Middleton and Whine

So yeah, given all the hype generated by this Radio 1 campaign to get Malcolm Middleton's curmudgeonly 'We're All Gonna Die' to Christmas No.1, it's somewhat inevitable the single will limp in at #7 or something come Sunday's chart rundown.

This may not be such a bad thing: the campaign's being backed by a roll call of mediocrity which includes Zane Lowe, Colin Murray, Edith Bowman and Dick & Dom. Can you even begin to imagine how smug that lot would be if they succeeded? We'd be hearing about it until next Christmas at the very least.

All the same, it does make me nostalgic for a time before Simon Cowell and his weaselly cohorts conspired to ruin the annual race for Christmas No.1 forever.

My favourite Christmas No.1 doesn't actually mention Christmas at all. Instead, it's a fantastically irreverential electro-pop cover of a hackneyed Elvis standard by my favourite singles band of all time. Here it is in its extended six-and-a-half minute glory.

Other great Christmas songs which don't mention Christmas:

A Spaceman Came Travelling - Chris De Burgh
(It's an allegory. The spaceman's actually Jesus. Clever, eh?)

Stay Another Day - East 17
(About suicide, allegedly. It does have sleigh-bells on though.)

Only You - Yazoo
(Immortalised in the denouement of The Office Christmas Special.)

The Power of Love - Frankie Goes to Hollywood
(Synonymous with sexual failure at school Christmas discos.)

Caravan of Love - The Housemartins
(Heaton, Cook et al go Barbershop quartet. Awesome.)

Manic Street Preachers @ Brixton Academy

[Originally published on Orange.co.uk]

It’s been a difficult decade for the long-suffering Manics devotee: forced to witness the band’s steady decline from fiery glam insurrectionists to bland everyman rock has-beens.

It seems even the hitherto blindly loyal glitter‘n’tiara brigade have abandoned the cause, judging by the disappointing lack of sparkle in tonight’s audience.

Thankfully, this pre-Christmas greatest hits set finds James, Nicky and Sean in defiant mood – re-energised after their solo outings and critically rehabilitated after a (partial) return to form with eighth album Send Away The Tigers.

Any set which begins with ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’ is setting the bar high, while 'Little Baby Nothing''s high-octane refrain of ‘cultural alienation, boredom and despair’ is delivered with irrepressible lustre. But newies such as the guileless ‘Autumnsong’ are not disgraced in such illustrious company, while a blistering ‘Your Love Alone Is Not Enough’ sounds every bit like their best single of the noughties.

The Richey-era material already seems like it's being beamed in from another lifetime, but songs such as ‘La Tristesse Durera’ and ‘Roses In The Hospital’ have lost none of their incendiary potency. We can even forgive them the odd throwaway number such as ‘Ocean Spray’ because, well, it's Christmas.

From the moment a beefed-up cover of The Cult’s ‘She Sells Sanctuary’ segues into ‘Motown Junk’, the Manics can do no wrong. Closing with their stately proletarian elegy ‘A Design For Life’, this is a band trading on past glories, but doing so with undeniable class.

'Ames Room' - Silje Nes

[Originally published on Twisted Ear]

Less really is more for a unique talent

Long before Sigur Rós became the obligatory soundtrack for sweeping vistas on wildlife documentaries, Nordic musicians have turned to the dramatic natural wilderness around them for creative inspiration. So it is with Norwegian multi-instrumentalist Silje Nes, who spent her formative years in the tiny town of Leikanger in Norway’s largest fjord of Sognefjord, before moving to Bergen in 2000 to begin making music. Her otherworldly and largely improvised recordings are collected on this endearing, understated debut.

From the off, the lyrics suggest an artist immersed in the environment around her. Over All is a glockenspiel-flavoured nursery rhyme teeming with both natural and supernatural imagery: buzzing bees, swamps, frogs and monsters. This child-like awe of the natural world is complimented by a poetic flair and bold musical invention: similar qualities which saw Joanna Newsom installed as indie folk darling last year. With its crisp arpeggios and lilting melody, Drown is disarming in its delicate simplicity, a shimmering, ethereal flight of fancy. Shapes, Electic is the first of several near-instrumentals, with Silje cooing wordlessly over a backdrop of scratchy ambience and woodwind. It's a perfect mood-setter before the gorgeous title track, an implausibly sweet lullaby with echoes of Stina Nordenstam's Little Star (a compliment of the highest order). A counterpoint to such gossamer pop delights comes with Giant Disguise, a hypnotic, slow-building rootsy mantra which evokes a similar druggy inertia to much-missed Domino acolytes Woodbine.

The second half of the album sees a slight dip in quality, with several wilfully unfocussed mood pieces so minimalist as to barely register. Many of these songs were actually written as recorded, lending them a necessarily unfinished air. Even so, there are a couple of hidden gems: Bright Night Morning is a rustic torch ballad possessed of a nagging, frazzled melancholy, like a stripped-down Mazzy Star. Melt, with its wispy refrain “the summer sun will make this melt” repeated softly over a spare guitar riff, is dewy-eyed and mesmerising.

At its best, Silje’s music conjures up a world of fragile beauty and kaleidoscopic intrigue. Like Four Tet and Boards of Canada, there’s a warm-blooded nostalgic core to this organic electro-folk which underpins the spirit of experimentalism. Ames Room is the sound of an artist alive with possibility, guileless in outlook and boundless in imagination.

MySpace

'Milkmaid Grand Army EP' - Midlake

[Originally published on Twisted Ear]

Before the Gold Rush: timely re-issue from Texan luminaries

Or “how I learned to quit worrying and embrace my wonky art rock past” as it perhaps should have been subtitled. To clarify: Milkmaid Grand Army is not Midlake’s eagerly-anticipated follow-up to 2006’s sophomore LP The Trials of Van Occupanther. It’s not even new material, but a re-issue of the Texans’ long-since deleted debut EP from 2001, pre-dating their Damascus-style conversion to pastoral, harmony-drenched Americana.

First impressions: hmm, this doesn’t sound much like Midlake at all, at least not in their latter-day incarnation. What it does sound like, (unnervingly so in places) is Radiohead circa 1997. Not surprisingly, as it turns out: the release of OK Computer represented something of a musical epiphany for singer/songwriter Tim Smith, who played the album every day for a year.

The result is seven tracks steeped in turn-of-the-century progressive rock stylings: multi-layered guitar parts, sparse piano motifs, distorted vocals. All it’s missing is the Nigel Godrich production credit.

Opener She Removes Her Spiral Hair gives an early indication of what to expect: a menacing guitar riff and insistent percussion leading into a sneering growl of a vocal which veers off in desultory directions. Paper Gown continues in a similarly downbeat vein, all brooding, woozy psychedelia, sounding to these ears like a lost outtake from Grandaddy’s stately lo-fi opus The Sophtware Slump. Excited but Not Enough and Roller Skate (Farewell June) see a welcome change of tempo, the former an adrenaline shot of dissonant bombast, the latter the sort of falsetto-driven drone rock patented by Clinic. Closer Golden Hour hints at the classicist sensibilities which were to follow, a mournful, minor key lament which owes an obvious debt to (yep) Radiohead's Exit Music (Theme From a Film).

Recent Midlake converts may find this EP hard-going and a little too self-consciously obtuse in flavour for their palates, lacking the obvious musical cohesion and songwriting élan which marks out Van Occupanther as one of last year’s most enchanting releases. While there's much to admire, it’s the sound of a songwriter too obviously in thrall to his influences to yet dare to transcend them. As a stop-gap release it represents an interesting insight into the band’s musical evolution, but one destined to remain a non-essential curiosity for all but the completist fan.

THE NOISETTES

Not pronounced like the triangular Quality Street chocolate in the green wrapper which everyone leaves in the tin, that would be waaaay too pretentious . Read my review of their ICA gig >>

ETERNAL BLAME

Ever feel that our kids' innocent and vulnerable minds are being corrupted by INSIDIOUS AND SUBLIMINAL GAY PROPAGANDA PROPOGATED BY A DEVIANT BEATNIK MAFIOSO? No, me neither, but these God-fearing Bible belters clearly do.

What I like best about this page is not just the inspired use of parenthisis: Elton John (really gay), Marilyn Manson (dark gay), George Michael (Texan), but also the rather arbitrary logic which classifies Lisa Loeb and Wilson Phillips as threats to the very moral foundations of society whilst categorising androgynous cabaret provocateurs the Dresden Dolls under the safe list.

In a suitably McCarthyist gesture, you can even shop gay artists yourself by emailing the site. Let's hope no-one tips them off about those Sir Cliff rumours.

I'M FROM BARCELONA

Not me of course. And not the band either, it transpires. Read my review of their ULU gig here

WHAT THE WORLD'S BEEN WAITING FOR

Exciting developments from the home (counties) front comes with this email from Greg, the Chris Lowe to my Neil Tennant...

"Only six years and seven months after the formation of Wrong Angle, our first demo...still some technical issues, but i think the Wrong Angle sound is established, along with the principle of using french language sociology texts with no relation to the song's subject for the coda - i don't think this has ever been done before, so a good six and a half years' work."

Have a listen to the Wrong Angle prototype here. Here's hoping it doesn't sound too much like Jeremy and Superhans band in Peep Show.

THE 'METHOD' TECHNIQUE

Great story in Uncut magazine about Jared 'Jordan Catalano' Leto:

"Aside from promoting his new musical project, Leto is currently filming the role of Mark David Chapman, in new film 'Chapter 27' about the John Lennon assasination.

The actor has reportedly gained 62 lbs in weight for the role of the killer by eating cocktails of Haagen Dazs ice cream with added soy sauce and olive oil!"

FEELING JADE-D

Resistance is futile. Obviously Big Brother is all anyone really cares about anymore and Jade Goody now vies with Nick Griffin for the title of Britain's most notorious racist. If you really care what I think, read it here. But for my money Simon Hoggart gets the balance just about right in his article in today's Guardian.

Simon's one of my journalistic heroes: his parliamentary sketches are brilliantly droll and insightful. When the press rumbled his affair with Kimberly Quinn it threatened to derail his career for good, but he handled the situation with enough humility and contrition to win back some of the respect lost. I guess being at the centre of one media shitstorm probably enables you to take a more generous line on someone else in a similar situation, no matter how unsympathetic a character they appear to cut.

MORE BLOGGING MADNESS

We've launched our News Blog at work, yet another platform for me to rant about things I know nothing about. Take a look and please post your comments, if only to save us from the hate-fuelled moron brigade who invariably take these things over (Will has already been accused of being a threat to democracy for having the audacity to suggest that people who voted for the BNP were a bit dim).

THE NINETIES +10

So I went to a party last night which had a nineties theme. Post-modern or what? When asked why I hadn't come in fancy dress, I replied with the not unreasonable explanation that as I pretty much dressed the same now as I did during the nineties anyway I didn't see much point. I really can be quite a curmodgeon when I put my mind to it. I was later informed that there were people at the party who were actually born in the nineties, which made me feel postively ancient and not a little grubby (the majority of people were well into their twenties, mercifully).

Anyway, my flatmate Charlie played a 1995 'Greatest Hits' set, and it reminded me what a great era for singles the mid-nineties were: not just the obvious stuff like Common People and Girls and Boys, but the less celebrated songs too such as Ladykiller by Lush, New Generation by Suede, Trouble by Shampoo, I'm Not So Manic Now by Dubstar, etc. I've spoken about my desire to write a Britpop musical on here before, but I feel the climate could be right, now This Life +10 has made nostalgia for that era officially acceptable. A nationwide hunt for someone to play Crispian from Kula Shaker surely awaits.

DON'T BELIEVE THE TRIPE

If there's one thing that vexes me more than those smug, self-congratulatory end-of-year critics' polls, it's the same critics' self-serving predictions of musical 'ones-to-watch' in the forthcoming 12 months.

Don't get me wrong, I like a good list as much as the next mildly autistic beta male, even if I find the whole Nick Hornby schtick slightly tedious in polite conversation. The problem is that it doesn't take Nostradamus-like levels of prescience for music journalists to predict what's going to be big in the next year when they're so obviously instrumental in setting the musical agenda.

So when the NME tells us that the Klaxons will be big in 2007 (and against my better instincts I actually quite like the Klaxons, even if their new single does sound like Spandau Ballet) , it's an entirely self-fulfilling prophecy, as their young and hugely impressionable readership will lap up whatever's thrown at them, so long as it's cutely-packaged with good hair. And why shouldn't they? This is exactly what I did when I was 16. The Internet may have allowed people to be more discerning in their tastes, but never underestimate the pull of the well-oiled media hype-machine when it comes to dictating musical trends.