Monday 30 June 2008

Current obsession - Bjork

Bjork is one of those people I accidentally forget about, so when I delve into her music I rediscover how amazing she is and get all excited.
Bjork is amazing because everything she does is amazing, from the Sugarcubes through all of her solo albums. I've been told that Dancer in the Dark is also amazing, but people always suffix that with 'but it's really depressing', so I haven't watched it. Bjork is kooky, uncomprising and when she sings, the angels are probably weeping. Everytime I hear her hit the lyric 'emotional landscapes' in Joga, I get a little shiver. Really, I do.
For some people she's a global superstar, but for a lot of others she's that crazy lady who wore a swan to the Oscars, bellowed It's Oh So Quiet and attacked a reporter at Bangkok airport. I realised that the young son she was shielding from media intrusion during that incident is now a man, which is a scary reminder of the relentless passage of time. And why do fashion and gossip journalists always drag up the swan dress as an example of the worst crimes against Oscar style? She looks amazing! Well, apart from the glittery, flesh-coloured body stocking beneath. She's Bjork, of course she's going to dress theatrically. Remember the 30,000 square feet of fabric she wore for the Athens Olympics opening ceremony in 2004 (pictured)?
Bjork herself is not a one-woman powerhouse of creativity, and it's all the energy of collaborations that make her AMAZING. From those Michel Gondry videos to the Reactable man it's all so amazingly brilliant. For a Bjork album produced by Timbaland, 2007's Volta doesn't sound as good as I imagined in my head. I'm ready for the seventh Bjork album, whenever that may be. Not for quite a while, I suppose. She's still touring the sixth one. And the shows are amazing. Amazing!

Saturday 28 June 2008

Back to the future

The Mystery Jets made a minor indentation on the top 40 with Two Doors Down the other week, which has now disappeared down the charts. I've never given the Mystery Jets more than a brief listen because I assumed they were a nice enough band for skinny, white teenage boys. They seem to do well on the underage circuit, along with the Holloways, Patrick Wolf, Laura Marling and similar whippersnappers.
But there's something quite endearing about Two Doors Down, which was produced by Erol Alkan. Were it not so endearing, I would have dismissed it as as a post-punk/Cure/Duran Duran rip-off. Which it is, yet it's also cute. And just in case you don't get the 80s references, the video rams it in your face. Let's take a look:
Pink leopard print background

Pastel suits like those seen on Simon le Bon, circa the ENTIRE EIGHTIES

A powerful moment highlighted with a clenched fist

A cardboard cut-out living room

An elaborate saxophone solo

A worn out copy of Marquee Moon

Friday 27 June 2008

Girl Talk

Pittsburgh mixmaster Girl Talk has been floating near the top of The Hype Machine and today was awarded a unit-shifting 8.0 on Pitchfork for Feed The Animals. So when I hit play I hoped for something wondrous, possibly a distillation of the past 50 odd years of pop music. Mr Girl Talk's schtick is mashing up the mash-up by condensing approximately one million poptacular samples into each track. (Well, maybe not a million, but you know what I mean.) There's a Hot Chip with The Cardigans' Lovefool, then a moment of Jay-Z with Paranoid Android. It feels like no moment of sublime pop is untouched, from Ace of Base's All That She Wants to Beastie Boys' Bodymovin'. Busta Rhymes. Metallica. Lil Wayne. Procul Haram. Et-bloody-cetera.
2005 just called. It wants its bastard pop back.
I realise it's supposed to be oh so clever by putting familiar sounds into new contexts, but it's so artless. Oh Pitchfork, what were you thinking? Feed The Animals is an extended megamix dependent on the pop musical genius of other people and the fact that most pop songs stick to a 4/4 beat. And pitch-shifting, lots of pitch-shifting. It's Strawberry Jam for people who find Animal Collective a bit, you know, weird.
It sounds like that daily Jo Whiley competition (The Shuffle?) dragged out for over 50 minutes. People who say they like this are just congratulating themselves because they feel clever for recognising the samples. Er, well done, you've listened to a lot of music.

Wednesday 25 June 2008

Current obsession - thecocknbullkid

I just listened to The Cock n Bull Kid (can't bring myself to type it as one word again. Why not? Because that's just silly.) I'm probably about a million years behind Hoxton, but wow! Isn't she just wonderful? Like an East London Santogold with a Casio keyboard, produced by the equally wonderful Metronomy.
Her new single On My Own (released on 7 July, release-date fans) is deceptively plodding at first listen, but those mosquito chords crept inside my brain. It's a bittersweet, end of the affair reminisce. And it is quite wonderful.
There's also an MTV2 ready video, in which she stamps on a cake. Video looks good, but a needless waste of a cake, I say.

Ain't going to Glasto

Months ago I decided that this year would not be a Glastonbury year for me. My first Glasto experience was last year, which I worked at. My main memories are of trogging around in the mud and staying awake all night to work. When the Monday rolled around I innocently thought I'd be safely home in Sheffield by early afternoon, not realising that Sheffield was flooded and inaccessible. There were a few anxious hours trapped in Chesterfield, watching the flood waters rise and listening to the sirens, car alarms and helicopters, wondering if the apocalypse was approaching. I need a lie-down just thinking about it.
But now Glastonbury 2008 is here, and I'm jealous. Very jealous. I want to be pitching my tent in Somerset while supping perry RIGHT NOW! I would even be happy to watch Jay-Z! Actually, I wouldn't. Glastonbury is one of the greatest shows on Earth, but it doesn't feel worth the effort of all that public transport, welly-induced blisters and financial outlay.
I'm still jealous. The coming weekend will be one of avoiding TV, radio and press coverage of Glasto 2008. Maybe I could recreate the festival experience by pitcing my tent in the park, build an unnecessarily big fire and tunelessly sing Oasis songs. Maybe not.

Seven inches of shame part 2

It's no Superstition My favourite waste of time, indeedAnother Finnish Eurovision entry





Friday 20 June 2008

Seven inches of shame

After tackling my CD collection, I had to go through my seven inch collection. Among the Tamla Motown, post-punk and Pop Will Eat Itself there are some shockers which made me exclaim 'what was I thinking?!' They must have cost about 5p, or were lucky dip charity shop buys. They must have been. What rational mind would buy the following:
Yes, Neil from The Young Ones recorded a single At least it's not Cuddles the MonkeyA joke's a joke, but...

MySpace trawl

I love Paul Lester's New Band of the Day on the Guardian Unlimited. My tactic is to leave it for a few weeks, allowing a nice stash of New Bands to build up. Checking in every day leads to disappointment when I've already heard the New Band, or the New Band are crapola. Well, it's not called GOOD New Band of the Day, is it?
From my most recent catch up, the memorable bands and artists are:
1) Lucy and the Caterpillar. Oh dear. This is so self-consciously quirky that I could barf. She's a Mancunian cutie-pie who crochets, drinks cups of tea and writes folky-dolky songs about indie boys (barf). The caterpillar is her miniature acoustic guitar (more barf). Sorry Lucy: you sound like you want to be a Soviet Kitsch-era Regina Spektor, but don't have the cross-cultural experiences or poetic lyricism.
2) The Magic Wands. Eeek! Boy-girl electro pop from Nashville with a post-punk sneer. It's making me a bit excited. A lot excited.
3) Goyte. Gasp! He's like a Belgian-Australian pre-Scientology Beck. Actually, he is the new Beck. This man is officially the future of music! (Edit - It's easy to get carried away listening to tracks on MySpace, isn't it?) And he's written a slick ode to the frustration of your call being put on hold.
4) Montt Mardie. A young Swedish gent called David Pangmar. He's got a nice voice and acoustic guitar, but if he gazes any harder at his navel he's going to develop a squint. But he apparently says things like 'my creativity almost suffocates me'. Because being able to write songs is a burden, isn't it? A terrible burden. I'm weeping for you, David. Weeping.

Wednesday 18 June 2008

One is not born a woman

PHWOOOOAAAR!! This is Katy Perry (taken from her Flickr account), whose album One Of The Boys is released in the US this week. According to "tastemaker" Perez Hilton, she is the new Lily Allen. So it can't be long before she's heading across the Atlantic for Radio 1 interviews and assorted promotion.
I heard her first single Ur So Gay at the end of 2007 (one of those tentative, limited edition releases) and hoped that would be the end of it. Because that song is so dumb on so many levels that I don't even want to think about it. But if you must know, Katy lambasts an ex-boyfriend for being feminine (in this context, feminine is defined as listening to Mozart, wearing SPF45 etc) because "feminine" = gay and gay = bad. Of course! Didn't you know that? If not, you're probably the sort of person who spells it 'you're'. Chuh!
Anyway, her more recent US single is I Kissed A Girl, another abomination trampling all over Helene Cixous and Lucy Irigaray. It's cute white girl R&B pop with a "rock edge", like Pink or Natasha Bedingfeld. Except that Katy (who released a Christian gospel album in 2001 under her birth moniker, Katy Hudson) is a naughty girl. A very naughty girl who is supposed to make you go "phwoar!" and think zexy zexy thoughts. If you can't guess from the title, it's about Katy kissing a female friend while drunk and discovering "it felt so wrong, it felt so right". Were this simply a tale of discovering an emerging sexuality, perhaps from the mouth of Yelle or similar, I'd be ok. But Katy has to go and add "hope my boyfriend don't mind it". So it's not about a young woman discovering herself, it's about a young woman positioning herself firmly in the male gaze and looking DEAD SEXY.
It's not really fair to direct bile at Katy as she's simply the empty vessel through which this slurry passes. (But it's dead sexy slurry, yeah?) Cathy Dennis has a writing credit. Oh Cathy, you can do better than this. Even Michelle McManus was a step up.

Sunday 15 June 2008

Don't mention "world music"

Tired of tea drinking It's that time of the month when the most exciting Observer supplement rolls around: the Music Monthly, or OMM as I like to call it. The Sunday mornings when I head across the road to the convenience-shop-with-no-name clutching £1.90 are the best Sunday mornings.
This month, Caspar Llewellyn-Smith treats us to a global special (NB, not a world music special, ok?), which is a difficult term that seems to mean 'music from places that usually get ignored'. Well, it's a good enough reason to put CSS on the cover.
Can monthly music magazines compete in an age of New Meejah? The two big features (CSS and Sebestian Tellier's Eurovision) emphasise the time lag suffered by monthlies. Terry Wogan is probably the only person still thinking about the ESC 2008 final, and the CSS interview dates back to January, before Ira departed over a guilty eco-conscience. Maybe the OMM have been sitting on that one for a while due to the second CSS album being pushed back to July (was it pushed back? I'm only making assumptions because they lost a bassist). Compared to the instant access of the internet, liveblogging and all, will Ver Kids of the future be interested in monthly music magazines? Ones printed on paper with photos and all that?
I hope so. The OMM reviews section is just about the right size, and I also like looking at whose written each piece and pondering any hidden significance. DBC Pierre gets the arbitrary top spot for a 5 star review of the new Sigur Ros offering, and Neil Spencer gets a double review of albums from Seth Lakeman and Eliza Carthy. What does it all mean? How do the reviews get divvied up? I like to imagine all the freelancers summoned for a meeting, then sipping tea and nibbling biscuits while tensely eyeing up a pile of choice promos. Finally, someone makes a grab for Beck's Modern Guilt and suddenly there's Jammy Dodgers all on the floor and an argument over who gets stuck with the new Usher album.
Anyway. The Observer Music Monthly global special. Well done, everybody.

Friday 13 June 2008

Shirley 2.0

I gave Garbage's Version 2.0 a spin last night, and in the 10 years since it was released (yes, 10 years) it's aged quite well. For me, at least. Butch Vig has a few Liberace moments, especially on Push It's 120 separate tracks. But this is Butch Vig plus Shirley Manson, so instead of turning out like an over-accessorised emo kid it's powerful goth pop.
But what about that Shirley Manson solo album? It's been in the works since 2005, but might not see the light of the CD pressing factory due to record label thumb-twiddling. The main concern is apparently that the material is "too noir". Maybe they're right to be worried, because Candie Payne has the monopoly on that genre. Obviously.
Maybe the songs that are in the can are crap. But come on, she's been working with Greg Kurstin. Greg bloody Kurstin! He is responsible for all sorts of wonders, including Sophie Ellis-Bextor's Catch You (one of my favourite pop songs from 2007). Shirley Manson + Greg Kurstin = pop noir perfection. If destroyed still true.

PS I was such a Garbage fan girl, that I had a ginger tom named Shirley. He was a very effeminate cat.

Thursday 12 June 2008

Current obsession - N.E.R.D.

Pharrell and chums have returned with Everyone Nose, a ruckus of reggaeton about LA club girls snorting cocaine in the bathroom. Through hundred dollar bills. It's parping, rude and features a chanted refrain of 'all the girls standing in the line for the bathroom!'. It's all punctuated by mock sneezing, which may or may not be lifted from At Chu, a non MySpace track by Panama pop star, Demphra.
I loved Everyone Nose when I first heard it a few months ago (look at me! I am soooooo effin' cool because I trawl MP3 blogs!) but also pondered what radio shows and music channels would play this. It's about casual drug abuse without any apparent retribution. Well, Pharrell warns the coked-up lovely falling off his arms that 'I won't blow your high talkin' bout your life and how it is all wrong / just know if you go outside and see the sun rise that all the stars are gone'. Not quite the cocaine blues, is it?
But now the video is Out There (I caught it on The Hits when channel surfing) I remembered that N.E.R.D. are global superstars. Thanks to iPod adverts, Jason Nevins remixes, all those Neptunes production credits and Pharrell's rent-a-rapper skits, N.E.R.D. don't need mainstream media. Their third album, N3RD, will shift units.
The video includes a lot of glimpses of licentious club kids covered by the tantalising 'removed by request'. Which of course makes some people head to the internet to find the uncensored version and gawk brief shots of girls snogging. Samantha Ronson and Lindsay Lohan appear, but not together. Looking out for them is like Where's Wally?

The death of the CD

Look at me, I'm a liberal arts graduate With a heaviness in my heart and tear in my eye, I realised that my love affair with CDs is officially over: my collection is being dispatched to eBay and charity shops. My near complete bundle of Kula Shaker singles has already been posted off to a better life in Germany. Blub!
I've moved so many times, and will probably move from Liverpool in the near future. And dragging around boxes of CDs and books is the heaviest part, so one of them has to go. A lot of my books are annotated (see left for some of them. Sylvia Plath, Jack Kerouac, Angela Carter - it's all what you'd expect). With books, you can often revisit them, flick through to re-read that poem or paragraph. But I'm not going to be giving those Mansun b-sides another listen. Ever. I'd prefer to MP3-ise my music and be able to move around, instead of staying in one place surrounded by Bernard Butler and Beth Orton albums.
Sorting through all those plastic boxes stirred a lot of memories. Remember when Tom Jones released that covers album stuffed full of stars of the day, including Cerys Matthews, Natalie Imbruglia and the Divine Comedy? He was like the Mark Ronson of 1999. And what about when Blur's Tender was avant garde because it contains a gospel choir, planks of wood and lyric that makes you think of F. Scott Fitzgerald? And who could forget that fortnight when Catatonia were the Biggest Band on the Planet (or so it felt when you turned on the TV or radio)? Or when that irritating Vodafone advert featuring the Dandy Warhols made it ok for bands to "sell out"?
Memories of record shopping was also stirred up. For a while at university, I had a three-times-a-week Record Collector habit. That shop was too conveniently located between seminar rooms and my student house not to pop in for regular browsing. It's like they jumped out into the pavement and dragged me inside every time I tried to hurry past.
My CD collection isn't vast, I always preferred ritualised browsing to spending money. Most of it is late 90s albums, when I was old enough to catch a train from home in south Shropshire for an afternoon in Hereford. The big city! They had Andy's Records, Our Price and the Dinosaw Market, an old warehouse full of second hand everything. All three are now defunct.
An even bigger record shopping treat when I was a teenager was Tower Records in Birmingham. After hearing Goldfrapp's Utopia on a Q magazine cover mount I HAD TO HAVE the album, but it wasn't going to turn up in the local Woolworths. So I spent weeks convincing my parents to take me to the big, big city of Birmingham where I could buy Felt Mountain. They did, and I loved it.
It's a bit sad that something which once meant so much is now a burden. But it's the music that's important, not the little plastic discs. Isn't it?

Thursday 5 June 2008

Here's one I made earlier... for the Long Blondes

Sleeper Here is my cover version (dyageddit?!!) of Couples by the Long Blondes, featuring Anthea Turner's wicker sofa and Mark Wallinger in a bear costume.
The only thing I forgot was the speech marks around Couples, making the album title "Couples". Why is this? Was somebody concerned that curious record buyers would pick up a copy and then recommend it to their friends saying 'oh yeah, I bought this great new album, I think it's called The Long Blondes by a band called Couples.' Or is it an act of self-sabotage? Did Kate Jackson not like the title and use the speech marks to create an ironic distance through punctuation?
Who knows. Either way, don't look too close or you'll see the glue isn't dry.

NB Anthea says her sofa and faux suede cushions are really easy to clean.

Wednesday 4 June 2008

Couples by the Long Blondes

Some albums need time to settle in. Couples, second album from The Long Blondes, has been out in the UK since 7 April, but my mind is only just made up on it. What is my mind saying? 'Meh...'
Lead single Century was alright, and new single Guilt sounds like it could sit comfortably amongst the tunes of Someone To Drive You Home. But overall it just tries to hard to be cool, and sadly fails. Erol Alkan? Good DJ, remixer and club promoter... but a producer? Not sure. He adds a lot of "electro" noises, but it's such a messy, lumpen album.
Even the cover (designed by singer Kate Jackson) doesn't do it for me. I like zebras. I like a well-upholstered chaise longues. But the Long Blondes are a self-proclaimed stylish band and this little collage isn't going to cut it. Look at all the white space in the middle!
I really didn't want to feel this way. I loved the Long Blondes when I lived in Sheffield, went to lots of their early pub gigs and felt jealous of Kate's apparently endless supply of pencil skirts and colourful scarves. Well, she was working in a vintage clothing shop at the time. Second albums are often difficult because bands are out on the road, promoting the first album and don't have time to write decent songs. But Dorian could have channelled some more Shadow Morton, couldn't he?

Monday 2 June 2008

She's got the look

In Low, Flo Rida sings of 'those Apple Bottom jeans and boots with the fur, the whole club was looking at her'. For me, this conjures images of a girl in unflattering jeans and Ugg boots over doing it on the dancefloor of a small nightclub in Pontefract while everybody looks on in embarrassment. But Flo Rida also mentions those Apple Bottom jeans in his new single, Elevator. So I turned to Google. And the answer: Apple Bottom jeans are not a new cut invented by Grazia magazine, but part of Nelly's brand.
For a mere $150, you can get a pair of 'sexy' skinny jeans hand signed by Nelly himself. On the backside. But don't worry! They are machine washable. And so you can feel that little bit sexier while working in the operating theatre, Apple Bottom also make scrubs.
Does this mean Flo Rida is a rapper, or a musical construct for aggressive product placement (cf Fergie)?

Access all areas

On TV you can watch brilliant things like bands and musicians performing. And you can watch bands being interviewed: not so brilliant, because bands don't always say interesting things. But all of this is apparently no longer enough, thanks to The Nokia Green Room.
In 4 Music's version of Top of the Pops, bands are forced to perform off as well as on stage. Tonight, I watched the repeat on The Hits because there's no reception for Channel 4 in my flat. I know! Weird. Anyway, Scooter, Gabriella Cilmi (is a popstar who requires a pronunciation guide really a good idea?), Young Knives and Feeder gathered in a gadget-filled backstage area which resembled a Big Brother house more than any green room I've ever seen. They had some awkward conversation (prompted by a file of questions), like the beginnings of a house party where nobody knows anybody else.
They periodically disappeared to perform. But you can't just relax and enjoy the music, as it cuts to backstage footage of the holding pen where the other bands mumble things like 'yeah, they're really good...' As if you need confirmation from a pop star that the music you're watching is cool. Pop stars who are forced into japing around like performing chimps.
Is this all because music itself has no inherent value, and needs to be dressed up like a reality TV show in order to commodify it and therefore sell more mobile phones?

Half an hour in Rock Ferry

You may have heard Duffy's debut album, Rockferry. That is, Duffy's double platinum debut album, Rockferry. It's named after a suburb of Birkenhead, on the Wirral, where Duffy's father grew up. Contrary to playground rumours, Duffy's father is not Shakin' Stevens (disappointing, I know...).
Rock Ferry (place) is two separate words: will the council rename it in honour of pop history? Probably not. Just think of all the road signs they'd have to change. Today I popped onto Merseyrail's Wirral Line to Rock Ferry (place) to discover if it has any resemblance to Rockferry (album). And here's what I found:
MerseyrailRock Ferry station, with crumbling community mural in background. 'People (blank) litter on the floor... Why is the world not clean anymore?' Oh dear.

No pawn for you
Empty shops.Greasy spoonThey were advertising for staff, if you're interested.
Fancy a pint?A boarded up pub.

ShoppertunityA big Lidl.

Conclusion: Rock Ferry needs some investment. And it didn't inspire Rockferry. It's just a nice-sounding album title.

Sunday 1 June 2008

Stuck on my ella-ella-elevator

Let's take a closer look at Timbaland in the video for Flo Rida's Elevator:
Isn't that the face of the class clown trying to hide his insecurities? I think so.