The other week I was listening to Radio One's Live Lounge during my couple of bonus days at home between jobs.  The guest that day was someone called Mika, who I had never heard of but who seemed to be generating a lot of hysteria from listeners.  It turns out that my having never heard of him had not prevented having the number one single at the time, which made me feel old and out-of-touch.

Anyway, the chap came across as very likeable in his interview and then played his own song, followed by a decent cover of The View's song Same Jeans, and I decided that I liked him as a person and as a performer.  That may shoot down any small scraps of street cred I may have had, but who cares?

What I didn't know was that Jayne, being a bit more in-touch than me, was already a bit of a fan and she bought Mika's album the other day.  It turns out to be pretty good. Its very similar to the Scissor Sisters in sound, but since I like the Scissor Sisters thats not a bad thing at all.  The current single, Grace Kelly, even has a vocal which sounds a bit like Green Gartside of Scritti Politti at times, so for a new record it all feels very nostalgic.  A couple of tracks are a bit dull (Any Other World and Happy Ending) and may well find themselves not transferred to the iRiver, but that still leaves 9 decent tracks.

This evening I checked out Mika's official website  – very impressive design and animation.  Its well worth checking out just for the look and feel of it, and a great example of how to build a site which encourages fans to interact and connect with an artist.

Having got that off my chest, I'll go back to listening to the new Bloc Party album to feed the inner indie-kid 🙂