rebellious jukebox

rebellious jukebox: here’s Jess’ own blog again! I need to put this in the sidebar though. He’s counting down his top 50 albums of the 1990s - ah, the memories that come flooding back. I don’t like reviewing albums, though, least of all my favourite albums because, well, a great album is just so big that how can you do it justice in a weblog entry? There are individual songs I feel I could write for hours about, after all, and there are only so many words I know.

let’s build a car

let’s build a car is a fine new addition to the sidebar links. It’s by David Raposa (NYLPM’s own) and Jess Harvell (ILE’s own, and whose blog should also be sidebarred but the dog ate my link. I will seek.). It’s about their quick impressions of the records they listen to. You might be able to guess what kind of records they listen to quite quickly. I’m holding out for a Hacky Sack review.

PINK — ‘Get This Party Started’

PINK — ‘Get This Party Started’

A fair bit of talk lately — on my personal Internet haunts, but in the wider popmedia too — about guitars. A lot of people quite like them you see, and want them to ‘come back’ — question is, what can you do with them these days? ‘This!’ says Pink as she winds up her beatboxes and then sprays chunka-chunka glam guitar* all over them.

Destiny’s Child had the same idea, you remember — ‘Bootylicious’ has the best intro of the year, the one that sounds a bit like ‘Eye Of The Tiger’, low-slung fuzzy bass tension and call/response sultriness. The idea is that you use guitars in your pop just like last year you used harpsichords and strings — to give that texture-thrill which is the icing on the pop cake and the central Thing of the song too (because kids don’t eat cakes for the base!).

The bop-gun riffing in ‘Get The Party Started’ is as delightfully sparkly as a tinsel boa, and the beats snap in all the right places. Pink doesn’t do much but then she does not much very well and with minimum fuss. You can probably guess the lyrics from the title, though you might be too busy banging your head to try. Which makes Pink the popkid’s Andrew WK, except while he’s in the kitchen chugging brews until he pukes, Pink and her friends have got the house stereo with the bass turned up. No choice, frankly.

*(It might not actually be a, you know, real guitar being played and all that. Thought I ought to mention. You don’t care, do you? Good!)

OUTKAST — ‘The Whole World’

OUTKAST — ‘The Whole World’

Or, the further adventures of Outkast in the Land of Do-As-You-Please. Like no other hip-hop group since maybe De La Soul, Outkast have their commercial and critical bases dependent on the idea that they can — and will — do anything they want to with their music. Playfulness, curiosity and pop radicalism aren’t just something Andre and Big Boi can get away with — since ‘Ms Jackson’ those qualities are their unique selling point. It’s a heady, wonderful, dangerous place for a band to be. Where do they go from here?

Broadway, as it happens. ‘The Whole World’ rolls merrily along on an audaciously jaunty clap-your-hands chorus, and Big Boi’s back-up ba-ba-ba-da’s are an extra, charming, swish of the theatre curtain. There’s a rinky-dink piano, a brassy pit orchestra, a chorus line with snare-drum tap-heels: such a swell party! ‘The whole world loves you when you don’t get down’ Dre mugs. What’s going on?

‘The Whole World’ is Outkast waking up famous and writing about it — most hip-hoppers end up doing that (if they’re lucky), few do it with this kind of humour and humility. ‘Yeah I’m afraid, like I’m scared as a dog, but I’ve got a new song and I want y’all to sing along is how it starts. They understand that the spotlight of fame — the whole world’s eyes on you — is basically a neutral one, that the problem and wonder of being famous isn’t the envy of the hatas but the faithful scrutiny of the lovas. The whole world loves you when you don’t get down, but they love you when you ’sing the blues’, too. What’s a Boi (and Dre?) to do? Keep on surprising, if this sweet, sauntering track is anything to go by. They could do anything right now — nice of them to do this.

Am I getting OLD?

Am I getting OLD? Not only is there the evidence of increased hangover potential, decrepitude of the drinking arm and ever-advancing gut to consider, but I have started getting angry at VOLUME in pubs. Back in the day I would bullishly head for the seats directly under the jukebox speaker the better to hear my drunken choices eg “What Do I Do Now?” by Sleeper. (For instance this was my policy in The Nelson in Wood Green, now a - heaven protect me - Rattle And Hum pub). But recently myself and my Carsmile Steve found ourselves rendered grumbly due to the playing of ‘pre-club’ music for the assorted SLAPPERS (of both genders mark - this is not a sexualist weblog) at weapons-grade volume. Yes yes the music was fabulous - “You keep on giving me the HOLD UP” etc. but my dears it limits the conversation.

Even worse in the Firkin in Epsom yesterday we parked ourselves in a table away from the foorball (a gripping confrontation, poor old Australia) and below a speaker. The Manics were playing, oh dear, but then the speaker switched to the satellite channel so though we could not see the football we could hear the commentators like invisible (and very very loud) drinking companions. We retreated to ‘the snug’ to complain about the youth, sub-section Bar Staff. They have, I fear, no respect.

(Apologies for lack of recent postings, faithful readers!)

(Apologies for lack of recent postings, faithful readers!)

BELLE AND SEBASTIAN — ‘I’m Waking Up To Us’

Superficially, Belle And Sebastian’s latest reminds you of last year’s ‘The Model’ — a meticulous arrangement, a melody that’s likeable but not forceful, a puzzle-box lyric. Actually, the lyric starts off pretty direct — winningly so — though Stuart Murdoch’s delivery is so stilted it sounds like he’s sight-reading. It’s only as the song goes on that the words tangle themselves up, and I stop caring and start thinking about how the song and the sound are setting round the band like plaster.

This lot’s last EP was a three-track essay on loyalty, its limits and costs, and all the new material I’ve heard since has done its best to test mine. I’m not well-versed enough in sixties pop to say who ‘I’m Waking Up To Us’ is a pastiche of — The Left Banke is my amateur’s guess — but it certainly has the feel of a compositional exercise, as impressive and baffling as a matchstick ship in a bottle. It’s marvellous that Stuart Murdoch can do this — nobody else in British pop could — but what’s in it for the listener?

When I wrote about Belle And Sebastian in the guilty and giddy flush of finding them I talked about what I thought was their key appeal — the sense of community they inspired — and what I thought was their secret weapon — Murdoch’s gifts as an arranger. But now (and yes it was happening when latecomer me first woke up to all this) that secret weapon has become the public obvious. This music is impeccably crafted but somehow chintzy, airless.

And the community? Still going strong — Belle And Sebastian catalysed an entire subculture of mailing lists, club nights, indebted bands. But, because this band managed somehow to capture an entire lifestyle in a handful of songs, the house that B & S built now hardly needs its foundations: the fans now seem less hermetic, more outward-looking than the band.

Great bands with fan followings can feel like either gangs, or clubs. Both have a mystique, both of them make you want to join up. But the Club is a retreat from the world, a private space to play and love and be in - and the Gang wants to conquer the world, change it, mark out its patch. A few years ago Belle And Sebastian were a Gang — redefining the pop festival, beating steps to a BRIT, careening into the Top 40, then the Top 20. But ‘I’m Waking Up To Us’, charming in its way and memorable if you work at it, is through and through the sound of a Club. Belle and Sebastian have quietly detatched themselves from pop, and both pop and them are the worse for it.

LOU REED — ‘Walk on the Wild Side’

LOU REED — ‘Walk on the Wild Side’

Oh, sure, he came off as street smart & gruff, talking smack about smack users and transvestities and other miscreants, showing off his track marks like the badges of courage he wants them to be, living the Raymond Chandler pulp life he epitomized & canonized in his best songs. But as with every tough guy projecting an air of wizened detachment, there’s a tender heart seeking shelter from its own need for solace — it’s a cliché because it’s true. You can make a good case that he’s just reporting what he knows, drawing a rough sketch of the Warhol Factory to shock all the squares and put all those freakish fuck-ups in their lowly little place, where they belong. He’s better off without them, damn it.

I used to just think that Lou walked away from the mike during the chorus to sit back, have a smoke, and smirk to himself. God damn, he’s a clever cat, with that wordplay and that so-clumsy-it’s-real delivery. He couldn’t care less about this song if he were reading off a shopping list or a recipe for an egg cream to that same sliding bass line - it’s just a yarn he’s spinning, one of many. It’s his job; it’s what he does. But now, looking closer, when those colored girls come in for the final time, I see Lou stumble into the background, pulling his leather jacket closed, not nearly as confident as he first looked. He’s got something in his eye, god damn it, don’t bother him. And get him a fucking match, would ya? Stop looking at him like that.

So Lou’s in the shadows, smoking a cigarette, while the girls’ sparkly dresses glitter with every hip dip, and every ‘doo doo doo’ is choking his throat, hitting him so hard that he can barely push the smoke out of his mouth. And know I really know what’s happening. You might think that’s a string section aping John Cale’s droning sturm & drang, bowing frantically as the sax solo darts and dives like a wet paper bag manhandled by the rank breeze coming off the Hudson. That’s really the sound of a Mr. Louis Firbank, a confused Jewish kid from Long Island 50 lives removed from such modest beginnings, finally coming to terms with the loss of a place he once called Home.

THE CURE - “Cut Here”

THE CURE - “Cut Here”

Yeah, as if I wasn’t going to take the opportunity to talk about The Cure’s new single on NYLPM. One thing notable about this song is the strong beat. One thing that Jason Cooper has brought to the group is a much less abstract sense of rhythm; Boris Williams is a god among drummers due to his complete willingness to create an entire beat based on doing rolls on the various toms in his kit, but his sense of dance rhythm can be seen as limited. Cooper can do the abstract thing, too (see the 12/8 groove of “Jupiter Crash” for the best example), but his dance-rock rhythms incorporate a lot more drive and fun in them. His rock-solid beat propells “Cut Here”, supporting Simon Gallup at his most New Ordery and Robert singing in the lower, more comfortable-sounding part of his vocal range. The overall effect is a startlingly-assured pop song, a fresh-sounding wistful eulogy for a relationship taken for granted too long. The juxtapositon of the spry and the melancholy is a Cure trademark that’s been left slightly by the wayside in recent years and may be one reason why their recent upbeat-sounding songs have been so painful. (I’m still trying to pretend that “Mint Car” and “Return” don’t exist.)

All in all, it’s a fantastic single destined to never be played on American radio. Oh well, at least I have my copy.

(and the) native hipsters

(and the) native hipsters are back! With a retrospective compilation CD featuring “There Goes Concorde Again” and a lot of other stuff. Buy buy buy! (Thanks to the band themselves for putting me onto that)

Raspberry World Music Blog

Raspberry World Music Blog - shock! gasp! A music weblog by somebody I don’t already know!