This is what tipped me off. Nothing. A casual mistake, searching for a similarly named band and then I was caught, ensnared, spellbound like a myopic fly beating around furiously and futilely inside the snare of the sticky, sticky music. Not even trying to escape, because why would I want to do that?

This is glorious. Through the looking glass slowly, absorbing much of the past and shunting it smoothly forward into the future.

Restraint, restraint, restraint. This is what matters in music. The feeling that emotions are being kept barely in check, tightly wound, just this side of a full-on explosion. I could name you a hundred bands without pausing for breath that this band remind me of, but I hope you are with me here in not thinking of this as a minus and also being supremely irrelevant. Many of these bands I am thinking of were former full-on crushes anyhoo, and I believe I may well be developing another one right now.

This all finishes when it ought to, and not a moment before.

I mean, ooh ooh got a crush on you (he says, misquoting an X-Ray Spex lyric full-on).

Imagine if bands fronted by male musicians could produce something as even a tenth as chilling and compressed as this. Nah, I mean. Dream on boys. Dream on.

There is so much out there still waiting for discovery. You know this, you all know this. I know this too. I do not need to remind myself of this fact. I do not need to remind myself of this. As the ladies sing, I’m going to fuck you up, I’m going to cut you up, I’m going to cut you up. Spice Girls taken to one of the many logical extremes.

And so forth.

Damn, ladies. Why so great?

Went for an interview yesterday morning, for a job I want.

Asked friends on Facebook to recommend me some motivational music. Here is what they suggested.

1. Pigbag – Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag

Nice bright one out of the stands to start with. Didn’t like it quite so much back in the day (much preferred Maximum Joy or Rip Rig And Panic) but it works fine now.

2. Chemical Brothers – It Doesn’t Matter

Strong follow-up, and a strong fuck-you sentiment. Not quite what I need, but appreciated.

3. Death Grips – On GP

Fuck it, I don’t care. Right? I get it. I get it.

4. Jimmy Cliff – You Can Get It If You Really Want

Well ain’t that the truth, bro’? (SPOILER: no.)

5. The Flying Lizards – Money

TUNE! (And five.three zillion times better than the original.)

6. Blue Orchids – Work

TUNE! (It’s no ‘Bad Education’, but what is?)

7. Royal Trux – I’m Ready

Caught a tube train with this pair once. I don’t believe I have ever desired to play them as motivation, though.

8. The Supremes – The Happening

Nearly as great as Girls Aloud. Joke. No, not really.

9. Rocky – Training Montage Song

I’m glad someone posted this. Now take it away again.

10. Arkells – Get Ready (The Temptations)

Yeah, baby. Yeah. (I’m ignoring the suggestion of the Walker Brothers’ cover of the same song.)

11. Val Doonican – Walk Tall

Very droll.

12. Lorde – Green Light

TUNE! (Although I’m a little disappointed that no one suggested other “green light” songs, part. Dexys.) (And we’ll ignore the suggestion of that horrific Tears For Fears cover, nice sentiment of course. Although I don’t. I just wanna eat.)

13. Olivia Newton-John – Physical

You can never get too raunchy in an interview situation.

14. Tina Turner – Simply the Best

Ah appreciate the thought, anyways.

15. Taylor Swift – Shake It Off

Like I haven’t played this twenty times this month already.

16. Beyoncé – Hold Up

Thank you.

17. Red Fang – Prehistoric Dog

O-hkay. SWEEET.

18. Jacky – White Horses (‘The White Horses’ theme)

The greatest cover ever, as performed thus.

(This is great, too.)

We’re in a holding pattern right now. Roger, roger. Let’s stay in position until we figure out what’s going on below. Bank 30°. 

And so forth.

This is how I came to the old (Nino Ferrer, does a mean line in funk and soul, as well). Sent a friend in Australia a link to my friend in Worthing’s video. Beautiful.

(That’s my friend in Worthing. Not a comment on his appearance, but the framing of the video and the music itself.)

My friend in Australia emailed back (let’s call him Stephen, because that is his name):

Nice, great vid, an arch Bill Nighy vibe going on. Lovely tune too, hard to pin down. Like ‘life in a scotch sitting room’ mixed with Nino Ferrer ”Le Sud’ (I have been learning French – I think it means ‘the bubble’)

Nino Ferrer : Le Sud – 1975 – YouTube www.youtube.com Nino Ferrer, né le 15 août 1934 à Gênes, Italie et mort le 13 août 1998 à Montcuq dans le Lot en France, de son vrai nom Nino Agostino Arturo Maria …

and weirdly enough, I keep getting bits of David Bowie circa Space Oddity album tracks.

Of course, it is its own good thing although he really should get up – only a damn fool would lie down on the road.

And my mate (in Worthing) emailed back and said,

Tell him I’m roadkill, that’s why I’m lying down. I’m a dog, Scooby Doo hat innit.

And…

Please ask if it’s ok to quote him in further self-promotional bids.

And now you now as much as I, except I played a Nino Ferrer playlist while waiting for my brother (the one who works for the IMF) to show up, and it did tickle me fancy, all the horns and funk and wotnot. And, well I guess it is ok for you to quote Stephen, seeing as how I have just put the whole vignette up here.

Not much, you might say. Yet if you followed this post closely you will have heard not one, but two – and maybe more – great songs.

Here is the ‘news’ story. 

And here… fuck it. Who the fuck cares? Both are weak, fifth-rate, belligerent boring narcissists with little taste in music and even less taste in hair.

On the one hand, Ryan Adams has never written poetry like this:

Father John Misty
You seem quite shifty
Humorous in a non-humorous way

Father John Misty
The critics love to discuss you
They want to know the ‘real’ you
Why?

All art is a performance
But not all art is boring
or dull or serious or like late 70s Elton John without any tunes

You have a beard
And no back story
Just another hipster glowing
In the light of another

Father John Misty
You have been compared to various art-
ists like Fleet Foxes, Jackson Browne and
others I have never heard

Father John Misty
I have not heard your new album either
This does not bother
Me

I have a feeling that
You and I could never be
friends or enemies or even one-night lovers as we have absolutely nothing in common beyond a distrust of
razor wit

Father John Misty
Critics like to use your real name
Why?

All art is a performance
Some duller than others
Some so dull that it should not be listened to at all

Father John Misty
Like an Agatha Christie
Without any myst’ry

Father John Misty
Pitchfork inform me that you have one of the “7 Albums Out Today You Should Listen to Now”
So demanding
And with the bar set so low

On the other hand, neither has Father John Misty.

On the one hand, one is a boring white rock tosser. On the other, one is Ryan Adams.

On one side is a man who has plenty to say, but fuck me is it dull and tedious. And on the other, one is Father John Misty.

One is bloated, corpulent, unfunny. So is the other.

Related posts:
Father John Misty vs Ed Sheeran. Who is the more shit?

You still want to know what the songs sound like? They sound exactly how you would imagine them to sound. The title track is a ragged folk-waltz, ‘Kindness’ is a lush testament to the healing power of love, ‘Save Me’ is an intimate country-rock lament … look I can’t play this game anymore. This album is awful. It is beyond awful. It is a waste of your time. Trust me; you can do much better than this. You deserve better. I am truly sorry if you think the things Ryan Adams describes on Ashes & Fire are real emotions. They are not. They are the words of a person whose imagination is comatose; it is the poetry of the mundane. We are all in the gutter, but that does not mean we have to drink from it. Ryan Adams – Ashes & Fire (PAX-AM/Capitol)

Sometimes, music catches you like that.

I’m that old I have no idea what music like this is called anymore. Makes you wonder about the power of words, if the names are so interchangeable and forgettable and meaningless. Ottawa band SKYTONE have no problem with labels though. Ottawa band SKYTONE call their album JangleWaves, and that is what Ottawa band Skytone’s album is. Waves of jangle. Guitars held high, across the chest. Bare knees. Bare knees jangle. In jeans and sneakers.

In recent weeks I’ve been through a heavy dosage of ELO – think of them as a panacea if you want, think of them as hollow to the core if you will but that reveals more about you than them. ELO soothe me. ELO balm me. (Can one be balmed?) Their music is infused with melancholy, it comes de rigour along with the vocoder broken robot voice and perm hairdo’s. So sad. So sad about us. So sad.

I do not know whether this means I am more open to Ottawa band SKYTONE and their rightly named album JangleWaves, but maybe. Sometimes, music just catches you like that. Unawares. Appreciative. Skytone remind of a 1970s I never knew (I was ill in bed) and a sound I never experienced, and by that I mean Ottawa band SKYTONE remind of that lost 1990s band The Webb Brothers.

Maybe it was because I went out yesterday.

Here, have yourself a listen. Thanked me yet? Oh, there’s no need.

Odd now that I think about it. The two bands sound nothing like.

https://skytone1.bandcamp.com/album/janglewaves

Oh wait. You still here? Well you know I hold no truck with male vocals usually, and certainly not ones that reference C86 (an otherwise charming musical ‘movement’ that was mainly spoilt by the preponderance of male over female vocalists) but there’s something about Ottawa band SKYTONE. Sometimes music catches you like that, and maybe I have been listening to a little too much ELO recently…

Hush my mouth! How can I say such a thing. As ex-Shop Assistant David Keegan told me on Twitter yesterday, life is too short not to form an ELO tribute band. Not that Ottawa band SKYTONE have, you understand, or if they have they certainly ain’t informed me of the fact. Here is what they say:

Skytone are Rodney and Darius Doddridge, brothers with a keen ear for melodies that pack more sunshine and warmth per decibel than you would have thought possible. The bright jangle pop tune “Second Hand Shops” and the moodier “Bright and Better Days are available for digital download. Also check out Skytone Live @ The Fishfry, eleven mostly upbeat and summery backyard indie tunes.

Ridiculously bright production, of course.

Oh, and here’s Felt.

See what I did there?

Thursday was not good.

Thursday, well maybe we should not talk about Thursday.

The magic begins, close to home.

I watch Cinerama play live, early. It strikes me that during the 1980s singer David Gedge got compared to The Smiths, but seriously now. You cannot imagine Morrissey reading out the rules to the fan raffle in between songs (unless he was being deliberately arch), nor laboriously detailing all the other acts playing during the day, nor indeed going on stage so early to help ensure a decent crowd for all the other acts playing during the day. I am in two minds whether this is good: long, I have thought that Mr Gedge undersells himself and this is to his detriment. It is also his charm, and Cinerama are a charming band, what with the female vocals and keyboard and languid sighs of affection masquerading as songs. I cannot but help think Cinerama would be playing Meltdown and the songs of Scott Walker and all that other stuff those fancy London names do (Neil and Jarvis and Richard) but Mr Gedge is too deprecating.  Still. You expect me to think this a plus, ultimately – and you would be right, ultimately. But. The crowd is subdued (old) but they warm up (not that old). No one cheers when the support bands are mentioned but mayhap the crowd thinks it to be bad form (disrespectful) in front of the Man of the Day. I do not think the Man of the Day would have minded.

(I miss Day 1. Membranes + The Wedding Present paying George Best. Is it not enough for you that I have made it out to my second show of the year?)

I sit outside and chat with my friend Helen for a while. Noisy bands play at being noisy inside: some with interesting sounds and shaven heads and the same male vocals as before, and some a little bit more rickety and ramshackle. This is all to the good but this is not my community. The magic continues nonetheless.

(Actually, I am wondering about this. This pronouncement of magic. I refer to it as ‘magic’ because it has a similar effect on me and on my dark moods as Thursday and Lorde, Thursday and ELO – but I do wonder that it is only when I identify the effect as ‘magic’ that it becomes magic – i.e the act of naming is what creates the effect. So until I typed in these words the magic did not exist. Is the naming so important? I would like to think so.)

So, The Popguns. I don’t miss just not going to shows, or chatting to friends (although I do miss both, terribly). I miss going to shows, dancing at shows, hearing bum notes on the bass and guitars cutting out on stage just during the climactic solo, and breathing in the cigarette fumes of friends chatting outside during the show. I miss punching the air and dancing on one leg (waving the other where no one can see it) and then dancing on the other and semi-pogoing when the guitar cuts out, and singing lustily along to lyrics I never learned in the first place, and feeling that yes this – with all the BO smells and unrecognised faces and coaches passing by outside the Concorde 2 – this is home. I miss my community. I miss the sense of belonging.

I have written much (and eloquently) about The Popguns over the years. For example:

I loved this band. They soundtracked my drunken despair, infatuation buoyed by delusion and brought down by the thought that however bad you feel now, tomorrow’s worse.

The Popguns obviously grew up on The Smiths. But their music was always a little too desperate to connect with all the cute indie kids out there. It wasn’t polite at all. (In terms of temperance, it was fucking heavy metal.) You could taste the bitter sea air of all those lonely walks home at 3am. Wendy had a real edge to her voice, the guitars were almost frantic in their determination to prove they amounted to less than the sum of their influences. It’s probably no coincidence I first encountered The Popguns around the time I moved to Brighton: after years of searching I had a place I could call home, with all the bitter aftertastes that involved. Nothing special to anyone who came from outside perhaps, but they were to me.

They really were.

So frantic. So futile. Their guitarists masked it all under a welter of jangle. They thought they were Sonic Youth or someone. (They weren’t. They really weren’t.) That self-delusion was one of the reasons I loved them so. The messiness of their music (when it could all have been so straightforward) so reflected the messiness of my life (when it all could have been so straightforward). They tried so hard. They could’ve been The School, easy. (If they’d been Australian, they would have been Even As We Speak or someone.) Wendy’s voice was so plaintive, so pleading. She always seemed rather embarrassed by my fanboy love for her band, perhaps reading into it something more sinister. I can’t say I blame her.

Nostalgia caught up with knowledge of a time when I really wasn’t somebody despite loads of people thinking I was.

I have waited long, lonely years to see them play live again – and they do not disappoint. They play my favourite song of 2014, ‘Lovejunky’. They play my second favourite song of 2014, ‘If You Ever Change Your Mind’, or if they don’t I imagine they do and that is just as good. They don’t play ‘Waiting For The Winter’ or maybe they do and I’m getting too distracted (by the sound of Popguns in my ears as I type these words). Wendy’s voice swells and ebbs and swells once more until it fills the rushing spaces and gaping silences, until it blots out everything that threatens to topple me downwards, it swells and swells until it becomes the ONLY sound in the world. As I knew it would. And Pat and Greg are laughing and smiling and doing what they need to, and Simon is earnest and committed, and…

Blammo.

The reason I should still go to concerts because when the magic happens the magic happens and there is not fucking getting away from that fact.

You’d think there’s no following that. You’d be wrong. Helen McCookerybook. More punk than a club full of miniature Ian MacKaye’s (no disrespect intended), more charming than a club full of miniature charming charming people. I miss going to shows, and hearing a crowd talking loudly over a beautiful, sad solo performer. I miss Helen.

She plays ‘Heaven Avenue’ and it is pure magic.

She plays ‘The Sea’ and everyone sings along despite not knowing the song seconds before and it is pure, sad magic.

She plays the old Chefs song ‘Let’s Make Up’ and it sounds like a phalanx of angels are playing her guitar.

She makes the magic happen. Not my words, not my naming of the event, just Helen.

She jangles and plucks with a Rickenbacker that makes all the boys on Facebook drool, and hits a string that sounds like a chorus-line of imps deeply chuckling. She plays the plaintive, heroic ‘Heaven Avenue’ and it’s more than I can do not to sob. Emotions overwhelm me and I fucking wish they wouldn’t and I desperately hope she doesn’t mention me from on stage because I want to remain invisible in this land under my Stranger beanie. She jokes and smiles and does that whole thing where she is clearly enjoying playing music so much that she cannot hold back the laughter.  I mourn friends I can no longer remember the names, faces or stories of.  I mourn wind smells, shapes the smoke used to make above Chelmsford in the early morning. I want to feel dew between my toes. I can hear harpsichords. (The importance of being Helen.)

This is a document.

Tidying through my iTunes folder at last. I have narrowed it down from 53 days worth of songs to 1.8 days (which isn’t as much as it sounds – a mere 680 songs).

Here is what I am keeping, to tide me through the remainder of the month. I appreciate I am showing my age but you know what? I do not care.

Various – A Prince Buster Tribute (personal mixtape, does what it says on the tin – features Buster himself in a variety of guises; 32 songs)
Various – Songs 2-Tone Taught Us (personal mixtape: compiled after Prince Buster’s death, 26 songs)
Various – The Great Pop Mix Tape (personal mixtape: 109 songs, entirely female-led, overwhelmingly drawn from the past 10 years, mostly the last 5, does need updating from 2017 if anyone would care to make a suggestion or two)
Various – 1980s AOR soft rock (personal mixtape: 145 songs, and does what it says on the tin)

Beyoncé – Lemonade (of course)
Beyoncé – Singles Compilation (personal mixtape, 40 songs)
Cher Lloyd – Sorry I’m Late/Sticks & Stones (mainly because I want to hear them)
Destiny’s Child – #1s (of course)
Dexys – Let The Record Show: Dexys Do Irish and Country Soul (one of these days, I am determined I will like it)
Dexys Midnight Runners – Nowhere Is Home (Live At Duke Of York’s Theatre) (so, so good; the next person who interrupts me listening to this on the Southampton train I swear I will punch)
Electric Light Orchestra – Discovery/Out Of The Blue (my main listening right now)
ELO & Olivia Newton John – Xanadu (because the above is my main listening right now)
The Goon Sax – Up To Anything (my second favourite album of 2016)
Jeff Wayne – War Of The Worlds (because it feels so deliciously wrong to be enjoying this)
La Roux – La Roux (even after all this time, I am still gobsmuck)
Little Mix – DNA/Get Weird/Glory Days (my main ladies: I am not that familiar with the two older albums but I intend to be soon)
Lorde – Melodrama/Vevo x Lorde (yes, I do prefer the more unadorned versions)
The Membranes – Dark Matter/Dark Energy (I still want to give this a proper listen)
Sugababes – Overloaded, The Singles Collection (‘Push The Button’ is my go-to song when I submit an important document online – in particular, my PhD submission)
Terry – Remember Terry (I want to hear this. I do remember Terry)
Tunabunny – PCP Presents Alice In Wonderland Jr (I meant what I wrote; I want to hear this more)
Vanessa Paradis – Vanessa Paradis (sometimes my taste surprises even me)

Haven’t much to say here. Should have, but haven’t.

Most days I listen to ELO. Today has been a sad day, so most of the day I have stayed in bed and not listened to ELO. (Of course, one could have caused the other. Perhaps if I had got out of bed I would not have been sad and I would have been able to listen to ELO. Perhaps if I had listened to ELO in the first place I would not have stayed in bed. Not that listening to ELO automatically makes a day a happy day, just that music – like friends, like chocolate – does help with my moods. And so if I do not listen to music or speak to friends – which I rarely if ever do – my mood is not helped. The trouble is, however commonsense it may appear to someone on the outside – “Hey, why not put on some music then! Turn those covers back! Give Steve Gullick a call!” – my moods do not work like that. Howl, the black dog said, and so forth.) Earlier today, before I fully realised that today might have been a sad day, I clicked on a link put on Facebook by my old Collapse Board colleagues. Always worth checking those links out. Especially today. And yet I didn’t. So stupid.

Twelve hours later, and finally.

The feel and sound quality of the first, and the fact she makes a quality of her frailties, she knows they are nothing to be ashamed of and neither is the silence, indeed they are beautiful. I do appreciate of course that this is still a performance, but I love the way the sound is sucked up by the wind. Stunning. Makes me want to start living again, almost. I cannot believe her new album will be as magical as just this first video but perhaps it will be. Perhaps I should stick around:

Sadly, a certain style of rolling piano puts me in mind of Coldplay (or Adele) these days. Yesterday, I drove my family to Ebbsfleet Railway Station – stark and isolated and oddly uninhabited – where they caught a Channel Tunnel train to Disneyland with the grandparents. A man sat at the found piano, having a good time tinkling a little beauty. “This is ‘Clocks’ [Coldplay],” smiled Isaac. “Are you enjoying it dad?” A lot more than if I’d heard Coldplay playing it, for sure. This next clip screams “soul” but… All of life is a performance, not that I am very good at it right now. But… this is Lorde and I love the fact the percussion is too loud and her reliance upon those breath-punctuations is too fierce but… “In my head I do everything right”:

Wait a second. ‘The Louvre’. Really? Wait a second. This is deep magic. Deep self-deprecating magic. Did you catch that clip of Lorde fronting “Nirvana” a couple of years ago? I swear, no one has understood the spirit of Kurt Cobain better, before or since. Not that it’s a competition. Not that music isn’t decided by personal interpretation. Not that you need to listen, or even do. Everything about this next song, everything. Everything anyone once claimed for any of those white boy beardy groups but so, so much more:

I think I have a new pop idol firmament star, and her name is not Beyoncé. I feel like a heel saying this, and I hope deep in my heart that it’s not true but I know even deeper in my soul that it is true, and her name is Lorde. Good Lorde. I know that part of me is simply reacting to the sound quality and the way the vocals are so high in the mix, and the way that wind can suck in vocals, and the sparseness of the accompaniment and the implied intimacy of the singing (comes about by not removing all the “flaws”) but… Oh god, this is as fine as ELO. This is Kate Bush good. Stay with me. Please stay with me (it ain’t gonna happen):

Isolated voice. So compelling. I do not know if anyone is still taking notes and I have not heard the album (I DO NOT COMMUNE) but this is so clearly the hit it hurts. The hits hurt. Awesome right?:

Spellbound:

She still has her accent:

It’s late but finally, today is happy. Even if it’s for a few brief minutes, today is happy. Lorde and ELO will see me right.

Thank you, Lorde.

London Grammar is shit. Not sure where this blog is going. Folk have already pointed out the irony of hosting a [ ] is shit series on a blog called Music That I Like. Fact remains that if I publish anything on new music, no one – or very few – is interested. I get traction if the band shares the blog entry, but only minimal usually. Find more evidence here. I am still up for challenging the form of music criticism but I do not like to repeat myself (unless I do) and also I am currently teaching the damn thing (by necessity, reasonably straight) and so this is a bit of a dead end. I love the idea of writing about music that turns me, but little turns me on right now – not the music’s fault, mine. The black dog roars once more.

Ultimately, I have always thought that my role as a music journalist is to tell the truth – however I see it. I view my role as an editor as an extension of my writerly role: to encourage individual and challenging criticism, mediation and commentary, to support those who need supporting, to inform those that need informing and to champion voices otherwise overlooked.

I view my role as a teacher similarly: to encourage individual and challenging voices, mediation and commentary, to support those who need supporting, to inform those that need informing and to champion voices otherwise overlooked.

VOTE NOW! YOUR VOTE COUNTS… or doesn’t. Depending.

Here are a few ideas.

1. Chase up leads (these ones from Lucy Cage)

Pixx: I Bow Down
Valerie June: Shakedown
Las Kellies: Sugar beat
Chastity Belt: Different Now
Sneaks: Look Like That
The Seshen: Distant Heart
Deerful: Cloudwatching

2. Don’t.

3. Continue with the [ ] is shit series, and perhaps compile a book around it.

Trouble is, no one gave a shit about the Most Recent.

4. Don’t.

5. Continue to reprint the occasional old article.

I have two mice.  One for good thoughts, one for evil.

Forgive while I wallow for a little in one of those years I have no memory of: 1983, say.  Somewhere, I lost track.  Somewhere I lost sight of the…

I’m thinking of what your fingers would look like holding this mouse, the stretch and length of them.  I’m wondering if the…

I survive an entire day at an academic seminar, and then need to take two Valium to overcome nerves at seeing one of…

Punk is viewed as a male construct, it is always about John Lydon lighting the touch-paper, The Clash The Damned Buzzcocks Vicious, whatever…

The women always made the more interesting music to me, more willing to take chances possibly precisely because they were commonly ignored by the patriarchy so it may not have mattered either way.  In 1982, I recall talking extremely, breathlessly, fast to Helen McCookerybook of The Chefs in the Rock Garden.  Sweet and wise beyond men’s comprehension, and clearly with bones of steel.  I watch her tonight play the Green Door in Brighton as part of some form of John Peel revivalism night, sandwiched between loud men playing loud guitars and am struck once again by how much extra punk she is – whatever the hell punk means: I have always chosen it to mean DIY and female and creating own rules, not following others (like, most obviously, The Clash who were so see-through it was kind of nice their clothes didn’t reflect their marketing).  She acknowledges errors and turns them into songs with extra special meaning.  She plays some sweet new songs, steely like Viv Albertine reinventing and smoothing over the past.  She plays some old Helen And The Horns songs (a band that partly formed out of a band I was in, Futile Hurling) and fills in the brass sections herself, the bits we aren’t loudly singing along to in our own heads), she reimagines some Chefs songs and explains the connection between DIY punk-pop and Giorgio Moroder (I can understand why Pete Waterman went for her now).  She jangles and plucks with a Rickenbacker that makes all the boys on Facebook drool, and hits a string that sounds like a chorus-line of imps deeply chuckling. She plays the plaintive, heroic ‘Heaven Avenue’ and it’s more than I can do not to sob.  Emotions overwhelm me and I fucking wish they wouldn’t and I desperately hope she doesn’t mention me from on stage because I want to remain invisible in this land under my Strangerbeanie.  She jokes and smiles and does that whole thing where she is clearly enjoying playing music so much that she cannot hold back the laughter.  I mourn friends I can no longer remember the names, faces or stories of.  I mourn wind smells, shapes the smoke used to make above Chelmsford in the early morning.  I want to feel dew between my toes.  I can hear harpsichords.

I dunno.  As usual, I have nothing to say but a burning desire to say it.  I want to make everyone dance and swoon and understand the importance of being Helen.  That unfailing thirst, wonder, steel.

One mouse looks dead now, disappointed.  The other feels useless in my hands.  I wonder what your fingers would look like caressing it.

I mourn my lost self.

I nearly don’t make it down the street, but I’m so glad…

I have nothing to boast about, brag…

One day I will learn how to write about music and then I will be in clover and cynical and without a heart like Barbara Ellen.

The importance of being Helen.

6. Don’t.

7. Pursue the same old bitter old music critic line
(From Facebook)

WHY ARE THERE NO NEGATIVE REVIEWS ANYMORE, ask a flurry of self-righteous music critics elsewhere. Here’s my brief experience as a reviewer for Brisbane newspaper Courier-Mail, shortly after I moved to Australia in 2008.

Me: “Can I do some work for you?”

Them: “Wow! What a CV! Fantastic! Of course you can!”

C-M sends me off to review a couple of shows. So I review a couple, favourably. So far so good. The third one, I don’t like – so I review it and explain why, forgetting Rule Number One of Local Journalism. Do Not EVER Slag Anything Off. Result? I never write for the Courier-Mail again.

This is music writing on the Internet today (mainly).

P.S. This is at odds with my experience as a reviewer with Melbourne newspaper The Age several years earlier, which let me write what the fuck I liked, only drawing the line at a ferocious kicking of Kylie…. and at odds with my more recent experience at The Guardian (Australia), the editors at which were very supportive.

P.P.S. This was also despite the C-M later running a couple of two-page spreads on me as a local “celeb”.

8. Don’t.  (From Facebook – response) 

Shannon Attwell · Friends with Elle Cee: keep it objective, it’s hard to shit on something if you’re objective, even if you don’t like something someone else will and it’s trying as hard as you can to see that and bring attention to it, right?

David Bennun: That’s not being a critic. That”s being a reporter. The worst thing a critic can possibly try to be is objective. It’s boring, pointless and impossible. A critic’s first job is to be honest to his/her own responses; the second is to interest the reader – which does not mean pandering to the reader. And nobody ever complains that favourable reviews aren’t “objective”. Only unfavourable ones. Which shows what people who demand “objectivity” really mean. They mean “Don’t write anything *I* object to.”

Jerry Thackray: thank you David. Spot on. 

9.Continue with Song of the Day. 

(See above.) Like anyone gave a crap about this one. Easily possible to source your own music and add in your own opinion.

10. Don’t.

All music critics are self-righteous. It’s in the job description.

Sally Young: It’s because no one cares what music journalists think. In 2017 the bands are the media. If you are a Mumford fan or Foo Fighters fan or Ed Sheeran fan why would you care what a 60 year old white male journo with his own lost music career down the pan thinks of the new album? What is the context? I personally don’t think I should be seen liking this type of music? Music writing started to die in the punk era because it was a race to be seen to the most snarky, the most cool. The music press started to die then.

11. Get a full-time job.

I need to hear cheerleading as I send this job app off. WHERE ARE THE POM-POMS!?

12. Don’t.

Win Butler, what have you done
You made a fool of everyone
You made a fool of everyone
Win Butler, ooh what have you done

Win Butler, you broke no rules
You laid it down for all to see
You laid it down for all to see
Win Butler, oooh you broke no rules

One sunny day the world was waiting for a new band
You came along to turn on everyone
Win Butler, the most obvious of them all

Win Butler, how did you know
The world was waiting just for you
The world was waiting just for you
Win Butler, oooh how did you know

Win Butler, you’ll get yours yet
However big you think you are
However big you think you are
Win Butler, oooh you’ll get yours yet

We gave him all the trust we had just to listen to his music
Just a vocal would lighten everything
Win Butler, he’s the latest and (not) the greatest of them all

He made a fool of everyone
Win Butler

However big you think you are
Win Butler

Buy the book: Grunge, My Part in its Downfall

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London Grammar is shit

London Grammar is shit.

Chilly, posh shit. Elevator muzak shit. Some music makes you want to lose control. Some music makes you want to cuddle yourself in secret delight, trembling like you have secret sensitive hands touching you all over. Some music makes you wanna fuck with The Man. Some music makes you want to lose yourself in the groove and dance there for always. London Grammar make Coldplay sound like Monte Cazazza, so bland that you could play an album of their wallpaper-beige music at a convention of Mumford & Sons fans and the only reaction you’d get would be, “yeah (nods) nice vibes man”. Posh indie shit. Posh pseudo-folksy shit that sucks all the laugher and the life and the soul out of music and turns it into Ivanka Trump, except Ivanka Trump is way edgier than this. You so scared of being viewed as reactionary or out-of-time or not with the kids that you’re scared of listening to fundamental truth? LONDON GRAMMAR IS SHIT. Non music. Cod music that takes on the trappings of music (there are instruments, voices, production) but is as tepid as a bowl of tepid bubble-gone greasy washing up water. Music that makes you feel dirty for even going near it. Dead inside. A beardy bland Urban Outfitters comfort zone for people who dig the fact no one is allowed to criticise their shit taste any longer, and a fondness for the tepid smug-assed jokes of Jimmy Carr. London Grammar is a boring money-making concern who sound a little like Lana Del Rey IF YOU HAVE SHIT FOR EARS. Slowness and a tedious beat does not make your music soulful or sad. It just makes it slow and tediously shit. London Grammar is shit. Middle class shit. You don’t need to be clever to realise this, you don’t need to be cute. London Grammar is shit. You don’t need to hear more than 5 seconds of their music to realise this. Shit that makes The XX sound edgy, Ed Sheeran sound fun, and anything vaguely crap not vaguely crap at all but a little bit interesting. An Enya for the given-up and jaded and let’s-stay-home-pretending-we-have-mates-because-we’re-on-Facebook generation. Not so much music as a boring to death of hope. London Grammar is shit. How many times do I need to say this? Quit thinking that whiny is soulful. London Grammar is shit. Do not be scared of the crowd. Has it not occurred to you that the crowd IS wrong? London Grammar is shit. The very idea of listening to their music makes me want to beat their fucking heads against their fucking collection of Enya and XX and Foxygen records until the blood trickles down into their collection of enervated Gwyneth Paltrow recipes. London Grammar is shit. Being a whiny entitled middle class white group does not make you interesting, it just makes you a whiny entitled middle class white group. See also, vacant. See also, billowy. See also, hackneyed. London Grammar sound a little bit like Cocteau Twins IF YOU HAVE SHIT FOR EARS. Fed up with trying? Step right this way. London Grammar are here to sooth all your worries and last vestiges of self-respect and identity away. London Grammar has no style, just a long empty line of vacant breadheads just like them. Empty empty empty empty empty empty empty empty empty empty empty empty empty vacuous empty empty empty empty empty empty empty nothing. London Grammar is shit. They provide an outlet for… nothing.

Boring boring boring boring boring boring boring tepid boring boring boring boring boring vacuous boring boring boring boring boring boring boring boring boring boring tepid boring boring boring boring boring vacuous boring boring boring boring boring boring boring boring boring boring tepid boring boring boring boring boring vacuous boring boring boring boring shit.

I eat food. I drink water. And London Grammar is shit.

The sound of Theresa May’s Britain.

Buy the book: Grunge, My Part in its Downfall

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Arcade Fire is shit

Fuck great expectations.

1. Fuck the purists.
2. Fuck having a good time.
3. Fuck anyone who doesn’t rate Beyoncé.
4. Fuck Donald Trump and all who sail in her.
5. Fuck music.

It was kind of horrendous actually. Bad, in the way that only untamed wealth and ego can be bad. I ain’t deaf to that, just think it’s shit-funny that folk were getting so hot under the collar about an artist crossing genres when… come on, you know the obvious question. Would anyone have reacted the same way if a white country artist had turned their hand to pop music? That fucking harmonica player ought to have been shot, though. And frankly I ain’t quite sure what this whole shebang is celebrating beyond it’s only marvellousness, quite what it’s got to be so damn smug about. Buncha rich out-of-touch artists bragging about how rich and out-of-touch they are in front of an audience filled with grinning ass-kissers and surly reactionaries. Indeed, now I think on it that way I ain’t sure which side I’m on. What a fucking horrendous sax solo. The whole affair is only saved by the stony-faced audience (shit-funny laugh riot) and the violin-player.

Cos that’s what violin-players do. Save the day.

Sometimes, taste in music is irrelevant.

I saw this update on my Facebook feed just now: “Lots of closet Linkin Park fans. Awful band.” I blocked the offender immediately. As Chris Estey rightfully commented, “This is messed up. This has nothing to do with what someone thinks of a band, and more-so, people need to have some freaking etiquette.”

Even if Chester Bennington hadn’t killed himself, I still would have the same reaction. The fact the dude killed himself – and left behind six children – simply amplifies my reaction. Gut instinct. You don’t go bagging on somebody when tragedy strikes.

Sometimes, you need to take a step backward and look at the bigger picture. It’s not about being generous, not even social etiquette. Not really. Rock’n’roll ain’t genocide. It ain’t rampant deforestation. It’s entertainment, escapism, release – a way of expressing emotions that you yourself might have trouble articulating or want to feel that someone else understands, or perhaps you just want the fuck to scream out or dance. Linkin Park’s music reached millions of people, made them feel better about themselves and their lives, gave them the strength to carry on through the next hour, the next minute; gave them plenty of reasons to be cheerful as well, gave them something to look forward to, dance to, fuck to, argue to, breathe through. I didn’t personally like Linkin Park but that is so totally irrelevant I’ve actually struck through that sentence eight, no nine times before allowing it to stand because I’m trying to make a point here. I know all of this whether I like Linkin Park or not because that is what the fuck rock’n’roll does, and if we have even one less practitioner, one less star in the burning firmament not adding to its brilliance, not radiating hope and enjoyment and emotion and pulling shit-kicking mic stand moves then we are all the worse off for it. All of us. Whether you like their music or not.

I’ll leave it to a mate for the eulogy. “[Chester Bennington] contributed to 13 year-olds in 2001 what NiN did in 1991 and Pink Floyd did in 1981: the sense that however lonely and misunderstood you feel, someone else has been through it and understands exactly what it’s like. Also, he had a lovely voice and their early songs were great pop tunes.”

However lonely and misunderstood you feel, someone else has been through it and understands exactly what it’s like.

Rest in peace, mate. And thank you.

Is Lana Del Rey the American Morrissey? ask Pitchfork. I don’t know the answer to that. But I do have some other questions for them.

• Is Adele the English Paul Weller?
• Are Florence and the Machine the British Johnnie Ray?
• Is Morrissey the reincarnation of Margaret Thatcher?
• Is Kris Kristofferson the blues Katy Perry?
• Is Neil Young the Canadian Elmo?
• Has Bruce Wayne ever been seen in the same room as Batman?
• Can chickens fly?
• Does the pope shit?
• Are online music publication editors more desperate than Theresa May?
• Are turtle lips the new buttocks?
• Is James White the old James Black?
• Does James Brown?
• Is Amos Tory?
• How Seasick is Steve?

…. and so on.

The Chainsmokers is shit.

Predigested shit so it slips down easier. Drab monotonous shit. Some music makes you want to dance like no one’s watching. Some music makes you want to dance all slinky and smooth and slow, pulsating in pleasure. Some music makes you wanna lose control and punch your way to the stars. Some music makes you want to lose yourself in the moment, and live there forever. Some music makes you want to celebrate life loud and clear. The Chainsmokers make me want to check out this life altogether.  You so scared of being viewed as dull or not banging or anti-establishment that you can’t state your own opinions? THE CHAINSMOKERS IS SHIT. Music that makes you feel like a Tory councillor. Dead inside. They’re a beardy belligerent Starbucks comfort zone for people with low life expectations, and a fondness for the diluted dirty weekend fantasies of Joss Whedon, a bloated money-making duo whose primary concern is not ENJOYMENT or ESCAPE or EMOTION or… wait, why am I even talking about U.S. business? The Chainsmokers is shit. Chauvinistic shit. You don’t need to be sussed to say this, you don’t need to be smart. The Chainsmokers is shit. You don’t need to hear more than 5 seconds of their music to realise this. Shit that makes Coldplay sound edgy, Explosions In The Sky sound fun and the new Katy Perry album sound cutting edge. Not so much music as a bludgeoning to death of the cute baby seal that exists within the soul of all of us. The Chainsmokers is shit. How many times do I need to say this? Quit thinking that whiny is soulful. The Chainsmokers is shit. Do not be scared of their crowd. Has it not occurred to you that the crowd can be wrong? The Chainsmokers is shit. The very idea of listening to their music makes me want to piss blood into their shared mocha. The Chainsmokers is shit. Being a whiny entitled middle class white boy does not make you interesting, it just makes you a whiny entitled middle class white boy. See also, obnoxious. Fed up with the way folk like Kendrick Lamar and Beyoncé keep insisting on bringing politics into the pop mainstream? Do not worry shill, the fucking Chainsmokers are here to sooth all your worries and last vestiges of self-respect and identity away. The Chainsmokers has no style, no stardust. The Chainsmokers is shit. One more way to sell perfume and Coachella tickets, and make soul-dead middle-management types believe they have a purpose. They provide an outlet for… nothing. Less than nothing. White bread funky music that has no semblance of funk, of groove, of… anything. Remember all those pissed cab rides home when there’s some featureless, colourless, unremarkable music playing on the driver’s radio? Me neither. It’s a strange yet dull and shit and tedious world The Chainsmokers and their fans inhabit, and I wish they would FUCKING TURN THE MUSIC OFF. A private university dorm room fart smell that keeps spreading and spreading. Anodyne, lifeless and wallowing in the smell of their own excrement.

I eat at home. I drink, coffee by the gallon. And The Chainsmokers is shit.

The sound of Trump’s America..

Buy the book: Grunge, My Part in its Downfall

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Not The Go-Betweens, actually. Robert Forster. The Go-Betweens could so easily have been a band the (commercial) stature of a Smiths or R.E.M., you know. Fortunately, they are far superior to either. I found this live review (taken from those heady days when I still held down a weekly Village Voice column) while I was idling away, looking for source material to use for my Classic Rock review of the new Robert Forster book Grant & I, Inside and Outside The Go-Betweens. It’s the book he promised his former partner, the day after his death. I started reading the book yesterday, finished it today, skim-reading past the sections where Robert merely quotes lyrics and with tears prickling hot during the final one or two chapters. Oddly, the book gives little insight into its main protagonist and rather more into the thoughts of its author. Maybe that is not so odd, after all.

The start is very evocative, made me feel bittersweet sad yearning for our joint chosen hometown of The Gap, an outlying suburb of Brisbane. It was different when he grew up there in the early 1960s, of course.

Anyway, I wanted to share the following review with you. The final line is uncannily prescient and I can still recall the exact time and location of that sunset, with the bank of trees looming on the hilltop high above the city.

I have interviewed Robert a couple of times – once on the deck of our Queenslander in The Gap (a few blocks away from his house).

——————————————–

Hugs and Kisses 56: Robert Forster, formerly of the Go-Betweens

Mostly, I sat entranced, lost in a reverie. I was appreciating the restraint being exercised in front of me on stage. I was appreciating the dry humour. I was appreciating the solid, good sound. I was remembering watching Elvis Costello perform at Brighton’s Dome when my wife Charlotte was pregnant with our son Isaac, and appreciating the good, solid sound then. I was watching the shadows—a deep, lustrous red and welcoming, lighting up the wall of Brisbane’s Powerhouse space the way the sun hits the deck in the evening. My mind was flickering through the years, I was 19 or 20 again and not quite sure what to make of that awkward, downbeat Australian trio The Go-Betweens when all around was fire and clamour: they sang of dust and shadows and street lights in the rain. And it touched upon a time a few years thence, and how angry I was that I amended my best lyric—my best damn lyric, “Like the middle-eight from a Go-Betweens song”—in its recorded version, because I figured it was too specific. Of course, when I was 23, 24 I didn’t even begin to register why people who read Dostoevsky look like Dostoevsky, and I had no way of knowing how central Go-Betweens would become to my life.

So I looked at the shadows. And I listened to the performer, former Go-Betweens singer Robert Forster, recount a story about going down to the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park to see Patti Smith play a live show, and how all these famous journalists from across Europe turned up and he was stuck outside with his partner. And I was thinking, I could have been one of those famous journalists he was referring to, it was the right year, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t into classic rock then.

Now, I am. In fact, now I so am I’d be prepared to listen to Bob Dylan—something I’ve never been prepared to do my entire life. Now I am, have been ever since The Go-Betweens returned several years back with an album, The Friends Of Rachel Worth which I swear remains my favourite, and not just because Janet Weiss drums on it, but because it features a glut of Forster songs—“German Farmhouse,” “Surfing Magazines,” “He Lives My Life”—that kill me. He performs them all tonight while I’m gazing at the swirling shadows, and it’s my world. Right now, it’s my world. We both live in Brisbane now and it seems less than coincidence, more like predetermination. Man. That’s some heritage right there, former rotten totalitarian state government or not.

And I’m enjoying the classic rock, kept under wraps. (That one solitary harmony on “He Lives My Life” is the most perfect solitary harmony this side of Joey Ramone.) Robert’s a great band, augmented by that kid from Flamingo Crash. The lady drummer from I Heart Hiroshima (acolyte of Weiss) is two seats across and she’s consumed with envy. She’s great too, but has way too much personality to be down there on stage. My mind is a hive. I think of former Cannanes drummer David Nichols and his book of The Go-Betweens which I’ll never read, and the way he coaxed me back into making music. I think of my UK band’s failed attempts to record a song for the Grant McLennan tribute album, mainly cos we kept picking on Forster songs by accident, but also because…well, you’ve got to realise. I don’t want to be Robert Forster (to paraphrase an Aussie pop star).

Before “Born To A Family,” Forster announces that “this is the story of my life, in three minute, eight seconds pop song” and then the microphone breaks, and he adds “this really is the story of my life” and then no one comes on to fix the mic and he has to switch with his guitarist, and the guitarist and that wonderful former Go-Betweens bassist make like “George and Paul” on the one remaining mic, even bobbing their heads and grinning inanely like they’re on Ed Sullivan… and there are many moments like this, moments like the terrifyingly resonant “121” (second encore) which I mistook for “From Ghost Town” with its full-on rocking and references to “tombstones/cobblestones/those old bones that lie beneath this city,” moments where Forster does a soft-shuffle like Nick Cave with his arms above his head, moments like the opening acoustic set where the band is introduced on stage one by one, or third encore “People Say,” which remains a favourite Eighties moment… it’s weird how often Forster references the weather when you consider how little Brisbane’s weather changes from day to day.

The following evening, driving down Settlement Road, we witnessed the most glorious sunset, a cascade of fiery reds and ambers and inclement purple. It was the sort of sunset that could change a life.

(AUGUST 21, 2008)

The XX is shit.

The XX is shit. Boring boring bland bland bland boring iPhone shit. Shit that drones and whines and whines because it thinks it’s smart and soulful to do so, instead of just being droney whiney whiney shit. Shit that makes me wish for the heady envelope-pushing days of James Blunt and Sam Shit, I mean Smith. The XX is shit. Music made to soundtrack the aspirational dreams of ad men and women and other shit beasts, their aspirations amounting to buying a ticket for next year’s Glastonbury. Shit that makes you wish for the nervy, boundary-pushing days of the second Coldplay album. You don’t need to be knowledgeable to know this, you don’t need to hold an opinion. You don’t need to be a puppet. The XX is shit. Pop music is about escapism sure, but why would you want to escape from one train carriage full of beige into another precisely the same? The XX is shit. Whisper into your lover’s face, scream it on production lines, snort it down the back of toilet seats. All those ‘soothing’ electronic effects designed to be formulaic, to not unsettle. The end-result of decades spent thinking that 50 Shades of Grey is somehow fucking “cutting edge”. The voice one long tedious loop of nothing backed by nothing. Whiny nothing. The XX is shit. Music designed to be forgotten before you’ve started listening. Their music is airport cock, driveway drivel, shopping mall malfeasance. The XX sing like they’ve been straining for the Big One for days now. They sing like turtles fart. The XX is shit. Don’t be cowed by sheep. Don’t be bowed by dunderheaded DJs. The XX is shit. Each time they creep out another vocal it makes me want to punch a tree. The XX is shit. Slow does not equal emotional does not equate with soul. It just means you’re playing something slow. The XX is shit. As genuine as toothpaste, a swirl of big ass noodly nothing snoring politely into a microphone, snoozing politely through 2017. A sad sack of shitty-edged shit, without the edge. A perfume ad without the smell.

I eat meat on a stick. I drink lager Shandies. I DO NOT FREQUENT FUCKING WAREHOUSE CLOTHING STORES. The XX is shit.

Buy the book: Grunge, My Part in its Downfall

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Boris seem to be grinding away at the same chord as when I last heard them, a decade or two ago.

I don’t have a problem with that.

Sure, some of the notes might change. Sure, a few guttural or bassy vocals might get added or removed. Sure some songs might remind me a little less of the first Black Sabbath album, or a little more. Sure the timings in between when the cymbals are struck and the guitar harmonics attained may vary. A little. The snowstorms of guitar fall at slightly different frequencies. The mountains of metal tumble a few rocks and landslides. Sure, layers and textures have been added or removed or mutilated or mangled or transposed. Sure, that happens. But Boris seem to be grinding away at the same chord as when I last heard them, a decade or two ago. (And I also acknowledge that it might not even be Boris I am thinking of.)

And I am just fine with that.

Stuff like this you don’t want to hurry. I believe I might even have preferred it if Boris had been playing in the background the entirety of these past two decades, sometimes muted and sometimes with the volume turned way past the volume turned way past the volume turned way past distortion, demons and craggy figures lurking unbidden in the shadows. Sometimes it feels like Boris have been playing in the background the entirety of these past two decades, sometimes muted and sometimes with the volume turned way past the volume turned way past the volume turned way past distortion, demons and craggy figures lurking unbidden in the shadows. Do Boris even stop playing? I mean, why would they? Even if there is no one in the room present to tamper with the guitar strings surely they have left a guitar resting against a switched-on amplifier for all this duration.

I mean, why wouldn’t they?

Holy fuck, this next one is the entire genre of grunge (good grunge!) distilled into a five-minute feeding frenzy of bass-heavy sound and unworldly screaming. Far be it from me to whisper “Soundg….” Fuck it. Holy fuck. Crap on crap on high. ALL of grunge distilled into a five-minute feeding frenzy of bass-heavy sound and unworldly screaming. Heavier than heaving.

feeding frenzy of bass-heavy sound and unworldly screaming

feeding frenzy of bass-heavy sound and unworldly screaming

feeding frenzy of bass-heavy sound and unworldly screaming

feeding frenzy of bass-heavy sound and unworldly screaming

feeding frenzy of bass-heavy sound and unworldly screaming

——–

And by way of not much contrast, here is Olivia. Both artists serve the same purpose in my life: to keep the howling yawning chasm at bay.

Try playing this after that. It really fucking works.

Fact of matter is though, life ain’t that.

feeding frenzy of bass-heavy sound and unworldly screaming

feeding frenzy of bass-heavy sound and unworldly screaming

feeding frenzy of bass-heavy sound and unworldly screaming

feeding frenzy of bass-heavy sound and unworldly screaming

feeding frenzy of bass-heavy sound and unworldly screaming

feeding frenzy of bass-heavy sound and unworldly screaming

feeding frenzy of bass-heavy sound and unworldly screaming

feeding frenzy of bass-heavy sound and unworldly screaming

This song, right here. This song makes me happy/sad.  This song makes me glad for invention. This song makes me nostalgic for long-haul flights to America and Australia where I would play Tetris for eight hours straight knowing that upon arrival my life would be sprinkled with stardust once more, and life would lose all sharp focus. This song reminds me, as all songs must, how in love with minimalism I am. How in love. I use the word ‘love’. I do not use it correctly. This song rocks in a way that only students who played Space Invaders for 12 hours straight in 1979 understand rock. This performance is beautiful, and of course it is the vocals but it is not only the vocals.

This is the new(ish):

And of course I want to mention David Thomas Broughton taking off his sweater in exaggerated slow motion.

I dunno. I love looking at maps of the Moon even though I will never be there. That is what experiencing a lot of music is like for me these days, Moon Maps. Taking me places I will never go, taking me to events I will never again be a part of. Taking me out of the mundane for a few brief precious moments.

————-

And here is the old(not).

It is in the lipstick, and the hair, and the shimmy. It is in the beat (which reminds me of ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ with a whole bunch of kissing thrown in). It’s in the sparkle, the repetition, the glow of the neon and the depression of travelling. It’s in the lighting and the depression-era cocktails, $2 a throw. It’s in the low sinuous slinky beat and the fact no one kisses, not these days when everyone (seems to) want the hardcore. (This is an illusion.) It’s in the distance of attraction, and the allure of the unobtainable, and the pull of the familiar. If these… Tru Thoughts is a damn fine label, right?

All of us hold the potential to be stargirls.

That’s a whole heap of shit. The top entry has as many hits as the next three put together.

1. Ed Sheeran is shit

Ed Sheeran is shit. He makes Mumford & Sons sound like a thriving farmer’s market. He makes Coldplay sound like Throbbing Gristle. He puts One Direction into perspective. He is the grey. He is the grey. He is the grey in the middle of grey.

2. Bob Dylan wins the Nobel Prize for Literature ; some facts

Bob Dylan winning a Nobel Prize for Literature is like David Cameron stating The Smiths are his favourite band. Why not Nina Simone? Why not Beyoncé? Why not FILL IN YOUR OWN FUCKING NAME?

3. Dave Grohl is shit

Dave Grohl is shit. You don’t need to listen to Foo Fighters or work out to them down the football stadium or listen to their legion of desperate fans to realise this, just read the apologetic commentary from those too afraid to state the fact (and still think that somehow it’s OK he’s shit cos he’s “such a nice guy”), the apoplectic commentary from those who think they’re Making A Statement by coming out against them, the yawning knee-less praise from those whose idea of a varied and worldly musical taste means including a David Bowie album on their playlist of Coldplay, U2, The Killers, Marilyn Manson and (shudder) Foo Fighters.

4. An appreciation of Melvins: ‘These are people who make up their own myths and legends, uncaring of what happens around them’

The opening track, the Satanic Bride Of Crankenstein, could be classic Soundgarden. Indeed, I’ve long felt Melvins could have out-stripped Soundgarden in sales if only they’d kept a tighter rein on their imaginations and warped sense of humour – not for nothing did they have Gene Simmons of KISS play bass with them at Lollapalooza in 1993 and 1994. And there are other moments (in particular, the churning Brass Cupcake and heavy gravitational pull of Onions Make The Milk Taste Bad) where you feel the classic 1970s era Black Sabbath comparisons are more than justified.

5. reasons I am not a David Bowie fan

The songs are becoming ghosts. They shift meaning, they move into new realms. Bowie as a memory star…oh god. Please excuse me. This song has just started playing in my headphones. Again.

6. Not so much the Top 200 Albums of All Time, as the Most Depressing Music List of All Time

First, why? Where is the pressing need for such a list in 2016? The rock canon was established long ago, by close to the same group of critics. This does not add anything to the dialogue. You could argue that it is worth doing because it generates discussion, or because it is entertaining. Well no. No, it does not. Not, it is not. Discussion is generated by intelligent, insightful commentary not near-mindless reinforcement of the status quo. Discussion is not complaining about how a group of people with different tastes to your own have different tastes to your own. Discussion is not the generation of more lists. This is not entertainment. This is stamp collecting (and frankly, stamp collecting would be a lot more fun).

7. Billy Corgan is shit

Billy Corgan is shit. Slap-headed self-preening egotistical entitled Trump-loving grave-robbing narcissistic tuneless bombastic flatulent snowflake cunt. Do not believe the woefully impressed. For years, I have had to put up with people going, “yes, but his early work was quite good really, you know”. NO IT FUCKING WASN’T. Just cos you have the ears of a doormat and the taste of a McDonald’s Aus burger, just cos you prefer your music with no wit and no imagination, a spittoon of cultural appropriation and a whole heap of dog-turd guitar fret wank, it DOES NOT MAKE HIS EARLY WORK QUITE GOOD, YOU KNOW. A rip off of a rip off of a rip off does not magically transmute into art. It remains a rip off of a rip off of a rip off.

8. Chris Martin is shit

CHRIS MARTIN IS SHIT. He’s a beardy bland comfort zone for people with little life experience and zero expectations beyond the promise of the new La La Land DVD in the post from Amazon, a smug histrionic sweep of secondhand emotion whose primary concern is not LURVE or HOPE or… wait, why am I even discussing the music business with you?

9. Father John Misty vs Ed Sheeran. Who is the more shit?

On the one hand we have boring bland pop folky chameleon tattooed gent Ed Sheeran, a man to whom cultural appropriation is a way of life. He has nothing to say and he doesn’t give a FUCK who knows it. He composes the songs the way the rest of us file tax returns. His idea of love is cement. On the other, we have boring bland rock folky serious chameleon bearded gent Father John Misty, a man to whom appropriating John Grant is a way of life. He has plenty to say, but fuck me is it dull and tedious, and like Ed before him, he does not give a SHIT who knows it.

10. R.I.P. Chris Cornell. I am so proud to have known you.

I remember sitting down to watch the new Bond movie Casino Royale – always an event in our household, even with Daniel Craig’s rippling man pout. The theme song started up. Dynamic, hard and metallic in the music, classic (Shirley) Bassey through and through. And then the voice came in… “Jesus fuck!!” I exclaimed. “It’s Chris Cornell!”

Helen stopped by my house a few months ago, on her way to a show.

She plays many shows these days, it seems; acoustic, lilting, a breath of warmth and sunshine and unhappiness across the bows of old grey Brighton. Far as I know, it’s just her and a guitar and a handful of trusty picked-out chords. The moods are tinged with melancholy, perhaps something more. The Songs (do you mind if I use a capital letter here?) are often deceptively simple, not adorned. They are not adorned because they do not need adornment. Helen’s songs have never needed much adornment: her voice is naturally encompassing and her harmonies are brief but well-chosen. She has a new album out, one that I listen to as I am typing these words. It is called The Sea, and she moves in worlds I can only dream of and places I would never want to voyage to. It’s called The Sea, and on the cover of the accompanying booklet/magazine is a shattered acoustic guitar at the sea’s edge.

*Colour me* it entreats.

*Play me* it chides, with all the lyrics and chords supplied.

Helen stopped by my house a few months ago, on her way to a show.

Something was not quite right – me quite possibly. I should explain that these days usually the only way I see friends and people I admire, once admired performing on stage, is on the rare occasions they stop at my house on the way to a show. There was little merriment, some nervousness.

Something was not quite right – she played a couple of songs on her guitar for one of my children and left shortly after, and yet magic happened. I wanted her to stay forever: a charm to ward off the Outside World. Helen has acted in that capacity for me for decades now, but I have always known this to be an illusion and that she is not – has never been – like that. Her songs on The Sea are tinged with sadness, often. Very often. Personal, and wider. Sadness and attempts at hope. There is one song here called ‘Don’t be silly he said. Don’t you worry your head’ and that makes me sad. Wrongful. There is another called ‘The Sea’ but really it’s about the same something that has bothered many of us for too long now (the subtitle is ‘Go Home To Your War Zone’). How can anyone turn back a refugee? There is laughter here too, but the laughter is tinted with disquiet and angry disgust and commonsense horror at Man’s Inhumanity. Depression coated with joy. Yep. I know how that feels. There is even an anthem to other women if even an anthem to other women is what you are after (well worth hearing).

This is the BandCamp.

So, hey. I was going to write something glib like “Helen McCookerybook is my own personal Dolly Parton” but I don’t feel like it now.

What is excluded from history is more important than what is included. I’m sure Rolling Stone or NME don’t intentionally *ignore* female musicians. I’m sure that Pitchfork doesn’t intentionally *ignore* good critical writing. I’m sure iTunes and Spotify don’t *intend* to always suggest the same broad pool of mainstream artists. But these omissions help shape reality far more than the inclusions.

Exhibit A: how much more manageable would life be if Radio One and Glastonbury was all about Southend band The Plan than Ed Sheeran and The XX? In class the other day, my students were arguing against Beyoncé because the songs on Lemonade are not ‘commercial’ enough. Yet commercial is a self-defining description: Lemonade sold plenty so whether the songs on it fit in with the template of what we the consumer have been taught (through countless reinforcement) to think of as ‘commercial’ is neither here nor there. See even more starkly: Jeremy Corbyn and the charge before the election that he was “unelectable”. The meaning words like that hold can be powerful but ultimately faintly ridiculous. Is Kendrick Lamar commercial? (Highest selling album of 2017 so far, according to one source.) Commerciality has little (or nothing) to do with song structure or production or earworms, and much to do with status. If you wish to define The Plan as not being commercial then sure, they are not commercial. The weight of evidence is against them, seemingly. It is not, of course. There is no evidence provided, only hearsay; aesthetic values, and these are based on taste, fashion, and hence are constantly shifting in terms of ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Several years back – another age now – hundreds of thousands of people read my words, perhaps millions. Was my writing more mainstream then? Yes, clearly. Self-defined. Was it more ‘commercial’?

Ha.

Someone has described The Plan as “Raincoats meets Fall meets Shirley Collins”. All of these are cult bands but… but… surely only through lack of exposure and targeting? If all was equal in the media industries (which it never can be) then The Plan would be overseeing a plethora of beautifully atonal challenging feminist Velvet Underground-influenced artists on the final of The Voice, not the mediocre painfully sanitised bilge we are usually presented with. Celebrity culture would be ugly-beautiful instead of airbrushed-beautiful or sweat-beautiful and life would be all the more interesting. Of course, celebrity culture would need to change from being part of the post-feminist discourse to being feminist once more – and again, life would be all the more interesting. Incidentally, the descriptive sentence at the start of this paragraph is not accurate. When I left Brisbane, there was a notable number of Wet Dog-influenced groups (Wet Dog are The Plan singer Rebecca Gillieron’s previous band), this lot not the least among them. And hence this lot (by proxy) too.

A win-win.

Here is the BandCamp.

Drums clatter. A voice challenges. Guitars do what guitars must, a broadside of desire. Strange rhythmical, strangely magical music. This is The Plan. Playful yet not. Intent on changing your preconceptions or at least the coffee in the filter every few days. Growing up but not growing dull. Every day in every way I am growing more angry. Sticks to what they know but it would be real weird if they didn’t (and also, impossible). Again, I cannot listen to this one when anyone else is around. And so, once again, in an odd way this music is more representative of my life than anything.

—————

And the old? Heard this yesterday, part of an exhilarating, six-CD, 126 artists, new Cherry Red compilation called Manchester North of England: A story of Independent Music Greater Manchester 1977-1993 – and was reminded how much I loved this band.

Strange rhythmical music and we’re never going to lose it.

Interesting. The sound on this video is far superior to the sound in my iTunes library. More vibrant, incisive – particularly the vocals. There again, I am on record as stating I think the sound of the early American (mongrel) versions of The Beatles’ albums is far superior to the sound on the (original) British versions: far brighter, and in your face and POP.

This is excellent. Gets going, goes, keeps going, and stops, and throws in a couple of rudimentary harmonies along the way. Can’t ask for more. The song reminds me of two bands: Newtown Neurotics (a slightly off comparison this) and Lush. The quote for the theatre billboards reads, “This is what I always wanted Lush to sound like” but there is so much wrong with that statement I am not sure I should even bother to unpick it. First, insulting to both bands. Second, it was up to Lush what they sounded like. Third, 20 years separation is way important. Fourth, Lush weren’t that sort of band. Fifth, neither are Feature. Sixth, comparisons always fall down whenever you examine them in any detail. Seventh, this. Eighth, this. Also, the song reminds me of three bands. Feature, being the other band.

Feature thud, and do not care who experiences it. Feature are instrumental cherubs and like to get straight in there among the plaintive guitar lines and bass runs, and THUDS (c.f., in particular, ‘Feature Theme’ which is a Batman theme for disaffected, alienated, lonely, unfit 56-year-old beardy sweaty white males… uh, too much information). Weirdly, the bass on this song also recalls the work of the great Stuart Moxham. I say weirdly, because the context is totally different. I say totally different but of course this is all music – and rudimentary, minimal music at that. I think I need to stop living in 1981, or if I am going to live in 1981 I need to start remembering it. Anyway, the rest of the album is totally aces: invigorating and insistent and intricate and oddly beguiling. Marvellous stuff. I also note that, it being their debut, and these being the times they are, the band have already split.

I mean Tsunami.

This is a shame, trust me.

I mean Against Interpretation.

I mean Life Without Buildings (once again I do not aim to be dismissive or slick or glib but I find that I am). Painting, not singing. There is a song on the one and only one Feature album (‘Gatekeeper’) that is equal yet different to this. And that is great praise.

And so on.

At the core of all great music critics is a fangirl.

Here. Here it is again.

“Start your story as close to the end as possible” – Kurt Vonnegut

I like ‘Blurred Lines’, although I can do without the rapey connotations. There is a song on the new Little Mix album that threatens to become annoying but right now amuses me greatly because it is such an obvious…um…tribute to ‘Blurred Lines’ but without the rapey connotations. So, duh. I like it. I am not so sure about Little Mix though. I saw them presenting a Christmas special on television and they struck me as irritating and not in a cute way. Just hard, cold. In it for the money not the cultural capital. And before you say “well isn’t that pop music in a nutshell” well no, it isn’t is it? Also, I just did a quick Google on Little Mix to see what they looked like and the top result is “Little Mix star Leigh-Anne Pinnock bares her bum in a blue bikini on a speedboat after sharing saucy topless snap”.

I suspect that if I throw that into my SEO as a phrase, hits on this blog will go through the roof.

Their new album Glory Days is ace though, in a way the new Katy Perry most definitely is not. Hits all the right buttons, fizzes with the correct amount of fizz, reminiscent of much else, slips down very easy and helps block out the sound (if not the heat or smells) of the 10.52 from Redhill to Guildford. Also, the concept behind ‘Shout Out To My Ex’ is strong if not quite nasty enough. It turns me into a partly passive consumer but I have never seen this as a minus, to subject myself to the all-consuming glare and high-heeled stomp of pop music. ‘F.U.’ is fun in the way Lily Allen once was. ‘You Gotta Not’ is so blatant it removes my breath briefly. And so on.

You don’t care.

Here’s the music:

And for balance, we have this.

I am just trying to point out the obvious. I am unable to listen to the first without the balance of the second, do not want to listen to the second without the balance of the first. The two are not linked, have never been linked, will probably never be linked again except in the mind of Everett True (who does not exist). I love the passion, the intent of Mecca Normal. The searing literacy. The relentless beauty. The admittance that most all relationships are always power struggles, especially when you least expect it. Crudely, three of my favourite artists remind me of Mecca Normal (not the other way round). That’s a recommendation in itself. The dialogue present in every Mecca Normal song I have heard is worth experiencing again and again. It does not infantilise the listener, much as the listener may want to be infantalised. It does not cause the listener to cast aside the class struggle that is central to day-to-day life, whether individuals are aware of it or not.

I am saying this like it is a good thing… yes, I believe it is a good thing.

Opinions are like assholes. Everyone’s got one. Except for Donald Trump. He’s got two.

There is a Jane Siberry song that goes:

Smiling at strangers reminds me of my dog
Better let them know you’re friendly
The way people dress reminds me too
Pissing on their favourite tree
Sad things remind me of my dog
Cockroaches and other insects
Remind me too, don’t eat them
The blank expression of the little boy
With thick glasses who picks
Himself up from the sidewalk
And stands there blinking in the sun

I am not a huge fan of dogs. I am a huge fan of this song: I understand the obsession, the way everything links back to one object or person or animal or circumstance. (This song is indelibly linked to a sad episode in my life: I am not going to discuss it here. You can buy the book if you are truly interested.) Also, it’s a metaphor duh. Most the time these days, it feels I can hear a phone vibrating somewhere out of reach. I keep missing the call. I think to myself, if only that person would reveal themselves then perhaps I might be happy.

The same applies to music: I am not able to listen to great swathes of music these days because the music is too linked to someone I am no longer. Or if I am still that person, he is out of breath and unsightly, possessed of little of the former stardust magic and perpetually weary. God, there goes that phone again. I wish they would leave a message.

Fortunately, there is always – at any given point in time – more incredible, insurgent, uplifting, life-affirming, infectious, sensitive (fill in your own adjective here) music waiting to be discovered than already experienced. Lift up the smallest of rocks and all manner of fascinating, inquisitive creatures come scuttling out. It is unavoidable. There is more great music around than at any other point in history (partly down to accumulation, partly down to the distribution of tools, partly down to training). Today, I would like to share three songs with you. They are my own personal Dog. Something that reminds me of everything else and vice versa. Context, context.

The first, I listen to constantly:

Man, this one makes me delirious with happiness.

The second, I listen to not at all but refuses to budge inside my brain:

Damn, if I am not convinced my own personal version sounds better than the actuality. (Not supposed to be a slight.) Quick, better listen to this one again and pretend I have a week-load of awesome gigs to look forward to and dance at (*instead of the reality).

Still paying attention? Good. The playlist should always contain repetition, to reflect life.

The third goes something like this:

I cannot listen to this one when anyone else is around, however. So in an odd way it is more representative of my life than anything.