Paolo Nutini - These Streets

At first I thought that Nutini was spelt 'Ntini' like the South African fast bowler Makhaya Ntini. As a result of this, I got really annoyed with people pronouncing it wrong. Looking back, this was quite hypocritical of me. I was annoyed that they hadn't taken the time to find out how to pronounce his name, but I was the one who couldn't be bothered finding out how to spell it.

I seem to be doing more and more of this as I get older - leaping to wrong conclusions that make me annoyed. I don't know why this is, but in the spirit of it, I won't be researching anything about Paolo Nutini for this review (yeah, they're supposed to be reviews).

Another time I confidently told someone that a piece of music was Paolo Nutini, when it plainly wasn't. There's something about the guy and my factual abilities in connection with him. If I'm honest I even spelt his name wrong in the title when I first tried. I put 'Nuttini'.

Anyway, back to leaping to conclusions about Paolo Nutini. These Streets features a song called 'White Lies' which is about the end of apartheid in South Africa. It also features a variety of songs with names too banal to even make up a decent lie about.

Paolo Nutini came late to music after fulfilling his boyhood dream of becoming a spaceman.

Fleetwood Mac - Rumours

What's with this band? Stevie - girl. Lindsey - boy. It's all wrong.

Then there's Mick Fleetwood, who is, at a conservative estimate, four metres tall. He had a ponytail, wore a weird broad-brimmed hat and he had a beard. And as if that weren't enough, he wore one of those jacket/tank top things that are so ludicrous that I don't even know what they're called. You know - like a leather body-warmer. He looked like some giant, druidic cowboy or something.

He was the drummer and of course the drummer always has his own thing going on, but they're rarely, if ever, giant druidic cowboys.

Fleetwood Mac and Rumours in particular will render the Soft Rock section a bit more convincing. It's full of stuff I don't really know how to categorise at the moment. Fleetwood Mac though? If they're not Soft Rock then Mick Fleetwood's a midget who bears no resemblance to either a druid or a half-arsed cowboy.

P Diddy - Press Play

Press stop! Press stop!

Maybe P Diddy's punning. Maybe Press Play refers to toying with the media. You know, 'the press'. Nah. It would never be that. P Diddy's far too busy making money to have time to pun. He's too busy to get a proper name, for God's sake.

He's also too busy to make a whole record all on his own. Of the 18 tracks on Press Play, no fewer than 13 'feature' someone else. Of the remainder, one is an intro and three are bracketed 'interlude' which presumably means they're just silence. The remaining track is called 'The Future' which seems optimistic for someone who clearly lacks the inclination to go it alone.

Perhaps he's just redressing the balance. How many songs are there out there that 'feature' P Diddy in one guise or another? My guess is that there's one million. More than 15 anyway, so he's still in credit.

I've just found out that he's actually just called 'Diddy' in the US. Apparently he's fighting someone for the right to be called 'Diddy' in Europe as well. Some guy called Diddy. There are more names. Pick a good one. Fight someone for that. What about The Diddinator 9000 - that's a good name. Or The Puffinator 9000 - there's another good name. The Combsinator 9000, The P-inator 9000. There's a wealth of great names to choose from.

If I looked like P Diddy, I probably wouldn't put me on the cover.

Funeral For A Friend - Hours

No, no, no. You should never include anything even tangentially related to death in the name of your band. It's like a beacon warding people off. Actually, it's more like a neon sign spelling out: 'We take ourselves VERY seriously. You shouldn't.'

Funeral For A Friend is a particularly earnest name. Come on. Give it a rest. You've all got your health. You own some nice guitars and drums and stuff. You don't have to work in an office doing someone else's bidding, like some kind of administrative whore. Let's get some perspective.

Let's move onto song titles. Maybe they're not so bad. No, I'm afraid they are. Track three: 'Roses for the Dead'. Again with the dying thing. We're all going to die. There's no need to keep going on about it.

There's another song called 'Monsters'. I'd like to think that this was a musical run-down of various bogeymen and other pantomime beasts, but more likely it's about 'the monster in all of us', or something wank like that.

The Fratellis - Costello Music

I know what you want to know: If this Fratellis album were a Carter USM song, which would it be? The answer, is of course, 'Bloodsport For All'.

Don't be fooled by their name. The Fratellis aren't Italian. Or ice-cream for that matter - Fratelli sounds like an exotic ice cream to me. They aren't shoes either - a Fratelli could be a shoe. They're actually Scottish rock stars.

Fratelli means something to do with brotherhood in Italian. I think the literal translation is 'brother with an ice-cream' or possibly 'brother in shoes'. I'm not quite sure. Either way it's definitely a Mafia thing. 'Mafia' translates as 'swaggering around with an ice-cream'.

It's a harsh world. Some people have ice-creams and some people don't. It seems that the Fratellis fall into the category of people who do have ice-creams and aren't afraid to let people know about it. When they first appeared on Later With Jools Holland, the bassist, Barry, actually offered some of his Mr Whippy to Pliers from Chaka Demus and Pliers, but withdrew it as Pliers attempted a lick.

Costello Music, in case you're wondering, translates as 'ice-cream to be used in torturing those who break the code of omerta'.

McFly - Motion in the Ocean

Ah, the rhyming dictionary. What a great boon when you're stuck for an album title.

McFly promise so much. After all, their name refers to Back To The Future, finest of all the films. Yet don't be misled. McFly really are a colossal shower of shite.

Time was when being in a band and playing the guitar was cool. Think of Cud or Ride or any of the other great bands of 1991. They oozed class. McFly are a pop band. A child-friendly, offensively inoffensive excuse of a group. Adam Mole, the bassist from Pop Will Eat Itself must be incandescent with rage that it's all come to this. Probably.

Back when I tore up the town and had it large and so forth, I'd listen to music that had bits of swearing in. That's what rock's all about - naughty words. One track on Motion in the Ocean is called 'Transylvania'. Effortlessly cool me, back in the Nineties, didn't care where Transylvania was. I only cared where Bargain Booze was. I also cared about my fringe. That's what sticking it to the man's all about.

If McFly were sticking it to the man, 'it' would probably be a tail with blu-tack on and 'the man' would still be an advertising executive, but he'd be their friend and they'd be playing games in his office.

Now I have to go through the charade of categorising McFly. I've got to go for Rock, which is wrong and Soft Rock, which is also wrong. It's sort of appropriate because McFly are wrong.

InMe - White Butterfly

I thought I'd review White Butterfly by InMe on the grounds that they're big with the kids. Unfortunately, due to my reclusive existence, cut off from popular culture, I don't know a thing about them. So I endeavoured to find out.

Turns out there's not much to know. How disappointing. I get the impression that maybe they're a UK band trying to do American rock. That never works. Look at Bush. They're big in the States, sure, but they're crap. And at the end of the day, isn't that what really matters?

No? Okay then. In that case, InMe are away. They're going to conquer the world. At least the world of kids who like boys from Essex pretending they're American. I'm glad I don't live in that world. I'd probably be executed for not feeling their angst.

Say what you like about rocking out with your mates, angrily pogoing until the snakebite rises back up to your oesophagus - it's not as good as watching cricket with a cup of tea, is it?

InMe? What is?

The Library Trust - The A to Z of Mathematics

Remember when you first discovered food? Of course you don't. Okay, imagine you've never eaten in your entire life and you're, what, twenty-odd now? Maybe you've had some sort of a sustenance injection to help you survive. It was a big injection and it hurt and there were all sorts of side-effects. You had it every day, it hurt like hell and it just about kept you going.

Now imagine, in this scenario, that somebody suddenly gives you your favourite food. I don't know what you like. Maybe it's pizza. Maybe it's a curry. Maybe it's Monster Munch. Whatever. Okay. Now how do you feel? For twenty-odd years you've been without this. You've missed out on so much.

But not only that. There's been the daily pain of that eight inch needle as well. Suddenly you don't need that either. It's like a new birth. A renaissance, if you will.

That's the effect that The A to Z of Mathematics will have on you.

The Library Trust have produced a record that is a bigger triumph than the Roman Empire at its zenith. A record that if it were an animal would be a unicorn-angel the size of China. A record that practically impregnates you with a bellyful of deities, waiting to pour forth over the earth to clear up all the shit.

If I had recorded the A to Z of Mathematics, I would retire on the spot. Then I would climb to the top of Everest with a camera crew and broadcast footage of myself going: "Aaaaaah. In your faces. Who's the best in the world now, eh? Hey? Who is it? It's me, isn't it? I'm the greatest. I've made the finest album in history AND I'm on top of Everest telling you about it."

Evanescence - The Open Door

The name Evanescence probably has some meaning and a fairer man than I might find out what it was and refrain from ridiculing it. A brighter or more motivated man might say something smart about the name, even if he didn't bother finding out what it meant.

Evanescence is a stupid name for a band.

How can anyone summon the will to act all 'heartfelt rock'? It's so transparent. You must feel like you're performing in a middlebrow BBC sketch show parodying teenagers when you put on that earnest face and voice and hammer your guitar. It's a joke.

Evanescence have that girl who warbles like some sort of wraith as well. You'd try that once and then never speak of it again due to embarrassment. At best you'd say: "Remember that time when we got Emily to do a weird, pseudo-religious wail? At least failing all of your GCSEs isn't as shit as that."

I'll say that the album's anthemic, safe in the knowledge that you all understand that word to be the greatest insult in the reviewer's armoury.

Muse - Black Holes and Revelations

The tracks on Muse's Black Holes and Revelations read more like computer game titles. 'Starlight' is clearly some sort of futuristic flight simulator - a shoot 'em up kind of affair. 'Supermassive Black Hole' is probably an element of that game.

'Knights of Cydonia' could only be an RPG. Within this game you gain the 'Map of the Problematique' and find your way to the 'City of Delusion'.

'Hoodoo' is some sort of big, first-person shooter release. Everyone owns this except you, because you don't keep up with games any more because you're too busy going to work and watching Newsnight.

If there isn't a game called 'Assassin', I'll walk the length of the country in just a pair of moonboots and a body-warmer. Similarly, 'Invincible', although this was probably a game on the Commodore 64 that had really appealing advertising that it couldn't live up to because it was played on a computer with all the processing power of a modern toaster.

Muse are a faintly comedy, overblown, upper-class rock band, who seem to have carved a niche for themselves by embracing all these seeming weaknesses whole-heartedly. It's quite admirable, in an inexplicable way.

Robbie Williams - Rudebox

Let's make a list of all the musicians who are better than Robbie Williams:

The bass player from Echobelly; the drummer from Shed Seven; all of Bananarama; the drummer from Cud; the drummer from Swervedriver; the drummer from Curve; the guy who played the maracas on a Boo Radleys record; me; the bass player from Sleeper; the drummer from Sleeper; the fourth member of Fun Boy Three; Emma Bunton; the drummer from Catherine Wheel...

Let's face it: The list is endless.

To be fair to Robbie, he's really pushing the boundaries for song titles. There's a song on Rude Box about Madonna. It's called She's Madonna. There's another one featuring the Pet Shop Boys. That one's called We're The Pet Shop Boys. Perhaps the only song title more painfully accurate than these is the last one: Dickhead.

Robbie was probably trying to get in first with the whole dickhead thing. It's probably an attempt at self-mockery intended to undermine any reviewer wishing to apply that term. I'll be brave though and use it a second time. Robbie Williams is a dickhead.

Also on the album are two tracks, one called The '80s and one called The '90s, which feature rapping. I'm probably the least cool person ever to drink real ale and have a crap phone and even I wouldn't rap in Robbie's position.

Gwen Stefani - The Sweet Escape

Gavin Rossdale from Bush only goes out with Gwen Stefani so that the world knows that he doesn't make the worst music ever. There. I've said it. The truth's out now.

Having come to prominence with the abysmal Spain package holiday anthem 'Don't Speak', Gwen Stefani has actually sunk further since then. I genuinely do think that she's some sort of major label experiment into how stupid the record-buying public are.

Hollaback Girl was perhaps the nadir of Western civilisation. It contained no music and only the vilest of vocals. Hollaback Girl was the first US digital download to legally sell more than one million copies. This is either clear evidence that there are - at the very least - one million morons in the US, or, more likely, between one and ten super-rich idiots who repeatedly downloaded the track, but couldn't find it on their PC.

I've only heard her new single once. It's like Hollaback Girl only with yodelling. I can't work out if this makes it better or worse. If a song's shit because it has a complete absence of melody or anything like that, how does the addition of something shit yet recognisable affect the end product? Hollaback Girl's very shitness was born of its absence of anything. Does the addition of something, even if it's shit, negate this quality, or could it add to it?

I didn't know how to classify this album, so I've put it in R&B and Soft Rock, because they're the shittest of all the genres.

Cooper Temple Clause - Make This Your Own

Where do you stand on The Cooper Temple Clause? I'm a firm believer that it's very easy to evaluate a rock band based purely on their look: Def Leppard - shite. Primal Scream - good (except, appropriately, when they looked shite). This only works for British bands, to be honest. Don't try and apply this rule to Arcade Fire or anyone. They look ridiculous.

So The Cooper Temple Clause, as well as having an unjustifiably cumbersome name, looked crap. They actually wore leather. No-one wears leather in a rock band any more. Not in Britain anyway. In keeping with this, their early music was, at best, unmemorable. I do remember that if the bass player from Echobelly had joined, they would have actually been a better band, though. This is not good.

A little while ago I heard a new record by The Cooper Temple Clause and it sounded EXACTLY like Led Zeppelin. Copying other bands is generally frowned upon, but The Zep are an exception. People try and copy them, but it usually goes horribly wrong. If you actually pull it off, it's a good thing. The Zep aren't making Zep records any more, so someone has to.

So The Cooper Temple Clause are good. Presumably, they don't wear leather any more and the bass player from Echobelly won't have to leave his job with Royal Sun Alliance.

Razorlight - Razorlight

I always thought that Razorlight were the worst band in the world. I can't remember the first song that I heard, suffice to say that it made me so annoyed I had to put Nightnurse in my tea to keep calm.

Then there was the song that sounded like they were 'doing' The Boomtown Rats' 'I Don't Like Mondays'. Then there was one which wasn't total sonic excrement - it was just a lame Clash pastiche.

Then I found out that the lead singer, Johnny Borrell liked cricket and suddenly everything was forgiven. Nobody who likes cricket can be all bad (except maybe Mick Jagger). Anyway, I set about re-evaluating their body of work.

It was still rubbish, but there were mitigating factors that in some way compensated for the pseudo-American vocal delivery and curl-up-in-a-ball-and-hide lyrics. Firstly, Johnny Borrell is rather partial to a bright white, tight, terry towelling jumpsuit. It's bizarre, totally unflattering and you can see his nads. I've no desire to see his nads, but at least it's not wilfully cool. Full marks.

Johnny Borrell also has strong opinions about the band The Kooks. He says that they are "shit". The Kooks are shit, so he's not without taste.

On balance, I'd prefer you not to buy Razorlight's records, but if you do, buy them for the cricket-loving, white jumpsuit-wearing, Kooks are 'shit'-saying aspects of the band, not the musical ones.

Pink - I'm Not Dead

Right. I've got a hell of a lot of problems with this and by God you people are going to hear about them.

One, Pink is a stupid name. In fact, it isn't really a name. It made the slightest bit of sense when she had pink hair, but often she doesn't.

Two, all Pink's songs are profoundly irritating. Every last one. They're 'singalong' affairs. If there's one thing I hate about people singing along, it's hearing them do so.

Three, everything's always about Pink. She's the centre of the world. Everyone's going on about her all the time. That's Pink's opinion anyway. The truth is, she's only mentioned when people are singing along and other people are forced to say 'stop singing along to Pink'.

Four, track seven, 'U + Ur Hand'. 'Ur' doesn't mean 'your'. It can't. It could be 'er' or 'you-er' whatever that might be, but not 'your'. Idiot.

Five, track 13, 'Conversations With My 13-year-old Self'. This is impossible and thank Christ that's the case.

Six, track 14, 'Fingers'. That better be a noun and not a verb, Pink. It's sickening to think otherwise.

An excellent record: 12 stars. (This is a lie).

Nelly Furtado - Loose

This is just grotesque. Is Nelly Furtado confessing to a life of sin, or is she regaling us with a tale of when she fell victim to some improperly cooked food when on holiday? Either way, I'm not interested.

Nelly Furtado's one of the mentals. Have you ever seen her interviewed? It's like she doesn't have an actual sense of humour and just guesses what to laugh at. Ordinarily she hedges her bets and laughs at pretty much everything. It's mighty unnerving.

On the plus side, she can spell. At least in English. A couple of the song titles are in Foreign, so I can't vouch for those, but the English ones are correct.

Beyoncé - B'day

B'day. Beyoncé actually called her album B'day, blissfully unaware of the fact that a B'day or 'bidet' is a device for washing your arse.

To continue with the theme of excrement, Beyoncé has stuck with the R&B philosophy of crap spelling. So we have song titles like 'Suga Mama', which isn't too bad. It could just be a typo. We also have 'Upgrade U', which is clearly deliberate; 'Kitty Kat', which is neither 'kitty cat' nor 'Kit-e-Kat' the nutritous feline feed; the baffling 'Freakum Dress'; and 'Get Me Bodied', which means NOTHING.

Beyoncé's a bright girl. I'd be very surprised if she couldn't spell. She's only doing this to show off in front of her friends. Her friend on this record is Jay-Z - a man who doesn't even have the decency to be embarrassed about his own outrageous name.

If I were in Beyoncé's position, I'd be making every effort to make use of my power as a force for good. I would ditch trendily-named rappers in favour of ones with good sensible names, like Graham - names that you can set your watch by. I'd pioneer a new trend in comfortable trousers and sensible shoes and I'd write songs about grammar and how to sidestep the frustrations of dealing with telephone helpdesks.

Come on Beyoncé: Use your powers as a force for good.

My Chemical Romance - Life On The Murder Scene

The kids are loving their My Chemical Romance these days. I know this because I read it in the Observer. I'm very much down with the kids, so long as broadsheet Sunday newspapers keep me abreast of the situation.

To be honest, I haven't yet read the article. It looked a bit too annoying. It featured lots of interviews with young teenagers. If there's one thing more annoying than the opinions of a teenager, it's the opinions of a weird teenager who thinks they're an outsider.

There were lots of pictures of girls with big crosses drawn in make-up around their eyes and others who had done themselves up to look splattered in blood. Nice branding.

I also learnt that My Chemical Romance are an Emo band. This is not to be confused with ELO who are an entirely different proposition. Emo was short for 'emotional hardcore' originally, but it's kind of broadened in meaning now. I'm not going to say anything else on the subject because it'll be glaringly apparent that I got all my information from Wikipedia, which isn't really the way you should find out about rock music.

Coldplay - X&Y

I'm the kind of person who habitually wears cardigans and doesn't like nights out that get too boisterous. I should really like Coldplay. I don't. They're too dull even for me.

I'm actually regretting starting to write about X&Y and I haven't even mentioned it yet. I've pretty much run out of things to say.

That song 'Fix You' is on this album. You know it, just as you know all of the songs on this album. I was thinking about the words in isolation - 'fix you'. It sounds kind of like a threat. I can imagine a half-cut Glaswegian saying it to me after I'd looked at him funny or something. Coming from the mouth of Chris Martin it could NEVER be a threat. He actually wants to fix you. Good luck mate.

Another single was 'Speed of Sound'. Not 'speed of light'. There's no need to go overboard, is there?

Akon - Konvicted

That's right. It's yet another artist who thinks that Ks are cooler than Cs. Well I've got news for you, Mr Akon: 'Cool' starts with a C, except for Kool of Gang fame - he doesn't start with a C.

Akon has a bit of a weird name, plus he did that song where the vocals were all high-pitched, so he's quite memorable. In order to offset this, he's gone for the most anodyne, forgettable song titles ever committed to an inlay. Konvicted includes such gems as 'Blown Away', 'I Wanna Love You', 'Rain', 'Never Took The Time', 'I Can't Wait', 'Once In A While' and 'Don't Matter'.

R&B really is the most boring of all the music genres, these days.

Scissor Sisters - Ta-Dah!

The Scissor Sisters all have ridiculous names. One's called Babydaddy - that's probably the worst of them. I won't bother naming the others. If you don't know, you get the idea from 'Babydaddy' don't you?

The main guy's got really intense, mad, staring eyes. He kind of looks like Damien Martyn who used to play cricket for Australia, only Damien Martyn was marginally less sinister and didn't dance like your mum.

Then there's a woman and two other guys who are fairly unmemorable, but fit the whole Scissor Sisters schtick. Then there's this guy who looks like he works in the kebab house. I love him. Burly guy. Beard. Kind of bored-looking.

There's a song on Ta-Dah! called 'Land of a Thousand Words'. Usually when there's a land-of-a-thousand-somethings, a thousand is a lot. Not with words though. A thousand's nowhere near enough to sustain a decent system of communication. I'm not sure whether this song title's (a) clever or (b) stupid.

Nas - God's Son

That's God's Son and not Godson. I'm not totally sure whether this album's all about big JC or whether Nas is claiming to be some sort of semi-deity. It's definitely not about his relation to the uncle or family friend who plays the role of his godfather though.

One song's called 'The Cross'. If we presume that there's a religious bent to this album, then that's probably about that whole crucifixion thing rather than a real-time description of hanging in the air waiting to nod the ball into the back of the net.

Another of Nas's song's is called 'Thugz Mansion (N.Y.)'. I'm going to presume that this is what justified the explicit content sticker. No-one should be exposed to spelling like that. No-one!

Also, just to confirm, this isn't the first lyrical outing for former England cricket captain, Nasser Hussain. It's some other guy. Some Yank. Some Yank called Nas.

The Killers - Sam's Town

The Killers are a cool band. One of the songs on Sam's Town is called 'This River Is Wild'. You get the impression that The Killers are singing about themselves as the river and that THEY are the ones who are wild.

Those crazy Killers.

The last track's called Exitlude, which isn't really a word as far as I'm concerned. They've also included a track called Enterlude, but it's track two, so that's a bit embarrassing if you're one of The Killers.

I used to be in a band. We knew about three Stone Roses songs and one by The Smiths. It wasn't really enough for a complete set, so we had to make up time with Oasis stuff. Oasis stuff's dead easy.