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A cow on the balcony of the nation

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The Borstal Choir – Jerusalem

… 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.]

Posted on January 26, 2012 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

We are old and grey

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Guided By Voices – Old Bones

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.]

Posted on January 10, 2012 - Tunes - 1 Comment » Share

Sometimes I think I’m going mad!

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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.]

Posted on January 4, 2012 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

The immigration sing-song

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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.]

Posted on December 18, 2011 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

Don’t you monkey with the monkey

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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.]

Posted on November 9, 2011 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

Slow train brought you to me, fast train brought you back

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Posted on November 8, 2011 - Videos - No Comments » Share

Come on home with me and it’ll be all right

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Posted on November 7, 2011 - Videos - No Comments » Share

“You’re not going to like the title”

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Morrissey – The National Front Disco

Morrissey is a racist and haven’t you heard it? It’s in everything he writes (in the papers, too), and most noticeably here, amongst the noise and crashes of Alain Whyte’s structured hysteria, amongst the forever unplaced inverted commas in the chant-like “England for the English.” And that was his first fault. Trusting the listener to hear the quotation marks in “England for the English”, trusting them to hear a voice not of Morrissey’s but of the countless Davids and their cat calls. Who writes like this anymore? Who writes with risk? Who writes for anything but for the flow of syllabic tongue run off; the dribble for the bleating sheep sing-along?

David, a young boy breeching the walls of manhood, succumbs to the promises of the far-right National Front, sharing in the vitriol for his land in is current state, the passing of its idolised commonality, the contrary flags of neighbours, and that lamentable howl of longing for what once was – or, most probably, the imagining of the ‘once was’. (“There’s a county, you don’t live there, but one day you would like to.”) It’s likely he’s found within the role model not available elsewhere to him. And that is the story.

This is not a call to arms. It’s hardly even shared sentiment on Morrissey’s behalf. It’s a study of those who have slipped into the noose. This is a bemoaning for those poor entranced fools, the stolen ones (“your friends all say” / “your mum says”), with their stench of sexual frustration, now so misplaced in their home and scornful. Twenty years on, “the National Front Disco” may now finally have more to offer in way of discussion than accusation – to be applied to all lands. “Your mum says, “I’ve lost my boy”, but she should know why you’ve gone because again and again you’ve explained.” Morrissey once told Whyte during a writing session for “the National Front Disco” that, “you’re not going to like the title.” There’s the give-away. The title held the intention for scandal, but it’s flesh and background and thrust hadn’t. He did not say ‘you’re not going to like the sentiment, the position, the posture of persuasion’. No, Morrissey is no racist. He’s a storyteller, and if he catches you suggesting differ he’ll poke your eye out with his Jack. [Your Arsenal.]

Posted on October 21, 2011 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

Real human being

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College – A Real Hero (feat. Electric Youth)

I’ve found that selective electronic music now satisfies my every plea for a soundscape, without fail, without whimper. Vibrant palettes of sound frisking on the borders of the otherworldly, aiding only the most expressive of vocal deliveries. The fire proof blend of the banal and the gut. “A Real Hero” is a song whose simplicity is just about enough. The horizon isn’t dreamt of, nor are there radio looped beats so obtrusive as to quench brewing enjoyment. To its benefit, it falters in the demand of one’s attention, unlike the hypnotic crush of any offshore wash. There’s timely shimmering detail in the offing, enough to make content event the most ardent of listener. The cold and steady layering of keyboard is apt staging to a voice sophronized to the point of definite believability. This voice, part sole provider of emotion, part synth actress, conquers the chorus, with the contorting cadences of her voice so sensational and essential to the quashing of synth and its fakery. A voice so sultry yet all at once so explosive. “You have proved to be a real human being and a real hero.” [155 people or more.]

Posted on October 17, 2011 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

Disloyal lover

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Big Hard Excellent Fish – Imperfect List

Adolf Hitler, Mike Gatting, Terry and June, fucking-bastard Thatcher, insincere social climate of mixed origin, overdose, Scouse impersonators, macho dick-head, Bonnie Langford, poll tax, Neighbours, lost keys, phoney friend, the Royal Family, Stock Aitken and Waterman, heartbreaking lying friend, smiling Judas, Myra Hindley, acid rain, stinking rich female in furs, disloyal lover, wife and child beater, drunken abuser, racist, bully, the Sun newspaper, AIDS inventor, Leon Brittan, all nonsense, massive-massive oilslick, loneliness, cancer, hard cold fish, hunger, greed, imperfect list, gut-wrenching disappointment, homeless, evil gossiping fashion bastard, Radio 1, tasteless A&R wanker, Nurse Ratched, the Tory invention of the non-working class, cold turkey, Mr. Jesse Helms, Thatcher coccyx, Hillsborough, weird British judges, depression, apartheid, J. Edgar Hoover, John Lennon’s murder, Hiroshima, anyone’s murder, Vietnam, the breakdown of the NHS, the bomb, Heysel stadium, Police harassment, the death of the rain forest, the Troubles, red-necks, the Clan, rape, imprisonment of innocents, the all-American way, the sending off of Len Shackleton, red sock in the white washing, Nancy’s term, Tienanmen square, Ronnie’s term, sexual harassment, Jimmy Tarbuck, mile long checkout queue, sick baby, Nelson Mandela’s imprisonment, miscarriage. Where were you? [Amazon.]

Posted on October 8, 2011 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

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