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?