This album came out at a troubled time for its superstar singer. The singer had hit international fame with a provocative, ambiguously sexual image, and had then gone on to work with some of the hottest names in black music – though many critic[…]

Whilst I am happy that the Wispa is back (it’s chocolate heaven, I ate it an hour ago and I’m still on a lovely bleary fuzzy high – Green & Blacks and Montezuma et al can just… fvck off until they get with the cocoa butter[…]

My latest column for Pitchfork looks at tastemaking and consensus in British music. It’s an ambitious column- almost certainly too ambitious, so I’ll use this post to briefly talk about some of the stuff that didn’t get in it and a[…]

Real actual poster for winning party in recent Swiss elections. Where is the political correctness WHEN YOU need it to go mad?

(more…)[…]

Judging by Technorati, responses to this Carl Wilson piece – “The Trouble With Indie Rock” – have mostly focused on his dismantling of Sasha Frere-Jones’ argument about the lack of ‘miscegenation’ in indie ro[…]

Idolator has been having a good deal of snarky fun about the OiNK bust, and it’s been very entertaining to read, but the fast-moving nature of that site means that the most interesting post of the last few days, Jess Harvell’s despairing […]

This week’s theme is the nineties – as ever, no revealing in the comments box kthx![…]

these are, in fact, my eyes! DO YOU SEE? (click to enlarge)
healthy yay! — the whitish crescents on the optic nerves are a sign of short sight, as are the “dark matter” tesselations patching the red areas[…]

what film is most often shown on UK TV? i vote tremors — and i know bcz i watch it EVERY TIME (and so does my dad)[…]

The problem with The Heartbreak Kid is the problem of nearly all US black comedies over the last twenty years. US mainstream film-makers genuinely seem unable to construct dislikable leads. Not necessarily anti-heroes, but charismatic yet despicable […]