A suitable riposte

Fuck off.

Not the Mercury Prize

The Mercury Prize List, as it should be. Probably.

So this year’s contenders for the Mercury Prize have been announced, and its the usual bizarre mix of elitism, populism and tokenism, with a few glaring emissions. Had I chose the nominees (who does, exactly?), it would read something like this:

Los Campesinos! – Hold on Now Youngster…
The coyest, most knowing record of the year, the Cardiff-based seven-piece created a debut which instantly draws you in with its unashamedly pop heart, and keeps you interested with its literate brain. It owes as much to the hardcore of Black Flag and Minor Threat as it does to the cardigan-rock of Pavement and Beat Happening, so don’t let its saccharine appearance fool you into thinking Los Camp can’t rock with the best of them.

Burial – Untrue
Also on the Mercury list, the elusive dub DJ is the nominee causing tabloid hacks the most confusion this year (see also Antony Hegarty and any jazz nominee ever), but this deep, brooding effort fully deserves to be brought to a wider audience.

Note to the bloke in the Sun: if Burial turns out to be Fatboy Slim, then I look like a young Nelson Mandela.

Portishead – Third
Bristol’s finest (sorry Tricky mate) finally returned after a seven year hiatus with the dullest title of the year, but a record that was far from dull. As edgy and deep as ever, with tracks ranging from ethereal beauty to those with beats that could cripple a man.

M.I.A. – Kala
The melting-pot sound of modern Britain flicking two fingers at ‘the Good Ol’ Days’: from African tribal rhythms to kitsch Bollywood covers, via Aboriginal wood sections, choirs and quite probably a kitchen sink, if there was any justice Kala would waltz to victory in the Mecury Prize. Alas, it wasn’t even nominated.

Frightened Rabbit – The Midnight Organ Fight
More sweary than me when I’ve had too much Southern Comfort and I’m confronted with an idea anywhere to the right of Trotsky, Scotland’s finest purveyors of Jock national stereotypes created a bittersweet, drink-sodden ramble through the murky, dingy streets of the Borders.

The Shortwave Set – Replica Sun Machine
Produced by Dangermouse, and partly arranged by John Cale and Van Dyke Parks, it was never going to be anything short of excellent, was it? Not that there wasn’t already enough in-house talent to create something special, either: The Shortwave Set’s alt-rock teemed with gentle-electronica is consistently tremendous.

School of Language – Sea from Shore
The constant overlooking of Field Music’s delightful retro-pop led to their probable split, and so David Brewis released Sea from Shore under this moniker: taking the toying pop sensibilities of his former (maybe) band and running wild with them under a multi-instrumental veneer.

Frank Turner – Love, Irove & Song
As much as I love Conor Oberst, the Bright Eyes’ frontman’s often overwrought worthiness is in my eyes exactly what prevents him becoming the ‘new Dylan’, or the ‘new new new Dylan’, as we’ve already truckloads of troubadours bestowed with grandiose comparisons to the reluctant ‘voice of a generation.’ Dylan though, had a sense of humour, and a lack of belief in his own hype or importance. The laconic, sardonic Turner also has his tongue often firmly in cheek, a jaded voice for the lost Left and the lost loves.

Hot Chip - Made in the Dark
Showing they can be as tender as they can geeky and dancy, Hot Chip’s third LP took them into stadium territory, with the aptly titled club-hit Ready for the Floor and the festival singalong title track, and a vastly improved live show to boot.

The Futureheads – This is Not the World
After the sadly underrated News and Tributes, the Sunderland quartet ripped it up and started again, leaving their record label to self-release this roaring work of near-perfect pop-punk.

Johnny Greenwood – There Will Be Blood (Soundtrack)
The Token Classical Entry, the score to Paul Thomas Anderson’s is an evocative, unsettling work that proves Greenwood’s multi-instrumental, trans-genre brilliance.

Radiohead – In Rainbows
Yes, this is bottom of the list because I forgot all about it until writing about Mr. Greenwood. Sometimes you can’t see the wood for the trees: their seventh opus caused ructions in the industry and brought the phrase “doing a Radiohead” into the vocabulary of clichéd journalists everywhere. It was, however, all trailblazing aside, a bloody fantastic album, as glitchy and neurotically brilliant as anything else they’ve committed to record.

I still like the Mercury Prize though, if only for how it perennially confuses the fuck out of the Sun.

Tilly and the Wall - O

Tilly and the Wall’s twee-as-fuck indie credentials couldn’t be much stronger. Bezzies with Conor Oberst, tourmates with Rilo Kiley and Of Montreal, and signed to uber-cool label Moshi Moshi. And they’ve got a tapdancer instead of a drummer, appear on Sesame Street and sing songs about rainbows. Or at least they did.

Third album O sees the Omaha band branching out from their summery indie-pop comfort zone, producing a glossier, fuller sounding record which misses a little less than it hits.

Opener Tall Tall Glass is reminiscent of the Tilly of yore, all saccharine vocals and acoustic hooks, a love-song to our favourite genre. We’ve all been there: “When there wasn’t anywhere for me to go, oh, I stumbled into deep love with you, rock and roll.” Anyone who’s ever found solace in alternative music, be it In Untero or In the Airplane Over the Sea, or indeed Tilly’s previous albums, will understand this sweet, light ode, the sentiment of which seems to pre-empt the sudden change of direction that follows on track two.

Pot Kettle Black is Tilly as loud as we’ve ever heard them: they’ve actually plugged in their guitars, and the rhythm section goes all out, giving the track a stomping driving force you simply can’t get with tap shoes. The infectious, dual vocal chorus is reminiscent of Le Tigre at their party-rock best.

Its tap to the fore on Cacophony though, but the song doesn’t deliver the noisy kitchen-sink antics that the title suggests, as it becomes a bit much of a muchness, the introduction of sax falling flat. The whole of I Found You falls flat as well, although again there’s more electric guitar than long-term Tilly fans will be used to.

Jumbler gets things back on track, a subtle bassline working perfectly with glockenspiel, tap dancing and call-and-response vocals. Chandelier Lake is the sort of typically lush sound we’ve come to expect out from American alt-pop on canonised labels like Moshi and Saddle Creek, if a little too forgettable.

Falling Without Knowing has an unusually speedy-yet-ethereal quality, another departure for the band, and an absolute treat. Blood Flowers has a glam feel to it, and tells you not “go fucking around in the garden”: older fans will remember Tilly quashing their butter-wouldn’t-melt image via the popular method of swearing (a method I’m very fucking fond of).

Tilly’s older albums typically closed on epic, folky efforts. This time out we instead get a Blondie-meets-Girls Aloud number with a handy “fuck you” ending and an “I don’t give a fuck, if I’m cool or not” mantra. Sweary, indeed, although you have to think that this newer, angrier Tilly and the Wall may be one that is squarely aiming to break out of the doldrums of college radio and support slots and become, well, cool.

O is an interesting departure for them; certainly more rock than their earlier work, with a swagger that suggests they could at some point cast off their cardigans in favour of leather jackets and truly “stumble into deep love” with rock and roll.

The Hold Steady - Stay Positive

The Hold Steady came to (slightly) wider prominence in 2006 with the release of the rip-roaring Boys and Girls in America, an album heavily influenced by the themes and the beat of Jack Kerouac’s seminal coming-of-age novel, On the Road. In many ways, it was also a coming-of-age record for the Brooklyn five-piece, a hazy, rowdy trip across the States seeing them truly finding their feet after the promise of their previous two releases. However, for many, Kerouac and his Beat Generation cohorts never truly fulfilled the potential of their early work, and after dispensing with the literary references, we hope the Hold Steady don’t follow suit (avoiding the drug abuse would also be handy).

The album begins as loudly as the previous, Constructive Summer tearing from the proverbial 0-60 in about a second, another instant Hold Steady classic, as gnarled and edgy as you’d expect: you can just imagine it soundtracking a bar fight on HBO. Sequestered in Memphis begins as a more melodic affair, and ends as a singalong, the song seeing the band back on the road (and subpoenaed in Texas) and shagging ‘n’ that, although this turns out a mistake, as “in bar light, she looked alright, in daylight, she looked desperate.”

False alibis are the subject of One for the Cutters, which asks “If one townie falls in the forest, does anyone notice?” I’m unsure of the American definition of ‘townie’, but if its anything like mine, then my guess is ‘no.’

Navy Sheets begins promisingly, but its noisy guitars and background synthesising don’t do enough to mask a generally lacklustre track, the lowpoint of the album. The tender Lord, I’m Discouraged is a slight departure from their usual output, even if the message to God is once more about a lost love. “Excuses and half-truths and fortified wine” says more about the foibles of the Church than the song’s subject, however. Its on this track that frontman Craig Finn’s vocal lessons appear at their most fruitful, his famously gruff voice displaying a softer edge, which is underlined on Both Crosses, a song reminiscent of Nick Cave both in style and in its dark content.

Yeah, Sapphire is a pleasant enough FM rock song, and the title track is the record’s poppiest moment, a jaunty paean of respect to the Youth of Today, telling us to stay positive about the future. Magazines begins in similarly happy style, but this makes way for a lament about a friend’s relationship failing under the weight of alcohol, ‘magazines, and daddy issues.’ The piano-led Joke About Jamaica unsurprisingly begins in a bar: if they’re not careful, the Hold Steady may get a bit of a reputation…

Slapped Actress rounds things off on a high, a typically raucous effort about attempting to keep a relationship secret, ending with an epic choral flourish.

Stay Positive doesn’t quite match the highs of Boys and Girls in America, but whilst they may have left behind Kerouac, the Hold Steady remain one of the most adept bands at chronicling the true American Dream, a murkier affair than many would have you believe.

Stay Positive can be streamed at: www.myspace.com/theholdsteady

Physical release July 14.

Girl Talk - Feed the Animals

Hip-hop is dead.

The Superstar DJ is dead.

Or at least, you’d think so.

DJs thankfully appear not be releasing albums any more, the superclubs are degenerated to tools to sell half-arsed compilations, and Ibeefa is just too bloody expensive for your average Weekend Millionaire.

And looking at the genre as a whole, hip-hop is a stagnant mess of egos, tired beats, and prison sentences, occasionally lifted above the level of dross by few-and-far between albums from the likes of the Def Jux stable, or are-they-hip-hop-or-not releases from the likes of M.I.A. That M.I.A. often isn’t accepted truly into the rap canon could be an indication of her renowned eclecticism, or of a genre digging its heels and refusing to evolve.

“Is it really hip-hop?” is also a question that could be aimed at of Girl Talk’s fourth outing Feed the Animals, the Pittsburgh DJ again throwing together an album consisting mainly of hundreds of samples, with the odd bit of original orchestration (there is yet to be a definite number on exactly how many samples are included, but its well into the hundreds. An incomplete list can be found on Wikipedia, and after only one listen you’ll have spotted something yet to be included).

What blurs the line over the pigeon-holing though is Feed the Animals’ eclectic variety of samples. Underneath various rapped verses from otherwise tedious artists, we’re smacked in the face with myriad other rips.

If these samples do defy the album’s hip-hop credentials, then we’re not sure exactly at which point it loses ghetto credibility.

Is it the inclusion of M.I.A.? We’re not sure where to categorise her, admittedly, but its more likely to be the skinny-white-boy indie rock of the likes of Radiohead, Blur and Yo La Tengo that moves the album out of the Hummers and onto suburban coffee-tables.

Even more likely still, it’s the amount of music generally reserved for pre-pubescent girls and middle-aged Tesco shoppers (who should really know better): Avril Lavigne, Kelly Clarkson, Pink et al.

Yet more likely to dissatisfy hip-hop purists is the amount of sheer cheese, though. Dexy’s Midnight Runners, for fuck’s sake!

What’s amazing though, is that on the whole, this works, and it works excellently. There’s so much to take from this LP. Gain indie points from spotting the Unicorns and Of Montreal, or sit in amazement as a Kraftwerk and Velvet Underground backdrop makes Low by Flo Rida not only listenable, but enjoyable. Wonder why the bloody hell you’re listening to Journey, or why nobody has used My Sherona as a hip-hop beat before. Wear out your rewind button trying to spot Rod Stewart, or hope nobody you know thinks you’re actually listening to Vanilla Ice. Or just stick it on, switch your brain off and dance your arse off.

Critics wondered whether previous release Night Ripper would date poorly, with many of its samples very much of its time, but the sheer range of the music involved means that each listen reveals something intriguing and new, even if you’d rather not still have to listen to Fatman Scoop. Whilst Girl Talk has once more sliced up the ringtone charts and thrown them into his musical blender with the inclusion of the likes of the ubiquitous Soulja Boy, Rihanna, and everyone’s favourite sample Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, again there are enough stone cold classics torn apart to keep the record almost timeless, whether from bona-fide hip-hop greats (ODB, Missy Elliott, Public Enemy) or the likes of The Cure and The Beach Boys.

Whether Feed the Animals is accepted as a hip-hop record is unclear, but to deny it would be to suggest that rap is completely averse to any innovation or inspiration. To accept it would suggest there is still life in the genre, and that Girl Talk may well be the Superstar DJ to save it.

A drunken day at Evolution in some marketing exercise known as NewcastleGateshead

Evolution is the north-east’s premier Bank Holiday Monday on the lash, and although this year’s line-up didn’t look particularly strong, it’s a chance to watch a load of bands for a ridiculously small sum of three English pounds (sadly the same price as the lager: Evolution is the only time of the year you go to the Pitcher and Piano to save money). And it was sunny this year as well. Top stuff.

Sunderland’s This Ain’t Vegas opened the proceedings at the Spillars Wharf stage, firmly stating their mackem credentials to a partisan crowd. It’s a great set from the Wearside indie-types, so often forgotten in the wake of fellow wheese-keys-are-these lads, the Futureheads.

The Whip are next. They play their best tune while I’m at the toilet, the rest of their set is, well, toilet. Instantly forgettable generic electro, with a frontman who is achingly desperate to be cool. His craic with the crowd is woeful, and he’s wearing a Batman t-shirt that was a cliché when Kele Okereke did it three years ago.

I’ve heard really good things and really bad things about Glasvegas, and I’m now siding with the latter. They come across as massively dull, and the Glaswegians’ name is reminiscent of the tendency of the inhabitants of various crap South Durham towns to add ‘Vegas’ to everything. I never want a night out in ‘Crook Vegas’, and I’d rather not have to listen to this lot again either.

Down on the other stage, I’m attracted to Hercules and the Love Machine by their links with my favourite transvestite New Yorker, Antony Hegarty (of Antony & the Johnsons fame). This project however lacks the immediate charm and beauty of his earlier work, as we’re presented with a poorly-timed cacophony of crap disco.

Duffy is a diminutive little minx, but fills the stage with a presence and a voice far beyond her tiny frame. It’s all a little bit Radio 2 though, although altogether less irritating than fellow soul-lite exponent, Adele.

Reverend and the Makers are bloody awful though. Poorly-informed leftist sentiment delivered by a raving tosspot who looks more likely to mug your gran then deliver any of the ‘peace and love’ he kept spouting on about.

I try to like Kate Nash, I really do, as by now the debacle that is backstage has made me decide to slum it with my mates who have assembled to watch her. She’s late, confuses stroppy little piano-smacking with charisma, and chucks glottal stops all over the shop. I get through one song before I can’t take any more of her mockney tedium and head for the bar.

All in all, Evolution remains a good day out. Next year we just need to hope for a better line-up. And more sun, please.

Whatever Happened to My Rock and Roll? (I'd rather not have the BRMC reference, but it fits the piece, reet?)

I can’t be alone in thinking that we’re on the edge of Something Very Shit Indeed.

You know the line in Fight Club about how our generation has no great war, no great depression? That our Great War is a spiritual war, and our Great Depression is our lives?

Pretty soon we’ll see how much shit hits the fan when we experience our Great War and our Great Depression at the same time (only after we’ve explained to a generally moronic and apathetic public that we’re using ‘great’ as a pejorative). Religious nutjobs trying to outdo each other in the Rank Stupidity and Death to Innocent Civilians stakes, and inflation threatening to go through the roof. Don’t get me started on the price of chicken. (Doesn’t seem to be affecting KFC though. Bastards.)

Anyway, I digress. What annoys me is that something somewhere is clearly going quite tits up, and Boris Johnson runs our capital city.

But on my radio is some berk telling me that she’s so lovely, she’s so lovely, she’s just so fucking lovely.

We’re all aware of the proliferation of NME diet-Libertines dross in the British music scene these days, but something a little deeper, a little more worrying struck me a month or so ago: the uber-pretentious music site Pitchfork’s main problem with the new Billy Bragg album is that it’s not political enough

They lamented that he’s foregone the polemic couplets of yore and made an album that’s, well, happy. They were criticising a man who remains one of Britain’s greatest living songwriters, who has produced another solid record, for not remaining the leftwing, Red Wedge firebrand he was so regularly caricaturised as. Often lambasted as a relic of Old Labour, a broken-record champagne socialist who shunned his roots, it appears we still need him to Help Save the Youth of America, and apparently the UK too. We still need him, and people like him, to speak for us.

It’s not, in essence, this idea I have a problem with.

I don’t disagree with the idea that musicians should speak for the disenfranchised and the jaded. Rock music in particular should be a simmering bastion of political dissent. Rock music should be rocking against racism one day, then shouting ‘cunt’ on live telly the next.

What worries me is that Bragg is a 51 year old folk-singer who clearly doesn’t want to be just a political songwriter, yet for some reason we are now yearning for him to be just that.

That’s because there’s nobody else. British music is a lethargic mess of indifference that only gets its arse in gear when they can make money from a cause they, in all honesty, know nothing about. Moody teenagers find solace in rebellion. Where’s the rebellion in the homogenized radio-friendly NME twat-rock that they’re force fed now? Once they had the Clash or Nirvana. Now they have the Kooks.

And we certainly can’t rely on Luke Pritchard to point out that the only way ID cards will save us from terrorism is if they’re nine feet by seven feet and made out of Kevlar (so we can hide behind them the next time some fuckwit sets fire to his shoes on a 747).

I wonder what the Twang’s opinion on the current plight of the Burmese public is. Does anyone think they actually have one? Does anyone care?

Is the View one of the stupidest band names ever? Is there actually a single thought between whole lot of the scruffy Cornershop-raping cunts?

When this generation shows our grandchildren the popular music of our day, what will they think? Will they be inspired by a Lennon or Stummer type figure, or be too busy scratching the microchip that’s implanted in their face because we were a generation that didn’t care, and looked to Alex Turner for social commentary? A generation that failed to see the irony of watching Big Brother as everything fell apart around us?

I’m not sure if the lack of activism amongst musicians is a result of the aforementioned apathetic and moronic public, or the root of it. It’s a chicken and egg situation, but chicken is too fucking expensive and we’re looking to the Hoosiers to save us.