Karmic payback for my not-listening-to-radio comments: the Gods of Pop have decreed that my new office will have the radio on all day. Hurrah! But wait – the station of choice so far has been XFM, which is so far confirming my every lapsed-fan’s prejudice against the i-word. Right now they’re playing Soulwax. “But you like Soulwax, Tom!” No, no, you misunderstand me – they are playing Soulwax. Not 2 Many DJs. Soulwax. And this on the request show!
Further notes: it takes an afternoon of XFM to bring home to you how massive (and disastrous) Radiohead’s impact on British guitar music has been. Fully every third track either is Radiohead or wants very hard to sound like they used to. What characterises these wannabe-heads, aside from the lost-puppy yowling, is a terrible sloppiness in the songwriting – no rhythm to speak of, few hooks, verse and chorus oozing into one another, the songs bobbing about in a brackish pond of studied pain with only the vocal dynamics to carry them at all. The relative tautness and economy of the last Blink 182 single is an absolute revelation after a few hours of this.