EOIN BUTLER's guide to downloads, singles and free audiostreams
TOM WAITS
Hell Broke Luce
Anti Records ****
“Nimrod Bodfish, have you any wool?/Get another body bag, the body bag’s full.” Tom Waits writes songs the way Hieronymus Bosch painted pictures, and Hell Broke Luce is among his most terrifying. “War is hell” is, basically, the message here. Matt Mahurin’s video is appropriately stark and claustrophobic.
MUMFORD & SONS
I Will Wait
Island *
Oh dear. The new Mumford & Sons single sounds like The Waterboys with their cojones surgically removed. But leaving that aside, the first video from the Babel album appears to have been shot by someone riding a bicycle. Careful now, chaps, it would be a shame if one of you fell off and became – oh, I don’t know – strangled by his own waistcoat.
RITA ORA
How We Do (Party)
Roc Nation **
If success has many fathers, Rita Ora’s debut album should outsell The Beatles. How We Do (Party) credits
13 songwriters. It opens with a sample of Biggie Smalls’ classic Party and Bullshit, but then degenerates into the sort of pop pabulum Katie Perry would need a whipped cream brassiere to flog.
B.O.B. ft ANDRE 3000
Play the Guitar
Atlantic ***
In which the Outkast rapper encourages children to pick up an instrument “cos if you’re mad with your Dad or your Mom/you can grab it and strum” and (cutting a long story short) children will come to realise that their parents have their best interest at heart. An earnest plea for intergenerational understanding? What happened to you, hip-hop? You used to be cool.
RYAN O’SHAUGHNESSY
No Name
RCA **
This 19-year-old Dublin singer-songwriter has a complicated backstory involving two TV talent shows (Ireland’s Got Talent and Britain’s Got Talent) and one long-running soap opera (Fair City). O’Shaughnessy’s debut single is sincere and obviously heartfelt, but also rather trite and unmemorable.