Next year, people not born when England played West Germany in the World Cup semi-final will be taking their A-levels. For someone becoming ever more aware of the onward passage of time, that's more than slightly scary. It also goes to show how fast music moves on in this country - a full generation has already moved on since the heyday of acid house, probably the last youth movement connected with music that did actually cause socio-political ructions, the idea that these gatherings were happening without your permission.
There's a lot of talk about the tightening coils that make up a timeline of revivalism in the UK music scene, what with nu-rave and baggy influences around at the moment and the enveloping fog of Britpop influences already coming to the fore (why that should be the big issue given the tag 'post-Libertines' is already passe we don't know, but let's move on), which is why it's timely that this week sees compilation box set virtuosos Rhino Records release The Brit Box, a four CD box set shaped like a red telephone box, inevitably, complete with a large booklet featuring contributions from Alan McGee, Stephen Street, Alan Moulder and so forth. It's being sold not only as the first retrospective of what happened in this wave of UK music in the vein of previous Rhino releases Nuggets, Left Of The Dial and One Kiss Can Lead To Another, which will only really impress the US audience it was originally aimed at, but more specifically as a Britpop/Cool Britannia retrospective, which now water actually has passed under respective bridges and the documentarians have had their say might work in itself, but it's far from that, taking a fifteen year sweep of what was going on, cutting off in 1999 when the British music scene finally got over itself. For a bit. While nobody accused Nuggets of being too hasty even though it came out six years after its most contemporary inclusion, fifteen years is a wide angle to take if compressing British guitar music down to a flowchart of cultural studies.
But that's theory. What about music? Well, that's soon enough rendered - what we did was ripped, downloaded and variously acquired as many of the 78 tracks as we could in advance, falling just eight short in the end, listened to them and tried to make sense of what actually happened here.
Disc 1
It starts with How Soon Is Now? Well, of course it starts with How Soon Is Now?, perhaps even more than the Beatles the single great influence on what follows to this day, through that guitar and that lyrical concern, a strong stylistic link that takes in both Blur and Oasis. These early stages are really more of a cherrypick of what was dispritely going on rather than trying to make a linear narrative, with the Cocteau Twins' Lorelei existing in its own world and three tracks nodding at the continued underlying influence of C86. Interestingly there's an attempt to make them flow in the choices of tracks - Primitive Painters was a standout at the time but other Lawrence songs with less hazy production have aged better, while there's better examples of the Shop Assistants' sharpness than the shimmering attempt Somewhere In China. The Mighty Lemon Drops' charged Byrdsian jangles presage much of what came, but by that token the Wedding Present shouldn't have had pride of place here. We're on firmer ground with the Cure's Just Like Heaven, a song that gets irregular attempts at not so disguised remakes, not least by the Cure themselves for about the next five years, Echo and the Bunnymen's Lips Like Sugar also going towards mining a seam that really didn't have the advantage taken from it until after the nineties, although for our money Back Of Love or Seven Seas would have been better. In retrospect the Jesus and Mary Chain's April Skies, while as dark as reputation suggests, doesn't have anything like the impact of Psychocandy, and after the previous two tracks seems somewhat leaden. And what was it with proper drums being mixed to sound like electronic kits at the time?
Although they would become more influential with other songs, Spacemen 3's Walkin' With Jesus also stands alone, as much by its lush minimalism as being between J&MC and the Primitives' endlessly likeable Crash, both of which are on a level with the now sounding underpowered Unbearable by the Wonder Stuff, which sounds like the Mighty Lemon Drops grown up and discovering the joy of record sales when they actually made you money. This is where we turn into the 1990s, and thanks to Oakenfold and those million DJs who claim to have discovered house music are running their clubs and creating a word of mouth that's getting all manner of losers, boozers and jacuzzi users to invest in sequencers. And so it is here, the moment when bands became structurally and crossover-wise ambitious. She Bangs The Drums, The Only One I Know, Step On, Loaded, This Is How It Feels - all as familiar to men aged between 26 and 48 as the national anthem and a lot less dirgelike too. But, certainly in the first two and last cases, also the first strains of successful British music rooted in the 1960s beyond the Beatles, the sounds of Merseybeat, garage and the British Invasion, a connection even more explicit when followed by the Trash Can Sinatras' Obscurity Knocks - a choice which suggests trying to make connections between this era and what came later, as some Pop Will Eat Itself to cement the dance-rock lineage wouldn't have killed - and, with a creeping sense of inevitability, There She Goes. Disc 1 closes with the Sundays' Here's Where The Story Ends, which is its own little microcosm of homegrown UK music of the 90s - 1990's Reading, Writing And Arithmetic was for a few years talked about in hushed tones, at least for as long until they followed it up in 1997, but nowadays is lucky to receive a mention in dispatches. Although, again, there are better songs of theirs - Can't Be Sure, a piece of opaque greatness from two years earlier - you'd now struggle to call this 'indie', bearing more in relation to KT Tunstall than the Long Blondes.
Disc 2
Precious little such acoustic-led shilly-shallying on this disc, as we spend most of its eighteen tracks with hair lank, pedals maxed and eyes downwards. The progression is gradual, Ride's Vapour Trail having more than a hint of jangle and strings among its blurred tremelos, and while the Pale Saints more than match up in the hovering guitars and wan vocals, more latter Spacemen 3 than anything, it's not until track three when Loveless, represented by the still extraordinary Only Shallow, arrives to blow the joint apart, and we're off into the realm of the effects. Some found a way through - the tremendously underrated at all stages Lush's For Love makes a link between the Popguns and those around them here - but the Telescopes are fairly evidently taking after Ride while Chapterhouse are Shoegazing 101 makeweights and the Catherine Wheel - quite successful on American college radio, lest we forget - appear to be trying to become the introspective swirling complement to Soundgarden. Inevitably it's this disc which is hit hardest by a lack of download presence, though we doubt Bleach, Five Thirty, the Dylans, Thousand Yard Stare and Moose, whose singer became famous for never looking straight ahead on stage, are bearing up well, although the Family Cat might have offered something. Curve were important on the route to Garbageesque female fronted electro-rock but their dense production and (machined?) drum patterns suggest they were more one of a piece with many of those around. This means we join the story on its way out of shoegazing and realising we're missing some vital component parts. Where, for example, are the clustered guitars and superior darkscaping of the House Of Love at the start, the square pegs and much hinted at of late Kitchens Of Distinction or indeed one of the genre's most important and well remembered bands, Slowdive?
Instead we rejoin well on the way to what came with the ragtag Ned's Atomic Dustbin - nice of them to remember, but surely Jesus Jones deserved a mention, although with none of the Britpop-affiliated ends of electro and big beat referred to in the rest of the compilation the dance pastures hinted at with the Mondays and so forth have been abandoned by the compilers. Before Select could get Brett Anderson in front of a blue screen it briefly looked like British guitar music would literally be dragged back kicking and screaming into hard pastures, firstly with Birdland's Shoot You Down, not half as malevolent as it wants to be, and then the Manics, smartly choosing early 'sixteen million and then we'll split' rather than successful, although if the point's being made there are better songs to make it with, as James and Nicky would now attest, than Stay Beautiful. (Note for timeline tracers: it was Birdland disappointment Steve Lamacq invoked in his interview with Richey about commitment that caused the '4 REAL' business). After such sonic pounding the final track is the one that ends up pointing the way best, Teenage Fanclub's still peerless Star Sign, which takes the wall of guitars and does something straightforwardly melodic with them. This, however, was clearly not a vintage period, and the fact we were about to type "where's Carter USM?" confirms it.
Disc 3
Now we're into it. 'YANKS GO HOME!' said the famous Select cover, not long after Suede had burst out of nowhere, all makeup, androgyny and suggestions of 'other', The Drowners for many the starting pistol for what was to follow. So here we have... Metal Mickey. Less glam, less lyrically suggestive, less all round. Only then, for some reason, do we get Swervedriver, who have become co-opted into shoegazing retrospectively - pedals, Home Counties - but on Duel resemble a louder Teenage Fanclub. Eugenius are an intriguing addition, a Kurt Cobain favourite whose jangly Breakfast almost predicts the next Fannies album, but if this part, which includes the similar but more attempted ethereal Superstar, is showing the way towards 1995's apogee then it's odd not to see Cud or the Auteurs included. Instead there's an almost token nod to New Order's last great song Regret and James' Laid and, bizarrely, Nick Heyward, who was signed to Creation for a short while for some facile acoustic stuff. Was there an issue with picking something from weller's Wild Wood? It's interesting that at this point we get three bands who didn't really fit in at the time, the Boo Radleys' glorious psychedelic epic Lazarus (an inventive reappropriation of Merseybeat retro, and at least it wasn't the get-out clause of anything from Wake Up!), Saint Etienne's retro-futurism - how the Americans will take to You're In A Bad Way's reference to "watching Bruce on the old Generation Game" is anyone's guess - and Stereolab's reuse of influences most clued-up people still know little about. What this all goes to show, we suppose, is that in 1993-94 there was a lot of music about of quality but it needed to coalesce for wider appreciation.
You'll never guess who made the next three tracks, given that build-up. Last first, Common People will remain unimpeachable, doffing its cap to many a direct influence while sounding completely of the time and yet in a way that will never age its quietly shifting sound. Frankly, it's a song about not getting on with middle class art students that resonated for everyone. Oasis come before it with Live Forever, the perfect match of their early fire and Noel's classicist aspirations. (Interesting to note that despite being the ultimate rockist band Noel often namechecked trip-hop and dance music among his listening at the time, only much later thinning it out to just Cotton Mather and Kings Of Leon.) Blur? Intriguingly, their choice is from Parklife but it's Tracy Jacks, not even the most celebrated or well sketched out of the non-single album tracks. Girls And Boys would have fitted the sequencing better, This Is A Low or Badhead would have shown the depths Damon was capable of, Parklife and End Of A Century would be better for the theme. We can only assume they wanted to represent his character study period, which only really came into play on the albums either side of Parklife to wildly varying results. And then the issue really gets clouded with The New Wave Of New Wave, more precisely These Animal Men, who shot for the glam stars but ended up lumpen and somehow just unlikeable. Maybe this and the resolutely second division Mega City Four is the warning from history, the way it might have turned out in a parallel world. Echobelly's Insomniac has aged just as badly, but this is by no means their most representative moment. By now we're well into the Cool Britannia longeurs and assorted hypes, Gene hampered by sledgehammer production, the infamous Menswear's Sleeping In - why not their calling card Daydreamer? - like a modern pisstake of chirpy Cockernee schmindie. Even Supergrass' celebrated Alright doesn't survive all that well, the joi de vivre pulling through a lightweight arrangement, but it's less of a hostage to fortune alongside Cast's own Alright, which now sounds desperately short of ideas. Although that concept is in the eye of the beholder - Elastica didn't have too many different ideas in 1994, yet Stutter still sounds like an invigorating come-on of pure Buzzcockian stock. That's kind of the impression a large part of this CD gives off - those that have commitment and audible personality were few on the ground, and those are the ones you remember. Which means that when we get to the dregs as the music makes the leap from weeklies to daily showbiz columns, some people are in trouble.
Disc 4
Are Dodgy one such band? They swept the scene at one point, with Math Priest's Never Mind The Buzzcocks residency and Andy Miller dating Denise van Outen, but minus the quotability presence In A Room suggests they weren't exactly cut out to be frontrunners. Ash might well have been, Girl From Mars one of few of their early songs that have aged well, but they kept taking their eye off the ball. Sleeper fare less well, but again Sale Of The Century shows off Louise Wener's style less well than Inbetweener, and Marion's glam racket is better served by Time than Sleep. Nothing will ever serve better for Kula Shaker. Did we really all go head over heels for Tattva's third hand Small Faces plus mysticism? Actually Ocean Colour Scene do better than expected out of being picked up from the populism reject bin, although the famous riff from The Riverboat Song, now divorced from memories of Chris Evans at his height, sounds horribly underpowered. Babybird's You're Gorgeous is still a textbook lesson in how to wrest a radio friendly anthem from unfriendly sources, although its omnipresence that year did stop Stephen Jones from receiving his songwriting due. The Bluetones' Slight Return? Ooh, this is painful - we don't mind admitting we loved them at the time of Expecting To Fly, but in isolaton twelve years later it's clearly musicians working at the limits of their jangling abilities. The singles from the derided second album have weathered much better. There's also those pushed out through the circumstances of the storytelling - no place for the Longpigs' maximalism, or Space's cheek, or any mention of the bands the fanzine kids followed as a contrasting story to the now mainstream rock hegemony - no Bis, no Kenickie, no early Idlewild, not even Belle & Sebastian.
And so the talking stopped. Country House v Roll With It happened, then Morning Glory broke big, then over 1996 and 1997 it all began to ebb away, in contravention of basic physics because it got too big. The smart ones realised that to survive you needed a few out of the way ideas because nobody was standing for straight pub singalong choruses any more. Pub lads wouldn't get Gruff Rhys or Neil Hannon, whose Something 4 The Weekend and Something For The Weekend remain moments of individual flair compromised by Rhino's tracklister acting too smart. We don't know which version of Brimful Of Asha they're using, but no prizes for guessing which of Cornershop's Richman-hinting original and Fatboy Slim's big beateria has weathered best. Has anybody thought about Silver Sun in the last ten years? Album track Service is an odd choice, but its glam beat, power chords and Californian harmonies just about carry through. Jason Pierce's second appearance completely at odds with his surroundings comes with the title track from Spiritualized's Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, still on the subjects of life's etherness and allusions to "taking away the pain" from perhaps the great lost classic of the '90s, routinely described as a masterpiece at the time but overlooked ever since. Plenty of people are still fond of Mansun too, and they don't sound like a lot of their disc compadres either in a very different way, especially when placed next to the post-Oasis bludgeon longeurs masquerading as gradiosity of Hurricane #1's Step Into My World and The Verve's Lucky Man. You can't help thinking it's this sort of radiant self-perpetuating reaching for the showbiz stars that's being replicated to smaller and smaller artistic merit - what is divisible by zero again? - as time passes. Rialto now sound exactly like the recent New Order albums, which probably wasn't their intention at the time. Britpop was conclusively over by this point, but it left a legacy of people who wanted to be in the tabloids at any cost. Exhibit A: there's nothing to Catatonia's Mulder And Scully, even the then sainted Cerys coming off second in an internal likeable vocal style contest with Wener. You Don't Care About Us is a fairly anaemic choice to represent Placebo but is Ace Of Spades next to Gay Dad, the final track and presumably chosen for their own story, hugely hyped in advance followed by instant backlash and mocking ever since. Oh Jim, rather than that much trailed debut single From Earth With Love, doesn't help that cause much. Evidently, UK music didn't learn anything as it went along from its mistakes. Or rather it did, and can repeat them when required.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Monday, November 19, 2007
Weekender : our face is a foreign food
FREE MUSIC: Chris Walla likes to keep irons in the fire - guitarist in Death Cab For Cutie, he's also made his name behind the production console with credits including the last two Decemberists albums, Nada Surf, Hot Hot Heat, The Thermals and Tegan & Sara. Now he's breaking solo, Field Manual set for a US January release despite a recent setback when his hard drive was briefly confiscated by Homeland Security while crossing the Canadian border. Sing Again will not pose a threat to your livelihood, but it is Shins-esque sunshine pop with a serrated edge just lurking beneath.
HEY YOU GET OFFA MYSPACE: We get a lot of emails, but that's what comes of badly organised spam filters. Occasionally we do get emails alerting us to decent new bands, one such being New York's Your 33 Black Angels. Doubtless this has been around the mid-ranking mp3 blogs at least four times by now, and we're fully aware of this sort of thing in the wake of that Idolator piece, but even before that their self-released album Lonely Street had earned special commendation from Rolling Stone editor David Fricke in September. They follow in the Brooklyn area recent years garage trend, not garage in the scrappy fall-down way but in the indiepop kids in a garage getting their smarter ideas into fruition sense, with echoes of the work of Stephen Malkmus and his compadre the Silver Jews' David Berman filtered through the likes of Hot Hot Heat and on through to Lou Reed.
VISUAL REPRESENTATION: This was only ever going to be given over to one band this week, with My Bloody Valentine reformation ticket demand briefly crashing both the Roundhouse online box office and Seetickets. Why is this important? Soon, Feed Me With Your Kiss and You Made Me Realise are three examples of why it's important. Kevin Shields could never quite fully explain why himself at the time, as when interviewed in 1990 by Edward Ball and featured on Rapido two years later, although he'd got better at it by 2000 and this past month, looking back and confirming the reunion to The Make-Up/weird War/Nation Of Ulysses' Ian Svenonius. Perhaps it's best expressed live, despite the 1990-91 mic-distorting levels as with I Only Said, When You Sleep, Only Shallow and even Sunny Sundae Smile. At least, we assume it is under all the feedback.
FALLING OFF A BLOG: Who Killed The Mixtape? likes Curb Your Enthusiasm. Score one point there. They also have a wide range of mp3s and embeds. Score many more.
EVERYBODY GET RANDOM: One of the most common 'whatever happened to...?' queries, mid-90s UK subsection, has been answered by Under The Radar magazine, who have tracked down Lush's Miki Berenyi, who is very forthcoming on the band's history and reveals that bar the odd guest vocal she has no plans to take up music again. And yes, we're aware that everyone knew she worked for TV Times for a bit, but that's hardly where the smitten wanted to see her.
IN OTHER NEWS: In a quite notable set of charts (the Spice Girls Children In Need single falling? We blame Fearne Cotton), Amy Winehouse's Back To Black shot up, pun only half-intended, to number 30. Winehouse's parents, you may recall, once appealed to the public to stop buying her album and were 'rewarded' by it climbing back up to number two. All publicity really is good publicity.
HEY YOU GET OFFA MYSPACE: We get a lot of emails, but that's what comes of badly organised spam filters. Occasionally we do get emails alerting us to decent new bands, one such being New York's Your 33 Black Angels. Doubtless this has been around the mid-ranking mp3 blogs at least four times by now, and we're fully aware of this sort of thing in the wake of that Idolator piece, but even before that their self-released album Lonely Street had earned special commendation from Rolling Stone editor David Fricke in September. They follow in the Brooklyn area recent years garage trend, not garage in the scrappy fall-down way but in the indiepop kids in a garage getting their smarter ideas into fruition sense, with echoes of the work of Stephen Malkmus and his compadre the Silver Jews' David Berman filtered through the likes of Hot Hot Heat and on through to Lou Reed.
VISUAL REPRESENTATION: This was only ever going to be given over to one band this week, with My Bloody Valentine reformation ticket demand briefly crashing both the Roundhouse online box office and Seetickets. Why is this important? Soon, Feed Me With Your Kiss and You Made Me Realise are three examples of why it's important. Kevin Shields could never quite fully explain why himself at the time, as when interviewed in 1990 by Edward Ball and featured on Rapido two years later, although he'd got better at it by 2000 and this past month, looking back and confirming the reunion to The Make-Up/weird War/Nation Of Ulysses' Ian Svenonius. Perhaps it's best expressed live, despite the 1990-91 mic-distorting levels as with I Only Said, When You Sleep, Only Shallow and even Sunny Sundae Smile. At least, we assume it is under all the feedback.
FALLING OFF A BLOG: Who Killed The Mixtape? likes Curb Your Enthusiasm. Score one point there. They also have a wide range of mp3s and embeds. Score many more.
EVERYBODY GET RANDOM: One of the most common 'whatever happened to...?' queries, mid-90s UK subsection, has been answered by Under The Radar magazine, who have tracked down Lush's Miki Berenyi, who is very forthcoming on the band's history and reveals that bar the odd guest vocal she has no plans to take up music again. And yes, we're aware that everyone knew she worked for TV Times for a bit, but that's hardly where the smitten wanted to see her.
IN OTHER NEWS: In a quite notable set of charts (the Spice Girls Children In Need single falling? We blame Fearne Cotton), Amy Winehouse's Back To Black shot up, pun only half-intended, to number 30. Winehouse's parents, you may recall, once appealed to the public to stop buying her album and were 'rewarded' by it climbing back up to number two. All publicity really is good publicity.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
In shops tomorrow: 19/11
Singles
This is more like it, plenty of 7"s, CDs and downloads to go round this week. Even for those who go down the Harvey/Marshall route of the emotionally charged while not overbearing female singer-songwriter, Scout Niblett can take some getting used to, even if there's fewer drum-powered songs than before on her current album This Fool Can Die Now. The single taken from it is the closest it ever remotely comes to commercial, Kiss being a duet with Will Oldham that resembles Cat Power in an iron maiden (no, not Iron Maiden, an actual iron maiden). Brighton duo/trio/loads Restlesslist, who form quite a solid piece of the interconnected Whitecentric web of Brighton music, seem to be appealing to a wider audience then they might have expected, their last single appearing in Mixmag's top fifty tracks of 2006. Your pilled up clubber would literally shit themselves at Dirty Pint, the imaginary soundtrack to an fairground ghost train based on Hammer Horror soundtracks. Just down the road literally and musically metaphorically, the Go! Team's Proof Of Youth received some criticism for its snail-like progression from the Thunder Lightning Strike sound, but in reality their style is so singular and so indubtedly theirs that it'd be difficult to see how much further it could be stretched. Third single The Wrath Of Marcie is therefore bracing funk brass, hip hop drums, half-buried Ninja rhymes and cartoon theme interludes, this one seemingly quoting J Geils Band's Centerfold. Baby-faced quasi-rustic folk storyteller and occasional National Theatre Shakespearian actor Johnny Flynn has somehow ended up on Vertigo Records (The Killers, Razorlight, Dirty Pretty Things, Amy Macdonald, OneKooks Night Only), and it'll be a nightmare for whoever's charged with trying to feed his sound through the A&R/publicity machine. The Box sees him continue to make his own corner of the London nu-'folk' scene. He's also subject of Rubbish ContactMusic Review Of The Week, wherein it is confidently stated "no matter how hard he may try, he will always be compared to Newton Faulkner". By that token the Raveonettes will forever be in the shadow of Amy Winehouse, being as both have betrayed Wall Of Sound influences in the past. The Danish ice duo again have their handstamped sound no matter where they take it, Dead Sound coming on with spooky distorted J&MC with Velvets to taste. Opinionated storyteller Chris T-T got distracted from his London trilogy of albums by his 9 Red Songs political repositioning for a good two or three years, but Capital is due out in February and advance notice is given on the This Gun Is Not A Gun EP. The album manages both the ying and yang of STN's musical worldview, featuring as it does both Emmy The Great and one of Razorlight (the drummer). The Rumble Strips do what they do, again, on Time, the Mules step out from the shadow of all their famous and talented friends with their very British take on Talking Heads '77, This Is Your Life; Australian youths Operator Please leave behind their meta-table tennis contextualising for the more streamlined Leave It Alone; Make Model, now on EMI, turn tail on their Canadian-influenced post-postrock for a more Heavenly-esque poppier/dark lyrical side on The Was; and the indefatigable Helen Love preview February's new album with the usual Ramones/J-Pop bubblegum of It’s My Club. Just as excitingly, someone's finally uploaded the video for Long Live The UK Music Scene, even if we suspect Ocean Colour Scene have now indeed sold more singles than Gina G.
Albums
Not much new to speak of, evidently. We're a UK music blog, so we're forced by law to namecheck Girls Aloud's Tangled Up, even if the new single sounds for the first time in their careers (bar the covers) like A N Other Girl Group. That's what happens when you recontextualise pop, everyone works out eventually what you were doing. Meanwhile Bonnie Prince Billy, or if you're Amazon Bonnie Prince Charlie, delves into the covers stopgap drawer on Ask Forgiveness and comes out with Bjork, Danzig, R Kelly, Merle Haggard and Phil Ochs. GoodBooks are probably as well renowned for their remixes as their originals, so it's no wonder that they've commissioned download-only Control Freaks, tracks from their underrated Control album reworked by the likes of the Teenagers (inevitably, being one guitar band with remix chops reworking another), Crystal Castles, Kissy Sell Out, Minotaur Shock and Lo-Fi-Fnk. Also going the repackaging route are Gorillaz, with second odds and sods compilation D-Sides, and Bloc Party, whose A Weekend In The City has grown Flux (after I Still Remember) and a DVD of Reading set and videos. Nowhere near as frenetic but just as heartfelt, The Drift Collective documents the highly promising Devon-based with Brighton offshoot folk label's best acts, including Thirty Pounds Of Bone, Mary Hampton, The R G Morrison and Actress Hands' Matt Eaton. New Boots And Panties is about to hit thirty, and reissued best of Sex And Drugs And Rock And Roll demonstrates why no home should be without some Dury. 5CD set The Brit Box catalogues most of the notables that took guitar music through the 1990s - we'll be covering this in greater detail later in the week. Sufjan Stevens' Songs For Christmas is one of many festive issues this week. For no tie-in reason that we can make out, Neko Case's country-noir second and third full-lengths, Furnace Room Lullaby and Blacklisted, also return.
DVDs
"Am I going to have to do this by myself?" It had never occurred to us before that for all the words written about the TV broadcast and CD and everything read into its significance, Nirvana Unplugged In New York, recorded fourteen years ago today, has never previously been released in visual form. This has the whole thing for the first time, plus rehearsal footage and a documentary.
Books
You've probably heard the 13th Floor Elevators' disciples more than you've heard their own garage psychedelia, and it's probable you know even more about leader Roky Erickson's subsequent RP McMurphy-esque mental breakdown and three years in a mental hospital for the criminally insane. Eye Mind: The Saga of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators by Paul Drummond, with Julian Cope on foreword, tries to unpick legend from fact with everybody involved as interviewees.
This is more like it, plenty of 7"s, CDs and downloads to go round this week. Even for those who go down the Harvey/Marshall route of the emotionally charged while not overbearing female singer-songwriter, Scout Niblett can take some getting used to, even if there's fewer drum-powered songs than before on her current album This Fool Can Die Now. The single taken from it is the closest it ever remotely comes to commercial, Kiss being a duet with Will Oldham that resembles Cat Power in an iron maiden (no, not Iron Maiden, an actual iron maiden). Brighton duo/trio/loads Restlesslist, who form quite a solid piece of the interconnected Whitecentric web of Brighton music, seem to be appealing to a wider audience then they might have expected, their last single appearing in Mixmag's top fifty tracks of 2006. Your pilled up clubber would literally shit themselves at Dirty Pint, the imaginary soundtrack to an fairground ghost train based on Hammer Horror soundtracks. Just down the road literally and musically metaphorically, the Go! Team's Proof Of Youth received some criticism for its snail-like progression from the Thunder Lightning Strike sound, but in reality their style is so singular and so indubtedly theirs that it'd be difficult to see how much further it could be stretched. Third single The Wrath Of Marcie is therefore bracing funk brass, hip hop drums, half-buried Ninja rhymes and cartoon theme interludes, this one seemingly quoting J Geils Band's Centerfold. Baby-faced quasi-rustic folk storyteller and occasional National Theatre Shakespearian actor Johnny Flynn has somehow ended up on Vertigo Records (The Killers, Razorlight, Dirty Pretty Things, Amy Macdonald, One
Albums
Not much new to speak of, evidently. We're a UK music blog, so we're forced by law to namecheck Girls Aloud's Tangled Up, even if the new single sounds for the first time in their careers (bar the covers) like A N Other Girl Group. That's what happens when you recontextualise pop, everyone works out eventually what you were doing. Meanwhile Bonnie Prince Billy, or if you're Amazon Bonnie Prince Charlie, delves into the covers stopgap drawer on Ask Forgiveness and comes out with Bjork, Danzig, R Kelly, Merle Haggard and Phil Ochs. GoodBooks are probably as well renowned for their remixes as their originals, so it's no wonder that they've commissioned download-only Control Freaks, tracks from their underrated Control album reworked by the likes of the Teenagers (inevitably, being one guitar band with remix chops reworking another), Crystal Castles, Kissy Sell Out, Minotaur Shock and Lo-Fi-Fnk. Also going the repackaging route are Gorillaz, with second odds and sods compilation D-Sides, and Bloc Party, whose A Weekend In The City has grown Flux (after I Still Remember) and a DVD of Reading set and videos. Nowhere near as frenetic but just as heartfelt, The Drift Collective documents the highly promising Devon-based with Brighton offshoot folk label's best acts, including Thirty Pounds Of Bone, Mary Hampton, The R G Morrison and Actress Hands' Matt Eaton. New Boots And Panties is about to hit thirty, and reissued best of Sex And Drugs And Rock And Roll demonstrates why no home should be without some Dury. 5CD set The Brit Box catalogues most of the notables that took guitar music through the 1990s - we'll be covering this in greater detail later in the week. Sufjan Stevens' Songs For Christmas is one of many festive issues this week. For no tie-in reason that we can make out, Neko Case's country-noir second and third full-lengths, Furnace Room Lullaby and Blacklisted, also return.
DVDs
"Am I going to have to do this by myself?" It had never occurred to us before that for all the words written about the TV broadcast and CD and everything read into its significance, Nirvana Unplugged In New York, recorded fourteen years ago today, has never previously been released in visual form. This has the whole thing for the first time, plus rehearsal footage and a documentary.
Books
You've probably heard the 13th Floor Elevators' disciples more than you've heard their own garage psychedelia, and it's probable you know even more about leader Roky Erickson's subsequent RP McMurphy-esque mental breakdown and three years in a mental hospital for the criminally insane. Eye Mind: The Saga of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators by Paul Drummond, with Julian Cope on foreword, tries to unpick legend from fact with everybody involved as interviewees.
The Weekly Sweep
Friday, November 16, 2007
Forward Rhydian
If we can be said to have many traditions this early on, one is that about this time every year we take a look at the advance betting on the Christmas number one. Of course, as commercialisation of the number one spot takes over, it's all been ruined - you won't be able to find a bookie taking bets on whoever wins the X Factor being the festive leader.
What can be done? Well, last.fm have had an idea - they've corralled three young bands into a competition, Christmas Chart Attack, where subscribers can vote for one and the winner will, it says here, "take their track and go head-to-head with the X Factor winner, to decide who tops the charts this December", apparently by offering it as a 40p download. The reason we mention it is that one of the bands involved is Lucky Soul, and in this situation, who cares about the other two candidates. Not that in a just world they should need a viral gimmick to become stars, given the quality of their album, but as it is what you need to do before Monday is go to its auto-play page and click on the heart symbol in the embedded player to register a vote. Together we can send Lips Are Unhappy into the Christmas top 130.
Back in the non-virtual world they've not got a clue, Ladbrokes having dropped their usual online book, not even offering Excluding X-Factor. Luckily there are no depths to which Paddy Power will sink, especially given their What Will Happen Next To Amy Winehouse? book (Win a Grammy 13-8 favourite, file for divorce 20-1, be snapped fighting with Lily Allen 25-1, start dating Pete Doherty 40-1, receive an ASBO 50-1, become the face of Ragu 100-1 - don't quite understand that last one), so here's what they reckon we'll be pointedly shunning the Cowelltopia for:
7-4 Spice Girls - Headlines
It's likely not to make number one this week, when it's the official Children In Need record! A five week slow burn is really pushing it
3-1 Sugbabes - Change
3-1 Leona Lewis - Bleeding Love
8-1 Mutya Buena feat. Amy Winehouse - B-Boy Baby
Now, Winehouse, if you could just put the pipe aside for a moment and answer this - if you love the Shangri-Las as much as you say you do, why are you doing backing vocals on a R&B 'update' of Be My Baby?
10-1 Shaun The Sheep - Life's A Treat
And to think we credited Aardman with some imagination. It's the opening theme to Shaun's CBBC series, as sung by Vic Reeves. And if that doesn't demonstrate something about Vic Reeves' current career trajectory, nothing will.
18-1 Kylie Minogue - 2 Hearts
20-1 Connie Talbot - Somewhere Over The Rainbow
Not the Sound Of Music stage Maria, that's Connie Fisher. This is a six year old from Britain's Got Talent and possibly the latest in a long line of precocious pre-teens pushed into million pound record deals and a Christmastime single who are never heard of again (cf All Angels, Declan Galbraith)
It gets really dull from then on, with all sorts of guesswork - yeah, Snow Patrol could suddenly rear back up the charts, but don't expect much change on your 50-1 - and a dark horse back at 100-1 if it gets publicity, Annie Lennox's charity single Sing featuring guest vocals from a whole host of female singers, wherein Madonna, Dido, Celine Dion, Pink, Shakira, Joss Stone, the Sugababes and KT Tunstall rub mastertape shoulders with Beth Gibbons, kd lang, Beth Orton, Martha Wainwright and, most intriguingly, Shingai Shoniwa from the Noisettes. Which is all very well, but... this Christmas race list. It's not very wide-ranging, is it? We all get peeved by chancers and noveltists, but nobody seems to be bothering trying to score populist approval any more. Not even a new Nizlopi.
What can be done? Well, last.fm have had an idea - they've corralled three young bands into a competition, Christmas Chart Attack, where subscribers can vote for one and the winner will, it says here, "take their track and go head-to-head with the X Factor winner, to decide who tops the charts this December", apparently by offering it as a 40p download. The reason we mention it is that one of the bands involved is Lucky Soul, and in this situation, who cares about the other two candidates. Not that in a just world they should need a viral gimmick to become stars, given the quality of their album, but as it is what you need to do before Monday is go to its auto-play page and click on the heart symbol in the embedded player to register a vote. Together we can send Lips Are Unhappy into the Christmas top 130.
Back in the non-virtual world they've not got a clue, Ladbrokes having dropped their usual online book, not even offering Excluding X-Factor. Luckily there are no depths to which Paddy Power will sink, especially given their What Will Happen Next To Amy Winehouse? book (Win a Grammy 13-8 favourite, file for divorce 20-1, be snapped fighting with Lily Allen 25-1, start dating Pete Doherty 40-1, receive an ASBO 50-1, become the face of Ragu 100-1 - don't quite understand that last one), so here's what they reckon we'll be pointedly shunning the Cowelltopia for:
7-4 Spice Girls - Headlines
It's likely not to make number one this week, when it's the official Children In Need record! A five week slow burn is really pushing it
3-1 Sugbabes - Change
3-1 Leona Lewis - Bleeding Love
8-1 Mutya Buena feat. Amy Winehouse - B-Boy Baby
Now, Winehouse, if you could just put the pipe aside for a moment and answer this - if you love the Shangri-Las as much as you say you do, why are you doing backing vocals on a R&B 'update' of Be My Baby?
10-1 Shaun The Sheep - Life's A Treat
And to think we credited Aardman with some imagination. It's the opening theme to Shaun's CBBC series, as sung by Vic Reeves. And if that doesn't demonstrate something about Vic Reeves' current career trajectory, nothing will.
18-1 Kylie Minogue - 2 Hearts
20-1 Connie Talbot - Somewhere Over The Rainbow
Not the Sound Of Music stage Maria, that's Connie Fisher. This is a six year old from Britain's Got Talent and possibly the latest in a long line of precocious pre-teens pushed into million pound record deals and a Christmastime single who are never heard of again (cf All Angels, Declan Galbraith)
It gets really dull from then on, with all sorts of guesswork - yeah, Snow Patrol could suddenly rear back up the charts, but don't expect much change on your 50-1 - and a dark horse back at 100-1 if it gets publicity, Annie Lennox's charity single Sing featuring guest vocals from a whole host of female singers, wherein Madonna, Dido, Celine Dion, Pink, Shakira, Joss Stone, the Sugababes and KT Tunstall rub mastertape shoulders with Beth Gibbons, kd lang, Beth Orton, Martha Wainwright and, most intriguingly, Shingai Shoniwa from the Noisettes. Which is all very well, but... this Christmas race list. It's not very wide-ranging, is it? We all get peeved by chancers and noveltists, but nobody seems to be bothering trying to score populist approval any more. Not even a new Nizlopi.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
GRRR Books
Gambaccini, Read, Rice and Rice, of course, originators of the Guinness Book Of British Hit Singles. The reason why we bring this up: why is last year's volume being repromoted with massive piles in bookstores this year without its usual update? Is someone going out of business?
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
An Illustrated Guide To... Squeeze
On 26th November the reformed Squeeze, or reformed in the sense it ever was for a good half of its lifespan in being Chris Difford, Glenn Tilbrook and others (returning bassist John Bentley and Stephen Large and Simon Hanson from Tilbrook's band The Fluffers, to be exact), begin a UK tour they thought might never happen. The figureheads, having been tarred at their peak with Rolling Stone's 'new Lennon & McCartney' tag, never made it to How Do You Sleep? levels of antipathy - the split was too civil for that - but there was a barely disguised depth of feeling between the pair well before the parting of band ways. Although the impasse long thawed completely, Difford has intimated that the tour is only happening because Universal wanted to promote this year's Essential Squeeze compilation, their tenth Best Of, and although Tilbrook has made encouraging noises about an eventual album and Difford has spoken of getting his own long gestated Squeeze musical going both are releasing solo albums next year. Whatever, it brings back into the spotlight one of the most literate and effective bands Britain has produced in the last thirty years or so.
In 1973, 18 year old Chris Difford placed a guitarist wanted advert in a shop in Blackheath, to which one of few respondents was 15 year old hippy Glenn Tilbrook. As their friendship and musical partnership blossomed the more musically able Tilbrook took up the melodic side while the longer standing songwriting half concentrated on lyrics, and the pair played at the bottom of bills for a couple of years, mostly under the name Skyco. On the side Tilbrook continued to sketch out songs with talented pianist schoolfriend Julian Holland, Jools to one and all, who Difford has described as resembling a Hell's Angel hanger-on at the time, if you can imagine such a thing. Mutual acquaintance Harry Kakoulli, who'd been in a band with future Only One and briefly Tilbrook flatmate Peter Perrett, joined the nascent outfit on bass, and with shortlived drummer Paul Gunn the band built up a south London following throughout 1975 under a name taken from a late Velvet Underground album. Perrett's friend's friend Miles Copeland was a managerial mover and shaker who would later turn his brother Stewart's band The Police into worldwide superstars, and he convinced the teenagers to sign a managerial contract that year on the promise of better paid gigs, handing over an unrecoupable fifty percent of all publishing rights in the process. A couple of aborted sessions followed before sessioner Gilson Lavis joined as drummer and a set of demos was finally recorded. Watching some of the session was John Cale, who produced debut release Packet Of Three EP, which sold 25,000 copies on the tiny Deptford Fun City label.
Cale was entrusted the self-titled debut album, but, heavily reliant on drink and drugs at this point, insisted first off that the band ditch all their road-tested songs and come up with a whole new set in the studio which abandoned their harmonic post-Beatles melodies for aggressiveness and subjects he suggested. Both main parties disown the album, released in March 1978, the two singles being the sole album tracks produced by the band themselves when ill health forced Cale out early. The first, Take Me I'm Yours, went top twenty, while Copeland hired a cramping van and drove them round America's byways for two months.
Take Me, I'm Yours
With a stockpile of their own earlier unreleased songs, second album syndrome was quelled until A&M recommended they scrap the sessions with Pink Floyd engineer Brian Humphries, the band ending up co-producing it themselves with first album engineer John Wood to what everyone refers to as superior results. Writing Cool For Cats, for a start, which ended up as the title track of the album released in March 1979. Difford took influence from Ian Dury, Nick Drake and the crew of local ne'er do wells who were hanging around the band at the time, while Tilbrook's musical experimentation was encouraged, early synths dotted about the record. The album is full of band classics - Slap And Tickle, Goodbye Girl, Cool For Cats - inspired by the musical segments of The Benny Hill Show - and Up The Junction, written in New Orleans in the Dylan reportage style. The last two sold a combined million records and the latter two tracks both reached number two as singles, so on with ever lengthening tours they went.
Slap And Tickle
At the end of 1979 Kakoulli was sacked, replaced by John Bentley, and after a single Christmas Day was curiously banned by the BBC and flopped as a result, Squeeze went back into the studio with three albums' worth of Difford songs, the best of which became Argybargy, a less successful but no less succinctly captured collection. Just after its February 1980 release Holland, who was seen as the band's calming internal force but had been sidelined during much of the previous two albums' recording sessions, left to pursue his own musical and soon enough televisual projects. Copeland was also summarily excommunicated as manager, Chris and Glenn feeling he'd taken his eye off the Squeeze ball as the Police rose steadily. Instead they hooked up with Stiff Records founder Jake Riviera, now operating his own management company, and his associate Elvis Costello agreed to produce the May 1981 fourth album East Side Story alongside Undertones producer Roger Bechirian. Operating to strict working hours and pub banning orders so work could be completed before Elvis' other commitments, the decision was also made to bring in Paul Carrack on vocals and keyboard. It was his soul background that encouraged the band to come up with Tempted, a song Difford admits is partly autobiographical, and at Costello's suggestion to put Carrack on lead. Widely regarded as their pinnacle, it's almost a theme album of love either going wrong or setting about things the wrong way, shaded by soul and country and moving away from earlier blanket accusations of a sexist nature. Labelled With Love went to number four, aided by B-side joke Squabs On Forty Fab, a Stars On 45-style disco medley of previous singles.
In Quintessence
Squabs On Forty Fab
By then Riviera and A&M had already come to loggerheads, and when having promised a contractless agreement Riviera presented a lengthy and detailed document for signing the die was cast against the manager. Five years' pauseless work behind them Squeeze needed rest; instead what they got was studio time for another album and a new keyboard player after the pivotal Carrack left, Don Snow his replacement. Sweets From A Stranger, released in May 1982 and produced, as much has he could with Tilbrook in particular dominating proceedings, by Phil MacDonald, was a major step backwards, exacerbating existing tensions and not selling half as well in Britain, although America proved less elusive. Standalone single Annie Get Your Gun also failed to make the top 40, the band surprised to find its producer had recorded all but lead vocals in their absence, and with members wracked in heavy drinking and success falling apart it was decided to end the band from late 1982, a hits compilation Singles 45s And Under being issued.
Difford and Tilbrook were reconciled by playwright John Turner, who wrote a script around their songs called Labelled With Love and with their musical arrangements ran it for three months at the Albany Theatre, Deptford. This led to Difford & Tilbrook, using mostly leftover songs from the previous two albums, a more grandiose and not nearly achieved take on the Squeeze sound. It didn't help that both had got into hard drugs and still didn't trust the other anyway, and that the album didn't sell. The Argybargy line-up reformed for a charity show in January 1985 which was so successful the proper name was resuscitated without Bentley, Keith Wilkinson taking up the bass, and the band also got back together with Miles Copeland despite an outstanding legal action over royalties. August's Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti was recorded in Belgium with Paul Young producer Laurie Latham but sounds like a band re-entering the studio before they're ready, inconsistency squared with 80s production values. The Soft Boys' Andy Metcalfe came on tour as a second keyboard player and stayed for September 1987's Babylon And On, recorded in six different studios at great expense but their most consistent album since East Side Story. Their biggest selling too, going gold in America on the back of an Ade Edmondson-directed video for Hourglass and a proper hit in 853-5937, Tilbrook's old phone number allied to a song they thought was so throwaway they refused to play it live even after it had broken big. Tilbrook took a co-producer's credit, leading to further internal fallouts and what he now calls the lowest point in his partnership with Difford, although in public things were going better than ever with a successful Bowie support slot and a Madison Square Garden sellout.
Metcalfe replaced by Matt Irving, the task again of following up a hugely successful album fell to September 1989's Frank, which was even more artistically successful, Difford back to lyrical sharpness, Tilbrook ever improving as an arranger, Holland and Lavis on form. Of course, it sank without trace commercially.
Love Circles
Holland's televisual CV was increasing and he jumped ship afterwards, and when A&M was taken over the band were dumped. Warners Bros picked them up and the two's personal lives changed - Glenn divorcing his much-unloved by bandmates wife, Chris getting married for the second time - but a soul-destroying Fleetwood Mac support tour and Difford's deteriorating mental state, as well as disputes with producer Tony Berg, meant August 1991's Play went similarly unrewarded. Both men remain proud of the album despite a much less happy-go-lucky lyrical content and overly smooth production. Lavis left again, Warners dropped them (although they were picked up by...A&M) and Difford walked out literally on the eve of an American tour to get to grips with his drinking. Steve Nieve and Pete Thomas from Costello's Attractions filled in for the tour, but Tilbrook was left alone up front. Difford meanwhile went through rehabilitation and rejoined the outside world in autumn 1992.
Carrack returned and Thomas continued for September 1993's revitalising Some Fantastic Place, the title track a tribute to Glenn's ex-girlfriend Maxine, who had acted as a middleman when the pair had fallen out and had recently died of leukaemia. Upbeat in tone if not lyrically, Difford's words often musing on man's relationships with women, men and drink, everyone pushing the same way for once led to a favourite recording for everyone, if again more successful in reviews than sales. Aimee Mann, who Difford had worked with, played several shows on the album's tour as a band member.
Some Fantastic Place
Carrack and Thomas disappeared again, Kevin Wilkinson the new drummer, and Copeland finally severed band ties before Ridiculous, which, released in November 1995, saw the band positioned as godfathers of Britpop and managed a couple of top 40 placings, but by now that was the limit of Squeeze's commercial ability. In 1997 they found themselves £30,000 in the hole on unpaid tax and were dropped by A&M again. Tilbrook's Quixotic label released Down In The Valley, a single to mark Charlton Athletic's 1998 Division 1 play-off final appearance featuring squad members, before changing the rest of the band completely, including Jools' younger brother Chris Holland on keys. An entirely new band and a rushed recording, Tilbrook producing, led to November 1998's Domino, a last album as regretted by the frontmen as the first.
Although both were out of ideas and patience with the band, neither admitted it at the time until in January 1999 Difford, depressed and feeling his demons return, walked out on an American tour again at the last moment. Personal clashes followed until Difford decided to finally call the partnership off, the band's last gig to date being in Aberdeen on November 27th 1999. Difford went on to write for and manage others and has released two solo albums, 2003's I Didn't Get Where I Am, co-written with It Bites' Francis Dunnery, and last year's live retrospective South East Side Story. Tilbrook has also released two albums, 2001's The Incomplete Glenn Tilbrook and 2005's Transatlantic Ping Pong, which featured a Difford co-write, and was the subject of the 2006 documentary film One For The Road, which followed him round America in a hired RV. Tilbrook released an album of early Squeeze demos, The Past Has Been Bottled, joined Difford onstage for a couple of songs at Glastonbury 2003 and there was a one-off acoustic session to launch Squeeze Song By Song, an oral history both contributed to with Jim Drury, but Squeeze only properly resuscitated at the Return to the Summer of Love Party at Hawkhurst, Kent in July, followed by a headline slot at Guilfest and some US dates in August supported by Fountains Of Wayne. It may or may not go any further once the tour wraps up on December 11th, but there's been a long and bumpy but worthwhile road getting there.
In 1973, 18 year old Chris Difford placed a guitarist wanted advert in a shop in Blackheath, to which one of few respondents was 15 year old hippy Glenn Tilbrook. As their friendship and musical partnership blossomed the more musically able Tilbrook took up the melodic side while the longer standing songwriting half concentrated on lyrics, and the pair played at the bottom of bills for a couple of years, mostly under the name Skyco. On the side Tilbrook continued to sketch out songs with talented pianist schoolfriend Julian Holland, Jools to one and all, who Difford has described as resembling a Hell's Angel hanger-on at the time, if you can imagine such a thing. Mutual acquaintance Harry Kakoulli, who'd been in a band with future Only One and briefly Tilbrook flatmate Peter Perrett, joined the nascent outfit on bass, and with shortlived drummer Paul Gunn the band built up a south London following throughout 1975 under a name taken from a late Velvet Underground album. Perrett's friend's friend Miles Copeland was a managerial mover and shaker who would later turn his brother Stewart's band The Police into worldwide superstars, and he convinced the teenagers to sign a managerial contract that year on the promise of better paid gigs, handing over an unrecoupable fifty percent of all publishing rights in the process. A couple of aborted sessions followed before sessioner Gilson Lavis joined as drummer and a set of demos was finally recorded. Watching some of the session was John Cale, who produced debut release Packet Of Three EP, which sold 25,000 copies on the tiny Deptford Fun City label.
Cale was entrusted the self-titled debut album, but, heavily reliant on drink and drugs at this point, insisted first off that the band ditch all their road-tested songs and come up with a whole new set in the studio which abandoned their harmonic post-Beatles melodies for aggressiveness and subjects he suggested. Both main parties disown the album, released in March 1978, the two singles being the sole album tracks produced by the band themselves when ill health forced Cale out early. The first, Take Me I'm Yours, went top twenty, while Copeland hired a cramping van and drove them round America's byways for two months.
With a stockpile of their own earlier unreleased songs, second album syndrome was quelled until A&M recommended they scrap the sessions with Pink Floyd engineer Brian Humphries, the band ending up co-producing it themselves with first album engineer John Wood to what everyone refers to as superior results. Writing Cool For Cats, for a start, which ended up as the title track of the album released in March 1979. Difford took influence from Ian Dury, Nick Drake and the crew of local ne'er do wells who were hanging around the band at the time, while Tilbrook's musical experimentation was encouraged, early synths dotted about the record. The album is full of band classics - Slap And Tickle, Goodbye Girl, Cool For Cats - inspired by the musical segments of The Benny Hill Show - and Up The Junction, written in New Orleans in the Dylan reportage style. The last two sold a combined million records and the latter two tracks both reached number two as singles, so on with ever lengthening tours they went.
At the end of 1979 Kakoulli was sacked, replaced by John Bentley, and after a single Christmas Day was curiously banned by the BBC and flopped as a result, Squeeze went back into the studio with three albums' worth of Difford songs, the best of which became Argybargy, a less successful but no less succinctly captured collection. Just after its February 1980 release Holland, who was seen as the band's calming internal force but had been sidelined during much of the previous two albums' recording sessions, left to pursue his own musical and soon enough televisual projects. Copeland was also summarily excommunicated as manager, Chris and Glenn feeling he'd taken his eye off the Squeeze ball as the Police rose steadily. Instead they hooked up with Stiff Records founder Jake Riviera, now operating his own management company, and his associate Elvis Costello agreed to produce the May 1981 fourth album East Side Story alongside Undertones producer Roger Bechirian. Operating to strict working hours and pub banning orders so work could be completed before Elvis' other commitments, the decision was also made to bring in Paul Carrack on vocals and keyboard. It was his soul background that encouraged the band to come up with Tempted, a song Difford admits is partly autobiographical, and at Costello's suggestion to put Carrack on lead. Widely regarded as their pinnacle, it's almost a theme album of love either going wrong or setting about things the wrong way, shaded by soul and country and moving away from earlier blanket accusations of a sexist nature. Labelled With Love went to number four, aided by B-side joke Squabs On Forty Fab, a Stars On 45-style disco medley of previous singles.
By then Riviera and A&M had already come to loggerheads, and when having promised a contractless agreement Riviera presented a lengthy and detailed document for signing the die was cast against the manager. Five years' pauseless work behind them Squeeze needed rest; instead what they got was studio time for another album and a new keyboard player after the pivotal Carrack left, Don Snow his replacement. Sweets From A Stranger, released in May 1982 and produced, as much has he could with Tilbrook in particular dominating proceedings, by Phil MacDonald, was a major step backwards, exacerbating existing tensions and not selling half as well in Britain, although America proved less elusive. Standalone single Annie Get Your Gun also failed to make the top 40, the band surprised to find its producer had recorded all but lead vocals in their absence, and with members wracked in heavy drinking and success falling apart it was decided to end the band from late 1982, a hits compilation Singles 45s And Under being issued.
Difford and Tilbrook were reconciled by playwright John Turner, who wrote a script around their songs called Labelled With Love and with their musical arrangements ran it for three months at the Albany Theatre, Deptford. This led to Difford & Tilbrook, using mostly leftover songs from the previous two albums, a more grandiose and not nearly achieved take on the Squeeze sound. It didn't help that both had got into hard drugs and still didn't trust the other anyway, and that the album didn't sell. The Argybargy line-up reformed for a charity show in January 1985 which was so successful the proper name was resuscitated without Bentley, Keith Wilkinson taking up the bass, and the band also got back together with Miles Copeland despite an outstanding legal action over royalties. August's Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti was recorded in Belgium with Paul Young producer Laurie Latham but sounds like a band re-entering the studio before they're ready, inconsistency squared with 80s production values. The Soft Boys' Andy Metcalfe came on tour as a second keyboard player and stayed for September 1987's Babylon And On, recorded in six different studios at great expense but their most consistent album since East Side Story. Their biggest selling too, going gold in America on the back of an Ade Edmondson-directed video for Hourglass and a proper hit in 853-5937, Tilbrook's old phone number allied to a song they thought was so throwaway they refused to play it live even after it had broken big. Tilbrook took a co-producer's credit, leading to further internal fallouts and what he now calls the lowest point in his partnership with Difford, although in public things were going better than ever with a successful Bowie support slot and a Madison Square Garden sellout.
Metcalfe replaced by Matt Irving, the task again of following up a hugely successful album fell to September 1989's Frank, which was even more artistically successful, Difford back to lyrical sharpness, Tilbrook ever improving as an arranger, Holland and Lavis on form. Of course, it sank without trace commercially.
Holland's televisual CV was increasing and he jumped ship afterwards, and when A&M was taken over the band were dumped. Warners Bros picked them up and the two's personal lives changed - Glenn divorcing his much-unloved by bandmates wife, Chris getting married for the second time - but a soul-destroying Fleetwood Mac support tour and Difford's deteriorating mental state, as well as disputes with producer Tony Berg, meant August 1991's Play went similarly unrewarded. Both men remain proud of the album despite a much less happy-go-lucky lyrical content and overly smooth production. Lavis left again, Warners dropped them (although they were picked up by...A&M) and Difford walked out literally on the eve of an American tour to get to grips with his drinking. Steve Nieve and Pete Thomas from Costello's Attractions filled in for the tour, but Tilbrook was left alone up front. Difford meanwhile went through rehabilitation and rejoined the outside world in autumn 1992.
Carrack returned and Thomas continued for September 1993's revitalising Some Fantastic Place, the title track a tribute to Glenn's ex-girlfriend Maxine, who had acted as a middleman when the pair had fallen out and had recently died of leukaemia. Upbeat in tone if not lyrically, Difford's words often musing on man's relationships with women, men and drink, everyone pushing the same way for once led to a favourite recording for everyone, if again more successful in reviews than sales. Aimee Mann, who Difford had worked with, played several shows on the album's tour as a band member.
Carrack and Thomas disappeared again, Kevin Wilkinson the new drummer, and Copeland finally severed band ties before Ridiculous, which, released in November 1995, saw the band positioned as godfathers of Britpop and managed a couple of top 40 placings, but by now that was the limit of Squeeze's commercial ability. In 1997 they found themselves £30,000 in the hole on unpaid tax and were dropped by A&M again. Tilbrook's Quixotic label released Down In The Valley, a single to mark Charlton Athletic's 1998 Division 1 play-off final appearance featuring squad members, before changing the rest of the band completely, including Jools' younger brother Chris Holland on keys. An entirely new band and a rushed recording, Tilbrook producing, led to November 1998's Domino, a last album as regretted by the frontmen as the first.
Although both were out of ideas and patience with the band, neither admitted it at the time until in January 1999 Difford, depressed and feeling his demons return, walked out on an American tour again at the last moment. Personal clashes followed until Difford decided to finally call the partnership off, the band's last gig to date being in Aberdeen on November 27th 1999. Difford went on to write for and manage others and has released two solo albums, 2003's I Didn't Get Where I Am, co-written with It Bites' Francis Dunnery, and last year's live retrospective South East Side Story. Tilbrook has also released two albums, 2001's The Incomplete Glenn Tilbrook and 2005's Transatlantic Ping Pong, which featured a Difford co-write, and was the subject of the 2006 documentary film One For The Road, which followed him round America in a hired RV. Tilbrook released an album of early Squeeze demos, The Past Has Been Bottled, joined Difford onstage for a couple of songs at Glastonbury 2003 and there was a one-off acoustic session to launch Squeeze Song By Song, an oral history both contributed to with Jim Drury, but Squeeze only properly resuscitated at the Return to the Summer of Love Party at Hawkhurst, Kent in July, followed by a headline slot at Guilfest and some US dates in August supported by Fountains Of Wayne. It may or may not go any further once the tour wraps up on December 11th, but there's been a long and bumpy but worthwhile road getting there.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Probably the oddest thing we've ever posted
Pagan Wanderer Lu, who you may be aware we quite like, has got in touch. For reasons that remain vague if decidedly excellent, he's putting together a compilation album, possibly for charity although it's up in the air at this early stage, of original songs about the giant isopod crustacean. All contributors are welcome - get in contact via its Myspace page before December 5th - and we hear there's more than one STN favourite interested.
If you're as musically talented as us, pass this message on. If you can't do that, be aware that PWL, Napoleon IIIrd and Applicants are touring together from tomorrow, taking in London, Manchester, Oxford, Brighton, Cardiff and Warrington (Modernaire rather than Applicants there). And if you come across a giant isopod, remember their staple diet.
If you're as musically talented as us, pass this message on. If you can't do that, be aware that PWL, Napoleon IIIrd and Applicants are touring together from tomorrow, taking in London, Manchester, Oxford, Brighton, Cardiff and Warrington (Modernaire rather than Applicants there). And if you come across a giant isopod, remember their staple diet.
Weekender : fresher than fresh
FREE MUSIC: So there's quite a bit of hype building around Yeasayer, a band who've found the midpoint between Arcade Fire and Fleetwood Mac, Danielson and Midlake. It's proving far more popular than that sort of juxtaposition and unhip referencing would suggest. 2080 is the expansive single from album All Hour Cymbals.
HEY YOU GET OFFA MYSPACE: We're slightly late to the punch, as these released an album in January and have had a couple of EPs out since, but it's high time we got fuzzy again, and that's a role The Manhattan Love Suicides fulfil splendidly. The Leeds outfit, who evolved from the great lost band of 1999 Pop Threat (we still have the Fierce Panda EP they featured on), know their way around Sonic Youth and the Jesus & Mary Chain, know their way around C86 and girl groups (doesn't everyone?) and follow the pure, well, pop threat lineage of the Shop Assistants, Primitives, Heavenly, Duke Spirit and A Sunny Day In Glasgow.
VISUAL REPRESENTATION: This week Elvis Costello declared both that he's not interested in making any more albums and that, after a tetchy encounter with the 2005 Glastonbury crowd, he's not going to play live in Britain any more. On recent Costello form this can only mean he'll be announcing a full spring tour within the week, but in the meantime we can dine out on his TV debut performing Alison, Oliver's Army on Kenny Everett's show, his helping Fiona Apple cover I Want You helping Diana Krall and Willie Nelson do Crazy and the song he wrote for Dave Edmunds, Girls Talk.
VIRAL MARKETING: And so to 2008, and first out of the preview blocks are the Mystery Jets, who've just been on a belated US tour and try out their new songs on a small tour starting on the 25th ahead of release (March, whispers say). In the meantime they've made us all a lovely illustrative clip including one of the new songs, very much bearing producer Erol Alkan's fingerprints. As well as sounding a bit like GoodBooks.
FALLING OFF A BLOG: Everyone's Got Nothing To Say has, oh, the usual interesting stuff. (Not to denigrate their work in any way, but recommending blogs every week and having to write something about them too out of fairness... well, it gets a bit limiting eventually.)
EVERYBODY GET RANDOM: Here's something that's come out of nowhere, and even the obsessives we passed it on to knew nothing about it - a new Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band album! The first for 35 years, all living original members are on plus Fry, Edmondson and Jupitus adding vocals to an immense number of new tracks, although we can't say our excitement on the news hasn't been compromised by the press release including the 'promise' of "a hilarious new take on the Kaiser Chiefs' I Predict A Riot".
IN OTHER NEWS: As you may have read, Christmas is approaching, and Sufjan Stevens is overly full of the festive spirit. Not only are Asthmatic Kitty streaming all five discs' worth of his Christmas box set, but they've set up a competition for one lucky entrant to write a Xmas song to give to Sufjan. He will buy up the rights to said song... and give you the rights back to one of his new songs in return. That's all explained better on that same link.
HEY YOU GET OFFA MYSPACE: We're slightly late to the punch, as these released an album in January and have had a couple of EPs out since, but it's high time we got fuzzy again, and that's a role The Manhattan Love Suicides fulfil splendidly. The Leeds outfit, who evolved from the great lost band of 1999 Pop Threat (we still have the Fierce Panda EP they featured on), know their way around Sonic Youth and the Jesus & Mary Chain, know their way around C86 and girl groups (doesn't everyone?) and follow the pure, well, pop threat lineage of the Shop Assistants, Primitives, Heavenly, Duke Spirit and A Sunny Day In Glasgow.
VISUAL REPRESENTATION: This week Elvis Costello declared both that he's not interested in making any more albums and that, after a tetchy encounter with the 2005 Glastonbury crowd, he's not going to play live in Britain any more. On recent Costello form this can only mean he'll be announcing a full spring tour within the week, but in the meantime we can dine out on his TV debut performing Alison, Oliver's Army on Kenny Everett's show, his helping Fiona Apple cover I Want You helping Diana Krall and Willie Nelson do Crazy and the song he wrote for Dave Edmunds, Girls Talk.
VIRAL MARKETING: And so to 2008, and first out of the preview blocks are the Mystery Jets, who've just been on a belated US tour and try out their new songs on a small tour starting on the 25th ahead of release (March, whispers say). In the meantime they've made us all a lovely illustrative clip including one of the new songs, very much bearing producer Erol Alkan's fingerprints. As well as sounding a bit like GoodBooks.
FALLING OFF A BLOG: Everyone's Got Nothing To Say has, oh, the usual interesting stuff. (Not to denigrate their work in any way, but recommending blogs every week and having to write something about them too out of fairness... well, it gets a bit limiting eventually.)
EVERYBODY GET RANDOM: Here's something that's come out of nowhere, and even the obsessives we passed it on to knew nothing about it - a new Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band album! The first for 35 years, all living original members are on plus Fry, Edmondson and Jupitus adding vocals to an immense number of new tracks, although we can't say our excitement on the news hasn't been compromised by the press release including the 'promise' of "a hilarious new take on the Kaiser Chiefs' I Predict A Riot".
IN OTHER NEWS: As you may have read, Christmas is approaching, and Sufjan Stevens is overly full of the festive spirit. Not only are Asthmatic Kitty streaming all five discs' worth of his Christmas box set, but they've set up a competition for one lucky entrant to write a Xmas song to give to Sufjan. He will buy up the rights to said song... and give you the rights back to one of his new songs in return. That's all explained better on that same link.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
In shops tomorrow: 12/11
Singles
Not much again this week, as all the really decent upcoming releases seem to have been moved to the end of the month. As there's lots to get through elsewhere this week we'll keep this brief, so as not to mention the Bloc Party single that tries to show their electro side but instead shows their Eiffel 65 side. Maths Class are really part of this whole post-punk-funk/mathrock Battles/Foals movement that was still coalescing when they came to our attention, in one of those synergic tricks musical timelines like to play every so often. Emporio Laser has all the tricks - it's electronically inclined, it's made for spasmodic dancing and it sounds a little like Q And Not U. You'd think with Jack Penate rockabillying his way into the nation's hearts EMI might have actually done something more with Vincent Vincent & The Villains, but there you go - On My Own leaks out this week. Correcto are the latest product of the Glasgow scene love-in, containing one of The Royal We and Franz's Paul Thompson. Joni is their appropriately pop-angular opening shot.
Albums
Our leadoff choice this week is a four track, 25 minute record, but we had all the farrago about whether these are EPs or mini-albums last week and it bored us already. It is, however, Wire, and for that respect is due, especially as we thought Colin Newman had finally conclusively left the band. Read & Burn 03 is the long-awaited third part in their "series of 'research and development' vehicles", the first two of which were put together in 2003 to form the band's last album Send, although apparently this will be a standalone release. Who knows what sort of post-post-post-punk drone will be involved here. In terms of proper full lengths, slim pickings - the Raveonettes return with much the same fuzz-Spector sound on Lust Lust Lust but in reduced circumstances on Fierce Panda, Fugazi bassist Joe Lally calls on Ian MacKaye's production and the guitar of Guy Picciotto (producer, lest we forget, of Standing In The Way Of Control) for a subtler take on the band's hardcore dynamics on Nothing Is Underrated and if pedal steel-driven hushed country rockers Japancakes calling their new album Loveless seems odd, there's a reason for it - it's a pedal steel-driven hushed country rock reinterpretation of My Bloody Valentine's classic, top to bottom. It might even rival Jeffrey Lewis for single album covers record of the year. LCD Soundsystem's Nike advert composition 45:33 makes it to CD for the first time, so you can spot which bit James Murphy reappopriated for Someone Great. Entertainingly, it's not 45:33 long. As he's been promising for a while now since regaining the rights to all his work, Darren Hayman has remastered his Richman-for-the-British-indie-kids meisterwork Breaking God's Heart and extended it with early singles including the recently lauded here Pull Yourself Together, B-sides, rare EP tracks, outtakes and whatever else he found in his cupboard. Despite being far more realistically grounded lyrically, it's a fair bet Hayman has heard some Robyn Hitchcock in his life. I Wanna Go Backwards is a five CD box set that randomly picks out (and these are also being reissued seperately for those already planning Christmas spending) 1981 solo debut Black Snake Diamond Role, 1984's I Often Dream Of Trains and its unoffical follow-up, 1990's Eye, gives them the remastering brushdown and adds While Thatcher Mauled Britain Part 1 & 2, a newly compiled two-disc collection of b-sides, outtakes and home demo recordings, many of them previously unreleased in the manner of kindred spirit Andy Partridge's Fuzzy Warbles series. More box sets are promised. Les Savy Fav's long awaited emergence to take the artpunk crown that's been rightfully theirs all along, the Henry VII to so many others' Perkin Warbeck, means the reissues are on. The Cat And The Cobra is probably their weakest album, it still demonstrates how far ahead of populism's curve they were in 1999, and it's got We've Got Boxes and Who Rocks The Party? on it. Still on the sort of collegiate rock college radio wouldn't play, being the Neutral Milk Hotel album that isn't In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, On Avery Island has some trouble receiving its due, a lo-fi tinderbox of ideas and arrangements that wouldn't find their niche for a couple of years yet. Unless you're talking about the largely horrible American punk sub-movement, you can't claim to know about ska and not be aware of the Skatalites, the Jamaican studio collective who included pretty much anyone who was anyone in the instrument-playing ranks and backed the vast majority of the classic mid-60s vocal originators too. With a band active for so long bewaring of cheap imitations is always a worry, so tread carefully but skankingly so around mid-90s set Ska Splash, the excellently titled saxophonist tribute The Authentic Ska Sound Of Tommy McCook and studio reunion with the great Laurel Aitken Clash Of The Ska Titans. A very different country's alternative musical heritage comes from Os Mutantes, the leading lights, not that we in the west knew it at the time, of Brazil's Tropicalia movement. 1968 debut Os Mutantes sounds immense, blending psychedelia, Beach Boys song cycles, orchestral pop and found sound of all shapes. Finally, while we can never fully condone a mid-price compilation, Nervous Tension is subtitled 'The EMI Post Punk Collection' and so finds room for Wire, Gang Of Four, Public Image Ltd, Buzzcocks, XTC, Magazine, The Stranglers, The Monochrome Set, The Skids and Scars.
DVDs
Read this. "Girls Aloud - Style, offers an exclusive insight into what it takes to create the look of the hottest girl group in the UK. From award ceremonies to nights out on the town, Girls Aloud know how to rock a look and here they share their favourite tips and sought after industry advice on how to look great in front of the cameras. For the first time we see Cheryl revealing her beauty secrets, follow Nicola through the trials of finding that all important perfect pair of jeans, catch-up with Kimberley on the benefits of shopping online, and hit the stores with Sarah and Nadine while they hunt for accessories and shoes to get that Girls Aloud style. Packed full of practical tips and hints, Girls Aloud - Style, also contains the band's music videos with commentary from Cheryl and Sarah on all those outfits and hair styles be they great - or a retrospective nightmare!" So this is what marketing a band has come to. Last year when the best of came out it actually looked like their handlers were acknowledging their hipster cachet, but no, it was the Cosmo Kids readers they were after all along. Sigh. And the new single is basically one of those girl band knockoffs from around 1999. Someone who does have something of a history behind them is collected on the three disc The McCartney Years, two DVD of all his solo and Wings videos, including the frankly remarkable Coming Up, and one of a Wings 1976 gig, his MTV Unplugged and Glastonbury headliner.
Books
And still the Control tie-ins keep rolling, but Joy Division: Piece by Piece comes with a simultaneous stamp of quality and a fear of actual content, given it's written by Paul Morley. It's an anthology of everything he ever wrote about them, from Warsaw to now, indeed right up to a critique of Control, and also including the original work that inspired his novel Nothing. The 33 1/3 series continues moving with a heavyweight modern writer, Pitchfork managing editor Scott Plagenhoef, who gives Belle & Sebastian's If You're Feeling Sinister the once-over with contributions from band members, producers, management and fans. Garry Mulholland may be the patron saint of obsessing over music lists, and his second volume Fear of Music: The Greatest 261 Albums Since Punk and Disco arrives in no doubt wrist-breaking paperback size.
Not much again this week, as all the really decent upcoming releases seem to have been moved to the end of the month. As there's lots to get through elsewhere this week we'll keep this brief, so as not to mention the Bloc Party single that tries to show their electro side but instead shows their Eiffel 65 side. Maths Class are really part of this whole post-punk-funk/mathrock Battles/Foals movement that was still coalescing when they came to our attention, in one of those synergic tricks musical timelines like to play every so often. Emporio Laser has all the tricks - it's electronically inclined, it's made for spasmodic dancing and it sounds a little like Q And Not U. You'd think with Jack Penate rockabillying his way into the nation's hearts EMI might have actually done something more with Vincent Vincent & The Villains, but there you go - On My Own leaks out this week. Correcto are the latest product of the Glasgow scene love-in, containing one of The Royal We and Franz's Paul Thompson. Joni is their appropriately pop-angular opening shot.
Albums
Our leadoff choice this week is a four track, 25 minute record, but we had all the farrago about whether these are EPs or mini-albums last week and it bored us already. It is, however, Wire, and for that respect is due, especially as we thought Colin Newman had finally conclusively left the band. Read & Burn 03 is the long-awaited third part in their "series of 'research and development' vehicles", the first two of which were put together in 2003 to form the band's last album Send, although apparently this will be a standalone release. Who knows what sort of post-post-post-punk drone will be involved here. In terms of proper full lengths, slim pickings - the Raveonettes return with much the same fuzz-Spector sound on Lust Lust Lust but in reduced circumstances on Fierce Panda, Fugazi bassist Joe Lally calls on Ian MacKaye's production and the guitar of Guy Picciotto (producer, lest we forget, of Standing In The Way Of Control) for a subtler take on the band's hardcore dynamics on Nothing Is Underrated and if pedal steel-driven hushed country rockers Japancakes calling their new album Loveless seems odd, there's a reason for it - it's a pedal steel-driven hushed country rock reinterpretation of My Bloody Valentine's classic, top to bottom. It might even rival Jeffrey Lewis for single album covers record of the year. LCD Soundsystem's Nike advert composition 45:33 makes it to CD for the first time, so you can spot which bit James Murphy reappopriated for Someone Great. Entertainingly, it's not 45:33 long. As he's been promising for a while now since regaining the rights to all his work, Darren Hayman has remastered his Richman-for-the-British-indie-kids meisterwork Breaking God's Heart and extended it with early singles including the recently lauded here Pull Yourself Together, B-sides, rare EP tracks, outtakes and whatever else he found in his cupboard. Despite being far more realistically grounded lyrically, it's a fair bet Hayman has heard some Robyn Hitchcock in his life. I Wanna Go Backwards is a five CD box set that randomly picks out (and these are also being reissued seperately for those already planning Christmas spending) 1981 solo debut Black Snake Diamond Role, 1984's I Often Dream Of Trains and its unoffical follow-up, 1990's Eye, gives them the remastering brushdown and adds While Thatcher Mauled Britain Part 1 & 2, a newly compiled two-disc collection of b-sides, outtakes and home demo recordings, many of them previously unreleased in the manner of kindred spirit Andy Partridge's Fuzzy Warbles series. More box sets are promised. Les Savy Fav's long awaited emergence to take the artpunk crown that's been rightfully theirs all along, the Henry VII to so many others' Perkin Warbeck, means the reissues are on. The Cat And The Cobra is probably their weakest album, it still demonstrates how far ahead of populism's curve they were in 1999, and it's got We've Got Boxes and Who Rocks The Party? on it. Still on the sort of collegiate rock college radio wouldn't play, being the Neutral Milk Hotel album that isn't In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, On Avery Island has some trouble receiving its due, a lo-fi tinderbox of ideas and arrangements that wouldn't find their niche for a couple of years yet. Unless you're talking about the largely horrible American punk sub-movement, you can't claim to know about ska and not be aware of the Skatalites, the Jamaican studio collective who included pretty much anyone who was anyone in the instrument-playing ranks and backed the vast majority of the classic mid-60s vocal originators too. With a band active for so long bewaring of cheap imitations is always a worry, so tread carefully but skankingly so around mid-90s set Ska Splash, the excellently titled saxophonist tribute The Authentic Ska Sound Of Tommy McCook and studio reunion with the great Laurel Aitken Clash Of The Ska Titans. A very different country's alternative musical heritage comes from Os Mutantes, the leading lights, not that we in the west knew it at the time, of Brazil's Tropicalia movement. 1968 debut Os Mutantes sounds immense, blending psychedelia, Beach Boys song cycles, orchestral pop and found sound of all shapes. Finally, while we can never fully condone a mid-price compilation, Nervous Tension is subtitled 'The EMI Post Punk Collection' and so finds room for Wire, Gang Of Four, Public Image Ltd, Buzzcocks, XTC, Magazine, The Stranglers, The Monochrome Set, The Skids and Scars.
DVDs
Read this. "Girls Aloud - Style, offers an exclusive insight into what it takes to create the look of the hottest girl group in the UK. From award ceremonies to nights out on the town, Girls Aloud know how to rock a look and here they share their favourite tips and sought after industry advice on how to look great in front of the cameras. For the first time we see Cheryl revealing her beauty secrets, follow Nicola through the trials of finding that all important perfect pair of jeans, catch-up with Kimberley on the benefits of shopping online, and hit the stores with Sarah and Nadine while they hunt for accessories and shoes to get that Girls Aloud style. Packed full of practical tips and hints, Girls Aloud - Style, also contains the band's music videos with commentary from Cheryl and Sarah on all those outfits and hair styles be they great - or a retrospective nightmare!" So this is what marketing a band has come to. Last year when the best of came out it actually looked like their handlers were acknowledging their hipster cachet, but no, it was the Cosmo Kids readers they were after all along. Sigh. And the new single is basically one of those girl band knockoffs from around 1999. Someone who does have something of a history behind them is collected on the three disc The McCartney Years, two DVD of all his solo and Wings videos, including the frankly remarkable Coming Up, and one of a Wings 1976 gig, his MTV Unplugged and Glastonbury headliner.
Books
And still the Control tie-ins keep rolling, but Joy Division: Piece by Piece comes with a simultaneous stamp of quality and a fear of actual content, given it's written by Paul Morley. It's an anthology of everything he ever wrote about them, from Warsaw to now, indeed right up to a critique of Control, and also including the original work that inspired his novel Nothing. The 33 1/3 series continues moving with a heavyweight modern writer, Pitchfork managing editor Scott Plagenhoef, who gives Belle & Sebastian's If You're Feeling Sinister the once-over with contributions from band members, producers, management and fans. Garry Mulholland may be the patron saint of obsessing over music lists, and his second volume Fear of Music: The Greatest 261 Albums Since Punk and Disco arrives in no doubt wrist-breaking paperback size.
The Weekly Sweep
Friday, November 09, 2007
Sweeping The Nation Covermount 10: C98
The usual Covermount housekeeping to start, and you'll see that all the live downloads are now linked on the sidebar. As for the double Christmas spectacular, that'll be reupped towards the end of the month along with, yes, a third selection.
For this tenth official Covermount we had all sorts of themes in mind, but given the popularity of the last one we put out, C97, not to mention the entertainment we had putting it together, and with the new year increasing in speck size on the timeline horizon, we thought we'd jump forward a year and do a similar short-termist Nuggetish job on 1998. In the wider world dance was taking advantage of the rock interregnum caused by 1997's conflagrance of Be Here Now's scene ending and OK Computer's barrier pushing as many people and their bands sold their guitars and bought turntables. CD:UK started, and with it a real push for the pre-packaged pure popists - B*Witched, Billie, Steps - in the wake of the Spice Girls' success, even as Geri left. All Saints made the leap from R&B popstrels to fully fledged celebrities. The Met Bar started attracting a better clientele than Annie from Elastica. Five appeared as Boyzone hit their sales peak and Robbie had his best selling album. There was Brimful Of Asha and It's Like That for the remix community to be proud of, while album racks were joined by The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill, Ray Of Light, Urban Hymns, This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, This Is Hardcore, Moon Safari, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea and Gomez' Mercury winner Bring It On.
None of this is reflected below, obviously. The only rule - no artist repetition from C97. We think we've managed it well enough.
C98
Lilys - A Nanny in Manhattan
Partly because of the number of bands who'd be perfect for C98 had we not featured often inferior songs in C97, we've had to take a few chances with this one. These 60s-referencing popstrels from Philly had a number twelve single off the back of a Levis advert, even though they evidently couldn't finish it without falling apart.
Hefner - Pull Yourself Together
Darren Hayman says he can't listen to Breaking God's Heart because of its unrealised potential, but this was the album that adorned many a Britpop-weary bedsit indie kid's portable Sanyo, a new lovelorn Richman or Gano for the lo-fi set. He still ends shows with this. This, well, isn't on it, although it was the preceding single and is on odds and sods collection Boxing Hefner.
Ten Benson - The Claw
Despite Radcliffe interest they never looked like becoming big, but the curiously minded powerchord-friendly possibly ironic filthmeisters pricked many an alternative ear in emerging with this... this... thing. Eventually they called an album Satan Kidney Pie, and supposedly they're still going.
Snow Patrol - Starfighter Pilot
Yeah, yeah, we know, but hear us out. This (we think this is the same version, ripped from 1999's now-available-in-Tesco Songs For Polar Bears) was their debut single, when they sounded like Lou Barlow gone new wave and a big Jacknife Lee-aided recording budget was a pipe dream. When this passed by nearly un-noticed, who'd have known the screams it'd get when played on last December's arena tour.
Cinerama - Kerry Kerry
In 1997 David Gedge decided that the Wedding Present jangle was all very well and good but he was feeling quite chipper at the moment, thanks for asking, so put them on ice and with girlfriend Sally Murrell formed Cinerama, a device through which he grew older slightly more gracefully. Strings, even. Then the pair split and the old identity resumed in 2004.
Garageland - Beelines To Heaven
The reason why we've been able to do all this is because around 1997-98 we bought a lot of CD singles, often from car boot sales. This New Zealand outfit approximating Pavement doing Teenage Fanclub released the album Last Exit To Garageland in 1996, but this crept out as a single at the start of '98.
Marine Research - Queen B
When Heavenly's Matthew Fletcher committed suicide in 1996 the remaining four members reformatted with a new drummer as Marine Research, putting out this slightly more textured but mostly business as usual single and album Sounds From The Gulf Stream a year later before all properly going seperate ways.
The Delgados - The Arcane Model
Now the dust is settling, we can probably agree that Peloton just outranks The Great Eastern as the Delgados' finest hour, a merging of their early fuzzy charges and later grandiose weird pop that sounds less like transition and more like something crystallising of itself.
Derrero - Radar Intruder
Substantially less well remembered but tipped for big things for a few years, the Cardiff-based arty types - singer Andy Fung is now a well respected experimental painter - would later work with John Cale and tour with Catatonia and near stylistic neighbours the Super Furrys.
Solex - Solex All Licketysplit
It's highly pleasing to see Amsterdam's Elisabeth Esselink cameo on the Go! Team's I Never Needed It Now So Much, as we'd lost contact with her Deerhoof-preceding dayglo oddness long ago, creating eclectic popscapes from loops, samples and her, erm, untutored vocals.
Clint Boon Experience - Only One Way I Can Go
Between Inspiral Carpets incarnations, the future writer and performer of the Enjie Benjy theme harked back to the Joe Meek-inspired "space age pop" that initially inspired him to take up the Farfisa. This sampleadelica followed, featuring Alfie Boe, currently being plugged as the future of Russell Watsonesque pop-opera.
Cornelius - Free Fall
In the early part of the year the underground was agog of tales of how Tokyo's Keigo Oyamada's multi-layered, MBV/Beach Boys/Beck-referencing indietronica, as it would later be pigeonholed, was going to take over. It didn't, but Fantasma remains a far more than sterling work.
Prolapse - Deanshanger
Bit of a cheat, this, as it was a 1998 single from 1997's The Italian Flag album, but we neglected them last time out so here's a better late than never nod to the Leicester-based noisemeisters who sounded like a shoegazing McLusky, if you added two singers, one girlish, one a shouting Glaswegian who now works as an archaeologist in Hungary.
Gel - Catching Ants
Near enough impossible to find much about them now, but they were five Reading teenagers doing Midgetish punk-pop, briefly signed to Sire at Seymour Stein's recommendation. Their album was even called Sparkly Things. Two are, conversely, now in proggers Pure Reason Revolution with, even more unlikely, one of Period Pains.
Cay - Better Than Myself
We can't do a where Are They Now? on charismatic Dutch ball of impotent fury Anet Mook because apparently not even her former label and bandmates know where she is. Often lazily compared to Hole, this was their debut single heralding the old, old story of quality releases and Next Big Thing puffery that led nowhere.
Chicks - Let Me Go
As Kenickie grew up and drifted apart, most eyes turned to the similarly glitter-friendly Dublin trio to carry the girls in indie-pop-punk torch forward. Again they never made the commercial breakthrough, and with Royal Trux producing their to date unreleased album it's doubtful they really disliked that state of affairs.
Magoo - Swiss Border Escape
Before Norwich brought us Bearsuit they brought us Magoo, who released two albums on Chemikal Underground (this is from Vote The Pacifist Ticket Today) of American-scented power indiepop, nowadays self-released. Chris T-T is a former member. There's every chance you don't know who Chris T-T is, so that's just spacefillingly pointless.
Spearmint - A Trip Into Space
A little after giving lazy bloggers a title, the Northern Soul-quaffing London pop dreamers led by a bloke called Shirley found a hooky sample and turned it into piano-pounding soul-pop with a regretful undertow. David Morales coincidentally found the same sample, put it in Needin' U and had a top ten hit a couple of months later.
Sodastream - Turnstyle
Peel-favoured Australian duo often compared to Belle & Sebastian, as a lot of Antipodean bands seem to be. Must be something in the water. We went mad for this at the time, and still can given half a chance. They split in February, it says here. Not much else to say about it, really.
Badly Drawn Boy - Road Movie
But plenty to say about this, not least that the CD of EP3 doesn't now go for half as much as we'd have liked it to. Back before he was permanently one step away from being mere high end AOR here was a shambolic, sarky, stylistically awry talent of the sort we couldn't imagine the north of England could produce.
Cat Power - Cross Bones Style
Chan's now a Lagerfeld feted style icon and pre-Feist cultured solo female scion of the Fifty Quid Man set. How different these days of turbulently fragile living, recording an album in Melbourne with two thirds of the Dirty Three half of which was written in one disturbed night.
Ooberman - Shorley Wall
And if that tears at the emotions, wait until Sophia Churney gets to read Danny Popplewell's poem at the end. The Liverpudlians Ooberman really were the nearly men (and woman) of the period, encouraged to re-release this on the promise of Radio 1 playlistings that never came, at which the label dropped them. They've recently reformed, as everyone will.
For this tenth official Covermount we had all sorts of themes in mind, but given the popularity of the last one we put out, C97, not to mention the entertainment we had putting it together, and with the new year increasing in speck size on the timeline horizon, we thought we'd jump forward a year and do a similar short-termist Nuggetish job on 1998. In the wider world dance was taking advantage of the rock interregnum caused by 1997's conflagrance of Be Here Now's scene ending and OK Computer's barrier pushing as many people and their bands sold their guitars and bought turntables. CD:UK started, and with it a real push for the pre-packaged pure popists - B*Witched, Billie, Steps - in the wake of the Spice Girls' success, even as Geri left. All Saints made the leap from R&B popstrels to fully fledged celebrities. The Met Bar started attracting a better clientele than Annie from Elastica. Five appeared as Boyzone hit their sales peak and Robbie had his best selling album. There was Brimful Of Asha and It's Like That for the remix community to be proud of, while album racks were joined by The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill, Ray Of Light, Urban Hymns, This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, This Is Hardcore, Moon Safari, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea and Gomez' Mercury winner Bring It On.
None of this is reflected below, obviously. The only rule - no artist repetition from C97. We think we've managed it well enough.
C98
Lilys - A Nanny in Manhattan
Partly because of the number of bands who'd be perfect for C98 had we not featured often inferior songs in C97, we've had to take a few chances with this one. These 60s-referencing popstrels from Philly had a number twelve single off the back of a Levis advert, even though they evidently couldn't finish it without falling apart.
Hefner - Pull Yourself Together
Darren Hayman says he can't listen to Breaking God's Heart because of its unrealised potential, but this was the album that adorned many a Britpop-weary bedsit indie kid's portable Sanyo, a new lovelorn Richman or Gano for the lo-fi set. He still ends shows with this. This, well, isn't on it, although it was the preceding single and is on odds and sods collection Boxing Hefner.
Ten Benson - The Claw
Despite Radcliffe interest they never looked like becoming big, but the curiously minded powerchord-friendly possibly ironic filthmeisters pricked many an alternative ear in emerging with this... this... thing. Eventually they called an album Satan Kidney Pie, and supposedly they're still going.
Snow Patrol - Starfighter Pilot
Yeah, yeah, we know, but hear us out. This (we think this is the same version, ripped from 1999's now-available-in-Tesco Songs For Polar Bears) was their debut single, when they sounded like Lou Barlow gone new wave and a big Jacknife Lee-aided recording budget was a pipe dream. When this passed by nearly un-noticed, who'd have known the screams it'd get when played on last December's arena tour.
Cinerama - Kerry Kerry
In 1997 David Gedge decided that the Wedding Present jangle was all very well and good but he was feeling quite chipper at the moment, thanks for asking, so put them on ice and with girlfriend Sally Murrell formed Cinerama, a device through which he grew older slightly more gracefully. Strings, even. Then the pair split and the old identity resumed in 2004.
Garageland - Beelines To Heaven
The reason why we've been able to do all this is because around 1997-98 we bought a lot of CD singles, often from car boot sales. This New Zealand outfit approximating Pavement doing Teenage Fanclub released the album Last Exit To Garageland in 1996, but this crept out as a single at the start of '98.
Marine Research - Queen B
When Heavenly's Matthew Fletcher committed suicide in 1996 the remaining four members reformatted with a new drummer as Marine Research, putting out this slightly more textured but mostly business as usual single and album Sounds From The Gulf Stream a year later before all properly going seperate ways.
The Delgados - The Arcane Model
Now the dust is settling, we can probably agree that Peloton just outranks The Great Eastern as the Delgados' finest hour, a merging of their early fuzzy charges and later grandiose weird pop that sounds less like transition and more like something crystallising of itself.
Derrero - Radar Intruder
Substantially less well remembered but tipped for big things for a few years, the Cardiff-based arty types - singer Andy Fung is now a well respected experimental painter - would later work with John Cale and tour with Catatonia and near stylistic neighbours the Super Furrys.
Solex - Solex All Licketysplit
It's highly pleasing to see Amsterdam's Elisabeth Esselink cameo on the Go! Team's I Never Needed It Now So Much, as we'd lost contact with her Deerhoof-preceding dayglo oddness long ago, creating eclectic popscapes from loops, samples and her, erm, untutored vocals.
Clint Boon Experience - Only One Way I Can Go
Between Inspiral Carpets incarnations, the future writer and performer of the Enjie Benjy theme harked back to the Joe Meek-inspired "space age pop" that initially inspired him to take up the Farfisa. This sampleadelica followed, featuring Alfie Boe, currently being plugged as the future of Russell Watsonesque pop-opera.
Cornelius - Free Fall
In the early part of the year the underground was agog of tales of how Tokyo's Keigo Oyamada's multi-layered, MBV/Beach Boys/Beck-referencing indietronica, as it would later be pigeonholed, was going to take over. It didn't, but Fantasma remains a far more than sterling work.
Prolapse - Deanshanger
Bit of a cheat, this, as it was a 1998 single from 1997's The Italian Flag album, but we neglected them last time out so here's a better late than never nod to the Leicester-based noisemeisters who sounded like a shoegazing McLusky, if you added two singers, one girlish, one a shouting Glaswegian who now works as an archaeologist in Hungary.
Gel - Catching Ants
Near enough impossible to find much about them now, but they were five Reading teenagers doing Midgetish punk-pop, briefly signed to Sire at Seymour Stein's recommendation. Their album was even called Sparkly Things. Two are, conversely, now in proggers Pure Reason Revolution with, even more unlikely, one of Period Pains.
Cay - Better Than Myself
We can't do a where Are They Now? on charismatic Dutch ball of impotent fury Anet Mook because apparently not even her former label and bandmates know where she is. Often lazily compared to Hole, this was their debut single heralding the old, old story of quality releases and Next Big Thing puffery that led nowhere.
Chicks - Let Me Go
As Kenickie grew up and drifted apart, most eyes turned to the similarly glitter-friendly Dublin trio to carry the girls in indie-pop-punk torch forward. Again they never made the commercial breakthrough, and with Royal Trux producing their to date unreleased album it's doubtful they really disliked that state of affairs.
Magoo - Swiss Border Escape
Before Norwich brought us Bearsuit they brought us Magoo, who released two albums on Chemikal Underground (this is from Vote The Pacifist Ticket Today) of American-scented power indiepop, nowadays self-released. Chris T-T is a former member. There's every chance you don't know who Chris T-T is, so that's just spacefillingly pointless.
Spearmint - A Trip Into Space
A little after giving lazy bloggers a title, the Northern Soul-quaffing London pop dreamers led by a bloke called Shirley found a hooky sample and turned it into piano-pounding soul-pop with a regretful undertow. David Morales coincidentally found the same sample, put it in Needin' U and had a top ten hit a couple of months later.
Sodastream - Turnstyle
Peel-favoured Australian duo often compared to Belle & Sebastian, as a lot of Antipodean bands seem to be. Must be something in the water. We went mad for this at the time, and still can given half a chance. They split in February, it says here. Not much else to say about it, really.
Badly Drawn Boy - Road Movie
But plenty to say about this, not least that the CD of EP3 doesn't now go for half as much as we'd have liked it to. Back before he was permanently one step away from being mere high end AOR here was a shambolic, sarky, stylistically awry talent of the sort we couldn't imagine the north of England could produce.
Cat Power - Cross Bones Style
Chan's now a Lagerfeld feted style icon and pre-Feist cultured solo female scion of the Fifty Quid Man set. How different these days of turbulently fragile living, recording an album in Melbourne with two thirds of the Dirty Three half of which was written in one disturbed night.
Ooberman - Shorley Wall
And if that tears at the emotions, wait until Sophia Churney gets to read Danny Popplewell's poem at the end. The Liverpudlians Ooberman really were the nearly men (and woman) of the period, encouraged to re-release this on the promise of Radio 1 playlistings that never came, at which the label dropped them. They've recently reformed, as everyone will.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Give me a wool
Instead of that heated-over Spice Girls song, or the - just because it's inevitable doesn't make it any easier to take - Boyzone reunion, or whatever the newsreaders are being corralled into doing, here's a more pleasing way of raising money for Children In Need - bidding for knitted representations of ¡Forward, Russia! created by Katie Nicholls during album recording downtime. The handmade Tom Woodhead is a thing of great joy.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Stupid people think it's cool, smart people think it's a joke - also cool
So the thing about the NME Cool List, which published again today, is it's a reductive use of an insta-reductive word, some specious notion based on a handful of people's opinions amalgated and compromised which end up showing up the magazine's latest editorial policy for what it is, changing wildly year on year and, if you believe in the word, creating an alternate 'cool' orthodoxy from those who declaim on the value of being left out. On the other hand, we had nothing better to do, so here's the new top fifty, worked out by, ooh, all sorts of precise science:
50 Spider Webb (The Horrors)
Last year's testaments to the power of Shockwaves, who despite many an article were never, ever going to win the hearts of a nation, which probably makes Conor think he's edgy. Unsurprisingly, in the new Mighty Boosh series. Although apparently he's the one with the enviable psych-garage collection, so we can let him off.
49 Dev Hynes (Lightspeed Champion)
48 Santogold
Dunno. MIA's mate, apparently.
47 Carlos D (Interpol)
It's all in the Wild West doctor look.
46 Patrick Wolf
45 Yannis Philippakis (Foals)
Yes, the two parts A Certain Ratio to one part Q And Not U boding well, but not content with the several partings, he's added a horribly camp tache of late.
44 Brandon Flowers
43 Suki (The Real Heat)
We've never heard of her or The Real Heat before. So we read the NME blurb, and we still have no idea. Put her down as one of those who flower for three minutes around Cool List time and you never hear of again.
42 Cole Alexander (Black Lips)
41 Josh Homme
40 Nicky Wire
Now pitched as some sort of elder statesman of being unhappy about modern music, although actually a lot more accepting than he used to be. It can't really have been for the album.
39 Kyle Falconer (The View)
38 Andy Burrows (Razorlight)
The drummer, and as every follower of pointless biz gossip knows, the actual writer of America. As Johnny Borrell often mentions, in fact. Also, this suggests this is something to be proud of.
37 Joe Lean (Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong)
Multi-pseudonymed ex-Pipettes drummer. You know, the band that are often to be read railing against identikit skinny boy Pete'n'Carl'n'Johnny-indebted 'indie'-guitar mugs. Let's leave that observation hanging there.
36 Ian Brown
35 Lou Hayter (New Young Pony Club)
One of the ones that aren't Phil Oakey Hair Girl. We've never really got along with NYPC, see.
34 Pete Doherty
33 Jamie T
32 Gerard Way (My Chemical Romance)
31 Tim Harrington (Les Savy Fav)
Tim sodding Harrington! Might have helped had they come across LSF before last month, but never mind.
30 Meg White
Exhaustion - is that cool?
29 Kele Okereke
28 Karen O
27 Simon Taylor (Klaxons)
Ahhhh. Although for the life of us we can't work out whether that really is the happy couple - it doesn't look exactly like Lovefoxx, and Taylor's hair isn't stupid enough.
26 Simon Neil (Biffy Clyro)
25 Morgan Yeah? (Does it Offend You, Yeah?)
That's Morgan Yeah? of Does it Offend You, Yeah?, everyone. Real surname, according to a couple of online sources, is Quaintance, which is actually far better.
24 Craig Finn (The Hold Steady)
The Foghorn Leghorn's Nephew Lookalike Contest winner of 2007, proving that in the American heartland there is no liver too weak.
23 Eddie Argos (Art Brut)
It does seem a shame that Art Brut have never sold any records, give or take a few hundred, when clearly a good TV slot would take him into the stratosphere. Not Buzzcocks. Bring Pop Quiz back, just for this purpose.
22 Matt Helders (Arctic Monkeys)
He's launched his own clothing range! What's going on in pop these days?
21 Caleb Followill (Kings of Leon)
See? It's like some extras from Almost Famous, except this time well in the background of label 'do' scenes that were cut.
20 James Smith (Hadouken!)
Glamorous name. Becapped 'grindie' tyke sporting accent very much not that of native Watford putting himself forward as anti-scenester (cf Jarman, R) in band whose Wikipedia page is curiously nominated for deletion. How soon the pop world turns.
19 Matt Bellamy
18 Brandon Flowers’ Tache (Brandon Flowers, The Killers)
Yeah, yeah. Maybe Yannis is onto something after all.
17 Hayley Williams (Paramore)
Oh, put Avril in and have done with it.
16 Noel Gallagher
15 Tom Clarke (The Enemy)
They're like The Jam! No, they're like The Records without the ideas. Funny how like fellow Coventryites the Specials he writes about the decay of Coventry and yet makes it seem almost appealing in comparison.
14 Prince
See, Spice Girls, a load of O2 Arena shows and you're putty in everyone's hands. Current critical reappraisal some would say overdue, although it's not as if he makes it easy for himself.
13 Drew McConnell (Babyshambles)
Bassist, reserve band mouthpiece and the only spokesman Love Music Hate Racism can seemingly find. Says here he has an Institute Of Contemporary Music degree in bass playing. Good god, they give degrees for four-string plucking?
12 Thom Yorke
Currently rebuilding the music industry very slowly.
11 MIA
Hark, iLX exploding.
10 Keith Richards
The whole ashes farrago blew up in an NME interview, see. Keith is an invenerate interview pisstaker, but the idea he snorted his dad's own remains is believable. Yeah, like the Loch Ness Monster is believable.
9 Beth Ditto
One of the most fascinating things this year has been watching support for last year's number one drop away as she flip-flops on the Kate Moss subject, or does a homespun Guardian advice column, or presents the Friday Night Project (Justin and Alan's pre-filmed comedy bit was about burlesque, which is all sorts of opportunities missed)
8 Amy Winehouse
Well, no, she shouldn't be a role model, but nobody's really asking her to be one so it's a bit late to start complaining. Apart from as role model to Halloween costumiers, obviously.
7 Kate Nash
If you ever get a moment, go to Kate's Myspace and read her mighty list of influences, which starts "London, Storytelling, Cabaret, Poetry, Punk, Rock, Folk, Jazz, Hip Hop, Ska, Garage, Politics" and progresses through Nancy from Oliver, Peaches, Katie Jane Garside, The Adverts, Tracy Chapman, Bikini Kill, DJ Luck and MC Neat, Shola Ama, Roald Dahl and "Anything with Christmas in it".
6 Alex Turner
5 Lethal Bizzle
Does anyone else get the feeling that grime has lost? Dubstep swiped away its low-level following and Bizzle decided he always wanted to be a punk and collaborate with Babyshambles after all.
4 Ryan Jarman (The Cribs)
Yeah! Man those barricades against corporate indie! Which, by the way, everyone now thinks the Cribs are part of. You lose.
3 Lovefoxxx
Occasionally fringed saucetress on her own terms who seems to be the subject of a million anecdotes concerning her homeland live antics, none of which are ever corroborated, and will never get the catsuit into fashion.
2 Jamie Reynolds (Klaxons)
Visual weight-fluctuating frontman whose band really should stop being recorded for telly while playing live, as they never come within a million miles of coming across well. May have taken illegal substances in his life.
1 Frank Carter (Gallows)
Living proof that you can still rock a crowd when you're wearing tattoos, "Frank Carter is a legend in gooseberry-growing circles". Sorry, that just made us laugh for longer than is healthy. Here's Conor's journalism-excusing blurb for the year: "Thirty years after the height of punk there are a whole load of new bands making wild and passionate noise. But it takes more than just great music to make it to the top of the Cool List - these people effortlessly set trends with every breath they take - and it's great to see that people like Keith Richards prove that you don’t have to be young to do this." Great steaming christ.
50 Spider Webb (The Horrors)
Last year's testaments to the power of Shockwaves, who despite many an article were never, ever going to win the hearts of a nation, which probably makes Conor think he's edgy. Unsurprisingly, in the new Mighty Boosh series. Although apparently he's the one with the enviable psych-garage collection, so we can let him off.
49 Dev Hynes (Lightspeed Champion)
48 Santogold
Dunno. MIA's mate, apparently.
47 Carlos D (Interpol)
It's all in the Wild West doctor look.
46 Patrick Wolf
45 Yannis Philippakis (Foals)
Yes, the two parts A Certain Ratio to one part Q And Not U boding well, but not content with the several partings, he's added a horribly camp tache of late.
44 Brandon Flowers
43 Suki (The Real Heat)
We've never heard of her or The Real Heat before. So we read the NME blurb, and we still have no idea. Put her down as one of those who flower for three minutes around Cool List time and you never hear of again.
42 Cole Alexander (Black Lips)
41 Josh Homme
40 Nicky Wire
Now pitched as some sort of elder statesman of being unhappy about modern music, although actually a lot more accepting than he used to be. It can't really have been for the album.
39 Kyle Falconer (The View)
38 Andy Burrows (Razorlight)
The drummer, and as every follower of pointless biz gossip knows, the actual writer of America. As Johnny Borrell often mentions, in fact. Also, this suggests this is something to be proud of.
37 Joe Lean (Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong)
Multi-pseudonymed ex-Pipettes drummer. You know, the band that are often to be read railing against identikit skinny boy Pete'n'Carl'n'Johnny-indebted 'indie'-guitar mugs. Let's leave that observation hanging there.
36 Ian Brown
35 Lou Hayter (New Young Pony Club)
One of the ones that aren't Phil Oakey Hair Girl. We've never really got along with NYPC, see.
34 Pete Doherty
33 Jamie T
32 Gerard Way (My Chemical Romance)
31 Tim Harrington (Les Savy Fav)
Tim sodding Harrington! Might have helped had they come across LSF before last month, but never mind.
30 Meg White
Exhaustion - is that cool?
29 Kele Okereke
28 Karen O
27 Simon Taylor (Klaxons)
Ahhhh. Although for the life of us we can't work out whether that really is the happy couple - it doesn't look exactly like Lovefoxx, and Taylor's hair isn't stupid enough.
26 Simon Neil (Biffy Clyro)
25 Morgan Yeah? (Does it Offend You, Yeah?)
That's Morgan Yeah? of Does it Offend You, Yeah?, everyone. Real surname, according to a couple of online sources, is Quaintance, which is actually far better.
24 Craig Finn (The Hold Steady)
The Foghorn Leghorn's Nephew Lookalike Contest winner of 2007, proving that in the American heartland there is no liver too weak.
23 Eddie Argos (Art Brut)
It does seem a shame that Art Brut have never sold any records, give or take a few hundred, when clearly a good TV slot would take him into the stratosphere. Not Buzzcocks. Bring Pop Quiz back, just for this purpose.
22 Matt Helders (Arctic Monkeys)
He's launched his own clothing range! What's going on in pop these days?
21 Caleb Followill (Kings of Leon)
See? It's like some extras from Almost Famous, except this time well in the background of label 'do' scenes that were cut.
20 James Smith (Hadouken!)
Glamorous name. Becapped 'grindie' tyke sporting accent very much not that of native Watford putting himself forward as anti-scenester (cf Jarman, R) in band whose Wikipedia page is curiously nominated for deletion. How soon the pop world turns.
19 Matt Bellamy
18 Brandon Flowers’ Tache (Brandon Flowers, The Killers)
Yeah, yeah. Maybe Yannis is onto something after all.
17 Hayley Williams (Paramore)
Oh, put Avril in and have done with it.
16 Noel Gallagher
15 Tom Clarke (The Enemy)
They're like The Jam! No, they're like The Records without the ideas. Funny how like fellow Coventryites the Specials he writes about the decay of Coventry and yet makes it seem almost appealing in comparison.
14 Prince
See, Spice Girls, a load of O2 Arena shows and you're putty in everyone's hands. Current critical reappraisal some would say overdue, although it's not as if he makes it easy for himself.
13 Drew McConnell (Babyshambles)
Bassist, reserve band mouthpiece and the only spokesman Love Music Hate Racism can seemingly find. Says here he has an Institute Of Contemporary Music degree in bass playing. Good god, they give degrees for four-string plucking?
12 Thom Yorke
Currently rebuilding the music industry very slowly.
11 MIA
Hark, iLX exploding.
10 Keith Richards
The whole ashes farrago blew up in an NME interview, see. Keith is an invenerate interview pisstaker, but the idea he snorted his dad's own remains is believable. Yeah, like the Loch Ness Monster is believable.
9 Beth Ditto
One of the most fascinating things this year has been watching support for last year's number one drop away as she flip-flops on the Kate Moss subject, or does a homespun Guardian advice column, or presents the Friday Night Project (Justin and Alan's pre-filmed comedy bit was about burlesque, which is all sorts of opportunities missed)
8 Amy Winehouse
Well, no, she shouldn't be a role model, but nobody's really asking her to be one so it's a bit late to start complaining. Apart from as role model to Halloween costumiers, obviously.
7 Kate Nash
If you ever get a moment, go to Kate's Myspace and read her mighty list of influences, which starts "London, Storytelling, Cabaret, Poetry, Punk, Rock, Folk, Jazz, Hip Hop, Ska, Garage, Politics" and progresses through Nancy from Oliver, Peaches, Katie Jane Garside, The Adverts, Tracy Chapman, Bikini Kill, DJ Luck and MC Neat, Shola Ama, Roald Dahl and "Anything with Christmas in it".
6 Alex Turner
5 Lethal Bizzle
Does anyone else get the feeling that grime has lost? Dubstep swiped away its low-level following and Bizzle decided he always wanted to be a punk and collaborate with Babyshambles after all.
4 Ryan Jarman (The Cribs)
Yeah! Man those barricades against corporate indie! Which, by the way, everyone now thinks the Cribs are part of. You lose.
3 Lovefoxxx
Occasionally fringed saucetress on her own terms who seems to be the subject of a million anecdotes concerning her homeland live antics, none of which are ever corroborated, and will never get the catsuit into fashion.
2 Jamie Reynolds (Klaxons)
Visual weight-fluctuating frontman whose band really should stop being recorded for telly while playing live, as they never come within a million miles of coming across well. May have taken illegal substances in his life.
1 Frank Carter (Gallows)
Living proof that you can still rock a crowd when you're wearing tattoos, "Frank Carter is a legend in gooseberry-growing circles". Sorry, that just made us laugh for longer than is healthy. Here's Conor's journalism-excusing blurb for the year: "Thirty years after the height of punk there are a whole load of new bands making wild and passionate noise. But it takes more than just great music to make it to the top of the Cool List - these people effortlessly set trends with every breath they take - and it's great to see that people like Keith Richards prove that you don’t have to be young to do this." Great steaming christ.
Monday, November 05, 2007
Weekender : to be kept away from children and held at arms' length
FREE MUSIC: Dragons Of Zynth's background sounds familiar - African-American New Yorkers feted by Bowie and Massive Attack, drawing influence from all over the place and whacking it all together with guitar manipulation, hip-hop inspired drums and vocals of preachers' conviction. Just to prove the point, David Sitek of TV On The Radio produced their debut album Coronation Thieves. Breaker sounds like Black Sabbath doing Return To Cookie Mountain.
HEY YOU GET OFFA MYSPACE: Just to prove round here it's not all Field Mice, from the unlikely environs of Leamington Spa come duo Mysterons, an electronic/sampling duo who produce what could be leftfield hip-hop backings (think MF Doom's assorted projects) were it not for the work and amount of detail that goes into them, like a Big Beat Go! Team. Believe us, it's better than that sounds.
VISUAL REPRESENTATION: For a feature that likes a good tie-in, we've been tardy in stripmining YouTube for Joy Division materials. Not a lot, as you'd imagine, but enough - Shadowplay on So It Goes, She's Lost Control and Transmission (the latter flanked by John Cooper Clarke reading Evidently Chickentown) for BBC youth community series Something Else, broadcast 15th September 1979, and New Order in their later guitar-heavy phase doing Love Will Tear Us Apart for Jools. No 10,000 Things, unfortunately.
FALLING OFF A BLOG: Making Morrissey Sound Like The Birdie Song is a superb title. Given it includes Elliott Smith, Radiohead and both Fish and Marillion they could make a case for the title too.
IN OTHER NEWS: Bands reforming is old news, but the speed and surprise quality of some of those back in grubby rehearsal studios does sometimes still cause the reader to halt for a moment. For example, welcome back Chicks, chiefly interesting because the Dublin girl trio, who made a couple of much loved EPs tracks from which are downloadable from their old label, recorded an album for DreamWorks with Royal Trux producing in 2000 which never saw the light of day, possibly because Neil and Jennifer didn't exactly rate them highly in later interviews. Until now, that is, with three tracks uploaded and apparently the full thing getting a release soonish.
HEY YOU GET OFFA MYSPACE: Just to prove round here it's not all Field Mice, from the unlikely environs of Leamington Spa come duo Mysterons, an electronic/sampling duo who produce what could be leftfield hip-hop backings (think MF Doom's assorted projects) were it not for the work and amount of detail that goes into them, like a Big Beat Go! Team. Believe us, it's better than that sounds.
VISUAL REPRESENTATION: For a feature that likes a good tie-in, we've been tardy in stripmining YouTube for Joy Division materials. Not a lot, as you'd imagine, but enough - Shadowplay on So It Goes, She's Lost Control and Transmission (the latter flanked by John Cooper Clarke reading Evidently Chickentown) for BBC youth community series Something Else, broadcast 15th September 1979, and New Order in their later guitar-heavy phase doing Love Will Tear Us Apart for Jools. No 10,000 Things, unfortunately.
FALLING OFF A BLOG: Making Morrissey Sound Like The Birdie Song is a superb title. Given it includes Elliott Smith, Radiohead and both Fish and Marillion they could make a case for the title too.
IN OTHER NEWS: Bands reforming is old news, but the speed and surprise quality of some of those back in grubby rehearsal studios does sometimes still cause the reader to halt for a moment. For example, welcome back Chicks, chiefly interesting because the Dublin girl trio, who made a couple of much loved EPs tracks from which are downloadable from their old label, recorded an album for DreamWorks with Royal Trux producing in 2000 which never saw the light of day, possibly because Neil and Jennifer didn't exactly rate them highly in later interviews. Until now, that is, with three tracks uploaded and apparently the full thing getting a release soonish.
Sunday, November 04, 2007
In shops tomorrow: 5/11
Singles
Isn't it supposed to be albums that dry up in the last couple of months of the year? Actually that's not quite fair as there's some decent stuff out this month, but bar an Animal Collective Fireworks 10", and that's more out of expediency than artistic merit, we can find nothing that we'd feel safe in recommending to you this week. Luckily what we can talk about are...
EPs
...or mini-albums, if you prefer. The first one's got eight tracks in 31 minutes, so how would you class it? This is also probably something Pagan Wanderer Lu sweated over at some stage, we're sure. Perfection RIP is his doing a reverse Radiohead, in that having released quite a few releases on what we'll call analogue download (YouSendIt and so forth) since last year's Independent Scrutineer EP he's expecting you to go to a shop, or an online shop, or a download service, and pay for it. It, as per usual, being lo-fi electronica plus socio-political sarkiness plus far too many ideas to comfortably fit into any easy classification. Regarding the latter you'd say much the same, on a grander scale, for Grizzly Bear. Ten tracker Friend isn't for the curious newcomer, being as it is alternate versions of songs from their two albums plus a couple of covers, including their live favourite version of He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss) and covers by CSS, Band Of Horses and Deerhunter spinoff Atlas Sound.
Albums
You'd be surprised how wildly Misty's Big Adventure split opinion. Well, no you wouldn't in truth, given if the upbeat cabaret with jazz and ska undertones doesn't get you the sight of Erotic Volvo will, but you rarely see a review or blogger that doesn't settle for either fervency or revulsion. If you're in the former category, you need to know that after transferring across labels with every release they've settled for their own Grumpy Fun imprint for Funny Times, a third selection of Grandmaster Gareth's wistful wryness to oddpop. Darren Hayman has long put records out under his own auspices, and literally under his own name, being Darren Hayman Records. It's been mostly Hefner rarities and reissues to date but there's been a steady flow of solo EPs too, which made it seem surprising to us that The Secondary Modern, named after his own country/bluegrass-ified backing band, is only his second full-length. Hayman, obviously, remains David Gedge's spiritual heir as bedroom love poet to the indie kid set. You wouldn't imagine the first thing that would come to mind of members of the Archie Bronson Outfit discussing a side project is raw blues-inspired garage - they could just make another album if that's the case - but Sam Windett and Mark Cleveland's The Pyramids's self-titled debut does indeed somehow wring even more direct intensity out. New Zealand duo the Brunettes' not entirely seriously minded carefully constructed Spectorish Shins-pop has been running for nine years but they've only just landed a wider deal with Sub Pop for Structure And Cosmetics. Ben Nicholls doesn't like making things easy for himself. Not only does he simultaneously operate guitar, bass drum, hi-hat, Vox organ and bass pedals, he's called his one-man operation Dennis Hopper Choppers. That's Dennis Hopper Choppers. Luckily Chop turns out to be accomplished murder rockabilly. Long Blondes fans, look this way for Glasgow scene glitter kids The Royal We, whose debut is also their farewell release, having already played their last gig before their singer returns to LA. In reissue news, it takes a brave marketer to squeeze out two CDs representative of Can's massively influential entire career but Anthology just about manages it, while the Slits' second, less mud-featuring 1981 album Return Of The Giant Slits gets remastered for all it's worth.
DVDs
It's often been the quick way out to describe Sigur Ros' glacial magnificence as instructive of their extraordinary Icelandic surroundings. Heima puts that to the test, as the band are filmed performing in caves, follies, hillsides, abandoned buildings and community halls on a summer tour that's like no guerilla gig you'll ever have seen.
Books
The Replacements should have been the breakout band from the early 80s underground, the youthful Minneapolis rock'n'rollers emerging in 1981 and producing a number of cult albums before it all fell apart. Sabotaged by their own actions, to be precise, as oral history All Over But The Shouting by Jim Walsh charts twelve years of drunkenness, FM rock and pressures of major label success.
Isn't it supposed to be albums that dry up in the last couple of months of the year? Actually that's not quite fair as there's some decent stuff out this month, but bar an Animal Collective Fireworks 10", and that's more out of expediency than artistic merit, we can find nothing that we'd feel safe in recommending to you this week. Luckily what we can talk about are...
EPs
...or mini-albums, if you prefer. The first one's got eight tracks in 31 minutes, so how would you class it? This is also probably something Pagan Wanderer Lu sweated over at some stage, we're sure. Perfection RIP is his doing a reverse Radiohead, in that having released quite a few releases on what we'll call analogue download (YouSendIt and so forth) since last year's Independent Scrutineer EP he's expecting you to go to a shop, or an online shop, or a download service, and pay for it. It, as per usual, being lo-fi electronica plus socio-political sarkiness plus far too many ideas to comfortably fit into any easy classification. Regarding the latter you'd say much the same, on a grander scale, for Grizzly Bear. Ten tracker Friend isn't for the curious newcomer, being as it is alternate versions of songs from their two albums plus a couple of covers, including their live favourite version of He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss) and covers by CSS, Band Of Horses and Deerhunter spinoff Atlas Sound.
Albums
You'd be surprised how wildly Misty's Big Adventure split opinion. Well, no you wouldn't in truth, given if the upbeat cabaret with jazz and ska undertones doesn't get you the sight of Erotic Volvo will, but you rarely see a review or blogger that doesn't settle for either fervency or revulsion. If you're in the former category, you need to know that after transferring across labels with every release they've settled for their own Grumpy Fun imprint for Funny Times, a third selection of Grandmaster Gareth's wistful wryness to oddpop. Darren Hayman has long put records out under his own auspices, and literally under his own name, being Darren Hayman Records. It's been mostly Hefner rarities and reissues to date but there's been a steady flow of solo EPs too, which made it seem surprising to us that The Secondary Modern, named after his own country/bluegrass-ified backing band, is only his second full-length. Hayman, obviously, remains David Gedge's spiritual heir as bedroom love poet to the indie kid set. You wouldn't imagine the first thing that would come to mind of members of the Archie Bronson Outfit discussing a side project is raw blues-inspired garage - they could just make another album if that's the case - but Sam Windett and Mark Cleveland's The Pyramids's self-titled debut does indeed somehow wring even more direct intensity out. New Zealand duo the Brunettes' not entirely seriously minded carefully constructed Spectorish Shins-pop has been running for nine years but they've only just landed a wider deal with Sub Pop for Structure And Cosmetics. Ben Nicholls doesn't like making things easy for himself. Not only does he simultaneously operate guitar, bass drum, hi-hat, Vox organ and bass pedals, he's called his one-man operation Dennis Hopper Choppers. That's Dennis Hopper Choppers. Luckily Chop turns out to be accomplished murder rockabilly. Long Blondes fans, look this way for Glasgow scene glitter kids The Royal We, whose debut is also their farewell release, having already played their last gig before their singer returns to LA. In reissue news, it takes a brave marketer to squeeze out two CDs representative of Can's massively influential entire career but Anthology just about manages it, while the Slits' second, less mud-featuring 1981 album Return Of The Giant Slits gets remastered for all it's worth.
DVDs
It's often been the quick way out to describe Sigur Ros' glacial magnificence as instructive of their extraordinary Icelandic surroundings. Heima puts that to the test, as the band are filmed performing in caves, follies, hillsides, abandoned buildings and community halls on a summer tour that's like no guerilla gig you'll ever have seen.
Books
The Replacements should have been the breakout band from the early 80s underground, the youthful Minneapolis rock'n'rollers emerging in 1981 and producing a number of cult albums before it all fell apart. Sabotaged by their own actions, to be precise, as oral history All Over But The Shouting by Jim Walsh charts twelve years of drunkenness, FM rock and pressures of major label success.
The Weekly Sweep
Saturday, November 03, 2007
Reganomics
Seriously, if you've not seen that Pagan Wanderer Lu video yet...
Posted partly to point out that among the extras, who it says here catering for made up the large chunk of the £20 cost, are two Hot Puppies and half of Gindrinker among other Welsh luminaries, and partly because despite not being out until Monday our copy of his new EP arrived yesterday. With badges. And because it's great, and that.
Posted partly to point out that among the extras, who it says here catering for made up the large chunk of the £20 cost, are two Hot Puppies and half of Gindrinker among other Welsh luminaries, and partly because despite not being out until Monday our copy of his new EP arrived yesterday. With badges. And because it's great, and that.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)