The Beastie Boys, Death Cab For Cutie and The Departure By Steve Rudd

The Beastie Boys - Triple Trouble (Parlophone)

Release Date: September 13th 2004. After all these years, The Beastie Boys are still making amazing music, here presenting the second single of 2004 from their To The 5 Boroughs album. These Manhattan-obsessed guys have long been respected for their refreshing fusion of rap, hip-hop and dance elements, and if you enjoy the music of bands such as Run DMC, then you are sure to love these boys.

This release's b-side is actually an Acappella version of Triple Trouble which provides a better opportunity to hear their lyrics (via which they profess that they ain't selling out), with band members Ad-Rock, MCA and Mike D proving more than ever that The Beastie Boys are purveyors of bloody fantastic music, fresh from playing live in Japan at the Summersonic event as they are. 4/5

Death Cab For Cutie - The Sound of Settling (Fierce Panda)

Release Date: August 23rd 2004. This is a truly beautiful song and, for me, the soundtrack to the summer. It's incredible that just one song can sometimes have a profound impact on the listener's life, with this perfect pop-rock anthem simply being one of the loveliest marriages of melody and lyric that I've heard in a very long while. Death Cab For Cutie (or DCFC for short) hail from Seattle and have been lucky enough to have been personally invited by Blink 182 to support them on their Autumn tour later this year.

DCFC, in their own right, don't really embrace any punk ethics in their music as Blink tend to. The Death Cab quartet can always be relied upon to write thrillingly sublime pop-rock songs, with The Sound of Settling being gorgeously melodic to a T. And the accompanying, soulfully sung by Ben Gibbard lyric is equally as captivating: I've got a hunger twisting my stomach into knots.. If you've got an impulse, let it out. Taken from their Transatlanticism album, this is only the second single that these guys have released this year, with their irresistible pop sensibility being joyously shot through with the style and substance oozed by bands such as The Dandy Warhols and Weezer. So look out and listen up, for this Sound of Settling is sensational. 5/5

The Departure - All Mapped Out (Parlophone)

Release Date: August 2nd. The debut single from this astonishingly cool quintet hitting out of Northampton with stylish rock 'n' roll posturing, The Departure's All Mapped Out is a perfectly anthemic introduction to the band. All Mapped Out is buoyantly anchored by a spikily vibrant guitar riff played out by Sam Harvey, with a certain David Jones on the vocals. David Bowie was once known as David Jones before he deemed it necessary to change his name, and then Glam rock 'n' roll music for ever. Still, this David Jones has nothing to do with that one.

What this band does share in common with Bowie is its love for delivering remarkable melodies, while Ben Winton underscores All Mapped Out with his cool bass groove before the single b-side in Dirty Words ball-busts by being another anthem of the instant classic type, that is dark yet upbeat and streaked with echoes of Joy Division's and Morrissey's poppiest forays into the art of setting moodswings to music. Bands of Franz Ferdinand's caliber now have some serious competition here, for sure. 4/5 www.thedeparture.com

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