Singles for the week starting 21 November!

Crushed Beaks
Close Ups / Sun Dogs
(Too Pure Singles Club)
* * *

The two members that make up Crushed Beaks bonded over a love of Italian horror movies. What they need however, is a big fat Italian mamma to slap their hands every time they reach for the 'REVERB' button: you'll have to squint to figure out what tunes lie beneath these echo-blurred A-sides.
That said, if they lovva the echo, we reviewwa the echo. 'Close Ups' sounds like a World Cup football chant from planet Zorba, while 'Sun Dogs' takes indie rock, melts it into a fine sauce, then smothers itself in the aforementioned sauce. Garishly psychedelic and not a little bit of good fun too.
Ric Rawlins

Bos Angeles
Days Of Youth / Beach Slalom
(Roundtable Records)
* *

Argh! It's a band with a bad pun for a name. I thought we'd seen the last of them with The Beatles! Anyway, to the music. 'Days Of Youth' has a similarly subversive flavour to Battles' tropicana, but a bland and weird anti-tune for a chorus, while 'Beach Slalom' whips up a summery pop groove, but suffers from a similar anti-tunage. On the plus side, it sounds like it was recorded in a suburban garage on low grade acid!
Ric Rawlins

Victoria & Jacob
Festival
(Bloody Awful Poetry)
* *

For a song that can justifiably draw parallels with James Yuill and Stevie Nicks, it’s such a shame when halfway through, ‘Festival’ just collapses in on itself.
With its ethereal but uplifting chorus, this song could easily have laid claim to being one of the most life-affirming releases of 2011, but then out of nowhere verse two boils dry and the song just folds.
By the time the second chorus kicks in the song picks back up but the damage has already been done. In short, ‘Festival’ is as fragile as a house of cards, which accounts for both its triumph and its demise.
Dai Howells

Breton
Edward the Confessor /Kensington System
(FatCat)
* * *

Marrying the jump-start keyboards of Gonzales with a lyrical style reminiscent of Good Books, Breton are the advertising man’s dream – retro styles with a future feel. Which gives them far less credit than they deserve, for both ‘Edward the Confessor’ and its doppelganger aa-side there are unprecedented levels of sample, vocal over-lay, hard hitting beats and intent.
There’s so much going on in both tracks that you’ll want to put your mind through their mangle of loud noises over and over.
Emily Kendrick

The Deer Tracks
Fra Ro Raa / Ro Raa Fraa
(The Control Group)
* * *

Hauntingly melancholic, Deer Tracks latest single conjures up images of natural beauty. It would seem fitting then, that the band are from one of the world’s most beautiful places, Sweden. Fusing electro, pop and folk, ‘Fra Ro Raa’ combines spooky, high pitched vocals with joyful relaxed pop melodies, concocting up a weird mix between M83 and the second Bon Iver album.
Ryan Bassil