Oh and David Ford (formerly of Easyworld) has a really good single out this week and it's available as a free download on iTunes/
27.9.05
Will update more properly soon, but in the meantime...
This album has so far exceeded all my (high) expectations easily!
Oh and David Ford (formerly of Easyworld) has a really good single out this week and it's available as a free download on iTunes/
Oh and David Ford (formerly of Easyworld) has a really good single out this week and it's available as a free download on iTunes/
22.9.05
Oh so Xtreme
So, on Monday I went to the Mean Fiddler for Virgin Xtreme's launch night, since I won tickets and all. I hadn't been to the venue before and was surprised at how close to being as big as the next door Astoria it was.
Firstly, it didn't do anything at all to sell the radio station to me, as they played a loop of music about 3 times over which just sounded like xfm if it was even more based around the NME. Plus the compere was an incredibly irritating sterotypical laddish twat, coming out several times between bands, Stella in hand, to say 'fuck' a lot and to tell us all as often as possible to get to the bar and get ready, because obviously it was very important to show that he was a big fan of drinking and not some kind of poof or something.
The highlight of The Ordinary Boys' set was when they stormed offstage about 30 seconds into their first song. Possibly the highlight of the evening in fact, a hilariously farcical beginning.
The Dead 60s have a couple of good songs, but insisted on playing them several times over in quick succession. And some of their lets-see-how-many-guitar-effects-we-can-show-off instrumentals seem to go on for millenia.
Hard-Fi were therefore left to be the highlight of the night, and all was going fantastically well until a few songs in when Rich Archer's voice suddenly vanished. Watching them struggle through their singles, helped out no end by the crowd, after this was entertaining but still a bit of a let down, together with their set being rather short anyway. Still, it was free!
Finally, something from the Xtreme website:
Firstly, it didn't do anything at all to sell the radio station to me, as they played a loop of music about 3 times over which just sounded like xfm if it was even more based around the NME. Plus the compere was an incredibly irritating sterotypical laddish twat, coming out several times between bands, Stella in hand, to say 'fuck' a lot and to tell us all as often as possible to get to the bar and get ready, because obviously it was very important to show that he was a big fan of drinking and not some kind of poof or something.
The highlight of The Ordinary Boys' set was when they stormed offstage about 30 seconds into their first song. Possibly the highlight of the evening in fact, a hilariously farcical beginning.
The Dead 60s have a couple of good songs, but insisted on playing them several times over in quick succession. And some of their lets-see-how-many-guitar-effects-we-can-show-off instrumentals seem to go on for millenia.
Hard-Fi were therefore left to be the highlight of the night, and all was going fantastically well until a few songs in when Rich Archer's voice suddenly vanished. Watching them struggle through their singles, helped out no end by the crowd, after this was entertaining but still a bit of a let down, together with their set being rather short anyway. Still, it was free!
Finally, something from the Xtreme website:
16.9.05
I've won tickets to Hard-Fi next Monday!
And The Dead 60s and The Ordinary Boys, but oh well. It's to launch Virgin's answer to Xfm Virgin Xtreme, where the answer in question is presumably ''me too''. My girlfriend has also won tickets, which may be a coincedence or a sign that not very many people entered the competition. Given the number of tickets Hard-Fi are giving away on their mailing list, probably the latter.
15.9.05
Arcade Fire: Top Of The Pops, video
Click here to see them perform Rebellion (Lies) on Sunday's show.
It was exciting and surprising as it was to see them there, especially in these days when exclusives of future flops by the 'world famous' or endless repeats of the same songs are far more likely to get TOTP appearances than records which people have, you know, actually just bought. I think that the linked blog rather overstates the weirdness though: 'the Top of the Pops crowd clapping along. To the Arcade Fire. Very bizarre as I'm sure you'll see'. It is a great pop song after all.
It was exciting and surprising as it was to see them there, especially in these days when exclusives of future flops by the 'world famous' or endless repeats of the same songs are far more likely to get TOTP appearances than records which people have, you know, actually just bought. I think that the linked blog rather overstates the weirdness though: 'the Top of the Pops crowd clapping along. To the Arcade Fire. Very bizarre as I'm sure you'll see'. It is a great pop song after all.
11.9.05
Help: A Day In The Life (Part 2)
12. Hard-Fi - Help Me Please
I maybe wouldn't have been as likely to give Hard-Fi's album much of a chance if my girlfriend wasn't such a huge fan of them but I'm glad that I did as it's full of excellent pop songs and lyrics which work better than expected. Slower songs don't tend to be their thing though, and this is the slowest and most melancholy of all ('so many tears','being alone scares the life out of me'). Despite occasionally sounding like Oasis it is honest and simple enough to work pretty well though.
13. Belle & Sebastian - The Eighth Station Of The Cross Kebab House
Somehow I can't believe that eighth is spelt like that, but apparently so. Carrying on where the mostly brilliant Dear Catastrophe Waitress left off, this is gloriously instant and catchy, but it also adds a political edge here more blatantly than Elbow do, with lyrics about Israel, although they don't seem to take any side particularly strongly. The last line is absolutely brilliant, particularly in referencing Coldplay, a band who are now on this compilation.
14. Tinariwen - Cler Achel
Again, a little outside of what I would normally listen to, and doesn't seem to do much for me; pleasant background music but I prefer Emmanuel Jal.
15. George And Anthony - Happy Christmas, War Is Over
Everything about this is almost compellingly awful! I have heard a few Anthony And The Johnsons songs and while I thought that the arrangements sounded great and the lyrics ok, I still couldn't bring myself to like them because of that voice. To me it just sounds like someone doing a really bad Buckley impression. Even if I were to enjoy it I can't imagine finding this anything other than hilariously bad though, a nasty saccharine arrangement of a far from brilliant song with totally misplaced voices.
16. Gorillaz - Hong Kong
Firstly, calling this a Gorillaz song is slightly questionable because it seems to bear no relation to any of their other stuff and to be virtually be a Damon Albarn solo song, or in fact is closer to Blur's Out Of Time relocated from Morocco to Hong Kong than anything. With that out of the way, this can be praised totally as the most gorgeous thing on here by some way, 7 minutes of bliss.
17. Babyshambles - From Bollywood To Battersea
Trying to ignore Pete's other activities is pretty hard nowadays, but at least this doesn't actually sound like it must have been recorded by a total waster like Fuck Forever. Instead it ambles along pleasantly for a few minutes like a lesser acoustic Libertines song, which is something at least I guess.
18. Manic Street Preachers - Leviathan
A unintelligable talking bit at the start and a big riff, must be a new Manics song! Not exactly the most punk thing they've recorded in ages as they've claimed, it sounds like the kind of agressive but unremarkable song that they can probably knock out in their sleep, before puzzlingly fading out just as it gets going.
19. Razorlight - Kirby's House
Razorlight tend to veer very easily from likable to completely terrible as far as I'm concerned. This stays just about on the likable side, laregly steering clear on pomposity even in the 'epic' ending.
20. Damien Rice - Cross-Eyed Bear
What, not Damien Rice And Lisa Hannigan? I thought that their move to more correct crediting on the last single would be a permanent one, and on the basis of this it definitely should be, with Damien becoming increasingly hopelessly mired in MOR and the moment when Lisa starts singing being the best by far. Damien also seems to be sounding unusually gruff, perhaps in an attempt to further distinguish himself from James Blunt. Any hopes that I might have had for his/their second album have now pretty much totally disappeared in the three-year farce that has been the O promotional campaign (and most annoyingly of all, it's worked).
21. Mylo - Mars Needs Women
The tracklisting to this largely appears to have been decided at random, but putting this straight after Damien Rice is a brilliant move, making it sound twice as exciting, shiny and modern as it actually is.
22. Coldplay - How You See The World Part 2
Ah, Coldplay. I think, with my getting invited to secret gigs and having thousands of posts on their forum and all, on top of their status as The Biggest Band In The World™ and resultant omnipresence, that it's increasingly difficult to think about their music without getting completely lost in too much baggage. I can try though.
This is another political song: 'You put the world in a tin can, black market contraband, and it hurt just a little bit, when they sliced and packaged it' this starts, and it sounds like a more direct and angry cousin of X&Y's closer Twisted Logic. Chris Martin has never been technically the best lyricist but these days his love songs have started sounding more and more trite (check out A Message or Swallowed In The Sea) and the angrier he is the more brilliant they sound. Somewhat surprsingly it never sounds too simplistic, perhaps as confused despair is a pretty reasonable feeling to have.
It's a shame that this song is thrown away in such a manner though, and it further enforces the idea of X&Y as a compromise between what Coldplay wanted and what they imagined that people wanted. Apparently Twisted Logic almost didn't make it on as well.
I maybe wouldn't have been as likely to give Hard-Fi's album much of a chance if my girlfriend wasn't such a huge fan of them but I'm glad that I did as it's full of excellent pop songs and lyrics which work better than expected. Slower songs don't tend to be their thing though, and this is the slowest and most melancholy of all ('so many tears','being alone scares the life out of me'). Despite occasionally sounding like Oasis it is honest and simple enough to work pretty well though.
13. Belle & Sebastian - The Eighth Station Of The Cross Kebab House
Somehow I can't believe that eighth is spelt like that, but apparently so. Carrying on where the mostly brilliant Dear Catastrophe Waitress left off, this is gloriously instant and catchy, but it also adds a political edge here more blatantly than Elbow do, with lyrics about Israel, although they don't seem to take any side particularly strongly. The last line is absolutely brilliant, particularly in referencing Coldplay, a band who are now on this compilation.
14. Tinariwen - Cler Achel
Again, a little outside of what I would normally listen to, and doesn't seem to do much for me; pleasant background music but I prefer Emmanuel Jal.
15. George And Anthony - Happy Christmas, War Is Over
Everything about this is almost compellingly awful! I have heard a few Anthony And The Johnsons songs and while I thought that the arrangements sounded great and the lyrics ok, I still couldn't bring myself to like them because of that voice. To me it just sounds like someone doing a really bad Buckley impression. Even if I were to enjoy it I can't imagine finding this anything other than hilariously bad though, a nasty saccharine arrangement of a far from brilliant song with totally misplaced voices.
16. Gorillaz - Hong Kong
Firstly, calling this a Gorillaz song is slightly questionable because it seems to bear no relation to any of their other stuff and to be virtually be a Damon Albarn solo song, or in fact is closer to Blur's Out Of Time relocated from Morocco to Hong Kong than anything. With that out of the way, this can be praised totally as the most gorgeous thing on here by some way, 7 minutes of bliss.
17. Babyshambles - From Bollywood To Battersea
Trying to ignore Pete's other activities is pretty hard nowadays, but at least this doesn't actually sound like it must have been recorded by a total waster like Fuck Forever. Instead it ambles along pleasantly for a few minutes like a lesser acoustic Libertines song, which is something at least I guess.
18. Manic Street Preachers - Leviathan
A unintelligable talking bit at the start and a big riff, must be a new Manics song! Not exactly the most punk thing they've recorded in ages as they've claimed, it sounds like the kind of agressive but unremarkable song that they can probably knock out in their sleep, before puzzlingly fading out just as it gets going.
19. Razorlight - Kirby's House
Razorlight tend to veer very easily from likable to completely terrible as far as I'm concerned. This stays just about on the likable side, laregly steering clear on pomposity even in the 'epic' ending.
20. Damien Rice - Cross-Eyed Bear
What, not Damien Rice And Lisa Hannigan? I thought that their move to more correct crediting on the last single would be a permanent one, and on the basis of this it definitely should be, with Damien becoming increasingly hopelessly mired in MOR and the moment when Lisa starts singing being the best by far. Damien also seems to be sounding unusually gruff, perhaps in an attempt to further distinguish himself from James Blunt. Any hopes that I might have had for his/their second album have now pretty much totally disappeared in the three-year farce that has been the O promotional campaign (and most annoyingly of all, it's worked).
21. Mylo - Mars Needs Women
The tracklisting to this largely appears to have been decided at random, but putting this straight after Damien Rice is a brilliant move, making it sound twice as exciting, shiny and modern as it actually is.
22. Coldplay - How You See The World Part 2
Ah, Coldplay. I think, with my getting invited to secret gigs and having thousands of posts on their forum and all, on top of their status as The Biggest Band In The World™ and resultant omnipresence, that it's increasingly difficult to think about their music without getting completely lost in too much baggage. I can try though.
This is another political song: 'You put the world in a tin can, black market contraband, and it hurt just a little bit, when they sliced and packaged it' this starts, and it sounds like a more direct and angry cousin of X&Y's closer Twisted Logic. Chris Martin has never been technically the best lyricist but these days his love songs have started sounding more and more trite (check out A Message or Swallowed In The Sea) and the angrier he is the more brilliant they sound. Somewhat surprsingly it never sounds too simplistic, perhaps as confused despair is a pretty reasonable feeling to have.
It's a shame that this song is thrown away in such a manner though, and it further enforces the idea of X&Y as a compromise between what Coldplay wanted and what they imagined that people wanted. Apparently Twisted Logic almost didn't make it on as well.
10.9.05
Help: A Day In The Life (Part 1)
(see here)
So, first off, this whole venture, despite being yet another repetition of something done in the past, seems a whole lot more likable than either Band Aid 20 or Live 8.
Band Aid 20 raised a lot of money, but it also foisted an uninspired version of a not very good song on us, and felt like it was being bought out of a sense of duty rather than because anyone was really planning to play the song a lot. This could be seen to be pretty irrelevant in the face of doing something so important, but why not have a good song as well as a good cause?
Live 8 did offer something that (some) people would actually want, the chance to see lots of popular bands in one day from a very long way away, but seemed hopelessly muddled in what it intended to achieve by this. 'It's not about the money, it's about the awareness' we were told, before eBay was forced to stop people from selling tickets to it because they were apparently taking advantage of a charity, and a 'golden circle' was put in place, in front of the crowd, of people who had bought the privilege of getting to be slightly less far away.
Help, though, manages to both have a clear and good reason for its existence and to offer something which people really will actually want (a lot of people judging by the meltdown of the Warchild website last night), a lot of new songs by popular bands.
1. Radiohead - I Want None Of This
This is, truth be told, not the greatest start to the album. Sounding vaguely like a slightly less evil version of Hail To The Thief's We Suck Young Blood, it has Thom backed just by piano and ghostly wordless backing vocals, singing things like 'if it matters to you, you can sell it all out'. It seems stuck halfway between sinister and moving though, and generally unremarkable. It probably doesn't say anything about how their next album will sound though, and I can't imagine this being reused as Lucky was last time.
2. The Coral - It Was Nothing
The first thing to notice is that the first second or so is In The Morning! Second is that it sounds like it could easily fit onto most recent album The Invisible Invasion. Perhaps this is because The Coral work so fast normally that recording in a day was normal (they have released about 80 songs in 4 years, which is pretty impressive going), but also it is because so many of their mid-paced songs now do have a distinct (to anything else) but very similar feel to them, a problem which really didn't help the album.
This has a really nice mid-section with twangy guitar and 'ooh-ooh's but overall I can't help but wish for a return to the days of Skeleton Key and similar madness.
3. The Zutons - Hello Conscience
'Hello conscience, how do you do? I've come such a long way to talk to you'
The Zutons' lyrics show no sign of getting any less stupid, clearly, but that doesn't matter too much in an enjoyably mindless stomping pop song like this. It takes a little too long to get to the big, garish climax though.
4. Elbow - Snowball
Elbow are my favourite band (review of them live coming soon!), so I am pretty predisposed to love this, it actually took a few listens to sink in though. It is quietly, elegantly lovely (Guy Garvey has my favourite voice ever!) but it is only gradually that the accusatory tone of it becomes apparent too, with 'I told you so' repeated and devestating lines like 'the largest of mistakes can be forgiven, but a snowball of little white lies will crush your house' before building to a dense and furious close. Seemingly political without being crass, despairing and angry yet beautiful, it's definitely one of my favourite things here, although that is no surprise.
5. The Magic Numbers - Gone Are The Days
They still haven't totally won me over, in spite of Forever Lost being so very adorable, and this fits expectations really - almost too sweet for words, though a little forgettable with it.
6. Max Emo Park - Wasteland
Much the same as for The Magic Numbers really. I haven't been persuaded to get their album yet, although Acrobat is fantastic and I quite like the singles, and this is very pleasant and likable but isn't changing my mind on them yet either. The accent is really a fantastic asset especially for some of these lyrics, and it has a great sudden ending though.
7. The Go! Team - Phantom Broadcast
I have to admit to being almost totally unfamiliar with The Go! Team. I really like the sound of this though. True, it doesn't exactly do much, but it does have a fantastic sound! And it onyl lasts 2:30 anyway. So it's fine.
8. Emmanuel Jal - Gua
This is a little bit outside of being the kind of thing that I can comment on with much confidence (not white blokes with guitars, is it?) but for what it's worth I enjoy it. It never goes anywhere near preachiness in making its point, and has really great backing vocals too.
9. Keane & Faultline - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
I don't know the orginal beyond this sounding vaguely familiar (and that's as much because the start sounds like Stars' Set Yourself On Fire as anything) so I can't really say how this compares. It's much better than Keane's cover of With Or Without You though. I don't know what Faultline actually did but the slightly distorted bits may be down to him, as usual it's mainly about that voice though, and even if it's easy to be tired of by now this is very pretty.
10. Kaiser Chiefs - I Heard It Through The Grapevine
Starts off sounding like Seven Nation Army, somehwat unexpectedly, and goes on to be not quite as much of a bad idea as I would have imagined beforehand. Still quite a bad idea though, and that's even as someone who normally really likes them.
11. Bloc Party - The Present
From a band who have released no new B-sides on any formats of any of their three singles this year, it's actually quite surprising to see a song on this as well as a properly new single soon. This is actually miles better than the rather limp Two More Years, building up extremely well and with some really brilliant echoey guitar, plus Kele in emotive but not quite full-on intense mode. Admittedly still not nearly as good as This Modern Love or Blue Light though.
(Part 2 to come tomorrow)
So, first off, this whole venture, despite being yet another repetition of something done in the past, seems a whole lot more likable than either Band Aid 20 or Live 8.
Band Aid 20 raised a lot of money, but it also foisted an uninspired version of a not very good song on us, and felt like it was being bought out of a sense of duty rather than because anyone was really planning to play the song a lot. This could be seen to be pretty irrelevant in the face of doing something so important, but why not have a good song as well as a good cause?
Live 8 did offer something that (some) people would actually want, the chance to see lots of popular bands in one day from a very long way away, but seemed hopelessly muddled in what it intended to achieve by this. 'It's not about the money, it's about the awareness' we were told, before eBay was forced to stop people from selling tickets to it because they were apparently taking advantage of a charity, and a 'golden circle' was put in place, in front of the crowd, of people who had bought the privilege of getting to be slightly less far away.
Help, though, manages to both have a clear and good reason for its existence and to offer something which people really will actually want (a lot of people judging by the meltdown of the Warchild website last night), a lot of new songs by popular bands.
Plus it has outdone the original from ten years ago in at least one way, as that featured a fair few remixes and live versions which can't have been the most exciting, and this features only new songs and a couple of covers. But are they any good? Well, I've listened a few times now, and here are my current thoughts:
1. Radiohead - I Want None Of This
This is, truth be told, not the greatest start to the album. Sounding vaguely like a slightly less evil version of Hail To The Thief's We Suck Young Blood, it has Thom backed just by piano and ghostly wordless backing vocals, singing things like 'if it matters to you, you can sell it all out'. It seems stuck halfway between sinister and moving though, and generally unremarkable. It probably doesn't say anything about how their next album will sound though, and I can't imagine this being reused as Lucky was last time.
2. The Coral - It Was Nothing
The first thing to notice is that the first second or so is In The Morning! Second is that it sounds like it could easily fit onto most recent album The Invisible Invasion. Perhaps this is because The Coral work so fast normally that recording in a day was normal (they have released about 80 songs in 4 years, which is pretty impressive going), but also it is because so many of their mid-paced songs now do have a distinct (to anything else) but very similar feel to them, a problem which really didn't help the album.
This has a really nice mid-section with twangy guitar and 'ooh-ooh's but overall I can't help but wish for a return to the days of Skeleton Key and similar madness.
3. The Zutons - Hello Conscience
'Hello conscience, how do you do? I've come such a long way to talk to you'
The Zutons' lyrics show no sign of getting any less stupid, clearly, but that doesn't matter too much in an enjoyably mindless stomping pop song like this. It takes a little too long to get to the big, garish climax though.
4. Elbow - Snowball
Elbow are my favourite band (review of them live coming soon!), so I am pretty predisposed to love this, it actually took a few listens to sink in though. It is quietly, elegantly lovely (Guy Garvey has my favourite voice ever!) but it is only gradually that the accusatory tone of it becomes apparent too, with 'I told you so' repeated and devestating lines like 'the largest of mistakes can be forgiven, but a snowball of little white lies will crush your house' before building to a dense and furious close. Seemingly political without being crass, despairing and angry yet beautiful, it's definitely one of my favourite things here, although that is no surprise.
5. The Magic Numbers - Gone Are The Days
They still haven't totally won me over, in spite of Forever Lost being so very adorable, and this fits expectations really - almost too sweet for words, though a little forgettable with it.
6. Max Emo Park - Wasteland
Much the same as for The Magic Numbers really. I haven't been persuaded to get their album yet, although Acrobat is fantastic and I quite like the singles, and this is very pleasant and likable but isn't changing my mind on them yet either. The accent is really a fantastic asset especially for some of these lyrics, and it has a great sudden ending though.
7. The Go! Team - Phantom Broadcast
I have to admit to being almost totally unfamiliar with The Go! Team. I really like the sound of this though. True, it doesn't exactly do much, but it does have a fantastic sound! And it onyl lasts 2:30 anyway. So it's fine.
8. Emmanuel Jal - Gua
This is a little bit outside of being the kind of thing that I can comment on with much confidence (not white blokes with guitars, is it?) but for what it's worth I enjoy it. It never goes anywhere near preachiness in making its point, and has really great backing vocals too.
9. Keane & Faultline - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
I don't know the orginal beyond this sounding vaguely familiar (and that's as much because the start sounds like Stars' Set Yourself On Fire as anything) so I can't really say how this compares. It's much better than Keane's cover of With Or Without You though. I don't know what Faultline actually did but the slightly distorted bits may be down to him, as usual it's mainly about that voice though, and even if it's easy to be tired of by now this is very pretty.
10. Kaiser Chiefs - I Heard It Through The Grapevine
Starts off sounding like Seven Nation Army, somehwat unexpectedly, and goes on to be not quite as much of a bad idea as I would have imagined beforehand. Still quite a bad idea though, and that's even as someone who normally really likes them.
11. Bloc Party - The Present
From a band who have released no new B-sides on any formats of any of their three singles this year, it's actually quite surprising to see a song on this as well as a properly new single soon. This is actually miles better than the rather limp Two More Years, building up extremely well and with some really brilliant echoey guitar, plus Kele in emotive but not quite full-on intense mode. Admittedly still not nearly as good as This Modern Love or Blue Light though.
(Part 2 to come tomorrow)
Yay for nice people
and accidently stumbling across their nice blogs while looking for the Clearlake story again.
Added to the links now is NOISE! which is written by someone who generally stands out a mile as the most reasonable person on the DiS messageboards, and also runs Clearlake's site for them which is nice!
'Same with (cough) 'Britpop'. In retrospect, we're told that it was all crap. Nope. Sleeper were. The Bluetones weren't (and aren't).'
I need say no more!!
Added to the links now is NOISE! which is written by someone who generally stands out a mile as the most reasonable person on the DiS messageboards, and also runs Clearlake's site for them which is nice!
'Same with (cough) 'Britpop'. In retrospect, we're told that it was all crap. Nope. Sleeper were. The Bluetones weren't (and aren't).'
I need say no more!!
Something To Look Forward To
Clearlake to release new album 'Amber' in January (finally!) Admittedly the clips of demos that I've heard seemed to be lacking a certain spark of brilliance that made 'Lido' and particularly 'Cedars' so special, but then they were clips. Of demos.
Next year's early release schedule is starting to take shape in general in fact:
Next year's early release schedule is starting to take shape in general in fact:
- Embrace have written a new album in 9 days, which will be called 'Exploding Machines'. I am imagining at this stage an album full of Near Lifes but that may prove a little optimistic.
- Belle And Sebastian releasing 'The Goalkeeper's Revenge' too. Apparently named after an old book which I may in fact have read, I read too many football books at one stage and they were generally fairly indistinguishable from each other. If their new track on the Help:A Day In The Life album for Warchild (full review here later!) is anything to go by it should be at least as fantastic as 'Dear Catastrophe Waitress'.
- Grandaddy should have a new album ready to go soon, in the mean time they are releasing a mini-album in a few weeks while we wait.
- You never know, The Flaming Lips might actually finish 'At War With The Mystics'. Or, for that matter, their Christmas On Mars film.
- The Strokes are also looking for a January release, and are now slowly dripping news to the overexcited NME.
7.9.05
4.9.05
Home Fires still burning
It's a decidedly odd thing to watch a guy sit a few feet away from you in a small room and play the song which, more than any other probably, got you really, properly, interested in this whole new music thing in the first place. I had this experience on Wednesday at a gig in Farringdon by Fi-Lo Beddow ('folk-poet and pioneer', says his card), otherwise known as the frontman of The Bluetones Mark Morriss.
In particular it's odd when there are people standing off to the side who have a chance to listen to this amazing, moving piece of music and yet talk constantly, and when even the faithful present (and there still are some!) are much more into the older stuff played. But that's ok, because even half hearing an acoustic Keep The Home Fires Burning felt like a privilege to me. I can still remember the first time that I heard it, watching Top Of The Pops on a tiny old TV, with a couple of dents in the screen, in the corner of the room. And it still sounded almost as amazing as it did to me then, which is as much of a compliment as I could pay it, really.
In particular it's odd when there are people standing off to the side who have a chance to listen to this amazing, moving piece of music and yet talk constantly, and when even the faithful present (and there still are some!) are much more into the older stuff played. But that's ok, because even half hearing an acoustic Keep The Home Fires Burning felt like a privilege to me. I can still remember the first time that I heard it, watching Top Of The Pops on a tiny old TV, with a couple of dents in the screen, in the corner of the room. And it still sounded almost as amazing as it did to me then, which is as much of a compliment as I could pay it, really.
Everyone Says That Everything Sounds Like Coldplay Now Now
Perhaps it's the same irrational need to defend commercial 'indie' music (after all, it doesn't need defending, it's totally dominant) as described in the post below which prevents me from finding Mitch Benn's 'hilarious' parody Everything Sounds Like Coldplay Now particularly amusing. Or maybe it's just that it isn't good enough to make up for such a completely lazy premise; everyone has already written about the load of new bands like Embrace, Snow Patrol and, according to a particularly chronologically confused New York Times, Travis who have apparently sprung up to replicate Coldplay's sound. Singing a song about this which sounds more accurately like Coldplay than any of them have come close to managing just doesn't seem to work.
On being a hypocritical James
I really can't stand this kind of thing. Something about the way in which it assumes that everyone needs to be saved from their current likes, and switch to the author's, is completely infuriating. Plus it is rather muddled to say the least: 'everybody likes something that is easy to understand – I’m a Hollyoaks fan myself' she says, before going on to criticise the existence of anything easy to understand (which of course the admittedly rather fab Mystery Jets couldn't possibly be!).
To be fair, my stuff on the same site is twenty times worse at least, but still.
The thing is... it's hard to tell how much of this dislike is down to the piece itself or how much of it is down to the fact that I really do like the bands in question. Yes, I like Travis, Embrace, even Keane!None of them are among my favourites, but then Elbow and to a lesser extent Coldplay are and plenty of people look upon both of those in the same way.
The idea of many seems to be that people who like this music either aren't really into music at all (the infamous '5-album a year' types) or are on their way to realising the error of their ways and liking either super-obscure Pitchfork-approved indie or mainstream pop music instead. this is a constant annoyance because it still hasn't happened to me. I wouldn't necessarily mind if it did, but here I am buying more like 50 albums a year, including some pretty obscure stuff, and a fan of Gwen Stefani, Natasha Bedingfield and all to boot, and yet 'pop by numbers' still holds a great appeal.
And what seals the idea that it's only because I disagree that I dislike it so much, and makes me feel vaguely uncomfotable, is that despite being possibly even more shoddy, I can't bring myself to hate this. Because I really really hate James Blunt. And I don't like hating something so seemingly harmless so strongly and irrationally at all, but I can forgive any nonsense in the article just because its main point is against him. Oh well.
To be fair, my stuff on the same site is twenty times worse at least, but still.
The thing is... it's hard to tell how much of this dislike is down to the piece itself or how much of it is down to the fact that I really do like the bands in question. Yes, I like Travis, Embrace, even Keane!None of them are among my favourites, but then Elbow and to a lesser extent Coldplay are and plenty of people look upon both of those in the same way.
The idea of many seems to be that people who like this music either aren't really into music at all (the infamous '5-album a year' types) or are on their way to realising the error of their ways and liking either super-obscure Pitchfork-approved indie or mainstream pop music instead. this is a constant annoyance because it still hasn't happened to me. I wouldn't necessarily mind if it did, but here I am buying more like 50 albums a year, including some pretty obscure stuff, and a fan of Gwen Stefani, Natasha Bedingfield and all to boot, and yet 'pop by numbers' still holds a great appeal.
And what seals the idea that it's only because I disagree that I dislike it so much, and makes me feel vaguely uncomfotable, is that despite being possibly even more shoddy, I can't bring myself to hate this. Because I really really hate James Blunt. And I don't like hating something so seemingly harmless so strongly and irrationally at all, but I can forgive any nonsense in the article just because its main point is against him. Oh well.
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