2012 - 2019 Archive
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Title: 2019 End of Year Review.
Published: 2019-12-31 05:00:00
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It’s not been the greatest year for big pop tunes in my opinion but there’s still been a lot that I’ve loved, with a strong showing in indie-pop and electronica. Here’s my top picks from 2019:Albums:Norman Fucking Rockwell - Lana Del ReyRemember The Future - IonnaleeHandfuls of Night - Penguin CafeFirst Contact - USFine Line - Harry StylesSacred Dreams - Josefin Ohrn + The LiberationCaligula - Lingua IgnotaSilver Eater - Grace LightmanFive V2 - White LiesCry - Cigarettes After SexThe Center Won’t Hold - Sleater-KinneySingles:People - The 1975DHL - Frank OceanDivided Cities - Mark FernyhoughBlinding Lights - The WeekndResentment - KeshaThe One - Marika HackmanNothing Breaks Like A Heart - Mark Ronson / Miley CyrusParadise - She Drew The GunIce Tea Liberace - Phebe StarrMy Name Is Dark - Grimes
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Title: Penguins on penguins.
Published: 2019-10-07 21:22:26
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I had the pleasure of getting to hear this album played in full at a recent live show and it was completely magnificent. At the time I felt it was likely to turn out to be my favourite of their albums and now that I have the vinyl on my turntable I can happily confirm that as a fact. Over the previous two albums I have enjoyed Penguin Cafe most when they lean towards the more dramatic, filmic or minimalist sides of their music preferring The Red Book to The Imperfect Sea which was a little too folksy at times for my tastes. Handfuls of Night, which began life as an accompaniment to a Greenpeace project based in the antarctic, certainly has a cinematic tone to it owing no doubt in part to its origins. Two of my favourite tracks Chinstrap and Chapter both have a perfect combination of musical storytelling and ethereal beauty, with a dash of drama. The latter is in fact described in the liner notes as the tale of ‘a penguin detective tasked with solving a crime that led to something bigger than anyone could have imagined..’ (And it has to be said at this point that the liner notes for this album are a joy of their own, stuffed with interesting little facts and wonderful scene setting for each track. Having a Penguin Cafe album that is actually predominantly about penguins is also irresistibly fun.)The only track that feels somewhat out of place for me is Pythagoras on the Line Again, and indeed it is a re-visiting of one of Simon Jeffes’ pieces. It’s a fascinating thing in it’s own right playing on harmonic relationships constructed from an old BT telephone engaged tone. I find it alternatingly pleasing and aggravating depending on my mood but it’s probably both the most unusual and most interesting track on the album. It does however feel somewhat like a cuckoo in the nest (to use a non-penguin bird analogy) and I wonder if it might have been better included elsewhere. It was an extraordinary thing to hear live though and it’s not something I would want to have seen buried. On the whole though the album is extremely cohesive, and takes the listener on a fascinating and curious journey.A gorgeous, enveloping and engaging collection of music that should please any existing fan and would be a great entry point for anyone new to their music too.ARTIST: Penguin CafeTITLE: Handfuls of NightMOOD: Floating in the bath pretending to be a penguinTOP TRACKS: Chinstrap, Chapter, Gentoo Origin
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Title: Divided Cities.
Published: 2019-09-19 04:00:00
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As we face down the increasingly real prospect of Brexit an Englishman based between the UK and Berlin, a city already keenly aware of the impact of borders both internal and external, is better placed than most to write a gloomily romantic electro-rock torch song on the subject - and here we have just that. Musically Mark Fernyhough’s latest single Divided Cities is a close relative of his earlier dramatic melancholia like Berlin, The Human Eye and Steal My Love but with the addition of a grittier, more urban, electronic edge first introduced on last year’s single Sidewalks and it’s fantastically dark and druggy sounding b-side Favourite. The track is accompanied by an chic and suitably international video starring French artist Camille Schaeffer, Belarusiannsynth player Julia Runova and Polish/Germannelectro drummer Agata D’mon. Shot amongst the imposing architecture of the German capital it captures the bittersweet relationship between the cities we inhabit and how they inhabit us.Divided Cities also comes backed by a brilliant (and single-worthy in it’s own right) b-side Edge of Town - a hooky little beast inspired by ‘fantasising about the ghosts, decadence and demons which lurk within the darkness of the forest at the end of the garden’ and which has a more guitarsey, gothically uptempo feel. Easily as good as its parent track it’s more of a double A side really, if such things still existed in the digital age.ARTIST: Mark FernyhoughTITLE: Divided CitiesMOOD: Romantic political gloom
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Title: Veda Rays.
Published: 2019-03-03 18:13:31
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nNew York post-punk band Veda Rays have released a new video for their single “Close Range,” taken from their current album For the Rest to Rest. The video has a dark and politically troubling feel that is described by band member Jim Stark as being about “image and identity, specifically as presented through the lens of the media, whether self-curated through one’s own social media platforms, or by professional design, channeled through larger outlets.”ARTIST: Veda RaysTITLE: Close RangeMOOD: Dystopian(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
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Title: Discordant beauty.
Published: 2019-02-28 22:38:23
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Words like ambient, instrumental or soundscape are often used to mean the kind of blandly soothing music you stick on in the background whilst doing the crossword, but although this is an often beautiful and delicate album, it’s also frequently a deeply unsettling one too. From the background chatter of children in decrescent to the intense sense of creeping dread in tracks like 4;28 and, the standout track for me, Uchujin there is not much about this album I would describe as soothing. In fact, a lot of it straight up gives me The Fear. I mean this in a good way of course, it’s perfectly done and I assume deliberate. There are shades of late era Scott Walker and the kind of skin crawling unease I get from David Lynch soundtracks but crucially it’s also underscored with a fragile, melodic elegance and it never tips into something unlistenable or aggressive. An elegantly put together and thoughtful collection that I feel like I’m still only scraping the surface of despite having played it frequently over the last month since I received my (charmingly hand packaged) copy through the post. If you are a fan of either the eerie or ambient music in general I can’t recommend this enough. ARTIST: ÍNEXUNÍNTITLE: AntisepticMOOD: Soundtrack for your anxietyTOP TRACKS: Uchujin, 4;28, (bonus track) Jónas
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Title: 2018 End of Year Review.
Published: 2018-12-31 15:45:26
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This year has been a blast musically and it was tough to narrow it down, but here’s my favourites from 2018:AlbumsA Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships - The 1975Continuing to teeter wonderfully on the precipice between meme, pretension and credibility this is a great mix of solid pop and genre mixing electronica.Berlin Archives - Mark FernyhoughThis limited release collection is a fantastic introduction to what Mark has been up to over the last few years and an appetite whetting tease for his debut-proper to come soon.Chris - Christine and The QueensGorgeous, sensual sophistipop with enough grit to save it from blandness.Dancing Queen - CherIt should be terrible, I guess it sort of is, but it’s also completely irresistible.Dirty Computer - Janelle MonaePrince meets Robyn meets M.I.A meets (literally) Brian Wilson - chic, hooky and funky.Hunter - Anna CalviAnna Calvi has a voice you can dissolve into and this record uses it to great advantage on swooning moody ballads and retro tinged rock.Hymn - Sarah BrightmanA return to form after a couple of less exciting releases this is and a near perfect and suitably eclectic capsule of what Sarah does best.Juliana Hatfield Sings Olivia Newton-John - Juliana Hatfield I never knew how much I needed this in my life until I had it.Negative Capability - Marianne FaithfullAnother soulful and moving record that evokes the same kind of mournful ache as Leonard Cohen or late-career Johnny Cash.The Blue Hour - suedeA more than worthy follow up to Night Thoughts, suede scrape around in the scrub of rural England and somehow come out with an epic and occasionally gothic masterpiece.SinglesBedtime - ToothpasteBlack Car - Beach HouseCreep City - Jake ShearsHot Pink - Let’s Eat GrandmaI Need You - Paris HiltonMariners Apartment Complex - Lana Del ReyNegative Space - HookwormsShallow - Lady Gaga & Bradley CooperThe Light (IYEARA Remix) - LUMPVoyager - US
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Title: Broken on the English dirt.
Published: 2018-09-22 22:58:13
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Suede’s last album Night Thoughts was a surprising late-career tour de force that took the excess of their mid-90s imperial phase and pushed it in a more grown-up, but altogether darker direction. Though this album is very much in keeping with its predecessor there is a still a definite tonal shift and it’s unmistakably a braver, weirder creature too. Like Night Thoughts the tracks run seamlessly together making it clear you are intended to listen to it as one piece and, similar to that record, some parts of it make scant sense on their own but form important points on the overall journey. However where Night Thoughts had at its heart a fragility and vulnerability, The Blue Hour is markedly more ominous, oppressive and sinister. As the song titles suggest it’s lyrically focused on the macro of domestic and rural drama but with a delivery and production that listeners will likely find either intensely affecting or faintly ridiculous, maybe even a bit of both. While it does contain quieter moments (along with some of the purest, gritty rock the band have produced in quite some time) it’s when it’s at it’s most brilliantly batshit that it throws all notion of simplicity or humility out the window and challenges the listener to either love it or loathe it. I can’t imagine many people being on the fence about the gothic extravagance of this album, but that’s as it should be I think.A worthy successor to Night Thoughts and the sound of a band continuing to push themselves beyond the nostalgic rehash of most post-reunion endeavours. It won’t be for everyone but I doubt it was ever intended to be.—–Track By Track As OneI’ve always liked opening tracks that aggressively set out the stall for the album and if you were unsure what you were getting into before pressing play then the funereal chanting and raw, chilling bombast of this track should give you a clue. Just to hammer things in it ends with an audio sample of voices shouting and dogs barking that sounds like the start of a horror movie. ‘When he smiles he looks like a fox but when he holds me we will be as one..’WastelandsThough I understand the desire to put something more familiar after the slightly brutal intro I find this both melodically and lyrically a bit too suede-by-numbers. It’s not that it’s a bad song, it’s just that it’s one we’ve heard before. It does however end with a wonderfully eerie quote from Wind In The Willows.MistressOne of the tracks closest to some of the quieter moments of Night Thoughts but also most reminiscent of some of Brett Anderson’s solo work. This is the kind of swooning, brittle, slightly nasty vignette he is already adept at but bolstered by the extra heft of production and arrangement it’s given here. Beyond The OutskirtsBeyond The Outskirts is essentially Wastelands but better. Lyrically very similar but with more interesting (almost Beatles-esque) melodies and some fantastic big chunky guitars, it does make me question the need for both tracks and I would definitely pick this as the stronger contender.Chalk CirclesA queasy, lilting nursery rhyme that suddenly turns into a great big cacophony of medieval chanting .. yeah, i know what you’re thinking .. and it shouldn’t work but I swear it’s one of the highlights. Cold HandsYou can’t beat some lovely, banging, pissed off sounding rock. Brett spitting out ‘I’m a hare in the cat’s eyes’ in his best proto-punk. Lyrically and spiritually this is the antonym of Night Thoughts’ The Fur & The Feathers. One of the definite highlights of the record for me and should be a monster live.Life Is GoldenAnother highlight track, Life Is Golden is a soaring, anthemic, hook-stuffed beauty. Classic nu-Suede with a dash of Manic Street Preachers. RoadkillI’m still undecided if a morbid, spoken word piece about a dead bird set over hymnal chanting is a shade too far on the pretension-ometer or not but I’ve got to admire the commitment to the cause.TidesThis track hasn’t really grabbed me yet but it’s interesting enough that I expect it to be a grower. Don’t Be Afraid If Nobody Loves YouI loved this track when it was released earlier in the year and I still find it to be one of the stronger songs on the album. Gritty but hooky and most reminiscent perhaps of something like No Tomorrow or Outsiders from the last album.Dead BirdA wonderfully creepy interlude and a good reason not to put your music library on shuffle when you have guests round.All The Wild PlacesIt’s been a while since I said Scott Walker in a suede review but this song is gorgeously Walkeresque, specifically the strings are very Plastic Palace People. A charming, romantic sigh of a thing in general.The InvisiblesProbably the track that feels most like something from Bloodsports, Invisibles was the first song released as a teaser for the album and though it seemed a decidedly obtuse choice at the time it also seemed encouraging that the album was going to be good not least because they were happy to chuck out something as lovely as this so early in the promo trail.FlytippingThe standout track on the album, Flytipping pulls off the sacred combo of being epic, melodic, hook driven and lyrically strong. And then just when you think you know what it is the drums kick in and it takes you to the end of the record with full-on bombastic guitar shrieking prog noise, soaring choirs and glorious strings. An album that starts and ends with ridiculous, wonderful excess is rarely a bad thing in my book.ARTIST: SuedeTITLE: The Blue HourMOOD: Gothic melodrama in the English countryside
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Title: Massive Aggressive.
Published: 2018-09-20 04:00:00
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Birdhead released their genre bending electro-rock debut ‘Pleasure Centre’ to much acclaim nearly five years ago, so the soon to be released follow-up ‘Massive Aggressive’ has been a long time brewing. Thankfully it’s been worth the wait. Traversing from wailing 80s guitar riffs, to throbbing funk, to vocals spat disdainfully Mark E Smith style at the listener, to the more mellow almost ambient moments of the record - Birdhead continue to do a remarkable job of making music that is both pleasingly angry, undeniably melodic and often surprisingly danceable. Rock music for dance fans, dance music for rock fans. Music for everyone to get drunk at a disco and start a punch up to. Highlight tracks for me are Custom Muscle, Sunsleeper, Tesseract, Autostrider, Beasts of England and the title track. This is an album with no duffers though and if you like your music with some meat on the bone (or muscle for that matter) then this one’s for you.Massive Agressive is released on the 28th of September.ARTIST: BirdheadTITLE: Massive AggressiveMOOD: RwaawwAAArgh
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Title: Gotta feel the Sidewalks.
Published: 2018-09-13 10:33:58
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With shades of 80s alt-electro mixed with infallibly hooky melodies and torch-song vocals, Mark Fernyhough’s new single Sidewalks is something that feels current but not slavishly wedded to trends. Similarly the low-fi glamour of the night-lit streets of Berlin in the accompanying video has a timeless, edgy cool. Although his previous release Nouveau (a collaboration with guitarist Steven Horry) was a slightly more upbeat pop sound than many of his previous tracks, Sidewalks sees him moving further again into a new electronic, and dare I say it kind of funky direction. The B-side Favourite is spacey, spooky and dark with a Jan Hammer / John Carpenter edge. Unapologetically unusual it’s exactly the kind of gem you hope to find in a b-side, and although it’s a pretty striking departure from his usual sound it’s an entirely successful one I think.ARTIST: Mark FernyhoughTITLE: Sidewalks
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Title: Brush your teeth before bed.
Published: 2018-09-06 20:30:17
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A gorgeous dreamy new track by Toothpaste, produced by Daisy Edwards and mastered by Simon Scott of Slowdive hit the internet today and it’s already a strong contender for one of my favourites of the year. The woozy, sleepy atmosphere of the track hides some surprisingly dark lyrics which give a little extra bite to what might otherwise have been something much less interesting. Instead this is an intriguing and enveloping thing that can be both soothing and troubling at the same time.‘Bedtime is a song about the misty-eyed moments of magic you might feel just before you drift off into dreamland. It is an ode to the blissful escape of sleep and the chance of seeing the one you love slip into your room, giving you a sweet send-off towards the shores of slumber. The feeling you get of slipping through the ever expansive layers of consciousness until you land with a gentle bump on the picturesque field of your dormant landscape. Was the one who floated into bed beside you ever really there? Whether in dreams or reality, the mere pretence of their presence was enough to soothe you for the night.’ARTIST: ToothpasteTITLE: Bedtime
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Title: The Beef.
Published: 2018-08-05 09:32:11
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A Frankensteinian superhero for the fast food era where no radioactive spiders or chemical plant explosions are required - just a steady, tasty diet of.. the beef.“Chuck Carter is a good man. Chuck has shot penetrating bolts into the skulls of approximately 23,000 cows in his lifetime. This hasn’t affected him at all.”The combination of Richard Starkings & Tyler Shainline’s bleakley satirical writing with Shaky Kane’s gloriously garish artwork creates the perfect marriage of love/hate Americanna - both indulging in and vilifying it’s reference points. It’s hard not to love the nostalgic crassness of the signposts of American culture and this story allows the reader to revel in it’s plasticy glory whilst also, not so much peaking below the surface as ripping the skin off and making you stare at the pulsing viscera underneath. As fun and entertaining as it is horrifying and grim, it’s a rare (pun intended) comic book than can successfully take down consumption culture in all its forms (food, labour, sex) and include a two-page spread on the ugliness of the dairy industry with an unflinching focus on the most grooey home truths without veering into over-worthy browbeating. You’ll finish The Beef with a gnawing feeling in your stomach - it’s probably guilt, but it might be hunger.AUTHOR: Richard Starkings / Tyler Shainline / Shaky KaneTITLE: The Beef
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Title: Nouveau
Published: 2018-02-26 16:46:46
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nFantastic, stylish and super cool new track ‘Nouveau’ released today by Mark Fernyhough and Steven Horry accompanied by an equally cool and colourful video featuring an awesome gang of Berlin roller girls. ARTIST: Mark Fernyhough & Steven HorryTITLE: Nouveau (Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
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Title: Us.
Published: 2017-12-29 11:10:38
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nPredictably beautiful new track by Andrew Montgomery’s most recent musical venture Us - accompanied by an equally wonderful, claustrophobic video with a dash of Eyes Wide Shut dark glamour.ARTIST: USTITLE: Mute(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
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Title: 2017 End of the year review
Published: 2017-12-03 23:18:39
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There’s been a lot of great stuff out this year so I’m going to do both an albums and a singles/tracks list. AlbumsWhite Lies - Friends: Electro retro crooner pop with soul and squidgy bits.Highlight Track: Is My Love Enough?Lana Del Rey - Lust For Life: Lana doing what Lana does best, with a little help from her friends.Highlight Track: Beautiful People Beautiful ProblemsRationale - Rationale: Soul, pop, funk - much awaited debut and One To Watch.Highlight Track: PhenomenalLorde - Melodrama: Smart, sexy sophistopop from the reigning queen of mainstream indie.Highlight Track: The LouvreCigarettes after sex - Cigarettes after sex: Melodic, melancholic, occasionally joyful but always intimately beautiful.Highlight Track: ApocalypseBlondie - Pollinator: Punchy, punk-pop that proves Debbie still does it better.Highlight Track: Long TimeBeck - Colours: Funky, optimistic, electronic - Beck at his poppiest. Highlight Track: Fix MeAlison Moyet - Reassuring Pinches: Another gorgeous (and criminally overlooked) release taking the blueprint from The Minutes down slightly darker paths.Highlight Track: Reassuring PinchesLindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie: Exactly the kind of collection of romantic harmonies, hooky choruses and Americanna love stories you would hope for from this collaboration.Highlight Track: Red SunThe Killers - Wonderful Wonderful: Return to form reunion album that fuses the best bits of late era Killers and Brandon solo into a dustland pop-rock banger.Highlight Track: The Man-SinglesBlack Honey - CadillacHMLTD - Satan, Luella & IMarika Hackman - BoyfriendSinkane - TelephoneCloves - California NumbHarry Styles - Sign of the Timesionnalee - NOT HUMANMark Fernyhough - Steal My LoveArca - DesafioMiley Cyrus - Younger NowLiam Gallagher - Wall of GlassUs - Till the Dying of the LightPumarosa - DragonflyPenguin Cafe - CantorumGrandaddy - Way We Won’tJoe Goddard - Human HeartToothpaste - TV YearsKesha - Old Flames (can’t hold a candle to you)Morrissey - Jacky’s Only HappyWhen She’s Up On StageVeda Rays - False Coloured Eyes
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Title: Veda Rays.
Published: 2017-10-06 04:00:00
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nWatch the hypnotic video for Veda Rays’ fantastic new single Shadow Side which is is available for purchase through their site www.vedarays.com/store and through bandcamp. A luscious slice of guitar-based, gothic, post-punk drama for your ears and eyes to enjoy.(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
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Title: INTRODUCING: TOOTHPASTE
Published: 2017-08-09 16:12:55
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Debut Single ‘TV Years’ out 10/08 Having already made their mark on the London indie scene in an impressive collection of other musical projects, Toothpaste comprise of Amol (Vox/Guitar), Daisy (Bass), Poppy (Keys) and Sami (Drums) and promise to bring you ‘minty fresh pop bangers, wicked tunes and okayish oral hygiene.’* Their first single ‘TV Years’ is set for release later this month on the 10th of August and they will be throwing a launch show, with the help of Viral Nights, at The Lock Tavern in London that night. The song explores the sense of disconnect between people in the modern world - singer Amol describes it as: “the sort of feeling that makes you want to stay away from the outside world, at home watching TV.”‘TV Years’ is a great introduction to what promises to be an exciting new band - awash with dreamy guitars, swirling digital synths, and drifting vocals. Please keep your eye out (and mouth open) for Toothpaste who are most definitely One To Watch.Listen to TV Years here now! >Find out more here:FacebookTwitterInstagram*none of the band are qualified to give legitimate advice on oral health.
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Title: Book Review: Goblin by Ever Dundas
Published: 2017-08-07 17:45:28
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Cover artwork by Cinnamon CurtisAn often dark novel with a non-linear timeline and an unreliable (and thoroughly bizarre) protagonist, this book could so easily have been a confusing, unreadable mess - but instead it is compelling, moving and strangely ‘real’. The portrayal of wartime London is evocative and raw and the author’s grasp on the mind of a young child remarkably authentic - a tough trick to pull off. Whilst it is far from being a piece of kitchen-sink realism it can be read in a more realist sense as an exercise in subterfuge, in shielding from the horror of reality through the escape into fantasy or as a literal ‘other’ world co-existing with our own, unseen. The story traverses a weird and wonderful collection of places, characters and themes including gender, sexuality, outsider status, the meaning of family and the treatment of animals. Indeed the book is teeming with fantastic beasties and creatures both recognisable and fantastical.It is a vividly drawn, frequently sad and at times completely gut wrenching story of loss, abandonment and cruelty - but it is also strangely life affirming and I would hesitate to call it bleak despite so much of the subject matter being so. Goblin herself is a hugely entertaining character and there is a great deal of humour and ‘joie de vivre’ to be found amongst the rubble. The plot is engaging but really it is the characters who drive this novel and they will stay with you long after they have left the story themselves, or indeed after you close the book. When you get to the end you will want to start all over again..Buy it here >
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Title: Albums of the year.
Published: 2016-12-07 17:30:52
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Prepare your rotten tomatoes of disagreement…Night Thoughts - suede nnI like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it - The 1975nnnnJoanne - Lady Gaga nnThe Electronique Void - Adrian Younge Come All Sufferers - Gabriel Bruce Blackstar - David Bowie I, Gemini - Let’s Eat Grandma nnHeavy Entertainment Show - Robbie WilliamsnnThese Systems Are Failing - Moby The Life Of Pablo - Kanye West SVIIB - School Of Seven Bells Blonde - Frank Ocean Starboy - The Weeknd Super - The Pet Shop Boys You Want It Darker - Leonard Cohen The Childhood Of A Leader - Scott Walker Songs For Our Mothers - Fat White Family Treasure House - Cat’s Eyes A Sailor’s Guide To Earth - Sturgill Simpson 99 cents - Santigold
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Title: Music Not The Bling
Published: 2016-10-22 15:19:04
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If there is one thing Lady Gaga could fairly be criticised for in the past it’s over-promising and over-hyping (Album of the decade! Reverse Warholian expedition! Redefining social media!) and whilst I’m sure there will be time for that yet the pre-release campaign for Joanne has been the polar opposite. Delivered with little fanfare, a low-key cover and a lead single that hardly set the world on fire, my expectations for this album were low. The two following buzz tracks struck a much better chord but I still expected this to be a grower, perhaps even slightly hard work to love. However, to my surprise I was knocked off my feet by half way through the first track and never looked back. There is a larger cautionary tale here about not to judging an album by the disembodied parts of it thrown out into the world before it’s launch but this has been one of the most extreme cases of going from trepidation to adoration in one listen that I have experienced.The artwork suggested something stripped back and ernest (Gaga’s Back to Basics if you will) whilst the lead single suggested fairly faceless pop with a Pat Benatar edge. The implicit desire to simplify and be ‘authentic’ felt somewhat forced and I dreaded a renouncement of her previous pop lives. In practice however the album has surprisingly frequent lashings of pure Gaga and is in a way perhaps the most successful, distilled embodiment of her long-running desire to fuse the serious and the frivolous, credible and throwaway, art and pop. The personal nature of the title feels a little laboured in this context but the song itself is touching without being overly saccharin.It should be no revelation that she might do something less 'theatrical’ at some point but being Gaga it is still essentially dress up. Contradictory as always her concept of what is artifice or construct has always been at odds with the rest of the world - for her the artifice is authentic and I would suggest that Joanne is really no different at its heart. For all it’s corded mic swinging and crowd surfing the video for Perfect Illusion remains one of the campest things I’ve seen. For her there has long been a kind of infinity mirror of artifice in the stripping away of artifice - visualised in moments such as her onstage costume change on the Artpop tour or the photo of her wrecked nails in an after-acrylics monster claw.This is by no means some kind of purist country record but what is, in the great tradition of musical ciphers like Gaga, is a pleasing mush of reference points across the gamut of country, americanna, rock and salsa and where this album really shines is when she mixes those flashes of trademark bonkers with vocals and lyrics that have hit a lusher more refined stride. A surprisingly strong and far less embarrassing outing than it could so easily have been Joanne stands comfortably, stetson tilted, amongst her best work.—-Track by track—-Diamond HeartHer strongest album opener this starts with a cool Courtney / Fleetwood drawl, leading us down a musical road we think we know before turning several unexpected turns into the kind of cross genre ferocity only Gaga can do. If Swine was a song attempting to get the anger, bile and rage of rape out into a poppers o'clock rave song then this is it’s whisky soaked 3am sister.A-YOA fun, poppy clap-along little track.JoanneThe purest and most successful no-whistles ballad she has written to my mind. Gorgeous vocals, touching lyrics and a melody that pulls at your emotions without becoming naff.John WaynePure Gaga in the vein of much of Born This Way but wrapped around a chunky country strut extolling the joys of a cowboy lover.Dancin’ in circlesit sounds like Shakira and it’s about masturbation - what’s not to like?Perfect IllusionAs is often the way this works much better as part of the album than on its own. Million ReasonsA melodic, harmony strewn ballad that is the closest to the type of country-lite the album seemed likely to be before release.Sinners PrayerThis toes a fine line between being almost pastiche, particularly in the chorus, and something that actually has a fair amount of depth to it but the combination works. Her vocal is particularly wonderful on this track - deep, rich and warm.Come To MamaCompletely daft, OTT musical hall with more than a dash of McCartney - and lyrically pure hippy silliness. It’s a standout for me but will be marmite for sure.Hey GirlThe hook is pure Bennie & The Jets but although Gaga and Florence sound great together the melody leaves me a little cold, the only song on the album that veers towards MOR R&B. Angel DownA standout track reminiscent of the more hymnal moments of Brandon Flowers’ Flamingo, or at least of their shared influences. A mournful dirt-track protest song.Grigio GirlsAnother standout track for me. One of those songs intended to be sung along to at 3am, dunk with your best friends whilst railing against the injustices of life and fittingly includes a Spice Girls namecheck. Makes me oddly weepy. Just another DayA very Scissors Sisters esque jazzy melody. Although the album proper ends with Angel Down and the deluxe tracks with the work tape of the same song this is definitely a sweeter, lighter way to finish if you want it.—-ARTIST: Lady GagaTITLE: JoanneMOOD: Nancy: 'I look like fucking Stevie Nicks’
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Title: suede 7″ vinyl box set
Published: 2016-10-20 11:44:37
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It had never really occurred to me before but I think I’ve always thought of suede as an ‘album band’ but listening to the releases in this way for the first time really hammered home the sheer strength of their singles run across the 20ish years covered in the set - the baseline of quality and immediacy is startling. And that’s without even taking into account the b-sides. Whilst the completest in me considered going for the CD box set which contains more tracks I was irresistibly drawn to the vinyl and I have to say there is something about the leanness of the 2 track format that also made the listening experience really enjoyable. In a way it felt like an interesting companion to Sci-Fi Lullabies - a sort of whistle stop tour of the band’s career so far. The b-sides, particularly in the Coming Up and Head Music eras, are well chosen to offer literally another side to each release and whilst not always the most obvious choices (to my ear anyway) this in itself makes the set feel slightly more special. They have always been a band to straddle a strange position between brash, poppy fun and some of the darker recesses of the human psyche (frequently both at once) and whilst listening to their releases in this way understandably tilts towards the former the b-side choices lean pleasingly towards the latter. nnInterestingly I also found the two singles I’ve always been a bit iffy about (Electricity and Positivity - two sides of the same rhyming coin in my mind) sounded so much better when listened to in this way removed from their parent albums - both of which I never wholly felt they fitted on. nnRooting through all those little records I also couldn’t help be struck by how great the artwork is across the run. The two A New Morning releases look somewhat odd on vinyl for the obvious reasons but from the DIY feel of the early singles through the Nick Knight / Peter Saville years right up to the Bloodsports singles - my personal favourite set of covers - it’s a pretty wonderful collection of imagery and for the most part hold an emotional coherence both with each other and the music inside.As frivolous as it seems I’m delighted with this set and look forward to dipping in and out of it in a nonlinear way in the future. Now if only I could get a 7" of Outsiders to pop in the back..
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Title: Suede: Night Thoughts.
Published: 2016-01-26 08:32:05
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[gallery]nIf Bloodsports is increasingly looking like the album equivalent of a soft launch then Night Thoughts is surely the ‘difficult second album’ and it is immediately tempting, irresistible in fact, to pit it against their second album proper. It’s irresistible not just because in that strangely addictive past-time of ranking albums against each other Dog Man Star is surely the suede album any other hopes to topple but also because from the first few opening strings there is clearly more than a little lineage between the two. Make no mistake, these are very different records but Night Thoughts is peppered with moments and motifs - some elegant, some cheeky - that echo the earlier album and it would be wilful to ignore that. Musically this is a stronger and more fully formed creature than anyone might have expected and sonically it stands head and shoulders against the majority of their back catalogue. I can’t think of another suede album that could possibly have been presented as a 50 minute instrumental as this is on the deluxe release without sounding like some kind of indie karaoke compilation but this is a lovingly and lushly soundscaped piece of work that holds up remarkably well even in that format. All of which makes this feel not only like a great record but like the sound of a band who - perhaps for the first time since the debut - are working together as a band and bringing experience gained individually in the hiatus years back to the collective table. In many ways this is an archetypal suede record but in others it is also something different - something more refined, more fleshed out and offers the exciting prospect of them stretching into other new and interesting places in the future.Whilst everyone seems terribly scared to say the words 'concept album’ out loud these days I’m not sure what else you call 12 songs that flow together, often gaplesly, with an overarching theme and which are presented with a full-length art-movie as visual accompaniment. Perhaps 'concept album’ suggests too much of a plot or political point to be made and indeed whilst the beautifully brutal film, directed by Roger Sargent, has a clear storyline the album itself is more oblique.The lyrics, whilst occasionally straying into familiar territory are by and large some of the best Brett Anderson has written. Although they have a general romanticism and an open-endedness that allow for multiple interpretations this is probably the first body of work he has produced since the start of his solo career that doesn’t largely consist of, as one reviewer put it, 'singing to portraits of women’. Having evolved over the years from a diarist of low-rent suburban glamour into something more akin to a misanthropic and occasionally sinister Byron it never feels like a volte face. But it is certainly, and rightly, an evolution. As an album that was always intended to be played as one piece, it now seems in retrospect almost butchery to have carved up portions of it for release as singles. The decision to lead with the more tonally upbeat tracks probably also did a disservice to the album, the film and indeed the tracks themselves. If a song like Like Kids feels fun but somewhat lightweight as a single, within the album it bursts through like a desperately needed moment of joy. So much of this album works intrinsically as part of the album that it is hard to listen to without listening to it all - and in that sense it is certainly their most challenging, but rewarding, release. Bass player Mat Osman recently joked in an interview that “You should always be dangerously close to pretentious” and this album certainly teeters, perhaps even nose dives, over the edge. But for me these are the moments that this band has always been at it’s best - when nosediving over the edge into a delicious, bombastic, histrionic vat of pretension.—-When You Are YoungBeginning with a lush and threatening string arrangement before collapsing in on itself through strangled sounding children’s voices into a tribal drum and a soaring vocal, this is an opening track that tells you to sit the fuck down and pay attention. Haunting, nostalgic and intense.OutsidersA standout track since it was released as the first single it batters in after the opening number and immediately sets out how well this album has been pieced together. A driving, classic suede chorus with a wonderfully dark sounding verse.No TomorrowA peppy, glam sounding banger about chronic depression. How suede.Pale SnowOne of the most pleasing transitions on the record for me is the shift from No Tomorrow into this affecting little vignette. At just over two and a half minutes (a chunk of which is ethereal, spacey, synth based instrumental) and with two vocal sections that seem almost unrelated it’s a song that on it’s own makes little sense but as part of the larger piece of the album is a powerful moment. I Don’t Know How To Reach YouOstensibly about the generational communication gap viewed from both sides it could as easily be read as a song about any other kind of communication breakdown. There is a pretty spectacular guitar solo in the middle of this and a truly epic end section with Brett wailing in layered vocals over and over on top of squealing guitars, noisy synths and banging drums.What I’m Trying To Tell You A very odd, louche, funky, slightly Franz Ferdinand / Roxy Music sounding track - the lyrics of which appear to be mainly a shopping list of self loathing. There is also a spoken bridge where Brett channels Neil Tennant and a tempo that borders worryingly on disco. Everything about this song on paper sounds like a horrible idea but it somehow pulls it off perfectly. It even ends with the snarkiest set of 'la-la-la’s I’ve heard, tipping right over from self referential to completely taking the piss. TightropeA classic suede ballad in the way that only suede do - complete with that glorious thing of Brett singing right on the edge of his register lending it a wonderfully cracked and desperate feeling.Learning To BeBeginning with an eerie and indecipherable sample of a child’s voice this is another delicate bridging piece similar to Pale Snow. Sweet if slightly elegiac it ends with a burst of synths, a young woman singing a lullaby over samples of rain and radio noise, and is finally punctured by a frankly terrifying, distorted child’s cry.Like KidsBy which point you really need a good old fashioned pop song.I Can’t Give Her What She WantsThere’s definitely a recurring theme on the album of songs about the inability to communicate with people and this is another seemingly in that vein. It does however have some extremely dark lyrics (most notably ’the keys are falling from her coat, as I weave my fingers round her perfumed throat’) that make the chorus start to sound much less about reaching out to someone than about shutting them up. Indeed it was apparently originally a song more obviously about murder but was dialled back somewhat in the final version. I’m more than a little curious to know what the 'dialled up’ version was like! Wonderfully sinister.I suspect that it’s the slightly meandering, vocal led ballads like this that those jumping directly from earlier suede albums will struggle with most but as a continuation of Brett’s solo work and the latter half of Bloodsports it’s a sound they are starting to cement as a new trademark. Sometimes it works more successfully than others and this is possibly the only track on Night Thoughts that I feel could have done with an extra push. Lyrically it’s strong but melodically it doesn’t quite hit it out of the park. When You Were YoungA brief but tonally darker and more imposing reprise of the opening track that serves as perfect thematic wrapper for the album. Nostalgia is not exactly the word in the end, with all it’s rosy connotations - perhaps more like looking down the wrong end of a telescope at childhood.The Fur and the FeathersWhatever you do, life happens. A cynical but oddly optimistic acknowledgement of the inevitability of love, hate, birth, death and everything in between. A song that is at once utterly weary but is also the sound of irrepressible blood pumping. This is a big, bombastic ballad that ends with an absolutely outstanding, epic, High Rise via Pink Floyd, falsetto strewn crescendo.ARTIST: SuedeTITLE: Night ThoughtsMOOD: What keeps Brett Anderson awake at night.
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Title: Bloodsports.
Published: 2016-01-17 11:07:44
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[gallery]nI’m not going to re-review Bloodsports properly since the time since release doesn’t really warrant it but I will add a few thoughts now that I’ve lived with it for a couple of years. You can read my original review here for the full track by track.When the band reformed I was sceptical and somewhat fearful and (to my now bitter regret) didn’t go to the first set of live shows. They may not have critically and musically ended on a high note but the farewell tour had been fittingly emotional and in the intervening years Brett had produced some extremely satisfying solo work - including most recently Black Rainbows an album which I believe sits comfortably at the top end of his career. I hadn’t been wowed by Here Come The Tears and for many of the reasons that reformations make me nervous - it felt mannered, polite and too much like the sound Brett and Bernard trying not to step on each others toes. At best I expected the reformation to be weak and at worst I feared it would be embarrassing. While the album shows at Brixton certainly disproved any fears I had about their capabilities on stage I was still left with the nagging concern that they would become one of those bands looping around the country playing the old songs to an ever-aging crowd.When Bloodsports was released I approached it with an optimistic caution and was rewarded with an album that although not instant is excellent. My original review gave it a 9/10 and while some songs have grown on me more (most notably Sabotage and It Starts and Ends With You) I will happily stick by that giving it an easy third place slot in my album rating after Dog Man Star and the debut. The tour and the collection of remarkably good b-sides that came out with the singles sealed the deal and since then I have been more excited by the band than I have been since the mid 90s. How wonderfully surprising. So, on a final note:Overall: 9/10Crib notes: A band flexing their muscles and finding that they can still right hook pretty good. The endless, bloody game. Listen to it when: Falling in love, falling out of love.In a fantasy world I would: not do much really. It’s tempting to switch out It Starts and Ends With You for the frankly gorgeous b-side Falling Planes but I suspect that would upset the balance of the album.
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Title: A New Morning
Published: 2016-01-17 10:44:51
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[gallery]nReview: A New Morning - suedeA New Morning is, it would appear, unanimously the least liked suede album by both fans and band alike. Least liked is putting it somewhat politely in fact - credited as the reason the band split up for nearly a decade it has been thrown under the bus in recent press with a spectacular vigour and described as, amongst other things, bland, disappointing and most succinctly by Mat ‘shit’.I’d be lying if I said when this came out it set my world on fire but did I hate it? No, not at all. I actually really rather liked it, and still do. I get a little sad for it every time it’s vilified but I do understand why. It’s a safe record, a comfortable old slippers record - and whatever any of the previous four were they were never that. While there are some definite gems in the b-sides for this era they are also some of the nadir moments of their output (with a couple being indefensibly bad) and it’s hard not to hear the period in retrospect as the sound of a band without much gas left in their tank.At some point mid-way through the writing process there was a (now exiled to a forgotten corridor of history) line-up change as Neil left due to illness and Alex Lee joined - and between that, Brett suddenly adopting a Gallagheresque rasp and a distinct mood shift to something somewhat prosaic in tone there is a general feeling that it’s not quite ‘suede’. The era’s imagery included casual clothing, sun-streamed windows, blonde hair (!) and greenery. Combined with a lead single called ‘Positivity’ I suppose it seemed ‘just not cricket’ to a lot of fans. In the liner notes on the re-issue along with saying he basically wishes it hadn’t been released Brett describes it as them trying to ‘destroy their own myth’ and for me, perhaps because of this, while the album without doubt has the general vibe of the recently sober it somehow still manages to come off as not quite happy, not quite sad. A bit like someone telling you they are fine when it’s obvious they’re not.At the time, after Head Music, I was - I would not go as far as to say to say a casual fan but my passion for the band was definitely coasting a little and it was, ironically, the fact that I did like this album a lot that made me go back and revisit Head Music again in the end. A New Morning may not be their best work but it has it’s moments and I am personally glad they released it even if they’re not.But I never want to hear UFO again as long as I live.Positivity‘and the morning is for youand the air is freeand the birds sing for youand your positivity’Not terrible, not great. Ridiculous video that almost tips into so bad it’s good.5/10—Obsessions'Obsession is like sex, it’s simple and complex’I love this song. Nice chuggy single-worthy track.Brett is a bit obsessed with obsession, I’m a bit obsessed with Brett’s obsession with obsession…9/10—Lonely Girls'Julia dreams while she’s typing awayJackie kills time while the company paysTracy still hears 808 ringing in her brain’This one is very reminiscent of some of the Coming Up era b-sides. I like the sound of the song, the melody and instrumentation but the lyrics feel overly familiar and it probably is more of a b-side standard than an album track.6/10—Lost In Tv'I see you in my lifeI see you on the screenAn ascending socialiteOrbiting the scene’This song barely sounds like something I recognise as 'suede’ but I’ve always loved it. A lovely melodic mid-tempo. There are a few tracks on the album where the alarming new Brett-voice (40 a day, bit butch) works well and this is one of them despite, or maybe because of it’s otherwise sweetness.8/10—Beautiful Loser'Your brain is drip-connected to the satelliteYour heart is not a part of your brainAesthetics and inventions well they pass you byAnd complicate your day’This is another chuggy little rock song in a similar vein to Obsessions but more reminiscent of some of Coming Up. It has some nice staccato rhyming and a bit of bite - maybe the song on the album that gets closest to a more classic suede 'rock’ song.7/10—Streelife'Street life into the night with the syncopated melodies’Yeah, this one is pretty terrible. Not so bad I have to run to turn it off but that’s about all I can say for it.. 5/10—Astrogirl'A strange experience has startedBetween her molecules and meIt’s like disease between us formingFrom obsolete technology’Lovely, romantic little ballad very reminiscent of the Coming up era slowies. There’s some great lyrics in this song too. A lazy, optimistic songs about the value of human connection.7/10—Untitled'Will you be my lover?Will you be the one?Will you be like no other?For how long?’There is a group of tracks on this album - this, '…Morning’, 'When The Rain Falls’ and 'Oceans’ that form the backbone of what I always feel the album should have / could have been. They are the songs that (vocal technique aside) dovetail more obviously into some of Brett’s solo work and are down tempo, sparser and less peppered with the lyrical ticks that haunt some of the later suede and Tears songs. This is not the best of them but it’s a song I enjoy a lot particularly as part of this ‘suite’ of songs.nnThe demo of this track is also very beautiful with some really lovely vocal harmonies and I think better on the whole than the final album version. 8/10—…Morning'Sleepy head get out of bed’This, to me, is the touchstone for what this album was probably intended to sound like. A sweetly hopeful little vignette - the sound of opening the curtains, letting the light in and stretching into the day..8/10—One Hit to The Body'I don’t need you to be sorryI just wanted you to knowThat this is one hit to the bodyOne hit to the soulOne hit to the body that won’t show’I’ve always loved this song - it used to be a favourite of mine for putting on playlists for people. Along with Lost In TV it’s another song that sounds very far from a typical suede sound but it’s a great little track with a bitter but defiant spirit.8/10—When The Rain Falls'When all the world looks like AtlantisAnd cars sit rusting in the drivesJust step outside and hit the concrete pavementAs the rain falls down for you and I’This perhaps tips slightly into overly-prosaic sounding for my liking and some of the lyrics are best not listened to too closely but it rescues itself from being insufferable and comes out the other side as a pleasant little song. The Stanbridge demo is much better with a darker tone and a sadly missing intro that would have given it at least another 2/10 points from me.7/10—Oceans'We sit and rot hereresenting each yearWill you go,Will you go?’A haunting, classic suede weepy and the very definition of a hidden gem. One of my favourite suede songs which never fails to make me tearful relegated to the arse end of the album no-one likes. SADFACE. Ostensibly about the protracted, incremental disintegration of a relationship neither party wants to call quits on, it’s hard not to imagine it as metaphor for the band itself at the time now.‘We sing the old songs, the beat box plays on..’10/10—Overall Score: 7/10Crib notes: neither as good as it should have been or as bad as everyone thinks. Not the end in the end.Listen to it when: Saturday morning with coffee and the paper.In a fantasy world I would: Change When The Rain Falls and Untitled for their demos, ditch Positivity, Lonely Girls and Streetlife and switch in b-sides Simon, Cheap and Campfire Song. Also, final word - I have to give a shoutout for Attitude / Golden Gun the great little standalone single release that came out to to promote them er.. splitting up.. (!) Poor ‘Attitude’ :/
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Title: Blackstar.
Published: 2016-01-12 09:47:49
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[gallery]nSo, I had been planning to review Blackstar this week but I can’t. Sorry. Just go and listen to it will you.
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Title: Head Music.
Published: 2016-01-09 11:46:40
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[gallery]nReview: Head Music - suedeI hated this album when it came out, to the point that I gave my copy away after all of about two listens. However reviewing it again now there is a lot to like - it’s got it’s flaws but Head Music is by no means a bad album. nnI think there were a few different things that contributed to my visceral reaction at the time but primarily it suffered from the weight of expectation. Coming Up had been a huge success for the band and the pre release campaign for Head Music was insane, including things like all HMV stores being renamed for launch day. The album also has a sonic pallet that no one was quite ready for from them at that time (reggae dub electro suede?). nnThe other notable factor was that the fact that the further into the Head Music campaign it got the less the band seemed to want to be there either. I won’t rake over it here because we all know now in hindsight why that was but even at the time I was aware that while he brushed up well for the videos Brett was beginning to look seriously out of it. I found it increasingly unsettling watching interviews and live performances from that period and in many cases still do now. I did see them live twice during the era - once was as good as usual but once was the only time I’ve ever not enjoyed them live. I weirdly bought all the singles (you can’t keep a good fangirl down I guess) so it wasn’t a full on ‘I’m done with you’ moment - not like that time I tore down all my Bros posters in one day. But this was definitely the period in which I felt least engaged with the band in general.There were a few tracks I listened to in the intervening time but it wasn’t until several years later after the release of A New Morning that I gave it a proper go again and found to my surprise that I really liked it. At a different point in my life and all of the surrounding mess out of the way I felt very differently about it. I now listen to it (or almost all of it at least) on a fairly regular basis. It’s a bit of a game of two halves and there is some less than stellar stuff on it but far from the 'difficult’ listen I pigeon holed it as at the time it’s also brimming with some of their best songs. There a few criminally neglected b-sides (I feel like every fan has their own fantasy version of Head Music swapping in some of the b-sides) and it was a divisive album for fans and the press at the time so I’m guessing I’m not the only one who bristled at this unexpected version of suede. But all in I think history has been kind to this record and it stands up surprisingly well today. Electricity'We got a love like AC/DC’I can’t really get excited about this track I’m afraid. It’s a very specific kind of suede song that I’ve never been so keen on (and that ironically peppered the Tears album) and while it’s not terrible it’s just very 'whatever’.5/10—-Savoire Faire'And she got everything she needsHarmony and ecstasyAnd she got pretty, pretty feetPainted toes and soft, soft solesAnd she got flowers in her hairDaffodils from windowsills’I love this track. I swear I’m not just trying to be obtuse since it tends to be at the epicenter of any criticisms of the album - mainly due to that opening lyric which people are weirdly fixated on. Much like Madonna’s Soy Latte I’m a bit baffled as to how anyone could take it seriously but it’s also frustrating because I actually love the lyrics in the song in general. It has a dreamy, sweet, trippy-hippy vibe and never fails to put a smile on my face. 9/10—-Can’t Get Enough'I feel real now walking like a woman and talking like a stone age man’This is for me probably their best pure pop single. A perfect example of the thuggish swagger that only suede do so well. 'Talking like sugar and shaking that stuff.’10/10—-Everything Will Flow'Life is just a lullaby’Another glorious single. I understand why a lot of people don’t like this since it’s so insanely radio-friendly and .. gasp .. optimistic but I think it’s beautiful. The woozy guitar line in the instrumental section particularly just transports me to a warm sunny place where everything will be ok. 9/10—-Down'And the ambulances sigh that you’re downAnd the traffic speeding by says you’re downAnd the people in your mind, they say you’re down and you’re down’This truly is an underrated gem. Heartbreakingly melancholic and one of the most elegant expressions of the mental disconnect that can happen when, as Dolly once put it, 'sometimes without knowing it I touch my face and find it wet’. This is one of those songs that if I play it at the wrong time will never fail to make me weepy.9/10—-She’s In Fashion'And if she tells you two is oneThen two is one my loveAnd if she tells you you should knowThen you should know my love’For me this track is basically Coming Up without the annoying production. It’s arguably edging towards the wrong side of radio-friendly (and was never off the TV as incidental music at the time) but it rescues itself from the brink for me and I do enjoy it. I also adore the lyric 'she’s the colour of a magazine’.7/10—-Asbestos'Scheming like a schoolboywatching you boycome in and lets be friends’Head Music is a bit of a 'bops up top’ affair and this is the point that it left turns into the stuff that people most commonly think of when they recall the album. I was completely ambivalent to this at the time but I really like it now, It’s got a nice mellow groove. There’s definitely a feeling on this album of Brett playing with the way words sound rather than just what they mean and there’s some lovely examples on this like 'listening to Lulu, Amazulu’. Some lovely bluesy brass towards the end too.8/10—-Head Music'Give me head, give me head, give me head music instead’Once you get over the awfulness/brilliance of the fact that this entire song is wrapped around a ridiculous innuendo it’s a pleasant if not earth shattering little number.6.5/10—-Elephant Man'We love that satisfying rattling crashThe sound of registers full of cashWe’ll be all over your town like a rashWe’ll steal your children and smoke all your hash’The most hated suede album track? It certainly seems to be the butt of the most jokes. I really like it personally - sort of agro-pop Fall-lite. But then I’m a sucker for bands writing songs about their own egos.8/10—-H-Fi'She and me together speed through space and time’This one gets a bit lost along the way I think. It has potential but ends up a bit sludgy and doesn’t really go anywhere. Not awful or annoying but not much of anything.6/10—-Indian Strings'Images of violence fill up my mindAnd you see the silence, feel it insideAnd you’ll see my heart is broke in twoCos I’ve seen the real you’I hated this at the time, I love it now. A beautiful, sad little song and another hidden gem. I find it quite moving and those wonderful woozy instrumentals make it feel like a sort of moody bookend to Everything Will Flow in my mind.8/10—-He’s Gone'Tears on a pillowEyes on the phoneYou pour all the love that you keep insideInto a songLike 'He’s Gone’’A classic suede ballad easily as good as many of the more cherished tracks from the earlier albums. Live versions always make my eyes water a wee bit.9/10—-Crack In The Union Jack'Another day, another lowAnother midday TV show’The only song on the album I can’t listen to. The melody is pleasant enough but the lyrics make me want to crawl into a foetal ball and not come out until it’s stopped. Sorry Brett.4/10Overall score: an 8/10 with a 9/10 desperately trying to get outCrib notes: When it’s good it’s very, very good but when it’s bad it’s awful. Not actually as stupid as a mouse.Listen to it when: Optimistic but prone to melancholy. In a fantasy world I would: Swap out Electricity, Hi-Fi and Crack In The Union Jack for b-sides Heroin (why that song was a b-side I will never understand) Popstar and the beautiful instrumental track Seascape.
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Title: Dog Man Star.
Published: 2016-01-06 22:33:00
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So, with just over two weeks before Night Thoughts is released I’ve decided to go back and review each of the previous albums as I feel about them now - which in some cases has changed quite a bit over the years. I am however not going to write full reviews for the first two because a) I’m not sure I have much to say that hasn’t been said before a million times over by many other people and b) quite honestly no one wants to read that kind of sycophancy! So instead as a brief summation I’ll say that whilst there are arguments to be made for certain b-sides (Painted People and Killing of a Flashboy most notably for each album for me) both albums as they stand are damn near perfect to my ear. Everyone has those one or two albums that have a profound impact on them at a young age and these were mine. How can you ever be truly objective about the first great love of your life? ;)All in however I would rate the debut a brash but beautiful 9/10 and Dog Man Star an insert hyperbolic phrase here 10/10. My reviews for the other albums should hopefully be more interesting though as I do have more ups and downs and thoughts to share! I will go in chronological order starting with Coming Up at some point in the next few days and if I have time I may take a look and Sci-Fi Lullabies and the b-sides featured on the re-issues too..There will be some pot holes along the way but it will be a marvelous journey all the same..
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Title: Goodbye 2015.
Published: 2016-01-04 19:02:54
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[gallery]nTop 10 Albums 2014nnn1/ Ghostface Killah - Twelve reasons to die IIn2/ Miley Cyrus - Miley and her dead petzn3/ Chemical brothers - Born in the echoesn4/ Brandon Flowers - The desired effectn5/ Tame Impala - Currentsn6/ Lana Del Rey - Honeymoonn7/ Marilyn Manson - The pale emperorn8/ Madonna - Rebel Heartn9/ FFSn10/ In This Moment - Rise of the blood legion (bit of a cheat as it’s a greatest hits but I only just discovered them last year)
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Title: Rebel Heart.
Published: 2015-12-21 09:46:33
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[gallery]nI’m not going to write an in depth review because my brain is fried but Madonna really blew my expectations out of the water last night. nnI was excited for the show when I bought the ticket and I love the album but I’ll be honest by the time it rolled around I was pretty meh about it. I’m so, so glad I went. She even got me up and dancing in the face of vertigo. nnThe staging and set pieces were great and all that (especially the obligatory religious section at the start) but she was just a joy to watch. I don’t think I ever expected see a Madonna tour where the highlights were just her singing on a stage with little else going on. Watching her skip around like a 15 year old to Like A Virgin or sit girlishly swinging one foot whilst singing Edith Piaf were things that just shouldn’t work - but they so, so did. Also, some genuinely wonderful live vocals. Who knew?nnThe new material felt solid amongst the hits and in many cases were stand out highlights. Madonna will not go quietly into heritage act status and it was great to see the crowd go genuinely wild for several of the Rebel Heart tracks.nnMuch will be made of her coming on late and having the power shut off on her and whilst I’m generally in the ‘just get onstage on time’ camp watching her come back on to perform Holiday with the lights up and no mic whilst the whole audience sang along was an A grade Pop Moment that I will cherish (pun intended) forever.nnThe last tour was fun in a big pop show way but this one for me was really special. Bitch made us wait but my god she was worth it.
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Title: Love shows in the dog ears and scratches.
Published: 2015-12-09 07:53:14
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Love shows in the dog ears and scratches.Ten, fifteen years ago when I was going through an evangelical digitisation and minimalisation phase I would have disagreed strongly with this piece but in recent years I have found myself falling back in love with physical media all over again.nnLike the author I discovered so many delights in my parents record and book collections and as an adult have learned to reapreciate the beauty of putting the needle down at the start of the record and listening until the end - metaphorically and literally. nnWhere once I had a collection of magazine clippings now I have a pinterest board and he is right, it’s not the same. It’s not the fact it’s printed that makes it special, it’s not even the keeping hold of it - it’s the wearing down of love. The blue tak marks, the creases, the finger prints, the glorious decline of an object that has been important to you.nnIn truth that period of material abstinence did me a lot of good because I was likely on my way to becoming if not clinically a hoarder then something just a bit too close for comfort. Now I find myself able to be more selective - I own the things I truly love, that mean something to me. The things that I would like someone else to discover by poking around in my collection one day.
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Title: I picked up my crown, put it back on my head. [Review: Rebel Heart by Madonna]
Published: 2015-03-13 12:33:52
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Despite being a lifelong fan Madonna’s last two albums have been, if not terrible, at least a case of lowering expectations for me so I will freely admit that my hopes for her most recent release ‘Rebel Heart’ were not high. Perhaps that’s why on my first listen I came away with with a verdict of ‘ok, but nothing special’. However unlike it’s predecessor MDNA (you can read my review of it at the time here) Rebel Heart is a grower not a show-er. Where MDNA started as a force-yourself-to-listen-to-it-because-it’s-Madonna 6.5/10 for me (and, in all honesty, three years later has ended with me only being able to listen to a few tracks from it) Rebel Heart took just a few spins to become one of those albums that I can’t stop playing. The biggest difference for me between this and MDNA is that it feels well crafted, well considered and cohesive. It also feels like an album made by an intelligent, functioning adult - by which I mean when there are saucy bits, bratty bits or sweary bits that make me guffaw out loud it feels finally like I am laughing with not at her again.Along with the ‘outrageous’ it’s worth pointing out that the ‘heart’ in Rebel Heart is very much present too. In fact for me this is her first album since American Life to offer genuinely heartfelt emotion and vulnerability. MDNA and Hard candy both had flashes of it but always with a caveat or a wink. Here there are many moments I find moving without feeling shoe-horned in or like they occupy the place of the obligatory label-required ballad. There are issues with the album - there are a few duff tracks (most of which are frustratingly lumped together at the start of the album) and most obviously, and sadly, her voice itself. She has in recent years lost much of the warmth, depth and tone to her vocal range that made it so beautiful and she now generally sounds rather shrill, thin and pitchy on most songs. There are flashes of what she is still capable of throughout the record but in most cases, on a technical level, it could be any of the big pop girls - and at times, arguably it would sound better if it were.That said, what Rebel Heart does give us once again that has been missing for so long is a big, high voltage kick of the Madonna spirit - saucy, smart, irreverent, iconic, and frequently ironic. And for that reason alone it really could be no-one else. Where only a few years ago she seemed desperate and aimless I feel like she has thankfully found her feet again - her sense of humour and soul with it. Rebel Heart is a very good record in it’s own right but also, almost more thrillingly, leaves me once more properly excited to see what she produces in the future. Something which I now confess (bless myself and genuflect) I thought was gone for good.Track by track1. Living For Love - 6/10Why do I hardly ever like anyone’s first single? I find artists often have a habit of releasing underwhelmingly ‘safe’ tracks as lead singles only for there to be a wealth of more exciting material on the album. No-one seems to be immune to this from Bowie to Britney and Living for Love is another one of those for me. It’s not a terrible song and the backing vocals give it some enjoyable flourish but it’s at best a mid-range album track for me and no doubt I will come to love it much more as that than I do at the moment. That said, I will probably never be able to listen to it without visualising that moment at the Brits :/2. Devil Pray - 6/10I feel like I should like this song more than I do as it’s reminiscent of some of my favourite songs on Music but it just doesn’t quite hit the spot somehow. 3. Ghosttown - 8/10One of the few songs on the album where we get glorious chunks of thevoice we grew up loving. Melodic, melancholic and catchy in the right places.This is also set to be the second single, a great choice I think.n4. Unapologetic Bitch - 4/10This is the only track on the albumnthat plumbs similar depths to MDNA for me and has the same icky ‘dancing withnthe kidz’ vibe that put me off most of that album. Plus it’s a bit UB40.n5. Illuminati - 5/10A fun and lyrically amusing track butnultimately musically unsatisfying – should provide for some excellent tournimagery though. n6. Bitch I’m Madonna - 10/10To say this song is divisive amongnfans would be an understatement but it’s one of the album highlights for me andnthe only of the teaser tracks I played constantly before the album release. Tonme this song is everything MDNA attempted but done properly – a brash, ballsy, bangernwith a cheeky sense of humour. It, unlike similar tracks on MDNA, harnesses bothnher current vocal range and her featured artist as highlights rather than hindrances.nPlus there is some excellent yelling. And Nicki does this ‘ooft’ noise that isnone of my favourite sounds of the year. n7. Hold Tight - 7/10A pretty, melodic mid-tempo with annanthemic chorus that for me achieves a similar feeling to Living For Love more successfully.n8. Joan Of Arc - 7/10One of those rare moments likenDrowned World or Easy Ride where we are allowed to peek behind the curtain andnsee that maybe she is actually ‘only human’ after all. A beautiful song that,nalthough it will likely never happen, I think could make a great late-campaign single.n9. Iconic - 9/10One of the most addictive tracks onnthe album for me. A massive, empowering stomper. This is also one of the songsnthat signals the (almost impossible to describe) shift from dance pop thatnfeels like it’s struggling to be ‘cool’ to a sound which feels far more effortlesslyncurrent as well as somewhat tougher and more confrontational. n10. HeartBreak City - 8/10It’s great to hear genuine emotion innher delivery again and this song has it in bags - bitter, sad, regretful and anothernexcellent mid-tempo, anthemic almost-ballad.n11. Body Shop - 10/10The absolute stand out track on thenalbum for me. So totally unexpected and really quite unlike anything she’s donenbefore - though the closest reference points for me might be some moments of Eroticanor Music. Her voice sounds wonderful, wistful and intimate and I dream of ever gettingnan entire album of songs of this level of ingenuity and sensuality from hernagain. Beautiful.n12. Holy Water - 8/10One of those songs that seems utterlynawful until you realise halfway through that’s it’s completely won you over withnits stupidity and sleaze. Hilarious in all the right ways.n13. Inside Out - 8/10One of my first favourite songs onnthe album – catchy and melodic again with the shade of melancholy that runsnthrough most of Rebel Heart.n14. Wash All Over Me - 9/10A beautiful and slightly funerealnballad that somehow ends up feeling far more uplifting than it should. I can’tnhelp thinking it would make a wonderful mashup with Rain.n15. Best Night - 7/10There are a clutch of songs on this albumnthat call to mind the Erotica album and on this track it seems to be a knowingnhat-tip on her part, particularly during the spoken section. A very wellncrafted and more-ish album track.16. Veni Vidi Vici - 9/10I just can’t get enough of this song.nBeing as lyrically self-referential as this can go either way but she pulls itnoff and for some reason I actually find the chorus strangely moving. Absolutelyncannot wait to see this one live.n17. S.E.X. - 8/10Madonna has spoken quite openly over thenlast year or two about her horror at the media treatment of women in her age bracketnand most specifically the notion that they shouldn’t be sexual or sexualised. While this is ancomplex issue that I don’t want to tangent into here I will say this - If you’rengoing to be our ambassador for screwing after 50 Madge then this is how to donit. Continuing the trend on this album of managing finally again to be sexualnin a way that reads as ‘adult’ rather than simply desperate or puerile, I feelnlike she has at last struck the right balance of ‘fuck you’ and ‘fuck me’.nLet me caveat that by saying that there is a tendency to forget that she hasnalways been somewhat puerile (even on the aforementioned Erotica she served usnthat unforgettable Colonel Sanders line) however in later years it has oftennfelt to me that she was trying to be shocking whilst in fact wimping out ofnever really going beyond playful or camp. All innuendo and no follow through ifnyou will. What I love about this song is that it actually is quite dirty. And itnsounds dirty. Yes, there is humour in it – but it’s definitely a sleaze jamntoo. So now I’m thinking SEX book v2.0? That really would be fabulously shocking..n18. Messiah - 8/10A swooning, slightly gothic unrequited-lovensong with some of the better lyrics on the album.n19. Rebel Heart - 8/10 A lovely, catchy salve at the end of the album and another surprisinglynhonest piece of self-reflection that leaves me feeling all kinds of warm andnfuzzy for our lady and her Rebel Heart.nnnnnn.Overall score: 8/10 (and nudging towards an 8.5 as the days go by)
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Title: My Movies of the year.
Published: 2013-12-21 15:43:00
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Here are my top movies and movie moments of 2013 :)nBefore you get angry at something you can’t believe I’ve not mentioned please check my list of films that I haven’t managed to see yet at the bottom in case it’s on there!nThe PaperboynGravitynStokernTrancenLes MiserablenStar Trek Into DarknessnBehind the candelabranRobot and FranknWreck It RalphnDjango UnchainednKill Your DarlingsnAntiviralnFrozenn—nnBetter than expectednWorld War ZnAlan Partridge Alpha PapanOblivionnAmerican MarynThe Hunger Games: Catching FirenNow You See MenThe Fifth EstatenWarm BodiesnThe InternshipnByzantiumnI give it a yearn—nnBiggest SurprisenRobot & Frankn—nnWorse than expectednOz the great and powerfulnThe Great GatsbynSide Effectsn—nnBiggest DisappointmentnMan of Steeln—nnBiggest ReliefnThe Hunger Games: Catching Firen—nnBest PerformancenMichael Douglas - Behind the Candelbran—nnCan’t believe I missed these (in no order)nZero Dark ThirtynMonsters UniversitynFlightnHitchcocknThis is 40nCloud AtlasnWelcome to the punchnSpring BreakersnPlace beyond the pinesnMudnElysiumnLovelacenFilthnHow I live NownMachete KillsnPhilomenanSaving Mr BanksnSecret Life of Walter Mitty n—nnOnly just outnAmerican HustlenAnchorman2
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Title: Music Review - My Best of 2013
Published: 2013-12-11 13:42:00
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This year has been a bit of a belter for me music-wise with some great releases from heavyweights and old favourites as well as a few new acts and surprises. nI hate trying to do proper numbered top tens so instead I’ve just given my favourites in no particular order but split out into to broader categories of ratings.nTop of the Pops(my 9 & 10 out of 10 albums - ‘zomg amazing’)nThe Next Day - David BowieYeezus - Kanye WestBangerz - Miley CyrusArtpop - Lady GagaBloodsports - suedeRandom Access Memories - Daft PunkThe Big Dream - David LynchnBest of the Rest(7 & 8 out of 10 - 'bloody good but not perfect’)nThe Minutes - Alison MoyetExile - HurtsTales of Us - GoldfrappDays are Gone - HaimPale Green Ghosts - John GrantKiss Land - The WeekendSeasons of Your Day - Mazzy StarInnocents - MobyThree - Charlotte ChurchDead Ends - The Rumour Said FirenCould do better(6 & 7 out of 10 ratings - 'a few belters and a bunch of fillers’)nSwings Both Ways - Robbie WilliamsThe Marshall Mathers LP2 - EminemRewind The Film - Manic Street PreachersCloser To The Truth - CherGreat song but the album was a bit rubbishRoar - Katy PerryAnything Could Happen - Ellie GouldingNew act that deserves a mention on the basis of one song aloneTake Me to Church - HoziernMan of the yearDavid Bowie - For being the best at keeping a secret ever.Woman of the yearMiley Cyrus - For cultural whiplash due to her unexpected smackdown on the pop landscapePerformance of the yearArtpop at Swinefest - Lady GagaBecause sometimes the simplest move is right.nn'Moment’ of the yearWrecking Ball - Miley CyrusFor straddling the zeitgeist as well as the ball.n Gig of the yearSuede - Glasgow BarrowlandsBecause that’s where I go, and that’s what I do..nnMost anticipated for 2014Ultraviolence - Lana Del ReyArtpop volume 2? - Could just be a scurrilous rumourMore suede please!
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Title: Movie Review - The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Published: 2013-11-30 00:14:00
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nI absolutely loved the Hunger Games books when I read them (you can see my review of the series here if you like) but never quite mustered myself to watch the first film. The trailers left me a little cold - or to be more accurate not cold enough - and having already been through the initially torturous process of learning to love the Potter movies I didn’t feel quite ready to sacrifice another fandom at the alter of the adaptation. However I had heard nothing but good about the sequel Catching Fire over the last week or two so I decided to man up and go and see it. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised.nLet’s get my kvetches out of the way first - as predicted all three of the main protagonists are far too pretty and healthy looking. You’ve been down the mines all year have you Gale? That’s funny because you look like you’ve been modelling Levis in a 50s garage. And speaking of Gale - actually why bother? A combination of a chronically underwritten character and an actor who might has well have been a piece of handsomely carved oak meant I really couldn’t care less about him. In fact I generally just forgot he existed. I realise he had a smaller part in the second book too but still, a bit of a waste.nOn the other hand I thought Josh Hutcherson was really well cast as Peeta and once I got over her too-pretty face Jennifer Lawrence was actually far steelier and closer to ‘my’ Katniss than I had expected. Sam Claflin as Finnick Odair and Jena Malone as Johanna Mason were a treat too.nThe biggest surprise for me was that even at a 12A it manages to quite effectively capture the brutality of the books. And although I felt it didn’t always fully realise the larger feeling of desperation out-with the tributes themselves they have more time to expand on that in the next film. Oh, and It made me cry once, but unusually for a movie not at the end.nA little too much lipgloss in the grime for my taste but on the whole a very good adaptationn8/10nn
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Title: Review: Miley Cyrus - Bangerz
Published: 2013-10-20 13:23:00
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nnFor some people an album that uses hashtags in song titles and includes lyrics like ‘SMH, I’m pressing send on you’ will only ever be a sign of the forthcoming apocalypse. But let’s be honest those are not the people BANGERZ was made for. This album is shamelessly zeitgeisty, absolutely of its moment, a living breathing tumblr meme and will undoubtably become one of those time capsule albums that sums up a specific point in the timeline of pop culture. It’s also a damn good record.But before I get down to the boring bit where I talk about the actual songs let’s deal with the giant dancing bear costumes in the room:nYes, I thought that VMAs performance was a car wrecknYes, I think it was absolutely meant to benNo, I don’t think she’s the devil incarnate butnYes, she is having a lot of fun pretending to benYes, this kind of makes her a dick butnYes, I also find it highly entertaining to watchnOh andnYes, I hate the tongue thing because it’s gross (an Americanism suits it best) butnYes, I also kind of love the tongue thing because it’s grossnI’ve always liked my stars to teeter right on the brink of self parody and cartoon. Ginger was my favourite Spice, I like Courtney more than Kurt, Country House is my favourite Blur video, I like Prince Charming more than Dirk Wears White Sox.. I could go on. The point is call it punk, call it privileged brattishness, whatever, I’ll take Miley’s ghetto-dyke posturing and fuck-you dry humping over most of her winsome, disingenuous or just plain dull contemporaries any day because there are no apologies and no get out clauses. If you don’t like it.. well, FU I guess. And more importantly because the bravado and infinitely giffable videos are backed by some really great songs.nnMiley 101nI guess a lot of people in this country really had no idea who she was a few months ago (other than a vague memory of Achy Breaky Heart if you are old enough) but I’ve had my pop-culture magpie eye on her for a while now.For those who don’t know Miley started out as one of those Disney girls like Britney or Christina only she played a character in a TV show called Hanna Montana who was a pop singer, sort of like herself but in a blonde wig. She also played Hanna’s alter ego Miley Stewart who was sort of like her in other ways (a 'down to earth’ Texan girl with brown hair) who also happened to secretly be a pop star. So basically she was playing a version of herself who was also secretly another version of herself whilst also being a Disney star herself with all the pretending that comes with that. Oh, and she also went on a tour billed as starring 'Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus’. Confused? You should be. So yeah, at 15 that’s surely going to fuck you up.nnDon’t give your daughter to the Mouse Mr Cyrus.But contrary to the crib notes most of the reviews are written from this is Miley’s fourth solo album and although she says she considers it her debut-proper since it’s her first truly post-Hannah release it's by no means her first stab at a 'coming of age’ album. That honour would go to the 2010 release Can’t Be Tamed, a patchy record with too much needless autotune but just enough potential that it peaked my interest. The song that hooked me being Robot - a dystopian journey straight through the dark heart of child stardom.nn'You gave me eyes and now I see..’nAlthough certainly her breakup album I am however convinced that Bangerz isn’t Miley’s breakdown album. It’s the perfect storm of a well orchestrated publicity machine and a young woman having a blast with it and - for once - I think calling the shots. This clip of her arriving at the VMAs and throwing a wobbly because her entrance plan had got messed up (she was meant to arrive in a police car) is pretty fascinating stuff. The moment she get’s out of the car and immediately turns on the Miley #BANGERZ 'schtick’ is an illuminating glimpse into just how aware of her persona she is.nnIn a lot of ways it reminds me of the heydays of the Spice Girls blitzkrieg - only with less tits and more tongue.nSo to the music..Miley is an old hand and unlike many of her peers she’s actually pretty talented. In fact one of the most surprising things about Bangerz is how enjoyable her vocal performance is. I’d go so far as to say its a highlight of the record. Her rapping does have such an obvious air of trying on a costume for size that it verges on the ridiculous but self-aware nods to being a 'southern belle’ and so on pull it back from the brink and in the end I find it endearing.The mix of styles covered in the album is unusual and it’s fantastically well put together - although I could do without hearing Mike Will’s name every 30 seconds like a fucking audio watermark. There are some surprising and brave decisions (mixing dubstep and hoedown anyone?) but it pays off and forms a remarkably coherent tracklist. It’s also an album that for being unashamedly mainstream absolutely has it’s own character and feels totally wedded to Miley rather than tacked on to whoever happens to be recording it in the studio.Thematically it’s pretty much half and half break up/fuck you songs and party tracks - occasionally blending together in that 'fuck you I’m going to party instead’ way and although it’s the shallow bits that grab you by the balls the first time round there’s a larger emotional range lurking behind the crazy. Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying it’s The Wall or something but it’s not all twerking and texting either.Out of the standard edition there is only one song that’s close to a skip track for me and if that was replaced by the first of the bonus tracks it would be a full house. Compared to recent albums by Katy Perry, Rihanna, Ke$ha, Nicki Minaj and even Madonna where I only listen to half the tracks at best Bangerz comes out head and shoulders above most of her peer group. In terms of pure, unabashed pop albums only Born This Way has topped it for me in quality and effort in the last few years. In fact removing Gaga from the equation it’s my favourite pop album in a long time.n9/10Track by tracknAdore YounStarting an album promising 'bangerz’ with a slowie is a brave move but it pays off. Adore You reminds me of that Beautiful South lyric 'you can tell a classic ballad by how threatening it gets’. There is something about the claustrophobia of the chorus lyrics 'When you say you love me, know I love you more. When you say you need me, know I need you more.’ that has 'doomed romance’ written all over it. It’s a sad song that thinks it’s happy. n7/10nWe Can’t StopnAs mission statements go 'it’s my mouth and I’ll say what I want to’ is a pretty good summation of the Bangerz brand. An insanely addictive mid-tempo resplendent with in-joke Miley/Molly drug references and terrible grammar. A sure-fire hit basically. n8/10nSMS (Bangerz)nIf you find the word BANGERZ as endlessly amusing as i do you’ll love it. Otherwise it might make you angry. Oh, and Britney features on it apparently.n6.5/10n4x4n4x4 is a moment of mad genius. Not only does it combine a country hoedown vibe, rap and dubsteb in an alarmingly enjoyable way but it also has the unforgettable lyric 'driving so fast about to piss on myself’. If there isn’t a tour mashup with Hoedown Throwdown it will be the crime of the century.nn n9/10nMy Darlin’nThis is the only song on the album I could easily live without - although it does tend to get stuck in my head after I do listen to it.n5/10nWrecking BallnWrecking Ball is a soaring, angry, knockout ballad in the karaoke / slow dance / cry-along-in-your-bedroom sense. It’s one of those songs that makes me really glad I’m not 15 anymore.n9/10nLove Money PartynMoney ain’t nothing but money when you get to the money. Love ain’t nothing but love when you learn how to love. Party ain’t nothing but a party when you party everyday. nAnother one of the songs with the wonderfully weird country / hip-hop thing going on. This will soon be going in a playlist sandwiched between 'Money, Success, Fame, Glamour’ from Party Monster and Lady Gaga’s 'Beautiful, Dirty, Rich’.n7/10n#GetitrightnA sweet sounding mid-tempo sex jam.n8/10nDriven'Drive my heart into the night, you can drop the keys off in the morning.’nDrive has the dark, brooding feel of a Kanye track and is the closest to what could be considered a 'mature’ sound on the album.n9/10nFUnEverything about this song is fucking perfect. Broadway meets hip-hop meets dub step meets Bond theme. With lyrics about texting and LOL-ing and all the bitterness and adolescent hyper-drama of the best mega-ballads. The kind of song that makes you feel like if all else fails for the artist it will have been worth it just for those 2 minutes 28 seconds. If you only listen to one song on the album this should be it.nn10/10nDo My Thangn'Don’t you worry bout 'me. Imma be ok. Imma do my thing.’nThere you go everyone, don’t worry - she gonna be ok.nI like this track a lot, it’s another addictive mid-tempo with a really hooky, soaring chorus. Next single maybe?n8/10nMaybe You’re RightnThe only song on the album that could have come from a previous Miley album and on first listen I wasn’t keen but it’s grown on me, largely because she sells it well.n6.5/10nSomeone ElsenA slightly grimey, end-of-the-party number with a wonderfully aggressive shouty bit near the end.nAnd it feels fitting that the last lyrics of the album are 'I’ve turned into someone else’.n7/10nSpecial mention for 'Rooting For My Baby’ from the bonus tracks which is actually one of my favourites on the record. It’s a sweetly melodic, melancholy, folksy song that reminds me of tracks like Gone and Don’t Tell Me from Madonna’s Music album.n8/10nnThe (MTV) Crib NotesnPop at it’s most shamelessly zeitgeist-grabbing coupled with strong vocals and genuinely well crafted tunes. Plus lyrics about pissing yourself in fast cars. What more could you want?n9/10
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Title: Review: The Cukoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (JK Rowling)
Published: 2013-09-13 22:02:29
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More consistent than The Casual Vacancy (although its highs were higher and lows lower) I found this to be an enjoyable, easy going whodunit that for the most part kept me engaged. Whilst the central characters felt quite cliched at the start they were fleshed out well throughout the story and by the end of the book were well poised for a sequel.nnIf I have any negative comments it’s that there is a strange combination of page-turner and long-windedness present in both this and The Casual Vacancy. Buried inside this book is a really gripping yarn half it’s length although unlike The Casual Vacancy it’s not as obvious to pinpoint where the extraneous information is. I never really felt bored while I was actually reading it, more that it just seemed to take far too long to get to the point. I’m a pretty gullible reader and never guess the endings to these things but in this case I did - I suspect mainly because I had so much prelude during which to wander through all the possibilities in my mind.nnSo to sum up..nA decent holiday read if not something that will blow your mind. Less divisive than The Casual Vacancy but ultimately less interesting too. nHopefully there will be a slightly more brutally edited sequel to look forward to at some point soon.nnRead it if you like: Colin Dexter, Jodi Picoult, Elizabeth Georgenn7/10
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Title: Review: Yeezus by Kanye West
Published: 2013-06-29 14:14:00
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nMost people seem to have fallen for Kanye after 808 & Heartbreak but I was a bit of latecomer to the church of Yeezus and it was the title song from My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy that finally piqued my interest with a genre-defying bolt of melancholy, humor and gloriously OTT crazy. nnIf MBDTF was the sound of Kanye losing his mind Yeezus is only further down the rabbit hole. Don’t for a minute be expecting that he’s found any kind of equilibrium since the last record. I’m a sucker for artists who expose their own human flaws and generally will give a free pass on things I might not have otherwise if I know they know too. Kanye most certainly knows - Runaway was the touchstone moment for that but Yeezus continues the theme. Like all the great rock stars he is a big mess of contradictions ranging from arrogance to humility, money obsessed to anti-capitalist, misogynist to apologist. None of it makes much sense but like all great polemicists it sounds good at the time. The lyric ‘Soon as they like you make ‘em unlike you’ in I am a God seems to sum this perversity up perfectly. There is also a recurrent theme in both this and the last record of him demonising himself - referring to himself as a monster, a wolf, possessed etc and while it is glamorized there is definitely a strong air of self-loathing about it. Self disgust is self obsession, honey. nAnd if anyone is still under the allusion that he doesn’t have a sense of humour about it all then the 11-on-the-hamometer pastiche of American Psycho he trailered the album with should prove otherwise:nnnMusically Kanye West is one of the only artists, never mind mainstream artists, who can genuinely surprise me at the moment and Yeezus is sonically thrilling. Don’t expect some nice Starbucks ‘urban’ background music - strap yourself in for this one, it’s a bumpy ride. Aggressive techno, punky rock sounds, glorious melody and angry, angry rap all mixed up and never, ever doing what you expect. Just when you settle into some soothingly melodic sample it will be ripped out from under you and at other times just when you think you can’t take it anymore the relentless nastiness will be salved by a soaring top line tune. It’s basically the musical equivalent of walking through a minefield in the dark while someone alternately screams at you and feeds you cake. nnOn the whole Yeezus is not as lyrically sophisticated as MBDTF although it has it’s moments, and there are times when it feels he’s trotting out pat rap-isms. But musically it’s leagues ahead, absolutely blinding.nTrack by tracknnOn sightnAs opening statements go this is firmly in the ‘strap in or fuck off’ bracket. Alternating between hard, dirty electro and eerie melodic samples of children singing. Yeezy’s back and he’s gunning for you.nBlack SkinheadnI cannot stop listening to this song. On first listen I thought of Gary Glitter’s Rock & Roll Part II, on second listen Marilyn Manson. It does indeed apparently sample Beautiful People and is a big, stompy, glambanger with some suitable glam-punk lyrics to match. The end section where he is shouting ‘God’ over and over reminds me a bit of Bowie’s Pallas Athena but that’s accidental I’m sure. nThis video of him performing it live on SNL illustrates perfectly why he is doing a better job of being Rock & Roll than most of our current rock bands at the moment:nnnnI am a GodnIf Kanye is a God then he is neither a benevolent nor a happy one. Doom-laden, apocalyptic sounding droning opens the track followed by intermittent screams and a general feeling of impending disaster. The last minute of the track is genuinely quite intense and terrifying. It does however also include a classic moment of Kanye meme-bait when he yells HURRY UP WITH MY DAMN CROISSANTS - reminiscent of Madge’s soya latte and maybe bested only by ‘the sky filled with herons’ for my favourite Kanye lyric.nNew SlavesnnIf there is any song on the album approaching something like a manifesto or a social commentary that extends outside of his own life then this it. Paralleling materialism with slavery he makes a strong case for rejecting capitalism and fashion, if not one he seems to be capable of following himself.nnnWhat you want, a Bentley? Fur coat? A diamond chain?nnAll you blacks want all the same thingsnUsed to only be niggas, now everybody playingnSpending everything on Alexander WangnNew SlavesnnnAnd as far as shade goes ‘Doing clothes you would have thought I had help - but they wasn’t satisfied unless I picked the cotton myself’ is a pretty smart stab at the insinuation a man like him couldn’t possibly have been involved in fashion beyond ‘cotton-picking’.nnIronically it’s this song and not ‘Blood on the leaves’ that offers the more satisfactory explanation for the troublesome Nina Simone sample as he states:nnnI know that we the new slavesnI see the blood on the leavesnnnDrawing an explicit parallel between contemporary black commercial slavery and Strange Fruit’s gruesome lynchings is in this context perhaps hyperbolic but certainly eloquent. New Slaves is easily the lyrical high point of the album and although he seems to have ruffled a few feathers with the section where he statesnnnFuck you and your Hamptons housenI’ll fuck your Hampton spousenCame on her Hampton blousenAnd in her Hampton mouthnnnI was instantly reminded when I heard it of Pulp’s equally threatening masterpiece I Spy where Jarvis tells us he’s been ‘sleeping with your wife for the past sixteen weeks’ and sets out his (also borderline misogynistic) plan for class revenge by fucking married posh birds:nnnYour Ladbroke Grove looks turn me on [..]nAnd every night I hatch my plan,nit’s not a case of woman v man.nIt’s more a case of haves against haven'ts.nAnd I just happen to have got what you need,njust exactly what you neednnnMusically it is as relentless as the previous two tracks and in my mind completes a trilogy of sorts ending with the soaring melodic last minute of New Slaves - a welcome respite by the time you get there.nHold My LiquornnMusically and lyrically we are back on more familiar territory with Hold My Liquor being the song that sounds the most like some previous Kanye tracks. But with a big, nasty air horn sounding after every line - just to keep you awake. Perversely this almost sounds like a love song in places. Or as close as you are going to get on Yeezus.nI’m In ItnnPornographic and kind of sexy in a fairly ridiculous way. nBlood On The LeavesnnSampling Strange Fruit was always going to be controversial and it’s certainly garnered it’s column inches. Most reviewers are dissatisfied with the disconnect between the sample and the lyrical content - a sprawling, bitter break up tale involving abortion, mollys and baseball games. Musically it all fits very well and feels to me like a gothic tale of love lost and in a way seems no different to the well tread tradition of equating blood and horror with personal loss. That said this particular sample is of course a little more contentious than something like Kurt Cobain singing ‘I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black’ because it directly connects to heavyweight socio-political issues. Within the context of the album it all hangs together for me with an overarching, if slightly messy, theme of blood, horror, personal confusion and black slaveries - both contemporary and historical. Of course it’s confusing that he chose to pair this sample with these lyrics and not New Slave but maybe that’s the point?nnFor most people this seems to be the centrepiece track but although I love it I prefer the triple header of Black Skinhead / I Am A God / New Slave and it’s sprawling majesty doesn’t quite topple My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy for me.nGuilt TripnnAn enjoyable but not stand-out out track for me - although the Popcaan hook is pretty infectious.nSend It UpnnI adore the queasy electronic background noise that runs through this track. Headache inducing in a great way - it’s like having your brain drilled by a drunk clown. The Beanie Man outro to the track ‘Memories don’t live like people do / They always 'member you /Whether things are good or bad /It’s just the memories that you have’ seems to sum up Kanye’s ‘There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about’ philosophy perfectly.nBound 2nBy the time you get to the sweet, dancehall lilt of Bound 2 you fucking need it. And it’s not just us. Poor Kanye feels the same.nnnAfter all these long-ass versesnI’m tired, you tired, Jesus weptnnnTrying to convince a prospective lover with the promise that he’s worth it despite everything she might have heard and sounding like for all the world like he wants to give up the whole exhausting business of being Yeezy and go grow potatoes with his woman somewhere but knowing that won’t happen. Bound to falling in love. Tired of loving with nobody to love.nnUh-hu-honey.nnnCrib NotesnnThe world seems to be stumped as to whether Kanye is an idiot, a genius or a madman. I say an irresistible combination of all three.nnYeezus is in competition only with The Next Day for my album of the year so far.
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Title: Review: Bloodsports by suede
Published: 2013-04-26 13:25:00
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nSo.. yes, it’s taken me over a month to sit down and write this review and I’m sure by this point no-one actually cares any more but here we are anyway.. The main reason it’s taken me so long is that although the overriding feeling of the album appealed to me and a few songs were instant I had the distinct suspicion that several of the slower songs would be growers and I wanted to give the album as a whole a chance to percolate before I wrote a review knowing that if I didn’t I would probably completely change my mind about half of it after I had written it.nMy initial impressions of the tone of the album were favourable - I really like the way Brett has been using his voice in more recent years. Despite loving the album the more years that have passed since Coming Up the less fond I get of the plastic-glam pitch of the vocals and I don’t think anyone misses the Oasis rasp even if it did work well on a few songs like One Hit To The Body. The sound of the vocals on Bloodsports (and indeed the feel of the album) is closest to Brett’s last solo album Black Rainbows - an album I’m very fond of and has probably increased in my estimation quite a bit since my initial 8/10 review of it. The album as a whole feels full and ballsy but, unusually for suede not petulant. Also, apart from a couple of Brett-by-numbers moments it has continued the trend of his solo albums in having far, far better lyrics than latter day suede and Tears songs.nI also love the way everything sounds SO LOUD. I’m not very techy so I can’t tell you what I mean by that in production terms but everything just seems to BURST OUT of the songs.nThe thing that threw me off about the album when I first started listening to it was the very strange way it is divided almost half and half into uptempo and downtempo songs which resulted in me often listening to first half only and ignoring the difficult ‘side 2’.nThe lightbulb moment for me was this interview quote:nnThe album was conceived as a journey from the start to the end of a relationship, taking on all the points in between - suspicion, obsession, infatuation, co-dependency.nnThe second I read that not only did I think it was kind of a nice idea for an album but the record suddenly made perfect sense and just clicked with me. Now that difficult second half feels like a necessary bookend to the more familiar territory of the pop-rock tracks about emotional infatuation and sexual desire.nThe album is difficult in places but after getting under it’s skin a bit I’m going to come out with a much higher mark than I might have expected on first listen. I’ve really fallen for it and although I think Black Rainbows is possibly more consistently satisfying (if less demanding) as a whole the highs on this album really are high. I’m delighted with this album as if not a ‘comeback’ (oh, but it is) then at least a forage into slightly new territory and hopefully a sign of things to come.n9/10nTrack by track:nBarriersnI really liked this song straight away. It has a nice meaty rhythm and a big punchy chorus. It does also, as many have said, have a bit of a stadium rock Simple Minds thing going on.n8/10nSnowblindnThis was another of my instant favourites. It starts with an even more Simple Minds opening followed by a Coming Up esque ‘oooh oooh’ but the body of the song is like a slightly more macho, aggressive version of some of the Coming Up era rockers wrapped around another big, loud stadium chorus.n8/10nIt starts and ends with younI pretty much hated it when it was released but much like The Stars (are out tonight) it works much better for me in the context of the album than elevated to a single. Again like Stars it’s, in my opinion, the weakest track on the album. What is with that? Second-single-itus?n6/10nSabotagenI love the oppressive, moody feel of this song and it builds towards a very satisfying ending although the chorus is a little weak. It seems to be a bit more loved by fans than I think it’s due but it’s a decent enough album track.n7/10nFor the strangersnI love this song. Swoony and gorgeous.n8/10nHit menSwagger. Next single. Fucking love it. Can’t wait to hear it live.nHit me is really close to being suede-by-numbers but then it does these melodic twists you weren’t expecting.n9/10nSometimes I feel I’ll float awaynI swear I’m not being hyperbolic when I say I honestly think this is my favourite suede song since Dog Man Star.nLyrics likennLet me take you through each stage of the male mistakeAnd we’ll adopt our natural rolesnnandnnAll the plans were madeIn the wooded gladeWhere your body was split wide openAnd I count to tenAs the race beginsRound your hairpin bendsnnare very un-suede but somehow still perfectly ‘right’. The guitar towards the end makes me feel like I’ll float away. The album would have been worth buying for me if it was just this song repeated twelve times.n10/10nWhat are you not telling me?nThe song on the album most reminiscent of Brett solo. Paranoid and slightly bitter, the turning point of the album into the second half.n8/10nAlwaysnA classic stalker anthem. Melodically reminiscent of some of the more downbeat coming up era b-sides but with instrumentation flourishes and drama of Dog Man Star slowies like Wild Ones.n7/10nFaultlinesnI’m in the odd minority of suede fans that really likes A New Morning (I’m not sure even the band are that keen) but I love this song because it’s like the best of the slow songs on ANM like Untitled.. or When the Rain Falls but just so much darker and tougher. The end feels almost positive, I think? But it’s quite ambiguous.n8/10nnOverall:nIt’s an odd album with the last three songs being a tough ride if you’re not in the mood but persistence pays off and there are treasures to be found. A welcome return to form with unexpected turns along the way.n9/ 10
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Title: Not Tomorrow: Review - The Next Day by David Bowie
Published: 2013-03-23 23:21:00
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nnHere I am not quite dyingnMy body left to rot in a hollow treenIts branches throwing shadows on the gallows for menAnd the next daynAnd the nextnAnd another daynnIt’s been noted elsewhere that anyone expecting an elegiac album of mournful slowies after the red herring release of ‘Where are we now’ was in for a surprise. The Next Day is an album positively drenched in the death rattle but it’s not the melancholic last hurrah of an ageing rocker eyeballing his future, it’s something far darker and more complex than that.nLyrically at least The Next Day is easily Bowie’s bleakest album to date. He has often dealt with similar themes - suicide, death, murder, apocalypse even - but mostly in a glamourised, romanticised or pithy way. There are moments such as The Motel or Slip Away that are somber and intense but I’m not sure he has before produced a body of lyrics with such unrelenting harshness. There are flashes of wit and humour but you only need to compare something like the swooningly tragic Rock & Roll Suicide to the sheer venom of You Feel So Lonely You Could Die to feel the shift. Even the two popiest sounding songs on the album (I’d Rather Be High and Valentine’s Day) contain lyrics like:nnI stumble to the graveyard and I lay down by my parents, whisper ‘Just remember duckies everybody gets got’nnandnnIt’s in his tiny facenIt’s in his scrawny handnIt’s in his icy heartnn—nnnIt’s tempting with any artist, especially one as shifting and enigmatic as Bowie to try and read biographical confession into song lyrics and certainly with Where Are We Now that seemed all to easy to do - the notion of a sad, elderly David ‘just walking the dead’ around Berlin seemed both plausible and poignant - but realigned within the context of the album it takes on a whole new flavour. With it’s cast of characters ranging from 17 year old soldiers to dying aged despots this is an album firmly written in the second person. Sure, like any art it must ultimately say something about the artist but transparent autobiography it certainly isn’t. This is nothing new for Bowie of course - his transparently autobiographical moments are scarce and many of those that I assumed to be such melted into storytelling for me on closer inspection. He wears many masks and he has always worn them well.nMusically the album is closest in the Bowie canon to the other jagged edges of his career - Scary Monsters, Outside, Earthling, the darker recesses of Heroes and Heathen - only the second single The Stars (are out tonight) recalls Reality and is, perversely, my least favourite track on the album.nDespite the fact I have literally not stopped playing it since it came out it’s taken me until now to tackle a review because there is just so much to digest, and I still feel like I’m only just scratching the surface. This will be an album I listen to for a long time to come. Bravo Mr Bowie.n10/10n——-nFinally here’s my track by track for anyone who wants it:nThe Next DaynnListen to the whores he tells hernHe fashions paper sculptures of themnThen drags them to the river‘s bank in the cartnTheir soggy paper bodies wash ashore in the darknnA stomping, beastly little introduction to the album where the words ‘the next day’ turn out to sound more like a threat than any kind of hopeful forward thinking that the album title might have suggested. The bit where he shrills ‘They scream my name aloud down into the well below’ puts a shiver down my spine.n9/10nDirty BoysnnYou’ve got to learn to hold your tonguenThis ain’t the moon this is burnin’ sunnnSlinky and sexy with some lovely sax. Reminiscent of songs like Sweet Thing, Candidate and John, I’m only dancing this was an instant favourite for me. It seemed immediately like it had been in my life forever. An old friend seen in a new light.n9/10nThe Stars (Are Out Tonight)nnWe will never be rid of these starsnBut I hope they live forevernnMusically this is the only track I feel is a little weak, although that’s comparative and I certainly enjoy it a lot more within the album than as a single. It has some great vocal moments and a fabulous video too.nn6/10nLove Is LostnnIt’s the darkest hour, you’re twenty twonThe voice of youth, the hour of dreadnThe darkest hour and your voice is newnLove is lost, lost is lovenYour country’s newnYour friends are newnYour house and even your eyes are newnYour maid is new and your accent toonBut your fear is as old as the worldnnThis song is just, I’m not sure what to say.. perfect? A brooding, gothic suicide note that breaks unexpectedly and confusingly into a seemingly uplifting middle eight before turning back in on itself as though that moment were an hallucination - a false promise leading towards a foolish act. ‘Oh, what have you done? Oh, what have you done?’n10/10nWhere Are We Now?nnHad to get the train from Potsdamer PlatznYou never knew that I could do thatnnSomeone who was once far too important to simply take the train finds himself now shuffling the streets of Germany. Maybe Mr Bowie, maybe not.nn9/10nValentine’s DaynnValentine told me how he’d feelnIf all the world were under his heelnnThere is little affection from the author for the characters that inhabit The Next Day and the would-be tyrant depicted in Valentine’s Day is no exception. I can’t help picturing a small man on the verge of a nervous breakdown, perhaps a little like Michael Douglas in Falling Down, about to finally let us all know exactly what he has to say.n8/10nIf You Can See MennNow you could say I’ve got a gift of sortsnA fear of rear windows and swinging doorsnA love of violence a dread of sighsnIf you can see me I can see younIf you can see me I can see younnThe song on the album most reminiscent of the best bits of Earthling. This one kind of gives me the willies. In a good way.n8/10nI’d Rather Be HighnnThe Thames was black, the tower darknI flew to Cairo, find my regimentnCity’s full of generalsnAnd generals full of shitnnThis was one of the first songs to click with me and I still can’t listen to it once through without hitting replay at the end. Deceptively perky sounding with lines like ‘I’d rather smoke and phone my ex, be pleading for some teenage sex’ jumping out on first listen. I’ve seen it interpreted as a kind of looking-back-on-being-young song when on closer listen it’s nothing of the sort.n9/10nBoss of MennYou look at me and you weep for the free blue skynnNot a skip track by any means but the only song I haven’t quite connected with yet. A decent album track but nothing as arresting as the rest of the album tracks.n6/10nDancing Out in SpacennSomething like religionnDancing face to facenSomething like a drowningnDancing out in spacennThe only song that teeters close to something glammy and a little silly sounding. A small oasis of fun, albeit abstract and slightly cryptic fun.n7/10nHow Does the Grass GrownnThere’s a graveyard by the station where the girls wear nylon skirtsnnI love this song. Not just because it has a chorus that goes ‘Blood blood blood’ followed by a backing ‘la la la’ that sounds almost exactly like that bit in Gremlins 2 where they get melted while singing New York, New York and doing the conga. Not just because of that, but it’s definitely got a lot to do with it.nn8/10n(You Will) Set the World on FirennFrom Bitter End to GaslightnBaez leaves the stagennOk so, the fact that the opening chords totally remind me of the Beverly Hills 90210 theme tune is my problem and mine alone. Other than that it’s the sole song with a more conventional Bowie/Fame motif. A pep-talk-come-warning for the promise of success in the vein of Opportunities by The Pet Shop Boys via Eno’s Baby’s on Fire.nn7/10 nYou Feel So Lonely You Could DiennI can see you as a corpse hanging from a beamnI could read you like a booknI can feel you fallingnI hear you moaning in your roomnOh, see if I carenOh, please, please make it soonnnA claustrophobically dark vignette wishing loneliness and death on a malevolent and unlikeable soul - with swooning Spectorish backing vocals. Nasty stuff. In the best possible way. n10/10nHeatnnMy father ran the prisonnBut I am a seer, I am a liarnnAnother instant favourite, Heat is a clear nod to Bowie’s long-time musical bedfellow Scott Walker with shades of Outside and Heathen mixed in. A somber and downbeat ending that leaves you feeling both satisfied and bewildered.nnAnd I tell myself, I don’t know who I amnAnd I tell myself, I don’t know who I amnn10/10nnOverall:n10/10n
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Title: Review: Stoker
Published: 2013-03-06 13:46:00
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nnThere are films which are, as the reviewer's favorite phrase goes, style over substance and there are films where the style is the substance. nStoker is an almost entirely visual film - it could quite easily have no dialogue and be not much worse for it, although when there is dialogue it mostly lyrical, witty and worth the wait. Even the score punctuates the film sparsely but effectively.nThis is a film that’s all about watching.nIt is dovetailed by India's monologue about how she sees things no-one else does. It’s voyeuristic in almost every possible sense. The characters watching each other through doors, windows, stolen glances and those long, stalkerish tracking shots at the wake. In Charlie’s case even watching India through the years themselves. nnnThe symbolism of sneaking a peak at something through locked drawers, photographs and letters is everywhere. nnnnnnAnd of course the way the viewer’s gaze is firmly positioned as the voyeur during both erotic and violent moments, the two blurring into each other on more than one occasion.nnLike a lot of my favorite books and films Stoker is pregnant with unsaid things, sexual tensions, violent secrets - the truths (if there are any) are in the gaps between what happens rather than the plot itself. Like the empty seat at the piano it could all just be a mirage, or a specter - like the vampiric connotation of the family name. Everything is submerged between a somnambulistic, dreamy funk - personified in the moments Nicole Kidman’s character half-knows what lies beneath her family, both literally and metaphorically.nI can understand why this film is dividing critics and viewers alike because it’s a strange combination of over-the-top pot boiler and microscopic emotional minutiae at the same time. The performances are all a restrained kind of camp found almost exclusively in old noir thrillers and whilst the cinematography, set and costumes are lush and seductive it’s an iron fist in a velvet glove. It has one foot in ‘pretty’, one foot in 'difficult’ and a more than slightly dubious moral compass - It’s a lovingly filmed spider on young girl’s inner thigh. Needles to say it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I’m happy to say I loved it.nOverall: 9/10nn
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Title: The Future Is Now (Review: Black Mirror & Utopia)
Published: 2013-03-06 13:10:00
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I had planned on writing reviews of both Black Mirror and Utopia separately but I can’t help thinking about one when I think of the other. Two British, dark, dystopian series running concurrently with surely a very similar audience.nnnOn paper Black Mirror covers areas that appeal to me more than Utopia - pop culture, media hysteria, and in particular, Brooker’s obsession with the frisson point between technology and human emotion. Utopia on the other hand sounds at it’s base level like a classic paranoid conspiracy theory. Even the titles would have me gravitating towards Black Mirror first - suggesting it’s as much about who we are as who we might become.nnAnd yet Utopia succeeded in almost every way that Black Mirror has near-consistently failed me.nnI’m not sure that the issue with Black Mirror lies entirely in the writing - the thing it is sold on - as the uneven execution. The drastic difference in stylistic tempos from episode to episode (and director to director) really is it biggest weakness for me. While ‘The Entire History of You’ (the absolute standout episode of the series for me, and in fairness probably good enough to justify the rest of the episodes on it own), 'National Anthem’ and 'Be Right Back’ were all directed with a sure, mature hand 'White Bear’ and '15 Million Merits’ were both so cheap looking and broadly directed that they felt more like slightly off cbeebies shows than anything being broadcast on late night Channel 4. nThat said some of the ideas felt so slight and barely fleshed out (National Anthem surely was not much more than a good Brass Eye sketch?) that they buckled under the weight of the 45 minutes running time.nNone of this would bother me if I didn’t think there was something there. Black Mirror is, or at least should be, exactly the kind of show we need to be producing more of in the UK and it’s frustrating to see it fall short of the mark.nnThankfully this frustration has been greatly salved by Utopia dropping it’s grinning yellow bag of death next to our feet.nnnnWhat can I say without sounding like a fawning idiot?nBrutal, beautifully filmed and perfectly cast it’s everything I could have hoped for from it, and a little bit more. If I have any criticism it’s that I had hoped for a clean one series and out ending (it was obviously well plotted through a proper story arc so it was definitely possible) and instead it left me feeling a little cheated in the final moments. However, that’s a small price to pay for the series that preceded it.nI won’t say much more in this review because it’s exactly the kind of show that will be spoiled by knowing too much about it so I'l just round off by urging you to catch up with it on 4OD if you haven’t seen it yet.nnBlack Mirror:nThe National Anthem - 6/10n15 Million Merits - 2/10nThe Entire History of You - 10/10nBe Right Back - 5/10nWhite Bear - 3/10nThe Waldo Moment - 4/10n–nOverall: 6/10nnUtopia:nOverall: 9/10
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Title: Review: Les Miserables
Published: 2013-01-15 08:36:00
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nLet’s just start off by saying that the ticket price is worth it for the three minutes that the camera is trained on Anne Hathaway’s face as she re-writes the book on how to perform I Dreamed a Dream alone. The word ‘mesmerizing’ doesn't even begin to cover it.nThat out of the way I think this stage to screen adaptation is on the whole an absolute triumph. Taking advantage of the opportunities for both large sweeping vistas and claustrophobic close-ups that the stage cannot offer Tom Hooper has directed this in a way that adds to the stage production rather than simply recreates it. It does at points creep into being a little visually overblown for my taste (Lovely Ladies being most notable) but this is offset by the fact that, being pure melodrama at heart, most of the cast spend the film makeup-less and crying!nnI heard some early reports that the soundtrack sounded disappointing and / or bad and having now seen it I can understand why. Much of the score is sung / acted as oposed to belted the way you have to do in the theatre to reach the back. I’m not sure it will be a score I will want to sit and listen to much but performing it this way was so, so much more interesting to watch.nHowever, as you may have heard, it has to be said that Russel Crowe’s voice is frankly completely honking. It’s such a shame because I was really excited by his casting and while physically he looks the part not only is his singing not up to scratch but he also looks seriously out of his depth much of the time too. This is a real shame because not only does he sing two of my favorite songs in the show but , despite Hugh Jackman acting his socks off, it also impacted negatively on the central relationship between Jean Val Jean and Javert for me. (Whilst I’m being critical I also wish they had left the Thénardiers reprise in the sewers while they were looting the dead - it’s such an eerie scene in the stage show and a lovely dark mirror to the earlier number - but that’s a minor grumble.)nThankfully there was so much else to enjoy (and it’s a credit to how good the rest of the cast were) that this didn’t in any way ruin the film for me. In the past I've never been that interested in either the Marius / Cossette plot or Fantine but both of these stories really flourish in the film. Amada Seyfried just gets more adorable by the day and Heart Full Of Love was particularly beautiful despite being a song I've never much cared for before. The surprising standout for me though was Aaron Tveit who I literally couldn't take my eyes off and lit up the scenes centered around the revolution.nSo, yes, on the whole an absolute knockout, and as a big fan of the show a huge relief. Do catch it in the cinema if you can. Take a box of tissues and a cold compress when you go though ;)n
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Title: Review: American Mary
Published: 2013-01-15 08:09:00
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nI was lucky enough to see a showing of American Mary on it’s limited release tour at the weekend. Shot in 15 days (!!!) as I found out at the Q&A after this is a very, very strong first time foray into mainstream-release territory for directors the Soska sisters.nPredominantly a (very) black comedy splattered with moments of empathy and pathos. As much as it’s it’s all about blood and horror and ‘horrible’ things it’s not really trying to scare you and it’s surprisingly not that graphic either, well - as these things go. It also has quite a lot to say for itself philosophically which is getting rarer than the dodo in contemporary horror.nKatharine Isabelle (of Ginger Snaps fame) is charismatic and nuanced in the lead role - a role that in less steady hands could have ended up flat out unlike-able. However it was Tristan Risk as Betty Boop obsessive Beatrice that stole the film for me. One of the standout performances of my year I think.nnIt’s a crying shame it’s got such a limited release because it feels very mainstream friendly - not in the sense of being 'safe’ but because it’s beautifully shot and feels very accomplished. It could easily have had a major release with the right publicity. Whilst the the film itself is 'alternative’ in the sense that it features unconventional body modification and lots of latex it’s put together with a surprisingly sophisticated and mature touch.nI found it to be charming and funny and beautiful to look at. It does have some flaws and there are a few scenes in it that fell a bit flat for me but on the whole I thought it was fantastic and if you can’t catch it in the cinema please snap up the DVD on the 21st.n
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Title: David Bowie: The Next Day. That album cover design by Barnbrook Design
Published: 2013-01-09 08:28:51
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nnnnThere has been much discussion surrounding the cover of the new David Bowie albumThe Next Dayso thought I would answer a few questions that people have asked about it.n– Why not a new image for the cover?We wanted to do something different with it – very difficult in an area where everything has been done before – but we dare to think this is something new. Normally using an image from the past means, ‘recycle’ or ‘greatest hits’ but here we are referring to the titleThe Next Day. The“Heroes”cover obscured by the white square is about the spirit of great pop or rock music which is ‘of the moment’, forgetting or obliterating the past.nHowever, we all know that this is never quite the case, no matter how much we try, we cannot break free from the past. When you are creative, it manifests itself in every way – it seeps out in every new mark you make (particularly in the case of an artist like Bowie). It always looms large and people will judge you always in relation to your history, no matter how much you try to escape it. The obscuring of an image from the past is also about the wider human condition; we move on relentlessly in our lives to the next day, leaving the past because we have no choice but to.n– Why “Heroes”?If you are going to subvert an album by David Bowie there are many to choose from but this is one of his most revered, it had to be an image that would really jar if it were subverted in some way and we thought“Heroes”worked best on all counts. Also the new album is very contemplative and the“Heroes”cover matched this mood. The songWhere are we now?is a comparison between Berlin when the wall fell and Berlin today. Most people know of Bowie’s heritage in Berlin and we want people to think about the time when the original album was produced and now.n– Why the white square obscuring the image?We worked on hundreds of designs using the concept of obscuring this cover but the strongest ones were the simplest – it had to be something that was in direct contrast to the image underneath but that wasn’t too contrived (we know all design is contrived, that is the essence of the word ‘design’). It would have been clearer to many people if we had scribbled all over the cover but that didn’t have the detachment of intent necessary to express the melancholy of the songs on the album. Obscuring Bowie’s image is also reference to his identity, not only in the past when he changed endlessly but that he has been absent from the music scene for the past ten years. Was this an act to hide his identity or that he has simply become more comfortable with it?n– Why is there no colour?The title of the albumThe Next Dayevokes numerous reference points, notably Macbeth’s speech ‘Tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow ’ which deals with the relentless onward push that any unnatural position of power requires. It also has the existential element ofWaiting for Godotwith waiting forThe Next Day– these all seem to question the nature of existence so a monochrome palette seemed most appropriate to this feeling.n– Why didn’t you do a logo, or new design of his name on the cover?We wanted the cover to be as minimal and undesigned as possible, we felt the most elegant solution was to use the original one from“Heroes”and simply cross out the title of the old album. It has the detachment appropriate for the atmosphere of the new album.n– What is the font you used for the main title?It is a new font that we are working on called Doctrine – this is the first major use of it. Doctrine will be released in the coming weeks atVirusFonts.n– What is Bowie like to work with?He is quite a private person, so no need to say too much about him other than that he is a pleasure to work with. Very intelligent, funny, serious when he needs to be and generous in his thoughts and actions.n– Is there anything else you can add?Yes, having said all this, we know it is only an album cover with a white square on it but often in design it can be a long journey to get at something quite simple which works and that simplicity can work on many levels – often the most simple ideas can be the most radical. We understand that many would have preferred a nice new picture of Bowie but we believed that would be far less interesting and not acknowledge many of the things we have tried to discuss by doing this design. Finally we would like to give David Bowie great credit, he simply did what he always does which is to go with a radical idea and that takes courage and intelligence. That is why we love his music and love working for him.nnBarnbrook Design >n
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Title: Review: Hit So Hard - The Life & Near Death Story of Patty Schemel
Published: 2012-11-10 15:47:10
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nThis documentary is a must for any Hole fan not just for the, often heartbreaking, old footage but for offering us up the time to appreciate exactly how good a drummer Patty was and what a lovely woman she appears to be now.nMore than a rockumentary though, Hit So Hard is a devastating portrait of addiction and excess. Not just excess in the pursuit of entertainment or escapism but excess of emotion, of anger, of energy, of passion and the blaze that these often difficult, selfish, self-destructive people set fire to for the world to warm their hands around. Being a rock fan can be a vicarious, morally dubious thing at times and this film underlines precisely why.nIt’s also a worthwhile reminder of the still-fragile place of women in the industry. Will we ever see another band like Hole again? I hope so, but I suspect not any time soon.nn
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Title: Review: Kylie - The Abbey Road Sessions
Published: 2012-10-31 13:18:00
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nOk, so straight off the bat I’ll fess up that I’m a covers junky. I have a real thing for finding interesting reworkings of songs and I had already loved Kylie’s Live Lounge session so I was probably more up for this than most to start with.nThere is a long tradition of artists stripping down and re-inventing their hits, most notably during the height of MTV Unplugged in the mid 90s. In recent years there have been a lot of (often ‘ironic’) reworkings of pop songs by more 'credible’ artists. Sometimes this delivers something wonderful, sometimes something that makes you want to slap the artist for thinking they are so much bigger and cleverer than pop. nWhen a pop artist decides to do this to their own songs the desire can often come from a surprisingly similar place - to imbue it with something new, something different or to try and prove that it is 'real’ music after all. Much as I love her Gaga’s recent Thanksgiving EP is a perfect example of the kind of po-faced schmaltz that often consumes stripped-down pop. (Although she has done similar things much better elsewhere - so I’ll give her a free pass on that one.)nSo which is this? Well, thankfully it’s more of the former than the latter. Had she attempted this during her indie-Kylie period it would almost certainly have been an exercise in cred-flexing. Thankfully at this stage of her career she is far more comfortable in her own skin and approaches the project with just the right mix of humor and melancholia.nShe’s had her fair share of chart bangers and OTT pop moments but I’ve long suspected that it’s the breathy mid tempo roboto-porn songs that have formed the backbone of her appeal. Kylie can sing almost anything and make it sound at once salacious and oddly refined. For a singer who’s voice has never really been considered her strong point it seems the closer and more intimate it gets the more enjoyable it becomes. And in that sense this album is a sidestep rather than a volte-face. The overall feel of the arrangement is stripped down in the sense that it’s not electronic but it’s certainly not girl-and-an-acoustic-guitar noodling and teeters on the edge of big-band but, Locomotion aside, remaining more reigned in and less 'retro’ than that.nThe standout tracks on the album for me are Finer Feelings, Confide In Me and Can’t Get You Out Of My Head - the latter two becoming so obsessionally seductive in tone that they start to sound, frankly, quite threatening.nOther highlights include On A Night Like This, All The Lovers (a 24 carat classic through and through), I Believe In You, Wow, Better The Devil You Know and I Should Be So Lucky. It’s also nice to hear Locomotion after becoming progressively dirtier and dirtier over the years re-instated to something more joyfully like, if not the original Little Eva version, then certainly Little Eva meets PWL.nIt perhaps could have done without a couple of tracks here and there and, beautiful as it is, the new(ish) song Flower does feel a little out of place but all in all it’s a lush, mellow and slightly saucy affair with some beautiful instrumentation and backing vocals that help give it warmth and depth.nClearly this album has a fairly specific demographic as you will have to enjoy both Kylie and these kind of easy listening/MOR arrangements - but it hit the sweet spot for me.n7/10n
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Title: Review: The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling
Published: 2012-10-14 10:21:00
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n(mildly spoilerish but no actual plot details)nLet’s get a couple of things out of the way before I start:nThis isn’t a Harry Potter book.nThe idea that Jo Rowling has any ongoing obligation to the children of the world when writing for adults is absolute bollocks. nIf the writing style or the content surprises or shocks you and you have actually read the Potter series then you clearly weren’t paying attention.nWith that out of the way let’s get down to what I thought of the book itself.nIt took me a little longer to get into in than I would normally have persisted with a novel and although I enjoyed the tone from the offset I found the lack of discernible plot in the first chunk slow going and would probably have given up on it had it not been the new JK novel etc. It’s worth pointing out that I’m a pretty impatient reader though and often give up on books after a half dozen pages, sometimes even less, if they haven’t grabbed me - however I still suspect it could have been edited a little more toughly in this opening section. Somewhere around the 200 page mark it suddenly clicked with me though and from that point on I found it pacey and highly enjoyable with the last quarter being un-put-downable. nTypically of Jo’s writing the highlights of the book for me are the plotting and the characterisation, particularly of the teenage characters and the odious Howard Mollison. nThe writing style and characterisation was exactly what I expected it to be. Pagford is basically Little Whinging dragged into a more invasively adult scrutiny. Like her previous writing every character is flawed and many of them fairly unlikeable but in almost all cases we are encouraged to empathise with them too. We are given all sides of each nobly story to mull over in a way that real life rarely allows us to. A few reviews have criticised the writing for being stiff or two dimensional but I think that’s largely an illusion. Whilst she does occasionally have a tendency to slip into trite phrases or slightly overwrote metaphors there is this odd aspect to her writing, which I love and which is also present in the Potter series, where she gives you the feeling of something slightly pompous and old fashioned (Enid Blyton or Agatha Christie often come to mind) then punctures it repeatedly with moments of humour, horror or realism. I can understand how people could take it at face value but it has an unsettling push-me-pull-me quality that I adore - in much the same way (albeit not quite as twisted) as Twin Peaks where the cherry pie and strong jaws are just as integral as the madness and terror.nI’m not sure if this will make any sense but the plotting is the book’s key strength but not the plot itself. The way the various character’s lives weave together - finally crashing into each other in an operatic and somewhat melodramatically Hitchcock-esque final act (also reminiscent of the end of the third League of Gentlemen series) is fantastically enjoyable but the main story itself is not all that involving. I did enjoy the device of the pivotal character being dead (reminiscent of The Virgin Suicides or Twin Peaks again) and revealed to us only in drips and drops through the lives of the remaining characters and their own intricate stories, but the larger arc concerning Pagford and Yarvil and the council itself felt more like a vehicle for the message she wanted to deliver than a fleshed out story.nI was quite concerned in the opening chapters that the class war between Pagford and The Fields would become naive or cloyingly liberal and while at points in the early stages of the book it does feel a little like having a finger wagged at you I was relieved that as it progresses the moralising becomes much more evenly spread and complex. If there is an over-riding message to the book it is a borderline-nihilistic suggestion that we should all try to be more aware and kinder to each other but that life itself makes that almost impossible to achieve - that social conscience of any kind is an almost Herculean effort when combined with your own desires and needs. And that’s very Jo.nIn summation - it’s not the best book I’ve ever read but it certainly wasn’t the worst either and although it’s not really like these author’s books I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys slightly gothic character based thrillers like Donna Tart, Patricia Highsmith and Louise Welsh . Or - and this really is the target demographic - Agatha Christie fans with a stomach for sex and swearing ;)n7/10
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Title: Whatever happened to the teenage dream?
Published: 2012-10-06 17:57:35
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My mom should’ve understood. At the Beatles’ 1966 concert in Chicago, she’d had to slap my Aunt Martha hard to get her to stop from screaming herself into a faint. From the teenyboppers to the Beliebers, teenage girls have been mocked for their crushes, but that scorn is just a shoddy mask for the anxiety these crushes inspire. Because a teenage girl with a crush is frightening. The Beatles were always on the run from shoving, hysterical girl-crowds, who wanted—what? To crush into them, to crush themselves, to crush against other girl-bodies that were all feeling the same feeling together, a chaos of feeling, a feeling that took your breath away. “A Beatle who ventures out unguarded into the streets runs the very real peril of being dismembered or crushed to death by his fans,” Life reported in January 1964. A girl with a crush is also capable of crushing.nnThe Killer Crush: The Horror Of Teen Girls, From Columbiners To Beliebers | The Awl
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Title: Can you believe it's been 20 years since she taught us how to uuuhh ?
Published: 2012-10-02 22:07:00
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n20 years ago tonight, the Erotica video premiered. Happy Birthday Dita.nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
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Title: You did something interesting recently.
Published: 2012-09-25 20:06:32
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screenshotsofdespair:nnI wanted to share a few links to things that are related to Screenshots of Despair, as well as to the general idea behind this blog.n-This Nevolution post, titled “Mood-board of Unknown Tumblrs” says some interesting things about emotion and the New Aesthetic, name-checking Webcamtears (a project whose editor also runs La Gazette du Mauvais Gout), Rich Kids of Instagram and Rob Walker’s Pergoogle. (Close readers will recall that Mr. Walker gave this site a huge boost when he wrote about it for Design Observer.)nAbout SoD, Nevolution says: “It’s the most interesting of the bunch, but it’s the one I feel least comfortable writing about. It’s the smartest of the bunch but also the one I feel least able to articulate.” This is pretty much what I’ve been striving for in every aspect of my life (yay, total inscrutability!), so it’s wonderful to read.n-Screenshots connoisseur Hayley Pearce sent in this article about skeuomorphic design, and the interaction and tension between the physical world and the digital one. Mr. Walker (cited above!) has also tackled this topic, and very well.n-Screenshots also got a little mention on Lost at E Minor.n-Panacea: A Screenshots reader submitted this site. It has a MAKE EVERYTHING OK button. Maybe it will make you feel better?nAs always, PLEASE submit stuff via the Submit button on this blog or by e-mailing me at josh.kimball@gmail.com. All submissions are appreciated!n
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Title: Review: Dusty Limits - Post Mortem
Published: 2012-08-22 19:32:00
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nOnly the best shows contain an addiction medley.nLike Meow Meow, who I had the joy of seeing at the festival a couple of years ago, Dusty Limits offers that strangely rare combination of camp humour, actual talent and moments of surprising emotion. nI’ve seen him in the past as an emcee which he was so good at I often found myself wishing he would just stay on the stage (no offence to the other acts) so decided to go and see his solo show this year. I’m glad to say I wasn't disappointed. Loosely hung around the theme of ageing and mortality (I still maintain it’s a lie he’s anywhere near 40) his chat was at times surprisingly political but always funny and caustic. His singing voice is exceptional and he treated us to his interpretations of, amongst others, Sinnerman, Losing My Mind (an ode to booze) and Ashes to Ashes as well as with some very funny self-penned numbers.nHe also performed at one point soley lit by the glow of his HTC smartphone after a mid-song lighting failure. It was a moment at once suitably eerie, glamorous and ridiculous.
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Title: Review: Re-Animator the Musical
Published: 2012-08-22 19:06:31
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nI went to see this on it’s opening night at the Edinburgh Festival and enjoyed it so much I went back a week later! nAlthough it features both a small cast and a fairly minimal stage set you leave feeling you have seen a big show. The cast are all so good it would be hard to single any one performance out and everything is delivered with energy and enthusiasm.nProvided you like your humor black and aren’t to squeemish it is absolutely hilarious - the front three rows being a gore splash zone is a particularly brilliant idea. Also, although there is a lot of extra joy to be had for those who have seen the film I doubt it’s necessary to enjoy the show.nThe props maintain a suitably shlockly aesthetic but that conceals some incredibly sharp and sophisticated effects. One slight of hand (or should I say head) I still couldn’t spot the second time even when I knew it was coming..nAll, in all I can't recommend this highly enough. It’s still on until the 27th, so get along and see it if you can.
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Title: I wake up and my wig is falling off my head, and my mole is on the other side of my face. My fake mole. No not fake, it’s just surreal.
Published: 2012-08-15 12:50:00
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nOk so there has been a shitstorm brewing around Lady Gaga and fur for the last few days and since everyone and their uncle has been sending me links to articles (of varying levels of accuracy) about it I figured I might as well just go ahead a post up my thoughts here. Kill two birds with one stone as it were. Sorry, was that inappropriate?nThe essential facts of the story are as follows:nGaga has been seen wearing various fur coats recently nnPETA sent her an open letter calling her out on itnnDear Gaga,nMany of your gay fans, I among them, have long admired what you told Ellen: “I hate fur and I don’t wear fur.” I included a link because these recent photos of you in fox and rabbit and with a wolf carcass make it appear that you have amnesia. I’m also including this brief videohosted by Tim Gunn showing the violent cruelty that you promote when you wear fur. What happened? Are your stylists telling you that it’s fake, or are you a turncoat? Many gays are animal advocates because we recognize that the same arrogance and indifference that some have toward animal suffering has at times been directed toward us personally because of our orientation. PETA has long participated in Pride events around the country, and just last week, we helped lead protests against Chick-fil-A. But by wearing those dumb furs in a heat wave, you’re making yourself a target just like the mindless Kim Kardashian. As we plan our fall campaigns, please tell us whether what you gracefully told Ellen was heartfelt or just a pose.nWe await your reply.nSincerely,nDan MathewsnSenior Vice PresidentnPETAnnShe deflected the issue with a trollish tweet and cryptic follow-upnnnEveryone is freaking outnSo my thoughts:nWell, for anyone reading this who doesn’t know me, I’m a vegan and therefor don’t wear leather or fur or eat meat or dairy.nSo far no one still really knows if it’s real or fake she’s wearing - and I’ll be damned if I can tell from looking at it - I can never spot fake fur unless it’s like the coat I’ve got that cost £12 from the kids section of Primark and basically looks like skinned Build-A-Bear.nThis either makes her pretty smart or pretty dumb in how she’s handling it. I don’t much care for how PETA are handling it either way - what exactly does Mr Mathews’ sexual orientation have to do with anything?nI will be disappointed if it is real but less because of her actually wearing the fur than because of her response. Hang in there with me on that one..nI can look the other way when she wears fur or leather because I live in a world where almost everyone I know wears leather and eats meat and fur is really not a whole lot different to me. It’s much easier for the average person to be sanctimonious about real fur because they will likely not be able to afford it (other than someone’s Aunt Trudy’s of course) but would never dream of giving up their inexpensive leather or meat - fur is, rightly, seen as more flagrant and dickish. It has that air of Cruella De Ville. Yes, yes, meat is (albeit in-essentially) nutritional not just fashion and leather is a byproduct and blah blah blah but once you get over the other side of veganism it just all starts to look like uniformly barbaric carnage. So I choose not to think too much about the choices of others in that respect because, you know, I want to have friends and shit. nBUT WHAT ABOUT THE MEAT DRESS I HEAR YOU SAY? The meat dress I could live with because it was an arresting image, really is no different to eating the meat (which she does, along with spending most of last year head to foot in leather) and opened up a lot of interesting conversations for me with meat eaters who funnily enough often seemed to find it really disgusting..nAnyway the point is there is a BIG difference for me between wearing fur on occasion and being actively pro-fur. Being pro-fur is not saying ‘I know, but I couldn’t resit’ or 'I know, but I was given it for free’ it’s saying 'Fuck you, I don’t give a shit and neither should you’. And more than anything it bothers me how being all sassy about it will result in a million fans thinking YAYZ FUR IZ COOL GAGA SEZ!!! Taking a pro-fur stance would be neither popular with me or many of her fans (judging by comments on her posts about it) even if the fashionistas might back it.On the other hand if it’s fake her tweet is hilarious. Well, it’s hilarious anyway but you know what I mean. If the coats are fake and she knows that PETA just haven’t done their research then she’s basically just giving them a big old 'talk to the hand’. Right now I’m swinging towards fake because I would prefer that to be the case, her second post about where 'real’ elegance comes from seems to indicate that to me and because I don’t think even Gaga is wilfully publicity hungry enough to take an openly pro-fur stance. Funny as it is, I do wish she would clarify her feelings on the matter one way or another though.nAnd no, even if it is real I won’t suddenly stop being a fan - that’s patently ridiculous - although I would definitely be pretty sad about it. I have a small handfull of friends who I would allow to argue with me on that but the rest of you can go back to your chicken fillets and zip it.*n*With love, of course ;)nEdit:nGaga responded tonight:nnTo the fans. i want you to know that I care deeply about your feelings and views, and I will always support your philosophies about life. We’ve been having over-arching conversations about society, equality, and politics for the past five years, and we should continue. I do not however support violent, abusive, and childish campaigns for ANY CAUSE. Particularly one that I respect. “Animal Rights.” I am choosing not to comment on whether or not the furs I purchase are faux fur-pile or real because I would think it hypocritical not to acknowledge the python, ostrich, cow hide, leather, lamb, alligator, “kermit” and not to mention meat, that I have already worn. This should already put me in a category as one who appreciates and adores the beauty of animals in fashion, but am not a strict vegan. I have truly always stayed away from skinned fur, especially as i have never been able to afford a nice one, but this does not mean my morals are rigid and that I won’t bend at the sight of an absolute art piece of a coat. I have no chains about this. You see a carcass, I see a museum pièce de résistance. But I am truly sorry to fans who are upset by this, its a fair and applaudable feeling about the health and safety of animals. I respect your views, please respect mine. And to campaigners, Save your flour to make bread for the children who are hungry. And Kim Kardashian is fabulous.nnnI may not share her feelings but she has articulated almost exactly the points I felt about the blowup myself. I agree with her about PETA’s approach and although I would have loved a more emphatically anti-fur response I am just relieved to see that she respects and understands the issue itself and the feelings of her fans. nEdit: I know that sounds a bit wishy washy and confused, it’s hard to explain exactly what I mean. I like her response in so much as it’s honest. It teeters on pro-fur but is more 'never say never’ than 'fur is fabulous’. As I said before I have a hard time seeing why fur is any more grotesque than the millions of everyday, invisible crimes that are committed against animals by almost everyone - it was reading about what is considered 'free range’ and 'humane’ that tipped me into veganism not couture coats. nI do think fur is abhorrent and I respect the more hardline views of other vegans but I have issues with meat eaters and leather weathers being sanctimonious about fur. I realise I’m a bit contrary in this and I don’t expect many people to agree with me. I’m not saying Gaga’s position is good - I’m just not any more (or less) horrified by it than a whole lot of other horrible stuff. I think the view she is expressing is probably also less of a distance from the way most people feel about animals than they allow themselves to admit - and I respect her for manning up, even if I think she’s wrong. nI predict the media will skin her alive for this though. Boom Boom.
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Title: Pop Bitch Celebrity Death Match
Published: 2012-08-11 12:03:00
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nPlaylist: Pop Bitch Celebrity Death MatchnHeavyweights: MadonnanMiddleweights: KylienFeatherweights: Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj, Gwen Stefani, Ke$ha, Britney Spears, Christina AguiliranBantamweights: Shakira, RihannanTag Team: Spice GirlsnOutside Contenders: Cher, Lana Del ReynNew Favourite: Lady Gagan—–nPlace your bets.. :)(Source: https://embed.spotify.com/)
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Title: MADONNA HAS A KIKI
Published: 2012-08-06 19:42:20
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scissorskiki:nnn Thanks Mutant Pop/Captain Obvious!n
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Title: Because We Can can Can.
Published: 2012-07-30 12:11:00
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nBecause we can can can(Source: https://embed.spotify.com/)
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Title: Madonna, last night, being amazing.
Published: 2012-07-27 10:11:00
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The last minute of Je t'aime makes up for the last 5 years as far as I’m concerned.n
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Title: Review: Madonna MDNA Tour at Murrayfield Stadium
Published: 2012-07-22 15:42:00
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All photos in this post by Chrissi McAlpine :)nBefore I review the show in earnest there are a few things I’d like to get out of the way first. I’ll do a track by track review after and if you just want a quick summary of my thoughts skip all the blah and go to the end ;)n“It’s the worst concert I’ve ever seen” Nonsense. Either it’s the only concert you’ve ever seen or you’ve only been to the closing night of the Ziggy Stardust tour, the Bad tour and the Blonde Ambition Tour so far. What I’m saying is it might not be the best show you have ever seen or ever will see but saying it’s the worst is just pure hyperbole in my opinion.n“She doesn’t play The Hits”I don’t hold any truck with the criticism coming from a lot of the media reviews that she isn’t playing enough back catalogue. This isn’t being billed as a greatest hits tour, she has an album out right now and the tour is in fact named after it so to expect the Celebration tour is foolish. Any artist that considers themselves still functioning will play a similar balance of new to old - unless you do what Bowie did when I saw him in 2003 and play a beast of a setlist that accomplishes both. But then he did end up having a heart attack two thirds of the way through that tour so maybe not. Whether the tracks from her current album are as good as they should be or hold up well enough live is a different matter, however saying that she shouldn’t be playing new songs is not really the issue to me. The fact that the audience were generally going home unhappy with this balance last night (comments overheard ranged from ‘It’s a lot of money to pay to be disappointed’ to ‘I’ll know not to go and see Madonna again’) doesn’t surprise me though - partly because she hasn’t had a genuine hit from this album and partly because the audience last night was exactly the kind of drunk-to-oblivion hen-party horror show that really should have been at an 80s revival disco instead. It was without doubt the most annoying crowd I’ve ever been in - and I include 2 hours stood at the front of T in the Park during Black Grape in 1995 in that. So no, I’m not surprised they didn’t want to see a world music version of I’m A Sinner. But then again who does really?One thing that was immediately apparent to me was that for all her trend chasing and Niki Minaj features at 34 and ¾ I was at the younger end of the average age bracket last night. It’s like trying to get a date - the more desperately you want it the more it turns people off. The Kids can smell it and they are staying away in droves. I’m absolutely convinced that if she relaxed on the ‘still relevant’ push she would actually pick up more younger fans - or at least ones in their 20s! I do think there is also an element of people reading reviews in the Daily Fail or whatever and just going along with what they are told to think though. A lot of the comments I heard afterwards (‘the violence was unnecessary’, ‘she didn’t play the hits’) seemed to be verbatim regurgitations of the press reviews. And maybe that just means it’s a consensus of opinion but i guess I have a little less faith in people’s ability to form their own opinions ;)“She lip synchs the whole show”I was very pleasantly surprised by how little of the show appeared to be mimed - and all the better for it. There were a couple of numbers (Human nature I think stood out particularly) where she sounded a bit ropey but generally her voice was good - Papa Don’t Preach, Masterpiece, Express Yourself and Like a prayer all sounded particularly strong.“She’s too old to be doing a pop show”I genuinely, and again to my great surprise, was really not aware of the ‘mutton dressed as lamb’ issue apart from during he majorette section where a combination of an unflattering costume and dance routine did make her seem a bit wobbly and trussed up. Generally I just felt I was watching a pop star not a grandma. The question of whether she can keep up with the choreography is a funny one though. It’s really hard to explain but I was impressed at how well she managed consistent, high energy and quite complex routines but at the same time I was aware of it. It’s like that thing about how good design should be invisible and there was an element of feeling ‘god, she’s doing it so well for a woman her age’ rather than it just being effortless. I think taking it down just the tiniest notch would have erased this though because the parts of the show where she is moving less frantically felt absolutely perfect in that respect. The stagingIt became pretty apparent to me when the show started why she’s been coming on so late at a lot of venues. I had assumed it was just because she was fannying about doing the downward facing dog in her dressing room or whatever but the strict curfew at Murrayfield meant she came on just after 9pm in pretty much daylight and I have to say the reliance on huge video screens to form the basis of the set really didn’t work well in the light. She made a comment during the show about having to keep it moving or they were going to pull the plug on her and as it was she cut two songs from the set (the two I was most looking forward too grrrrrr) and I highly suspect this was because she was holding back starting until it got darker.I was standing a little to the side at the front of the general admission area but due to the fact there was a VIP area and a golden circle then some space then the GA area I had a good view but was still really not that close to the stage and from where I was the first section of the show looked surprisingly flimsy and the stage quite empty. The motel set was particularly disappointing from a distance in the light. Everything looked so much better as it got darker though.The stage as an object is massive but the actual stage area was surprisingly small, or seemed so from where I was. In general I think the screen-based sets would have looked amazing close up but were not so good from where I was in the crowd. I think the show will look fabulous on DVD and certainly the sets looked much more dynamic even on the live feeds but for some reason felt a little flat to me in person. Of course this could just be down to where I was standing but since I had a fairly good spot I can imagine it would have been much the same if you were anywhere in the main bulk of the crowds.nnDown to the nitty gritty..Opening section / Girl Gone WildI feel like this should have been really epic but it fell a little flat for me. It probably doesn’t help that I really don’t like this song much. I’m not sure if this was mimed or autotuned or what I but either way the pitch of her voice was really weird. The crowd seemed to enjoy it though and I’d say that out of the new songs it got the best reaction from those around me with a fair amount of singing along etc.nRevolverI’m basically the only Madonna fan that liked and bought this song. It’s just me, Madonna and Lil’ Wayne digging it. Putting it on the set list was typically obstinate of her but I enjoyed it so raspberries to the lot of you ;)Gang BangThis was one of two set pieces I was most looking forward to seeing live (the other was cut ;_; ) but I didn’t enjoy it as much I was expecting for some reason. It’s hard to put my finger on because I do love the way it looked and it was definitely my favourite of the more elaborately staged numbers but I found it sort of dragged on a little or something. It might have been the light, I’m not sure, it just didn’t rock my boat.Papa Don’t PreachMassive cheer from the crowd. She sung it really well. Only complaint was it was too short.Hung UpThis was an unexpected highlight for me. The audience seemed to get a bit bored because there was no ABBA sample and the song was reworked but I really enjoyed the way it sounded and the physical routine was one of my favourites in the show. The part where she walked the slackline barefoot was particularly lovely for some reason.I Don’t Give AAnother unexpected highlight. One of my main fears was that this would be one of those Britney-type shows where there was so much spectacle going on because the performance at the center was vacant. I know that everyone loved her Superbowl performance but it left me pretty cold because it seemed she was heading in that direction. But having this number fairly early in the set last night really alleviated a lot of my concerns about her performance abilities because it was predominantly just her standing singing - and singing with bite, vigour and some actual emotion. The funny thing is I’m not that keen on the song but she really brought something to it live I hadn’t got from the album version. She sounded pissed off, but in a good way. If only she could let go a bit more in the studio and get some of that feeling on record.nExpress Yourself / Give Me all Your Luvin’ / Born This Way / She’s Not MeThe majorette costume has to die. I hated the routine, the costumes and pretty much everything about this section apart from the vocals for Express Yourself which were fabulous. I actually loved Express Yourself I just wish she had worn something that didn’t make me feel nauseous while she sang it. GAYL was a remix which I actually enjoyed far more than the single version. It was also not, in fact the song of the same name by ZZ Top as my husband thought when I was telling him about the concert. That would have been amazing though.I still think including the Born This Way excerpt was classless and unnecessary, even more so within the frame of the show, but it was mercifully short and while I did see one guy wearing a t-shirt with Gaga’s face and the word ‘BITCH’ written underneath I did also hear the audience around me singing along to BTW so who knows what it accomplished other than some column inches.Turn Up The Radio Uneventful and unmemorable. She had the front row singing into the mic which was cute but other than that I don’t really remember much about it. I do remember that it was preceded by a rather interesting, scratchy little intrlude that mixed up video clips from throughout her career. I remember thinking ‘ooh, what’s this leading towards’ and then hearing the chorus line of TUTR and thinking ‘oh, that. oh well.’ I actually like TUTR well enough and it’s my favourite of the fluff songs on MDNA but still, it’s hardly stellar material to follow up a recap of her career highlights with.As a side note: who knows where her career - touring or otherwise - will go in the next few years but I do hope she takes stock a little before her next move. As enjoyable as the show was and as not-as-bad-as-the-singles-make-it-seem as MDNA is there has been a lot (too much to go into here on a review of the tour) wrong with her approach to her career recently and I sincerely hope that she is not beaten but emboldened by the criticism. No Fear not No Care.nOpen Your HeartThis was a weird one because I really enjoyed it but it went down like a lead balloon with the crowd around me. It was reworked completely with those Basque fellas whose name I can’t remember and I thought it was really interesting. A crowd pleaser it was not though. I could have done without the dancing at the end but she does love a bit of ‘ethnic’ street dancing does our Madge.MasterpieceThis was another highlight for me. The song has really grown on me recently and excepting the opening clunker the lyrics are lovely. I found the performance quite moving and very well sung. I’d love to see her do a theatre tour of this kind of stuff but it will never happen.VogueVery enjoyable classic performance of Vogue. Exactly what you would expect from it but in a good way.nCandy Shop / Erotica / Human natureThis was my favourite section of the show despite the fact that I can’t stand Candy Shop on record. The choreography was paced just right and the set up fell on the right side of sexy - at times moving, at times humorous. Human Nature was visually particularly good and probably the only part of the show that gave me food for thought or stimulated emotions beyond the purely visceral. I’m absolutely gutted that she cut Like A Virgin (which would have fallen after this set) although if she was going to cut something I guess the audience that was there would probably not have been that receptive to the version of it she is doing on the tour so maybe it was the best choice in that sense. You can see what I missed here.nI’m A SinnerI thought she looked really beautiful during this section - the slightly hippy look has always suited her so much. The song itself was a bit of a snooze for me though.Like A prayerSimilar to Vouge this was a strong, classic performance that did nothing more than you would expect but nothing less than you would hope. The crowd loved it and she sounded fantastic.CelebrationI felt this was a bit of an anti climax for a closing number although she certainly gave it her all. I geuss Celebration is the new Holiday though and I never liked that much either ;)nSo..All in all I enjoyed it and I’m glad that I went. The bits I expected to wow me (the big visual set pieces) didn’t really but the thing I was most fearful of (her core performance) was actually really good. I know I was quite out of step with the crowd around me in terms of the bits I enjoyed most so obviously it’s just my opinion but I would love to see her focus on less high energy but more performance led numbers - which she has done plenty of on previous tours so this isn’t a ‘she’s old’ thing just a personal preference. That also doesn’t need to mean sitting on a stool for an hour and a half just more routines like Human Nature and less like GMAYL. Overall I’d say it’s a 7/10 for me - but since I nearly didn’t go because I was so worried about it being terrible that’s a score that’s made me really happy.
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Title: MDNA.
Published: 2012-07-18 11:55:34
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nI’ve been revisiting MDNA over the last week or so having not really listened to it at all since it was released. Generally I won’t put in the effort to go back to an album I haven’t connected with but partly because I have given in and am going to the tour this weekend and partly because I’ve had the nagging suspicion there was a much better album lurking in there than it appears I decided to give it another go. I’ve been working on this little redux playlist and I think I’ve finally hit the sweet spot.nA lot of albums these days have problems with weak bonus tracks cluttering up otherwise sturdy albums but I have to say that with MDNA the bonus tracks are far from being the problem - in fact it’s the singles that drag it down most for me. The running order also exhausts me with far too many of the flimsy or psuedo-ballsy songs up top leaving the songs I rate most obscured or so far down the tracklist that I’ve given up by then.nWhittling the album down to these 11 tracks has made all the difference and I feel like there is a pretty strong little record there after all. No, still not her best but in this format certainly stronger than Hard Candy and arguably Confessions too.nThere are a few songs that I’ve left on here (most notably Turn Up The Radio, Gang Bang and I Don’t Give A) that still bother me for various reasons but in this context I can enjoy far more.nIn my mind I am currently living in a parallel universe where this was the album, the singles were I’m Addicted > Love Spent > Anything apart from GMAYL, GGW or Birthday Song and the artwork looked more like this:nnand less like this:nnIn that unviverse MDNA is really rather good actually.(Source: https://embed.spotify.com/)
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Title: Review: Prometheus
Published: 2012-07-01 11:38:00
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nI feel like there are two angles that I need to broach in reviewing this - firstly how does it square up to / sit alongside the Alien franchise and secondly is it any good in it’s own right.n(This review is very, very mildly spoilerific btw but no major plot details or anything..)nLet me get the big Alien question out of the way first.nAesthetically and visually it feels akin to the first two to me but with a glossier, slicker edge. It’s by no means sanatised when it comes to grooey bits and unpleasant deaths but it doesn’t have the run-down, grimey quality of the original film. Contextually in terms of the actual space ship etc this makes sense because of the reasons they are there but it’s present in the direction and cinematography too. The characters are thankfully fairly close in spirit to the best moments of the Alien films in that I found them mostly believable and uniformly well acted. nThe clue is in the title of course but philosophically it felt like quite a departure from the original series. For all that the Alien films spun on the axis of gestation, birth and survival it was in a unilaterally darwinistic way. Rape as the most effective form of impregnation, survival of the fittest, and above all the devastating strength of mother-love. So despite all the procreation the creationist dilema of Prometheus still came as little bit of a surprise to me. It sits (albeit inconclusively) to the side of theology I’m personally comfortable with but this is absolutely a film about looking for God in our ancestral trail. I perhaps found it slightly disappointing that the theology had to be framed within the recognisable symbolism of the crucifix but I can understand why it works as as a shorthand for the audience. I do think it’s interesting that the cesarian scene is written as a cesarian and not an abortion, but I am possibly reading too much into that.nIf the Alien films are Mother then Prometheus is Father. This is born out both by the fathers and their children (both metaphoric and literal) that pepper the plot as well as the design of the huge, muscular, Fusili-like Engineers and the general masculine heft and might of the film itself.nOn the whole it feels like a film that exists within the same universe as the Alien films but very much has it’s own rhythm and agenda.nSo on to the second question - is t any good?nThis is much easier for me to answer because yes, as a standalone piece I found it very enjoyable. It looks magnificent and it has a solid mixture of nastiness, action and dialogue. The cast are excellent particularly Michael Fassbender and Charize Theron who between them stole the film for me. Noomi Rapace has some strong moments in the film but for some reason never really felt like the lead to me although technically she is. Fassbender’s Bishop by way of Bowie in The Man Who Fell To Earth is without doubt the best thing on screen at any point in the film - he is absolutely spellbinding.nIf I am being critical the pace sags a little in places, particularly in the first third, but it still tops out as a well above average sci-fi / action movie.n7.5/10nn–nAnd for anyone who has seen it - I leave you with these:nnn
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Title: Review: The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins
Published: 2012-07-01 10:08:00
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nThis series may start as a familiar, if well crafted, dystopia but it ends as one of the most brutal and bloody indictments of the politics of war I have read - be that for the teen demographic or otherwise.nSuzanne Collins’ writing uses fairly broad brush strokes and at times can verge on the more stylized futurism of something like Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series* but ultimately remains grounded in a bone-crunching realness that gives weight to both the story arc and the characters.nAlthough all three books are consumate page turners (I downed the series in less than a month) it’s not always the adrenaline rush of the standard action page turner. There is an intrinsic, unspoken caveat to these books that anything - especially anything bad - could happen to any of the characters at any time and whilst this makes the action gripping it also creates an uncertainty and anxiousness I rarely feel with hero (or heroine) led stories. There is also a grinding, ‘last-gasp crawl towards the finish line’ quality to a lot of the action that at times has more in common with horror movies, in particular those that veer into torture porn, than anything else. None of these observations are criticisms by the way, they are exactly what makes the satire present in the story arc so powerful.nOnly just raising it’s head above the parapet of nihilism it’s not a series for anyone looking for a new Alex Rider but if you like to have your buttons pushed along with your action then I would absolutely recommend it.nIn terms of where it sits within the frame of teen writing, and for any parents considering whether it's appropriate for their kids, I would say it's definitely at the upper end of the YA spectrum. That’s not to say you have to be 17 to read this - I think I could have tackled it effectively by the age of 14 or so - but it will depend on the individual and their reading habits. It’s not a book that is controversial for the sake of it but it could certainly be a conversation starter for younger readers. I also suspect that under 12 or 13 it would be the emotional language of the personal relationships in the story that might be an issue in digesting the series rather than just the violence.nIn short - highly recommended.n8.5/10n–n*RE: Uglies: I love those books too. Here is my very old review of them.
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Title: Review: The Book Lover by Ever Dundas
Published: 2012-06-29 09:31:29
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nThis might look like a small, fragile sliver of a story from the outside but it’s a wonderfully messy, urgent and visceral little beast on the inside. It’s sexy, honest, real and slightly perverse. nTitillating? Yes, but if The Book Lover were burlesque it would be the pulling glitter out of it’s arse kind not the awkward fan dance in perfect lipstick and lacy knickers kind. And all the better for it.
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Title: Madonna's Hands
Published: 2012-06-16 17:11:00
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When I'm dead, they'll finally kiss my ass. Isn't that how it works? (Madonna, 1995)rnI’ve got a lot of problems with Madonna right now, but her hands aren’t one of them. Despite that, they are the subject of this nauseatingly long think piece
I’m not going to talk about her laissez-faire approach to her recent musical output, her terrible lead single, or her dubious forays into gym franchises. I’m going to talk about her hands
Why the hands? Why not the exposed nipple, the cheek implants and the 20-something boyfriend? Or whether she’s too old to dress like a majorette? Or that mash-up?rnI’m going to talk about her hands because they are a microcosm of all that and more. Madonna’s hands sum up all our fucked-up issues with the aging process in one fell swoop. Yuk! Granny hands! Madonna’s losing it! What an old hag! She’s so past it now, why doesn’t she just give up and leave it to Gaga and RiRi and Katy??!rnHow about this:
I mean, it’s pretty pathetic how she is soooo blatantly trying to cover up her ugly old lady hands with those nasty leather gloves right? And fingerless gloves?? On a 53 year old?? It’s so juvenile and unbecoming. She needs to get a grip and stop trying to dress like a teenager! Leave the rock-chick look to Lola!!
And there's the rub - as a woman aging in the public eye you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Not even Madonna can stop time and we can’t have it all ways at once. It’s not fair to bitch about her surgery and the signs of aging at the same time. It’s not fair to blame her for the gloves when we recoil in horror at the sight of what lies below
Some people would rather she continues down the surgery route and fights her age as much as she can. They are usually the same people who enjoy the idea that her faking a vacuous nubility that she never really inhabited the first time around (baton twirling! pom poms!) is liberating for women who want to 'stay young’. They are the glove people. Some people feel she should act her age, be more responsible in front of her children, stop flashing her boobs in public. Age 'gracefully’. They are the hands people, right?
You would think so, but from what I can tell no-one seems to be the hands people. The age-gracefully people still have a utopian notion that she will somehow do this without a wrinkle on her brow. Only she’ll be doing it in a twin-set. Kind of like Evita, but without Jimmy Nail
When we see wrinkles and veins and liver spots appear on someone like Madonna it scares the shit out of us because we are staring straight into the face of our own mortality. If even our immortal icons are mortal, what hope do we have? Asked in an interview in 1998 what she thought people saw when they look at her she said simply “they see themselves”. And we do. Not because she is 'one of us' or 'the girl next door' but because she has always been, and always will be, a mirror to our collective social mores
A little vanity can be a healthy thing and while I, personally, disagree with the people who are all-out, knowingly and enthusiastically for the surgical approach but it doesn’t bother me as much as thinking that she/we can do both at once forever. With the right bank balance you can get away with it for a while - a little Botox here, a slight alteration there. And maybe over time the procedures will get better, more sophisticated - but the inevitable end-point will still be waiting for us all
Those candid, pre-photoshop pictures of her in her underwear that get used as the full stop on any reference to Madonna’s current sex appeal will never bother me as much as the puffy cheek photos and the way her face barely moves any more when she talks. One is a fit, fifty-something woman photographed off guard, the other is someone fighting their age desperately and unsuccessfully. One is the hands and the other is the gloves
If you can’t see the connection between how we, as a society, react to the hands and why Madonna, of all people, has ended up in the gloves then let me put it this way: congratulations world, we broke her. Enjoy it while you can though, because you will be wearing those gloves yourself sometime soon no doubt
This piece isn’t really about Madonna of course (which is precisely why I don’t want to talk about the underwhelming album or the religious connotations of her show, or whatever) but she is an unparalleled cultural barometer when it comes to how we view our own vanity, sexuality and self esteem
Lets, please, learn to love Madonna’s hands?rn
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Title: 5.4 Pitchfork, 1995–present
Published: 2012-06-16 09:19:00
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5.4 Pitchfork, 1995–presentnnWhat did we do to deserve Pitchfork?nnFantastic article on the history of Pitchfork and the recent music industry in general. Here are a couple of excerpts but please read the whole piece..nn..as indie bands watched the industry’s collapse, the envy and contempt they had traditionally felt toward major labels stopped making sense. What was there to envy anymore? Wasn’t it obvious that indie bands, with their devoted networks of fans, critics, and performance venues, had it better? Not only were the major labels soul-sucking money machines, they couldn’t even make you rich! This made early indie’s militancy and paranoia look silly, and the hard lines began to soften.nIn the last thirty years, no artistic form has made cultural capital so central to its identity, and no musical genre has better understood how cultural capital works. Disdaining the reserves of actual capital that were available to them through the major labels, indie musicians sought a competitive advantage in acquiring cultural capital instead. As indie’s successes began following one another in increasingly rapid succession, musicians working in other genres began to take notice. Hip-hop is an illustrative foil. As indie bands in the ’90s did everything they could to avoid the appearance of selling out, rappers tried to get as rich as possible. The really successful ones stopped rapping—or at least outsourced the work of writing lyrics—and opened clothing lines and record labels. But for all their corporate success, rappers knew where the real cultural capital lay. When Jay-Z decided, as an obscenely wealthy entertainment mogul, that he wanted finally to leave his drug-dealer persona behind, he got himself seen at a Grizzly Bear concert in Williamsburg. nPitchfork has fully absorbed and adopted indie rock’s ideas about the uses of cultural capital, and the results have been disastrous. Indie rock is based on the premise that it’s possible to disdain commercial popularity while continuing to make rock and roll, the last half century’s most popular kind of commercial music. Sustaining this premise has almost always involved suppressing or avoiding certain kinds of knowledge. For indie bands, this meant talking circles around the fact that eventual success was not actually improbable or surprising. For indie rock’s critics, it meant refusing to acknowledge that writing criticism is an exercise in power. nnnThis is a kind of music, in other words, that’s very good at avoiding uncomfortable conversations. Pitchfork has imitated, inspired, and encouraged indie rock in this respect. It has incorporated a perfect awareness of cultural capital into its basic architecture. A Pitchfork review may ignore history, aesthetics, or the basic technical aspects of tonal music, but it will almost never fail to include a detailed taxonomy of the current hype cycle and media environment. This is a small, petty way of thinking about a large art, and as indie bands have both absorbed and refined the culture’s obsession with who is over- and underhyped, their musical ambitions have been winnowed down to almost nothing at all.nIt’s usually a waste of time to close-read rock lyrics; a lot of great rock musicians just aren’t that good with words. What you can do with a rock lyric, though, is note the kinds of phrasing that come to mind when a musician is trying to fill a particular rhythmic space with words. You can see what kind of language comes naturally, and some of the habits and beliefs that the language reveals. This makes it worth pausing, just for a moment, over Animal Collective’s most famous lyric: “I don’t mean to seem like I care about material things.” The ethical lyric to sing would be, “I don’t want to be someone who cares about material things,” but in indie rock today the worst thing would be just to seem like a materialistic person. You can learn a lot about indie rock, its fans, and Pitchfork from the words “mean to seem like.”nnnI sometimes have the utopian thought that in a better world, pop music criticism simply wouldn’t exist. What justification could there be for separating the criticism of popular music from the criticism of all other kinds? Nobody thinks it’s weird that theNew York Review of Books doesn’t include an insert called the New York Review of Popular Books. One of pop music criticism’s most important functions today is to perpetuate pop music’s favorite myth about itself—that it has no history, that it was born from nothing but drugs and “revolution” sometime in the middle of the 20th century. But the story of The Beatles doesn’t begin with John, Paul, George, and Ringo deplaning at JFK. It begins with Jean-Philippe Rameau’s 1722 Treatise on Harmony, which began to theorize the tonal system that still furnishes the building blocks for almost all pop music. Or, if you like, it goes back to the 16th century, when composers began to explore the idea that a song’s music could be more than just a setting for the lyrical text—that it could actually help to express the words as well. Our very recent predecessors have done many important and wonderful things with their lives, but they did not invent the musical universe all by themselves. The abolition of pop criticism as a separate genre would help pop writers to see the wider world they inhabit.n
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Title: Imaginary Stripclub.
Published: 2012-05-18 10:42:36
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nPlaylist: Imaginary Stripclubn
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Title: Review: Marilyn Manson - Born Villain
Published: 2012-05-15 17:27:13
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n“When all of your wishes are granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed.”nIt’s got to be pretty weird being Marilyn Manson in the post Burton/Emo world. How do you carry on as the Antichrist Superstar when no-one cares if you are the Antichrist or not?nThe key word in that moniker for me however has always been ‘Superstar’. It’s long been a frustration that his one obvious road out of this hell was to be our last great glam rock star - Mechanical Animals set the stage perfectly and his career since then has been punctured by blindingly good reminders of why he has all the sex, sass and swagger necessary to be the God of Fuck forever - unfortunately it’s more often not the road he chooses to take.nBorn Villain, like much of his career, is a mixed bag. When it’s good it’s very, very good and when it’s bad it boring.nHigh points: There are a few excellent tracks on Born Villain - Pistol Whipped, Slo-mo-tion, The Gardener, The Flowers of Evil, Born Villain and Breaking the Same Old Ground are all above average, with Pistol Whipped and Slo-mo-tion being the standout tracks.nPistol Whipped is a claustrophic, sexy, BDSM drawl that, although tempting to view as part of the recent I Love The Way You Lie trendification of domestic violence is in fact probably best just not thought about too much at all!nSlo-mo-tion is a fantastic big glamorama done in the way only he can. Reminiscent of songs like I Don’t Like The Drugs (But The Drugs Like Me) and Arma-goddamn-motherfuckin-geddon it’s exactly my favourite kind of Marilyn Manson song. Pop-rock with a great big middle finger.nLow Points: One of the biggest disappointments on it is the cover of Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain (intriguingly also credited to Johnny Depp though I’m not sure doing what). Marilyn Manson has recorded some of the greatest cover versions of all time, I Put A Spell On You, Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) and Golden Years spring to mind, but sadly this is more in the vein of Tainted Love and Personal Jesus - tired rehashes that don’t really bring anything new to the table. What a wasted opportunity!nThe rest of the tracks range from average (Murderers Are Getting Prettier Every Day, Children of Cain) to tedious (Disengaged, Lay Down Your Goddamn Arms) and most anoyingly the album does that strangely common cardinal sin of starting with one of the most boring songs on it (Hey, Cruel World). nNo Reflection, the lead single, comes alive significantly alongside the video but is also hardly the strongest song on the record.nAll in all not a classic and certainly not an album that will gain him any new fans but there is still enough here to keep the ones he has happy.nScores on the doors:nHey, Cruel World - 5/10No Reflection - 6/10Pistol Whipped - 8/10Overneath the Path of Misery - 6/10Slo-mo-tion - 9/10The Gardener - 7/10The Flowers of Evil - 6/10Children of Cain - 5/10Disengaged - 4/10Lay Down Your Goddamn Arms -4/10Murderers Are Getting Prettier Every Day - 6/10Born Villain - 6/10Breaking the Same Old Ground 7/10You’re So Vain - 5/10nOverall rating: 6/10nBuy / Listen / WatchnnThe final word: Not the God of Fuck-All quite yet.n
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Title: Bossy Bottom.
Published: 2012-05-01 08:23:09
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“Are you a top or a bottom when you sleep with women?” I ask.nn“I’m still trying to figure that one out.”nn“How about heterosexually? Top or bottom?”nnShe dips her head back in the water. “Heterosexually I’m a full-out bottom.”nn“You’re probably a bossy bottom,” I guess.nn“No,” she says. “That’s Madonna. That’s the difference between us… .nnLove Child | Hollywood | Vanity Fair 1995
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Title: THE CASUAL VACANCY - Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2012-04-12 14:46:01
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THE CASUAL VACANCY - Little, Brown Book GroupnnLittle, Brown Book Group announces that the new novel for adults by J.K. Rowling is entitled The Casual Vacancy. The book will be published worldwide in the English language in hardback, ebook, unabridged audio download and on CD on Thursday 27th September 2012.The Casual VacancyWhen Barry Fairweather dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the little town of Pagford is left in shock.Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war.Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils…Pagford is not what it first seems.And the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations?Blackly comic, thought-provoking and constantly surprising, The Casual Vacancy is J.K. Rowling’s first novel for adults.nnWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA SO EXCITING!
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Title: Review: Madonna - MDNA
Published: 2012-03-29 07:38:40
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I’ve been trying to write this review for about a week now and here’s the thing - I still can’t work out if MDNA is a better album than it appears to be or a worse one. Let me try to explain..nThe SongsnIn her early years Madonna was a master at that great pop art of making songs about not very much feel like they were about quite a lot - Borderline, Open Your Heart and Crazy For You all being perfect examples of songs with a gravitas far exceeding the lyrical content. From Ray Of Light through Music and American Life she started writing far more lyrically complex songs and emerged as a near-perfect crystallisation of ‘smart pop’. Great tunes and a mature depth often absent in the Top 40. Since then she has, with varying degrees of success, been engaged in an olympian sprint in the opposite direction - the coveted crown of Club Queen in her mind’s eye and a lyrical focus largely of the 'get up and dance’ variety. Like some patronising parent I have so far indulged it as a mostly enjoyable but hopefully passing phase.nAnd now here we are with MDNA. If in her early days she was good at conjuring more substance out of her material than it naturally contained MDNA feels like an odd exercise in the reverse. Once you scratch beneath the surface these songs contain easily some of her most explicitly personal lyrics - Lord knows Guy Ritchie’s ears must be permanently burning these days. Some are undeniably brilliant ('all of Falling Free for starters’), some clunkers ('Frankly, if my name was Benjamin’) and some so awful they become brilliant ('Baby Jesus on the stairs’).nAnd yet somehow it all feels so.. impersonal..nIt’s often noted that post-Evita her vocals have become increasingly clipped and over-pronounced - perhaps this new voice can’t commit fully enough to the sound of MDNA? Perhaps it just not 'her’. There is certainly some kind of disconnect going on here. Strangely, I find myself thinking about Kylie a lot listening to this album. I can’t help suspecting that several of the tracks on MDNA would fare better with her breathy, electro-purr wrapped around them. So many of her songs are equally (or even more) weak/forgettable but often pull it off in that odd slutty-but-classy way that Kylie has been curiously pulling off things that she shouldn’t for the last couple of decades. That said, her vocals are hardly centerpiece stuff either - frequently nasal and equally over-pronounced. I find myself comparing it to other recent dance-pop but the less said about chart rivals Katy and Rihanna’s vocals the better (I’m not entirely convinced that Britney actually is human any more) so I don’t know that vocal delivery is the problem I’m having with MDNA. Or at least not the only one.nMusically it certainly feels like a case of style over substance which may well be a greater part of it. There are shades of Music and American Life, the expected how-very-2011 dubstep breakdowns and a few (far less expected) moments of celtic influence. The production is good and almost every song starts promisingly but crucially most seem to go nowhere - there are few strong hooks and I find it hard to remember many of the tunes once I stop listening to them. The bubblegum songs (Girl Gone Wild, Give Me All Your Luvin’, B-Day Song) are pretty awful and beaten out of the water by most of the nonsense banging around the charts over the last year or two. Unfortunately the 'proper’ songs generally leave me wanting more too. There is plenty of sassy spite - Gang Bang, I don’t Give A and Some Girls are all full of superbly nasty, tough lyrics and big punchy fuck-you beats but it’s a violence that lacks plausibility. Even when telling us to 'die bitch’ it’s a cartoonish lip curl rather than a bloodied fist.nThere’s nothing 'bad’ about MDNA - on the whole it feels like a very credible stab at credible dance-pop and it’s consistent where most pop albums (including a few of her own) are horrifically patchy - but at the same time it leaves me mostly unmoved either emotionally or sonically.nThere is a cynicism to the creation of this album - the musical trend boxes that are ticked, the Nicki Minaj / M.I.A guest features, the constant references musically and lyrically to previous Madonna moments - that is both obvious and exhausting. Amusingly, one of the few songs on the album that I find genuinely engaging is about money. I know I have a personal tendency to root for the underdog (it’s no accident that I have an uncomfortable relationship with ego boosting rapper-bling-speak) but I can’t be the only one who feels a sense of relief by the time Falling Free and I Fucked Up come on. After having it pounded into me over and over again that 'There’s only one queen and that’s Madonna’ (thanks Nicki) I’m glad to be reminded that she is a fallible human being too. Even then I Fucked Up is delivered with an ironic (favourite Madonna word) caveat at the end.nThe VisualsnI’m not particularly interested in Madonna’s personal life beyond how it influences or appears in her work but with an artist as evocative and with a level of fame as unparalleled as hers it becomes impossible to talk about a new Madonna record with talking about Madonna. How does she look? What are the videos like? The album art? This might seem irrelevant but it’s not - it’s absolutely integral to her career and I would be doing her a great disservice to pretend otherwise.nSo, it occurs to me while consuming the visuals for this era - and in particular the video for Girl Gone Wild - that the notion that she has been primarily concerned over the years with sex is only partially correct. Madonna has never had the raw sexuality of Debbie Harry or Susanna Hoffs but what she did so, so well was present a frequent dissection of sexual politics - an almost academic appraisal of cultural approaches to sex and sexuality. If it was sexy it was reaching us as much through the brain as through the groin. It’s no surprise to me that Madonna would want to continue to be sexual, even aggressively so, at this point in her career but what I see now, visually, is the smoke and mirrors of pop-sex with all the brain removed. It’s amazing how unsexy Madonna is when there is no brain work to do. In the words of Jarvis Cocker 'you’re so perfect you don’t interest me at all’.nnnThe Give Me All Your Luvin’ video is undoubtedly her best video in a long, long time and it’s witty and smart. But like her superbowl performance it’s a series of quips and re-affirming gestures designed to again remind us why Madonna is the Queen and little more.nnnnOh, ok then..nThe elephant in the room of this review is of course her age. Lets not beat about the bush - no other pop artist has ever been in the position she is. She has a very real stab at being the first POP star to transition past her 40s without becoming a niche, greatest hits or Vegas parody artist. It’s what I’ve always wanted for her and I’ve long nurtured the seed of hope that she would be the one to lick the incalculable challenge of being an older woman in an industry obsessed with youth and beauty. Will she manage? Quite possibly yes, but it would seem not in the way I had hoped. It’s all gone a bit Death Becomes Her. I’ll be brief here because it’s a subject that I could write an entire blog post about on it’s own but I’ll take those much-mocked ropey, veiny old arms, crows feet and sags over a badly molded Barbie face (or photoshop smudge) and vacant expression any day. People are loving it of course but it’s breaking my heart that she’s going to win the battle by losing the war. When will we get another shot at this opportunity? 30, 40 years from now if any of our current bright young things are still around? On a human level I totally understand - I can only begin to imagine the pressure on her. I empathise entirely but it still makes me sad. It’s a bitter irony (that word again) that the most moving, human aspect of this campaign so far has been her fight against nature itself.nGirl Gone Wild artworknnPontificating aside, here’s my ratings:nGirl Gone Wild: 5/10nRather horrible and generic. The inexcusable Act Of Contrition retread aside I actually (controversially) prefer this to the lead single but, admittedly, that’s a bit like saying I prefer Body Of Evidence to The Next Big Thing.nGang Bang - 7/10nSoooo much potential. Starts off brilliantly and ends well but there’s a bit too much 'ho hum’ in the middle for my liking. I feel like this should be my favourite track on the album and every time I listen to it I’m disappointed it’s not.nI’m Addicted - 6/10nPasses by pleasantly enough but absolutely will not stick with me afterwards.nTurn Up The Radio - 7/10nEnjoyably vapid and contains one of the few memorable choruses on the album. If she really, really had to release a 'fun’ single then this should have been it.nGive Me All Your Luvin’ - 3/10nThe spelling of Luvin’ tells you everything you need to know about this song. Horrible. N.O Thanks. Don’t Wanna.nSome Girls - 7/10nI feel much the same about this as Gang Bang although to my eternal surprise I think this is slightly better.nSuperstar - 6/10nCute and probably a grower.nI don’t Give A - 6/10 (but 10/10 for the last, totally epic 50 seconds)nFor some reason not entirely clear to me the ah-ah-ah-ah bits always remind me of the music in Tim Burton’s Willy Wonky.nI’m A Sinner - 7/10nStarts off tantalisingly Frozen then goes all Girl Gone Wild by the chorus. One of several songs on MDNA that sound a lot like Beautiful Stranger - a Madonna song I’ve, unhappily, never been that fond of.nLove Spent - 10/10nMy favourite song on the album by a country mile. This will be the one that makes it out of my MDNA playlist and gets hardcore listening. It’s neither the most lyrically sophisticated or the the 'toughest’ song on the album but it all comes together beautifully. Even/especially when it gets a bit Riverdance in the middle.nMasterpiece - 7/10nA pretty enough melody but a shadow of her great ballads. And for my money Madonna has often been at her best on ballads an down / mid-tempo songs.nFalling Free - 8/10nI don’t like this quite as much as most people seem to but it’s still very, very good. I also suspect it might sneak up to a 10 over time. The last minute of it is absolutely beautiful.nBeautiful Killer - 6/10nAnother song I suspect may be a grower.nI fucked Up - 9/10nThe other of two songs on the album that grabbed me straight away and one of the few that I think sit comfortably next to my favourite songs from across her career. It’s not perfect and like almost everything on MDNA it does noodle on a bit but I love, love, love it anyway.nB-Day Song - 4/10nMarginally better than Give Me All Your Luvin’ which has a similar retro feel but definitely a skip-track for me all the same.nBest Friend - 5/10nAnother pleasant but weak song that won’t really stick with me.nnThe final wordnMDNA is either a slightly weak, rather vain exercise in self aggrandisement mascarding as a much better, cooler, beast of an album or a pretty decent stab at current adult pop that unfortunately tends to come off a little cheaper in places than desired. I’m going to plump for the latter because ultimately I don’t want to see the woman fail.nNot a classic but not a turkey either, and if it seems lke this is a tough review it’s because Nicki is right - she is the fucking Queen. And I want more from her. I want her to make me think and feel not just dance and give her all my $$ luvin’. But to do that her heart needs to be in it 100%, not just her wallet and and her production crew.n*or not ;)nnOverall Rating: 6.5/10nHighlights: Love Spent, Falling Free, I Fucked UpnLowlights: Give Me All Your Luvin’, Girl Gone Wild, B-Day SongnBUY | LISTEN | WATCH
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Title: Creative Review - UK Music Video Awards 2011 Winners
Published: 2011-11-10 12:45:00
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Creative Review - UK Music Video Awards 2011 WinnersnThe UK Music Video Awards are voted for by people working in and around the promos industry, so are viewed as an insider’s take on the best music video work of the year. This year saw a widening of the awards to include international winners in every category, alongside a favourite UK winner. Canada, who were profiled in the October issue of CR (read the article here), also picked up the Best Pop Video - International award for Oh Land by White Nights and the Best Art Direction and Design gong for Invisible Light by Scissor Sisters (both shown below).nnnnnnnGreat to see Invisible Light getting some love :DnRead the rest here »
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Title: The Skin I Live In By Pedro Almodovar
Published: 2011-10-18 14:27:00
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nnEver since his wife was burned in a car crash, Dr. Robert Ledgard, an eminent plastic surgeon, has been interested in creating a new skin with which he could have saved her. After twelve years, he manages to cultivate a skin that is a real shield against every assault.nIn addition to years of study and experimentation, Robert needed a further three things: no scruples, an accomplice and a human guinea pig. Scruples were never a problem. Marilia, the woman who looked after him from the day he was born, is his most faithful accomplice. And as for the human guinea pig…nnnnnnnnnnnCannot wait to see this film!
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Title: Black Rainbows: Review
Published: 2011-09-27 21:58:00
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Black Rainbows by Brett AndersonnBrett’s solo career has been interesting and at times surprising - whilst his first album felt like a fairly natural step I’m not sure anyone could have predicted that the man responsible for that arse spanking Brits performance would ever release something like Wheatfields.. and yet somehow it has all made sense as a journey too. While I enjoyed Slow attack and Wilderness for what they were I can’t pretend I’m not glad to have him return to a more ‘rock’ sound. nOne clear benefit of the route he has taken is that experimenting with different, more low key, sounds gave his lyric writing a welcome shot in the arm. nWhilst Black Rainbows is definitely on the rock side of pop it’s not an adolescent record - though using words like ‘mature’ are the death kiss in any review - it is mature, but I mean that in the best possible way. It is introspective and slightly bitter in the way that only someone who has lived can be. Musically too it most calls to mind the crossover point between 80s MOR and alt rock / New Wave like Echo and the Bunnymen, The Cure and Simple Minds.nFor some suede fans this will be on the surface not what they want to hear from Brett but personally I think it’s a surprisingly (and enjoyably) dark turn that suits him down to the ground.n8/10nTrack by TracknUnsungnI LOVE this song! Easily as good as a many classic suede ballads. It gets seriously big and swoopy.n9/10nBrittle HeartnThe poppiest song on the album, it’s very catchy and pleasant to listen to but at times sails close to not having enough bite. It’s rescued for me by the verse melodies which are lovely and swooning. n8/10nCrash About To HappennI like the jangly 80’s Indie sound and there are some great lyrics in the one but I feel the chorus could be stronger.n7/10nI Count The TimesnMy favourite song on the album. Love the lyrics, love the way his voice sounds, love the instrumentation. Just love it.n9/10nThe ExilesnI really like this track. It has a nice driving rhythm, lots of staccato drum stuff and angry lyrics. Pleasantly dark and brooding. n8/10nThis Must Be Where It EndsnA gorgeous swooning and melancholic track. Not quite a ballad in the conventional sense but it has the heart of one.n8/10nActorsnThe opening riff reminds me of Blondie but the song itself is the kind of snappy, grumpy, guitar-pop that The Tears should have been. Vicious but fun at the same time.n9/10nIn The House Of NumbersnThis has a very 80s Bunnymen / Cure feel about it. A solid song with a pleasantly dark underbelly and some almost obsfucated swearing ;)n8/10nThin Men DancingnSwagger, swagger, swagger. I think it will be a beast live.n9/10nPossessionnPleasant but not the strongest of Brett’s ballads and I would have preferred to see this dropped in place of one of the bonus tracks if I’m honest.n6/10n———————-nBonus Itunes Track: UnstoppablenIn true Christina Aguilera fashion I think I am going to end up liking this track more than anything that’s actually on the album proper! The chorus is an absolutely cracking hook and I love the pulsing, relentlessness.. well unstoppableness of it.n9/10n———————–nOverall:nIf you want balls-out rock then this won’t be the album for you however I would stop short of calling it a ballad or down-tempo album. It’s certainly not Slow Attack. I can’t help thinking that 'Brittle Heart’ is actually quite a good description of the album itself. Brett is a chronic (dare I say it Byronic?) romantic at heart, but it’s a romanticism that is tempered by a snappy cynicism and world-weary anger. These kind of rockish torch songs suit him and his voice very well I think.nAnyone going into this expecting the epicness or bravery of Dog Man Star will be sorely disappointed and yet there is something about the swooping, bitter mood of this album that has a more direct lineage from that record than maybe anything else he has done since..n9/10n n
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Title: Brett Anderson - 'Brittle Heart' Exclusive video
Published: 2011-08-15 14:27:58
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Brett Anderson - 'Brittle Heart' Exclusive video brettanderson:nn“I kind of hate most narrative videos to be honest, including my own, I just wanted to capture the energy of the band.”n
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Title: Alisha rules the world.
Published: 2011-08-13 11:20:39
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tumblr_lpv66fbNgx1qauzhko1nnStill Life by Suede covered by Alisha’s Attic
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Title: Don't ask me, I just share here..
Published: 2011-08-11 12:50:00
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nI love social media, this is true. I could bore you to tears for paragraphs on the good it performs in modern society, but I am increasingly becoming frustrated and concerned by one particular aspect of it that the last few week’s of news has intensified.nLet’s call it the ‘instant opinion’ problem.nMuch has been said about the 'quick fix’ aspect of the web but it cuts increasingly both ways. Speed is of the essence and when something significant happens we all feel we must Have Something To Say about it and preferably before anyone else.nThis leads to several issues:nThe constant pressure to form an opinion on something within minutes of it happening (no matter how politically complex, personally distressing or just plain baffling) and project that opinion boldly to the world.nThe pressure, having done that, to stick to this opinion (even in light of new discoveries or change of heart) in case you seem a hypocrite.nThe fear that if you don’t offer an Instant Opinion you will appear shallow or foolish as you merrily tweet about your lunch or the new Ke$ha single instead.nWhat this leads to is everyone making a whole lot of noise about things they often don’t really understand. People have always had similar interactions - over dinner, across the water cooler - but in the past we had at least a little breathing space to gather ourselves. It concerns me that we are not only losing the desire (and ability) to consider, analize and chew over subjects but that doing so is in fact becoming almost stigmatised as a sign of a poor mind rather than an educated one.nI don’t have the answers to everything, so I plan not to pretend I do anymore!
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Title: Alex Steinweiss, Originator of Artistic Album Covers, Dies at 94
Published: 2011-08-07 13:13:00
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nnThe record cover was a blank slate in 1939, when Mr. Steinweiss was hired to design advertisements for Columbia Records. Most albums were unadorned, and on those occasions when art was used, it was not original. (Albums then were booklike packages containing multiple 78 r.p.m. discs.)n“The way records were sold was ridiculous,” Mr. Steinweiss said in a 1990 interview. “The covers were brown, tan or green paper. They were not attractive, and lacked sales appeal.” Despite concern about the added costs, he was given the approval to come up with original cover designs.nHis first cover, for a collection of Rodgers and Hart songs performed by an orchestra, showed a high-contrast photo of a theater marquee with the title in lights. The new packaging concept was a success: Newsweek reported that sales of Bruno Walter’s recording of Beethoven’s “Eroica” symphony increased ninefold when the album cover was illustrated.n“It was such a simple idea, really, that an image would become attached to a piece of music,” said Paula Scher, who designed record covers for Columbia in the 1970s and is now a partner in the design company Pentagram. “When you look at your music collection today on your iPod, you are looking at Alex Steinweiss’s big idea.”nMr. Steinweiss preferred metaphor to literalism, and his covers often used collages of musical and cultural symbols. For a Bartok piano concerto, he rejected a portrait of Bartok, using instead the hammers, keys and strings of a piano placed against a stylized backdrop. For a recording of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” he used an illustration of a piano on a dark blue field illuminated only by an abstract street lamp, with a stylized silhouetted skyline in the background.nnn nnMr. Steinweiss left the music business at 55, when he realized his design ideas were out of step with the rock era. He turned to his own art, making ceramic bowls and pots and later paintings, often with a musical theme. In 1974 he and his wife moved to Sarasota.nMr. Steinweiss said he was destined to be a commercial artist. In high school he marveled at his classmates who “could take a brush, dip it in some paint and make letters,” he recalled. “So I said to myself, if some day I could become a good sign painter, that would be terrific!”nnVia: NY Times
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Title: Love, Madonna.
Published: 2011-08-07 09:48:42
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Nh2hqnsAJYnI could watch this over every day for the rest of my life and never get bored of it.(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
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Title: Cindy Sherman for MAC
Published: 2011-08-03 12:12:00
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nCindy Sherman for M·A·C Via Baroque BoudournnM·A·C is forever asking “Why not?” when it comes to the miracles of makeup – our medium for transformation – always exploring new ideas about the many ways we long to look and feel different for a day, a night, a lifetime. With the help of props, makeup, prosthetics, wigs and sets, artist Cindy Sherman embodies this Power of Transformation – from off-kilter Hitchcock heroine to fresh corpse, Caravaggio Portrait to Park Avenue Plastic Surgery Maven – all elaborate exercises in trying on different personas. In the campaign we’ve longed forever to conceive, Cindy Sherman for M·A·C created three characters using three different colour stories. We’re living in a time when people of all persuasions have become bolder than ever about the ways they choose to express themselves: with a colourful palette of possibilities, You are the Artist, You are your own Subject, and no matter how fearfully you begin, you become fearless in the process. We can’t wait to see what you (and the genius that is Cindy Sherman) do next!n- M·A·Cn
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Title: Marilyn on ‘Four Rooms’
Published: 2011-07-29 21:07:29
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nnMM collector Gene London (also a former children’s TV host and fashion designer) brought one of his most prized possessions – a sketch by Marilyn, Myself Exercising – to the UK recently for an appearance on Channel 4′s antiques show, Four Rooms.nLondon was offered £150,000 by dealer Jeff Salmon but, incredibly, turned it down. I can understand why – not from a financial point of view – but to me, that sketch is one of the loveliest things Marilyn left behind. It should either go to someone who truly adores it, or preferably, be donated to a museum.nUK readers can watch the show here (the sketch is the final item, saving the best for last.)nn(via Marilyn on ‘Four Rooms’ | ES Updates)nI just watched this tonight - it’s only the second episode I’ve seen of the program and I quite like it - but I agree, I wouldn’t have sold it to them either. The poor man clearly loved it the way it should be loved and I’m not convinced he really wanted to sell it at all.nHe said he wanted to sell it to buy costumes at a forthcoming auction, but personally I would far rather own this than a dress - even ‘the’ dress.
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Title: Designing the books of the future
Published: 2011-07-13 16:34:00
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nThe simple pagenDesigning a book is largely an exercise in balance: Balance of letterforms and surrounding space in relation to the physicality of a book. In Hochui and Kinross’ Designing Books, they discuss the uniqueness of book symmetry:nThe axis of symmetry of the spine is always there; one can certainly work over it, but not deny it. In this respect book typography is essentially different from the typography of single sheets, as in business printing, posters, and so on.nThe spine gives book reading a kinetic motion not found in unbound sheets of paper. Forward and backward movement within a book happens because of the spine. And so designers erect scaffolding—text blocks and running heads and other literary accoutrements—around this keystone axis. It is the natural balance point of a spread. The implicitness of this means publishers have largely achieved functional book design right from the beginning: the forty-two line columns of thick type in the Gutenberg bible, even today, are quite a marvel of typographic balance.nIf the axis of symmetry for a book is the spine, where is it on an iPad? On one hand, designers can approach tablets as if they were a single sheet of “paper,” letting the physicality of the object define the central axis of symmetry—straight down the middle.nOn the other hand, the physicality of these devices doesn’t represent the full potential of content space. The screen becomes a small portal to an infinite content plane, or “infinite canvas,” as so well illustrated by Scott McCloud.nFig 1. The infinite canvasnRegarding iPad book design, designers are left with a fundamental question they must answer before approaching this device: Do we embrace the physicality of the device—a spineless page with a central axis of symmetry? Or do we embrace the device’s virtual physicality—an invisible spine defined by every edge of the device, signaling the potential of additional content just a swipe away?nFig 2. Every which way is upnPresently there’s a clear rift in iPad editorial design. There are those applications—iBooks, Kindle, New York Times, Wired, The New Yorker—that attempt to transpose a type of print design built around physical cues to a screen lacking those same cues. They treat the boundaries of the iPad screen like the edges of a printed sheet of paper—sometimes awkwardly forcing content into columns which aren’t optimized for the canvas.nThese applications are often characterized by an imposition of arbitrary, non-semantic breaks in content in the name of pagination. Oliver Reichentsien, in his essay iPad: Scroll or Card breaks down use cases for the two models. He provides metrics for determining when to scroll or paginate, and also how the very experience of reading changes between them.nInconsistent metaphorsnFig 3. The New York Times app: swipe to the left to continue reading this articlenFig 4. The New Yorker app: swipe up to continue reading this articlenThe inconsistency in which the physical page is mimicked on a tablet leaves readers disoriented, unaware of their position in the context of the greater whole, and unable to easily scan back.nOn the other side we have reading applications like Instapaper and Mobile Safari (Mobile Safari being the most fundamental of reading applications on our iDevices) that embrace the boundless nature of the iPad screen. The physical edges don’t bind the text blocks.nVery rarely does one find an application that masterfully merges these two schools. Inkling, however, is one such example of a reading application that straddles the new and old—chunking content in an intuitively predictable and consistent manner within and across chapters, thereby grounding the user via thoughtful navigation. And doing so beautifully, with a confident awareness of the container.nWhat’s so exciting about all of this is that even now—at the start of 2011!—we’re still refining and iterating on optimal reading solutions to these issues of digital editorial design.nAs designers, we need to ask ourselves: Where does our axis of symmetry most rationally lie for the content at hand? From where is the kinetic element of this content born? What’s the rationale behind specific layout and navigation choices for this content and will they be thoughtlessly intuitive to the reader?nWe can start with these questions. Then, we can take our content, and—piece by piece—place it back onto this new canvas with considered awareness. These are the first steps to treating the iPad as more than a simple page.nA List Apart: Articles: A Simpler PagennThis is just a small excerpt from an absolutely FANTASTIC piece by Craig Mod. I am so excited to see how we can use these new platforms to expand and enhance our reading expierences rather than just stubbornly cramming print layouts into them.
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Title: You're In A Bubble*
Published: 2011-07-12 11:22:00
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nnEli Pariser has an intriguing idea - that the increasingly “personalisation” of the internet is trapping us all in echo chambers, hearing only opinions we already agree with, and narrowing our interests.nPariser, the board president of citizens’ organisation MoveOn.Org, points to Google’s switch to personalised search in 2009 as the moment when “the Filter Bubble” became an urgent topic of discussion. There is no longer an “objective” Google - you receive search results based on your previous searches and other information - and the company reportedly measures 57 “metrics” about you every time you search.nnWhat is a “filter bubble” and why we should be worried about it?nIt used to be the case that you’d Google something and I’d Google something and we’d get the same results. Now that’s no longer true. Many sites, including Google, predict we want to see based on personal data that we’ve given them. The filter bubble is the personal unique universe of information that results when we have these algorithms following us around and sifting through data for us and showing us what they think we want to see.nIt’s a problem because it’s happening invisibly; you don’t know how your view of the world is being edited - you can get a distorted picture and not even really know it.nIs the filter bubble made worse because of the dominance of a few companies over the net - Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook?nAbsolutely. Google and Facebook are especially prominent, and Microsoft is a close runner up. These companies have an incredible power to edit and filter what we see and what we don’t. But they don’t think of themselves that way, they don’t seem to be taking much responsibility for that power that they’ve accumulated.nSo the problem is that you can’t see what you’re missing?nYes. You don’t know what the editorial sensibility is: whereas when you pick up the Guardian you know what the editing role is. But you don’t know who Google or Facebook think you are, and you don’t know in what way they are editing information, so you really don’t know what’s being edited out.nDo you think, for example, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has a distinct political worldview?nI don’t think that they’re doing this to shape politics, I think the contrary it’s sort of a wilful ignorance of the critical implications of this stuff.These guys are engineers, and they tend be very wary of the messy, social, consensus-orientated culture of politics.nNone of these guys would have ever run for office. But here they are running these huge companies that are making decisions that apparently aren’t political. But for the fabric of society they do have really important repercussions.nI’m sure journalists would agree that not all of the results of search-engine optimisation [writing headlines that use popular search terms] are positive.nIf the way that you get to a large audience is having a headline that people will click ‘like’ on a lot on Facebook, that changes the kind of headline you write - because you literally don’t want it to be a downer.nI think the “like” button has a really significant effect on both what is produced and what is distributed. it’s not a neutral word. And so, you know, a story about someone overcoming the odds and surviving their fight with cancer gets lots of “likes” - but the war in Libya? That’s harder to click “like” on.nIs there a filter bubble on Twitter - because you only follow people similar to you?nTwitter, until recently, has been bucking this trend somewhat in that it doesn’t make a lot of personalised decisions for you. One of my jumping-off points with the book was the fact that on Facebook I was being shown updates only from my Facebook friends whose political views I agreed with - the others were being edited out, essentially. That doesn’t happen on Twitter - I see the conservatives as well as the liberals. I get to choose.nDo you think that we will outgrow this obsession with personalisation and instant gratification?nI feel hopeful that people are shocked when they hear that this is happening. The more it’s bought to people’s attention, the more [companies] will be pressured to develop products that give people much more fulfilling media.nPersonally, where do you get your news from these days?nI find Twitter very helpful because it does allow me to get a taste of a lot of different information in the world. I also rely a lot on standard newspapers, the New York Times and The Washington Post I think still do a very good job. I use Google News and I use Facebook, so I don’t want to just go backwards.nSo it’s not a case of “ban Facebook and we’ll be fine”?nNo, the question is how do you make the new 21st century media as good as the best of the earlier centuries’ media.nPresumably the only way to do that is legislation.nSome of this change can be produced by consumers. When people get to know this is happening, they do want a change. It’s one of the frustrating conversations I get into with engineers at these companies where they say: “Nobody’s demanding better tools on this ”. You have to know [about them] first.nThere is a legislative component as well, which is about the updating the laws around personal information to reflect this new world in which you click in one place and that ripples out. It starts with giving people better control over their own personal information. If the basis of the web is going to be that we hand over all this personal data - which is valuable - in exchange for services then we need to understand the value of the data.nWhat change would you like to come out of publishing the book?nThe best scenario would be that people understand how their information is filtered in a more serious way so that they can make better choices.nThe Filter Bubble is out now (Penguin, £12.99). For more information, visit thefilterbubble.com. nnThis is a fascinating subject because it’s not as simple as being dominated by some cartoon omni-present villain. (Although there is certainly a conversation to be had about that - what should be regulated, should we regulate and who on earth is impartial and knowledgable enough of the technology to do it?) People make a fair amount of noise about targeted advertising because they don’t like the idea of being advertised to in general - but when it comes to personalised searches or the ability to self-select the information dissemenated to them the water becomes muddier.nPeople have always done this to an extent of course - you read the the paper that shares your political or world view, you watch tv channels that show the programs you like - but increasingly the internet is allowing us to live our lives almost completely free of debate, challenge or dissenting voices.nWhile there are many implications in how this could be controled for political or monitary gain I’m almost more interested in how we are already abusing it ourselves. It’s as though we are already starting to live in many simultanious, parallel, virtual worlds rather than one shared one. I’m certainly not preaching from on high about this - I’m as guilty as the next girl when it comes to filling my online networks with things that aleady interest me - but I’m curious, if not nervous to see where it might lead..n*and yes, that is a Geri Halliwell reference.
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Title: Where did all the redheads go?
Published: 2011-05-27 18:31:00
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I was watching the horror/thriller movie Peeping Tom last night which stars a trio of beautiful redheads - Moira Shearer, Anna Massey and Shirley Anne Field:nnnnand I suddenly realised how rarely you see an electric, fiery redhead on the big screen anymore! The golden era of 40s and 50s movies were full of them, not to mention the pin-ups, but these days you barely see anything that would constitute as ‘strawberry’.. nI’m a great fan of the bottle blonde (the trashier the better) but surely it’s time for a revival of the redhead too? :Dnnnnnnn
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Title: We don't talk about love. We only want to get drunk.
Published: 2011-05-27 09:48:34
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nnnI can’t decide if this is quite funny or extremely annoying. I’m guessing the artist is popular at parties either way..n(via Best Modern Artist Ever Presents Drinking Art - Geekologie)
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Title: IGAF
Published: 2011-05-15 09:02:00
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[gallery]nfuckyeahcourtneylove:nnI don’t give a fuck what CL says. I love this record. Almost Golden, Hello, Hold On To Me, Life Despite God, But Julian (the original from the Hollywood Bowl in 2001 was so much better with lines like ‘you know how when you went to the store? Well that was me I was following you around’) and of course the alternate version of Mono (with the Cleopatraesque Elizabeth Taylor demanding ‘you will kneel’). Plus Brody provided backing vocals on Sunset Strip! I love it.nnthe sound on A.S. sucked beyond words. The production was a nightmare. Linda and I had written some really good songs, but they were rendered lazily and sound like shit. The art was horrific and not my idea and the label didn’t back it at all. I was busy taking drugs to dull the pain of having lost everything and made a shit album to boot the producer [Jim Barber] didn’t know what he was doing and he just spent my money. It almost had a moment of being Exile on Main Street - almost - but that’s like almost winning a race. You either do or you do not. And in this case it’s a delightfully written record in parts and sonically untenable with two of the most pretentious songs I have ever written. I was so druggy I thought it’d be cute to rip off “Teen Spirit” on “I’ll Do Anything.” Believe it or not, “All the Drugs”, “Sunset Strip”, “Mono” and “But Julian…” are all good songs. They just were produced crap and the songs weren’t taken further than demo status. The art still makes me seethe. At least make it look cool, and instead there’s me as a Playboy pinup. I love Olivia’s art but that was personal for me - not art for a record.nnPlus, this documentary footage from 2003 of the recording of America’s Sweetheart is pretty interesting with a little clip of Patty & CL towards the end.nnI agree - personally I think it’s her best work.nThe only issue I have with the entire album is that the alternate I think US? version of my favourite song on it Sunset Strip (possibly my favourite Courtney/Hole song) is terrible. The UK version that I bought at the time is AMAZING but it’s not on Spotify these days just the sucky one :(nOh, and I adore the cover.
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Title: Robot
Published: 2011-05-03 09:29:00
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATKOP1xtptcnI realise I’m about a year behind but I’m kind of obsessed with this song at the moment. It’s like a one-woman tour through the dark heart of the Disney channel. Somewhat ironiaclly it’s autotuned to hell on the album - the girl can sing live though..nIt’s been like this from the start One piece after another to make my heart You mistake the game for being smart Stand here, sell this, and hit your mark But the sound of the steel and the crush, and the grind it will scream - who am I, to decide my life? But in time it will die, they’ll be nothing left inside Just rusted metal that was never even mine I would scream, but I’m just this hollow shell Waiting here, begging please set me free, so I can feel Stop trying to live my life for me I need to breath, I’m not your robot Stop telling me I’m a part of the big machine Im breaking free, can’t you see I can’t love, I can’t speak Without somebody else operating me You gave me eyes, and now I see I’m not your robot, I’m just menMiley Cyrus - Robot (Live At House Of Blues) HD (by Daria1771)(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
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Title: All dots and lines that speak and say
Published: 2011-04-19 16:28:00
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nSpotify Playlist: AInTracklisting:nAqua – Cartoon Heroes - Radio EditWorld is Mine Live -Miku HatsuneDECO*27 – Chocolat Beats feat. Miku HatsuneDECO*27 – Mozaik Role (kous DR Remix) feat. Miku HatsuneHatsune Miku – Futari Nomoji PittanDaft Punk – Touch It / TechnologicHatsune Miku – true my heart -VOCALOID 2 special edit-DECO*27 – Mukashi Mukashi no Kyou no Boku feat. Miku HatsunePenguins Project – 思春期ボーカロイド - Vocaloid In AdolescenceHatsune Miku – Ievan PolkkaPenguins Project – チョコレート・トレイン - Chocolate TrainHatsune Miku – Ne.Mei.Gede Reset!t.A.T.u. – RobotHatsune Miku – Mikumikuni ShiteageruPenguins Project – 泣いて 泣いて 泣きやんで - No More CryHatsune Miku – Miki no IvuHatsune Miku – Lost my musicMissill – KawaiiPenguins Project – Penguins Projectのテーマ - Theme Of Penguins ProjectJonathan Coulton – ResolutionsPortal Credit Song Still Alive
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Title: Slightly Swoony Spring Playlist :)
Published: 2011-03-23 17:48:12
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nMoby – Be The OneTinashé – MaydayThe Naked And Famous – Punching In A Dream - Single VersionKleerup – Music For GirlLykke Li – I’m Good I’m Gone (Fred Falke Vocal)The Human League – Never Let Me Go - Single VersionTegan And Sara – Back In Your HeadKe$ha – c u next tuesdayTinashé – Come On Over (This Could Be Love)The Naked And Famous – Young BloodSkilla – Dancing On My OwnPJ Harvey – The Last Living RoseLykke Li – I Follow RiversThe Pierces – You’ll Be MinenSubscribe here >>
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Title: I just re-read this vault entry. I love it so much :)
Published: 2011-03-10 14:26:53
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JKR: So you can call it a fraternal bond, but I think it makes it more tragic for Dumbledore. I also think it makes Dumbledore a little less culpable. I see him as fundamentally a very intellectual, brilliant and precocious person whose emotional life was absolutely subjugated to the life of the mind - by his choice - and then his first foray into the world of emotion is catastrophic and I think that would forevermore stun that part of his life and leave it stultified and he would be, what he becomes. That's what I saw as Dumbledore's past. That's always what I saw was in his past. And he keeps a distance between himself and others through humour, a certain detachment and a frivolity of manner
But he's also isolated by his brain. He's isolated by the fact he knows so much, guesses so much, guesses correctly. He has to play his cards close to his chest because he doesn't want Voldemort to know what he suspects. Terrible to be Dumbledore, really, by the end he must have thought it would be quite nice to check out and just hope that everything works out well. [Laughter.]
MA: Because he's set up this massive chess game -
JKR: Mm, this massive chess game. But I said to Arthur, my American editor - we had an interesting conversation during the editing of seven - the moment when Harry takes Draco's wand, Arthur said, God, that's the moment when the ownership of the Elder wand is actually transferred? And I said, that's right. He said, shouldn't that be a bit more dramatic? And I said, no, not at all, the reverse. I said to Arthur, I think it really puts the elaborate, grandiose plans of Dumbledore and Voldemort in their place. That actually the history of the wizarding world hinged on two teenage boys wrestling with each other. They weren't even using magic. It became an ugly little corner tussle for the possession of wands. And I really liked that - that very human moment, as opposed to these two wizards who were twitching strings and manipulating and implanting information and husbanding information and guarding information, you know?
Ultimately it just came down to that, a little scuffle and fistfight in the corner and pulling a wand away
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Title: The thing about Dickie
Published: 2011-03-09 15:10:31
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Marge Sherwood: The thing with Dickie... it's like the sun shines on you, and it's glorious. And then he forgets you and it's very, very cold
Tom Ripley: So I'm learning
Marge Sherwood: When you have his attention, you feel like you're the only person in the world, that's why everybody loves him so much.
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Title: The Truth About Cutting the Cable TV Cord
Published: 2011-02-01 09:45:00
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The Truth About Cutting the Cable TV CordnnFor better or worse, television requires very little effort on the part of the user. Aside from changing the channel or looking at the onscreen TV guide, television is just “there.”nConnected devices, on the other hand, demand a lot more user effort. Viewers have to make conscious choices about what content they want to watch. This is fine if someone wants to watch a specific movie or TV show, but it can be less satisfying for the channel surfer. There is much less serendipity built into the current generation of connected devices.nnAs someone who has never had a satalite contract and has not had ‘TV’ for nearly a decade I am fascinated to see where 'connected TV’ (as the article refers to it) goes over the next 5 years.nIronically in the last 6 months I have moved back to FreeView and largely away from 'connected TV’ due to various issues with broadband speeds, contracts and prices. Currently I am using a mi-fi unit - a very exciting piece of technology that I think may well change the face of Wi-Fi - and allthough the speed is fine the data cap is prohibitive.nI hate FreeView though because of everything 'TV’ that it brings with it - the constant shouty adverts, the osmosis dripfeed of things and people I really don’t care about and the inherent lazy channel surfing that despite my best intentions I still end up doing.nIt does sound however that for 'connected TV’ to succeed it will end up taking on most of the characteristics (and evils) of regular TV - but that will only hold true I suspect of the major services like Hulu and integrated solutions like Google TV. I hope there will still always be those oasis’ of calm like the BBC iPlayer and 4OD out there.nAs soon as I can afford to increase my Wi-Fi package I will gleefuly ditch the little black box and in the meantime try my very hardest to Switch Off My Television Set and Go Do Something Less Boring Instead..
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Title: Black Swan [Review]
Published: 2011-01-31 13:35:00
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nOk.. so, a slightly more involved review ;)nI loved Black Swan SO much that it’s hard to know where to start. I only saw it last night and already I’m dying to see it again. On first viewing there is not a single thing I would change about it.nThe cast is small and tight - it really is Natalie Portman’s film - with only five real characters. The direction, cinematography and (as to be expected) editing are also wonderful. There are so many elegant visual clues that I look forward to watching it over because I’m sure there is plenty that I missed first time around.nOne of my own personal fixitations in film and literature is the device of the ‘unreliable narrator’ and whilst Black Swan doesn’t necessarily fall neatly into that box we are certainly seeing the world through the eyes of a woman loosing her grasp on reality. She is also, objectively, a rather unappealing character - although of course we understand why..nI think you can read the film on one level, somewhat bluntly, as a story about the uglier side of the delicate art of ballet or more loosely as an allegory of obsession, control, self control, fractured self-image, body-horror, the pressure of being 'perfect’ and the need for release. It’s quite shocking in places (even for a fairly hardy soul) and these shocks are meated out in a kind of dartlike, sporadic way that often left me gasping. [oh, and as a side note - anyone who thinks the film actually has anything to do with 'lesbianism’ wasn’t paying attention..]nThe whole film is one huge, tense pressure cooker and the second that thing happens with Wynona Ryder you know it is about to blow.. I think if you know the story of Swan Lake there are aspects of the film that are probably quicker to grasp and a slight inevitabilty to the plot - but within that an absolutely crazy freewheel that means there is NO CHANCE OF GETTING BORED. It is grandiose, melodramatic and gothic - but all tempered with a delicate touch and maturity.nDefinately one of the best films I’ve ever seen.
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Title: Ladies sing the blues [playlist]
Published: 2011-01-26 17:24:00
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Listen on Spotify.. nnPlaylist after the jump ;)nnDuffy – My BoyDuffy – Too Hurt To DanceDuffy – Breath AwayDuffy – Hard For The HeartWanda Jackson – Like a BabyWanda Jackson – Nervous BreakdownWanda Jackson – Thunder on the MountainWanda Jackson – You Know That I’m No GoodAmy Winehouse – Back To BlackAmy Winehouse – Fuck Me PumpsAmy Winehouse – Me & Mr JonesAmy Winehouse – To Know Him Is To Love Him - NapsterLiveEtta James – Nobody Loves You Like MeEtta James – Only Women BleedBillie Holiday – Stars Fell On AlabamaBillie Holiday – I Didn’t Know What Time It WasDinah Washington – Drinking AgainDinah Washington – Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My BabyIke & Tina Turner – Stand By MeIke Turner – Proud MaryIke & Tina Turner – Cussin’, Cryin’ And Carryin’ OnJoseph Gershenson – Big Spender - 1969 Motion Picture SoundtrackAlma Cogan – Whatever Lola Wants (Lola Gets)Adele – Rolling In The DeepAdele – Hometown Glory (High Contrast Remix)Florence + The Machine – Dog Days Are OverFlorence + The Machine – Cosmic LoveFlorence + The Machine – Kiss With A FistMarina And The Diamonds – GirlsMarina And The Diamonds – NumbMarina And The Diamonds – Are You Satisfied?Ellie Goulding – AnimalEllie Goulding – HumanEllie Goulding – Under The SheetsEllie Goulding – Guns And HorsesEllie Goulding – This Love (Will Be Your Downfall)Ellie Goulding – Your Biggest MistakeAmy Macdonald – Don’t Tell Me That It’s OverAmy Macdonald – Love LoveAmy Macdonald – An Ordinary LifeAmy Macdonald – Give It All UpAmy Macdonald – Next Big ThingAmy Macdonald – This Pretty FaceCharlotte Church – Back To ScratchCharlotte Church – We Were YoungCharlotte Church – UnravellingCharlotte Church – Logical WorldCharlotte Church – Don’t Think About ItCharlotte Church – Cup Of The SunNatalie Merchant – Life Is SweetNatalie Merchant – Thick As ThievesNatalie Merchant – EffigySuzanne Vega – Tom’s DinerSuzanne Vega – LukaSuzanne Vega – Marlene On The WallAimee Mann – Wise UpAimee Mann – Save MeMartha Wainwright – Bleeding All OverMartha Wainwright – Comin’ TonightMartha Wainwright – So Many FriendsMartha Wainwright – In The Middle Of The NightMartha Wainwright – See Emily PlayBeth Gibbons – RomanceRustin Man – Funny Time Of YearBeth Gibbons – Sand RiverJoan As Police Woman – The MagicJoan As Police Woman – I Was EveryoneJoan As Police Woman – Game Of LifeAu Revoir Simone – ShadowsAu Revoir Simone – Knight Of WandsAu Revoir Simone – Trace A LineAu Revoir Simone – Only You Can Make You HappyAu Revoir Simone – HurricanesAu Revoir Simone – The Disco SongCamera Obscura – Away With MurderCamera Obscura – The Sweetest ThingCamera Obscura – Honey In The SunThe Bronx Sisters – Red Hot MomaShe & Him – ThievesShe & Him – Over It Over AgainShe & Him – This Is Not A TestShe & Him – Change Is HardShe & Him – Sweet Darlin’She & Him – In The SunMark Lanegan – Honey Child What Can I Do?Tammy Wynette – Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go BadDolly Parton – Steady As The RainDolly Parton – Silver DaggerDolly Parton – Travelin’ PrayerBillie Jo Spears – You’re My ManBillie Jo Spears – (I Never Promised You A) Rose GardenNorah Jones & The Handsome Band – Loretta (Live 2004)Norah Jones – Blue Bayou (feat. M. Ward) (Live in Austin)Juice Newton – A Little LoveJuice Newton – Queen Of HeartsJefferson Airplane – Somebody To LoveJuice Newton – Heart Of The NightStevie Nicks – Stand Back - Live From SoundstageStevie Nicks – Edge of SeventeenJanis Joplin – Piece Of My HeartJanis Joplin – Me And Bobby McGeeJanis Joplin – Try (Just A Little Bit Harder)Patti Smith Group – 25th FloorPatti Smith Group – Till VictoryPatti Smith Group – Gloria - Digitally Remastered 1996Patti Smith Group – Elegie - Digitally Remastered 1996Courtney Love – Life Despite GodCourtney Love – Never Gonna Be The SameCourtney Love – All The DrugsPJ Harvey – My Beautiful LeahPJ Harvey – The Sky Lit UpPJ Harvey – A Perfect Day ElisePJ Harvey – AngelenePJ Harvey – Is This Desire?John Parish – Leaving CaliforniaJohn Parish – The SoldierTori Amos – Pretty Good YearTori Amos – GirlTori Amos – The Wrong BandTori Amos – Past The MissionKate Bush – Feel ItKate Bush – Oh To Be In LoveKate Bush – Them Heavy PeopleKate Bush – The Kick InsideKate Bush – L'Amour Looks Something Like YouPolly Scattergood – Nitrogen PinkPolly Scattergood – Unforgiving ArmsPolly Scattergood – Bunny Club
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Title: Time goes by so slowly..
Published: 2011-01-17 15:25:52
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nnIn the autumn of 2009, with various knockoff cover versions of Shakira’s ‘She Wolf’ scaling the charts before Shakira’s own version of the tune had even been released, we did a thing for The Guardian about how soundalike versions of tunes were taking over iTunes. “Labels have now lost control of their most precious marketing device, which teased fans with radio play, video airings and TV performances, creating demand months ahead of a single’s release,” we wrote. “Illegal downloads, and this latest wave of covers, mean that any thirst a label creates can be instantly, unofficially quenched.”Well this weekend it was announced that in order to combat piracy (ie make more/lose less cash) Sony and Universal will be moving to an 'on air, on sale’ model. As soon as a song is played on the radio, it’ll be available to purchase.The timing is pretty perfect: following last Tuesday’s official online and radio premiere of the Britney single 'Hold It Against Me’ Sony released the track for sale in most of its major territories. At one point, not long after release, the song was at Number One on iTunes in 17 different countries.That didn’t happen in the UK.In the UK, Britney’s label decided on a February release date. As well as unnecessarily putting Britney head to head with Lady Gaga’s new single - a foolhardy move for any act - the decision also meant that UK fans would have to wait a month to buy the song. Well, of course, they wouldn’t have waited a month. Although they would happily have spent a quid on a legal download, fans ended up illegally downloading the track, or legally listening to the track on YouTube. Either way, by the time February’s official release would have come around, the legal release would have been purchased by only the most hardcore Britney fans - the ones bothered by the single’s chart placing. Everyone else would probably have moved on.nnnPopjusticenFinally! Forward progress! This has been needing to happen for such a long time..nIt’s not just about instant gratification either (well, not entirely) it is also about removing the insanity of staggered teritory based releases in the internet age.nAlso for those of us who spend the lead up to big releases squinting at the computer with our fingers in our ears trying to avoid leaks and demos this might help ease up the deluge.
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Title: Dexter Season 5 Review
Published: 2010-12-14 13:08:00
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Warning: this post is spoilerific from the outset!nnnnnnSo that’s Dexter over for another year - though arguably to many people’s surprise not for good. Having had 24 hours to digest the series finale I thought I would jot down a few of my feelings about it.nOn the positive side the acting delivered by all the central characters was, as always, superb with stand-out guest roles from Julia Stiles (Lumen) and Johnny Lee Miller (Jordan Chase). I really enjoyed the relationship with Lumen and was surprised how successfuly they managed to evoke empathy without creating either a martyr or villain of her. Several of the episodes were extremely tense (though nothing has yet managed to rival the Doakes showdown in series two) and on the whole the Barrel Girls plot line was entertaining - if not as elegant or gothically beautiful as The Ice Truck Killer or Trinity.nOn the other hand I can’t help wondering where Dexter - as a character and a series - has left to go. Between Rudy, Rita, Lila, Miguel and now Lumen I feel like we have explored the gamut of credible relationships for Dexter. Other than some sort of Lila / Lumen hybrid Natural Born Killers scenario (which would feel like a huge retread) then I think it’s safe to say that Dexter is on his own now. The end of this season was incredibly downbeat (far more so than Rita’s death for me) and sort of dumped Dexter right back where he started - disconected, bewildered and completely alone. Where do you take a character like that other than further down? Part of Dexter’s stregnth has always been it’s delicate tightrope between light and dark - murder scenes scored with salsa music - but increasingly the character is travelling a road where humour feels unwelcome.nThe one thing that I expected to happen in this series that didn’t was for Dexter to begin to drop the code and go a bit wild and trigger-happy after Rita’s death - it seemed to hint at this in the first episode too when he beat up the guy in the gas station bathroom. I was expecting to have his character pushed in a more chaotic and unsustainable direction to force the inevitable end - be that Deb catching him in the act, a boat-ride into the sunset or some grizlier demise.nI couldn’t help feeling let down that Deb didn’t whip back that plastic sheeting instead of hitting the great plot reset button and leaving. Deb is now really the only character left that Dexter has any meaningful relationship with - the kids are more like plot props than characters the viewers actually care about - it surely has to be her that either brings him in or set’s him free in the end..nObviously Showtime have a massive cash cow on their hands and although the plot has been feeling the strain since series 3 the show is more popular now than it’s ever been. I can’t help being concerned that they will continue to eak it out until Michael C Hall decides to throw the towel in.nDexter’s bad is still better than most show’s brilliant and it would have to get far, far worse before I would even consider not watching it. However, like a great meal no matter how good it tastes I will get full up eventually.
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Title: From a fake Lady Gaga CD to a thumb drive that is a pocket-sized bombshell – the biggest intelligence leak in history
Published: 2010-11-29 11:46:00
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nnAn innocuous-looking memory stick, no longer than a couple of fingernails, came into the hands of a Guardian reporter earlier this year. The device is so small it will hang easily on a keyring. But its contents will send shockwaves through the world’s chancelleries and deliver what one official described as “an epic blow” to US diplomacy. The 1.6 gigabytes of text files on the memory stick ran to millions of words: the contents of more than 250,000 leaked state department cables, sent from, or to, US embassies around the world.n“I would come in with music on a CD-RW labelled with something like ‘Lady Gaga’ … erase the music … then write a compressed split file. No one suspected a thing … [I] listened and lip-synched to Lady Gaga’s Telephone while exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in American history.” He said that he “had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day 7 days a week for 8+ months”.nnI realise this is actually a rather serious story - but I have to admit I’m still giggling at 'lip-synched to Lady Gaga’s Telephone while exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in American history’.nOur Lady gets everywhere ;)
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Title: Book Review: Killer Photos with Your iPhone by Matthew Bamberg, Kris Krug and Greg Ketchum
Published: 2010-11-13 22:15:00
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nSince getting my first iPhone I find I am using it to take almost all my photographs (bar those that require particularly high-res or studio quality) partly because of convenience but largely because of the amazing options for in-phone photo editing and sharing. So it was with great excitement that I received my copy of of ‘Killer Photos with Your iPhone’ through the post..n“Killer Photos with Your iPhone shows students how to take fantastic pictures using the camera built right into their iPhone. Because of its portability and unique capabilities, the iPhone camera is now one of the most popular digital cameras on the market, and this book shows you how to do everything from taking simple pictures to using apps to snap and create innovative images. You’ll find information on the basics of shooting with an iPhone, including how to aim, compose, and focus your shots, as well as shooting within an app platform, and even post-processing. Many of the most popular photography apps are covered, and explained option-by-option with full-color images that allow students to see the progression of the app all at once instead of step-by-step. Covering both the 3G and 3GS iPhone models, this book will have students shooting, editing, and sharing killer photos in no time!”nThe first section of the book is aimed at beginners learning the basics (both of the iPhone specifically and photography in general) however there are lots of handy tips and hints that seasoned users may find useful too.nHowever it’s the second half of the book that I personally got the most out of. It covers more detailed issues such as dealing with various kinds of lighting (often one of the few real problem areas of the iPhone camera) and, most interestingly for me, guides to post-processing apps such as Photoshop.com, CameraBag, PhotoForge, FX Photo Studio and Tiffen Photo. The book goes into each featured app in great detail and as well as discovering a few apps I hadn’t heard of I also learned quite a few new things about ones I already used.nI really enjoyed this book - I found it very easy to read and useful. The language is engaging and informal throughout (not too geeky for the casual gadget owner) but at the same time not as forcedly 'humorous’ as the Dummies guides. I would definitely recommend it to anyone with an iPhone regardless of knowledge base.That said, I would particularly recommend it to any iPhone users who are new to photography as well as it really frames iPhone photography within improving your photography skills in general.nBuy it on Amazon.com here >>nFollow the authors on Twitter >>nAs a side note you can see some of my own iPhone photography and art here and a 'phone art’ event that I helped organise here.
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Title: Fanzine
Published: 2010-10-21 18:13:56
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[gallery]n`A loving look at this DIY strand of publishing, from its earliest incarnations up to modern day online`E-Zines’nnThis is the ultimate book on Fanzines an amateur magazine produced by fans, for fans of a certain subculture. This highly visual illustrated book is full of reproductions of the best fanzines ever created, from the superhero tributes of the 1950s and 60s, to punk fanzines such as Sniffin Glue, right up the contemporary e-zine scene. Arranged in six chronological chapters, each with a thorough introduction, Fanzines spans eight decades of counterculture and features many extremely rare publications. Written by a fanzine collector and expert author, Fanzines has cult appeal for anyone interested in graphic design, magazine publishing or underground culture.nnI would love to get hold of a copy of this :)
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Title: Lady Gaga - Then You Love Me
Published: 2010-10-15 17:09:31
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Lady Gaga - Then You Love Me So this is a pre-Fame demo that I’ve become obsessed with recently. I know it’s sort of awful but somehow I just Can’t Stop Listening to it. I like to think of it as the best thing that Steps never recorded.
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Title: A Kylie Moment
Published: 2010-06-14 11:42:30
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A Kylie moment is when a bit in a song inspires a slightly unexpected surging emotion, and happiness but also some sadness, with a sense of being slightly close to tears for no real reason. It is a bit like Christmas.nnPopjustice - An interview with Kylie Minogue
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Title: Scissor Sisters | Night Work
Published: 2010-04-14 12:03:36
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Scissor Sisters | Night WorkA. MAZING.
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Title: Hole – “Samantha” (Stereogum Premiere) | Stereogum
Published: 2010-03-30 17:20:45
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Hole – “Samantha” (Stereogum Premiere) | Stereogum
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Title: Spotify playlist: Melancholy and Infinite Bowie
Published: 2010-02-05 13:29:57
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Spotify playlist: Melancholy and Infinite Bowiemelancholy and infite bowienDavid Bowie – SundayDavid Bowie – 5:15 The Angels Have GoneDavid Bowie – Slip AwayDavid Bowie – The Loneliest GuyDavid Bowie – Try Some, Buy SomeDavid Bowie – She’ll Drive The Big CarDavid Bowie – If I’m Dreaming My LifeDavid Bowie – Something In The AirDavid Bowie – Everyone Says ‘Hi’David Bowie – Thursday’s ChildDavid Bowie – Strangers When We MeetDavid Bowie – SurviveDavid Bowie – Bring Me The Disco KingDavid Bowie – SevenDavid Bowie – DaysDavid Bowie – What’s Really Happening?David Bowie – Brilliant AdventureDavid Bowie – The DreamersDavid Bowie – OutsideDavid Bowie – Thru’ These Architects EyesDavid Bowie – New Angels Of PromiseDavid Bowie – AbdulmajidDavid Bowie – Pallas AthenaDavid Bowie – A New Career In A New TownDavid Bowie – No ControlDavid Bowie – You’ve Been AroundDavid Bowie – Nite FlightsDavid Bowie – The MotelDavid Bowie – I Know It’s Gonna Happen Someday
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Title: New Year, New Playlist
Published: 2010-01-12 13:58:07
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New Year, New PlaylistMarina And The Diamonds – I Am Not a RobotPolly Scattergood – Other Too EndlessKate Bush – How To Be InvisibleMarina And The Diamonds – SeventeenLittle Boots – RemedyLady Gaga – Dance In The DarkRoisin Murphy – Movie StarFlorence + The Machine – Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)Bat For Lashes – DanielAmanda Palmer – The Point Of It AllPolly Scattergood – Bunny ClubAdam Lambert – SoakedAmanda Palmer – What’s The Use Of WondrinBat For Lashes – What’s A Girl To Do?The Killers – SpacemanPet Shop Boys – My girlM.I.A. – Paper PlanesMadonna – Revolver - feat. Lil WayneKaty Perry – I Kissed A Girl (Jason Nevins Funkrokr Extended Mix)Dragonette – Fixin To ThrillEva Simons – Silly BoyLady Gaga – TelephoneShakira – She WolfMIKA – Relax, Take It EasyLady Gaga – TeethRöyksopp – The Girl And The RobotLady Gaga – So Happy I Could DieDragonette – Jesus Doesn’t Love MeRöyksopp – Tricky TrickyAir – Alpha Beta Gaga (Edit 91)
