Praise the Lord! The Shins are back and even though there have been plenty of changes to the lineup they’re still producing the same gorgeous indie pop sounds that we have come to know and love. Album number four, Port of Morrow, won’t be released for another couple of weeks but to keep us all interested they have just dropped another video from the album, “Bait and Switch.”
Cool but Ultimately Pointless this week focuses on Sony’s latest effort to corner the market in hand-held computer gaming, the PSP Go. [History lesson - feel free to skip] Sony launched the original PlayStation Portable system back in 2005, the first hand-held video game console to use an optical disc format, Universal Media Disc (UMD), as its primary storage medium. With 1.8Gb of storage, Sony intended this medium to herald a new wave of mobile media. But the format’s proprietary nature and the lack of writers and blank media meant that film studios and content providers shied away from it. Despite the relative failure of its storage medium the PSP sold well worldwide but continually lagged behind its main competitor, the Nintendo DS. Sony has constantly strived to increase it’s market-share in hand-held gaming and with the launch of the PSP Slim & Lite in 2007 sales increased dramatically. This … There’s more
Title: Can’t Shake It Artist: Kate Miller-Heidke Label: Unsigned/Sony Music, Australia Release: Looking for UK/Irish label I execute the moonwalk like I stepped in… Its lines like that which make me love this song. You see poor Kate can’t shake her bootie (or booty, which is the right one) and this limiting factor is ruining her dancefloor time. You see, this is pure pop. But pop with humour. It sounds odd to say this but the ammount of bubblegum pop that takes itself seriously is, ironically, absurd. Or to put it another way, Sophie Ellis-Bextor (another hyphenated lady) or Lady GaGa writing a song as a pisstake would be pretty close to this. It sounds great, bouncy, but the po-faced delivery hides a wealth of comic timing. Of course all humour gets dull, but given her serious past, I think a bit of fun is allowed. Oddly, this works better … There’s more
