The Q magazine awards are literally laughable: insomuch as I literally laughed at the list of utterly predictable winners of their ‘awards’, which one suspects are awarded by a man who has been locked in a room with the same 10 records for the last 15 years.
Generic, all-encompassing award for Coldplay? Check. Obligatory nod to U2? Check. Devastatingly, soul-crushingly obvious spurious award to Lana del Rey? Oh yes.
Today, official ANBAD mascot, Alex James, awards Q Magazine – the music magazine that time forgot – with it’s own special prize of molten cheese. (BTW: U2 vs Oasis? Please…)
Mixtape:
FIRST: The Alpaca Jamboree have popped up on ANBAD for a couple of reasons – chiefly because their renditions of folk songs and sea-shanties are simply gorgeous, and enough to melt even the most diamond-hard of hearts.
Secondly, their demos were apparently recorded on a kitchen table with iPhones, which blows my mind in all sorts of ways – that their voices and a few instruments are all that is needed to craft these songs, and that a device the size of a deck of cards allows the recording, mixing and uploading of songs. Phew.
SECOND: BhangLassi have made, in Everything’s Amazing, a song that is suspiciously catchy. But then, so is the Ebola virus, so what makes this song OK? Well, it’s possibly that this is the sort of song that could be both a Big Pop Smash for some Simon Cowell-spawned pop moppet, or, alternatively, a niche scene hit. That’s an achievement.
THIRD: Nihiti are sliiiiick, and yet rough around the edges. That’s even harder than being simply slick. Lit Up In Rows shoves its stuff towards you until you’re obliged to take notice. It would probably be really good as Cyber-Goth stripper music. Works for me.
FOURTH: Parakeets have the feel of a band that have twanged away at their instruments in a garage for a while before committing their songs to tape. There’s an overblown theatricality to elements of Fingernails, and it’s a surprisingly welcome feature. Probably not so good as Cyber-Goth stripper music, but whatever.