts at a blistering pace with opeing track Showdown as the track starts one can be forgiven to think it isnt a simple extension of the first album. Fast and relentless we only catch breath at track 5 which is Midnight Runner only to be hammered all the way until the final track The Tempest. All tracks have incredible tempo and even the "slow" songs are not that slow.

Propane Nightmares is the jewel in the crown and is incredible live(trust me) it reached number 9 in the UK top 40 and the album scaled all the way to number 2 in the Album charts. The album celebrated a commercial success for the band and every band no matter how anti-media or main stream they are need commercial success. Check it out here.

This release not only put a little known niche drum and bass Australian group called Pendulum on the map, it made them the damn map.

Sex, Drugs and on the Dole - #44 The Streets - Original Pirate Material

It's hard to think that it is a full nine years since Mike Skinner, aka The Streets, released his debut album. Many a song has come and go inbetween, he's flirted with chart success, become a megastar in his own right and guested on countless artist's work (and had a part in Doctor Who), but as a Streets fan from the start, I am firmly of the opinion that Mr Skinner was at the peak of his powers here, on Original Pirate Material.

I honestly couldn't stand Has It Come To This? the first few times that I heard it, and I remember it vividly, despite it being such a long time ago. Although, saying that, I remember not liking the song at all, but can't think why.

However, it didn't take long for my views to change on Mr Skinner and his unique style of, urm, well, rap? Garage? Urban dance? I honestly have no idea what genre it 'officially' falls under. It could even be performance poetry of a sort I suppose? Sod it, I don't know. Ask Mr Skinner.

So onto the album. It kicks off with Turn the Page, which is an absolute tune. I can't tell you why, but it really conjures up images of Gladiator for me. I might just be swayed by the line "I'm 45th generation Roman". I am quite easily influenced. I think it's the music in the background. It has an 'epic' feel to it, and builds and builds throughout the track.

And then we come to Has It Come to This? The song that I couldn't stand. For the record, that no longer applies. As I've got older, it seems that I have come to appreciate the lyrics more. Ok, so it might be about living life smoking weed and driving crappy souped up cars, but at the time, it seems that's what Skinner was into. It's pretty much a theme that runs throughout the entire album. Weed, paying for weed, selling people weed. It actually sounds a little cliched now, but rather than be a slur on Original Pirate Material, it is infact praise, as it indicates how many acts have been influenced by Mr Skinner. You have to remember how long this album has been around.

Track three is probably the most popular on here, Let's Push Things Forward. Can't remember how it goes? Check it out here. Again, it's all about being a shady youngster in London, but is catchy as hell and is blessed with a throughly confident swagger.

Not every track on here really shines though to be honest. Sharp Darts is a bit of a bore, and there is only so many tracks that you can actually make about the same thing. Being an agressive twat on a night out might seem like a good idea for a song, but by the third, it gets a bit dull. Same Old Thing and Geezers Need Excitement are a case in point. It seems to be Mr Skinner in an 'I'm such a wrong 'un' mood. Not a big fan.

Thankfully there are two more magnificent tracks on here to drag it back around. Don't Mug Yourself tells the story of Mike being told by his mates that he shouldn't go chasing after a girl he likes. Yes it's really laddish, but it's good fun throughout.

The second, and in my opinion by far the best track on here is The Irony of It All. It's basically two blokes talking one after the other. One is a heavy-drinking lout who loves fighting, but is essentially not a criminal. The other is a softly-spoken, weed-smoking graduate, wouldn't hurt a fly but is the one in the wrong in the eyes of the law. It's a really, really good listen, very clever and a lot of fun. I've even dug this one out for you too. Click here for it.

And that's me done for Original Pirate Material. It really was a pleasure to listen back to this album. It reminded me of how great the Streets were, before Dry Your Eyes became a song that reminded me of England mediocre football team on every listen.

There's a lot to love, and although it isn't hit after hit, it is more than worth buying/digging out.

Ok, with only a week and a bit to go until the festival, these are going to be coming thick and fast, so please check back for some more musical goodness tomorrow. Ta.

"Your father cracks a joke, and in the usual way empties the room...." No.43: Morrissey - Vauxhall And I

Guest reviewer: Steven T. Askew

In recent years Morrissey has taken to reissuing his back-catalogue albums. The repackaging of a couple of mid-1990s efforts has seen him radically alter cover art, reorder track listings (in some cases leaving originally included songs off altogether) and adding single b-sides and previously unreleased curios. All very nice for the completist, of course - but a bit of a pedantic course of action from a man purported to be happy enough in his own skin in recent years to let the past lay as it fell.

There's no getting away from the fact that 1997's Maladjusted - perfectly perfunctory but a tad uninspired - was, at that time, an exasperating let-down. It is far too late for the perverted act of dropping a couple of songs almost fifteen years hence to change general perception.

Similarly, reordering the track listing of 1995's Southpaw Grammar and adding a couple of outtakes could never disguise the fact that it had to do the hardest job of any album Morrissey has ever - or will ever - release.

It had to bear the weight of following 1994's Vauxhall And I.

V&I is such a self-contained record that it lives almost entirely outside of Morrissey's entire canon. It's not as commercial as any other Morrissey record, for a start, but it really doesn't sound like any other Morrissey record, and it doesn't read like any other Morrissey record. It's not that it's a musically odd album - far from it - but it has a uniqueness of sonic tone, emotional tone, a maturity and self-analysis that none of his other albums could ever hold a candle to.

It's my belief that it is the only album he has released which IS Morrissey. That's Morrissey the man, not Morrissey the cartoon.

It was born in a time when Morrissey was still preoccupied with bruisers, boxers, black-and-white movies, books, the ephemera of a passed England... which, of course, had gotten him into trouble with the popular music press, and set up the psychological watershed of what followed...

V&I came from a time before the smash-and-grab of Britpop had been breach-born, when England was still under Conservative rule. You can feel the tiredness, the greyness, the dissatisfaction, the atrophy, the complete dulling of the senses and the squeezing of the skull - and the romantic strive to make one last stand against the numbness of having lived through Thatcher's socially, psychologically, diminishing rule. It was rumoured - a rumour occasionally furthered by the man himself - that this was to be Morrissey's final album.

At the relevant point in time, Morrissey was living in Camden. The title of the album is a direct reference to Bruce Robinson's Withnail And I, the story of two down-at-heel London actors barely co-existing there in an inter-dependant and mutually self-destructive blur of vague psychoses and neuroses, alcohol, drugs, squalor and unfulfilled promise in the late 1960s: "Indeed we are drifting in the arena of the unwell"...

It has hinted that Morrissey was engaged in a similar kind of cloistered, intense and consuming relationship as that portrayed in the film, and here romanticised it onto vinyl. Perhaps not explicitly - perhaps it is only there around the edges, a mood, an oblique reference here and there, a provocative nod. But maybe this album was Morrissey finally coming out with the truth - or the truth as he chose to tell it, filtered through that entirely charming but peculiar self-regard. V&I almost lays Morrissey's private life utterly bare without actually saying the thing that dare not speak its name, taunting you into using that word, then roundly chastising you for having the temerity to even think it, to even presume a single thing.

Beautifully crafted songs seem like intensely private diary entries, portraying - and in some cases betraying - deep-held feelings and thoughts. On this record, which seems to have been written entirely for himself and is all the better for it, Morrissey doesn't shy away from the murk of depression, hypocrisy, the ache of lust, love, sorrow, satire, hate, anger, ageing, regret, humour.
It's all here, lyrically - in Morrissey's own strange way of course - with producer Steve Lillywhite's instinctive and painterly ambience perfectly creating a tangible and complementary mood and tension which has often been absent from the more visceral production of other Morrissey records. From the off, we're let know that this time, this once, this was something different.

Opener Now My Heart Is Full begins with a wash of melancholic guitars fashioning previously uncharted sonic territory, exploring deeper textures and moods. I'm reluctant to use the word "filmic", but a film is what the first few seconds evoke, and the rest of the album is entirely elevated to the status of the cinematic.

Blue-eyed, sensible-quiffed, geometric cheek-boned Morrissey stares out from the cover in a beautifully lit portrait which strongly evokes 1950s cinema matinee idols, before delivering a prosaic Coronation Street killer opening line in deep and rich velvet tones: "There's gonna be some trouble..."

Blurry-eyed late-night gin-soaked trudges through rained-on brickwork back-streets are precisely located in a London that exists, really, only in Morrissey's mind, all slate-grey skies, lamplight reflecting in puddles, 1960s suits, tattoos and slicked-back hair - and the danger of a knife. References to Graham Greene's Brighton Rock add further layers to the romance of crime, the romance of grime, the threat and the thrill. The passing of crime and all of its times.

The song shares a moment of mood with the rush to danger of the bond forged in the mask-theft scene in Breakfast At Tiffany's, as if now fully committed, with no turning back. It is perhaps no accident that Morrissey recorded that film's Moon River as an addendum b-side to one of Vauxhall's singles.

No other Morrissey song has sounded so enormously melancholic as Now My Heart Is Full. Scarcely believable that he should be redeemed and completed. Really? Or, of course, is he nodding back to the Northernisms of Weatherfield again, with "full" meaning sorrowful..? There's gonna be some trouble...

Spring-Heeled Jim begins with a bass throb and distorted guitar wail that expand on the darkness of those London alleyways, suggesting the danger of a killer, a Jack The Ripper, even. But it turns out to be an observational, mournfully wry, take on the diminishing process of getting older, the demise of everything that self-defines a chancer, a wide-boy, a womaniser. Time passes, chances fade - all fades as self slows. The passing of time and all of its crimes.

Two minute thrash Billy Budd - title taken from Herman Melville - vaguely recalls The Smiths' London, and seems to mischievously throw references to Johnny Marr into the legend: "Twelve years on since I took up with you...". But who really knows? The fact it's followed by Hold On To Your Friends does, though, add further credence to this theory.

A contemplative ballad that somehow made it out as a single, heavily acoustic Hold On is beautiful. "There are more than enough to fight and oppose, so why waste good time fighting the people you like?". Earnest and open, surprisingly generous, utterly gracious and graceful.

With its arresting couplet "...beware, I bear more grudges than lonely High Court judges", the album's lead-off single The More You Ignore Me The Closer I Get is an exercise in wilful pursuance. Great title and - despite anything Elvis Costello might tell you about Morrissey songs being no more than the sum of their title - a classic song, focused around an attractive guitar motif and lovely vocal melody.

It's about as close as we've ever got to Morrissey acknowledging this album's existence in recent years. It has occasionally cropped up in his set list, and on a surfeit of hits albums. In many ways, being pretty straightforward it is probably the only song from this album that could even be well-served by a live set-up - potential inclusion on the Glastonbury setlist, then.

Why Don't You Find Out For Yourself - the grass is not always greener - is a sturdy riposte to those who, from the safety of sitting in an armchair behind a copy of the NME, have criticised Morrissey's career choices. Paradoxically, to an agreeably radio-friendly acoustic backing, it dissects and displays the hypocrisies, cynicisms and manipulations of the music business in vague but colourful detail, taking wistful and well-aimed potshots at the faceless, nameless, men in suits.

Used To Be A Sweet Boy could just about be the most straightforward song Morrissey has ever written. It puzzles over the "something" that "went wrong" between the "distant land" of childhood, with its "blazer and tie and a bright healthy smile", and the man now. It's a sepia-toned snapshot of a regretful man gazing at a sideboard photograph of himself as a young boy, holding his Dad's hand. Lush, romantic and yearning. No, I just have something in my eye.

I Am Hated For Loving, Lifeguard Sleeping, Girl Drowning and The Lazy Sunbathers deal with lazy misconception, apathy, emotional and actual, and selfishness. Gentle, mournful, slightly Smithsish, none fully prepare us for the tempest to come.

Speedway bitterly addresses the proceedings in a court-room and could therefore be seen as sage and angry comment on Morrissey's own experiences therein.

Following the opening seconds of jaw-dropping direct address to the judge - "When you slam down the hammer, do you see it in your heart?" - the broken plea for human understanding outside of the strict technical confines of the legal process is utterly carved up by a few seconds of silence, then the loud scream of a chainsaw. It's wilfully disturbing.

But the song could also be Morrissey's most explicit Oscar Wilde moment - no longer content to merely reference, this is authorship, art, biography. Morrissey actually inhabits the writer to express the tumult within during the infamous trial which led to his eventual downfall: "You won't rest until this loving mouth is shut, good and proper" / "You won't sleep until the hearse that becomes me, finally has me"... Stirring, trembling, defiant.

During the final couple of minutes the song builds progressively intensely, until release - but not closure - is delivered by a brief and sonically stark drum tumble signifying the final slam of the judge's gavel.

It's been an intense and perfect 39 minutes. Perfect.

A couple of times in a lifetime along comes something that cuts much deeper, darker, more defiant. Something you can disappear into, something that demands of you. There are many reputedly classic albums which are so precisely crafted and drawing-board designed that they fall woefully short of displaying any real insight or personality - or anything substantial of what it means to be alive. Many albums are exercises in creating terrific listens but conclude with you knowing nothing more about yourself or anything or anyone else at the other end, leaving you with merely the aftertaste of a fleetingly enjoyable moment.

Perhaps, in the end, that is all music was ever meant to be..? Perhaps we shouldn't actually be looking for deeper displays or analysis of the human condition from music..? I'm really not, as a rule, but I love them when they come, and I do keep my fingers crossed and sleep with half of one eye open. Tick-tock.

Vauxhall And I is Morrissey's masterpiece. A neat and uncompromisingly brilliantly penned book - but no easy read. In the examining of battle scars and in the laying to rest of old ghosts, it is optimistic, but opens up fresh wounds, fists fly, glass shatters. It's occasionally difficult, but ultimately life-enhancing, poetic and telling - an absolutely essential listen if you have even the slightest interest in circumnavigating the lazy myth of the quiff and the quip and getting straight to the bottom of Morrissey. 

So far, it appears to be the one exception from those devious, truculent and unreliable efforts to repackage and rewrite history. It is to be hoped that Morrissey realises that to give or take a further inch of it would be to demean his work and himself. Listen and marvel, you will never hear the like again.

I Think I'm Getting Old - #42 Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles (II)

There is a term that has started popping up more and more in conversation recently, mainly on Twitter I think, and I love it.

Batshit mental.

A phrase used only to describe the truly crazy. And, by something of a coincidence, exactly the term that I would use for this album.

Now I get the feeling that saying bad things about this album might not make me the most popular person in town, but I would be lying if I said I was a huge fan of it. It's good when it's good, but at times, well, it's batshit mental.

I imagine that it is perfect workout music. It rattles along at a fair old pace and has a booming bassline that would be cracking to run along to. I might test this theory next time I'm out on the push iron. I'll get back to you on that one.

It's definitely one that has tracks on it that would send a rave mad. There are some tracks on here that are just designed for off your head dancing, but at times, it's just a shit load of noise, and very little else. Maybe, as I've alluded to in the title, I'm just getting a bit old for all this. You kids and your boom boom boom. I remember when music had a tune etc etc.

The other thing that I don't understand is how this is going to work live. I've seen the occasional thing about the band's shows, and it seems that they are as off the wall as the music is. I'm pretty sure that on more than one occasion I've read stories about Alice Glass fighting with members of the crowd. A cynic would say that any publicity is good publicity, but I'm not a cynic. Maybe she actually just does have a screw loose.

It's tricky really to try and mention what her voice is like... A lot of this album seems to have been put through a laptop, a lot. Do the stage shows have her going barmy, and a guy with a laptop playing the 'music'? I don't know, maybe they have keyboards, synths and the such. I have no idea. Which is intriguing. But a headline slot for the band means that I'm not likely to find out either.

Celestica is the first real 'tune' on the album, and I could imagine this is the one that DJs up and down the land have been 'dropping' in clubs. But the track that immediately follows it, Doe Deer is just a few minutes of angry sounding noise. Maybe I just don't 'get it'.

Actually, as I type Baptism has just come on. Again, it's all shouty vocals, but the tune is actually a corker. If someone like Fatboy Slim had come up with this, and got a celebrity video to go with it, it would be huge.

Right, I'm going to stop here I think. I'd suggest checking this out, just to see how mad it really is. I'd like to see the band at the festival, just to see what they are like live, but think there are other bands on at the same time that I'd prefer to see...

Sorry for the crap post. I'll be more informed on the next one, promise. It might be something I understand a little better, and not so batshit mental.

Doom Mongers? I Beg to Differ - #41 White Lies - To Lose My Life

One of the pleasures about writing this blog, which inches its way into the final third today, means that every now and then, an album comes up from a band that I have been lucky enough to see live. One of those bands is White Lies.

Two years ago, at Glastonbury 2009, I had heard a lot about the band. They had just released this album, To Lose My Life, and there was a lot of publicity and, dare I say it again, hype, levelled in their direction. But, as anyone who has been to the festival will vouch for, planning to go to see a band and actually making it are two different things. There is so much going on, that sometimes you get dragged away by something else, or are just having such a good time that you forget what you were meant to be doing. I'm gutted to say that I think mine was a combination of the two.

However, I finally made up for it earlier this year when my other half and I took a trip over to Toulouse to see the band on their tour for their second album, Ritual. Now I know that album is newer than the one I'm looking at here, but in my opinion, it isn't as good as this one, and, as I stated in the Rules right at the beginning of this whole thing (click here to have a look), I'm choosing the album that I think they will play most from. At the gig in Toulouse, this album just shaded it in their setlist.

That gig, by the way, was one of the best that I've ever been to. Although Le Bikini wasn't packed to the rafters in the way it was for the Beady Eye gig later that week (which is wrong on a number of levels), the atmosphere was great, we were almost at the front throughout, and the band sounded magnificent. Often accused as being dark and miserable doom mongers, they put on a real show, packed full of songs that had the crowd jumping around, loving each moment. And yes, both I include both myself and the missus there.

So, to the album.

It's not often that track one on an album is arguably its best. I suppose it opens up the opportunity to only listen to that song, before turning it off. Or maybe that doesn't apply at all anymore in the digital age. Anyway, I'm talking crap, no?

Track one on here though is Death. Ok, so it might have a name to add weight to the doom monger theories, but it's not the depressing song that its name suggests. It showcases all that's good about the band. Rather than go on and on about it, I'll just pop up a video. I can't really do it justice by writing about it, but I should say that the song on the album is a little quicker to the version the band play here. See the band playing Death on Later with Jools Holland by clicking here.

Actually, this album is another one of those in which I could go into detail about every song, but I've resisted doing that on all of the other blogs, so I'll do the same here, and just pick out my highlights.

Death is actually my favourite track on here, but Unfinished Business pushes it close. The missus, myself and a friend have been trying to fathom out the storyline of this song for a while. Death has definitely come to collect the character in it, but we can't figure out if his girlfriend killed him or not. If any fans get to read this, and you know the real story behind it, please leave me a comment clearing it up!

Elsewhere? A Place to Hide boasts a huge chorus, Fairwell to the Fairground is the song that most people will recognise the band from, and is, to be fair, first class, and the title track, To Lose My Life is also a belter.

The last song on the album, The Price of Love, is another that tells a story, something that White Lies are very good at. It is about a man trying to raise £1m in a week to save the life of his wife, who has been kidnapped. Surprisingly, it was the gig that the crowd really went mad to at the gig, something that I wasn't expecting, but it was really, really good live.

And that's me about done for White Lies. I'm a bit disappointed that I haven't really got across how much I love this album here, but I'm nursing a monster hangover, and am a day behind on here, so have another to do later. All I will say is you should DEFNITELY check this album out. It is excellent, it really is.

One last word, I found this picture, thought it looked really cool.

Another quick word from me, don't forget that if you liked this, or if you at least bothered to read until the end, you can get all of the other blogs over on the right hand side of the page. All of this month's, and April are over there. Whether you fancy reading about someone you already like, or are curious about a band that are new to you, give them a go, and please, if you do like this, pass it on through the various social media sites out there.

And onwards we go....

It's Who You Are That's Important, Jessie - #40 Jessie J - Who Are You

Hype. It's a funny old thing. It can mean that an act can rocket into the charts with almost no justification, or, like in some cases, it can make a waiting audience sceptical before anything even happens. Thankfully, despite all of the hype, awards and other such stuff, Jessie J has justified all of the publicity, and delivered what is actually a very good album.

I should start by saying that this isn't what I expected it to be at all. Having heard Do It Like a Dude, I expected a fully-blown R&B album here, full of attitude. That didn't sound like anything that would interest me in the slightest. To be honest, the album cover doesn't really do much to dispel that thought.

However, you might be surprised to learn that Jessie actually has an excellent voice. This becomes apparent on the acoustic tracks on here (maybe I've got the bonus edition) – and hearing her live is fascinating. Big White Room is my case in point. Check it out with this link. Would you have expected that? Compared to the Do It Like a Dude, there is a lot of beauty in her voice, and a confidence that justifies that afore-mentioned hype.

When you take into account that she came top in the BBC Sound of 2011 poll, ahead of acts like the Vaccines, James Blake, Warpaint and the magnificent Anna Calvi, that's quite a reputation to fulfill. The thing is, Jessie seems more than capable of filling the huge boots that have been placed in her path.

The comment about her voice doesn't mean that there aren't R&B songs on here. Now I won't even start to pretend to being an expert on the subject, but I can hear why they would be popular (well, they might need a little editing to take over Radio 1). It's that attitude though, and Jessie's 'couldn't give a fuck' persona that makes her so likeable. Coming across like that can go one of two ways really, people will pick up on your confidence and admire you for it, or will take an instant dislike to an seemingly ignorant person. It would be intriguing to see her Twitter feed, as I would put a fairly confident bet on it being a combination of the two. Fans declaring their love, and 'haters', as we seem to call them these days, abusing her for absolutely no reason. For the record Jessie, if you do get to read this by some miraculous coincidence, I really enjoy your music, more than I ever thought I would.

So, highlights? Big White Room as I've already mentioned, and for my money, Who's Laughing Now, which sees Jessie 'sticking it' to all the people that slagged her off when she was younger, then came rushing back as soon as she became famous. It might not be a wholly original idea, but it's got enough in it to keep it fresh, and parts are also pretty funny.

Do It Like a Dude also raises a smile. I'll have to admit, the first time I saw the video, I only noticed in the background somewhere, and didn't really realise that she was taking the piss. Looking back, I'm obviously a bit of a tool. It's catchy as hell (I've been humming it to myself pretty much all day), and it really is hard not to like the lyrics if you listen to them properly. That confidence I was talking about? Never been more apparent than here.

I think that's probably enough from me, I do think you should go and give Jessie J a go, no matter what you think of her before you actually give her a chance. Oh, and did I mention, she's pretty fine too.

Another of my favourite albums tomorrow, stop by and take a look?

For now, if you didn't mind this, then please feel free to pass it on... Or check out one of the older entries down the right hand side. There's 39 more in there.

See ya's later.