Eighteen Reasons
1) They like indie music. Obviously.
2) Their regulation thick-frame black glasses. No more breakable item of nosewear has ever been invented: on slow afternoons I could happily cruise the streets for hours walking up to indie kids, […]

Godspeed You Black Emperor – Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven
Absurdity is the central problem with Godspeed You Black Emperor! Their poetry-slam titles; their thick cardboard packaging; their interminable song-suites; their huge […]

The Fall – The Unutterable
Mark E Smith used to “sing” of spectres, and told ghost stories with loud amplifiers. Nowadays, though the supernatural atmosphere of “Dragnet” and “J Temperance” has all but evapor[…]

Mazarin And My Indie Conscience
Hands plunged in pockets to keep the cold out; a rueful smile and a toss of the hair; a tumble of drums and a clotted voice –
“Hold on! (more…)[…]

And Julie Was Her Name – Listening To Old Music
Whenever you choose to fix it, the birth of Rock is a barrier, like a wall built in time. We on the other side look back to the times before and can’t touch them somehow, can’t imagine tho[…]

The Clientele – Suburban Light
My favourite record of 2000 sounds like it fell through a hole in 1968, and waits in the here and now shyly and patiently, hoping people will notice it. Actually it crackles with a sensibility from still further b[…]

Radiohead – Kid A 
I’ve enjoyed Kid A most when the office is empty and it’s just me and the striplights and the screen, too late in the evening. At quiet times like those I’ve been only too happy to indulge it – in fact I’ve found i[…]

“Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable, or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?” Good question. I’ve asked it myself for years; John Cusack phrases it neatly in the first minute of High Fidelity. But then he […]

American Psycho seems to be a film about pop music, among other things. Its anti-hero, Patrick Bateman, is a handsome and successful man desperate to retain his standing among other men, often a sliver more successful or handsome than he. To manage t[…]

1.
Belle And Sebastian are great: Belle And Sebastian are dreadful. After a couple of months spent waking up to the first, it’s dispiriting to be reminded that the second still holds. I spent three years disliking Belle And Sebastian after hear[…]