HATE TO SAY I TOLD YOU SO

Hives

Maybe I’m getting mellow in my old age (27), but recently I’ve started agreeing with the many and varied weekly music publications (the NME). After years of having the likes of Gomez, Mercury Rev, Terris, Air (dear God) and the White Stripes dumped on me, I was fairly surprised to discover the Strokes were actually very good indeed and now there’s this lot. Having heard their album, I can tell you it’s loud, mad and very fast indeed – in fact, this single sums them up nicely. The guitarists and the drummers have clearly been on the caffeine and the singer, not wanting to risk being drowned out by his mates, shouts his way through the song. If you regularly tune in to Radio 2, there’s a chance that this won’t be your cup of tea. I don’t and this is.

GET THIS PARTY STARTED

Pink

I am surprised. This is good. You can forget the Lady Marmalade horror as this, despite being funky and upbeat, gets it right. It’s about as cheerful as you can get without being Timmy Mallett and it’s damned good fun too. A result.