Louis Pattison, Gwilym Mumford, Annette Barlow, Luke Holland and Sam Richards 

#ReviewAnything – your creative handiwork appraised by our crack team of critics

Every Friday we pledge to review whatever you've sent us over the past seven days. We might not be nice about it, mind…
  
  

Beware: the Guide's critical opinions can be toxic.
Beware: the Guide's critical opinions can be toxic. Photograph: Feng Yu/Alamy Photograph: Feng Yu / Alamy/Alamy

Yes, we did say we reviewed anything. But we haven't got time to read your novel or listen to all ten of your albums, we've still got a Saturday newspaper entertainment supplement to produce on the side. So why not just send one song, or a short story, like these more realistic hopefuls?

Faded Gold: Homelands


It twinkles. It billows. It does everything in its power to make us believe we live in a universe of boundless and infinite beauty, and if that doesn't come off, at least enough to get used as a bed in a BBC science documentary in which Professor Brian Cox does his slightly spangled-sounding slow talky thing as the camera pans over a computer-generated Milky Way. When you're aiming for a sense of interstellar wonder, what you really want to avoid is sounding a bit cheap, and I note Homelands cuts off a bit abruptly, in a manner that suggests perhaps Faded Gold don't actually consist of a celestial choir and a line of white-robed musicians tooting trumpets made from hollowed-out unicorn horns, but someone with a cracked copy of Audacity and the right shimmery plug-ins. Also, if you really want to ride this sound to fame and fortune a la Sigur Ros, you need some pretentious glossolia. Why not pop a bit of Enya on there? I don't reckon anyone will notice. LP

Seb Reilly: Donation (short story)

Donation is 17 pages long. In the time that it will take me to read it, I could have watched the video of the guy mimicking that Japanese news anchor's sobs with his guitar at least six times. In short: Donation needs to be at least six times as good as that video. So no pressure, Seb Reilly.

Is this a short story or a how-to guide to duping gullible sods into giving you some of their hard-earned? If it's the latter, well done: I'm now ready to take my Key Stage Three in being a duplicitous dick. As a short story though, it's not quite as successful. Sure, there's a nice line in Paul Auster meta-narration (are you reading the story or is the story reading you…?) but the problem is that your tale never quite lives up to the tale within the tale – you know, the one so compelling that it traps the reader forever into a terrifying Astral Cult, which takes their money, possessions, LIVES. Until you spin a yarn THAT good, I'm going to stick with the Japanese man crying, I'm afraid. GM

Mohammad: Anyone

"The Art…" proclaims Mohammad's Molaei's website, humbly. I was forced to visit his site because we were sent a link to iTunes and we're not spending 79 pence to review a single. Commendable chutzpah, Mohammad – although your website, a Gatling-spread of mugging headshots of you posing in stances no non-arsehole has ever or will ever position themselves in, is probably the worst thing I've ever seen. In each pic you're pouting the pout of someone who's just had their Elemis Men's Time Defence anti-wrinkle cream pinched, and it looks like you suspect it may be the photographer. The whole thing's how I imagine a billboard advertising a new aftershave made by Kickers and aimed exclusively at estate agents would look; a smorgasbord of the most appalling patrons of a northern Mood nightclub. Oh yes, the song: it's Eurovision-lite, faux-emosh pish-twaddle, and I didn't much care for it. But maybe I'm just mightily cheesed off because I had to visit your spirit-death website in order to have a listen. LH

Pippo's Progress: Elysium

Pippo's Progress's Souncloud blurb for Elysium effectively sums up the spirit with which the track appears to have been crafted: "Likely to be the last from us for the foreseeable future". It's a passionless statement, and yet, contains more feeling that the entirety of the song in question. By 2:07, I've stopped listening and started checking Facebook (koala memes). By 4:30, I appear to have relocated from the Guardian offices to an off-strip Vegas lounge, where a curiosity of lycra-clad middle-aged men play jazz-funk whilst aged Floridians tuck into an early bird buffet. Six minutes in, and I've forgotten my own name. It's not terrible, per se – rather, it's a soulless void of repetitive droning; an aural embodiment of the fizzling out of a relationship neither party actually cared about. But if that's your bag – you'll totally dig this. AB

Squeal Like A Pig: Bombscare

After so much solicitous nicey-nicey indie, something this preposterous comes as a welcome relief. You've got to admire Mr Squeal's don't-give-a-shit attitude, both in terms of lipstick application and in making his vocals sync with the music. It reminds me of going to an electroclash night in the early 00s when, just as you were coming up nicely on some deep Dutch electro, they'd bring on the live act – a frightening six-foot tranny bellowing obscenities into a mic shaped like a dildo – and you'd be forced to spend the rest of the night cowering by the exit, talking about non-league football with the bouncers. "Run dumb fuck run run" indeed. SR

 

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