Kanye West - Famous
★★
Twenty-four hours after the Brexit vote apparently spelled doom for the entire known world, Kanye West dropped this bizarre, icky, music video on Tidal. In it, extremely realistic prosthetic replicas of a dozen naked TMZ celebrities are depicted snoozing next to each other in bed. Apart from Chris Brown, who expressed his bemusement on Instagram, none of the other celebrities immediately made any response. Seemingly peeved at this, Kanye tweeted (and later deleted)"Can somebody sue me already #I'llwait." The rapper's most shameless attention-seeking stunt to date, alas, came at a time when the world had other things on its mind.
Blood Orange - Augustine
★★★★
According to virtually every American review I've read of Dev Hynes' Freetown Sound album, the act of dancing on a rooftop at sunset, which he accomplishes quite magnificently in this video, is a time-honoured NYC tradition. As a non-New Yorker, I cannot vouch for that. But the video also depicts the British-born Hynes eating chicken wings in a grotty deli with a mouldy looking Julian Casablancas. Which, I'm willing to bet, is another, slightly less cherished New York rite of passage. Here's our review of the album
The Avalanches - Subways
★★★
The first previewed track from The Avalanches' forthcoming Wildflower album was the truly weird Frankie Sinatra. The third is more like business as usual for the Australians, with a sample of 12-year-old New Wave oddball Chandra's 1980 track Subways sanitised to the point where it could be piped into M&S without frightening the horses.
Rosa Nutty - Sea Salt
★★★
This new track from Dublin singer-songwriter Rosa Nutty is about growing apart from an old flame. She plays the Original Penguin Stage on Friday night at Castlepalooza 2016.
