Month: November 2006

The album slams wide open, no fuss; 6 straight seconds of ribcage-raking feedback, about the same of unblinking ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ drums and then a bass-line that drags you in by your hair and sullies you deliciously. It’s that irresistible moment the pub door swings open and you’re swallowed by a blast of hot air, that textured amalgamated mash of sound and smell, a first taste of everything that inevitably lies ahead; Friday night, Saturday evening, a lost Tuesday afternoon, whenever Continue Reading

Damien Rice is in the business of pissing people off. It’s kind of become his thing. Not to mention being pissed off himself – somewhat of a by-product. He even had a comedic yarn about being “pissed off“, during which he stressed the term repeatedly, and which was regularly unfurled before live readings of ‘Amie’, if you’re looking for exhibits. But if anything has characterised his live shows over the past 4 years, since the release of the slow-burning-then-snowballing classic ‘O’, Continue Reading

Have you ever just sat and watched a spider spin its web? Until very recently, no, us neither. But sit we did, and we’re as arachnophobic as they come (we figured it would be busy enough with the task in hand). And it’s fascinating, absolutely fascinating viewing. And it takes forever. It’s meticulous, drawn out, unforgiving work, though it has natural momentum, involving such intuitive skill. And when it’s done, though fragile in appearance it takes all that nature can Continue Reading

It’s nice to know that no matter how much you’re letting the human race down yourself, whether you look like Pete Doherty before a bath and communicate like lotto lout Michael Carroll with a mouthful of cabbage, there is always going to be somebody out there with the bona fide style to cancel you right out put the universe back in balance. And take heart that for all the Keanes of the world who think after 2 choruses ‘no, wait, Continue Reading

Vice-president, Al Gore once described postmodernism as a ‘combination of narcissism and nihilism’. Umberto Eco went one further, describing it as the sense that the ‘past is restricting, smothering, blackmailing us’. So when you consider Blair’s zero-point agenda for change in Iraq please bear a little of this in mind, for that too was narcissistic, nihilistic and it too applied no small amount of cultural blackmail. The first strike in the first war of the first Post-modern century? You bet. Continue Reading

There was a couple of things I was reluctant to mention, knowing how both age and location can be the deciding factors in the intractable UK fashion-market, so when I say that Afterhours has been around since 1986 when British journalist John McCarthy was kidnapped in Beirut, Argentina defeated West Germany 3-2 in the FIFA World Cup and Paul Simon released Graceland and that they, along with Pizza, Umberto Eco, Garibaldi, Olive Oil, Parmesan cheese and Roberto Baggio, are from Continue Reading

Hmmmn. Not too sure I’ve really connected with this. Not sure why, as it bears all the usual watermarks of good taste: trancey tribal rhythms, a menagerie of smooth keys and jazz filters, ambient grooves, an element of funk, a few curves. If it was Air I’d probably be preparing the most kindly of accolades. And if it was Four Tet I’d probably be wetting myself, so the fact that ‘Soft Hand Feel’ is by a fairly anonymous looking Toronto-based Continue Reading

‘I Love The 80s’. That’s the usual battle cry of the nostalgic forty-something rifling through their drawer of leg warmers and fingerless gloves. But hang on a minute. What if you didn’t love the eighties? What if, like me, you managed to sleep through it like the superficial and embarrassing seventies hangover that it was? It wasn’t all bad, of course, we had Chernobyl, Tiananmen Square, even AIDs was a more credible option to Spandau Ballet and Cyndy Lauper, making Continue Reading

Donovan, Roy Harper, Nick Drake, Al Stewart. Could have been talking about Musketeers but we’re talking about troubadours. Dusky, loquacious minstrels with one hand holding a book of poetry by Percy Bysshe Shelly, and one hand clutching a bottle of sleeping pills, squatting in a bedsit in a leafy suburb of Dorset, telling stories about cats, old manuscripts, sunsets, prophets and obscure historical episodes over a glass of warm claret. Very clever stuff. Very tuneful and more often than not, Continue Reading