Album Review: Girls Aloud - Out Of Control

Girls Aloud have always excelled at producing frothy, fun-as-fuck pop, but with Out Of Control, our favourite five-piece have managed to mature without leaning towards being boring or worthy. Not only have the Girls' and their excellent Xenomania producers honed their infectious, eclectic pop sound, they've managed to add real soul to their songs with a selection of bloody beautiful lyrics. As Adem With An E pointed out in his excellent review, it doesn't get much better than Untouchable's 'without any meaning, we’re just skin and bone, like beautiful robots dancing alone'.

Anybody who's heard lead single The Promise knows it's pop perfection. It gets better with every listen and has Helen Of Troy... grinning like a loon and feeling like a film star as we sing 'here I am, walking in primrose' while making our way through the sometimes less-than-glamorous streets of Manchester.
It may be perfect, but when Helen Of Troy... first heard The Promise, we were a little worried that the mighty GA were going to jump on the 1960s girl-pop bandwagon and produce an album of Ronson-alike sweet soul songs. Happily, Out Of Control is a completely mixed bag, lurching from high-energy electro tracks like We Wanna Party to the skiffle-icious Love Is The Key.

Though all tracks on the album are excellent, real stand-out moments include the Pet Shop Boys-penned The Loving Kind, which oozes the kind of heart-breaking yet detached emotion that makes Tennant and Lowe's back catalogue so consistently brilliant and the shake-your-ass-tastic Revolution In The Head, which manages to be cool-as-fuck in spite of Nadine Coyle's ill-judged Alesha Dixon-alike 'gimme the ting' rap.

Where as GA's previous offering Tangled Up really only became excellent around the track seven stage, Out Of Control is fierce from start to finish. We never fell out of love with Girls Aloud, but it's all too easy to just remember their singles. OOC reminds us that a great Girls Aloud album is more than just four singles surrounded by fillers. A great GA album is an eclectic joy from start to finish, which is more than can be said about the majority of albums by 'serious' artists.

9/10

Released: 03/11/08 Label: Polydor

Blog Recommendations

Following the Manchester Blog Awards, which we attended last Wednesday, we thought it was high time we did our bit for the blogosphere and revealed our favourite blogs of the moment. We wanna point out that the following aren’t listed in any kind of order, oh except alphabetical!

First off is A Boy Like Thom , which has fast become one of our firm favourites. Here you’ll find a selection of Thom’s musical musings as well as ‘opinions and shit’ on a host of other fascinating topics.

Next up is our favourite dedicated music blog Adem With An E , which is your one-stop shop for all things pop and rock. Adem is probably one of the most hard-working and passionate bloggers we’ve come across to date. Definitely one to bookmark.

For those of you who don’t know, Mancubist is a wonderful site dedicated to everything Manchester. Run by the rather lovely Chris Horkan - who we met on Wednesday and is a thoroughly nice chap - there’s no better place to keep abreast of Manchester’s cultural news and events.

Last but by no means least we have Manhattanchester , the home of Gregling’s ‘stories, thoughts, adventures from the pretty, gritty city’. We stumbled across Greg’s blog around the start of the year, and have been avid readers ever since!

So there you have it dear readers, our top tips for what’s happening in the blogosphere at the moment. If anyone would like to direct us to their blog, leave a comment below and we’ll be sure to check it out.

Helen Of Troy Does Audience Participation

After a recent conversation with fellow blogging chum Adem – check out Adem With An E - about the greatest female pop acts of all time, we thought it only right that we pose the pertinent question to you lovely people and ask for your insightful thoughts on the matter, while starting a wee debate in the process… hopefully! Over the next few weeks we’ll be releasing our top three favourite female rock, hip hop, punk, electro and leftfield acts, and in return we’d like to know yours.

Anyhoo, after a few conversations with our friends and a little time for mulling over our choices, we both came to the conclusion that our top three female pop acts of all time are:

1. Madonna – needs no explanation.

2. Girls Aloud – we get a lot of stick for liking the might GA, but Biology is, quite simply, one of the best pop songs of all time. They’re the hardest-working girl group of the last decade; releasing five albums in as many years, not to mention the countless Arena tours and side projects, and have put out consistently good singles for longer than we can remember. They’re also extremely likeable, which is more than can be said for the super-surly Sugababes.

3. Janet Jackson – she may not be everyone’s cup of tea, what with the Nipplegate fiasco and her sometimes-sickly singing style, but songs such as Rhythm Nation, Nasty, What Have You Done For Me Lately and Black Cat, amongst others, are undeniably worthy of a listen to this very day.

So ladies and gentlemen, it's over to you...