David Thomas Broughton = Malcolm Middleton gone completely fucking mental.
David Thomas Broughton = Sprinting back and forth over the line that seperates “disturbing” and “hilarious”
David Thomas Broughton = never going to be Paolo Nutini and not just because he has a song that features a refrain of “Is it balls”
David Thomas Broughton appears, to the naked eye, to be a mild mannered acoustic singer/songwriter. Oh and he’s got a looper pedal, how nice, he’ll probably use that to build up some super complex guitar parts. Oh wow, his voice is a bit interesting isn’t it? Wh… What did he just sing? Well this is all just noise now! It was a song a second ago I swear. Oh and now he’s got a drummer and a double bass player and it’s still just noise and hey, woah, now it’s a new song! And now he’s sung the chorus of a Florence and the Machine song over another section of noise. And now another song. Now he’s peeling a banana. Now he’s eating it. Now he’s throwing his shoes across the stage. Now he’s got four kids on playing drums in a totally unrhythmic way. Now he’s put the banana peel on his head.
And all the while he is singing about death, about relationships breaking down, about deciding to commit suicide by drowning.
Now he’s flicking Vs at the audience and saying “Now you can go and see some real music” then SPRINTING off stage.
David Thomas Broughton = baffling
David Thomas Broughton = better live than on record
David Thomas Broughton = an actual, honest-to-god, straight up genius.
Being A List of Bands, Songs, Artists and Albums (Real and Fictional) Referenced in the "Barely" Chapter of Daniel Handler's Excellent Novel "Adverbs"
The Clientele
“I Am Here” by The Unsuspecting Motorists
Katydids
“Andrea Says” by Waltzing Pneumonia
Give Up the Ghost by Fallen Airlines
“I Wasn’t Meant To Live My Life Alone (with Vince Gill)” by Tammy Wynette
“Where Were You When They Crucified Our Lord (with The Carter Family)” by Johnny Cash
“My Way” by Frank Sinatra
Salad Forks
Tish Brothers
Phil Spector
The Spinanes
“A compilation from Don’t You Love Me Records”
Brad Wooly
Burt Bacharach
Ruins In the Country
The Asking Prices
The Stone Roses
Perfect Teeth (possibly by Unrest)
Ev’rything’s Coming Up Dusty by Dusty Springfield
Bob Dylan
Barrelhopper
Elvis Costello
“Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” by The Beatles
“I’ve Been Wrong Before” by Dusty Springfield
“How Good Are You” by The Magpies
Prince
“Manic Monday” by The Bangles
“Gota Whole Lota Shakin’ Going On” by The Bangles and Prince
How Can You Believe by The Cottontails
“Girl Hurricane” by The Cottontails (sample lyric: It was dark all day and getting darker all the time/I was sitting in a rocking chair, drinking gin and lime”)
Nick Drake
“Talk Show Host” by Radiohead
(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan by Dntel (with Ben Gibbard)
Sandinista! by The Clash
“Somebody Got Murdered” by The Clash
Katydids
The Marvelettes
A) And this is all in 19 pages. I love this chapter so much in part because of how the charachter’s lives are so accuratley soaked in music.
C) You can work out which of the above aren’t real with a few quick Googles. Some notes though - “Talk Show Host” is not named (neither are Radiohead) but a lyric is quoted and it is suggested that they didn’t want their name included, but you can’t trust that Daniel Handler. He could well be joking. “The Dream of Evan and Chan” is referenced earlier in the book without mentioning the title. Magpies are a recurring theme. The Bangles and Prince are (obviously) both real but the collaborative cover is fictional.
D) Daniel Handler wrote a wonderful short story in the liner notes of the album In Our Bedroom After the War by the band Stars (featuring the excellently titled “Life 2: The Unhappy Ending”) which I really aught to type up sometimes. [Use this paragraph to work out what is what in The List]
(In which our hero continues to have a worryingly personal relationship with a comic book about music and magic)
Let's call it a review. This blog post is a review of "Phonogram: The Singles Club" Issue 2, which is entitled "Wine and Bed and More and Again". It is written by Kieron "Amazin" Gillen with art by Jamie "Awesome" McKelvie and colouring by Matthew "Brilliant" Wilson. If you recall, the first issue was about dancing. This one's about memory. It's about one pretty indie boy's fight with a pop song which throws him, against his will, into the memory of a dead relationship. There, now, go read it. Spoilers follow, see.
On account of how Phonogram is my favourite comic book series ever (note: Scott Pilgrim comes so close that arguing the point between the two is stupid. They're both the best thing ever, at the same time. It's a qauntum-awesome thing), I got up early on Thursday (the 30th) to go find me a copy in the wastelands of Birmingham. My usual friendly independent comics place didn't have it so I ended up in Forbidden Planet (EVERYBODY MAKE A DISSAPROVING NOISE RIGHT NOW. THANK YOU) and then went to read it in Starbucks (EVERYBODY MAKE A etc. etc. I had a light mocha frappacino thing, it was "well good") with a pre-prepared mp3 player playlist of Sad Danceable Pop, because I sort of knew what I was getting into here. Sort of.
By the time I finished reading, the cute indie couples who had been sat outside the window directly in front of me had all dissapeared. I think I may actually have immediatley reread it. I don't know. More so than the first issue, "Wine and Bed and More..." will emotionally beat the shit out of you if you love music. As is right and just. It centers on the idea of "curse songs" which shouldn't need explaining. Either you're already going "Ah, yeah" or after reading it you'd go "Well OF COURSE" or you're thinking "That's silly, it's just pop music" and if you're the third type of person you can fuck right off. Our heros cursed song in question is the CSS track which the title quotes, "Let's Make Love and Listen to Death from Above" which, unfortunatley for dear Marc, is A Hit. A sizeable one, borderline inavoidable in indie clubs which is of course where the action takes place. There are three different levels of story for most of the issue - The Present (the timeframe of the previous issue, Christmas Eve), Marc's Head (featuring a mental spectre of The Girl who joins him on his journey) and The Past (where Marc is forced by The Song). Present Marc hears the song and in Marc's Head, Head Marc and Head Girl (she's nameless) venture into The Past. It's a bit like a really depressing MST3K episode except not that depressing because The Girl is really funny ("You are Emperor of Whine. Are you MCR fan now? Tell me Marc, what was your favourite time you ever cry?" seems the most qoutable line, other than a callback joke to the first series. I fuckin' love intertextuality)
Anyay [We should perhaps note that I came back to this review over a week later to write this second bit] it's a great, great issue and what makes it even better is if you then reread the first issue there is one page of it that will now have an emotional impact a good five times greater than it did the first time. We also get some hints at elements of the situation we still don't know about. Next issue is, I think, The Emily Aster One. I'm quite excited about this.
It also got me thinking about my curse songs - Oh if I must: Songs that you pretty much cannot hear without being forced into some painful memory. I was discussing this idea with a friend recently and she named a few of hers which she just cannot listen to. I put forward one of my own, or at least, I thought I had. In retrospect, I was lying, because I actually CAN hear Chicago by Sufjan Stevens without thinking about the time I listened to it for two hours on repeat after a uniquely unpleasant break up. Sometimes I recall that, sometimes I don't and just love the hell out of the song. I do, however, have a curse band. Well. No, I heard their most recent single a few weeks back and it didn't do anything to me but everything they released up to a certain point is Cursed and I'm not telling you any more than that because, as Gillen says when discussing his own in the backmatter of the comic - "That would give you power over me. That would be bad."
Luckily for me I rarely encounter them in public, but did recently have the misfortune to hear one of the Most Definitely Cursed songs in a pub. I don't think my companions noticed me wincing for 3 minutes. I'm just glad none of mine are indie dance club staples.
(God, why did this take so long? By this point said comic has probably sold out in your local emporium of sequential art narratives, but if not go and buy it already. Do feel free to discuss your own Curse Song experiences in the comments, it seems they stop working after a certain length of time so maybe one day (a few series of Phonogram down the line) we can come back to mine)
[Oh and the title is a reference to a really good Clem Snide song. Out.]
Do this, and I'll forgive all the boring ladrock. (Although really, if I were in a position to dictate global indie club playrules, I'd ban Rage Against the Machine and Pendulum. Seriously, guys, stop that) And then less enforced but wildly appreciated: M83, Spoon, Metric, Kenickie, Cut Copy, Art Brut and THOMAS TANTRUM.
Wouldn't all this make the world a better place? Yes it would. [This post broke my blog about 8 times. Video embedding got scaled back a lot to save the post]
Your hideous dyejob is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen And I try not to think about it when our set really hits its stride (when your voice mixing with mine sounds like nothing I can describe) -albumtracknumber3/recent7"b-side/firstsingle/alt-classiccover/newsingle- But inevitably I remember the look you gave me after the first London show (withthekidsshoutingournameswiththekidsshoutingOURnames!) when we stumbled off stage and all collapsed onto each other in the van And then I want to turn around, turn down all these screaming teen girls And sing to you and you alone.
[End. Being a love poem from an indierock frontman to the female vocalist in his band. Written whilst listening to Like A Hitman, Like A Dancer by AC Newman, edited whilst learning to No Turning Back by Gui Borrato. :)]
1. You can get the new Dirty Projector's single for free here: http://www.dominorecordco.us/usa/news/09-04-09/dirty-projectors--free-track/ for the price of an e-mail adress and it's absolutely amazing. I listened to about 9 times in a row after I downloaded it. This is what your summer is going to sound like. [Well, this and Phoenix]
2. I now have that Google Follower box thing going on (I know one of you was having trouble Following me) so scroll way down on the right for that.
If you're looking for Saturday's NaPoWriMo Poem, it's beneath this.
All these goddamn poets and songwriters And screenwriters and rappers and bloggers Keep beating to me to every single punch. Everything I have to say has been written by twenty men and women who wield and weld words better than I ever could.
[In one caffeine powered burst, I stand up (ill advised) and shout: And even if I had, who would listen? You’ve got your goddamn acoustic guitar and think that gives you instant credibility. But me? Just one white kid shouting words against the walls? Not so much, no, no one wants to listen to that. Well, hell, I went and GOT a backing band, so I will break into your headspace someday soon then you'll fucking swoon when I tell you to and you will hate and hurt and heal over and thank me for it]
/And breathe/Eyesclosedeyesopen +++++ What follows is a list of things can instantly turn a(ny) day around:
Or at the very least, seriously improve a mood - Pizza. Long talks with good friends. Short arguments with bad friends which you clearly win (and others witness). Loved songs (loud ones played quietly, quiet ones played painfully loud).Lists. Unexpected e-mails or invitations from long lost much missed companions and comrades. Good poems. Dancing. Warm weather (with intermittent breezes). Sugar. Noise. You. Did I mention the pizza? Trust me about the pizza. \Andbreathe\Eyesclosedeyesopen +++++
We wake late (Having been up until godknowshwhathour Working on songs about poems and poems about songs) And, after dislodging the dust from our eyes, We just lay there for a long, long time. We digest the crumbling remains of dreams But we will rise, given time And then do great things - So stand back and shut up. Open a window, let in some sun, Fetch us some water and gather your friends.
And they do. Then -
Someone raises a placard saying “FUCK LIFE, LET’S ART!” The girl to my left pulls a face. “Isn’t it all the same thing?” The boy to my right leans in front of me. I move my head forward. He leans behind me. I move my head back. He leans in front of me. “It depends on how you live, surely?” “And more importantly” I add “what your art is like” The crowd knows the answer to this one and answer in unison: “IT’S PRETTY GOOD” I grin. There is hope yet.
We float above our beds Alone, held up by sheets of sound And the white noise does cause goosebumps but only at the very best of times Mostly we just lay there Glad we're not touching the ground Thankful for the force we feel beneath us (but cannot understand) And always always wishing we could share the feeling Wishing we could fly (hands touching)
Eventually, the stars come out, So we rememember where we are. We turn out the lights And in the total black that follows the curtain's fall Our legs hang off the edges of our beds.
There could be nothing there. If we slipped off we could just
drop.
But we never do.
[End. Written whilst listening to: Wilco. Edited whilst listening to: Phoenix. Pretty sure there are at least two references to lyrics of songs I like in this one. This will be a recurring theme. I like to think there's a fine line between intertextuality and plagiarism.]
It starts with a simple plan - Meet friends who are back in the city for the winter holidays, go out, get drunk, go home.
It starts with a song that leaps out of a consistently great album and sits in my head for ever and ever.
It starts with a comic book about dancing.
It ends with a minor epiphany, another road-to-Damascus moment, life imitating art imitating life and me being ridiculously happy.
Ready? Go.
My friends are a varied bunch, with very different tastes in music and wildly different degrees of interest in the stuff. So it is that when we are drinking and talking in a student pub in Leicester, me and Adam leave the conversations we are having to high-five when Sound of Silver by LCD Soundsystem plays and then two minutes later both fume at somebody highjacking the juke box and putting on Queen or the Red Hot Chilli Peppers or something like that. Something with guitars that a teenage boy could like without having to think about it or defend it.
We break apart and head to various bars and after a short period in the great-when-it's-empty-shit-when-it's-busy Time (wherein too many shouting bald men and too much bad house music stop me from even attempting to get to the bar and buy one of their genuinely brilliant cocktail milkshakes) we arrive at Mosh, one of Leicester's very few Alternative nightclubs. Metal in the basement, emo on the ground floor, indie upstairs. Which is kind of perfect isn't it?
Firstly I have one of those odd moments where you meet someone in person for the first time that you've previously known mainly online. (In this case we have in fact crossed paths before but not really and we didn't really know each other then and now we do so). Secondly I have one of those odd moments where you are surprised by the appearance of a very close friend you haven't seen in too damn long. Thirdly I have one of those really, really odd moments where someone buys me a drink. C'est bizzare.
All of which puts me in a pretty good mood which is instantly killed when we head up into the indie room and, well...
Indie is a terrible word and if it does mean something to the kids in here, it means boyrock. There are at least two songs by Pete Doherty in some guise played. There's Killers and Kings of Leon. It's grim.
There's a glimmer of hope when a Long Blonde's song is played but it's one of my least favourite songs of theirs and the dancefloor thins out for it and I'm not drunk enough and anyway I'm not planning on dancing because I only have once before ever (You know I really WILL write up the story of Sunday at End of the Road. I'll do it soon. Promise) and I don't think I'm anywhere near drunk enough for such a thing.
So me and my trustworthy partner in indie adventuring, Ashish, find ourselves a corner and sit and talk to friends whenever they appear. You, probably more than I, know how it is with a group of friends and an establishment like this - they go to talk to people you don't know, they go to dance to records you don't like, everyone disappears occasionally to buy drinks.
Just as I'm despairing (full dancefloor for "Sex on Fire" which is one of the worst things ever), something fairly wonderful happens: The DJ plays Broken Heartbeats Sound Like Breakbeats from Hold On Now, Youngster by Los Campesinos!
Me and Ashish shout along but it's not one of my favourites (don't get me wrong, Los Campesinos! are a band I love more than almost any other band in existence but I definitely love We Are Beautiful We Are Doomed more than HON,Y) and I imagine it'd be a bit akward to dance to.
Now.
1) A week or two ago, the first issue of Phonogram: The Singles Club was published. This is the second Phonogram mini series written by Kieron Gillen and drawn by Jamie McKelvie. In the world of Phonogram, music is magic [because music IS magic]. The first series was concerned with Britpop and memory and the Manics and Blur and the Auteurs and stuff like that which I understood. The first issue of The Singles Club is largely about dancing. The music is mostly stuff I know and like (The Pipettes, The Long Blondes, CSS, Blondie) but dancing... I've never understood. And even the one time I have done it was to a live band and was possibly the last time they'd ever do what they were doing and there was a lot of proper fans there and it was Different. Pull Shapes (the book) is concerned with dancing in a club, with people, y'know. Properly. Kieron Gillen once wrote something along the lines of "I don't get people who don't get dancing" (I've Googled but can't find it on his blog so maybe it was in an e-mail, I don't know) to which I said "I don't get people who don't get people who don't get dancing". Anyway. I've been thinking about Pull Shapes (the book) a lot and listening to Pull Shapes (the song) a lot and all of this praying on my mind at the time but I think I won't say any more about it for fear of spoiling the thing. Go and buy it if you can, there's a reprint due this week or so.
2) Salt, Pepa and Spinderella by Johnny Foreigner is possibly my favourite single song of the year.
It's incredible. I hadn't heard it before playing the album, Waited Up Til It Was Light, so I was listening to it in full for the first time and very much enjoying all of it. Every song had at least one memorable bit that refused to move from my memory and it rocked and was fun and great. Hennings Favourite was ending (with a lovely big guitar bit) and this bass line emerges and creeps across stereo channels and keyboard drums bite down on my ears as Alexei's vocals enter and then it turns out to be a duet with Kelly and it's the most melodic thing on the album so far and it sounds incredible and I can't really tell what it's about (I have this problem with JoFo, I always ADORE lots of lines from songs but in many cases I can't tell you what the whole song is about. This shouldn't be a problem, obviously) but it FEELS like an infidelity anthem.
And just when I don't think I could love it any more, Alexei does some spoken word and then it ALL. GOES. MENTAL. LOUDER. BIGGER. INDESTRUCTIBLE.
So. 1+2=
3)
The slow bit at the end of Broken Heartbeats Sound Like Breakbeats fades out and me and Ashish look up as we hear a very distinctive bass guitar sound and then we look at each other. I can't even recall what words are exchanged but something along the lines of: Him: "Is that JoFo?" Me: "HELL. YES." Him: "That's remarkable" Me: "DANCEFLOOR"
And there I go. It's mostly empty, a few of the "I will dance to anything!" warriors doing their best and then me and Ashish shuffling awkwardly and singing along and then...
I don't know. What I remember is singing louder, closing my eyes, moving faster, knowing that The Loud Bit is coming and then it hits and then ERUPTING and for some reason everything seeming white and then it ends and something I don't care about fades up and I stumble to the bar exhausted and grinning and feeling amazing.
And from that moment on, I am immune. No shitty boyrock, no overheard misogyny, not even being dragged into the METAAAHL basement for 3 minutes can dull my mood. Important lessons learned I: It doesn't MATTER that I can't dance, I can flail with an energy that'd make many a skinny-jeaned I-don't-dance-cause-it-might-mess-up-my-hair type of indieboy decidedly embarrassed. I need to do this more often.
So I do! Later my very good friend Hannah enters the room just as the DJ drops Paris by Friendly Fires which is pretty much perfect because they are the only band I think Hannah has introduced me to that I've ended up loving rather than the other way around. It's a great record, all manner of Rapture-esque funky and sexy (but decidedly platonic and therefore cute). And then just as we think we've made it away safely, my favourite MGMT song (well. Almost. It's the standard version of Kids rather than the AMAZING Soulwax remix but waddayagonnado?) so more flailing.
Lessons Learned II: Indie clubs SHOULD be small and horrible and ARE largely rubbish (I mean The Average Indie Club here, the likes of Offbeat are another plain of existence entirely) but perhaps worth it if we can get two or three songs I really love over the course of one night.
Lessons Learned III: Don't ever question Kieron Gillen? Except, actually, do, it's more fun that way. But, uh...
Anyway. That was a true story about a thing that happened on Friday night. I'm pretty much still feeling good about it. Please do buy the JoFo album if you haven't already, yeah? Yeah.
What have you done this weekend, readers? What was the first record that you danced to in public? What minor epiphanies and road-to-Damascus moments have you had recently? etc. etc.
[For those of you wondering why this is taking so long, stay tuned]
Saturday began, promisingly, with an excellent Breakfast Burrito [which isn't in Firefox's dictionary. Way to be racist against awesome food, Firefox] and me and Richard and Ashish and Laurence all watching Absentee [who I quite liked, in an "inoffensive" rather than "engaging" way. Their last song was very good] and then Noah and the Whale. Apparently they're "a bit popular". I've been a bit unsure about Five Years Time previously but it's great fun here, all "the kids" [in both a literal and a Stuart Murdoch sense] make noise/throw up their hands and so on. Laurence notes that they seem to have at least one "hoedown bit" per song. Which should be encouraed, frankly. Dear British indie bands, more hoedowns, less songs about birds and lads.
Bowerbirds are a band I knew absolutely nothing about beforehand except that John Darnielle had talked them up, so I was expecting some sort of lyrical-heavy stuff but what we got was very pleasant folk with wonderful vocal harmonies. I hear Bon Iver had them on later to help him out but I missed that because I was in the Bimble Inn very much enjoying Seabear, an Icelandic indie pop seven-piece who sound like they should probably be from Glasgow. Well. During their songs anyway. In between their front man's heavily-accented and ever so slightly broken English shows their roots. They're adorable and soon get the [fairly full] tent on side, even suceeding in employing most of the tent as back up vocalists on their last song. They very quickly sold out of CDs immediatley after, much to my dissapointment. Still, probably my favourite discovery of the weekend.
On the way between the 'Birds and the 'Bear [shoot me on the way out], our party saw one of the best songwriter's in the world ever hanging out at the Duke of Uke stall so we all went and said Hi. Turns out Darren Hayman is very nice as well as being constantly brilliant. Apparently he'd brought Emmy the Great with them to sing during the Darren and Jack Play Hefner Songs set but she'd gone and gotten a gig on Sunday so she wouldn't be doing it. And then we discussed how he thinks Jeremy Warmsley doesn't have a good name for rock. Right on, Darren.
Sometime after this I saw British Sea Power. I don't understand all the business with the branches and the leaves or why their fans had made banners and were, um, waving a Yoda toy arond. For one I literally do not know why they do this and for another I'm not sure what drives them to be so devoted to the band in the first place. British Sea Power are alright. I really can't think of anything interesting to say about their set because it was, y'know, Quite Good. And yet, the crowd went wild. Maybe it's just me. On the plus side, they did announce that there would be a Jonathan Richman covers band featuring two of their number, playing in the Inn at 1.30am.
A little while later, Low took to the stage. I'd been floored by their set at Summer Sundae 2007 so I was excited for this and was not dissapointed. Whilst I like Low on record, I LOVE them live. Many people made that crowd cheer but very few silenced them like Low did. It was dark and nasty and atmospheric and wonderful - the bass line of Canada creeping in made me smile more than anything else musical that had happened up to that point. Murderer was excellent too and I was really liking even the ones I didn't know [well, y'know, as much as you can enjoy the ultra-bleak stuff] but me and Richard and Ashish left early to get to Jeremy Warmsley.
See, JWarm was playing in the smallest tent of the festival so we assumed it'd be full and we'd have to get their early to get in. It was not as full as it should've been when we got there and then technical difficulties meant he started late anyway [meaning we missed the now infamous Alan-Sparhawk-throwing-a-guitar-AT-the-crowd incident]. But it was worth it, once he got going it was a joy to watch, I'd forgotten how tight his live band is. The second-album material was sounding extremely strong [Dancing With the Enemy is catchier than SARS and I love If He Breaks Your Heart more than is reasonable], the first album songs sounded better than they do on the album [I Believe In The Way You Move was never this sprightly, was it?] . He ended proceedings with my favourite cover song of all time, his version of New Order's Temptation. I told him this afterwards and he hugged me. This was all Very Very Good. He said he'd be back at 2.40 to do a covers-heavy acoustic set.
At midnight, me and Ashish went over to a tent that had been used in the day for children's activities and was now playing host to "Scarytelling", in which comedians were supposed to tell vaguely scary stories. Some of them did this, luckily not all. It ended with Robin Ince very drunk doing a series of the last lines of scary stories ("It was a child with the face of an old man! The hand wouldn't die! HE was the ghost!" etc.) and then a John Peel impression and then um, something about Stewart Lee vomiting. Then he read a very moving passage from someone's autobiography about their wife dieing. And then Darren Hanlon played a "Magical-realism Christmas murder ballad". Seriously.
After this Ashish (perhaps wisely) went to bed and I went to see the end of the Modern Ovens [Modern Covers or Modern Others, gentlemen, surely?]. Sadly no "Since She Started To Ride" or "Dancing In the Lesbian Bar" or "Pablo Picasso" but a lovely "Ice Cream Man" and of course they finished with "Roadrunner". It's a very nice thing to see a tent full of people go mental to "Roadrunner". [RADIO ON!]
After a while, it became apparenty Jeremy Warmsley would not be playing a covers-heavy acoustic set. Here is how I could tell: There was nobody on stage, they were playing music over the PA, a dancefloor had formed, Jeremy Warmsley was on that dancefloor. So I went over and he turned out to be a bit drunk which is why he was not playing and he apologised profusely and repeatedly and sent me off with another hug. He's very nice he is. Buy his next record when it's out and definitely go see him life.
After all this excitement, I went to bed looking forward to Sunday. BUT WOULD SUNDAY BE AS GOOD?
Here is a spoiler, readers: Sunday was the best day EVER. I will write all about it soon.
I should begin this by noting that my esteemed colleague from Sugar and Noise (and award winning young poet) has begun his write up of End of the Road festival and his will probably be loads better than mine because he's pretty good at That Writing Business. Click "Thirty Three Forever" in that list of links at the side and enjoy his view on things.
--
I've always been suspicious of music festivals. At most of them [even my beloved, local Summer Sundae] there are ten terrible bands for every one kinda-good one, the people are awful ["No, I'M more drunk right now. Anyway let's go and see the Klaxons"] and the places are worse [Mud! Mud! Massive Amounts Of Advertising! More Mud!]. But End of the Road is more than a little different. I'm fine to use up as many negative adjectives as I want in this paragraph because I'm not going to get much of a chance to for the rest of the article...
Me and the other half of Leicester's favourite interracial indie-fan duo, my good friend Ashish, arrived at the End of the Road site in fairly low spirits. We'd been up since 5am, we'd been on a series of slow, warm coaches and for some reason we'd had to go through the center of London. We'd just missed the first shuttle bus from Salisbury to the festival so we'd had to wait for most of an hour and then on they were we passed a caravan on fire in the middle of nowhere. A bad omen, if ever I saw one.
But you know what the first thing you see as you head onto the End of the Road site is? A series of big pink letters on top of the box office saying "HEY! HO! LET'S GO!". Right on. Some friendly steward complimented by band t-shirt as we got wristband'd and from there on it was almost all up. We set up tents quickly [with the aid of my internet aquaintance Laurence] and decided to eat instead of watching Laura Marling. Not that I dislike her [um. Except for that "I think he thinks it makes me weak" one which is dire. But her most recent single was pretty good!] but we were hungry and I figured there'd be pleanty of average-to-good acoustic singer/songwriters performing at any given moment from now until the end of time really. Whereas handmade oragnic pizza would only be here this weekend!
I'm not quite sure where the evening went but the only music I remember seeing properly was Robyn Hitchock and Conor Oberst. One of these was weird and funny and very enjoyable and the other was more difficult. I really didn't know what to expect with Robyn, I've heard one or two things by him before and liked them. I was kinda hoping his full Venus 3 band would be with him because that'd really be something [look it up, mighty fine backing band that occasionally includes Sean Christopher Nelson doing backup vocals. More on him some other time perhaps, but in short he is (in every sense of the phrase) one of my favourite voices in US independant music]. It was just Mr Hytchock and an acoustic guitar for the most part but the songs were great. Baffling, but great. Richard once told me he didn't like The Shins that much because James Mercer's imagery was "a bit all over the place" and I'd say that applies times ten to Robyn, and I like it (I like The Shins too of course). There was a particularly charming number performed with two female vocalists about how babies behaviour leads to their sexual preferences in later life. After it had ended Robyn declared "This is folk music!". Then there was something about how all babies are really Jesus. As I said: Baffling. And how often do you get properly baffled in a pleasant way in music? Not often enough.
Conor on the other hand... Oh I don't know. There were some good songs in there; I Don't Wanna Die In A Hospital and Soulded Out!!! were fun and performed well but so much of the set felt flat. The long, boring blues number and cliche "rrrock and rrroll" songs by other members of "The Mystic Valley Band", Conor trying to be funny and just coming off as a collosal asshole ["Hi, we're The Decemberists! Haha! Woo!". I wish, Mr Oberst, I wish] and otherwise behaving like an 8 year old playing at rock star. The last few songs of his set were made immeasurably more enjoyable by two girls near me who found a space in the crowd and had themselves a spectacularly energetic emo/country dance off, followed by interpretive actions for all the lyrics to [the very dull] "Milk Thistle". Those of us nearby were applauding them more than Conor by the end of it. Good work, girls, whoever and wherever you are [and whatever you were on].
After this I finally managed to meet up with Richard and together we took in a few minutes of Akron/Family [I liked that one loud, rhythmic one they did with all the shouting! Oh and again. Not so much this time. Now I'm bored. The End.] and then tried to see David Thomas Broughton but soon gave up because the sound was so terrible. For a few moments though, I really could see why Plan B goes on about him. His voice and the things he does with loops and samples are pretty incredible and pretty pretty.
So Friday was alright. It was to be bettered by the days that followed but it showed promise. And that pizza was really good.
[More of this tomorrow, obviously. Oh Sweeping the Nation also has their End of the Road coverage up so read that too, they're brilliant]
Times New Viking are giving me a headache as I write this. The songs are so good and I do like them but I can only deal with that much noise for a certain length of time. I do respect what they do and all but... have you heard their Daytrotter session? Where you can actually hear the songs without straining so hard? It's all the fun with less of the pain. I'm not saying that's necessarily better or worse, I'm just glad that it's there.
At the very, very opposite end of the production spectrum, the new TV on the Radio album is astonishingly good. The second half in particular is amazing. I'm not going to upload any tracks for fear of being bombed by the RIAA or something but... I will be buying that record on release day and you should to. If you want to sample it before doing so, you can hear it at various places on the internet. Kyp and Tunde have two of the best voices in indie rock and they get some really wonderful vocal melodies to work with on this album (See my current favourite: Shout Me Out). Dave Sitek is still a genius and proves he can do more than glossy fuzz: Family Tree features ghostly pianos and feels like a funeral in Heaven*. Oh and Dancing Choose is... well: "He's a WHAT? He's a WHAT?! He's a newspaper man!". Sold.
As I said last post: No My Week in Lists this weekend because I will be at "End of the Road" festival in Dorset. Which is cool for me, because I get to see maybe my current favourite band ever [The Mountain Goats] and half of my favourite broken-up band ever [Hefner, Darren and Jack Play Hefner are doing their last ever (?) set at the festival] all in a field in southern England. It's going to be worth the seven hour coach journey. It'll also be cool because some of my good friends who I speak to regularly online but rarely get to see in the real world will be there. One of them is Richard who's blog is linked in the sidebar there, the wonderful Thirty Three Forever. If he does a write-up of the festival it'll probably be better than mine. But failing that: Great big fat review/report post on Monday.
Enjoy your weekend, all. Listen to that TV on the Radio album if you get the chance and if you're a Legal Music Only Type [and I respect that, whatever] then pre-order that thing. I imagine for those of you in the same age bracket as me, this may be your last weekend before leaving for University? It's mine! Do good things. Be good people. Talk to you Monday.
*Oh god I am so sorry that is such a terrible, pretentious meaningless thing to say. BUT IT DOES!
Episodes of Student Bodies on YouTube. I (and various friends I've linked to it) have fond memories of this stupid Canadian teen sitcom from my childhood and it turns out it's just as much fun now. Flash (the amoral, mercenary, female photographer) may be the best charchter in any 90s teen sitcom. Also it is a LOT better than Saved by the Bell ever was. [Take that, Saved By The Bell . You are dumb! Student Bodies is dumb sometimes too but not on the same level. Mostly.]
My new Spoont-shirt from Insound. Took ages to ship (to be fair, I am on the other side of the Atlantic to them) but was totally worth the wait. They sent a really cool little catalogue along with it. And, uh, a Kate Nash poster, for no apparent reason. It has been donated to one of my younger sisters. So that's two amazing Spoon related things I now own - the other being a setlist signed by Rob Pope. I am indiegeek, hear me roar.
Peppermint Smints. SO much better than the normal/blue Smints. I may never go back.
Johnny Foreigner's album Waited Up 'Til It Was Light. It's been a month or so since I last gave the thing a serious listen and it's still one of the very best albums of the year, and not just for this most recent amazing single. I think my current favourite is the sole slow/quiet number [it always is], "DJ's Get Doubts" [I will add an mp3 here within 24 hours, promise]. I will point out that if this is the only JoFo song you've heard: The rest of them are high speed, high energy, electric-guitars-to-the-walls punky indie rock/pop madness. They're amazing, obviously.
The first disc of season one of Flight of the Conchords. Pretty much worth it just for Arj Barker and Eugene Mirman and John Hodgman (no YouTube because all his best stuff has been on The Daily Show and that's all at their site and blah blah blah). I hear Aziz Ansari turns up later on too! Yay for people employing comedians I like.
So there you go. I'll see y'all for a Midweek Musing about something but I warn you now that there will be no My Week in Lists next Sunday because I will be in a field in Dorset seeing some amazing bands.
"I know you're pretty pissed, I hope you still let me kiss you" etc.
Two things of interest happened to me today: 1. I found out where I will be living when I start University in a few weeks and 2. I got the new Stars EP
Two first because it's more fun: I've long been a fan of the EP. There aren't enough of the things. Dear every band, do an EP or two. With EPs you get an equality of songs that doesn't exist in any other format. On most albums people will pay more attention and listen more to the songs near the begining (understandably just because albums take time to listen to and you don't always have it) and any singles taken from it. With EPs though, they're short enough that all songs can be judged on equal merit. Uh, unless any singles are lifted from it which does happen and is silly. I'm all for non-album singles but they should be a standalone thing.
The EP allows for an album like "arc" of songs [slow opener, mid tempo song, more intense song, climax, cool off for example] but without the time consumption, so it requires less effort on the part of the listener. For this reason alone I can't believe EPs aren't more popular. You'd think the mainstream pop kids would be all over such a format. But no, it's left to the left-of-center and the ever-so-slightly-obscure (and of course the Very Very Obscure and everyone in between) to really utilise the form.
Stars, as you should be well aware by this point, are a Canadian indie pop five-piece who formed in Toronto and currently reside in Montreal. After a series of small releases they got Indie Big with Set Yourself On Fire and followed it in 2007 with (my favourite of their albums, though the fans disagree with me) In Our Bedroom After the War. Why do I love Stars? A few reasons: They're frequently unabashedly romantic and sexual, Torquil Campbell and Amy Milan are both excellent singers and I enjoy bands with multiple lead vocalists, the instrumentation is always interesting ranging from guitar lead pop-rock to lush electronics to a lone piano...
"Listening to Stars feels like being young and in love" is what I expect to say about this band once I'm old enough to say that without it being ridiculous. Actually that's a neat segue: There's a track on their new Sad Robots EP called "14 Forever" which, over a skipping, tapped beat and a piano that grows into a rush of full percussion and keyboards, addresses and acknowledges the joy and ridiculousness of youth. "Ten thousand drunken kids in a field can't be wrong" Torquil declares breathlessly through an old radio. He knows that he is joking and that there is some truth to his joke.
My favourite track here is called "A Thread Cut With A Carving Knife". It follows the floaty, piano-led ambi-pop intro track and starts with a swell of keyboards before an insistent little beat sneaks in, soon joined by live drums and Torquil describing a series of incidents over a few days at the height of Summer whilst keyboard lines descend in the background. The explosive chorus of "Til the next day!" has Amy joining in and a big fuzzy wall of noise backing them up. It sounds like taking a deep breath of cold air on the top of a hill as the sun rises. It sounds like being alone and perfectly peaceful in a large, noisy crowd. It feels good.
The six track set ends with "Sad Robot" itself which sees Amy singing softly in French over an acoustic guitar [up close] and cold, synthetic ambient noises [far away]. It's lovely, more than anything else, and very touching even though I don't understand a word she's saying. [Update: My mutli-talented friend Sophie has translated a few of the lyrics for me, it's sad, pretty stuff but I think it works just as well if you don't understand it. Amy's voice does a lot of the work for you.]
Which is Stars all over: Not always precise, but always effective and always affecting
Meanwhile in the real world: I'd been panicking about my University accomodation because other people I know who are going to Birmingham had been told and I had not. Today, I finally recieved an offer. It's not where I wanted to be but it does seem alright and (Drumroll!) I have my own toilet. That puts me in a relatively small percentage of the world's population, you know. Even a relatively small percentage of University students it seems. I will make sure to never take this for granted. Anyway, I move in on Sunday the 21st. I now have a definite date to countdown to. Countdown seems the apropriate term, too: Leaving home to live alone for the first time is a lot like leaving Earth for planets and places unknown. I think there may even be a Simon Armitage poem that uses the same analogy?
Probably. I steal everything I write [today's post subtitle is a Hold Steady reference in case the top line didn't tip you off]
Top 5 Things I've Done Way Too Much This Week 1. Played N. At one point I was stuck on a very short level for over an hour. That hour was 2am.
2. Listened to Intimacy by Bloc Party , the new album they rush-released [Can we stop calling it "doing a Radiohead" and start calling it that? And then if Rush ever do it, it'll be hilarious. Almost as hilarious as Rush recording new material! Hey-ooooooh] on Thursday morning. Espescially listened to Ion Square too many times. More on this in the week perhaps.
3. Watched How I Met Your Mother. Illegally, on the internets. I'm getting through Season 3 as quickly as I can. It may be my very favourite trad-sitcom ever? [Note: I've never seen Seinfeld. Yes, I know, I WILL]
4. Overthinking my reaction to Hellboy 2. It's really good but it's all kinda Big and my favourite Hellboy stories have always been smaller in scope but it's really fun and funny and [spoilarz] the bit where Hellboy and Abe get drunk is brilliant. And I love Selma Blair. In a non-creepy way.
5. Fretted about starting a blog. It'll be fiiiiiiine.
