Stephin Merritt, the forced-upon possessor of the moniker ‘Eeyore of Pop’, has dragged (shame on my slapped wrist) from the grave of themes the classic ‘boy-loves-boy’ who isn’t thematically a boy but a girl who isn’t herself real and so said protagonist must lay his blooming love at the cat-flap of impossibility. “I’d sign away my trust fund / I would even sell the Jag / If I could spend my misspent youth with Andrew in drag.” This is fantastic stuff. It really is. “So stick him in a dress and he’s the only boy I’d shag / I’ll never see that girl again, he did it as a gag.” To exaggerate, there is nothing more romantic than the hopeless pining for of the unattainable. It’s the most utterly compelling story of a universal truth, shared blood. “Andrew In Drag” is love for the unresisting and so the non-existent. Of course, he really just wants to shag Andrew or whatever Andrew then represents, prancing about, licentiously sloven, in a half-fitted dress. The grab and pull of love. And who could blame him? But in this here story not even base desire is fulfilled. In early March the Magnetic Fields will allow Love At The Bottom Of The Sea its day of public consumption and it would be a good idea to bring it into your life. [The Magnetic Fields.]
Everything this person has written for TUNETHEPROLETARIAT
It’s not for me to say
“And speaking just for me, it’s ours to share.”
A cow on the balcony of the nation
… one January afternoon we had seen a cow contemplating the sunset from the presidential balcony, just imagine, a cow on the balcony of the nation, what an awful thing, what a shitty country, and all sorts of conjectures were made about how it was possible for a cow to get onto a balcony since everybody knew that cows can’t climb stairs, and even less carpeted ones, so in the end we never knew if we had really seen it or whether we had been spending an afternoon on the main square and as we strolled along had dreamed that we had seen a cow on the presidential balcony where nothing had been seen or would ever be seen again for many years until dawn last Friday when the first vultures began to arrive … [Gabriel García Márquez's 'the Autumn of the Patriarch', Tom Courtenay, and the Borstal Choir.]
We are old and grey
By registered post, we’ve sent for her indefinite residency on the greenest isle. The folder/application/lifeline, unintentionally sickly green, is thick with pages still warm from an overworked printer. Copies of copies prove its muscle, with insides including an abundant fall of letters one wouldn’t keenly show to even a best friend, birth certificates, one with an ink print of baby feet (about the size of those toy cars we had as children, the ones you’d get free with cereal), financial records, receipts, invitations, film stubs, concert tickets; everything once saved and stored and now used. Set out are our characters – in black and white characters – now en route in its registered clothing, for us simply to wait and be judged. “When your bones are frail.” [Let's Go Eat The Factory.]
Sometimes I think I’m going mad!
Fionn Regan – Be Good Or Be Gone
Nora: “The’ agony I’m in since he left me has thrust away every rough thing he done, an’ every unkind word he spoke; only th’ blossoms that grew out of our lives are before me now; shakin’ their colours before me face, an’ breathin’ their sweet scent on every thought springin’ up in me mind, till, sometimes, Mrs Gogan, sometimes I think I’m going mad!” [Art by Santiago Rusinol, words by Sean O’Casey, music by Fionn Regan.]
The immigration sing-song
Karen O, Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross – Immigrant Song
In its beginning, in its poverty, “Immigrant Song” tells us of droning back alley sounds, their violent subtleties, and raiding rhythms lugubriously stylised with thrilling drums and pedal driven guitar. It’s an entrance theme for the boxer, the momentarily fallen, and the certain-to-be triumphant. The song is character building, playing on O’s vocals strikingly abating the rash inflections of the instrumental – the music itself an unexpected battle, with Karen’s sturdy pronouncements prying away the intractable instrumentation and its flailing complete ownership; the war then descending, spiralling head bound towards conclusions of gigantic guitar notation. “Immigrant Song” runs spritely along with brash dynamism. [The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.]
Don’t you monkey with the monkey
Peter Gabriel – Shock The Monkey
Gabriel’s “Shock The Money” is a thick crust – the kind I save for last – riding bareback on the complete desertion of normalcy and popular tenderness that so usually accompanies POP!, wafting in the cool breeze of the keenest of tendencies, on course towards engorged intricacies and colourful palettes. Ah, it’s a song! Oh, it’s so pleasant. And so are the occasional splutters of coughed “Shock!” that stick out like the suckable sore thumbs of “Monkey”’s gut bass. At best your ears will propel outwards from reality, impelled towards these fresh and lush surroundings of rapacious layers of sound. At its worst the experience of listening is still very much unlikely to leave you aghast, writhing with melancholy for lost minutes. After all, it’s just a song. You, “You throw your pearls before the swine.” [Art by Julien Pacaud. PG4.]