NEW MUSIC: Frankmusik - By Nicole (Highlights)

Frankmusik is some kind of modern pop hero, and quite possibly the UK's guiding light for truly independent music. After a year of using social media to share his every move, emotion and frustration during the process of making this album, it would be a bummer if "By Nicole" was anything less than exceptional. Luckily it's more than exceptional.

I'm not here to review the album in detail, but I will tell you it's his most colourful, organic and human sounding effort yet. Whilst still being essentially electropop, live instruments pop up everywhere, weaving a delicate 3-dimensional tapestry that the "Do It In The A.M." Frank would never have considered. Take the lilting guitars on the verses of "Misdemeanor" and "These Streets" - gorgeous. And the double bass/marimba texture on the verses "Go"? Subtle but somehow breathtaking.

"Misdemeanor", "Go" and first single "These Streets" are my album highlights because they are the sound of an artist simultaneously at his artistic and commercial peak. Their big pop choruses could easily stand out on his exceptional debut Complete Me, with a warmth and maturity that Vince wasn't in touch with back when he recorded it. On "Misdemeanor", Frank talks of conquering his fear of getting older at one point, admitting "the future's a place I feel I don't belong", whilst "Go" could well be about the same girl from "Confusion Girl", but this time Vince is wiser, wryly encouraging Ms Confusion to "go and do what your friends say, they didn't like me anyway."

But best of all is "These Streets". It might not seem like an obvious first single, with its subtle, subdued "Black and Gold"-esque pulse, but placed at the very end of a focused, reflective and forward thinking album, it comes across as the perfect curtain call, or perhaps the perfect 'to be continued'. It's a break-up song, like so many of Vince's are, but when he says "strangers pass by where you were once there by my side", he shrugs it off with a sweet "I've got these streets". 

After 7 years of Vince singing mournful tales of 'what if?', and even one unconvincing (yet beautiful) track named "Final Song (To You)", this finally feels like the end of this chapter and the beginning of a new one for Vince, musically and lyrically. And judging by the raw, idea-crammed By Nicole, there is so much more new inspiration in him, growing by the second and bursting to be expressed.

Below is the one take video of "These Streets". It features nothing more than Vince standing under a bridge somewhere in London (on the route of the 152, if you pay attention), but I dare you not to fall slightly in love with this man whilst watching it.

FOR FANS OF: Sam Sparro, Bastille, The 1975

- Joe Copplestone, 28.04.14

GivePopAChance's Summer 2013 Playlist.

So the year's first perfect sunny weekend bids a hopeful farewell to a miserable 7 month winter, and as May approaches, festival season begins to rear its defiant head. Visions of cider drenched, Diplo-worshipping, scantily clad music lovers passing out in fields, outside clubs and on stony beaches seem so much closer.

It seems like the perfect time to share a dance-heavy Summer playlist of sure fire hits and lesser known, but equally deserved ones, that you can expect to be on heavy rotation throughout the summer. If GivePopAChance had its own radio station, you would indeed expect these tracks to be A-listed until October.



The return of Daft Punk is perfectly timed, and sets the tone worldwide for a summer of chilling out, partying and getting lucky. In the UK, Duke Dumont led the 2012/13 House revival to the the top of the charts a couple of weeks ago, and Basement Jaxx's crazy comeback tune is a defiant "anything goes" statement.

If anything really does go this year in dance music, hopefully DJ Snake's bizarre tweet-trap (quite literally) number "Bird Machine" will make its way to your confused but welcoming ears, and if that's too way out, Major Lazer is bringing Jamaica back through the medium of crushing dancehall beats and hyperactive synths.

Watch out for Moon Boots, whose soulful, irresistibly funky 80s take on the new wave of House music has sported two of the years most effective, sun-kissed remixes. They morph Singer/songwriter Alison Valentine's "Peanut Butter" into something altogether more blissful and euphoric, and their take on Bondax's "Gold" drags the track back to 1991, where it clearly belongs. Miaoux Miaoux's glorious, synth-laden take on CHVRCHES' "The Mother We Share" occupies similar airspace, so bright and grin-inducing it's almost impossible to look directly at.

After the huge,anthemic electronic dance of Swedish House Mafia and Madeon dominated dancefloors and dance festivals last year, 2013 has its fair share of big dance tunes. After his godly, life-affirming "Language", Porter Robinson teams up with Mat Zo, to bring something just as breathtaking for 2013, in the form of "Easy", Kat Krazy comes down hard on Bastille's hit indie single "Pompeii", transforming it into this year's "Don't You Worry Child", and Russ Chimes' stunning "Turn Me Out" is fist pumping, Balearic heaven.

Also queued up is the D&B anthem of the summer, Drumsound & Bassline Smith's "One in A Million", the dark Gold Panda-produced electro of goth-flecked starlet Charli XCX's "You (Ha Ha Ha)", the similarly quirky and groove-laden vibes of Flume's "Sleepless", the drunken, woozy beats of the UK hip hop tune of the summer, Dream McLean's "Sloe Gin" and perhaps the sunniest of them all, Mausi's carefree piano house ditty "Move", graduating straight from the 2003 school of blissed-out house.

Whatever the weather, dance music in 2013 seems to have one defiant goal, to have fun, not take itself too seriously, and to party harder than ever. And judging by the gradual lean towards dance music that the Top 40 is beginning to show, looks like we're all on the same page.