Monday, August 30, 2004
And then that's it...
I got my bike out yesterday for the first time in, well I was claiming 18 months, but I think it's actually 2 years. I cycled about 8 miles last night. The jelly legs and nearly-blistered hands aren't the problem though. The problem is the fact that I can't sit down because my arse is sore from the saddle. Still, I got to take some amazing photos.
Photos. Aye. And there's the rub. Fed up of words. Prefer images at the moment.
And stop dissing Paula Radcliff. "Quitting isn't the British way!" Yeah, well shit, neither is WINNING and Paula went there to win. Once she realised she wasn't going to win and she was in danger of fucking her body on a level you and I CAN NOT IMAGINE, she stopped, and fair play to her for that. Had the 10,000 metres been before the marathon then yes, she would have stood a much better chance at both, but to run 22 miles in searing heat, mentally and physicaly collapse, and then try and run 10,000 metres in competition conditions just five days later, not a chance.
Bjork album is incredible, especially the bit in the beatbox techno choir number when someone starts doing pussy cat impressions. Ghostface album is also great so far. LL Cool J album has a handful of good tracks.
But yeah. The rub? I reckon I've got another year of writing about music left. I've run out of things to say, things to write. Or at least I feel that way right now, about music. No one fucking cares anyway, outside of the few hundred people who read ILM. People just want you to tell them whether to buy something or not.
If I've not made serious progress on starting that novel by the time I'm 27, feel free to hit me.
NJS
8/30/2004 06:11:00 pm
Thursday, August 26, 2004
News
Tonight at 6.30pm Embrace played an illegal gig in the middle of Leicester Square to hundreds of fans clutching helium-filled balloons. Grasping only acoustic guitars and tambourines, Danny with an old-fashioned mic-box strapped around his neck, they made it through four or five songs before the police turned up. Apparently Danny tried to steal a policeman's hat before the band fled to the offices of Capital FM and locked themselves in.
What other band in the world can you imagine doing something so ridiculously weird and wonderful?
In other news, the beach where this photo was taken from (during a walk yesterday evening), has been closed today, and over Bank Holiday weekend, because of high levels of pollution. Go figure.
NJS
8/26/2004 10:51:00 pm
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
???
I should update, shouldn't I?
NJS
8/24/2004 10:08:00 am
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
advice
don't stop at the first hundred
no really, don't
NJS
8/18/2004 11:18:00 pm
The sum of all years
I’m choking up a lot lately. Stephen Parry winning bronze made me choke up, not the moment when he won, not even the moment when he said his dad was too ill to have flown out to Greece, but the moment when [whoever the commentator was] explained how Parry had qualified for the final, coming 16th or something in one heat, how he’d spent seven years working for it, always finishing fourth, never quite making the podium, and then said “well done, mate”. It was exactly the same sensation as hit me at Matt’s wedding, and those first few times I listened to Out Of Nothing, that wave of vicarious relief and satisfaction at seeing someone (not necessarily someone you love, or even know in the case of Stephen Parry) who’s worked and worked at something for years finally see it start to pay dividends. Of course I’ll never get that feeling first hand because I’m a lazy fuck.
Something about favourite bands goes here, but I’m not sure what. What is it about a band that makes them yr favourite? Do people even have ‘favourite bands’ anymore? Perhaps ILM has coloured my understanding of how people react to music, because, as useful and wonderful as it is, there is very much a different approach to music there than there is anywhere else I have come across. It’s the “12 CDs a year” dilettantism writ large, it’s “240 CDs a year”, magpies on a massive scale, devouring everything for 40 minutes or 80 minutes or 3 minutes depending how long the CD or song lasts and then passing it over forevermore. Everyone seems to know something about everything there, but that’s just the nature of the net’s anonymity shroud making distinct individuals merge into the oft-mentioned, never defined, non-existent-in-truth “Hive Mind”. Because of course, even if people do buy 240 CDs a year, or more for that matter, and even if they are across all genres, that’s not everybody on ILM, it’s a handful of people. So maybe some people on ILM do have favourite bands, and/or albums they play over and over again compulsively. I don’t know. Yes I do. Ned & MBV. Kate & Spacemen 3. Matt DC and Orbital. Marcello and Escalator Over The Hill. It’s not about whether something is objectively good or bad; it’s about whether you love it, whether you enjoy it. Analyse something because you like it, don’t like something because you can analyse it.
I shied away from it for a couple of years, cut ties, blah blah, wrote that big long thing about wrong decisions and missed opportunities, etcetera etcetera, distanced myself, but Embrace probably are my favourite band, insofar as I have one. It struck me the other day that I care (in so much as one can care? – can one care about music? – I have said in the past that there are songs which I care about more than some people I know, is that bad? – but fuck it, music is wonderful, of course I fucking care, it’s not just about analysis and appreciation), that I listen, and have listened, to Embrace more than just about anybody else. But what is it? Just the songs? Almost, but not quite. Many of the songs are flawed, but… It’s certainly not the mythos, because I’m too old for that shit anymore, to believe in the Platonic essence of band, to believe in legends and so on. Sure, there are stories, a whole host of stories, not just about my relationship with the band but about how the band got fucked around, about what lead them through where they’ve been to where they are now. There are stories. And, importantly, there are real people doing actual things, not pop icons or rock stars or anything, but real people making music. On Sunday they played a secret gig in a scout hut in Brighouse to mark the tenth anniversary of the band forming, and there was cake and lemonade and everybody who attended (100 people) was asked to bring a present. Pop icons and rock stars don’t do that. Po-faced too-serious Northern miserablists don’t do that. Embrace are the last big romantic gesture. But every big romantic gesture is built on a thousand tiny ones. To be the best, to be loved, to have people place their soul on stupid odds for this band, for their songs, for the promise that one day they would make a record which would eclipse things, eclipse the shit and slurry they’ve crawled through, that would knock down doubters and cause cynics to sit back and stroke their chins and, at the very least, say “yes, well, it’s very good at what it does” or some other platitude, and, at the very most, cause them to stand up and say “bloody hell, that actually moved me”, to see that the things they do and have done work on many levels, not just the one you think initially, to see that it can be enjoyed as a trifling nothing that simply sounds good just as much as it can be cried too or hollered along with. Just to say “I told you so” isn’t enough, because that’s smug. It’s about… just being able to sit back and see that other people finally get it. If they ever do. We’ll see.
Fucking Strange Moment Of The Day #1
X was just in AV. She’s doing a PhD with the English department, and has worked as an evening supervisor at the library too. She used to work for MTV. Anyway, on my desk there are four South Park figurines, a cheap green plaster Buddha, and a bighead figurine of David Hirst. X commented on them, and I said that the only other person I’d want a toy of on my desk is [anonymous old rock/pop star/situationist], but that nobody made toys of him as far as I was aware, which prompted the reply “are you taking the piss? – no you’re not are you, we’ve not actually – have we spoken about this? – we haven’t have we?!” which in turn prompted me to say “spoken about what?” to which X replied “the fact that [anonymous old rock/pop star/situationist] is the father of my bloody child!”
As William pointed out, “that was the last thing I was expecting anybody to tell me today”.
[anonymous old rock/pop star/situationist] is a source of much discussion in AV, and both William and I were completely unaware of X’s relationship with him. I have two books and one album by [anonymous old rock/pop star/situationist] and have met him once, and written about it on here. X is mentioned in the acknowledgements of one of the books I have by [anonymous old rock/pop star/situationist], which is titled after how fast 7” records need to rotate in order to play at the right speed CAN YOU TELL WHO IT IS YET please don’t guess in the comments boxes, I am keeping names anonymous to protect the innocent, or something. But yes, X and [anonymous old rock/pop star/situationist] were involved some 22 or so years ago (23 years, as X & [anonymous old rock/pop star/situationist]’s son is now 22). If you can tell who it is yet, and you should be able to, then you should realise that this is both a; fucking weird, and 2; fucking cool. The people you meet, eh?
Fucking Strange Moment Of The Day #2
Also, Y (who used to be in a band and was signed at one point but burnt out on sex & drugs & rock n roll, or something, and has been at Exeter University for the last four years getting a first for his BA and then doing an MA) has got funding for his PhD, which prompted me to exclaim “fucking good job!” very loudly in the middle of a street, but in such a manner, whilst effusively shaking Y’s hand, that the older gentlemen who turned to see the source of such profanity, actually smiled rather than frowned, such was the honesty and integrity if not decorum of the exclamation. Y wants me to produce his next demo at some point because he says I have good ears and a mad brain. I will, of course, need an engineer who actually knows what he’s doing present.
NJS
8/18/2004 02:05:00 pm
Bring On The Songs (2004 Redux Version) (Marlon Brando Has A Number On His Face) Ra-Ra Girls And Summer Fun Days Oh My God What Am I Singing In The Heat Haze AKA These Are The Songs Of Our Lives, Or At Least August 2004 (The Year Thus Far) [OR; Killing Time While I Wait {For A Camera}] [which has now arrived hence this has got forgot]
It’s the middle of August. Shall I witter about some singles and album tracks that I’ve loved so much I’ve put them together in a playlist on the iPod…? Yes I shall.
Britney Spears – Toxic
This doesn’t even need talking about anymore, does it? I picked it as a standout back in October last year or whenever it was that I reviewed In The Zone, and sure enough it tore up the charts. It is, thus far, the single of the year, and I can’t imagine anything else trumping it. The guitars don’t sound real, the strings don’t sound real, Britney doesn’t sound real, but then again she never did. You can barely make out any of the words, and those you can make out are salacious. It’s a barrage of hooks, weird, automated, artificial intelligence hooks. The whole album, apart from the dodgy ballads, is like that though. (Why sing ballads, Britney, you can’t sing, you really can’t, yr much better or moaning cod-sensually over some weird faux-Asian synth-strings and an electronic warble bassline. [“Touch Of My Hand” in case you didn’t realise.]) But whatever, “Toxic” is some kind of lesson in weird cybernetic airbrush sexpop, and Britney’s almost complete removal from the actual song (and video, considering the digital effects and image manipulation), the culmination of several years of weird sonic extrapolation on behalf of her varied producers makes it all the more compelling. She’s now not even an image and a voice. She’s a pixel.
Delays – On
Last track on the Graham Sutton-produced debut album by Southampton’s finest fringe-rock psych-pop swoon-bop quartet (there are four, right?). This is like an airy, psychedelic take on house by some kids who heard “Voodoo Ray” and liked it but preferred to dance to Ride.
Engineers – Home
Lush, aquatic debut single by these guys (and, I think, a girl), like really early Verve without the ego.
Predator - Mad Sick
A late-night AIM chat with Dave Stelfox resulted in this being sent over the wires (or through the ether or whatever) along with a few others – Dave’s very good at sending me the odd titbit of dancehall during midnight chats about nothing in particular when we’ve both had a few. This is the least poppy of the last three or four he’s sent me, which include “Never Leave You Lonely” by Mr Vegas and, um, Irishman?- which was good but a touch too sweet for my ears. Whereas “Mad Sick” is proper shouty/growly with a savage pulse.
Fennesz – Circassian
Seems from a distance like stillness but actually builds an inexorable momentum, perpetually rising and moving forward but at incredibly slow speeds. Venice is gonna be firmly ensconced in my top ten come the end of the year, and “Circassian” is maybe the highlight. Embrace fans lulled in by the final two minutes of weird psych-noise which climax “Out Of Nothing” would be advised to download this track and then, after falling in love with its weird absent-presence, sound-is-all approach, go and buy the album.
Girls Aloud - The Show
Not as compelling as Britney because it’s more human, oddly, from the least human band in the UK (I point you towards what Marcello was saying ages ago, what Julie Burchill said, etcetera, about them being PUNK because their identities are totally unimportant to the music), but still a barrage of hooks. It doesn’t even have a verse or a chorus, it’s just hook after hook after hook, a series of refrains running into each other. And the line about hanging “around the kitchen in my underwear” is the best line of the year.
Jadakiss - The Champ Is Here
That guy who beat Tyson? Can’t remember his name. Should have walked out to this.
Jay-Z - Dirt Of Your Shoulder
“99 Problems” seemed to get all the praise and this all the malingering “so whats”, despite the fact that on “99” Jigga is so far off the fucking beat he’s almost back on it again. “Dirt…” is a weak “Hola Hovito” rip (“Hola…” being J’s best moment for me, fucking love it), nothing special from either Jigga or Timbaland, but, you know, I like it.
JC Chasez - Shake It
Had this been on the Jaxx album it would’ve been the best track. JC’s album loses it in the final third as the dodgy ballads come out, but the first ten tracks or so are great, and this is the psychohandjob highlight.
Junior Boys - Teach Me How To Fight
Don’t listen to this record enough, not sure what is the right situation to listen to it, frankly. Restrained emotion seeps through this.
Kelis - Trick Me
Called this out as the best track on Tasty back in October or whenever too, but until Emma told me otherwise I kind of assumed it was Neptunes work. It isn’t, obviously. Less weird than “Milkshake” but probably better. It’s just a fucking good song with a really compelling hook, same as “Good Stuff”.
LCD Soundsystem - Yeah (Crass Version)
THIS IS MAD, THAT IS ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW. I can’t wait for the album, IF IT EVER COMES.
Lambchop - Nothing Adventurous Please
Of course, not actually adventurous in the scheme of things, but relative (and rock is always relative), this actually is adventurous, being, as it is, not soul or country or hushed ambient acoustic Americana, but actually an actual Rock song.
M.I.A. – Galang
The two follow-ups have been less than inspiring, and the album, supposedly, has been pushed back till 2005 (this is just rumour, if anyone else knows otherwise, use the comments box please!), but the last minute or so of this is still the most joyous thing I’ve heard all year. Claims about her being “the British Kelis” or “the British Missy” are bullshit though.
Method Man ft. Busta - What’s Happenin’
Still love this. Still bought fuck all hip hop from this year.
Nelly - Flap Your Wings
wtf is up with the current single? Was this ever released? Is the current single meant to be subversive? It sounds like Luther fucking Vandross or Lionel fucking Richie, COME THE FUCK ON. This is bizarre and great and tapped in the head, especially when Pharrell goes “umphalumpa”.
Petey Pablo - Get On Dis Motorcycle
This is still odd and still great.
Usher – Yeah
New single is some pussy ballad or something. Heard it once. Heard this a thousand times. The best bit is Luda.
Rachel Stevens - Some Girls
Again, another barrage of hooks, and almost as cybernetic as Britney. Not quite though, which prevents it being properly amazing, and leaves it as merely “a good pop song”. I’m getting bored of writing these now, can you tell?
Wilco - Company In My Back
Lovely guitars over the chorus, best song on the album, NO ONE mentions it, why is this? And Akiva, A Ghost Is Born is really NOT that much about layering melody underneath noise.
The Beta Band - Pure For
Expect something on Stylus about this song soon.
Kanye West
Kanye gets his own bit, because I can’t remember the names of individual tunes and the album as a whole pisses me off (anti-education skits? NICE! You go, boy! You diss anyone interested in learning rather than earning! Cockfarmer…), meaning that none of them made it onto the playlist, but I have to say that taken in isolation the songs that have graced the radio are pretty much all wicked, especially when he pumps up the drama like on that one wot’s about Jesus. Sure, he probably ought to be producing other people because he’s not the greatest rapper in the world, but that doesn’t really matter, especially to someone like me who a; knows nothing about hip hop and b; knows nothing about hip hop.
Stack The Chart Hits High
There are, of course, plenty of other tunes that seem to climb off the radio and slap me about the face, not because I like them or because they’re good, but just because of their sheer fucking ubiquity. Scissor Sisters, for instance, I always hum along to on the radio (hum?- um, sing, OK) but have no desire to even download. Likewise the two Franz Ferdinand singles which went mental (“Take Me Out” and that one about the matinee?), both mega radio listening but no impetus to buy the album or even listen to the downloaded copy I have (I was going to review it but… didn’t). Likewise Goldie Lookin’ Chain and all those singles that Swygart has raved about on his chart rundown column at Stylus which I hear once by accident whilst driving and can never remember anything about. EXCEPT for The Killers, if he has raved about them, which he might not. The new one is OK, but “Indie Rock N Roll For Me” is fucking putrid, like “All I Wanna Do Is Rock” by Travis but for people with serious fucking authenticity and inferiority issues. Nasty little song.
NJS
8/18/2004 10:46:00 am
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Eat a Dog
Hit up The Verve on my iPod earlier, on the way home, 20 tracks and the ‘shuffle songs’ function, but only after I’d selected “A New Decade” first. I love the way it whispers and whimpers and then crashes in, Ashcroft a bag of spite and vision, “a new decade / the radio plays the sound we make / and everything seems to feel alright / coming through your lonely mind…” When I was 16 I actually did believe he’d seen things, been places, that the sky had bruised and left him blind, and who’s to doubt it now? I skipped “She’s A Superstar” after two minutes, fell asleep on the train (I always do) during “Let The Damage Begin”, to be awoken by the shoulder-shake of the conductor, and twitched through “Brainstorm Interlude”, possibly my favourite piece of music by The Verve, and always the most maligned track on A Northern Soul, because it is a mess and a yowl and how do you deal with it if you came to this band from, say Oasis? I came to Oasis from this band though, so I dealt with it and loved it.
Zane Lowe played “Bitter Sweet Symphony” as his – what?-crowdrocker?-krautrocker? – whatever, he played it, and it was magnificent. It struck me that the strings could easily have been waxed onto something from The Blueprint; I remember Ashcroft at the time muttering something about “takin’ what we’d learnt from ‘ip ‘op” and it makes sense, the drums don’t work like a rock tune [dyswidt?], it’s layered in a manner more akin to hip hop production, and they got raped over a sample, so there you are. If I were in an ambitious mood (I’m too tired), I’d stake a claim for it being the defining tune of the 90s, but not now.
I notice everybody at FT (apart from Swygart) is down on Goldie Lookin’ Chain’s new single, which is, I suppose, not surprising, because it is in essence a joke tune. But then again I thought “My Name Is” was a joke tune the first couple of times I heard it back in 98 or whenever it was. Anyway, I quite like the Chain, in a vague, enjoy-them-on-the-radio way. I think a mate of mine was at uni with them.
Why so tired? FOOTBALL! Scored a hat-trick, drew 7-7, first goal a clumsy touch to control, wet ball wet boot, spins up, instinct VOLLEY bottom corner like a bullet. If I believed in god instead of people then I’d say it wasn’t me who scored the goal so much as something that took over me, some gift or talent or something, but that’s bollocks. When I was 13 I used to spend hours a day practicing volleying a ball against the back of a garage, and all that work has contributed to some kind of biological memory or footballing instinct. And I’m far from a great footballer. I’m not even particularly good. I can see a decent pass and I can score a few goals, but I’m out of shape and never did play enough, even when I was 13, to get really good. Now my brother, he IS really good. It pisses me off to see Seth Johnson, ruptured cruciate ligament and all, drinking in Dawlish pubs rather than sorting himself out, because to play football every day for £30k a week is some kind of bizarre dream. (The second goal was a quick turn in our half of the pitch, leaving Rick, an excellent defender, for dead, and then head-down, Ronaldo style, and surge for goal before powering it, left footed, so it canons off the post and into the net on the other side – most satisfying.)
I’ve long had a problem with the notion that "talent is God given"; I've thought for a long, long time that this belief is the lowest form of envy and dismissal, and is a sister to the kind of attitude which is the foundation of statements such as "The Beta Band sound like they must be on drugs!", the inference being that it is drugs (or God or alcohol or mental illness or depression or whatever) that is responsible for art or talent or beauty or any form of human endeavour, rather than a fuck of a lot of hard work and effort and perseverance. Beckham is good at free kicks, for instance, not because God made him so, but because he practices them for hours and hours every week until he knows how to do it. Embrace write great songs not because they're blessed but because they work fucking hard for a long time putting them together. Timbaland is a great producer because he spends every available moment in the studio putting things together and taking them apart. I think it's kind of selfish and smacks of jealousy and excuse-making to write off talent as God-given, to say "oh well they're blessed and I'm not so I may as well not bother," and use that as an excuse to never really work to try and achieve something, maybe in case you fail, maybe because you assume that other people just know they are blessed with a talent rather than love doing something and choose to work at it.
I’m tired and my wine is nearly finished.
NJS
8/11/2004 10:31:00 pm
Tuesday, August 10, 2004
And now for that there new album, yeah?
This Is Part Six Of The Enormous Embrace Exercise
A song-by-song directory and exegesis of my in-and-out-of-love affair with The Brighouse & Rastrick Brass Band On Acid
Ashes
Not an ounce of fat on this. Some had thought it would be a 7-minute epic, huge, surging chorus, extended coda, fiddly intro, blah blah. NO. This is as tight as all hell. It’s like The Joshua Tree compressed into 4 minutes and not written and performed by cunts. It’s about the band (I think, anyway, and I am right, of course, because now this is my song, not their song, and soon it will be your song too, and by then it will be about whatever you want it to be about and sod what I think [and that, people, was always the point that anyone who called me a cunt did not get - this is what I think, now say what you think]). Danny said on Radio One the other day that “girlfriends in the past have always been annoyed at being second fiddle to the band” and this is the point at which that becomes possibly the most profound thing in terms of understanding what this record is about. Because it’s not about falling out of love with gurlz; it’s about music, and the band, and the struggle to make the music, the way they’ve been misunderstood and beaten down by certain parties and the fact that FUCK YOU AND FUCK YOU AND FUCK YOU TOO because this owns, this is the shit, this is the real comeback single (alternate world, should have been). 0.49, right channel, wisps of electronic guitar interference. Little moments like that make this record, the same way they did DFM, only now the tunes are HUGE.
Someday
Like I said, they told me to my face about this song in 1997 and then made me wait fucking 7 fucking years the fucking fucks. Danny cannot sing as well as Edith Piaf, and this means he has to compensate. He does this by twisting melodies in ways you wouldn’t expect – not the same was Rufus does it because Rufus is an entertainer and is blessed with remarkable pipes – just listen to how he squeezes in “and you wont know how to act”, finding a whole other area of melodic territory within the line he’s already given himself. My brother on this song: “It’s just Embrace doing Embrace, innit?” Me: “Yeah, but better.” My brother: “True.” In that it is, um, BIG, and SOARING. Might just be their best song, their most fully realised anthem. Oh GUFF. This makes me cry because it’s so fucking GOOD. The dynamic falls and rises are perfect, the guitar just silver and burning enough. Get that pause, when the word “back” echoes into silence and then Danny says (“yeah!”) and things cut back in and Richard plays another gloriously retarded guitar non-solo and there’s a big gospel bit only done properly (sorry Jason you missed out there) and this screams WORLD CONQUERING SINGLE and is five or six minutes long and massive massive MASSIVE, starting and ending exactly as it should. The bass is doing subtly wonderful things, little rises and falls that raise your solar plexus. (Oh yeah, did I ever explain that Besty’s drum fills, although not groundbreaking or technically that astounding, make my chest feel like nothing else? Because they do.) Fucking hell yeah. Is it triumphalism? No. What is it that makes me cry? It’s just the melody in the opening verse, the fact that it’s so perfectly placed and poised so that you know how it goes and ALWAYS have known but it doesn’t repeat, it moves onwards. And the chorus… Which is “you will feel the way I feel someday” but I hear as “you wont feel the weight I feel someday” because it’s about shedding things and helping others, saying you can stand it and you’ll carry it for other people and one day soon it’ll be OK, more than OK, you wont have to carry those scars anymore. Because the music sheds them. Band catching up with songs? Yes.
Looking As You Are
Just a lovingly-crafted slice of pop music, delicate and powerful (get the rumbling, shouting middle-8, all twisted vocal lines and muscular rhythm). It’s at this point that it becomes apparent that the balance on this album between sound and song is remarkable – the opening guitars on this are nothing short of beautiful, to the extent that they don’t sound as if they’ve been written or slaved over, don’t even sound as if they’ve been played, but rather are just there, existing and complete. And the melody is, again, lovely, lapsing into broken-falsetto, exposing vulnerability but not sentimentality. A possible single. Which makes three possible singles and an actual single out of the first four songs (the actual single being the weakest track).
Wish ‘Em All Away
Nothing particularly remarkable about this track, it’s just very fucking strong, melodically etcetera, blah blah what what AND THEN you realise that, in the middle-8, at 2.29 in, there is not only the most wonderfully savage guitar blackness going on, but also A TRIBAL CHANT in the right channel, mimicking the bassline, the whole band plus assorted friends and lovers (except Steve, who, apparently wisely, videoed the episode) going “HOO-HA-HOO-HA-HOO-HA-HA-HA” like some fucked-up version of the All Blacks doing that thigh-slapping thing. Again, this is a possible single, and I hope to god it is, because in this climate it would go top ten and I’d love to have a “faceless Britpop outfit” doing the haka in the top ten just so I can scream at people for being unlistening idiots. If it wasn’t for that middle-8 I’d just think this song was ‘good’. As it is, it’s now brilliant.
Keeping
Karim’s favourite? Certainly his tune in the way that “Too Many Times” is my tune. Two choruses. Massive. Lyrics about a tidal wave. Again it’s produced brilliantly and could easily be a single. It’s that surge of emotion that they always had but now it’s so much more competent and well delivered. Much to write about? Not really, just very fucking strong.
Spell It Out
I’m not sure, but I’d hazard that this was a Richard tune. Absolutely MAD time signature which seems really complicated (like 9/6 or something stupid and impossible) but is probably actually just another waltz. The reason I think this is Richard (Danny sings all the songs here, and sings them incredibly well – Youth’s bullying worked on many, many levels) is because, big as it is, it’s a pop song rather than a rock song or a big anthemic ballad with Buster Gonad balls or whatever. Also uses strings much more effectively than they have in the past; rather than existing on top of the tune they create space within it. Like “Ashes” this gets a powerful momentum going, and, although longer, it’s just as tight. Another thing about this record, EVERYONE in the band just sounds better, more on top of their game, playing harder. (Interestingly it seems as though Mickey Dale is less obviously present on this album than the last two – piano obviously down to him, but is some of the guitar his work too, I wonder?)
A Glorious Day
Was unsure about this when I first heard it, but finished it’s muscular and powerful in a way I couldn’t imagine before. There’s an oh-oh-ohoh bit which I thought would have people mocking Danny’s voice again (not about hitting notes, about pulling strings, you fucks; do you not realise what you’re invalidating by saying that he can’t sing when you don’t even listen? – if he couldn’t sing would he be able to deal with the melody in “Spell It Out”? No), but actually it’s stunning. Again, and I’m getting bored of typing this now but it’s true, this could be (and probably will be) a single. At Christmas time. And go top 3. And again is totally about the band; it even references “Wonder” at one point. Actually I like to think of it as being about Youth rather than the band.
Near Life
I’m interested to see how people deal with this, because there’s not really any precedent for it in the band’s catalogue thus far. I gather that, like material from The Verve’s first two albums, this was put together from an extended jam by a couple of engineers under the band’s instruction. At first it feels almost formless, but patterns emerge over time, distinct patterns and melodies and movements. It’s a big grooving spacerock jam, basically, but because melody is so key to everything Embrace do it becomes more compelling. I think it might shock and scare people at first. I know one person who thought it was scarily negative, but I don’t get that. Ominous, sure, but it’s got a quiet confidence (“I’ve got my hammer all I see is nails” = we are equipped to do our job and we are going to do it better than ever before) which makes the threat not one of violence but of strength and intention. This may well signal where the band are off to next (and it definitely says “band” and not “songwriters”). I love this, but I’m weak for big, spacey jams. The guitar, keys, bass and drums are all remarkable, the sound echoes and rolls and expands. Oceanic might be a word. Oh come all ye unfaithful. Lets see how you deal with this.
Out Of Nothing
Starts as piano ballad with wisps of guitar feedback painting the corners and periphery, Danny as fallen choirboy, something about a dancing bear, sweetly desperational, resigned almost, forlorn some would say. And they’d be right, for a second. But this says, not in so many words, it’s over, it’s done, stand up, move on, goodbye. The feedback darts move it onward. And after two minutes and some an eruption, sudden and shocking, that sinking ship again, a cry, a plea, a violent eulogy for all the failed attempts before, crashing and writhing and then back to that choirboy, bidding us fairwell. And then nothingness. And then YOWL, howl, a punctured silence, as gasp of disbelief, a tumult, deep, anchored bass, layer upon layer upon spiralling, searing layer of white noise, the most sonically extreme and powerful thing they’ve ever done, chaos and disorder but bound to earthly ties, absolute dischord and breakdown, and then strange, melted, sunken noise falling away and away and away until silence again. This says that this band are not over. This says that this band mean business. It grabs hold of your guts and twists them, seizes the watermelon-sized hole in your chest, the drops of ruby-blood from your nose, the blackened space behind your eyes, and shakes you, shakes you until you are nothing. Out of nothing and back into it again. Make no mistake, this is a fucking powerful record, in every direction. I keep worrying that I’m going to overplay it, break it, make it lose it’s power, but, although I’m over the sobbing that grabbed hold of my body for that first week, it’s power is undiminished across… how many listens? Dozens. And hundreds more yet to come.
NJS
8/10/2004 08:20:00 pm
100 Things You Should Have Done In Bed But You Never Got The Chance To Try
1. Suffered a bad back
2. Had sex
3. Read the 50 Greatest Movies To Change Your Life article in this week’s Radio Times
4. Suffered the awful, dawning realisation that life experiences are meaningless in this country unless they can be codified and quantified by lists
5. Made a list
6. Ticked off things you have done / listened to from a list you read in Q / Cosmopolitan / TV Quick / Sluts & Goddesses Fortnightly [delete as appropriate]
7. Ticked off things you have NOT done / listened to from a list you read in Q / Cosmopolitan / TV Quick / Sluts & Goddesses Fortnightly [delete as appropriate]
8. Ruminated on the hideousness of Hen Parties in Dublin (or any major city famed for offering “a good night out” [for instance Nottingham, an absolute fucking armpit of humanity, a dingy, dark, dank city with nothing to it’s name but a history of social injustice and bandits, but which has more women than men and also loads of bars and clubs in the city centre and also hideous problems with alcohol, violence, etcetera etcetera because of all the bars and clubs in the city centre which exist almost entirely at the expense of any kind of daytime socially-binding culture or commerce or industry]), which are much worse than the already foul Stag Parties because (I sense a list coming) a. Women on Hen Parties tend to wear matching t-shirts emblazoned with phrases such as “Debbie Does Dublin 2004”; b. Women on hen Parties tend to drink all day which is not something that women do that often (men tend to do it a lot), which leads to; c. Women on Hen Parties tend to get much more drunkenly incapacitated than men on Stag Parties because women’s bodies are less amenable to the abuses of alcohol, which in turn leads to; d. Women on Hen Parties tend to get taken advantage of by local men who can spot them from a distance of 500 yards because of point a.
9. Made a list of lists you ought to make
10. Pondered whether in actual fact there are people in this country who are so emotionally and culturally retarded that they are ticking boxes on lists of “important” or “profound” or “exciting” life experiences that they have been told they should have experienced by whatever age they happen to be right now by a list in a magazine which purports to detail all the “important” or “profound” or “exciting” life experiences that one needs to have had by age X in order to be able to consider oneself a proper and interesting human being instead of actually considering their own happiness away from the faux authority of lists which seek to codify and quantify the life of a human in 2004 by telling them which “important” or “profound” or “exciting” life experiences will make them “happy” where “happy” = “being able to tick a box in a list” and come to the crushing truth that Yes there are and what’s more their numbers are growing everyday due to the proliferation of such lists
11. Realised that you hate lists and very rarely make them, even shopping lists
12. Wondered if anyone has ever had their “life” “changed” by a list of films they read in the Radio Times
13. Or any list that claimed it would “change” “your” “life”, for that matter
14. Rage… increasing… exponentially… as… list… grows…
15. Fuck making a list
NJS
8/10/2004 10:19:00 am
Sunday, August 08, 2004
Still listening
Two years ago my oldest friend and his girlfriend of (then) four years got engaged. Some six months later his mum died very suddenly and unexpectedly at Christmas time, only a few months after she and my friend’s dad had moved back to the place where they had grown up in order to retire. Which made the wedding I attended on Friday as my oldest friend’s best man even more affecting than weddings normally are. Various other factors, which I shan’t go into for personal reasons, coupled with a beautiful day, an extraordinary location near London, and a great deal of alcohol (as you would expect – the groom, having just landed a plum new job just outside London the previous week, insisted on starting the day with us making Bucks Fizz with two £90 bottles of Dom Perignon) combined to make a day, two days even, that I wont quickly forget, and certainly the best wedding of the half-a-dozen or so that I’ve been to so far in my life. The speeches all went well, causing tears and laughter as appropriate, the suits were immaculate, the food excellent, the (civil) service brief and touching, the company wonderful (even if, for the first dance, I was left alone drinking Pimms, my partner being several hundred miles away). I’m welling up now just recalling it all. The fact that my friend of twenty years is moving away in three weeks, and that this will almost certainly mean we only see each other a couple of times a year at most for the foreseeable future, merely compounds the emotion by mixing it with sadness. The six-hour drive back to Devon the following day (busy M25 and A303) was somewhat maudlin and subdued…
NJS
8/08/2004 08:08:00 pm
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
In Other News...
The Beta Band have split up, probably because of the (rumoured) huge debt they owe their record company, which in turn is probably because they keep making wonderful, expensive, luscious records that no bugger buys.
NJS
8/03/2004 11:51:00 am
The Jews are here
Waddling pop man could be anywhere between 26 and 46. I imagine it is nearer the latter than the former though. Not a single grey hair, but he waddles, and drinks a bottle of pop every day on the train. Yesterday Sunkist, today Seven Up. I am fascinated by him. He appears to mumble or sing to himself, silently. His colleagues (once there were four who sat together, now there is only waddling pop man and one other, whose name is Jan) don’t appear to listen when he speaks.
“I didn’t like her parents, and my brother didn’t like my girlfriend. I’m doing alright, actually. You never know what’s around the corner. Try to stay positive and keep on top of things. Is that the right attitude, Jan?”
His colleagues don’t appear to listen when he speaks. I am fascinated by him. He sweats and pants just stepping off the train, and then wobbles like a Weeble as he regains balance and shifts his momentum towards the steps.
On the train home last night I sat opposite a young guy, maybe 16-18, who looked like yer singer from The Music, only better looking. He had a big bag at his feet, beneath the table, and a guitar in case sitting on the chair next to him. Big silver Sony earphones plugging either side of his head and a Kyuss t-shirt. It was the combination of headphones (I had mine on, and don’t like sitting next to someone without headphones for fear of offending them with the tinny sonics seeping from my ears) and Kyuss t-shirt (never seen one before, and I love Welcome To Sky Valley) that made me sit opposite him. I got the idea that it was his first long trip alone. At a table diagonally across from us there were some screaming kids, whose mother was resolutely not bothered about them screaming their guts out. As the torrent of wails reached a crescendo I muttered exasperatedly “for fuck’s sake”; Kyuss kid heard me, eye contact was made and a pained nod in agreement exchanged. We both had headphones on and still this screaming child penetrated to our eardrums. But this is by the by. As I said, I got the impression that this was his first long trip alone. The train from Exeter to Dawlish runs alongside the Exe for most of its duration, going by Powderham Castle (I saw Peter Andre and Jordan on the Cathedral Green at lunchtime yesterday, accompanied by a baby in a pushchair and a burly bodyguard – Peter was supporting Westlife at Powderham last night) and Starcross and Mamhead along the river banks, until it passes Red Rock at Dawlish Warren and suddenly reveals the sea – and the look on this young guy’s face as he saw the sea was magical. Uber-cool stoner-rock teen rebellion art-façade melting away in the space of half a second into childlike wonder. I smiled a big smile as I departed the train.
NJS
8/03/2004 09:20:00 am
|
|
