One of the big problems with fads is that they generally do burn out the general public – even the general hipster public – to a specific sound, which is a shame when the victims are records as beautiful as this one. Will admit to not hav[…]

I have more than a bit of sympathy for Jess on this thread — I find the earliest hip-hop tough going sometimes too. Thing is, I usually find myself nodding my head more at the positive descriptions of and arguments for Funky Four &c. than […]

Good Charlotte – “Girls and Boys” / Big Brovaz – “Favourite Things”
You wait ages for top pop tunes slamming materialism and referencing that old song which goes ‘these are a few of my favourite things’[…]

White Stripes-Seven Nation Army
This is proof that all of the shyness is bullshit, all of the desire to not be rock stars is nonesense. They play rock and roll, and this rock and roll gets them on the charts. See no one in the fly over cares about t[…]

White Stripes – Elephant
“Realness”, in pop, is a deeply silly idea/ideal. Show me a wholly “real” artist and I’ll show you a profoundly boring personality. But you can’t, so there’s no worry. There&[…]

In the Live Forever film, Damon Albarn keeps on doing a horrid thing. He’s clutching some kind of miniature banjo and whenever the interview asks him a difficult question he looks sensitive and pained and hunches over it, picking out indifferen[…]

“Barbara Song” – Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weil.
Its my friend Maria’s birthday, and I heard her sing this for the first time a few weeks ago. We were all drinking, but she wasn’t and she left before the evening ended by me[…]

Botch job — they cut out the girl MC, which means they lose the bits that make the song loveable as well as sensational (plus: a love song as well as a sensation), that duel of ‘oh well’s. Without that it’s just being hectored[…]

I spent pretty much all of yesterday reading the BBC’s Doctor Who Episode Guide. I think I’m undergoing some kind of internal audit – all the things I liked when I was a kid and brutally blue-pencilled in my worried 20s are now up f[…]

And Then They Lez Up: Cozen’s t.A.T.u. epic is up and ready on Freaky Trigger – so is Dr C’s latest instalment in the C90 Go! series. Num num num.[…]