Shuffle

Eoin Butler's guide to singles, downloads and free audiostreams

COLDPLAY
Violet Hill
Parlophone
**
They've sometimes been accused of being a watered down Fischer- Price Radiohead for sissies. So it's appropriate that, instead of making their Viva La Vida album free to download in its entirety (as Radiohead did with In Rainbows), Coldplay have given us just one track. No point taking any chances, is there? Their comeback single is - hold the front page! - a melodramatic piano ballad with a high pitched chorus, and it's available to download from  www.coldplay.comuntil May 6th.

SPIRITUALIZED
Soul on Fire
Universal
***
"I've got a hurricane inside my veins/And I want to stay forever . . . " Near-death experience aside, things haven't changed a lot in Jason Pierce's universe. This features the same religious references, the same epic choruses, the same not-very cryptic drug references we've come to expect.

MICHAEL JACKSON/AKON
Wanna Be Starting Something (2008)
Sony
**
Interesting contrast: while Jackson escaped jail after he was acquitted on child molestation charges, rapper Akon has just been exposed by website The Smoking Gun for having invented most of his criminal rap sheet in a cynical bid to bolster his street cred. This effort doesn't do either any favours.

BORN RUFFIANS
I Need a Life
Warp
****
Ruffians, eh? Yes, of course, no three words convey menace quite as effectively as "Canadian indie band". Still, this is pretty cool. And not in an Arcade Fire way.

NEON NEON/CATE LE BON
I Lust U
Lex Records
****
The only way that Neon Neon (Super Furry Animals frontman Gryff Rhyss's electro-pop side project) could be more 1980s would be if it were wearing shoulder pads, listening to Jan Hammer and driving a De Lorean. This single should be irritating. But somehow it contrives not to be.

SCARLETT JOHANSSON
Falling Down
Atco
*
Falling Down is a bittersweet hymn of love and redemption, written by Tom Waits, one of rock's grizzled true originals. But this shockingly awful rehashing might as well come courtesy of Tina from accounts at the office karaoke night.

MORRISSEY
All You Need Is Me
Polydor/Decca
***
Actually Morrissey, all I need is a wristwatch, a Hoover pipe and a set of pliers. But this isn't a bad effort at all.