Back Towards The Locus

Diane Cluck – Easy To Be Around

The Smashing Pumpkins – Today

Emmy The Great – First Love

Neutral Milk Hotel – Two Headed Boy

Kid Cudi – Day N Nite (This song would have sounded really cool if it had been recorded in a church at 4am)

“Jeremy Clarkson has got away with insulting his own Prime Minister, thus breaking the convention that you don’t rubbish your own country from overseas territory.

Well, actually, this convention’s on pretty dodgy ground considering that it was shattered nearly 50 years ago by Peter Cook’s wonderfully doddering Harold MacMillan. Here are a few of the best bits*…

“I then went to America, and there I had talks with the young, vigorous President of that great country, and danced with his very lovely lady wife. We talked of many things, including Great Britain’s position in the world as some kind of honest broker. I agreed with him when he said that no nation could be more honest, and he agreed with me when I said that no nation could be broker.”

“That is not to say that we do not have our own Nuclear Striking Force. We do. We have the blue steel, a very effective missile, as it has a range of 150 miles, which means that we can just about get Paris. And by God we will.”

“Well, let me say right away, Mrs McFarlane, as one Scottish old age pensioner to another, be of good cheer. There are many people in this country today who are far worse off than you. And it is the policy of the Conservative Party to see that this position is maintained.”

[*] Taken from Tragically I Was An Only Twin, which you should get or forever hold your peace.

Mogwai – Hunted By A Freak

Interpol – Obstacle 1

The Knife – Heartbeats

At The Drive In – Lopsided

After enjoying James and Septicisle’s music reviews, I thought I’d indulge myself (and entertain you…obviously…).

Music was up-and-down in the last year, with equal opportunities for bile spittings and enthusiastic gushings. Most rock/indie was insufferably meh, with a lot of very heartfelt gas from Kings Of Leon, another zombie-like stagger from Oasis and The Wombats, who are sweet n’ all but would take second-billing to the facking Wombles. Meanwhile the big hits have included Katy Perry, who proved that faux-lesbianism isn’t only about as original as sliced bread, it’s considerably less exciting, and Duffy, who could lower the pulse of corpses.

Still, the ups were quite exquisitely up. MGMT made some very nicely flavoured pop, Crystal Castles set video-games to music, wonderfully, and My Bloody Valentine made a welcome comeback.

2009 looks rather rich in promise…

Prinzhorn Dance School set off a few of 2007’s more minor ripples, and should release a new album sometime in the next year.

A lot bands seem to feel a desperate need to appease the listener, and throw together all sorts of plasticky melodies, riffs or clatterings. PDS (see, I’m in with the whole abbreviation thing) strip everything down to clipped, spare rhythms, which lends their music a nice, eerie edge…

With the glorious Enter Shikari still working on a worryingly “mature” second album, and Funeral For A Friend having successfully excised all fun from their output, British music needs a few more bright young things. Most promising is My Favourite Pornstar (now perplexingly renamed Set In Motion). They’ve got more energy than a squash player on speed and show mercifully few signs of ever taking themselves too seriously…

One of the best tips for big good female solo artist is La Roux. Her synths are a leeeettle bit too Van Halen, but there’s a denseness to her music that transcends corporate surface-cleanser, and she can do languorousness without sounding like she just needs a sleep.

Fuck Buttons are a post-rock duo, whose debut, Street Horrrsing, granted them deserved recognition last year. They take the melody/dissonance formula to a vivid extreme, with blissful keyboard doodlings set against white noise and screaming. Does the name echo this? The glorious consonants of the “fuck”, with the childhood implications of…buttons? Hmm….who gives a [censored for unsightly repetition], it’s thrilling music and rather beautiful…

One of the best albums of the year will be released, I think, by Emmy The Great (birth-certificately known as Emma-Lee Moss), who’s written some of the most deceptively brilliant songs of the past few years. Her delicately pretty vocals and arrangements complement evocative lyrics, which can nasty and sad well as merely melancholy, and touching as well as just upbeat…

I’ll leave you with the gorgeous To Here Knows When, from My Bloody Valentine’s comeback tour.

Life can be a bitch, but it helps to have a soundtrack worth smiling to…

“Cutting off the edges of cutting-edge tv,
it’s here to tell you you’re ugly in cleverer ways than ITV,
it’s here to tell you it doesn’t quite know what you should be today,
it’s here to offer you Jimmy Carr to find a better way.
It’s here to over-theorise and intellectualise pop trash,
it’s only really here to make itself some cash,
it’s here because we want it. It’s here because we’re bored.
It’s so “Well Marketed”
It’s so “Us”
It’s so “Channel” “4” !

And don’t forget, week nights at half-past eleven
is Graham Norton’s new show “Graham’s About” -
the concept is similar to the much-hated show
”Beadle’s About”
but with a gay presenter.
Now that’s progressive TV programming…”

- From “Channel” “4″ by Luke Wright

Funeral For A Friend – Bullet Theory (Live)

MGMT – Time To Pretend

Le Tigre – Deceptacon (Live)

Philip Larkin – An Arundel Tomb

I’m very miserable at the moment and fail to see why anyone else might be feeling differently. As a contribution towards the clearance of this gloom, here’s one of the greatest comedy sets ever performed…

Theodore Dalrymple is bemoaning the “punk ethic”…

…I also feel a certain rage at the culture that we have created, and a certain guilt that I have not fought against it with all my heart and soul, to the best of my ability. It is a culture that can produce lines – and mean them, that is what is terrible – such as the following from one of Richey Edwards songs (as Mozart took dictation from God, so he took dictation from the Zeitgeist):

I hate purity. Hate goodness. I don’t want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone corrupt.

The problem is that he hasn’t quoted one of Richey’s lines, but a sample from 1984. Thus, he’s actually raging against the culture that can produce…George Orwell.

Manic Street Preachers – Motown Junk

Enter Shikari – Enter Shikari

Bright Eyes – Road To Joy