Broken Sounds

Hospital Blues, or How I Learnt To Stop Worrying And Love Novocaine, or Mostly Armless, or Out On A Limb.

2007-06-08T11:26:00.000+01:00

So, not that long ago I had to go into hospital.

The leadup to this is a long and not particularly interesting story, but to cut it very short I broke my arm when I was really young and have had to go for x-rays etc. ever since. One of the consequences of this is that there is a small bump on my upper inner arm which has to be removed.

After ages waiting for the NHS to get their collective finger out and make me an appointment, I finally got called to be told that they had farmed out all of the patients on their waiting list to local surgeries and private clinics.

I ended up in one of those, a pretty swanky private surgery up in Belfast that normally caters for rhinoplasties and boob jobs (both augmentation and reduction, fyi). It is the sort of place that Northern Irish zed-list "celebrities" go to get botoxed and whatnot.

Anyway, I went up there one afternoon after work. After arriving at the clinic at 4pm in the afternoon, I had to wait for an hour and a half before I was called upstairs. I was quizzed on my medical history (pretty uneventful) etc., and then had to wait for a further hour before I went into the operating theatre.

I was told to remove my shirt and lie down on a gurney in the middle of the room. It was padded and fairly comfortable, though it did feel slightly odd lying bare-chested in a room full of strangers. My arm was put out on this long, cushioned plinth to the left.

The doctor, who I had met before, was very nice and friendly, even though he was about to jag my arm with about three injections. It wasn't too sore, and immediately I felt most of my upper arm and forearm go to sleep.

Then he covered my arm with iodine, which looked and smelt like soy sauce, and placed a blue towel on my shoulder so I wouldn't be able to see what came next.

Unfortunately, the overhead lamp had a reflective metal circle in the middle, so as it turned out, I could pretty much see everything that was going on.

And here is where things went downhill somewhat, so if you are at all squeamish I would suggest that you don't read the rest of this post...

The doctor informed me that he was going to start the procedure, and off he went. It felt as if somebody with a rather fat ass was sitting on my arm, but it wasn't sore.

Yet.

He called for a nine scalpel and "skin hooks", which, as I understand, was to hold my arm open when it was sliced open.

The doctor also said that if I felt any pain I was to tell him. This puzzled me slightly. I mean, somebody was cutting through my skin and muscle and poking about inside, so obviously it was going to hurt a little. But how much pain is too much pain? I didn't want to look like a pansy, so I girded my loins and decided that I would only request more painkiller juice if it got really bad.

Ahem...

So the doctor carried on, slicing and poking, but what was most distracting was a funny fistling noise.

"What's that noise?" I asked.

"Oh, that's this," the doctor said, holding up what looked like a thin metal pen. "It's heated, and it cauterises the area to prevent bleeding."

"Oh okay," I repled nonchalantly, as if this was the most normal thing in the world.

And then it started to hurt.

A lot.

Apparently, there are quite a few nerves located in your arm, and believe me when I say that I could feel most of them complaining about the fact that some beggar was jabbing them with a pointy knife.

"Ow," I yelped. Like a pansy.

They injected me a couple more times, but to me honest, it didn't really make any difference. The doctor resumed his cutting, and it still hurt. I bit my lip, clenched pretty much everything there was to clench, and thought happy thoughts.

At this point, another plastic surgeon, and Indian fellow with a bad attitude, came into the room and started complaining about how he was too busy the next day.

"Dr Fogerty," he said, sounding a lot like Apu in The Simpsons, "I have two breast reductions to perform before lunchtime tomorrow. I don't have time to look at Mrs Vincent's hand injury too."

And then my right leg started to shake uncontrollably. At first I thought that it was because I was cold, but the doctor said it was mild shock.

Mild shock? Now there's a paradox. Apparently, consciously you know that everything is fine and that nothing (too) bad is going to happen, but subconsciously it's a different story.

So, there I was, topless, leg quivering, while somebody was cutting southwards through my inner arm (Apu had nicked off, thankfully). I could see all of this going on in the ceiling lamp: the inside of your arm looks all white, yellow and red, you know.

It felt slightly weird, as if it was happening to somebody else, but anytime I zoned out I was snapped back by yet more pain, as if somebody was giving me a donkey nip right on my nerves.

And my fingers were twitching too. You know that bit at the end of The Empire Strikes Back when Luke gets a new hand, and the robodroid operating on him pulls the metal rods to make his fingers move? That's what it was like.

By this point, I was feeling slightly woozy and more than a little uncomfortable. My left elbow hurt from digging into the plinth, and inside my arm felt like dozens of nettle stings.

I decided to give in and ask for more painkiller.

"Sorry Ross," the doctor said, before going on to explain that a patient can only have so much Novocaine, otherwise it might get into their bloodstream, go straight to the heart, and cause convulstions.

At this point, the nurse moved round to my right, and said, "Take my hand, son."

The doctor said, "I'm afraid this might be pretty uncomfortable for the next twenty or thirty seconds."

The nurse looked down at me sympathetically and said, "You might want to take breath."

I took a deep breath, and what followed was what I can honestly say is the most painful experience of my life. Seriously, I broke through my pain threshold and entered a brave new world of ouch!

Now, I have broken my arm, been knocked unconscious by an angry horse, atacked by a dog, and knocked off my feet by a fat girl on a swing, but this beat all of those hands down.

It was so bad that I nearly swore out loud, but held my tongue - etiquette and courtesy are important even in the direst of situations.

And here's the kicker: after all of that, the doctor couldn't remove the bump. There are too many nerves near it. The doctor apologied, and said that he would have to get me back and do the operation under a general anesthetic the next time (the reason they didn't do it this time was because he wanted to talk to me while the operation was going on).

So, he started to sew me up. By that point, however, I was just happy to get out of there. I had been in the theatre for two and a bit hours, and had felt as if I was starring in a sequel to Hostel or something. I put on my short-sleeved shirt, and went downstairs to meet Ali.

Unbeknownst to me, Ali had been really worried, as including the pre-op chat, I had been away for over three hours. She had visions of me bleeding all over the operating table, or being tortured or something similarly nice.

Therefore, what she did not want to see was me shuffling into the surgery foyer, white as a ghost, slurring my speech, with my arm covered in yellow iodine and my own blood. It was not a pretty picture...

The funny thing was that the doctor told me that I would be fine to return to work the next day.

There would also be "slight" bruising.

Three days later, my arm was purple black from shoulder to wrist. It was inflamed too, so my upper arm was about twice its normal size. I had to wear a sling, and couldn't get into the bath or wash my own hair without help.

And I was high as a kite on painkillers, which made doing parents evening interviews really fun.

So, that is the end of that saga. I now have a three inch scar running down the inside of my arm, but apparently come the next stage of this ridiculously protracted process it will be even longer.

If I get a moment, I will pop up a photography of my poor arm post operation. It's a sight to behold...

New Moon.

2007-05-16T20:44:00.000+01:00

What with the recent release of the Elliott Smith compilation New Moon, here is a piece that I wrote on the late singer songwriter a few months ago:

HISTORY LESSONS: ELLIOTT SMITH

Words_Ross Thompson

It’s difficult to write about Elliott Smith’s life without immediately jumping to the way in which it ended. It’s like reading the last page of a book, or watching a movie after someone has already told you the killer twist: Bruce Willis is a ghost, Edward Norton is Tyler Duerden, and the dead man lying in a pool of blood is alive after all. In Elliott’s case, it wasn’t so much a surprise twist as an ending that everyone could see coming. In 2003, midway through the episodic recording of a new album, Elliott died at home as a result of two stab wounds to the chest. The verdict: he had stabbed himself in the heart, a fitting metaphor for a man who wrestled with darkness for the majority of his adult life. Elliott, it seemed, did not want to feel the pain any more.

Even in his earliest records, Elliott could not conceal the storm that raged within him. His trademark vocal style - breathy, gossamer-thin and multi-tracked - was in stark contrast to the monsters that gnashed and clawed through his most upbeat songs. As with Edward Hopper paintings, many of Elliott’s songs were character portraits of desperately lonely people, bond traders and drug dealers and gamblers betting on lost causes.

In most cases, however, Elliott’s pen was a weapon aimed at his own heart. He sang about drug addiction (‘The White Lady Loves You More’, ‘Strung Out Again’), childhood neglect (‘Some Song’) and paranoia (‘Don’t Go Down’). It quickly became apparent that, for Elliott, few of these were fictional creations.

Most disturbingly, there were the frequent references to suicide. Elliott wrote regularly about fading away, disappearing, about being silenced or snuffed out. It was never quite clear whether this was his way of warding off the phantoms that haunted him or something else altogether: a plea for mercy, a cry for help.

Yet you can always find light in the darkest of places. Elliott Smith was a unique talent, and the music that remained when he left us is unlike anything else that was released during the 1990s. Or now, for that matter. After spending his formative years in Heatmiser, a grunge band from Portland, Elliott started recording a trilogy of predominantly acoustic albums on four-track machines borrowed from friends: ‘Roman Candle’, ‘Elliott Smith’ and ‘Either/Or’. But it was his appearance on the Good Will Hunting soundtrack that drew the attention of a major label, DreamWorks. The idea of a contract never sat well with Elliott, but it allowed him to set free the music that he heard chiming inside his head. A fascination with The Beatles, The Kinks and The Zombies led him away from the whispery lo-fi of his early work into flamboyant orchestral psychedelia. It was the ideal playground for him, but the wolves were never too far away. During his final years, Elliott lapsed in and out of periods of drug addiction and the depression that would eventually claim his life.

Now, ten years after the release of ‘Either/Or’, it’s the perfect time to investigate or rediscover Elliott Smith’s phenomenal body of work, but do feel for the little boy who was lost in the shadows and never found his way home.

Normal Service Is Resumed...

2007-05-16T20:10:00.000+01:00

Hello again.

If it seems like I have been away for an age, that is because I have been. The past few months grew more busy and more intense, so in the end something had to give, I guess.

What with working in school, working in the medical centre, working for AU magazine, I really had no free time - and that is not a "woe is me" exaggeration, it's absolutely true. Whenever you thrown in helping out Friday nights with Youth Club, and playing guitar in church on Sundays, my spare time quota diminished into almost minus figures.

In the past week, however, all that has kind of changed, mostly because I finished my contract in school. Yep, after around nine months of getting up early, going to bed late , being sleepy most of the time... my maternity cover in Belfast came to an end. The last day (or rather, my last day) was a rather bittersweet affair. Saying goodbye to all of my pupils tugged at the heartstrings just a little too much. I was even sad to leave those ones who had really got on my wick.

And pretty flattered to receive lots of cards and gifts - including a pretty snifty set of cufflinks.

So now I am looking for a new contract in a different school. Much as I would love to stay where I was, it just was never going to happen. The woman who I replaced is much too conscientious to give up the working life for a baby of all things, so it's back to looking for something else again.

That means filling in more application forms, going to more interviews (one tomorrow afternoon) and all the associated crap that goes with it.

Anyway, it's hard to believe that the year has gone so fast. There were times, I admit, where it seemed like the work was never-ending. For example, marking coursework for 3 weeks nearly drove me over the age - I swear I nearly had a panic attack at one point, which is unlike me. I was close to throwing the computer through the study window, which would have felt great for about five minutes, until I started to panic about a broken window, a broken computer, and potentially a broken bonnet of our car.

But the time has indeed passed. It's a weird thing to describe, but teaching is definitely a job that you take home with you. It really does get to you, so much so that I often found myself fretting about the welfare of more than a few of my pupils. This is coupled with the realisation that there really isn't a great deal that you can do to help them - you just have to do your job well and hope that's enough.

Anyway, I won't prattle on about this anymore, because a. you are no doubt bored b. if my ex-pupils find this, they will no doubt cut and paste this and stick it up on bebo to make me look like even more of a pillock.

The short answer is that I am still working my other jobs (and have started invigilating exams in another school), which is nice as otherwise I would end up a sad, bored and very edgy individual, stuck in my own flat, chewing the walls and waiting for Ali to come home from work.

The other thing is that yesterday, my health took a pretty severe turn downwards. I was invigilating an exam, so you have to understand that I could at no point leave the room. I was the only teacher there, and with nearly thirty boys sitting a GCSE Maths exam, it was up to me to ensure that there was no foul play going on.

This all went swimmingly until about an hour in (another hour and a half to go) when my stomach decided to play silly beggars and start churning like a concrete mixer full of mouldy bread and rotten-egg mayo. I told myself to calm down and let it pass, but pass it did not, and five minutes later I started panicking about how exactly I was going to cope for the next hour or so.

To cut a long and pretty unpleasant story short, there was much walking up and down the hall, a lot of gurgling from down below, gurning pained faces on my behalf, and even some gripping of the desk lest I should pass out. I was in a great amount of severe discomfort, and close to thinking that I was going to faint and clonk my skull off some unsuspecting fifth former.

Thankfully, another teacher finally came into the room to check if everything was okay, at which point I made my apologies, dashed past her in the direction of the nearest salle de bain.

This is all fairly unpleasant, so I shall cut this bit short...

Most of yesterday evening was roughly divided between the bedroom and the bathroom. It was not, as they say, the most fun.

But, I have begun to ramble again. I shall be posting more regularly from now on, so in the meantime, here are some of the things that I have written for AU since we last spoke. Feel free to read, skip or whatever...

THE SHINS

Words_Ross Thompson

A couple of years ago, James Mercer, frontman with Portland-based band The Shins, was landlocked in the doldrums. When he wasn’t spending endless weeks on tour where his bunk for the night amounted to an empty space on the floor of a stranger’s apartment, he was living next door to a crack house in a neighbourhood that even the most unscrupulous of estate agents would struggle to describe as desirable. Plus ça change then, as in recent days the band’s fortunes have surged up towards a much perkier realm. Mercer tells AU all about how it feels to finally be up and running…

You should probably know by now that the inclusion of ‘New Slang’ on the soundtrack to the film Garden State did wonders for The Shins’ indie credibility, as you can’t read an article on The Shins now without hearing how Natalie Portman’s character waxed lyrical about how that song will change your life. Evidently, being bigged up by Princess Leia works, as The Shins are currently playing sell-out shows across the States, where their excellent new album ‘Wincing The Night Away’ reached the dizzy heights of Number 2 on the Billboard charts.

“Any time I get asked about Garden State, I always say the same thing,” says Mercer, his voice full of the rattle of a late night followed by an early morning. “I am really grateful for the opportunity. Garden State was not a success right off the bat, but its popularity ballooned over a period of time. We saw our audiences grow over a course of a few months, as the colleges wanted us to start playing more and more shows. It re-established us with that scene, which is no bad thing.”

A simple rock equation dictates that a bigger venue times a bigger audience equals a better hotel for the band. Thankfully for Mercer and his cohorts, ‘New Slang’ did indeed change their lives. The Shins’ newfound success meant that they no longer had to slum it in the least salubrious of conditions.

“Touring can be exhausting. You do it to make money, but it is no fun when you all have to sleep in the same room, at the houses of friends or those of people you meet at parties. Where you have nothing for your pillow but a bag of Doritos. When you are eighteen that is tons of fun, but that is what breaks up a band when you are in your mid-thirties, especially when you are away from your family and loved ones. Fortunately, we get to stay in nice hotels now.”

If ‘Wincing The Night Away’ was a hotel, it would be The Overlook, the isolated cliff-top locale from The Shining where Jack Nicholson loses his mind. One listen to the album, and you are sucked into a fantastical scary-tale world. A kind of indie-rock Pan’s Labyrinth, if you will. You find yourself precariously padding through a forest where the moon is permanently half-obscured by dark clouds, and the trees look as if they might come to life, pull their gnarly roots out of the earth and march about. Here, whimsical gingerbread melodies and coruscating sounds abound. In a way, it is funny that the album has hit the big time in America, given that it doesn’t exactly fit into a neat little generic box. ‘Sea Legs’, built around sampled beats and loops acoustic guitars, veers into Radiohead territory, while ‘Red Rabbits’ sounds like a high school marching band playing at the bottom of a swimming pool. ‘Turn On Me’ flirts with Hawaiian surf guitar, while ‘Girl Sailor’ falls into the bracket of 1960s psychedelic pop.

“When I was writing the album, I didn’t have a clear idea for what I wanted it to sound like. I experimented a great deal with sounds. There was a lot of groping around in the dark to find things that worked. The thing about that is that it takes a long time, but you end up with pleasant surprises, and you discover new territory. For example, ‘Red Rabbits’ was originally along the lines of ‘Australia’. I wrote it on a guitar, but then I started working on it with the piano, and it became a lot darker. I messed around with it in the studio until I came up with that weird sound, which is actually a bass played through a lot of weird effects. I remember being in the studio, talking to the other guys about whether people would get it or not. I said I hoped that they would just hear the album and give it a second chance.”

You would like to think that second, third and fourth chances are on the cards. ‘Wincing The Night Away’ is one of those classic albums that bears the sweetest fruit with repeated listens. Riffs that will stick in your skin like fish-hooks are played out against lyrics that will have you reaching for the nearest dictionary. How many other records laconically toss out words and phrases like “unrepentant buzzards”, “polymorphing opinions” and “facing the dodo’s conundrum”? To quote the band’s website, it is a “collection of tales beyond the imagination”.

“You can blame our designer for that one. I don’t really know what that means,” laughs Mercer, self-effacingly. “I’ll be sure to tear that down tomorrow. Actually, I would say that lyrically I’m influenced by things rather than musically. I mean, just look at how literate Morrissey is. He has so many killer one-liners in his lyrics.”

Mercer’s Anglophilic tendencies stretch further than a passing familiarity with The Smiths. The shimmering guitars on ‘Australia’ recall Johnny Marr’s most excellent fretwork, and ‘Phantom Limb’ is fuzzier than The Jesus And Mary Chain playing with several boxes of fuzzy felt.

“I went to high school in England, so I spent my formative years there. I first got into music there too, Rhythm And Blues stuff from the 1960s like The Rolling Stones. Even early Led Zeppelin is R & B, I guess. I got into so much brilliant music when I was going through that period, falling in love with girls and all that crap, though it doesn’t seem like a load of crap when you are sixteen years old.”

At first, it is hard to imagine a surly teenager listening to The Shins - and yes, that is a compliment. The production on is so pristine, the melodies so and blithely cheery that it would have your average lank-haired troubled youth within earshot stuffing their black wristbands into their ears. But while a typical Shins song is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on the surface, the lyrics tell a different story. Three quarters of the way through ‘Wincing The Night Away’, and Mercer has already sung about gouging out eyes, evisceration, spilling blood out onto the floor, and cutting off his own face. Clearly, The Shins will not be contending for Eurovision any time soon.

“I know, what the heck is wrong with me? Maybe there is just a part of my personality that gravitates towards that darkness. There was a lot of angst there that I needed to vent, and writing songs is a good way of dealing with that.”

By “angst”, Mercer is not referring to the torment that had Jordan Catalano off My So-Called Life (Google it if you don’t know) pinching the bridge of his nose and sighing deeply. He is talking about the kind of actual, real-life problems that send us lily-livered wusses here at AU Towers go scuttling off behind the sofa and the CD racks.

“One of the worst things about recording this album was when we started I was going through a really stressful time. Important relationships were falling apart as a result of being away on tour for a long, long time. But the funny thing was when we were finishing the record I had dealt with all of that stuff and I was happy, so the idea of going back down to the dungeon and digging through the dirt again was not pleasant.”

Then there was the small matter of living next door to a crack house. When you read about that sort of dangerous neighbourhood in Jack Kerouac novels, it sounds incredibly bohemian, but in reality it must be something of a downer.

“I had earned some money, but the part of town which I could afford to live in was best described as a gentrified ghetto. Put it this way: when I went to see the place at 10.30 in the morning, the neighbours were pretty good at hiding the fact that they were dealing drugs. After I moved in though, things went south pretty quickly. My neighbours were busted, and they blamed me for calling the cops. So I thought, “Screw it! If they are going to blame me for calling the cops and getting them busted, I might as well have the pleasure of calling the cops and get them busted.” After that, they started shooting at my house.”

It must have been a relief when The Shins’ burgeoning popularity allowed Mercer to move out of the area only previously seen on America’s Most Wanted. Not everybody owns the stones to live in cribs more befitting the shadier members of Snoop Dogg’s entourage. Music fans, however, can be quite unforgiving, as some folks are pretty cynical about an indie rock band making it big and “selling out”.

“I can understand that attitude. I can see the kid who is really into a band and then goes into to school and gets his ass kicked by one of the jocks, and later finds out that the guy who kicked his ass likes that band too. I can see how that would piss that kid off.”

Not that Mercer should be too worried. It is hard to be concerned when you are playing shows to packed-out crowds of fans who sing along with every word of your songs.

“I’m really, really happy. I’m married, and the band is working out really well. I’m far happier in my thirties than I was in my twenties, actually. I think of people in their twenties as kids now. I mean, I was a kid in my twenties.”

However popular The Shins may have become, Mercer is acutely aware of how fickle fame and hype can be. “Hopefully,” he intones, “Your popularity is in some way based on the strength of your songwriting.” If that is the case, Mercer need not be too worried, as ‘Wincing The Night Away’ marks The Shins are at the peak of their creative powers. The question is: now that the band have made it, now that their lives have been changed for the better, what is Mercer’s hope for the future?

“I don’t think about the future. I don’t even hope. The success on this album has been perfect. What else could I possibly want?”

ARCADE FIRE

Words_Ross Thompson

In the relatively short period of time since Arcade Fire released their eponymous debut record, their popularity has spread outwards, moving as quickly and unceasingly as a bush blaze. Here, AU investigates how a supposedly niche group can make the transition from an underground scene in Montreal to the front cover of Time magazine…

We live in strange times, musically speaking. Years ago, this writer’s school playground echoed with the catcalls of two neatly polarised groups of kids: those who were into Wham, and those who were into Duran Duran. An occasional lunchtime highlight was when a rammy broke out between the two, the aim of which was to discern who was the greatest, the day-glo pop funsters, or the cravat-wearing New Romantics. Some time later, the sixth form centre was equally divided: on one side sat the Goths, listening to The Sisters Of Mercy on their brick-sized walkmans and trying not to smile, and on the other were the Rugby team, whose idea of edgy music was The Shamen performing ‘Ebenezer Goode’ on Top Of The Pops. In the past few years, however, we have seen a paradigm shift in the way in which music is viewed. What was once considered as “underground” has cross-pollinated the mainstream to the point that the two terms have all but disappeared, like side of the road markers buried after a heavy snowfall. In a previous, darker age, the genre-bending likes of The Klaxons, The Automatic and The Arctic Monkeys would never have made it anywhere near the hit parade, but now they speed towards the top spot with only the minimum of fuss.

But who could have foreseen that Arcade Fire would become such a stone-cold hit? At this point, your Pitchforks and your Stereogums and the rest of your trendy bloggers will mew that they were posting about the surrounding buzz yonks before anybody else had even breathed the band’s name. But seriously, could anyone have predicted that Arcade Fire would span the globe with such consummate ease? “In the states the difference between the majors and the indies is a chasm,” claims frontman Win Butler. “You need this big business in order to break things. Whereas in Britain – the NME like it, Radio 1 will play it, you’re a celebrity now.” You know what? He’s exactly right. If the trail blazed by an oddball outfit like Gnarls Barkley proved anything, it was that the Berlin Wall that used to separate indie rock from more respectable pop has been torn down; the outposts previously manned by the likes of Gary Davies and Bruno Brookes have been demilitarised. Top Of The Pops, once deemed required viewing of every Thursday evening, and the conversation topic of every Friday first period, has fallen foul of a mercy killing. In our current fast-moving climate, the notion of a children’s television presenter being “wacky” and struggling to read an autocue is completely redundant.

So permeable is our music scene that a band like Arcade Fire can attract such interest and nobody bats a deftly mascara-ed eyelid. Their sound is the aural equivalent of what groovy young chefs would call “fusion food”, a cauldron brimming over with snatches of Talking Heads, Leonard Cohen, Echo And The Bunnymen, The Velvet Underground, Hungarian Folk, Gospel and Chamber Music. They play violins, accordions, cellos, French horns, mandolins, trombones and a hurdy-gurdy. Meanwhile, their lyrics are awash with references to post 9/11 politics, portentous Biblical imagery and Haitian mythology. In short, they’re not exactly The Kaiser Chiefs.

In spite of their somewhat leftfield nature, Arcade Fire have played to audiences numbering in the thousands in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. They have supported U2 on major tours, and can count the Davids Byrne and Bowie as major fans – they have even performed onstage with the latter. With no sense of hyperbole, Chris Martin went as far as to hail them as… dramatic drum roll… the best band in history. The question is: how the douche did such an unassuming, somewhat unfashionable band from Quebec turn out to be such big business? Is it really all to do with the changing face of the music scene, or is it something else entirely?

‘Funeral’, Arcade Fire’s full-length debut from 2004, is partly to blame. Heralded by most publications as the album of the year, this collection of songs, most of which appeared to share the name ‘Neighbourhood’, puts the fun into all things… hmm… funereal. Inspired by the deaths of several close relatives of the band, it took weighty subjects of loss and bereavement and transformed them into something transcendent. Even now, ‘Funeral’ sounds fantastic: its pounding drums, church bells, chaotic guitars and Win Butler’s pained yelping become more and more hypnotic as the album progresses through its track-list. The result is a piece of work that saw the band being fêted by critics, fans and fellow musicians alike.

Around the time of the release of ‘Funeral’, the hype surrounding Arcade Fire was so excitable that you could almost see the words in a review jittering about on the page. Live, the band is a total force of nature, a whirlwind of noise: the multiple musicians get into a groove with such ease that they appear to be communicating telepathically. The salvo of classic and modern instruments is unbelievably intense and loud, Phil Spector’s Wall Of Sound as played by The Salvation Army. As Win Butler says, “Music is the most immediate language. You can say a lot less and communicate more in a shorter space.” You only need to glance at the audience at an Arcade Fire show to see how profound this level of communication can be. There is a carpet of arms thrust up towards the rafters, and heads tilted backwards with eyes closed. The ensuing rapture flowing through the crowd borders on religious, which is fitting given the big themes of God, the Christian Church and political hypocrisy that filter through the band’s songs. The subject material is a quantum leap away from having the same jeans on for four days, being a punk rocker with flowers in one’s hair, or whatever it is that Girls Aloud sing about. Disposable pop the Arcade Fire are not.

It is astounding that Arcade Fire has the ability to not only pack out auditoriums, but also to cast this spell on their listeners from the very first bar of the show. Particularly when you take into account that the band refuse to do the necessary courting dance with the media, in most occasions refusing to appear on television or in print at all. Perhaps this has only served to make them all the more alluring - their enigmatic, old-worldly quality has been enhanced by their relative silence. Whatever the reason, it is relatively unheard of that such a band so early on in their career has the pulling power to turn down the weeklies and the monthlies yet still shift a tonne of records and appear near to the top of the bill of a festival like Coachella, attended by 15,000 eager punters.

This phenomenon carries on with the recent release of second album ‘Neon Bible’, which has already shifted enough copies to prove that Arcade Fire were not victims of beginner’s luck first time around. It is just as confident as ‘Funeral’, but it is a much darker affair, if you can comprehend that. Whereas ‘Funeral’ was a cataclysmic release of angst, frustration and fury, ‘Neon Bible’ is all about restraint: its emotions are permanently boiling beneath the surface, ready to spew upwards like a geyser. The approaching thunder that introduces ‘Black Mirror’, the opening track that deliberately wavers in and out of tune, recurs throughout ‘Neon Bible’. The noise is a metaphor for the approaching doom mentioned in the lyrics: the crashing planes, blazing television screens and falling buildings. At points, the rumbling sounds as if it is rising up from the bowels of the earth, threatening to cleave the world in two. But it does not. The result is the feeling that something awful is about to happen without it actually happening. The listener is made to stand on the edge of the cliff, but is never permitted to fall. The experience is discomfiting, but exciting at the same time.

Then there is the album’s sound. It is just as cacophonous as ‘Funeral’, though the crisper production means that the darkness has much sharper edges. The gothic church organ that pumps through tracks like ‘Intervention’ and ‘My Body Is A Cage’ adds to the feeling that this is the sort of music that Davy Jones, with his tentacles, pipe and rheumy eyes, likes to unwind to after a hard day’s killing and pillaging. ‘Neon Bible’ becomes a ship lost at sea, set adrift across a stormy ocean, in search of the lighthouse mentioned in the title of one of the songs. Add that sense of motion sickness to lyrical allusions to starving children, black waves and heretical prayers of defiance, and this is the most un-pop pop album of the year.

“It’s really hard making a record,” says Butler. “Because certain songs will never be better than the first time you recorded them. But some songs will take months, or years, to work out all the details. In some ways that’s why this record has taken so long: you need to save space for songs that have been refined and refined, and some that are a live band recording.”

‘Neon Bible’ is one of those albums that takes a few listens for the listener to work out its details. A song like ‘(Antichrist Television Blues)’ will not make sense on its first outing. It gradually reveals itself, opens its pages, so you can decipher its codes.

Yet baroque as ‘Neon Bible’ is, come December it is guaranteed to be in the top five of every single one of this years best-of lists. That is not an impressive prediction. As we have already established, Arcade Fire exist in an age where music operates by much different rules than it did in the Dark Ages of the 1980s. Or even the 1990s. The ridiculous terms used to pigeonhole bands back then (‘Grebo’, anyone?) just don’t cut the mustard anymore. For evidence of that fact, check the relative failure of the term ‘Nu Rave’ to enter our lexicon. And really, there’s no need for that kind of lazy journalism right now. The thing about Arcade Fire, and perhaps the real answer to the question at the beginning of this article, is that they make brilliant music. Which, when you cut through all the other chaff, is what really matters.

HISTORY LESSONS: BEN FOLDS

Words_Ross Thompson

Ebony and ivory, as Messrs Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder once pithily observed, go together in perfect harmony. The world, it seemed, wasn’t listening, for piano players were not always viewed as the coolest of cool dudes. In days gone by the only people who would have been caught dead behind a Steinway included Liberace, Billy Joel and Dudley Moore. Nowadays though, you can’t turn around without tripping over a sensitive indie band with a piano-playing frontman. Keane, Coldplay, Morning Runner, Guillemots and even happy go lucky Thom Yorke… they are all joining the ivory tickler brigade. But before any of these bedwetting milksops (Yorke excepted) arrived on the scene, someone else was doing his damnedest to bring the piano back into fashion.

In 1994, whilst playing a weekly residency at Sin-é, the same café in New York where Jeff Buckley cut his gigging teeth, college dropout Benjamin Scott Folds befriended bass-player Robert Sledge and drummer Darren Jessee. Brought together by a mutual love of both lounge jazz and 80s Hair Metal, the trio vowed to start playing “punk rock for sissies”. Less than a year later, Ben Folds Five got signed and released their self-titled debut album. It launched the classic single ‘Underground’, which affectionately parodied Jesus Christ Superstar, and spoke of teenage disaffection more pointedly than anything by the welter of soundalike Grunge bands of this era. It had a jaunty singalong chorus to boot.

On the strength of their first record, the band embarked on a series of mammoth tours up and down and across the States. Live shows were raucous affairs where audience participation was encouraged, and impromptu cover versions were frequent. In a novel twist on the ritual of a rock band trashing the stage, they regularly ended with Folds standing atop a baby grand, dropping a piano stool onto the keys.

Thanks to their between-song banter, Ben Folds Five became known for an edgy sense of humour, a quality that was brought to the fore on their second record, ‘Whatever And Ever Amen’. Tracks such as ‘One Angry Dwarf And 200 Solemn Faces’ and ‘Battle Of Who Could Care Less’ featured comedy swearing and smartly sarcastic one-liners. Yet at the same time Folds was writing elegiac lyrics that, amidst all the effing and jeffing, indicated that the band were not just about having a good time all of the time. The deceptively benign single ‘Brick’ is a case in point. While the verse-chorus-verse structure rose and fell in all the right places, the words told the story of a couple breaking up over an unwanted pregnancy. Not the stuff of your typical pop song.

Another album followed, the confusing but hugely underrated slow-burner ‘The Unauthorised Biography Of Reinhold Messner’, but the band had already started to fragment. The Five, in reality a three, were reduced to just one, as Folds went it alone, releasing a string of solo albums and EPs of elevating quality, which witnessed him further honing his craft. Folds still bangs the Joanna with the same galumphing dexterity as before, but he does it more sensitively, as evidenced by his elegant second solo work ‘Songs For Silverman’. But ‘Whatever And Ever Amen’ remains his finest moment to date. Released a decade ago, it is both melancholic and laugh-out-loud funny, where each obstreperous up yours is followed by a sophisticated ballad, which in turn is followed by a joke about cellulite. Imperfect harmony, if you will, but compulsive listening nonetheless.

Aloha!

2007-02-21T13:37:00.000Z

Hey there,

I am working on a big overhaul of this site, so please bear with me while I am absent.

It's my birthday today (no, I won't say what age I am, you scamps), so I can't be bothered doing it right now. I have finished work for the day, and am off home to loaf about.

Off to see Hot Fuzz tonight, and I can't wait. It will be excellent!

I have much to write about here (adventures with my Wii, going to see Ray LaMontagne, listening to The Shins etc.), and I will update you on all of these things in due course.

Hope you are all doing well. Please keep coming back,

Ross boss.

2007-01-09T15:03:00.000Z

Some recent writings from the pages of the glorious AU magazine. Here we go:

HISTORY LESSONS: PAVEMENT

Words_Ross Thompson

THE LOWDOWN
By all rights, Pavement should have, like, totally sucked. An indie rock band whose line-up comprised a stonemason (Steve West), a museum security guard (Bob Nastanovich), an aging hippy (Gary Young), a barman (Mark Ibold), and two nerdy slackers (Stephen Malkmus and Scott Kannberg AKA ‘Spiral Stairs’), they were never going to top any coolest of the year lists. But suck they did not; Pavement lasted a decade, made five cracking albums, made fans of the likes of John Peel and Graham Coxon, then split acrimoniously, thanks largely to the venomous enmity between Malkmus and Kannberg.

Influenced in part by the records of noiseniks The Fall and The Replacements, and the do-it-yourself cover art of Sonic Youth, Pavement started out by recording lo-fi EPs whose contents sounded like a banshee trying to break out of a cutlery drawer. Their debut album ‘Slanted And Enchanted’ retained the same skew-whiff song dynamics, but was counterbalanced by a keen sense of melody. After jettisoning original member Young, due to his drug intake and a penchant for doing handstands when he should have been playing the drums, Pavement became more proficient, if not entirely professional. Their second long-player, the brilliant ‘Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain’, spawned what would be called “hits” in an alternate universe: the singles ‘Cut Your Hair’ and ‘Range Life’, both of which received heavy airplay on MTV. The latter’s lyrical content kickstarted a vitriolic feud with Billy Corgan: “Out on tour with the Smashing Pumpkins / Nature kids, but they don’t have a function”. This barbed aside was typical of the sense of humour that pervaded Malkmus’s writing.

The bipolar quality of Pavement’s music was stretched even further on their next record, ‘Wowee Zowee’, a gloriously eclectic mess which contained everything from ballsy punk to acoustic ballads to stoned country. Around this time, the band would drink heavily and smoke whole window-boxes of dope before going onstage. The resultant gigs could either be transcendent or tragically awful. Dispensing with the setlist, the guys indulged in hour-long jams. A jazz odyssey did not sit too well with fans who had paid to hear the singles.

Ironically, the things that made the band so alluring gradually began to pull them apart - the cracks in the Pavement, if you will. The tension between Malkmus and Kannberg that had once generated an awkward kind of chemistry revealed itself to be little more than jealousy and bile. After years of jostling for songwriting duties, Kannberg was largely excluded from contributing to the final albums ‘Brighten The Corners’ and ‘Terror Twilight’, relegated instead to b-sides on the accompanying singles. Once bookish and self-mocking, Malkmus became aloof towards audiences and dismissive of the band, going so far as to vocally lambast his fellow members during concerts.

In 1999, during a gig in London, Pavement announced that they were taking a break for a while. In truth, the band had broken up. The gold soundz, it seemed, had come to an end.

ESSENTIAL LISTENING

‘Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain’ (Big Cat, 1994)
Neatly described by the NME with the one-liner, “so good they named it twice”, Pavement’s second album is also their most accessible, featuring pop songs (kind of) like ‘Elevate Me Later’, ‘Unfair’ and ‘Cut Your Hair’, which became something of an anthem for those plaid-shirted college kids who didn’t listen to Nirvana or Pearl Jam. The one Pavement album that is truly indispensable.

‘Wowee Zowee’ (Big Cat, 1996)
Eighteen tracks strong, and covering almost as many genres, everything about this album is contrary, but deliberately so. The fact that they chose three of the slowest, weirdest songs as lead singles should indicate just how much weed the band were smoking in those days. Malkmus advised listeners, “Play it on random – it sounds good that way.” And you know what? It does.

‘Brighten The Corners’ (Domino, 1997)
Arguably the last great Pavement record. The stream of consciousness lyrics were just as nonsensical as ever, with references to Geddy Lee (of Rush fame), Ikea and malaria, and one of the best lines ever (“You’ve been chosen as an extra in the movie adaptation of the sequel to your life”), and the music was at once experimental and focused. At turns bookish, funny and melancholy, and ‘Infinite Spark’ is the nearest the band ever came to beautiful. Not just bright in the corners, but in the centre too.

PERFECT SOUND FOREVER: SELECTED PAVEMENT TRIVIA

SNACKS!
At early Pavement gigs, original drummer Gary Young used to hand out mashed potato and rounds of toast to members of the audience. Occasionally, he played a song or two.

SMACK!
Whilst appearing on the bill for the infamous Lollapalooza festival, the band was welcomed by a steady shower of clods of mud. After being clonked in the face, and the rest of the band had exited stage right, Kannberg stood at the edge of the stage, flicking both birds at the knuckleheaded audience. Kind of like Custer’s Last Stand, but with a slacker and a whole lot of rednecks.

RIP-OFF!
A riff plagiarising ‘Rattled By The Rush’ was frequently used as cutscene music in bland sitcom Friends. Could it be any more indie?

FOLK!
Weirdly, ‘Spit On A Stranger’ seems to be popular with folkies: it has been recorded by both Kathryn Williams and Nickel Creek.

CONFUSION!
Much to the chagrin of producers everywhere, Stephen Malkmus rarely sang the same lyrics twice, often changing the words completely between takes. Depending on which edition of ‘Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain’ you have, you will have a track called ‘Silence Kit’ or ‘Silent Kid’; ‘Rattled By The Rush’ is also known as ‘Rattled By La Rush’; and ‘We Dance’ is occasionally referred to as ‘Dancing With The Elders’.

WORD!
One of Malkmus’s finest lyrics is the genius putdown, “Show me a word that rhymes with ‘Pavement’ / And I will take your parents / And roast them on a spit”.

FANBOYS!
According to music business lore, one of the driving forces behind Graham Coxon leaving Blur was that he wanted to make music that sounded more like Pavement. Note any similarity between the Pavement track ‘Starlings In The Slipstream’ and the Blur b-side ‘Swallows In A Heatwave’?

BOYFANS!
On ‘Unseen Power Of The Picket Fence’, their contribution to the AIDS charity album ‘No Alternative’, Pavement profess their love for R.E.M.. After praising some of the band’s earlier compositions, Stephen Malkmus informs the listener, “‘Time After Time’ was my least favourite song.

GO BACK TO THOSE GOLD SOUNDZ: A PAVEMENT MIXTAPE

1. ‘Trigger Cut’, (‘Slanted And Enchanted’, 1992)
2. ‘In The Mouth A Desert’, (‘Slanted And Enchanted’, 1992)
3. ‘Here’, (‘Slanted And Enchanted’, 1992)
4. ‘Summer Babe’, (‘Slanted And Enchanted’, 1992)
5. ‘Shoot The Singer’, (‘Watery, Domestic’ EP, 1992)
6. ‘Frontwards’, (‘Watery, Domestic’ EP, 1992)
7. ‘Greenlander’, (‘Volume 4’ Compilation, 1992)
8. ‘Cut Your Hair’, (‘Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain’, 1994)
9. ‘Gold Soundz’, (‘Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain’, 1994)
10. ‘Range Life’, (‘Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain’, 1994)
11. ‘Rattled By The Rush’, (‘Wowee Zowee’, 1995)
12. ‘Grounded’, (‘Wowee Zowee’, 1995)
13. ‘Fight This Generation’, (‘Wowee Zowee’, 1995)
14. ‘Give It A Day’, (‘Pacific Trim’ EP, 1996)
15. ‘Shady Lane’, (‘Brighten The Corners’, 1997)
16. ‘Infinite Spark’, (‘Brighten The Corners’, 1997)
17. ‘Winner Of The…’, (‘Stereo’ Single, 1997)
18. ‘Spit On A Stranger’, (‘Terror Twilight’, 1999)
19. ‘Major Leagues’, (‘Terror Twilight’, 1999)
20. Carrot Rope, (‘Terror Twilight’, 1999)

HISTORY LESSONS: BECK

Words_Ross Thompson

THE LOWDOWN
Twelve years ago, an unknown high school dropout simply known as “Beck” (born Bek David Campbell) dropped the track ‘Loser’, a stone-cold sound-clash of fuzzy distortion, sampled beats and stream of consciousness lyrics. Though it sounded as if it was made for two dollars plus change, it was the most exciting thing to happen to music since The Pixies’ debut six years earlier. Remember that this was 1993, a year where the charts were dominated by the likes of Ace Of Base, Gabrielle and (the horror, the horror) Ugly Kid Joe. Taking all of that into consideration, you can imagine the collective relief of music fans at the prospect that least somebody had at least an ounce of talent.

Thanks to heavy rotation on MTV, ‘Loser’ became a sleeper success. At first, Beck was largely dismissed as a one hit wonder, a stoner who had somehow inveigled his way into the affections of the Geffen record label. With its cheap as chips, art school video, and tongue-in-cheek lyrical references to Cheez Whizz, chimps and termites, ‘Loser’ was denigrated as a novelty record. When the fuss died down, Beck would no doubt sally off to the same retirement home inhabited by Babylon Zoo, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Baby Bird and The Reynolds Girls, with his beat-box tucked firmly between his legs.

But Beck refused to let sleeping stoners lie. The album that followed, ‘Mellow Gold’, could vie for the title of the oddest major label release ever. Influenced in equal measures by Willie Nelson, Captain Beefheart and magic mushrooms, Beck mix-and-matched styles in a fashion that recalled The Beastie Boys on ‘Paul’s Boutique’. If that wasn’t enough to secure his indie rock scout badge, the buzz surrounding Beck was such that he was allowed to wangle a deal where he could simultaneously put out albums on different independent labels: the country-tinged ‘One Foot In The Grave’ and the sprawling, very weird ‘Stereopathic Soul Manure’ were both released at the same time as ‘Mellow Gold’. Even though he was playing with the big boys, it was pretty clear that Beck had not cashed in his chips.

A few years later, something wicky wicky wah this way came in the form of ‘Odelay’, the album on which Beck further honed his individualistic sound. Better produced than ‘Mellow Gold’, but just as loaded with junk culture imagery, ‘Odelay’ scorched and buried any notion that he was a one trick pony. Packed to the gills with hit singles, it bagged Beck a clutch of five star reviews, not to mention a handful of illustrious Grammy awards, thus permitting the self-confessed “Loser” to graduate to the major league. All the same, he remained both within and without the mainstream.

It is a dextrous balancing act that Beck has been performing ever since. How can you explain the fact that he followed ‘Sea Change’, a lovelorn, acoustic-based affair in the style of Nick Drake, with the hip-hop shenanigans of ‘Guero’? The answer is pretty simple: you can’t. But then, when the music is this cool, why would you want to?

ESSENTIAL LISTENING

‘Mellow Gold’ (Geffen, 1993)
With the world still reeling from the aftermath of the Gulf War, Beck responded with a gloriously silly, 100% FUN blend of witty lyrics, infectious tunes and insane noise. Poking fun at rednecks and hippy girls, and featuring a chorus that aped the long-haired moping of the plaid brigade (“I’m a loser, baby, so why don’t you kill me?”), Beck arrived with a bang – and a bong.

‘Sea Change’
And so to the winter of Beck’s discontent… this is a largely sombre affair in which Beck documents in full the break-up of a long-term relationship. Though it lacks the scattergun approach of previous efforts, and certainly does not make for comfortable listening, this is a mature, deeply absorbing album awash with acoustic guitars and swirling strings. Interesting for the fact that it shows a tender, less knowing side of Beck’s songwriting, you don’t so much listen to ‘Sea Change’ as bathe in its waters.

‘The Information’
Largely written and recorded in tandem with ‘Guero’, Beck’s latest release is a riot of invention, and is in part a return to the unhinged chaos of his early material. From the bluesy, rocking ‘Nausea’ to the sinister title track, this is this is an all-you-can-eat banquet of great songs.

HIDDEN TRACKS: FOR COLLECTORS ONLY
Beck was gyping about with recording songs long before he got signed, and there is a shedload of rare material to hunt out for those who are so inclined. Along with vinyl only releases such as the EP ‘A Western Harvest Field By Moonlight’ (1994) and contributions to compilations and soundtracks, there are early demos such as ‘The Banjo Story’ (1988), ‘Golden Feelings’ (1993) and ‘Fresh Meat And Old Slabs’ (1993). While far from top notch in the quality stakes, these lo-fi efforts offer an early glimpse of Beck’s talent for wrecking the mic.

WEIRDNESS FOLLOWS: SELECTED BECK TRIVIA

FOGEYS!
For no apparent reason, Beck promoted ‘Loser’ by appearing on Top Of The Pops with a bunch of old folks standing in as his backing band. The funny thing is that many viewers at home believed that it actually was his backing band.

FUTURAMA!
Beck guest-starred in an episode of Matt Groening’s brilliant but short-lived cartoon. Displaying a total lack of ego, he parodied his public persona with the genius line, “‘Odelay’ is just a word. Look it up in the Beck-tionary.”

GAMEBOYS!
For the ‘Hell Yes EP’, tracks from ‘Guero’ were remixed using, amongst other things, Nintendo’s brick-sized, portable gaming gadget. The results are much better than you might expect.

GRINGO!
An alternate version of ‘Jackass’ features Beck singing the entire song in Spanish, backed by a full Mariachi band.

GROOVY!
On ‘MTV Makes Me Want To Smoke Crack’, a b-side to ‘Loser’, Beck scats in a lounge jazz style about the brain-draining effect of watching the music channel that made his name.

STICKERS!
‘The Information’ comes equipped with a blank front cover and a sheet of dinky stickers so listeners can design their own sleeve. Thanks to ridiculously stringent rules in the UK, this disqualifies the album from a chart entry. Party poopers.

PUPPETS!
Recent Beck shows star a troupe of cute but creepy puppets made in the likeness of every member of his band. Each mini-me is designed to look exactly like its counterpart, complete with identical haircuts, clothes, hats, beards and instruments.

HAPPINESS GROWS IN YOUR BACK YARD: A BECK MIXTAPE
1. ‘Loser’ (‘Mellow Gold’, 1994)
2. ‘Totally Confused’ (B-Side to ‘Loser’, 1993)
3. ‘Steve Threw Up’ (7” Single, 1994)
4. ‘Satan Gave Me A Taco’ (‘Stereopathic Soul Manure’, 1994)
5. ‘Girl Dreams’ (‘One Foot In The Grave’, 1994)
6. ‘Got No Mind’ (‘Beercan EP’, 1994)
7. ‘Where It’s At’ (‘Odelay’, 1996)
8. ‘Jackass’ (‘Odelay’, 1996)
9. ‘Deadweight’ (‘A Life Less Ordinary Soundtrack’, 1997)
10. ‘Tropicalia’ (‘Mutations’, 1998)
11. ‘Sexx Laws’ (‘Midnite Vultures’, 1999)
12. ‘True Love Will Find You In The End’ (‘Daniel Johnston Tribute’, 2004)
13. ‘Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime’ (‘Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind Soundtrack’, 2004)
14. ‘The Golden Age’ (‘Sea Change’, 2002)
15. ‘Lost Cause’ (‘Sea Change’, 2002)
16. ‘E-Pro’ (‘Guero’, 2005)
17. ‘Bit Rate Variations In B Flat (Girl)’ (‘Hell Yes EP’, 2005)
18. ‘Cellphone’s Dead’ (‘The Information’, 2006)
19. Nausea (‘The Information, 2006)
20. ‘New Round’ (‘The Information’, 2006)

Calexico.

2007-01-09T14:59:00.000Z

A pretty short piece this, due to the constraints of the fearsome wordcount, but here it is nonetheless:

Calexico

They’re one of the most productive bands in the world. Nearly always on tour, and regularly hammering out unique-sounding records, Calexico makes music that demands to be heard. Whether it’s on your car stereo as you drive through an empty dustbowl, or on your iPod as you traverse a busy street, it doesn’t matter. It just has to be heard, is all…

The past years have been a busy time for Calexico, the hardworking outfit from Tucson, Arizona. After playing in Giant Sand, friends Joey Burns and John Convertino broke out on their own. To date, the band has released five albums and numerous tour-only releases and EPs. And that’s not counting their myriad collaborative projects, such as ‘In The Reins’, last year’s brilliant record with Iron And Wine. Prolific is not the word.

Best described as alt. country with a twist, Calexico features a strong emphasis on percussion, provided by the multi-talented Convertino, and Spanish guitar and Mariachi trumpets. Think about the soundtracks to Sergio Leone movies, and you’re along the right lines. But even that comparison doesn’t quite fit. Calexico’s ability to hurdle genres is evidenced by ‘Feast Of Wire’, their most expansive, eclectic work to date, a mix-tape in which country rock collides with jazz and random electro weirdness.

“We’re all big lovers of lots of different kinds of music; we’re not trying to adhere to one particular genre or style,” says chief songwriter and frontman Joey Burns. “That’s pretty clear from the fact that we do so many different projects with everyone from Neko Case to Gotan Project and the Two Swordsmen.”

Like opening a Kinder Egg or pulling a cracker, you never know what treats you will find inside a Calexico record - and the results are much sexier than a clip-on plastic moustache. This creativity reached a new peak with this year’s ‘Garden Ruin’, a comparatively straightforward, slimmed-down work that recalled, amongst others, the best of The Beatles and Crowded House.

“We wanted to mix things up with that record,” continues Joey. “It’s natural to change and challenge things. You don’t want to take anything for granted.”

‘Garden Ruin’ certainly does challenge things, by featuring lyrics that are cryptic and overtly political at the same time.

“The simplest things can translate into larger, broader themes. It’s interesting for music to be specific in detail yet be abstract enough so that the listener can interpret their own meaning. It takes away from the song when it is too heavy-handed, and becomes too much of a slogan.”

With lines like “When numbers matter more than the heart”, it doesn’t take a military strategist to figure out who’s coming under fire. But it’s far from being hollow tub-thumping; it’s got great tunes, with a thick seam of melancholy.

“The melancholy is a big aspect of the music. To me, it’s the most important thread; it is the minor blues, it is coming from people rather than from the commercial or corporate side of things.”

Despite this, however, ‘Garden Ruin’ is far from a downer.
“Hey, I like the downer,” laughs Joey. “I like the connection to other downers.”

As far as downers go, ‘Garden Ruin’ is up there with the best of them.

No Soup For You!

2007-01-09T14:57:00.000Z

“Well, that’s it over for another year,” as one of my brothers (I won’t say which one) has a slightly irksome habit of saying during the closing moments of each Boxing Day. The flipside of the Christmas holiday for me, and I believe that I have already expressed how much I love that time of year, is the period that follows: the post-festive comedown and the wet, wintry months that follow. Today, we took down the decorations in our house, and I cut up the tree - in itself, a fairly violent act when you think about it, but I choose not to think about it. Instead, I thought on, as I often do, how quickly time seems to be skipping by. It’s faintly depressing, so I shall not dwell on it too much here, but suffice to say my mind snagged on events past, not just of this year, but of years before that. I do this sometimes, when I have nothing better to occupy my brain, small as it is. It happens every New Year, and I obsess myself into a nasty depressive slump, something that is made all the more easier by the dark, inevitably wet mornings that persistently greet me as I wake each day throughout the month of January.

Great start, huh? It’s the first post of a new month of a new year, and I have slumped into the sort of paperback psychobabble claptrap that would have given Dawson and Joey chills up their post-pubescent backs.

So, let’s backtrack a little… In my last post, I referred to an event on Boxing Day that had me hopping mad. Well, here’s what happened:

Christmas Day, as usual, was brilliant fun: carols at Church, visiting relatives, eating a nice meal and opening shiny gifts: Paul Auster novels, new cufflinks, Seinfeld season 7 and King Kong on DVD, and, of course, my Nintendo Wii. The grail for geeks everywhere this Christmas. As you know, I was fairly excited (read: giddy as a schoolboy) about receiving this gadget, and on Boxing Day I feverishly unwrapped it, slipped it out of the box, and got it hooked up to the TV. My heart was thump-thumping, my palms were sweating, and my tummy was tingling.

After naming the console (Rossy 1) and setting up the time, date etc., I quickly decided that the Wii is pretty darn cool. The wireless remote felt good in my hand, rumbling whenever I moved the cursor over onscreen buttons, and making pleasing clicks when I hit them. I also discovered that one of the features is that you can design a cute wee cartoon character that looks just like you, so I gave mine a wee beard, spiky hair and a red jumper. We created one for Ali too, and after about forty-five minutes of this malarkey I decided that it was time to play some games, which, after all, is the purpose of the thing.

So, I took Wii Sports out of its case, slightly feverish at the prospect of creating virtual tennis and ten pin bowling in my living room. I gently pushed the CD into the loading bay, hoping that it would be sucked gently into the machine, but instead it make a rather discouraging grinding noise and spat the CD back out again.

I tried a few more times, and each attempt was punctuated by a series of bad words of increasing ardour, but to no avail. Then I stomped out of the room in a huff, into the bedroom where I swore some more and punched whatever was in my vicinity.

So, that was a bit of a downer.

In fact, I am now embroiled in an ongoing dispute with Amazon, which I shall detail in full in a subsequent post. It is something of an epistle, so I shall spare you the joys of that for now.

I shouldn’t really complain, I know. I got lots of other really nice presents, so I should really shut my trap and stop whinging, but the as yet unplayed copy of Zelda: Twilight Princess sitting all lonesome on my shelf taunts me daily…

What is a pauvre garcon to do?

Feliz Navidad.

2006-12-27T13:52:00.000Z

Christmas has been exceedingly fun, though there is an accompanying story which I am far too cross to write about just now. I don't want to spoil the festive goodwill.

So, leaving that aside for one moment, I want to wish all of you a very merry Christmas from all of us here at Shaftesbury Heights.

Hope you all are having a really, really great Christmastime.

God bless you all,

Ross boss.

Big Update Part Two.

2006-12-18T10:18:00.000Z

You should know by now that Christmas is my favourite time of year. In fact, I like the whole of winter: the dark afternoons, walking home in the mist, seeing my breath in front of my face. I know that I am romanticising this to make it seem as if I am alive in Victorian London, but I really do get into the autumn to winter period.

But Christmas is up there, as far as fun times go. I could go as far as to say that I love the build-up to Christmas Day a little more than the day itself. The anticipation, picking out of presents, preparing food, decking the halls etc. It's all good stuff.

So, last week Ali Pup and I headed out to buy our tree. We get a real one each year, and head to a local farm to pick it up, which is quite fun. For some reason it makes me think of the Charlie Brown cartoons I used to watch when I was young, which always seemed to be set at Christmas. Even now I can visualise Charlie and Lucy and Linus et al in their scarves and woolly hats, having snowball fights and catching snowflakes on their tongues.

So, we picked the tree out and took it home and Ali decorated it, and now our front room glows.

But to get to the most exciting thing about this year's Christmas: I am getting a Nintendo Wii. All jokes about the name aside, I am so giddy about it. Now, this is geeky, but I have been going back to playing Perfect Dark on my N64 recently (which I also got for Christmas several years ago), and it has made me feel nostalgic for my days in Dundee, sitting up late with Michael Paisley, eating chip butties and playing Goldeneye and Mario Kart for hours on end. It's to get me in the mood for the whole Wii experience, you see, and for the console Nintendo has released a brand spanking new Zelda game, so come the 25th of December I will be in Geek Heaven.

I know what you are saying: Ross boss, how do you know if you are getting one of these fabled consoles? Well, one, I have been a very good boy this year. And two, we ordered it online through Amazon, which sold out of the things in 7 minutes (7!), but we (note the use of the plural royal "we" there, where in fact "I") I mean were fortunate enough to be amongst the privileged few who will be savouring the Wii (that sounds so wrong) this yuletide.

So, yes, I am pretty stoked about that. I am a seasoned gamer and I am not afraid to admit that fact. I love playing games, always have and always will. I don't care if other folks think that they are for kids, nerds and sociopaths. I think they are great.

And I love getting presents for friends and family. I have to say that I am a little anally retentive when it comes to this though (as I am with most things), as I cannot just buy presents. I have to get the perfect present for those concerned, so it takes me on average 27 hours longer per person to identify a range of options for each candidate, then another 27 hours to search for those options, then a final 23 hours to collect, wrap and deliver said gift. It is a very scientific process.

Now, I am not normally a fan of those ridiculous X Factor shows. My feelings about them range from finding them funny, to finding them sad, interminably dull, irrelevant and farcical. I don't know if any of you saw the final on Saturday, but the choice of "winners" were not that great:

Leona: girl who models herself on Whitney, Mariah and all the other divas, but has the emotional constitution of a poodle and seems to cry at any available opportunity. "Oh wow, you opened the door for me? You actually took the time to open the door for poor little me? Boo hoo hoo."

Ray: Creepy manchild whose interest in Frank Sinatra borders on the obsessive. Also looks distinctly like Eddie Munster, a grown-up, mutated Eddie Munster. Also cries at any available opportunity.

In short then, the choice was not stellar, and to be fair, I don't think you can really "win" The X-Factor. As with Lost, it comes to the end of the series, they have to have an explosive finale, but then it will all start over again next year, and be just as confusing, hollow and disappointing.

So, even though Leona "won" the show, I reckon that her singing career will be over in six months, and she will be on the cover of Nuts and Zoo magazines before you can say "Michelle McManus". Ray, meanwhile, will be working in Zippy Chips fast food restaurants by day, and singing Frank Sinatra songs in working men's clubs by night.

Cynical? Who, me?

While we are on a Christmassy theme, here is my favourite festive joke:

Two snowmen standing in a field. One turns to the other, sniffs and says, "Do you smell carrots?".

Christmas Compy.

2006-12-13T10:59:00.000Z

As regular readers will know, every year I make Christmas-themed compilations for relatives and friends, and hand them out as interactive cards, I guess.

It’s my way of spreading a little seasonal cheer.

Along with picking up our tree, decorating it, and eating the first harvest of mince pies, putting this CD together is when I really begin to feel all festive.

As usual, all of the tracks are a little off-kilter, and some are plain darn weird.

01 Vince Guaraldi Trio – Skating
02 The Pipettes – White Christmas
03 Deegan DeWitt And The Sparrows – Christmas Light
04 The Weepies – All I Want
05 Aimee Mann – Christmastime
06 Daniel Johnson – Christmas Music
07 Vitesse – Ice And Ribbons
08 The Killers – A Great Big Sled
09 Ed Harcourt – In The Bleak Midwinter
10 The Dismemberment Plan – This Christmas
11 The Flaming Lips – Christmas At The Zoo
12
13 Pedro The Lion – The First Noel
14 Denison Witmer – A Christmas Song
15 Hotel Lights – Stumblin’ Home Winter Blues
16 Iron And Wine – Faded From The Winter
17 Scott And Brad Allen – Silent Night
18 Sunfall Festival – Still, Still, Still
19 Sufjan Stevens – Sister Winter
20 Belle And Sebastian – O Come, O Come Emmanuel
21 Pedro The Lion – Be Thou My Vision
22 Low – If You Were Born Today
23 Eef Barzelay – Joy To The World

Have a good one,

Ross.

Big Update Part One.

2006-12-13T10:50:00.000Z

I’m sorry, folks. I really do feel like a fairweather friend, as my appearances on here in the past months have been about as frequent as a good John Travolta film, and as any movie buff will know, that is not very often.

You see, I don’t have broadband hooked up at home yet, which means that I have to type up these epistles when and where I can: at my mum and dad’s house, at the AU office, in school. The latter isn’t very likely, as I have been totally snowed under with work of late. I have to say that I prefer it that way; I thrive on deadlines and being busy, and would much rather that than sitting about on my ass all day long being bored. But I do feel as if my day is spent running from pillar to post, then driving home, having a quick nap, and getting fired into some prep / homework marking etc.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining at all. I love my job, but it can be fairly intense. For example, last Saturday I woke up at 8.30, looked at my alarm clock, said a naughty word and jumped out of bed, thinking that I had slept in. After I had come to my senses and realised it was the weekend, I clambered back into bed and, when my heart stopped doing a polka, fell back to sleep. I guess it was because last week had been so hectic and so heavy in a lot of ways, but there’s nothing much I can do about that.

Anyway, I was talking about something else. I have wandered off on a tangent, as I am often prone to do. To rewind a little, we are planning to get Broadband hooked up in the New Year, so normal service will resume, and posts on here will become much more regular. Perhaps even obsessive…
Anyway, a load of cool things have happened recently (the timeline of this post will be more convoluted than in Back To The Future 2). One of the big events was going to see Bruce Springsteen play in Belfast. My father-in-law has been a fan of The Boss for years, so when the gig was announced he demanded that we all go. As soon as tickets went on sale (9am in the morning), we went online and grabbed them.

So, a few weeks ago, we headed up to Belfast to the venue. I have to say that I am not a huge Spruce Bringsteen fan. I like his stuff, definitely, and would go as far as to say that it is beezer, but it wouldn’t be on my iPod every day or anything (It’s far too mainstream for a geek like me).

I have to say that I was absolutely blown away by the gig. Bruce is not just a performer; he’s a showman, and him and his band were totally professional and energetic and entertaining. It was quite weird to be one of 10,000 people in a big venue, especially when you saw the Mexican wave of people standing up to sing along with ‘Atlantic City’. It was a pretty amazing sight.

(Allegedly, Gerry Adams was there too, though I didn’t see him. I did sit behind a z-list Northern Irish television “celebrity” who I cannot be bothered to describe here, so I will not waste your time with that).

The other big thing is that the bound copy of my PhD Thesis arrived in the post, thanks to my old friend Chris “Big Bear” Murray (I don’t mean the word “Bear” in the homosexual sense, if you know what that means in gay slang). It was kind of weird to finally get it, mostly because it is the size of a breeze block, and it’s funny to think that I spoofed all that out myself. It was also strange to have it, as my Viva was delayed for such a long time, and so much happened in the year that I waited for it, that I sort of forgot all about it. So, when it came in the post in a big jiffy big, it was pretty exciting, though somewhat melancholy as well. Chris wrote me a very sweet, heartfelt message, which made me feel a little sad and lonesome for the times I spent in Dundee with friends and loved ones. I have so many special memories of that city that will never be erased. Lots of bad ones too, of course, and they will probably never be erased too, but I don’t know if I would go back and change things if I could. I would go back and live it all over again, but I wouldn’t change it.

I feel a bit sad when I think about my time in Dundee, mostly because it was a fantastic period of my life, one which is locked in a time capsule in my heart and cannot properly be opened again. Sometimes, when I go back there on short trips, I can open the lid a little and have a sneaky peak, but I will never get to look at it properly…

But let’s step away from this morose solemnity. In total contrast, I went to see the new James Bond movie, Casino Royale (with cheese). I have never been a big Bond fan, and the last one was absolutely appalling. I reckon that a pretty reliable rule of thumb is that if your film features an invisible car, you have probably botched things up. However, I was curious to see the “new and improved” James Bond schizzle, and as it was Crazy Tuesday in Belfast, it meant that the ticket was only a couple of pounds.

And I have to say that film was pretty good. Well, about three quarters good. It was interesting and different and quite dark until about half an hour from the end, where (don’t worry: no spoilers here!) it all went a bit cack, for want of a better word. Compared with The Bourne films, any spy movie nowadays is going to look ridiculous, and Casino Royale definitely did its best to fight against that. I loved the whole poker thing (as I am a bit of a nerd where that sort of thing is concerned, and will sit up into the small hours of the morning watching fat Americans getting all serious over a fairly silly card game), and I liked the action sequences, and I very much appreciated the new bond girl, Vesper Lynd (ding a ling a ding dong), but (and this is a big but), there were moments where I felt as if I was watching scenes where characters had mistakenly wandered in from another film.

The first is a somewhat odd torture scene in which the unshakeable, unstirrable Monsieur Bond is stripped naked, tied to a chair and then whipped by a dodgy Frenchman with a funny eye. This was not too far from a scene from Hostel, for example; was there any reason that James had to be in the nip? I don’t imagine that this would be too pleasing even for the ladies in the audience, given that the romantic ambiance is spoilt by James Bond enduring the pummelling of little James Bond with a knotted rope. Hmmm…

The second is not quite as unsavoury, but just as painful to watch: the torture is followed by an interminably soppy interlude, with dialogue that is just dripping with Edam: “You have stripped away my armour, and you can have what is left of me”. By the end of what seemed like an hour of poncing about and gazing winsomely into each other’s eyes, I wanted to be tied naked to a chair and whipped with a knotted rope.

However, up until that point, the film is pretty good, so when the you might as well fall asleep or leave the cinema. You won’t be missing that much.

Dublin And Dublin.

2006-11-10T09:27:00.000Z

Last week, I was off school for half-term, so Ali took some flexitime off and we went on a much-needed break: a road trip down south. As chance would have it, this coincided with a concert by one of our favourite bands: Calexico, from Tucson, California.

For anyone who hasn't heard Calexico, they mix Alt.Country and traditional Mariachi to startling effect. I would particularly recommend their albums, Feast Of Wire and Garden Ruin.

I have been wanting to see them for a while, and also got the chance to interview Joey, the lead singer.

This turned out to be a bit of a palaver: the interview was scheduled for 3, but when I arrived at the venue I discovered that the soundcheck had been brought forward. The tour manager, who was very friendly and polite, told me that it wasn't a problem and if I waited the band would not be long.

So, I stood in the corridor and looked like a tool, and about 2 hours later, after much fannying about on the band's part (not to mention celebrating the birthday of Volker, one of their members), I finally got down to doing the interview.

Joey was very warm and talkative, so we chatted for about an hour, which is pretty long for this sort of thing. I'll put up a transcript of the interview when I have it written.

Live, meanwhile, the band were fantastic. I never lose the excitement of having a "plus one" on the guestlist, as it makes me feel the slightest iota of importance as I approach the bouncers at the door and tell them I am a (ahem) music journalist.

The gig was great. The Olympia in Dublin is a great venue, an old ballroom with a downwardly sloping floor so no matter where you stand, you can still see the stage.

The setlist was fantastic too, and by the time the band played Crystal Frontier and Guero Canelo I was dancing and singing like an idiot.

It was, along with Sparklehorse, the gig of the year.

Album Reviews.

2006-11-08T11:04:00.000Z

Here are some of the most recent reviews I have done:

LAMBCHOP – DAMAGED

Some records leap forth from the speakers and smack you right in the face. Others sneak up on you slowly, like when you fall asleep on the couch and your girlfriend covers you with a blanket while you doze. ‘Damaged’ falls into the latter category, and once you are wrapped up inside the folds of these gorgeous songs, you may not want to re-emerge. This is a late-at-night album, a soundtrack for drawn curtains and lit lamps, or homebound drives along country back-roads. Pace-wise, it rarely rises above somnolent, but it still makes you feel as if your feet are being lapped by warm Mediterranean water. Whether singer Kurt Wagner addresses faltering relationships (“And I promise I won’t live without you”) or American politics (“I have always thought that handguns are made for shooting people”), he does so with invention and wit rarely seen around these parts. The standout track is ‘I Would Have Waited Here All Day’. Originally written for Candi Staton, Kurt reinvents himself as a woman counting off the moments for her significant other to come home. It’s a tearjerker in the best sense. The ten songs here are concerned with how being human can be both joyful and sucky, but ultimately the message is one of hope, or perhaps redemption. ‘Damaged’ may be the product of great hurt, but it is soothing in the way that only a well-worn comfort blanket can be. Let it sneak up on you.

DUKE SPECIAL – SONGS FROM THE DEEP FOREST

Question: What do you get if you cross Aimee Mann, Ben Folds and Nick Cave, with Randy Newman, Ed Harcourt and Tom Waits? Answer: An AU reviewer trying desperately to describe what this album sounds like. And failing, for if Duke Special’s first “proper” record proves anything, it is that record labels are still willing to take a punt on interesting, strange and plain different music. Sure, keen-eared listeners will be able to detect echoes of the work of each of the aforementioned artists, but the simple fact of the matter is that Duke Special hails from a world all of his own. And he didn’t make it by cribbing from his vinyl collection; he made it by a winning combination of talent, hard graft and writing cracker tunes. And hot patootie, here be monster tunes. There’s ‘Everybody Wants A Little Something’, a jaunty little number with a chorus more addictive than Tetris. Or ‘Brixton Leaves’, a dark, Parisian-flavoured track that could be featured in a West End musical. Or how about the single ‘Last Night I Nearly Died’, a song so elaborately orchestral that it makes one think of ELO, even though Duke Special claims to have never heard ELO. And it’s not just about bombast, either: there is nobody else around right now writing songs like ‘This Could Be My Last Day’, which is so elegant and poised that it changes both the colour and the temperature of the air around your fingertips. This is not empty writer hyperbole; it’s fact. Here’s another question: should you buy this record? Answer: definitely. It probably won’t change your life, but it will make your year.

SEAN LENNON – FRIENDLY FIRE

You can feel the burden of the past weighing down upon this record. Comparisons with The Beatles, or at least one of them, are inevitable, and it’s difficult not to notice the echoes of John Lennon’s voice floating throughout these songs. Hearing his ghost materialise and disappear within the room is disquieting to say the least, but it is not as if Sean isn’t aware of his heritage. At one point he knowingly sings “I’m a believer”. But if Sean has inherited anything, it’s the ability to write skewed but melodic pop songs. ‘Dead Meat’ opens with a spectral piano reminiscent of Muse by way of The Onedin Line soundtrack, and ‘Parachute’ is decorated with merry-go-round whimsy. ‘On Again, Off Again’, meanwhile, is in the same vein as the prettier low-key songs on ‘The White Album’. The emphasis on orchestral psychedelia and major-to-minor chord changes mark this out as the album that Elliott Smith never made, and that’s high praise indeed. A very fine surprise

THE FRAMES – THE COST

Reviewing the latest Frames album is a scary prospect. The band inspire such unbridled devotion in their fanbase that it is worrying to think of the backlash should some lazy, lying journalist utter anything approaching a discouraging word. There is also the small fact that the band are yet to release a duff record, which, after five full-length studio albums, is a pretty impressive run by anybody’s standards. The Frames are just as stylistically contradictory as Radiohead, so it’s tricky to predict which direction they will take next. Whereas ‘For The Birds’, arguably their most popular work to date, was an intimate and stripped-down affair, its successor, ‘Burn The Maps’, was a chaotic and noisy dark night of the soul. Aptly, the band nearly burnt out whilst making it. To ‘The Cost’ then, and a few songs in this reviewer is still wondering what to make of it, not to mention thinking more and more about the impending deadline for the dreaded review. Sure enough, opener ‘Song For Someone’ is delicious, and ‘Falling Slowly’ ranks up there as another very fine Glen Hansard composition. Elsewhere, the songs are difficult to grab hold of, and when one tries they fall apart, like damp confetti. After living with ‘The Cost’ for a few days, the tracks that before seemed so subtle take on a new, stirring form, and the album as a whole develops an intriguing fluidity reminiscent of Will Oldham, whom The Frames have long claimed as a touchstone. This emphasis on space and warmth culminates with ‘Bad Bone’, a sensual track that just begs you to hit the repeat button on your iPod while you drift from room to room, buoyed along by the intricate melody that washes in and out of the headphones. Whereas other albums depend on noise to make an impact, ‘The Cost’ has a quiet, dignified presence. When it stops playing, the house seems strangely empty.

MOBY – GO – THE VERY BEST OF

Moby may be a slightly odd, chrome domed vegetarian with some questionable political beliefs, but it is doubtful that thousands of pretty young ravers are thinking about that whilst shaking their rudeboxes to his hit records. This expert in tofu cutlets also knows a thing or two about manning a drum machine and a sampler. Years on, ‘Go’ still sounds fantastically thrilling, and the beats ‘n’ blues grooves of ‘Honey’ and ‘Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?’ aren’t too shabby either. But here’s the thing: Moby effectively has a Best Of in the form of his breakthrough record ‘Play’, thus rendering this record completely unnecessary. There is a distinct whiff of contract fulfilling about the whole affair (it’s not as if Moby needs the money), along with a wimpish lack of bravery to the pick-and-mix song selection: ‘God Moving Over The Face Of The Water’, the shimmering theme to the movie Heat, is conspicuously absent. Worse, a couple of the fifteen tracks are real stinkers: the HI-NRG waffle of ‘Move’ is as dated as an episode of My Family, and ‘New York, New York’ is a leaden dance number replete with Debbie Harry’s sea lion honk that would be more at home on a Bonkers compilation – and it’s the new single! This kind of dross is better off in the bargain bin, or just the bin. It doesn’t do Moby any favours, and it won’t do you any either. Best buy ‘Play’ instead.

Duke Very Special Part 2.

2006-11-08T10:57:00.000Z

Last month, I was asked to write the cover feature for AU magazine on the belfast artist Duke Special.

I was really flattered to be asked to do the cover, and I really enjoyed doing it.

As it turned out, it was to be a timely coincidence indeed, as his star is very much in the ascendant: he has just appeared on Jools Holland on BBC2, and a show on Channel 4, has played lots of high profile gigs and support act with major groups, and has been in every major music magazine on the racks.

But we got there first. Hee hee.

Here, for those who are interested, is the complete draft of the piece. It was slightly abridged for space reasons:

After years of slogging it out in any dingy venue that would have him, the artist known as Duke Special has finally graduated from the little league: freshly signed to the V2 label, playing some of the best gigs of his life, and on the cusp of delivering an album of beautifully constructed, old-fashioned pop. It’s the classic story of slow and steady winning the race, but that shouldn’t make us any less proud of how this very talented local artist made good. In this exclusive interview, the Duke tells AU all about how it feels to have finally made it.

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING: THE RISE AND RISE OF DUKE SPECIAL

By Ross Thompson

Rewind a few years. AU is sitting in a local pub, a not entirely salubrious location that might have the feel of a juke joint where punters enter through the door and exit through the window, if it were not for the fact that there is not enough people here to instigate a bar brawl. A clutch of doleful-looking individuals sit around nursing pints, while another bunch of sad sacks stand at the back, smoking foul-smelling cigarettes and playing the puggies. A group of jokers wearing denim that Status Quo would reject for being too rare comprise the support act that has just finished their set of tediously average mid-paced rock.

Things do not look hopeful. In fact, things could only get worse if the rest of the evening’s entertainment was made up of a back-to-back screening of all seven Police Academy films. Particularly the later ones that don’t star Steve Guttenberg. Then, without fanfare, a curious-looking fellow shuffles across the beer-sticky floor to what passes for a stage in these parts. Head down, hands buried deep in the pockets of his military jacket, he appears shy and self-conscious. Not what you want when your evening is rapidly spiralling downward into mind-numbing boredom.

And then he sits down at his piano, quietly says “hello” into the microphone, and starts playing. If you’ve heard Duke Special before, you will already know how that feels.

Fast forward a bit, and AU is mingling with the audience in The Empire. The people around us push forward, camera phones aloft, as they try to catch a glimpse of what is happening at the front. Duke Special has just finished the second night of a two-gig residency, and is performing his encore in the middle of the room. As he runs through an impromptu version of ‘John Lennon Love’, un-miked and un-amped, everyone, AU included, joins in with the chorus. Up above, the mirrorballs hanging down from the ceiling sparkle in agreement, like stars perhaps.

Jump cut to the present, and The Duke, or Peter Wilson to his chums, is belting down the motorway with Chip Bailey, the talented multi-percussionist that bears more than a passing resemblance to Rowlph the piano-playing dog from The Muppets. They are heading for the airport, where they will jet off to Brussels. It’s an appropriate metaphor, for in recent months Duke Special has seen his music career leap skyward. Having signed to V2 records, he is readying his first major release, ‘Songs From The Deep Forest’, a wonderful melange of heady orchestral pop and wry, poetic lyrics rare in modern music.

But getting from there to here hasn’t been easy, and Duke Special has played in dozens more dirty little grips than the aforementioned dive in Belfast. Over the next hour, he chats to AU over a phone line that keeps cutting out each time his transport passes underneath a bridge. This, as it turns out, is pretty often…

“Music has always been in my family. It was always around, and was a huge part of growing up. I have three older sisters who all play piano and guitar, and we would all play together every Christmas. Everybody had their own party piece. When I was eleven or twelve, I played in shows in the clubs, and I remember people really liking it, and being quite chuffed at that. Then, from about thirteen, I just knew that I wanted to do music, in the same way that other kids like playing sports. It allowed me to escape into my own private world, and I did everything that I could to get there. I went to piano lessons, and I even followed those guitar charts that tell you where to put your fingers on the fret-board.”

Like every awkward teenager worth their salt, the Duke started jamming along with records in his bedroom. AU tries to imagine a young buck with dreadlocks-in-waiting miming into a can of Lynx deodorant, but the image is a little too surreal.

“I listened to The Beatles a lot, particularly their song ‘You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away’. I also had an album by a guitarist called Phil Keaggy that my sister gave to me as a present, which, and I’m kind of embarrassed to say this, made me cry. But then I’ve always been emotional about music. It has that power to get under your skin and right into your soul.”

It’s an apt description. Lou Barlow, of Sebadoh (sort of) fame, once sang that it’s all a matter of soul and fire, and Duke Special has each of these in spades.

“At the same time, I didn’t want my writing to become maudlin and stodgy. I wanted it to be fun and entertaining. Particularly live. There are so many things that you can do during a concert setting that you can’t do on a record. It is a live event, and it has to be visually arresting. That can be anything: what you wear, or where the drums are placed, or the piano or whatever.”

Anyone who has had the pleasure of seeing Duke Special play live, especially those who were present at The Empire not that long ago, should know that the eccentricities of these performances are one of his most unique selling points.

“People had been telling me that they could imagine my songs being part of a play or a musical. After my initial alarm I began exploring the worlds of Music Hall and Vaudeville, along with early Chaplin, Laurel And Hardy, and Bob Hope among others.”

Sure enough, going to a Duke Special concert is like transporting into a bygone era. With the stage resembling an explosion in a bric-a-brac shop, replete with piano, theremin, crushed velvet throws and those beloved gramophones, you almost feel as if you are flicking through the pages of an old, dusty photo album, so the sepia-tinged pictures blur into a jerky reel of film.

With this emphasis on showmanship, Duke Special is unlike any other artist currently on the scene, within Northern Ireland or without it. But the persona wasn’t easily won. The road to hell might be paved with good intentions, but the path to a successful music career is littered with unsold demo tapes. For Peter, bands came, and, such is the fickle nature of the music business, they went.

AU mentions an early incarnation, Booley House, and then, with a click and a buzz, the phone cuts out. AU hits redial, slightly worried that Peter has hung up on us for rattling a skeleton in his closet.

“Hi,” says Peter when he picks up again, and starts laughing, but this is not him scorning what has come before, or thinking that his newfound renown pegs him above the folks he has left behind. As it turns out, he is charmingly self-effacing about those tentative forays into the world of songwriting.

“In a way, I wish that Duke Special was the first thing that I’d done, but that’s the unnerving thing about releasing music outside of your garage. My first songs were crap, to be honest. Basically, I was in a hurry to get each one finished: there was the first verse, then the chorus, and anything that rhymed went in. I tried to wrap everything up in a Disney way. In the first verse you’re feeling rubbish, but by the end everything is resolved.”

This is not false modesty, the kind feigned by other folk when they are fishing for a compliment. It’s just Peter being honest.

“I mean, it was only five years ago that I discovered the likes of Aimee Mann, Nick Cave and Tom Waits, all of whom have become landmark artists for me. I also started listening to Bruce Cockburn, who was inspired by T. S. Eliot, and I realised that there are new ways of looking at something that open up new ways of looking at the world. It forced me to work really hard on the lyrics. It made me up my game.”

By bringing the piano to the fore, and by writing wry, witty lyrics, Peter also invites comparisons with other artists such as Randy Newman.

“I’m really pleased with that. The interesting thing about Newman is that he often writes from the perspective of another character. He mixes things up to the point that you cannot separate fiction from fact. I use Duke Special as a character from a play or a book. Some of my songs are really, really personal to me, but I also take liberties. Others are a mouthpiece for other people or friends of mine. I guess that’s the difference between therapy and art. If it was purely for my own therapy, then it wouldn’t be very good, and I don’t think people can relate to that. Anyway, what the songs are actually about is less important. Frank Sinatra sang other people’s songs, but he always said that what matters is that people believed them.”

Along the way there was another band, the short–lived Benzine Headset.

“What happened there was a group of us sat in the studio with a dictionary, looking for two words that we could put together. As a result, we came up with a really crap name. Seriously though, it was a good experience playing with the other guys but in the end we were different people with different influences and different expectations, to a certain extent. It took me a long time to realise that I wasn’t trying to be a musician and a songwriter; I was a musician and a songwriter. I explained to the others that I had to go for it, that I needed to go on my own for a while.”

As abortive as those flirtations with the group format may have been, they each acted as a vital stepping stone to the creation of the identity of Duke Special. First of all, the Benzine Headset album, ‘Garçon Pamplemousse’, featured a handful of songs that still feature in Peter’s repertoire: ‘As Good As It Gets’, ‘Freewheel’ and ‘Kill Me Quickly Please’.

“I was doing the first Duke Special EP, ‘Lucky Me’, with Paul Wilkinson of The Amazing Pilots. He said that there was a different side to those songs, that they could be made much bigger. I wanted them to be orchestral-sounding and old, as if they were from another world.”

‘Freewheel’ is one of the songs that caused V2 to see Duke Special’s potential, hence its inclusion on ‘Songs From The Deep Forest’. Radiohead have frequently said that ‘Creep’, the song that made them but one that they rarely perform live, has become their albatross. Can the same be said for ‘Freewheel’?

“Lyrically, I still get so much of it, but it feels a little strange playing a song that was written so long ago. But I don’t want to be colloquial about it either. There’s a big, wide world out there who still hasn’t heard it. I tell you what though, it won’t be on the next album.”

The second lesson that Peter learnt was that it was okay to sing in his own accent. Unlike other artists from these shores, one of the joys of listening to his music that he does not try to sound as if he was born and raised either in The Bronx or on America’s East Coast. A few years ago, the idea of the dulcet Norn Iron tones being pleasant on the ear seemed more than a little far-fetched, but it’s time to make an exception. Northern Ireland is not only noticeable in the lilt of Peter’s voice; it is at the heart of his music. There has always been the myth that in order to make it bands must leave behind the province and head for the big smoke. Duke Special’s ascension has proved that this is not the case.

“Yeah, and that is part of the reason why I wrote the line “I could go to London” in the song ‘Salvation Tambourine’. I really cannot emphasise the importance of local music. It’s such a great time for Northern Irish acts at the moment. There’s Brian Houston, whom I played with for a couple of years, and he is a fantastic songwriter. Or Oppenheimer, who are doing so well right now, Iain Archer, The Amazing Pilots, Snow Patrol and Red Sirius. It’s great to be part of that scene, to represent Northern Ireland in that way. I think that I’m the only one who lives in Belfast though. We’re a disparate community, but it still feels like a community. And no, I’m not moving away either. God bless Easyjet, is all I can say.”

Despite hailing from this humble backwater that we call home, it was not that long before Duke Special bagged support slots with the likes of Aqualung and, umm, Maroon 5.

“I played with them in Whelan’s in Dublin. There were lots of teenage girls there who were mad about Maroon 5 and not mad about seeing me.”

As Peter’s reputation as a thrilling live performer began to spread via both word of mouth, his website garnered thousands of hits, and the crowd at his own headlining gigs began to increase in number. To the annoyance of local promoters, a recent last-minute “secret” show in The Limelight attracted so many people that the clubs in the surrounding area were pretty much deserted. Added to that is his appearance at the Vitalic festival and upcoming tours with The Beautiful South and The Divine Comedy. As ever, Peter is unassuming about his growing popularity.

“Of course I am stoked to have signed to V2, but I know that it’s not the be-all and end-all. It’s all about having the right team around you, and I’m fortunate in that I have great people around me, people that I trust and being around. I deliberately play with people whom I like, and who aren’t idiots.”

That said, after so many years of kicking against the pricks, it must feel pretty good to finally be paid some well-earned recognition.

“It’s pretty surreal. On one hand, it has been easy in the sense that I’ve never really had a big disposable income. I worked in an office once making blank cassettes, which I wouldn’t recommend as a career choice, but otherwise I’ve just been playing music. But then it definitely feels as if it’s snowballing now. I do feel vindicated and relieved, and of course I’m totally stoked. I mean, I’m flying to Brussels today to do interviews. How the hell did that happen?”

At this point, the phone line threatens to go silent again. It buzzes like a fridge, and for a moment Peter sounds like a Dalek, albeit a very friendly and passive one. AU can hear the sound of the car engine cutting out, and Peter announces that he has arrived at the airport and has to go.

AU has one final question though: reflecting upon the hullabaloo of signing to a major label and recording his debut album proper, what does Peter Wilson, or Duke Special, envision for the future?

“I’m very grateful for all of that, but it doesn’t mean that I’m going to get better just because I have a contract. It’s still all about me and my art. More than anything, I just want to be a good songwriter and do really good gigs.”

On recent evidence, this seems like a safe bet. The good things, as Peter sings in ‘Everybody Wants A Little Something’, might take a little longer, but having only just finished ‘Songs From The Deep Forest’ he is already working on the next Duke Special record. Hopefully, it will include a new track that he premiered at the gig in Lisburn Arts Centre last month. Potentially called ‘Quiet Revolution’, the song brought the room to a dead standstill, with the audience fixed to their seats, unblinking and holding their breath for fear that the slightest movement might break the spell. It started quietly and slowly, but built to a chorus of close harmony so sweet that it left us wondering whether to clap or cry. Music, as Peter pointed out earlier, does that.

From then till now, Duke Special has been staging a quiet revolution of his own. His story is of particular interest to AU because it sums up everything that we stand for: not just the championing of our burgeoning local music scene, but the belief that Northern Ireland has a special and unique quality unrivalled by anywhere else in the world. We should celebrate that. It’s time to join the revolution.

PUT UP YOUR DUKES!

Peter Wilson isn’t the only vagabond who has taken the name “Duke”. Here are a few more.

Duke Nukem
Wilfully politically incorrect videogame series in which the main objective is to machine gun, bazooka and grenade any alien scum that get in your way. Pretty much like every other videogame then, but this one has the added bonus of scantily-clad ladies telling you what a he-man you are. Amidst all the carnage, much of the fun factor stemmed from spotting the numerous fanboy references to movies like Army Of Darkness and They Live: “It’s time to kick ass and chew bubble gum. And I’m all out of gum!”

The Thin White Duke
Along with Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane, this was another alter ego dreamt up by crackpot genius David Bowie. No doubt a side effect of sniffing one too many lines of Columbian bang bang. Now one of the most austere and respected figures in British music, he prefers to be addressed as “Mr Bowie,” or if he’s feeling frisky, “David”.

The Dukes Of Hazzard
Popular Saturday teatime televisual entertainment that did not seem quite so outdated when we were kiddies as it does now. The slim plot revolved around a pair of studly Southern Men, Bo Duke and Luke Duke (who drew the short straw in the name stakes), raking about in their 1969 Dodge Charger, ‘The General Lee’. Basically like Bangor on a Sunday evening, but with banjo music instead of happy hardcore. Most episodes featured the boys outwitting the law, represented by Boss Hogg and Rosco P. Coltrane, by virtue of the fact that their car could jump over rivers and roadblocks and policecars could not. Worth watching for a glimpse of Daisy Duke in her trademark cut-off denim shorts, but objectionable for its distinctly racist overtones. Plus, it earned this writer the Primary School nickname of “Sheriff Rosco”.

Everybody Dansh Now.

2006-11-08T10:52:00.000Z

These past few weeks have been another mad time around these parts, hence my inability to get near a computer to type up these darned updates. I am going to do my best to fill in the blanks, but forgive me if the timeline is a little bent.

Let's start with some recent magazine articles:

The Sad And Beautiful World Of Sparklehorse

By Ross Thompson

Somewhere, deep in the heart of North Carolina, Mark Linkous lives in a house that, AU imagines, looks as if it fell straight out of a 1970s Horror Movie. However, instead of being filled with bear traps and chainsaws and perhaps a few disembodied teenagers, it is stacked to the rafters with guitar pedals, mellotrons, pump organs and half-built drum kits. This is the home of Sparklehorse, the music project on which Mark Linkous has been working for over a decade. Drawing influences from more underground artists such as Daniel Johnston and Smog, Sparklehorse take Alt. Country tropes and bend them into strikingly weird shapes.

The songs sound as if they have been fashioned in a workshop or excavated from the dirt, but Linkous’s lyrics are as poetic as anything by Blake, Shakespeare, Bukowski and any of the other writers to which he alludes in his literate lyrics. There are references to spirit ditches, apple beds, gasoline horseys and painbirds, but for all the otherworldly nature of the imagery the focus is ultimately on the workings of the human heart.

Sparklehorse are due to release a new record, the enchantingly entitled ‘Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain’. For a while, there was the fear that Linkous would never record again. The distorted ghosts that haunt his songwriting were filtering through to the other side of the glass, and threatened to destroy him completely.

“It was pretty tough to put this record together. I was in the middle of a depressive slump. I was in a pretty bad place in my head for two or three years, and I pretty much became a recluse. I liked writing songs, but I didn’t like recording them. On one hand, I couldn’t pay my rent, but then I didn’t want a guilt trip from making a living from my screwed-up brain.”

In a traditional Sparklehorse song, darkness is never too far away. The title song from the new album is a huge in scope, ten-minute instrumental that one might hear reverberating through the woods near where Linkous’s home.

“I recorded a loop on a guitar pedal, turned it down half-speed, but forgot to switch it off when I left the studio that night. It was still playing when I came back the next morning, so I sat down at a piano and started playing chords over the top. It sounded pretty good.”

The song holds a sense of place that is normally lacking in most contemporary music.

“Where I live is pretty cool. It’s full of chilled-out rednecks. There are mountains and trees and a huge valley. And I really did get trapped inside my house by a bear, and my dog really did get bitten twice by rattlesnakes.”

Sparklehorse dwell in the same slightly scary fairy-tale world that is inhabited by Tom Waits, who not only guests on the new record but was initially one of the figures that kickstarted Linkous’s writing.

“There was just something about Waits. There was stuff on his record ‘Swordfishtrombones’ that nobody else could get away with. Before I was in a band, I lived in a shitty apartment with a shitty record player. I had, like, three albums that I played over and over, and that was one of them. That was my only source of entertainment for a while. I was really into The Stranglers and, to some extent, The Pixies, but I really wanted to make a pop record in the same vein as Waits. It’s hard to make rock or pop songs that don’t sound bogus, that I won’t be embarrassed by in later years.”

Throughout previous albums ‘Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot’, ‘Good Morning Spider’ and ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’, Linkous has honed the trademark Sparklehorse sound, which switches between songs from broken toy melodies to full-tilt feedback boogies. Then, there are the collaborations with some pretty distinguished guests: Polly Harvey, Nina Persson and, most recently, the ubiquitous Danger Mouse.

“I loved the Gnarls Barkley record, and then I heard that Brian was a fan of Sparklehorse, so we started working together. He came into the studio and started fiddling around with computers and stuff. He was pulling guitar bits from one track and turning them backwards and splicing them into another song. We’re going to collaborate on another record next, which will probably be called ‘Danger Horse’, I think.”

Tom Waits once said in an interview that he hears music in the same way that Picasso saw colours. For Linkous, however, it’s a slightly different process.

“It’s kind of abstract and hard to articulate, but when I hear songs in my head they are like individual frames of film. Like from a documentary movie.”

Wherever the inspiration behind it lies, Sparkelhorse’s new album is an absolute cracker. When speaking of what comes next, however, Linkous is typically modest.

“Honestly, my only goal at the minute is to be able to pay my rent.”

Heart Of Darkness: A Sparklehorse Mix-Tape
Download ‘Em! Burn ‘Em! Love ‘Em!

1. ‘Spirit Ditch’
Linkous juxtaposes a recording of his mother speaking alongside ghostly guitars. Lovely.

2. ‘Tears On Fresh Fruit’
Propelled by a squalling riff, this is a standout rocker from ‘Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot’.

3. ‘Most Beautiful Widow In Town’
Frequently covered by The Frames, and if you have heard this poetic song then you will know why.

4. ‘Pig’
The opening track on ‘Good Morning Spider’ is loud, fuzzy and deliciously nasty.

5. ‘Sunshine’
Male and female harmonies mingle on this butterscotch-flavoured slow track.

6. ‘Sick Of Goodbyes’
Poppy without sounding bogus, and as catchy as a winter cold.

7. ‘Apple Bed’
Starring Nina from The Cardigans, this an off-kilter, melancholy ode to childhood.

8. ‘Eyepennies’
Featuring another classy lady (Polly Harvey), this is a creepy piano number with allusions to The Wizard Of Oz: “At sunrise / The monkeys will fly”.

9. ‘Don’t Take My Sunshine Away’
The first single from ‘Dreamt…’ is a cracking slice of Alt. Country fuzz, with Danger Mouse sprinkling his magic all over it.

10. ‘Shade And Honey’
First featured in the movie Laurel Canyon and given a new lease of life here, this melancholic yet tuneful track is another gem from Linkous’s songbook.

DAMAGE LIMITATION: AN INTERVIEW WITH LAMBCHOP

By Ross Thompson

Kurt Wagner, self-confessed “Grumpus” and frontman with Lambchop, has just confessed that he has spent his day “doing a hundred interviews and cleaning up dog mess”. AU wonders how exactly he tells the difference between the two, but chooses not to pry any further. Conscious that he will no doubt have heard the same banal questions ten times over, AU looks at the prompt sheet sitting on the table next to the telephone and starts to worry. Is there anything that he hasn’t spoken about today?

“Hmm… I don’t know. People generally don’t ask questions about one’s love life, do they?”

This is an unexpected reply, but it could provide an interesting hook on which to pin the interview. AU takes a deep breath, then asks: Kurt, are you happy with your love life at the moment?

“No dude, I would rather talk about yours,” Kurt replies, laughing out loud. It’s a hoarse laugh full of sandpaper and cigarettes, a full-on har har har that crashes and booms and makes the telephone receiver crackle. “Do you have a girl?”

AU has to say yes, they do have a girl, and what’s more, she loves the new Lambchop album, ‘Damaged’. She goes as far as to say that it’s the best thing that she has heard all year.

“Well, I’m glad to see that we’re keeping the family together.”

Kurt laughs again. He does this a lot. Almost every sentence is punctuated with a fireworks display of guffaws. Defying the curmudgeonly character who narrates most of his songs, Kurt is friendly, open and down-to-earth. His warmth of character envelopes every corner of our conversation, even transcending the limitations of a wobbly transatlantic phone line.

It gradually transpires that it is this ability to joke in the face of anything, trivial or monumental, that buoys Kurt through the darkest of days. Whereas previous Lambchop records have carried oddball titles (2002’s ‘Is A Woman’, for example), the name of their new long-player is fairly loaded.

“It’s rare for me to be so obvious with a title. At first I was worried that it was too corny, but I was listening to a lot of Black Flag at a time, particularly their album ‘Damaged’, so I borrowed the name. I also liked the fact that the word “damaged” has a secondary meaning: the implication that it’s in the past. The storm is over and the air has cleared.”

Inevitably, the specifics of Kurt’s very own private storm have seeped out into nearly all of the band’s recent interviews. AU is no meteorologist, but knows enough to deduce that the making of ‘Damaged’ was not a whole bag of fun.

“Once the cat comes out of certain bags, there’s not much you can do to stop it. It just makes people more curious. I respect the journalistic instinct to get to the bottom of things. I just don’t like the fact that it’s directed at me.”

At the top of the list was an escalating series of health scares.

“In-between doctor’s appointments and trips to the hospital, I was trying to put a record together,” says Kurt, dryly. “It was not a fun time.”

The first of these was a pretty nasty disease that nearly destroyed his jaw. True to form, Kurt transformed the unpleasant experience of operations and bone grafts into a wry gag: “I still hold my hip each time I sneeze”.

Barely recuperated from that body blow, he was diagnosed with Cancer.

“I could have gone on without knowing and would have been blissfully happy, but damn it, modern medicine had to go and screw it up.”

Even though Kurt talks with disarming candour about how close he came to death, in his lyrics he retreats into deadpan one-liners, wordplay (“I scramble our affection like some eggs”) and apparent non sequiturs.

“I didn’t want this to be “Kurt’s Cancer Record”. I didn’t want people to hear it and go, “Oh, poor guy”. I wanted there to be some sort of dignity to it. I played it down deliberately: the gory details of my illness or whatever it was that happened to me. Everybody has problems and everybody will have something go wrong with their body sooner or later. With me, however, it was the real deal. They chopped it out of me, and now I’m uninsurable.”

In a culture where celebrities will witter on at great length and in great detail about their latest drug addiction or failed romance, Kurt appears far more courageous by all but ignoring the trauma that birthed an album but nearly killed him in the process. Rather than address his head-to with the “C” word directly, he used it as a metaphor for the maelstrom that was raging outside the confines of the recording studio.

“The whole world seemed to be going crazy. Not just for me, but for everybody. I was lying in a hospital bed watching news reports about America being buried beneath a flood, or what insane stuff was happening with the war.”

This political awareness was given a voice in ‘Crackers’: “In the barracks / By the army cot / There’s a feller who’s just cut his face shaving / And as he bleeds / On his pillow in the dark / Waiting for the morning / When he gets to go online with you”. Whereas previous Lambchop lyrics mostly had two settings (oblique and impenetrable), the message of this track is pretty clear, and has more truth about the futility and loneliness of the military life than any conventional protest song could muster.

“I don’t think people really notice what’s going on with that song, and the fact that you noticed it at all makes me wonder if I was too obvious there. In America there is no aspect of your life where you can get away from politics or the war or whatever. It’s all around you, whether you’re getting gas at the fuel pump or watching TV. I never wanted to write a political song, but it was inevitable that it would come out sooner or later. There is a certain military aspect to throwing yourself on a bus with other guys on campaigns we call “tours”. I do relate to that loneliness, of being plucked from my normal life and being separated from loved ones.”

AU happened to be present at one of Lambchop’s most calamitous campaigns. In a festival tent plonked in a muddy Scottish field, the audience, tweaking on overpriced fajitas and free Irn Bru, made their discontent pretty clear. Retreating from the torrential downpour outside, they were quite unprepared for a band of misfits playing their quirky, soulful brand of Alt. Country. Impatient for headline sets by Coldplay and Texas, it was not long before the projectiles began to fly in the direction of the stage.

“Man, you were at that gig? We were getting killed up there,” says Kurt, laughing again. “The crowd hated us. They were throwing bottles and all kinds of crap, but we were pros. We stuck to our guns and rode it out.”

Whether or not those bottles were filled with “special liquids” remains unclear.

“We didn’t examine them too closely, but there was some weight to them, I’ll give you that.”

Lambchop cohorts are used to being on the fringe, however. The band came together in Nashville, an area widely known for its thriving music scene and its abundance of guitar-picking local yokels.

“There are lots of music-type folk in Nashville, but there are also lots of people who are outside that world. I was more drawn to non-musicians who just wanted to hang out and play music. As corny as it sounds, the more we did it, the more it came together. The only guide we had was to make each record a little better.”

And throughout the past six years, each Lambchop album has got a little better. From the critically acclaimed ‘Nixon’ (2000) to the double opus of ‘Aw C’mon / No You C’mon’ (2004), the band have become more proficient songwriters than even they might like. Their music is infused with elements of The Tindersticks, Nick Cave, Otis Redding and countless others, but ultimately their sound is very much their own: mysterious, sensual and really rather fantastic.

“‘Damaged’, as much as any other record by us, has a sound that’s significant. We’ve been bumping up against a sound for a few records now, flirting with jazz and country and the like, and finally it’s all melded together.”

Kurt sounds remarkably serious when he says this, but not for long. Wary perhaps that he has lapsed into the language of a press release, he cracks out another joke at his own expense.

“Critics keep calling this our breakthrough record, but it’s more of a breakdown record. I mean, come on, I’m falling apart here!”

There is a note of real poignancy hidden in the rattle of his laughter.

“There is residue that I will carry for the rest of my life.”

The diagnosis is good, however. In ‘Damaged’, Lambchop have crafted an album that already ranks as one of the contenders for best of the year.

Help them carry the weight.

LOOKING SHEEPISH: OTHER OVINE-RELATED CELEBRITY TRIVIA

Lamb Chop
Sock puppet operated and voiced by ventriloquist Shari Lewis, made popular by the children’s television show Lamb Chop’s Play-Along. Kind of like the American version of Sooty And Sweep, but with less squeaking.

Lamb
Slightly odd trip hop outfit who were briefly popular in the mid-nineties. Singer Lou Rhodes went on to join a commune and release a solo album, which was nominated for a Mercury Music Prize. Not being by The Arctic Monkeys, it didn’t win.

Christopher Lambert
Born in New York but French of descent, Lambert is most famous for “acting” in the Queen-soundtracked adventure Highlander, in which he jostled with Sean Connery for the worst accent ever, and claimed “There can be only one”. Liar: there were three sequels of decreasing quality and a spin-off television series.

The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway
The concept album to out-concept all concept albums, Genesis’s double record was so witlessly grandiose that even Peter Gabriel, not normally known for being subdued, was forced to leave the band in shame.

Amanda Lamb
Lovely, lovely television presenter who, when not finding new homes on the Algarve for loaded middle-class families, dons a dinky leotard for Olympic-themed Channel Four show The Games.

Contrary To Popular Belief...

2006-10-17T21:18:00.000+01:00

I'm still around.

Here's what has been happening since I last said hello:

Thesis printing, Thesis sending off to binders, Interviewing Sean Lennon, Starting school, Going to see The Frames, Going to see Sparklehorse, Ali's birthday, Marking lots of homeworks, Getting cross with lazy pupils, Feeling tired, Watching Seasons 2 of Arrested Development and Battlestar Galactica, Feeling very tired...

I will give you a full write-up in due course.

Now, however, I have homeworks to mark...

See you in a wee bit...

Goodnight, Steve Irwin.

2006-09-07T23:05:00.000+01:00

I found it really sad to hear the news that everybody's favourite croc-botherer, Steve Irwin, died this week.

I always liked him, not just because he was funny and a bit mad, but because he was doing so much to help the environment by preserving Australian wildlife.

Besides, it was cruelly ironic that, after years of sticking his head in snake nests and the mouths of crocodiles, he was killed by a poisonous fish.

That just sucks.

And I am always affected when I see so many people respond with such warmth and affection for a much-loved celebrity.

Goodnight, Steve Irwin. You were ripper, mate.

55 Alive.

2006-09-07T23:03:00.000+01:00

My mate Sean recently set a challenge on his blog for readers to come up with their best Ghost Story.

The catch was it could only be 55 words long, excluding the title.

Here's my effort. It didn't win.

He found it inside a book in his grandfather’s library. An ebony figurine, buried in a paper grave.
There was some writing carved into its back: his name, today’s date, and a time.
He looked at his watch. That time was now.
He heard a noise behind him. He didn’t have time to turn round.

Duke Very Special.

2006-09-07T23:02:00.000+01:00

Here's yet another overenthusiastic review...

Thomas Truax / Duke Special
Lisburn Island Arts Centre
August 16, 2006

Thomas Truax is, in the best of ways, a total fruitloop. Part Tom Waits, part Emo Philips, he sings funny, dark songs about a crazed butterfly hunter and a woman of ill repute whose shimmering clothes and scarlet lipstick made her look like a giant, walking fish. Truax’s rhythm section is a homemade instrument that looks like a mini ferris wheel which clanks and booms, a battery-operated fan, and anything else that comes to hand. More performance art than musical performance, he unplugs his guitar and gallivants about the theatre, leaping up the stairs and down the aisles. Some of the audience are visibly uncomfortable with this, which makes it all the more entertaining.

Besides, Truax’s weirdness is the perfect aperitif for the music hall eccentricities of Duke Special, who, replete with gramophones, piano and Theremin, is unlike any other artist currently on the scene. After slogging it out for around a decade under various aliases, it is heartwarming to see that he has finally made it, and the fact that tonight’s gig is completely sold-out should indicate just how popular this Belfast artist has become. The feeling, it seems, is mutual. “We’ve recently played some dirty little grips,” the Duke says, before commenting on how welcome it is to play in such a spacious venue. Following that, he plays his heart out. We get a breathtaking solo version of ‘Closer To The Start’, an orchestral reading of ‘Wake Up Scarlett’ that recalls ELO at their peak, and a smattering of new songs from the forthcoming album, each set adrift on waves of melody, close harmony and poetic lyrics rare in modern pop. Lou Barlow once sang that it’s all a matter of soul and fire, and Duke Special has both of these in spades.

A Bulging Package.

2006-09-07T23:00:00.001+01:00

I love getting stuff in the post.

It really doesn’t happen that often, so when it does it feels special.

This morning, I received a big jiffy bag care of AU Magazine.

It included:

The new issue of AU.

The new Duke Special Album, Songs From The Deep Forest.

The new Frames album, The Cost.

The new Lambchop album, Damaged.

I’m interviewing Lambchop tomorrow, so I listened to their record tonight, and have to say that I enjoyed it very much indeed. It is off-kilter and warm and cosy and reminiscent of a lot of things. You can hear elements of Tindersticks, Alt-country, and The Beatles circa Abbey Road in it.

I will be reviewing all of these in due course, but in the meantime here are some reviews from the new issue. Some were good, some were bad, and some were ugly.

I would really recommend the Sparklehorse and I’m From Barcelona albums. The other two are pretty cack.

Sparklehorse – Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain

Sparklehorse tend to hibernate for several years before releasing each album, a pattern that befits the sleepy, homegrown quality of their songs. Each record sounds as it has been sown and harvested rather than recorded in a studio. A new long-player has just been dug out of the dirt, and it confirms that, despite the five-year gap since their last emergence, Mark Linkous still has an ear for a memorable tune. As with previous albums, the songs herein lurch from sleepwalking laments to white noise wigouts. First single ‘Don’t Take My Sunshine Away’ is a fuzzed-up ‘Dear Prudence’, a creaky tea chest of static crackle, Morse code bleeps and layered harmonies. ‘Shade And Honey’, meanwhile, is as golden as the title suggests, and the instrumental title track is a haunting guitar slide back into the dark night. This is a troubled bad dream of a record, the product of one too many dog days, but its heart radiates much warmth.

I’m From Barcelona – Let Me Introduce My Friends

Sweden’s latest export I’m From Barcelona may have 29 members (Gotta catch ‘em all!), but that just means that there’s more love to go around. Like The Cardigans and The Concretes before them, the collective makes instantly appealing sunny day pop songs where the emphasis is always on melody, and the humability factor of this album goes all the way up to eleven. As soon as opener ‘Oversleeping’ starts playing, don’t feel embarrassed if you feel all gooey inside. Pretty soon, your ears will be further tickled by kazoos, banjos and xylophones, and, in ‘We’re From Barcelona’, the catchiest song you will hear all summer. Taking in elements of The Spinto Band and The Flaming Lips but retaining its own Nordic charm, this is poptastic fried gold.

James Yorkston – The Year Of The Leopard

If quiet is indeed the new loud, then James Yorkston should do very well. For the first few tracks, his sparse, mostly acoustic songs offer the ideal backing track for dimly-lit, late night meanderings - or if you just happen to be sailing up the French Riviera. It all comes a bit unstuck at the midpoint, however. ‘Woozy With Cider’ is a spoken word piece, in which, over a pleasant enough ambient interlude, Yorkston mumbles twaddling non sequiturs about the joys of country life and umm... dead monkeys. Things improve significantly thereafter, but Yorkston’s insistence on musical minimalism and talk-singing each line in a hushed whisper ensure that this album is not guaranteed to rock your socks off – or your slippers.

Seth Lakeman – Freedom Fields

How many folk singers does it take to change a light bulb? Four: one to change it, and the remaining three to write a ballad about how they miss the other. It’s an old joke, but it raises a question about the current fascination with music dubiously entitled “New Folk”. What, pray tell, was so bad about “Old Folk”? Seth Lakeman’s take on this genre suffers from the same problem that makes Jamie Cullum doing a bit of Jazz so annoying. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with his pretty, often complex arrangements, but the affected way in which he enunciates every lyric about mermaids and mystical kingdoms begins to wear thin pretty quickly. Not so much New Folk as Folk Lite.

Held Together With Spit And A Prayer.

2006-09-07T22:58:00.001+01:00

So, I’m back in bonny Bangor and pretty much recovered from my exploits in Scotland last weekend. First off, it was great to see old friends again: Big Chris, Champion Kev and his good friend Lesley. It was lovely hanging out in my old stomping ground of Dundee, to observe how the city has changed (for the better) and added new shops, restaurants and other cooler-than-ice-cool bars for the up-and-coming trendies – of which there are so many in Dundee.

Of course, there is the small matter of my Viva, which, praise God, couldn’t have gone much better.

It’s weird to think that after months and months of agony and angst, hard work and far-too-late late nights, writing and rewriting, heartache and disappointment, not to mention barrels full of blood, sweat and tears, that it call could be resolved in a few minutes shy of two hours.

Thankfully, the people chosen as my examiners were ideal. They were really nice and encouraging and were not – as is often the case with poncey academics – there to score points off one another and appear smart. They were really kind, asking me questions that were fair and responding with murmurs of “Hmm… that’s interesting” when I finished rambling for sentence after sentence.

It all turned out better than I could have hoped. I had been so worried about the moment for so long that I couldn’t believe it when the convener said, “Well, we are all in agreement that we feel that you deserve to be awarded a doctorate.”

Further, there are no rewrites or revisions. They said that my submission was a very “clean” copy, which apparently is academic speak for no major errors. Just a handful of typos and silly Microsoft Word-related mistakes.

Phew, I said to myself. I don’t have to go back to Ireland with my tail (and my thesis) between my legs, and proclaim myself a total ass-hat.

It was still fairly rigorous, however, and about three quarters of the way through I did feel as if my brain was going to melt out of my ears.

Thankfully, it did end, and the three examiners, myself and my supervisor all headed out for drinks in the local arts centre, which was all very swish. They feasted on lagers and martinis and gin-and-tonics, and I partook of ginger beer.

After that, Chris, Kev and Lesley came down and more ginger beers arrived. We chatted and chatted and laughed and reminisced about the years gone by. Chris and Kev are doctors too, you see, so you can imagine that the conversation was rather arsey.

It was quite bittersweet, thinking about friends who aren’t around any more, and times which we can never possibly recapture, but it was nice too, and warm and familiar and pretty special.

That night, after we stuffed ourselves at a local restaurant then partook of yet more ginger beers (well, I did), Chris and I walked the one hour plus journey to his house on the edge of the city. It was the middle of the night, but still warm, so I wore only a t-shirt. The streets were pretty much empty, so it did feel as if we were passing through a ghost town, but the sky was wide and open and full of stars.

With all of my thesis writing behind me, it did feel as if a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Even now, nearly a week later, I still cannot really believe it.

They Call Me Mister Tibbs!

2006-09-01T19:33:00.000+01:00

I'm just out of my viva.

It was a mammoth 1 hour and 45 minutes long.

Don't have much time to talk about this now as we are heading out for the evening...

But you can call me Doctor Thompson, if you like...

Running Out Of Patients.

2006-08-30T16:56:00.000+01:00

Hi,

This week has been a heady blur of travelling, working in the Medical Centre, and writing lots of copy for AU.

Other folk neglected to write their articles or get them in on time, so I was called to help pull in the slack. Which was cool. I really don't mind doing that kind of thing.

I wish I could tell you about what happened in the Medical Centre (where I'm working until School starts next month) today. It was outrageously funny. It involves a patient though, so I can't go into details. Suffice to say it involved lines of dialogue such as:

Re: a stool sample: "Shall I go into the bathroom now and have a shot at it?"

"I put my hand on here knee and she didn't mind. She's 70, you know!"

I couldn't laugh obviously, because that would offend the patient and lose me my job which would not be so good.

So, I will deftly segue into another subject: my Viva on Friday.

I head off to Dundee tomorrow (via plane, bus and train), so I won't probably post until Friday evening, at which point I will have passed my Viva and be a doctor and be gloriously happy, or have failed it and look like a total ass-hat.

Come Friday night, I will be out celebrating with Champion Kev and Big Chris and the like, or out consoling myself by getting hammered for the first time ever.

Or maybe not.

But I will feel like an ass-hat.

So, I will let you know how it goes.

Off I go, where angels fear to tread..

Hammering The Cramps.

2006-08-22T13:46:00.000+01:00

By the way, Mark from Sparklehorse was dead on.

Friendly and warm and funny and talkative.

It was cool to chat to him, and I am pretty sure that I didn't make a fool of myself.

The Duke Special gig was really good too. All in all, it was a great night.

The Final Countdown.

2006-08-22T13:32:00.000+01:00

Next thursday I head over to Scotland for my PhD Viva.

It takes place on the afternoon of Friday the first.

The funny thing is that I have not started worrying about it yet, which is kind of unusual for me. I suppose it has taken the University so long to get their finger out and organise the thing that I got used to the idea of it not happening. What with the University pay strike (as if they need to get paid any more money) and my tutor not really helping matters by taking things at a less than leisurely pace, it seems like an eternity since I handed in the draft.

Anyway, we are full steam ahead now, so I should probably think about re-reading my thesis (for the thousandth time) and figuring out what kind of awkward questions they are going to ask me.

Plus: whether or not they will declare it a pass or a fail.

Argg.

Please Don't Take My Sunshine Away.

2006-08-16T16:39:00.000+01:00

So,

Off to see Duke Special play in Lisburn tonight, which should be nice.

Also, have to do a phone interview with Mark Linkous from Sparklehorse up at the venue.

Am not ashamed to admit that I am slightly nervous about this. I have liked the band for so long that I am worried that I will either come across as sycophantic or else say something really dumb and offend him.

Or else be really dull and boring.

Lol.

I am so professional, huh?

"Let's Get Down To The Neety Greety".

2006-08-16T16:29:00.000+01:00

So, as yesterday was Titanic Tuesday, we ventured to the cinema.

We saw Nacho Libre, which I adored.

It is very funny, but I cannot really explain what made me laugh so much. It did not have lots of snappy one-liners and comedice setpieces, but it was just a warm, gentle piece of work.

Kind of what you would expect from the writer of School Of Rock and the director of Napoleon Dynamite. In fact, it's probably more like the latter, as nothing very much happens, but it is paced really well.

Jack Black is always value for money, and in this he works his eyebrows so much they must have hurt.

Also saw some great trailers, which had me quite over-excited: Taladega Nights (the new one from the Anchorman people: Yay), Hot Fuzz (the new one from the Shaun of the Dead people: double Yay), Jackass 2 (Yay cubed), and Snakes On A Plane (Yay to the power of infinity).

The cinema is so hot right now.

News Just In.

2006-08-11T22:16:00.000+01:00

Here's what's happened in the past couple of days:

1. I received the new Sparklehorse album in the post, along with a record by a band called I'm From Barcelona. They are actually from Sweden, but it is very good indeed. I'll post both reviews up here after the next issue comes out.

2. Going to see Duke Special in Lisburn next week. It's weird that a whole year has gone by since I saw him support Glen Hansard in the same venue last year. Tempus does indeed fugit.

3. I am interviewing Mark Linkous (he of Sparklehorse) on the same night.

4. Finally found out when my PhD Viva Voce is going to be (there is a whole tedious backstory to this involving my tutor, who, as far as I know, has now lost his job). It's on September 1st, so I have booked my flights (before today's shenanigans) and am now beginning to try and deduce what they are going to ask me.

And if I am going to pass the thing...

Idiocy International.

2006-08-09T16:51:00.000+01:00

One of my current bugbears is being stopped in the street by people collecting for charity.

Now, I don't mean to be a root, because it's not as if I disagree with charity. Obviously, I don't, but I don't really like being stopped by people and lectured on the fact that there is so much poverty and suffering in the world. It's not as if I don't know that already, and really, I know that the person lecturing me is getting paid to do this job, which must be demeaning for them. So, it all seems fairly false.

Also, I don't have any money at the minute. Absolutely zero. So, I have to tell the person that, and then they say something along the lines of, "Well, this is only 2 pounds per month".

One chap actually said to me, "What, are you on benefit?".

As if I would tell him if I was, cheeky blighter.

Anyway, yesterday I was stopped in the street by a girl collecting for Amnesty International. It may be my cynicism gland working overdrive, but I always notice that female collectors stop blokes, and male collectors stop ladies. They are always very attractive too. This, of course, is a very clever and collective strategy which no doubt works - though it backfired when, over a period of several weeks, I was stopped in Bangor and Belfast by the same, admittedly very attractive girl, collecting for several different, idealogically opposed charities.

So, the girl yesterday stopped me and a slightly awkward conversation ensued. It went something like this:

"Hi, can I borrow you for a moment?"

"Actually, I'm just out of work, so I am -"

"Great, I'm going to talk to you about Amnesty International. Have you heard of us?"

"Yes."

"So you know that we do a lot of good work all around the world."

"Yes."

A long interlude about gun trafficking, child soldiers etc ensued...

"You agree with freedom of speech, right?"

"Actually, no."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, the idea of freedom of speech is great, but in practice it doesn't really work. I mean, if you agree to the concept you have to accept that everbody has to have freedom of speech. There are many people who argue for it that I wouldn't want to have it."

"Like who?"

"Well, any kind of terrorist, for one -"

"I can't talk about that - we're not allowed to use the word "terrorist"."

"Or there are certain religions fundamentalist groups that force young girls into servitude and polygamy, or there are other organisations, perfectly legal ones in some parts of the world, that argue for the sustained abuse of children, and they believe that they should have freedom of speech.

"Oh..."

"There are other political groups that uphold principles of racism and prejudice that this world could really do without, but they believe they are entitled to freedom of speech too."

At this point I apologised for ranting. I have watched a lot of documentaries recently on oddball cults and conspiracy theorists in America. This was followed by a long, uncomfortable pause, then the poor girl who I had just lambasted said...

"Okay, do you want to give us some money?"

Lol.

Mann-tastic.

2006-08-09T16:38:00.000+01:00

As it was Titanic Tuesday yesterday, it was obligatory that we go to the cinema.

So, we headed up to see Miami Vice.

Now, I barely remember the original series, though I do remember that my brothers watched it, and I seem to recall an episode with Phil Collins in it, and one with members of The Power Station (remember that supergroup with Duran Duran and Robert Palmer?) , but that is about all.

But, being a big Michael Mann fan, and thinking that most things he has done have been ace (Manhunter, Heat, The Insider, Collateral, though Ali was a bit pants) I had to go see it.

And it didn't disappoint. Even though it had all of the elements to be rubbish: Colin Farrell, for one (who has been in so many stinkers that he should hang his head in shame: SWAT, The Recruit, Phone Booth, Daredevil, Alexander... the list goes on and on), but surprisingly, he didn't annoy me in this. Neither did Jamie Foxx, and normally he gets on my wick too. Neither did the fact that there was a Phil Collins cover on the soundtrack (which must be a jokey reference to the fact that he "acted" in the series.

Nope, the film was quality. It is moody and at points unbearably intense. The gun fights are great, even better perhaps than the one at the end of Heat, and, as befits most Michael Mann movies, the bad guys are really well cast. They are just such believable, scary-looking villains. And, as Ali said, there is an increasing scale of villain throughout the movie. It starts with Nazi Drug Dealers, then we meet Columbian street gangsters, then there is a guy who calls himself "Crazy Pig", then a head honcho drug kingpin.

One thing I really like about Michael Mann is that he refuses to patronise his audience with exposition by explaining plot details, who characters are etc. For example, the film doesn't have opening titles; it starts with a drug bust gone bad and then things get worse.

In short, it is one of the most satisfying films that I have seen in some time.

Top notch!

Titanic Tuesday.

2006-08-04T15:43:00.000+01:00

About this time last year, we regularly attended a function at the Dublin Road cinema called "Crazy Tuesday". An ongoing offer meant that you could get into any showing of any film for £2.50, all day long.

This was a sweet deal, and consequently we went to see a lot of movies, good and bad.

Recently, a rival cinema in Belfast has come up with a similar idea, keeping the price but calling it "Titanic Tuesday" instead.

Consequently, we have started seeing a lot of movies, good and bad.

We went to see Superman, which, in spite of the fact that it has received a lot of negative press, I really liked. Yes, it is ponderous and slow, but I liked that about it, and think that the story needed space. It wasn't as camp (or, let's face it, as crap) as some previous Superman movies, especially 3 and 4, which were woeful. Superman taking on Nuclear Man and then giving a press conference about saving the world... please.

Maybe it was that Superman felt good after the terrible, terrible X-Men 3, which was, in my opinion, a real kick in the nuts. I enjoyed the previous X-Men films so much that the third part of the trilogy was about as fun as repeatedly banging myself in the head with a frozen stoat.

So, all in all, I liked Superman. I think that it was cast well (Kevin Spacey is great as a very nasty, vindictive Lex Luthor) and had some good action sequences, such as a bit in a burning, crashing plane.

We also went to see The Break-Up, which did exactly what it said on the tin. I thought that it was funny, but perhaps not funny enough. Vince Vaughn is such a comic whizz-kid that his motormouthing should have been used far more. For a romantic comedy, it did not have much romance or comedy in it, but I relished the fact that it was not sappy at all. In fact, it is quite the opposite. It's pretty misanthropic, but somehow you come out feeling all warm and gooey inside.

And, I don't mean to be a twit, but I am going to be: for all the hype surrounding the news that you see Jennifer Aniston's bum... you don't. The camera is out of focus. A big boo-urns to that, I say.

Lol.

Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot.

2006-07-29T15:05:00.000+01:00

In answer to your question, Sparklehorse have an album out later in the Autumn. I hear a rumour that they are playing in Belfast around then too. In fact, I just checked MySpace and they are playing here on October 17. Huzzah! It will be at the Empire, which is a bit weird as the last time I saw them play was about six or seven years ago in the very same venue. How time flies.

In fact, Sparklehorse are the band that I have seen the most times live. I think it is about 5: three times in Glasgow, once in Belfast, and once supporting Radiohead. That was a good gig.

While they are not my favourite band of all time, they definitely are in the top 5, and they hold a nostalgic place in my heart which will never be dislodged.

If I could wangle an interview with Mark from Sparklehorse (well, effectively he is Sparklehorse), I would be more than chuffed. Yes, apparently he is nervous and quiet, and yes he does take a long time between albums (it's been five since It's A Wonderful Life), but he is an ace songwriter, and his production is fantastic.

So, all in all it's shaping up to be a good time for music. I am also chasing a Calexico interview (they are playing Dublin) too, which would be wonderful if I could combine that with a Plus One into their gig.

Again, Huzzah!

...

2006-07-28T19:47:00.000+01:00

So,

After all that, the Sufjan interview was canned. After I called Eef, we got a call in the office to say that Sufjan was not doing the interview because (and I quote) "he was tired".

How very rock and roll.

I don't care how popular or talented he is, you don't treat people like that. That's like the fourth time he has stood us up now - admittedly, he only did it to me once, but this debacle has been going on for about two weeks now.

And there I was, all ready to ask him, "It's been a while since your heyday of hits such as 'Green Door' and 'This Ole House'. What have you been up to since?"

On the other hand, Eef was a sweetheart: warm, friendly and funny.

Interviews, Schminterviews.

2006-07-27T14:19:00.000+01:00

Hi All,

I'm back from a trip to the North. We are not getting away on holiday this Summer, so we headed up to stay with Ali's parents for a few days.

We had bar-b-qs, we ate Chinese food, we paddled for miles along the beach, we played croquet on the grass, we slept, and mostly loafed about whilst I read the Tom Waits interviews book, Innocent When You Dream.

So, it was a good time, and upon my return I had four episodes of Ed lined up for my viewing pleasure.

Huzzah!

Anyway, I am interviewing Eef tonight at 5 (11am Nashville time), and he has given me his home phone number, which is trusting of him, and somewhat foolish given my past as a stalker.

I am looking forward to it, as he seems dead on, funny and witty, so it should be better than most interviews.

Tomorrow though, I am interview Sufjan Stevens, who I hear is quite popular with the youngsters these days.

I am not a fan, really, which is annoying as Manjo really wanted to do it (he is a fan), but Sufjan has rescheduled, like, 3 times, which is pretty unprofessional in my book, and... well, mean, really.

So, the piece got passed to me.

Also, he has sent through a list of topcis which he will not talk about in interviews: God, Religion, his childhood, Politics, Bush, America, and... worst of all, the fact that he is recording an album about every State in America.

Now, I would think that if you had set out to record one album per State, then you might think that people would be interested in asking you questions about why you had done so, but apparently not.

In short, I would think that if someone is kind enough to take the time to interview you, you should just accept that they might be asking you questions. Perhaps even questions about difficult subjects.

I mean, he's not Madonna.

He is a Prima Donna, though.

Anyway, enough about that. I will let you know how it goes. It will probably go belly up, but it might be funny. I reckon I might only ask him questions about things that he explicitly asked not to be asked about.

Well, we'll see. He might be dead on. I will reserve judgement.

News just in: I might be interviewing the guy from Sparklehorse, which would be a bit of a dream come true, but I don't know yet. We'll see how that pans out.

Adios, Amoebas!

IMDB Is The Font, I Am Just The Conduit.

2006-07-18T15:04:00.000+01:00

In the library again, but fortunately that weird woman who accused me of being a pedo last year (remember that? Fun times) is not here.

However, there is a weird dude sitting right beside me looking up porno (in a public library!). To be specific, he has a big film guide (Leonard Maltin would not approve of how his research was being used) and has IMDB open, and is looking up which films certain actresses have been in and then googling for nudey scenes.

Lol.

The funny thing is that I have been here for about an hour and a half and he is still at it.

At least he is dedicated.

On a different, more wholesome tack, I am getting more hooked on the tv show Ed. Not to be confused with the film where Joey from Friends plays baseball with a talented chimp (look it up here if you don't believe me), but the tv show that's kind of like Northern Exposure meets LA Law minus all the crappy bits.

The next interivew I'm doing is probably going to be with Eef Barzelay from Clem Snide. I got an email from him the other day saying he would be up for it. It's weird receiving emails from the singer in a band you have liked for years, but kind of cool too.

I'm also trying to chase up a David Bazan (he of Pedro the Lion) piece too, but that one is proving to be more elusive.

That's all, folks!

Porno Boy is still going strong. That said, he has moved onto Glenn Close and Barbara Streisand, so he must be getting desperate.

"When French Fries go to sleep at night, they dream of being Tater Tots."

2006-07-17T15:10:00.000+01:00

Not much to report from the weekend other than it was absolutely boiling and I practically had to clamber in the fridge to get some sleep. It's far too warm...

And I had to go to another interview today. This time it was for a summer job to keep me tided over until teaching starts in September. Fun times.

I am now addicted to the TV show Ed. Anyone else watch it?

Season finale for The OC sucked. Did anyone else care that (Spoiler Alert: highlight text to continue reading) Marisa died? In such a lame way too. Haven't they already done the car crash thing, like, a million times. And it's amazing that there was no blood or bruises or broken bones and she still expired in a waif-like fashion. In Ryan "So wooden he is being sued by the makers of Pinocchio" Atwood's arms? Come on, that's so Home and Away ten years ago...

Breakfast In NYC

2006-07-17T15:08:00.000+01:00

Another recent review... This time it's a Belfast-based band called Oppenheimer. They really are quite good, and this review is typically self-indulgent.

Oppenheimer – Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer were arguably the standout at the AU birthday bash last month. With songs so lovely and perfectly formed, you could almost see their colours streaming out of the speakers onstage: party ribbons and strings of tiny Christmas lights and confetti and fireworks vapour-trailed above the audience, filling the air with electric static, making the crowd shiver and goose-bump with joy.

This album is shot through with that same exciting quality. Slip it into your stereo and your room will be filled with sparks and crackles. As the rousing double whammy of ‘This is Not a Test’ and ‘This is a Test’ gives way to the gorgeous toy piano of ‘Breakfast in NYC’ - and that is just the first three tracks – turn off the lights, and you might see Aurora Borealis dancing in the dark. This is electropop with heart: the band have a knack for creating a memorable melody along with the twitchy beats and squelchy beeps. Amidst the robotic vocoder vocals and jitterbugging sequencers, songs such as ‘OK, Let’s Take This Outside’, ‘Allen Died, April Five’ and ‘This Kiss When’ contain more hooks than a fisherman’s kitbag.

And the joie de vivre invested in each of these fourteen songs, few of which exceed the two-minute mark, is as infectious as the tunes. Oppenheimer songs have the feel of summers gone by, of skinny-dips and moonlit gallivants and sprinkler jumps and first crushes. You might hear elements of The Postal Service and Stereolab in this record, but there is something more fragile, more human, pounding at its centre. The music therein, homemade in our own Alternative Ulster, has an indescribable, tip-of-the-tongue quality that might make you teary as you swim around in it, and might well haunt for days you afterwards.

Is It A Bird? Is It A Plane? No, It's The Deftones!

2006-07-14T14:38:00.000+01:00

Hey Folks,

Here's what's been happening recently around here.

1. Started a musical side project. I'm not going to throw a Thom Yorke and say "don't call it a solo album" or anything like that. Nothing that grand. It's more a return to the way I used to record music at home on an old, crappy 4-track machine. About ten years ago (!), which is scary when I think of it now, I spent most of the summer working on an "album" called "Please Be The One", which had 14 songs on it and in truth was not very good, but it was fun putting it together. Now, as a way of trying to recapture my youth, and because my band aren't about at the moment, I thought I would try it out. This time, I am not using a 4-track but a fancy computer program, but the pretty ropey songwriting remains the same. There is less moaning about girls on this one though.

Well, just a wee bit less.

Anyway, if you want to hear anything and have nothing better to do, head over here for fun and frolics.

2. Still can't believe I blagged a teaching job in Belfast. In answer to your question, Dermo, I can't really talk about which school it is on here (for child protection issues and all that), but ask me in person or via email and I will be happy to tell you all about it. As I may well be moaning about it in the future on here, I should probably keep schtumm on which school it is. It's a pretty cool establishment though: the staff seem nice, the head of department is funny and down t0 earth, and more than that it's a job which means that I can buy pizza or new trainers or DVD and not have to endure a panicky fit about not having enough money in the bank to buy groceries or pay the bills.

So, I am pretty thankful for this opportunity. Colour me relieved.

3. Going to see Springsteen play in Belfast in September (It must be cool to have people refer to you by your surname and everybody will know exactly what they mean. I doubt that many will be saying, "I was listening to Thompson the other day"). I am pretty exctited about this, but not as excited as my father-in-law who is perhaps the biggest Springsteen fan. He Has liked him for about 30 years but has never seen him play, so it's worth going just to see the look on his face.

4. Was hanging out with The Deftones last week. Yep, those Deftones. Now, I don't pretend to know very much about them or what any of their songs sound like, but I was with people who do. I was up in Belfast for an editorial meeting. We were all sitting at a table outside a coffee shop in the blazing sunshine talking about the fact that some of us were going to see The Deftones play up the road in town (I was not one of them), when somebody said, "Look! Over there! It's the Deftones."

Sure enough, there they were, pottering along the road looking like Mexican gang-bangers (big black hair and beards, skater shoes and cut-off shorts, hoodies, silver wallet chains), so we headed over to ask them if they wanted to come up to the office for an impromptu photoshoot.

They did, so they came up and hung out for a while, just long enough to ask if any of us knew where we could "score some weed". Lol.

5. Been downloading a lot of the recent American Radiohead concerts. This is partly out of envy of my friend Dane, who lives in LA and went to see the band play 3 times (3 times!) on their recent tour. They have been playing about a dozen new songs, all of which sound interesting and quirky and catchy in the same way that the new stuff from Hail to the Thief did when they played it at Salamanca.

If you want to hear any of it, click on the Radiohead Live 2006 link on the sidebar to the left and off you go. I particularly recommend the Toronto Hummingbird concert. That's a cracker.

6. I was at a wedding on Monday for a girl out of my class. It turns out she is the sister-in-law of somebody I used to hang about with about a dozen years ago. I was giving said somebody a lift home to discover that him and his wife live in a house Ali and I were thinking of buying about two years ago...

Things like that freak me out a little.

7. Random Act of Kindness Number 3: My brother gave me an Itrip for my Ipod, so I can tune into my car stereo or the radio in the house and play some steeky beats and bangin' tunes (not really: lots of whiney indie angst for me, please). It works a treat, and the quality is ace.

That's about all from me for now.

You lot take care of yourselves.

Peace out, Napoleon...

Death Cab For Rossy.

2006-07-14T14:31:00.000+01:00

Here's the Death Cab interview. A much-edited version was published in AU magazine, so this is the unabridged version. Think of it as a Peter Jackson, Director's Cut Lord of the Rings type piece.

Or maybe not...

Death Cab For Cutie
By Ross Thompson

Watching the HBO TV show Six Feet Under a few years ago, AU experienced a profound, shivers-down-the-back moment: Claire and her slacker buddies are getting stoned in her bedroom and talking about arty-farty concepts only stoned Art College students would want to talk about. During the course of the scene, the background music swells until it bursts into the foreground: one of the characters turns up the stereo and they all sing along in imperfect harmony. In a haze of smoke and closed eyes, the cast join in with the repeating line “I need you so much closer”. This example of metatheatre (sorry: that’s what a degree in English Lit. will do for you) worked on several levels: it not only captured both the theme and the intense emotionality of that episode, but it also, in the simplest of ways, spoke of the power of music to move, excite, unnerve and judder the heart.

It was as if the song wafted out of the telly, Poltergeist-style, and possessed anyone who was watching. After that, AU went a googling, searching for the band responsible for this gorgeous, throbbing sound. It was Death Cab For Cutie, and the song was ‘Transatlanticism’, a track on the 2003 album of the same name. Straightaway, AU went forward and backward, seeking out anything and everything from the band’s back catalogue. It transpired that Death Cab are not only one of the most lyrically and musically erudite bands to have emerged from the States in recent years, but are also responsible for a backlog of great material that leads up to last year’s stirring epic, ‘Plans’. Listen to these records and you might be able to spot glimpses of reference points (Teenage Fanclub, Superchunk, Eurythmics), or you might just hear clever wordplay and shimmering tunes.

AU chats across a wire to Death Cab drummer Jason McGerr about the band’s past, present and future.

You joined Death Cab in 2002. How did you start playing together?

You know, I’ve known the guys in the band for a long, long time. Like, ten years before they were even a band. They had told me before that they were thinking of trying out some different drummers, and if I was interested. It would go around the horn a few times, but without sounding too serendipitous, it was just something that was meant to be. We had always entertained the idea, but never fully gone for it. To make a long story short, they asked me if I wanted to do it last time around. They said that we should try recording a record together, and that was just before ‘Transatlanticism’.

What an album to come in on. ‘Transatlanticism’ is a great piece of work.

Thankyou. It was the right time for that record too: everything that was going on with all of us individually, to finally do a record where four people who had known each other for so long and really wanted to play music together. It was a combination of a lot of things, but I think a long-term friendship was the best evidence of what we were able to accomplish with that record.

Did the other guys encourage your input?

I think any time you are in a brand new relationship, it’s an open playing field. I mean, you don’t have any reservations, you don’t know the other people so well that you’re set in your ways; you’re not communicating just because, so you just say what you feel. As a result, that wound up being a very labour-free album to record. I did have a lot of input, just as I did with ‘Plans’ too. We kind of found a new way of working. Making records number four and five with this band was totally different to making records number one two or three. We figured out how to do it: have each record sell a few more copies, and be able to play in front of a few more people and get a little bit more recognition. If we were all twenty-one and making our first record, I don’t know what the outcome would have been. Both ‘Transatlanticism’ and ‘Plans’ feel like seasoned attempts at making music. It’s just a very comfortable time for us.

It’s a journalistic cliché to describe a band in terms of who they sound like. So, who does Death Cab sound like?

[Laughs] I think it’s probably easier to find out who we sounded like on our first or second record. There was more going on that was a patch on the sleeve at that point in time before we defined our sound… Actually, I don’t know that it’s so much defining your sound over the years but just doing what you only know how to do. You can have a large bag of tricks or a large musical vocabulary, but it’s always within the guidelines of your sound. The longer you make records the more it solidifies your sound. You think, “Yeah, that sounds like a Death Cab record”. There are no other comparisons at that point in time.

A lot of people discovered you guys through watching Six Feet Under. How did that come about?

We’re all big fans of Six Feet Under, and are very happy to be part of it. As artists we need those avenues these days. There’s a lot of radio in the States, but it’s easier to reach people if you’re working with the power of the great television programme. The channels of reaching people these days are pretty broad: the internet, commercials and independent movies. Radio is so dominantly controlled by urban music that if you’re not doing that, if you don’t have the physique and the style to be on MTV you need other avenues.

Death Cab play quite an integral role in The OC too.

Hmm… That’s nothing that we went after. We were all watching Six Feet Under, and were really excited when the licensing request came through. The OC came through, and we hadn’t watched the programme, and didn’t know anything about it, but there was a list of other bands involved that we really respected: Modest Mouse, Beck and The Arcade Fire. Somehow we became associated with the iconic figure of Seth Cohen [laughs]. We were his favourite band, and he had a poster of us on his wall. After so much usage, they said, “Hey, do you want to be on the programme, and by the way it’s going to be an episode where Seth gets a ticket to your show but misses it?”. We said, “That sounds perfect”.

What about ‘Plans’? Was the recording of that album – pardon the pun – planned, or did it come organically.

It was pretty organic. ‘Transatlanticism’ was the inhale, and ‘Plans’ was the exhale. You know, you get excited about doing something, and you’re about to dive into the water and you take a deep breath and hold it. You take this big excited thing and you pack your lungs full of energy. After eighteen months of touring on ‘Transatlanticism’, we knew how to make music. We had another three hundred shows under our belt and it was time to make the next record. There was a whole lot of trust, and not as much of a set vision or goal. We did set out to record twenty-five songs: there were A-list songs, B-list songs and Drunken list songs, things we would get to if we had time… but it got whittled down, and eventually songs began to show their shape. It’s like farming in a way: you got to throw some seeds into the ground and wait and see how the weather helps the crop [laughs a lot]. We eventually wound up with the record that was going to be ‘Plans’, but there was never a grand scheme or lyrical theme that was intended from start to finish. I don’t think you can force something. You know, songs are like your kids – you can’t control what they are going to be as people, you can trust to be a good parent. We tried to take our time and do it right, but also be open to things that might change the course of a song.

What about the song ‘I Will Follow You Into The Dark’? It was a brave decision to record it as just Ben [Gibbard, Death Cab singer] and an acoustic guitar.

Some of my favourite records don’t even have drums [laughs]. The rhythm of that song didn’t need anything else. The nakedness of the lyrics and the honest potency of what Ben was singing seemed to work best when it was just his voice and an acoustic guitar. Whenever Ben, Chris, Nick or I bring in demos we all sit down and we listen to the music and we collectively talk about what the song needs. There was nothing that song really needed. I’m not putting it on the same level as Paul McCartney singing ‘Yesterday’, but it seemed to be a perfectly classic song. There was a harmony of lyric and instrument that really brought your focus and attention on what Ben was saying and the imagery around the words. The more instrumentation you add to something that intimate, the more it takes away from the intimacy of that song. I had no problem with that. If there’s nothing to play, I’m not going to try and make something happen.

There are clear lyrical and musical themes running through ‘Plans’: the end of Summer, the end of life, the end of…

Heavy [laughs].

Well, it makes a change from pop music proclaiming that everything is dandy.

If there is a common thread, then it’s honesty. It takes an honest, confident person to be able to stand on a stage and play a song. It’s easy to coat a story and fabricate some fictitious, elaborate tale about some super-heavy night out where you got it on at every party in town, but to talk about things that you really care about, to and put yourself out there, it’s a really welcome thing. Being exposed and cutting the crap is imperative. We’re all human, we’re all messy, we all have things to deal with in life and we all die, and why not be thankful for that?

So, what’s next for Death Cab?

We’re leaving tomorrow to tour Europe, Australia and the States, and maybe go back to Japan again. Come January of 2007, we’ll be taking a hiatus. ‘Transatlanticism’ melted into ‘Plans’ in an album cycle. We’ve been working solid for the last four years, so it’s time for a break. We’ll regroup in the Fall of 2007 and being work on our next record. We want to take some more time to write individually and think of ideas. There’s no hurry for the next Death Cab record: maybe a Spring release of 2008, hopefully.

Any ideas what it will sound like?

We realise that there’s a whole different energy to the way we play live, and as Death Cab continues, we will try to do all our studio work in a different way. The next album will have that live energy to it. There’s going to be more rock songs, I think. Ben and Chris didn’t realise when they were working on ‘Plans’ that they barely played any guitars. This record, the way it was written, it wound up having more keys. Ben doesn’t have a growly, screamy voice, so no matter what it’s still going to sound like Death Cab… But it will be a little bit more bloody, a little sweatier.

So Many Possibilities To Not Be Alone: A Brief Guide To Death Cab For Cutie

‘You Can Play These Chords With These Songs’
Collection of early recordings, demos and rarities by frontman Ben Gibbard that was originally put out on cassette. Patchy, especially when compared with the quality of Death Cab’s later output. Probably one for the completist.

‘Songs About Airplanes’
Debut album proper from the band, and an expansion of tracks previously available on the preceding demo tape.

‘We Have The Facts And We’re Voting Yes’
You can hear the familiar Death Cab sound beginning to take form here: Ben Gibbard’s voice takes on the honeyed, smooth quality that characterises his singing in later years, the guitars are fuzzy but becoming more focused, and keyboards are beginning to seep in to the corners.

‘Forbidden Love EP’
Hunt out this five-song set and you will discover another raft of great tunes. ‘Technicolour Girls’ has one of Death Cab’s sweetest melodies, and the acoustic version of ‘405’ is as purty as a yellow, spiky-haired little girl.

‘The Photo Album’
The Death Cab song template is coalescing, and the promise of great things is tantalising. Lyrics about regret and loneliness are placed on top of lovely, repetitive melodies. Jason McGerr: “I’m all for the type of repetition that is intoxicating, that keeps you feeling good yet you’re not wondering when it’s going to be over. We’re all big fans of the hypnotic riff thing, but there has to be enough there; we’ve never had the goal to turn into a jam band and just stay on one thing for fifteen minutes.”

‘Transatlanticism’
Arguably, Death Cab’s finest moment to date. From opening to closing track, this is a thrilling journey. Chunky Yorkie pop-rock tunes ‘The Sound of Settling’ and ‘Expo ‘86’ collide like meteorites with quieter, sparser numbers ‘A Lack of Colour’ and ‘Passenger Seat’. Jason McGerr: “Those moments are beautiful, cleansing, focused moments that we try to ensure are on our records.” Essential listening.

‘Plans’
One of the best albums of 2005, propelled forward by unusual pop melodies and dark, insightful lyrics. Check out lines like “I braved treacherous streets / With kids strung out on homemade speed” (‘Crooked Teeth’) and “In my head there’s a Greyhound Station / Where I send my thoughts to far-off destinations” (‘Soul Meets Body’). Epic, in the best sense of the word. Jason McGerr: ‘Plans’ was very reflective of the environment in which we recorded it: it’s a very spacious, out in the middle of nowhere record. It’s nice to hear some space in-between notes, along with a lot of thick, elaborate, layered material.”

Souvenirs From Better Times: A Death Cab Mix-Tape
Download 'Em! Burn 'Em! Love 'Em!

1. ‘Steadier Footing’
Opening track from ‘The Photo Album’ is simple, understated and quite elegant.

2. ‘Soul Meets Body’
You can hear Seth Cohen hugging his skinny body and drying his girly tears to this pop gem with a brooding undertow. Google the Rose Polenzani acoustic cover too – it’s ace.

3. ‘A Movie Script Ending’
Big guitars and lolloping drums make a joyful noise.

4. ‘Your Heart Is An Empty Room’
A pounding groove drives this pop rock thunderbolt. The aural equivalent of a nitrous oxide fuel injection.

5. ‘The Sound Of Settling’
Ba-ba harmonies and handclaps. Nice.

6. ‘Such Great Heights’
Ben Gibbard’s side project The Postal Service are best described as an American Oppenheimer. This is them at their twitchy, tuneful best.

7. ‘All Is Full Of Love’
Death Cab take on Björk in this neat cover from the ‘Stability’ EP. Clever without being clever-clever.

8. ‘Handle With Care’
Ben Gibbard pops up on this Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins version of The Travelling Wilburys classic, joined by the imperial guard of Indie chaps: Conor Oberst and M. Ward.

9. ‘What Sarah Said’
Intimate, weepy tale of death and loss that is reminiscent of Ben Folds Five’s ‘Brick’. Your tears will definitely be jerked. Sample lyric: “As each descending peak of the LCD / Took you a little farther away from me”.
10. ‘I Will Follow You Into The Dark’
Wonderful acoustic interlude from ‘Plans’. Sample lyric: “If Heaven and Hell decide that they both are satisfied / Illuminate the NOs on their VACANCY signs”.

11. ‘Transatlanticism’
Standout title track from Death Cab’s strongest album. Goes on for about seven minutes, and could happily go on for seven more. A song to get lost in, and remain there.

12. ‘Earth Angel’
Back To The Future fans will appreciate this cover of The Penguins, as featured in the Enchantment Under The Sea Ball.

The Will Always Negates Defeat.

2006-06-26T17:01:00.000+01:00

Howdy, Y'all!

HMV have a sale on at the minute, and as I had vouchers left over from my birthday I invested those in some lovely DVDs.

I purchased American Splendor, Napoleon Dynamite, Saw and Sideways, which is a fairly nice wee collection, I think.

After that I was a bit tired (lol), so Ali and I made a den in the living room, ordered pizza and watched TV for about 10 hours. We had lots of programmes saved up on video, so we watched Bir Brother, about 6 episodes of CSI and the first episode of Big Love, which I am not entirely hooked on yet, but we will see.

Thanks to everyone who left comments on the Alt. Country piece. That was nice of you.

The other big news is that I got offered a teaching job today! I start in September in a school in Belfast, so I am pretty stoked about that. It's a temporary post, but it is better than nothing. A foot in the door, as the experts say, and way better than sitting around on my ass feeling sorry for myself, and certainly better than sitting around on my sorry feeling ass for myself.

The summer is upon us though, which means that my seasonal insomnia is beginning to kick in.

This, if you remember last summer's posts, is not too good...

Defintootely.

2006-06-19T21:23:00.000+01:00

The interview with Death Cab's drummer went well.

He seemed like a nice guy: very talkative and erudite.

So there you go...

Rootin' Tootin'.

2006-06-19T15:39:00.000+01:00

I was asked to write a piece on Alt. Country for the music magazine Alternative Ulster.

The bried was that it was to be "irreverent but informative".

Here it is:

START ME UP!
The Bluffer’s Guide To…
By Ross Thompson

ALT.COUNTRY
THE HISTORY

Think tumbleweed. Think vast and desolate dustbowls drenched in the golden rays of a setting sun. Think rickety chairs rocking on a back porch bedecked with empty bottles of bourbon. Think Alt.Country. Just like regular Country, but with added Alt. Whatever you do, don’t think Kenny Rogers or Shania Twain. That, as she might say, would not impress purists too much. Hard to define and all the more appealing for it, Alt.Country begs, borrows and steals from Gospel, Blues and Rock, yet nobody really knows what in tarnation this genre is all about. Influenced in part by the attitude and music of 90s Alternative Rock, Alt.Country cribs from the songbooks of rootin’ tootin’ folks like Willie Nelson, Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams, yet adds a contemporary twist. Out goes the unkempt beards, Nudie Suits and names like Buckwheat Tweeter and Lefty Frizler, and in comes a troupe of young bucks with messy hair, distortion pedals and a dapper line in plaid shirts. The songs about a dead hound, a trusty hoss and a loose woman stay the same.

The Sound of the New West, as Uncut magazine elegantly phrased it nearly ten years ago, can be heard in the most unusual of places. For his solo album Let it Come Down, tiny fret-dancer James Iha ditched his fellow Smashing Pumpkins, set aside his trusty axe, turned his amp down from eleven, and busted out a dozen country-tinged ditties. Once a bunch of angry arthouse punks, The Lemonheads mellowed significantly when they discovered that acoustic guitars and pedal steel were the way forward. Even Sting donned a Stetson and played cowpoke for a while, but let’s not talk about that.

Alt.Country, Twangcore, Hick Rock, Y’all-ternative – call it what you like, this is the genre to talk about if you really want to show off your smarts to the musical cognoscenti. Namedrop Slobberbone, Drive-By Truckers and Okkervil River and you will really sound like you know what you are talking about. It doesn’t matter that most of these bands claim that they are Alt.Country at all. There’s nothing like a little denial to add credibility to your cause.

REMEMBER THAT FRESH NEW SOUND YOU WERE LOOKING FOR? LISTEN TO THIS!

Gram Parsons – Grievous Angel / GP (1973/74)
Both with The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers and as a solo artist, Gram helped steer Country and Western away from the image of grown men in leather chaps and twenty gallon hats. A hard-living, hard-rocking star, Gram specialised in the oeuvre he dubbed “Cosmic American Music”, hooked up with Emmylou Harris, and produced a canon of songs about the fact that love plain ‘ole sucks. He wrote Wild Horses, you know.

The Lemonheads – It’s A Shame About Ray (1992)
Slacker Evan Dando may be more associated with College Rock, and he may not have released a good album for years, but listen to this one again and you will see exactly where he found his influences. Most things in Evan’s life at this point were measured in Grams, and his songwriting was no different: the ghostly voice of Parsons can clearly be heard here. The whole thing clocks in at just under thirty minutes (Sigur Ros would just be getting warmed up), but life is too short for long albums.

Wilco – Being There (1997)
A rollicking romper stomper of a double album, this has everything that a sad and single muso could hope for. Taking on every style under the sun – and the Las Vegas lights - Wilco tear through Honky-Tonk, Blues and Bubblegum Pop, all wrapped up in the sort of gorgeous harmonies that you would only hear if you lived inside Brian Wilson’s head.

Ryan Adams – Heartbreaker (2000)
Forget everything that you hear about Adams being a messed-up narcissist who can write albums in his sleep but has no idea of quality control. Each of those things is undoubtedly true, but in Heartbreaker he produced a bone fide Americana classic. Whiskey, women and any narcotic available may form Adams’ staple diet, but damn, Sam, if he can write a good tune. Heartbreaker does exactly what it says on the tin, offering both empty desert melancholia and raucous Rolling Stones boogie in equal measures. Even Queen Bee Emmylou Harris gives her seal of approval: she pops up on the lovely Oh My Sweet Carolina.

Whiskeytown – Pneumonia (2001)
Before collapsing under the weight of Adams’ ego, Whiskeytown got it together for long enough to record their much-delayed final album. Thanks to a record label snafu, it took yonks for the record to be released, but it confirmed Whiskeytown as one of the most innovative groups in the Alt.Country canon. An absolute peach of an album, Pneumonia takes traditional country and bends it into exciting new shapes, but it is straightforward numbers like Jacksonville Skyline and Crazy About You that hit you in the heart like bullets from a sixgun.

Clem Snide – Your Favourite Music (2001)
Decked out in spectacles and snazzy suits, Clem Snide are more leftfield than most, but their songs are as addictive as sugar without the sweetness. Lead singer Eef Barzelay channelled the Alt.Country vibe through the group’s second album, but added his own individual stamp of brainy, slightly mad lyrics and bent tunes.

Johnny Cash – American Recordings IV: The Man Comes Around (2002)
Not strictly Alt.Country, but then the point of Alt.Country is that it is not that strict, and it would be plain doggone wrong to not give props to one of the forefathers of the Americana sound. Less chuckles than most records, as Cash reflects upon his life and his imminent death, but it is thrilling to hear The Man in Black square up to The Grim Reaper. As well as adding his own compositions, Cash covers an eclectic array of artists (Depeche Mode, The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel), aided by the sparse production of Chili Peppers cohort Rick Rubin. He even manages to make The Eagles and Sting sound credible, and his version of Nine Inch Nails’ Hurt is devastating. Not a party album then, but an essential one nonetheless.

Calexico – Feast of Wire (2003)
As big as a desert and just as haunting, Calexico’s music is all over the place, and difficult to pigeonhole. Americana has a Mexican standoff with Mariachi grinding and French Jazz, and everybody gets up to some serious shenanigans. Like a soundtrack to an imaginary Western, Feast of Wire is a road trip through the darker parts of Alt.Country, with scorpions, rattlesnakes and gun-toting bandits at every turn, but it is a riveting ride to the finish. And it has more trumpets than the campfire scene in Blazing Saddles.

RULES TO REMEMBER

Why drive a car when you can hitch a ride?

There are pick-ups on your guitar, there’s a pick-up in the parking lot, there’s a hot pick-up standing at the bar. What more could you want?

Either you sing in a hushed whisper (Lambchop, anything by Will Oldham) or you yawl until your throat bursts. There is no in-between.

The back porch is there for a reason. Use it.

Your two best friends are Jack Daniels and Jim Beam.

You will gain much more kudos if it sounds as if your band is made up of siblings: The Pernice Brothers, The Waco Brothers, The Flying Burrito Brothers, The Cash Brothers, Palace Brothers. Not to be confused with The Chemical Brothers. Or actual brothers.

Women are nothing but lying, cheating gals and any man that comes between you and your lying, cheating gal should be beaten like a red-headed stepchild.

Things were always better in the past. If you change a lightbulb, chances are somebody will write a song about how great the old one was.

DOs AND DON’Ts

DO enthuse about places beginning with the letter T (Tulsa, Tucson, Toleda, Tennessee, Texas etc.) even though you have never been there.

DON’T sing about being happy. The grass is always greener.

DO dress as if you have emerged from a three-day bender and have been dragged through a cactus backwards.

DON’T wear spurs and a Sheriff’s badge. You’re not in the Village People.

DO go on a three-day bender, before dragging yourself through a cactus backwards.

DON’T drink water. It’s for lightweights.

DO say, “Son Volt’s last album is much, much better than the Wilco’s last one”.

DON’T say “Cotton Eye Joe by Rednex is a brilliant slice of Alt.Country”.

DO perform covers of recent pop hits in a comedy country style.

DON’T tell the joke, “You left your Injun running”.

My Heart Is An Empty Room.

2006-06-19T14:49:00.000+01:00

Hi Folks,

Thanks for the nice comments on the last post. Here's what's been happening since then:

1. More nightmares: Friday, I was dreaming I was in the game Hitman, running around bumping people off with a gun and piano wire; Saturday, I was in the programme Prison Break, trying to escape from a lunatic asylum whilst chased by soldiers and police. Very weird indeed.

2. Doing a phoner with the drummer from Death Cab later this evening. It could have been frontman Ben, I guess, but it's better than nothing. It will be fun nonetheless. Any ideas for questions. Before you ask, the name comes from a song by everyone's favourite, the Bonzo Dog Doo-dah Band. So there you go.

3. News just in: The second season of Desperate Housewives sucks. As does this season of The OC. The latter, in fact, is particularly bad. Not even bad it's good bad. It's just bad it's bad.

Honk If You Love Billy Ocean.

2006-06-15T14:12:00.000+01:00

So...

Here I am once again, up from the depths, fifty stories high...

I seem to be apologising for my absence quite a lot of late, but sadly it cannot be helped. The past two months have been a pretty turbulent, topsy turvy time for all at Broken Sounds HQ. Here are the reasons why there have been no posts:

1. First off, our phone has not worked properly for so long now that I do not care to remember when it first went kaputt. This means pretty much no Internet access at home, and time at school etc was limited.

2. I finished my second placement in school, and the last few weeks were pretty hectic with a lot of work to do / discipline problems / getting forms filled in and all that crap. I loved being at that particular school, even though it was really tough on occasion. One of the highlights was a boy who supposedly suffered from ADHD dealing spare Ritalin to his mates, thus making them hyper, totally wired to the moon.

3. I finished my PGCE teaching course and am now a qualified teacher. Hooray! I have succeeded at something in life. Go me.

4. Applying for jobs and going to interviews. I would be the first to say that I do not perform well in interviews. There is something intrinsically false about sitting awkwardly in a chair whilst strangers ask you random questions to which you have to respond by saying how good you are. I don't like blowing my own trumpet at the best of times, but that situation is just hateful. Anyway, I had one yesterday and didn't get it (quelle surprise). I have another two next week so I will let you know how I get on with those.

5. Prison Break. The season one finale double episode whammy was one of the most brilliant pieces of silly-but-great television I have seen in quite some time. It was unbearably tense at points, so I had to keep pausing the video to make myself calm down.

6. Seinfeld Seasons 4-6. Recently accumulated these on DVD and have been laughing my fat ass off at them ever since. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

7. More writing for Alternative Ulster: Might be interviewing Death Cab for Cutie next week. Huzzah!

8. Another top secret writing project which I cannot talk about yet.

9. Went to see X-Men 3. Liked it and didn't like it. Good and bad. Exciting and dull. Involving and too rushed. Characters wasted and plotlines left unexplored. Neat twists at the end (and the very end: wait until the credits stop rolling) but silly James Bond-style dialogue in parts. The DVD better be better, that's all that I will say.

10. Rediscovered my SNES emulator on the computer. Been busying myself with Chrono Trigger and Lufia 2: Rise of the Sentinels. Could I be any more of a geek?

11. Bizarrely, on a health drive of late so am taking lots of long walks and evening constitutionals.

12. Lots of nightmares recently. If you are a regular viewer, I sporadically go through periods of not sleeping and having scary ass dreams. For example, last night I woke up thinking that Ali was in bed beside me but her ghost was floating up towards the ceiling. Awful.

13. The illnesses affecting my family members seem to have dissipated slightly, but not gone away altogether. I can do without this, thankyou very much, but when you have as large a family as I have, the laws of probability would suggest that it is going to hit one of you at some stage.

14. I think that is probably enough to be going on with right now.

So, sorry once again for not being here. I don't like to be unfaithful.

I'm Not Dead.

2006-06-02T14:34:00.000+01:00

Lots of updates coming soon.

I promise...

Mission Improbable.

2006-05-09T09:45:00.000+01:00

I realise that posts have been a little thin on the ground, and I'm sorry for that.

The past couple of weeks here have been pretty tough: there have been a lot of discipline problems in school, which I cannot write about for legal reasons, and my mood about that has been aggravated by the fact that two of my immediate family have been pretty seriously ill, which I cannot write about for the sake of their privacy. It got to the point a week ago that I nearly told one of my classes, in which a charming pupil announced that "poetry is sh*t", that they should go to Falkirk and exactly how they would get there.

So, with all of this I couldn't find the time or the inclination to write anything of note here.

Anyway, onto more frequent and cheerier posting. Went to see Mission Impossible 3 at the weekend, which I enjoyed a great deal. I really liked the first one in the series, but the second was turgid. You might remember that John Woo directed that one, so it had the requisite doves and men walking in slow motion.

Well, MI3 is silly in a Big Lads action movie way (lots of car chases, fisticuffs and a lot of blowing stuff up), but it is actually pretty smart too. It is directed by one of the men responsible for Lost, so you can understand that it would have some degree of intelligence about it. Tom Cruise does his usual big grin, small range of facial expressions thing, and his sidekicks are pretty expendable, but it is Philip Seymour Hoffman who steals the show (as ever).

Seriously, he puts in a fantastic performance as the bad guy who wants to destroy the word and must be stopped. Absolutely emotionless, but not in an unintentional, Schwarzenegger fashion. It's quite chilling to hear him talking about how he will kill Tom Cruise's wife and make him watch as she screams his name.

All in all, it's a good show, and there are some highwire action sequences which really gave me the heebie jeebies.

And Simon Shaun of the Dead Pegg is in it too. Bonus!

It put me in the mood to watch The Bourne Supremacy again, so I did.

Speaking of Lost, I have watched up to Episode 5 of Season 2, and so far it has proved to be both intriguing and frustrating. Kind of like watching a dog chase its tail. What really bothers me about the programme is that it has an interesting premise and some strong characters, but the writers squander the opportunity by making it so darned slow. To make things worse, the first 3 episodes of this season repeat the same event over and over again, but from a slightly different angle, which is nothing short of tedious.

So, I don't know how the rest of this season will pan out. It's good to see Adebesi from the warm and cuddly male prison series Oz as a new character, and it's funny to hear Jinn talking about the "Others" because it sounds like he is saying "Udders", and then I imagine all of these cows coming to kill the lactose intolerant passengers of Flight 815. Well, it makes as much sense as the theories that they are part of a government research experiment or that they are all dead and waiting in Heaven's departure lounge.

Well, I will keep watching, but I don't know how enthused I am about it all. You need to watch 3 full episodes in one go, which is the equivalent to the content of one normal television programme. Too slow it is, as Yoda might say.

Prison Break also continues to thrill, but one does wonder how long they can hold off the titular escape until people watching get bored. I hear that they are making a second season of that, so that cannot be good. After watching twenty-odd episodes, I would hope that there would be some sort of satisfying pay-off, and not yet another cliffhanger promising that the inmates will escape, but we will have to wait until next year to find out how.

That really would get on my wick.

The fifth season of The Shield is absolutely superb, and reminds me why it is my favourite tv show of all time. Powerful stuff. It is the only thing that I watch which makes me feel tense and worried about the outcome. I have spoken about this before, I'm sure, but it is beezer.

This might sound as if all I do all day is watch telly, which is patently not true. I tape things and download them from the net, and then splurge in one evening or afternoon as I don't have time otherwise. Too busy countering the opinion that poetry sucks, you see.

Anyway, I have to go. Class bell is about to ring...

Toodle pip,

Ross.

Feline Groovy.

2006-05-08T09:47:00.000+01:00

Hey All,

For those of you who don't live in Northern Ireland, here's a copy of the Grandaddy piece I did for Alternative Ulster.

I'm not completely pleased with it, but then I never am...

Grandaddy: Lost That Loving Feline
By Ross Thompson

Watching Grandaddy play at a Scottish music festival five years ago, AU experienced what might be called a revelatory moment. In a ginormous circus tent in the middle of a sun-baked field, the band ploughed through a fantastic set-list of surging space rock and hook-filled country fuzz. As the tunes throbbed and thrummed out of monolith-sized speakers, huge screens at the back of the stage displayed videos of kids dressed as the band - plaid shirts, skater caps, false beards and all – dancing and gyping about to the music. Life, AU thought, doesn’t get much better than this.

Five summers later, Grandaddy are just about to release a long-awaited new album, the curiously entitled Just Like the Fambly Cat. Following on from their last long-player Sumday and last year’s EP Excerpts from the Diary of Todd Zilla, the band are ready to serve up another helping of gorgeous music. The forthcoming Just Like the Fambly Cat is an achingly poignant, often very beautiful record where waves of orchestral sweep collide with distorted guitars and synthesised arpeggios. It is without a doubt the band’s most accomplished work to date.

Sadly, Grandaddy’s new album will also be their last. A few months ago, online messageboards and music blogs buzzed with the news that the band were in the middle of the painful process of splitting up. Shortly after, the story was confirmed by a post on the group’s official page: a heartfelt diary entry that thanked fans for listening to “this dumb band”. For many of those fans, however, there was much more to Grandaddy than that. The music press had always fixated on trivia rather than talent: the band hailed from California, loved skateboarding, and many of the members had beards. They missed the simple fact that Grandaddy wrote really, really great songs. Songs that sounded summery and wintery at the same time, where poppy, upbeat tunes were underpinned by mournful lyrics and chilly keyboard sounds. In other words, songs that sounded ace when belted out in a mountain-fringed valley somewhere near Perth and Kinross. That, it has to be said, is a sign of being much more than just a “dumb band”.

Chatting across a wire, AU asks main daddy Jason Lyttle about the band’s past, present and future.

Was it a hard decision to finish Grandaddy when it obviously meant so much to you?

It would be hard if I had a bunch of bullshit excuses for it. I mean, it was to do with a lot of things. A big part of it had to do with money. You can be the critics’ darlings, but you still don’t make any money. That and grown men doing the same thing for a long time and wondering, “Does it make sense to continue doing this?”

The new album is turbulent and traumatic, but ultimately uplifting. Did you plan it as going out on a high note?

I would call it going out on a real note. I wish I had the right word for it. I wanted the record to be as complete as I could think of making it. I knew that it needed to be complete. A lot of other albums halfway come across, but I wanted this one to be as good as it possibly could be. I had sixteen songs written, and I was grateful for them. Each song meant so much to me, and I felt the responsibility to treat them right. That had a lot to do with the fact that they were fuelled by matters that meant so much to be.

The songs on there certainly are emotionally wrought.

Yeah. I was there and back, man. I was drunk and out of my mind. I was heartbroken. I was losing my band. I just wanted all of this to come across, but I didn’t want to think to myself, “Is this all I do: talk all the time and throw temper tantrums?” I mean, even a song like ‘50%’, which sounds like the most tossed-off thing in the world, there is so much feeling in that.

Were there any differences between the writing of these songs and the writing of those for previous albums?

On this one, songs are a lot longer. They go through the spectrum of emotions. When we started recording each one, I always thought, “Well, this is going to suck”. But, when you pull it off, it’s really rewarding. You keep going back to a song and adding stuff. You know that it won’t leave you alone, but it won’t give you the answers either.

To go back to the start then, how did Grandaddy get together?

Well, I first met Aaron at a skate park. He rented out equipment, swept things up, and gave tickets to little kids. I knew that Aaron was a drummer, and we just started playing together. He knew a guy called Kevin, who was playing guitar in a reggae band. I think Kevin was looking forward to not playing in a reggae band. So, we stole him. I guess I saved him from playing bad white boy reggae.

Was that when you started recording the album Under the Western Freeway?

At that point, I had been recording material for two or three years. I was making records to hand in to bars so I could play shows there. A record called Complex Party Come Along Theories came out of that. I knew I was striving for grandeur on that one. It had the blend of the scratchy and the big. I am still pretty proud of that part of it.

Who were your influences back then?

When I was young I had a fascination with ELO. Middle kids tend to like ELO. It is hooky and textured and memorable. When I started skating, I didn’t mention that one to my friends. Skaters aren’t supposed to like ELO.

Yep, don’t they like Black Flag and other angry rock types?

Yeah [laughs]. After a while though, I persuaded a lot of my friends to come out of the ELO closet. Pixies were an influence too: they were a great band of the chaotic and the melodic. Hold on [long pause], I think my cat is sick. He looks like a possum with rabies. Sorry, where were we?

We had just got to Under the Western Freeway.

Oh yeah, I rented a house out in the country, about sixty miles from Modesto. I bought a whole bunch of equipment and fitted the place out. We created an idyllic environment out there and just started recording.

That album reminds me of early Sparklehorse.

Yeah, there’s a similarity, I guess. They both have that same scratchy, homemade feel.

There was a big leap in terms of songwriting and production between Under the Western Freeway and The Sophtware Slump.

That was the effect of playing live and taking more things into consideration. I had bought more equipment and had rented another place. It was a really weird, dark and dinky house which was really small and claustrophobic. It must have been playing in that space, but I was trying to make the record sound as big as it could possibly sound.

The album was really well-received by critics and fans.

The success was a timing thing more than anything else. A lot of people needed to hear that record at that time.

How did the Arm of Roger record [spoof second album: selected highlights include a song about a cosmopolitan robot and an obscene comedy rap] come about?

Making The Sophtware Slump was all getting too serious. The record company were phoning us every day and bugging us about the new album. I wanted to throw a wrench in the gears, so we knocked that together and sent them that. Afterwards, I told the other guys not to answer the phone for five days. The company were totally freaking out about it. Lots of people lost their jobs over that [laughs].

What is amazing about Grandaddy is just how big a back catalogue you guys have accumulated over the years. As well as the albums, there are dozens of b-sides from singles, EPs and compilation tracks, as well as all of the bootlegs and unreleased material.

Yeah, my jaw dropped when I looked at our discography. I mean, I’m no Robert Pollard [Guided by Voices singer], but I was amazed at how many songs we have. I’d like to think that they cover all the bases. They’re a little funny, a little sad, a little serious. I guess I maybe get more out of them than the listener, as they are all representative of small chunks of time and memories. I’ll never get tired of taking the listener on a journey. Each time I put on a CD I hope it’s the one, but I know it won’t be. That’s what I was aiming for with the new album, I guess.

So, one final question then. What is going to happen after Grandaddy? Do you have any plans for the future?

It’s pretty exciting at the moment. The area where I’m going could be really beautiful. I think my brain is going to get wired in a really interesting and effective way.

And with that, Jason – sleepy, jetlagged and no doubt a little sad – signs off. He says that the new album’s title and, one suspects, Grandaddy’s exit stage right, was inspired by the feline tendency to slope off into the distance when they sense that death is fast approaching. There’s something really noble about that, says Jason, with no hint of irony in his voice. AU tends to agree. Don’t think of Grandaddy’s split as the demise of just another “dumb band”. Don’t think of it as going out on a high note. Just think of it as something that inevitably happens, and maybe it won’t seem so sad.

In fact, don’t think of it as the end at all. Listen to the music and think of something else entirely.

Striving for Grandeur: A Brief Guide to Grandaddy

Complex Party Come Along Theories

You might have to hunt around the internet for this one, as you will have a hard job getting hold of it otherwise. Collectors will want it for the sake of completion, but others might well enjoy the combination of the lo-fi ramshackle and the tuneful on offer here.

Under the Western Freeway

The first album proper from the Princes of Modesto, where experimental weirdness is mixed with back porch singalongs and big hunks of genuine radio-friendly pop in the form of ‘Summer Here Kids’. If you have seen 28 Days Later, you will have heard the videogame grunge of ‘AM 180’, which is surely one of the best singles of the past ten years.

The Sophtware Slump

A massive leap forward from what came before, this is brilliant in almost every conceivable way. The tunes are here, in the shape of ‘The Crystal Lake’ and ‘Hewlett’s Daughter’, alongside excursions into stranger territory such as the strangely moving eulogy for a frazzled computer called “Jeddy 3”. It is the songs that top and tail the album that really jerk the tears: the operatic opening track ‘He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s The Pilot’ and the closing track ‘So You’ll Aim Toward the Sky’. Soul-stirring, life-affirming stuff.

Signal to Snow Ratio EP

More cuts from The Sophtware Slump stable, including a further tale of Jeddy 3. Quite difficult to track down, but the whole world could be saved from going to hell in a hand-basket just by hearing the heartache beautiful ‘Protected From the Rain’.

The Broken Down Comforter Collection

A compendium of early recordings, this is worth having just to see how little the Grandaddy template changed throughout the years. Costs next to nothing at most reputable online stores, and it has the wonderful ‘Levitz’ on it.

Sumday

At first this seems slightly less left-of-centre than previous albums, with more major chord arrangements and deceptively happy-go-lucky tunes, but repeated listens reveal it to be just as melancholic as anything else the band has released. Whether lamenting how his life has crashed into a dead end, or describing an empty parking lot, Jason Lyttle sings like the loneliest man in the whole world.

Excerpts from the Diary of Todd Zilla EP

Intended as a stopgap release between “official” albums, this is not hugely different from other Grandaddy records. The requisite memorable tunes, lyrics about dejection, and the ghost of ELO are all here. Besides, how many other records have a song that includes the playground rhyme “Siamese, Portuguese, Dirty knees, Look at these”?

Just Like the Fambly Cat

And so, it’s time to say goodnight. This is everything that AU have come to expect from Grandaddy, only more so. The loud songs (‘Jeez Louise’, ‘Disconnecty’) are louder, the sad songs (‘Summer… It’s Gone’) are sadder, and the whole listening experience is wrapped up in the knowledge that this could well be the last we will hear from these guys. Fare thee well…

A Little Funny, A Little Serious: A Track by Track Guide to Just Like the Fambly Cat

1. What Happened?

Children asking what happened to the family cat over a plaintive piano line, with beeps and clicks added in for good measure. A neat way of setting the scene for what is to follow.

2. Jeez Louise

‘Summer Here Kids’ part two. A thumping, insistent drumbeat and a killer chorus make this an ideal choice for the first single.

3. Summer… It’s Gone

A desperately sad paean to things ending and slipping away. Bells, acoustic guitars, and a coruscating synthesiser that at one point threatens to devour the entire song.

4. Oxygen / Aux Send

A brief but haunting instrumental offers some welcome breathing room before a sequence of longer tracks.

5. Rear View Mirror

A real grower, this one. Starts quietly, with the song title repeated over a wavering synth, but builds to a chunky guitar surge in the middle.

6. The Animal World

Weird and eerie, this is Grandaddy at their strangest. But even their kind of weird and eerie has a really good tune.

7. Skateboarding Saves Me Twice

Mostly instrumental piece with yet another melody that you will be whistling in the bath, in the car, in your sleep.

8. Where I’m Anymore

More lyrics about alienation, coupled with Jason contributing “Meow” multi-tracked backing vocals to the chorus. Seriously.

9. 50%

Another interesting interlude in the form of a short and spiky burst of harmonious punk.

10. Guide Down Denied

Another epic, with lyrics that sum up the thrust of the album: “I don’t want to be the story / Of the guy who tried / But ended up guide down denied.” Yet more keyboards and multilayered harmonies.

11. Elevate Myself

Jolly videogame nonsense, but addictive with it. Kind of like Radiohead but more personable.

12. Campershell Dreams

Reminiscent of ELO circa Out of the Blue. Packs more sweet chords and vocals into four minutes than most bands manage on one album.

13. Disconnecty

Lashings and lashings of loud guitars and fuzzy keyboards. Another tune that will be jostling for space within your skull normally reserved for more important things.

14. This is How it Always Starts

A great way to end the album, and the career. Organs, digitised voices, drums, guitars, keyboards and static come together to make something that is both epic in scope yet incredibly intimate.

Hidden Track: Shangri-La (Outro)

“I’ll never return to Shangri-La,” sings Jason over one of the most heart-piercing minor arpeggios he has written thus far. Pretty upsetting when you think about it.

Back To Skule Yet Again.

2006-04-25T15:39:00.000+01:00

Yep, it's back to school for the final term in this placement, and indeed the final term of my course.

Rewinding back a bit, Ali Pup and I had a great time on holiday in Scotland. It was fantastic to see friends, and go on an 800 mile road trip from Troon to Skye to Loch Lomond to Home. We hung out with old pals in Dundee, stayed with other pals north of Inverness (where we had a truly delicious meal), pottered up to Skye for a few days, then across country to Loch Lomond.

We drove through up mountains and down valleys, through forests and over bridges. We saw sheep and deer and stag and the most amazing, snow-capped mountains and wild, open plains.

All in all, it was pretty supoib. We ate well and slept well and generally had a good all-round rest.

I handed in my thesis too when I was in Dundee. It felt weird to finally be shot of the thing, and when I paused to look at this bulky paper brick after I printed it, it did not feel as if I had written it. An odd sort of detachment set in, something that I still kind of feel to be honest.

Next stop, the viva... arrgh, that will be horrific...

Inverness Is Next To Godliness.

2006-04-15T10:32:00.000+01:00

Hey all,

We're having a lovely holiday so far. Driving, sleeping, eating, chilling, hanging out with friends - It's all good.

At the moment, we are staying up North of Inverness with an old friend Al and his wife Val. It's really nice up here: the drive yesterday was just fantastic, as it is pretty much nothing else bar fields and mountains and water. I don't actually mind driving long distances, as it is pretty relaxing when you get used to it. With Ali on CD changing duty, I am quite happy to tootle along for miles.

Dundee was good fun too, though a little brief. It was good to see buddies like Big Chris and Jude, Champion Kev and Lesley, and just chat and generally gype about.

Also did the Grandaddy interview, which went well too. I shall maybe post it here whenever I get it done. Jason (lead singer, songwriter and, well, main daddy) was really nice and welcoming to the questions that he has no doubt heard one thousand million times before.

Handed in the brick-sized thesis too, so it will be interesting / agonising to see how that pans out.

Going back to Dundee is always a nice but bittersweet experience, and I would be lying if I said that it did not jigger me about inside a bit every time I return. I spent so many happy times there, and so many crappy ones too, that they flood back whenever I drive into the city. It's not that I want to return there now (though that would not be so bad), or that I hanker after my careless youth (though I kind of do), more that I had so much fun there that I would not mind spinning back some years and doing it all again.

For now though, it's open fields and bridges and clear skies. It's pretty lovely up here. The Isle of Skye sounds like it should be spectacular too. The weather appears to be holding up, so it might be a nice drive today as well.

Okay, Alister has made an adventure breakfast.

I'm offski...

Off On A Jaunt.

2006-04-12T20:17:00.000+01:00

Just a very short one, folks.

Am off to Scotland with Ali tomorrow to see friends, travel, sleep, read, sleep, eat, walk long walks, hand in my ruddy thesis, sleep, sleep, sleep.

So, Chris, Kev, Al, we will see you soon...

Looking forward to it...

Update: Doing the Grandaddy interview tomorrow night. Any questions?

Got a free copy of the new Flaming Lips too. I love writing for a magazine. It's ace.

Something Borrowed.

2006-04-10T23:11:00.000+01:00

Last week was fun but almost unbearably busy.

First, there was helping out with the school play ("Musicals Through the Decades" as my uncharacteristically camp T-Shirt declares), which was a laugh. Highlights included:

Lots of things that I can not talk about for legal reasons. If, however, you meet me in person, ask me about it and I will tell you lots of funny stories.

Second, there was running up to Ali's parents' house afterwards to get ready for Mike and Laura's wedding on Thursday. I seem to have been to a lot of weddings in the past few years (including my own, natch), but this one really was a corker. It is lovely to see our good friends getting hitched, as they really are great for each other. They make a lovely couple.

I have only known Mike for a few years now, but he has become a great friend. He is smart, witty and very, very funny. A really genuine, dead on bloke. Laura, meanwhile, is a sweetheart. I have a lot of time and respect for her, and have grown very protective of her too (though not in a creepy uncle who is not really your uncle way). It really was a joy seeing them tie the knot.

After that, we had people (who were over for the wedding) stay at our house, which was nice if a little exhausting. Throw in some private tutoring, working on the dreaded thesis, and staying up too late watching telly and playing Nintendo, and I am now one very sleepy little chap.

So much so, in fact, that most of Sunday was spent in the land of nod. In-between eating and watching yet more telly, I slept in, had a nap, went back to bed, went for a refreshing walk only to head back to bed again.

I tell you, being busy doesn't half wear you out.

Quote of the wedding day comes from Ali: "Ross, you know your gays".

Lol.

I Hate Theses To Pieces.

2006-04-10T22:58:00.000+01:00

The past couple of weeks have past in a heady, dizzying blur, folks, and there is much to tell.

I am absolutely knackered, for reasons which I shall now reveal:

This Thursday, Ali and I head off to Sctoland for a jaunt (more on that later), but one one of my work-related duties is to finally hand in my thesis. I sent off the draft about 5 or 6 months ago, and my tutor finally got back to me to give the a-okay.

Well, I think that's what he meant by "hand it in as it is". Maybe he was so fed up with reading the biggest load of bollards that he just wanted to get rid of it.

So, some 400-odd pages, 550-odd footnotes, 70,000-0dd words, and a huge chunk of my life later, I am finally ready to give birth to this heavy, big, mewling beast of a thing that probably will make no sense to anyone other than me.

And, to be honest, it does not make that much sense to me either.

Looking at it now, some five months after I sent it off, it feels a little weird. It kind of seems as if it was written by someone else entirely. And even though, if I say so myself, some parts of it are maybe a little bit good, I know that the external marker will probably mawl it and say something like, "You helped kill the rainforest for this piece of crap?".

Anyway, time will tell. I will keep you updated..

Random Act Of Kindness.

2006-03-31T21:28:00.000+01:00

This morning I got a real treat in the post.

Normally, my mail consists of nothing but bills and junk and fluff (and every month the new issue of Empire), but today was different from that.

My good friend Mike Page (aka Page Boy) sent me a late birthday present of an Amazon voucher.

I have a long backlist of CDs and DVDs that I would really quite like if I had any money, so this is a real treat.

I met Mike a few years ago (he's the fiance of Ali Pup's best friend Laura), but we have become good pals in that time. He''s a funny and clever bloke, and I am really chuffed as him and Laura are getting married next Thursday. That's really good news.

This, of course, also means a day off school, which is pretty good news too.

Lol.

Righty-ho. Time to go peruse my Amazon wishlist...

Lovin' The Ipod.

2006-03-27T15:53:00.001+01:00

Have to say that I am absolutely loving the Ipod. It is absolute beezer, and changing the way that I listen to music. I had so many Mp3s stored on my computer that just weren't getting listened to, so now it's cool that they finally have an outlet.

Into my ears, that is.

Am currently reinvestigating Radiohead's... ouvre, for want of a less poncey word. Hail to the Thief, in particular is on current rotation, which sounds fantastic on the Ipod headphones. Clicks and whirrs and buzzes that I didn't pick out before are now as clear as a bell. It sounds great late at night, when Ali is asleep and I am in the kitchen making the next day's lunches. I cocoon myself in own hermetic musical universe and dance about the kitchen, trying not to slice my finger open with the cheese knife (I already did that last week by making a welcome mat: I cut my finger with a stanley knife and sent blood everywhere. It was like a scene from ER: blood was pouring down my arm, vampires were braying at my door and windows... all fairly nasty) and digging the Thom Yorke wail.

Amnesiac is also on there. It's the one that I didn't give a proper listen to before, but it sounds purty darned good, I have to say. Some great tunes on there, though we can skip the one about trapdoors and locked doors and all that nonsense. It's a bit guff, really.

On a teaching related tangent: today, I was walking along the corridor, which was empty and quiet for once, apart from this one girl who was slowly edging up the hallway. She had lank, raven-coloured hair hanging down in front of her face and, I swear, she looked just like Samara from The Ring. She even did the funny jerky walk (which I do sometimes in the house to freak Ali out - what a good husband I am) and everything. It was slightly weird. If I had been listening to that Radiohead track about trapdoors it would have been even weirder, I suspect.

Still watching the third season of The OC, but have to say that it lacks a little of the charm of the previous ones. A bit protracted - sorry, a lot more protracted than the other two, and repeats itself with fairly redundant storylines (the whole Marisa-Jonny thing is a real pain in the unmentionables), but it still has Nice Guy Sandy and Lovely Ickle Summer, so there's two good reasons to watch it.

Prison Break, on the other hand, is totally cheesy and unbelievable and far-fetched, but bags of fun too.

And, you'll like this Dane, I have downloaded about 9 episodes of the new season of The Shield, so am looking forward to getting wired into that. I love The Shield. It is perhaps the only programme that I watch that makes me feel physically tense and worried. The characters are so well-drawn too, and the writers take them to the darkest of places. Little kiddies, the easily offended and wimps need not watch.

Anyway, it's the end of the school day so I shall saunter off home. Mum and Dad are coming round tonight for a (Day After) Mother's Day tea. Ali's parents were round yesterday, so that explains why.

As for the Grandaddy interview... well, it seems that phoners are less important than face-to-facers, as it got pulled. Well, postponed indefinitely I should say. That's cool tho. From my understanding, Jason (bless him) is a shy guy, and is plenty busy at the moment, so we'll just have to hope that it does happen some other time.

Anyway, I should head off and put on my chef's hat.

Ali does the cooking though... I just wear it for fun, and to cover up my ridiculous hair.

See you,

Ross.

Howdy!

2006-03-17T21:44:00.000Z

Hey all,

Sorry for the lack of posting during the last few weeks. I wasn't taking a deliberate hiatus or anything, but this past while has been quite stressful and busy, and maybe you could say that the incessant typing of lesson plans and job applications put me off typing anything of any great (or not so great) consequence, but the long and the short of it is that I just haven't found the time to come on here.

Sorry about that. Starting back at school wiped me out a bit, and it wasn't helped by the fact that the school server has now started to block blogger for some reason, but I will now try my damnedest to get back into the swing of posting.

Thanks for that nice comment, whoever it was. If you hang on my every word, you really need to get out more, but it was sweet of you to say so.

Here is what has been happening since I was last here:

I have lots of funny stories to do with teaching, but I don't know that I am allowed to recount them here in case I break any privacy and child protection laws - truth be told, us teachers should have some protection from the kids that we have to teach.

I went to see Goodnight, and Good Luck, and I thought that it was fantastic.

And I just got an advance copy of the (now defunct, sadly) Grandaddy album, which is absolutely wonderful. Really, really good. A fitting send-off to a great band. They are one of the best live bands that I have ever seen.

In fact, I am interviewing lead singer Jason next week. Any suggestions for questions?

And, here's the coolest thing: I finally got an Ipod!

Yes, after all those months of waiting and saving and hankering...

It transpired that I was not going to be able to afford one. Being married, it seems, is an expensive business, so I had to put my savings to use elsewhere.

But, my brother David bought a new Ipod (A 60 GB Video, no less), and kindly gave me his old one. I was completely taken aback when he handed it to me, and didn't quite know what to say (apart from thankyou, obvs), but I am dead chuffed. I have had a wee play with it, and so far it seems a whole lot of fun.

Actually, I can't stop admiring it and thinking about what albums I am going to load onto it.

Huzzah!

Okay, I'll see you in a bit. Not a long bit, but a short bit, you understand.

I promise.

The Suicide Handbook.

2006-02-27T13:25:00.000Z

Any Ryan Adams fans out there could do a lot worse than heading here for a treasure trove of material, including the unreleased albums Suicide Handbook, 48 Hours and The Loft Sessions.

As far as I understand it, Destroyer is going to be posted here too.

These are all highly recommended, especially Suicide Handbook, which I downloaded from the Ryan Adams FTP a few years ago, and is very good indeed.

Go check it out...

Birthday Shenanigans Part Deux.

2006-02-24T15:40:00.000Z

Well, that's it over for another year, as my mum would say.

I had a fantastic birthday, and was blessed with lots of gifts and treats. I will be sending out formal thankyou cards in the next while, but a quick thanks now to everyone who was so generous to me on Tuesday. I really did get a lot of cool stuff: DVDs, CDs, Books, a new Hoodie, Aftershave (BOSS, lol), and a mike for my computer, to name but a few.

The mike is because I got a program for recording music onto my PC. You jack your guitar or whatever into a foot pedal, it acts as a mixer and pre-amp, and then off you go.

I've started messing around with some old songs that didn't make the band cut, and "new material": opening track for the forthcoming concept album is a weird, backwards Sigur Ros kind of thing.

So, maybe I'll put some MP3s of that up here when I'm done.

Anyway, just wanted to say thanks, so "thanks".

See you,

Ross boss.

Birthday Shenanigans.

2006-02-21T12:24:00.000Z

Well, I don't want to blow my own trumpet or strum my own harp, but I cannot write about the fact that it is my birthday today.

Yes, I have reached the ripe old age of 26 - ahem, I don't think so... well, I will let you figure out what age I am. I'm sure it won't take too much detective work.

So far I have had a lovely day, and have received some great gifts: Mule Variations on CD, Seinfeld Season Five on DVD, aftershave and other selected treats. As Jerry Seinfeld says, why are people given presents on their birthday? I mean, it's like being awarded a prize for not dying.

Well, I for one am glad that this tradition is in place, more so because I enjoy giving gifts when it is someone else's birthday, though I do torture myself somewhat in trying to find the ideal present. Honestly, it takes me roughly 10 times longer than the average person to pick out a present because I spend so much time agonising over it.

Anal, moi?

Anyways, I gotta go hit lectures, which will doubtless be a hoot and a half.

Off out tonight with Ali Pup for food and a film - or meal and a movie, whichever way you want to phrase it.

Adios, amoebas!

...

2006-02-20T15:27:00.000Z

I forgot to say that for Valentine's Day, Ali bought me Season One of Arrested Development on DVD, so I am looking forward to getting stuck into that.

We watched the Pilot the other night, and I laughed so hard a little bit...

Sorry, I should probably stop myself there.

My interior monologue is not working too well today.

Back To Skule Part Three.

2006-02-20T14:45:00.000Z

I found out where I am going for my next teaching placement, and have to say that I am somewhat relieved about it.

A required part of the course is that we have to complete three placements: one short one in Primary (done and dusted), one 11 week block in a Grammar School (also put to bed), and a final 11 week block in a Secondary School. Or "High" school, as they call it, not because of the amount of dope that the young bucks therein are smoking (though that might be true in some cases; I would not like to comment on that), but for some other legislative reason which I cannot be bothered going into right now.

So, in two weeks I am jetted off to a school that shall not be named (for legal reasons, you see, though that phrase now reminds me of a girl I once knew who is now referred to as "the beast that dare not speak her name") for more lesson planning, homework marking fun.

I don't really know what to expect other than it will be totally different to what has gone before. That said, I am looking forward to the kids, more so as they are what other folks refer to as "difficult" and "problematic" and other nice adjectives like that.

From my experience, they are the kids who are the most worthwhile, for they are the ones that require the most work and patience and effort, but if you make the smallest of breakthroughs with them it is like you have really accomplished something special.

Anyway, enough wittering from me about Pedagogical issues.

I need to get back to talking about Zombies. Speaking of which, I am currently reading Dead in the West by Joe Lansdale. Cowboys versus Zombies in the Wild West. Top hole!

"I Shot A Man In Reno, Just To Watch Him Die."

2006-02-16T16:19:00.000Z

After all that cogitating, we went to see Walk the Line the other night, and I am pleased to say that it was very good indeed.

Normally, these biopic things tend to be formulaic and cloyingly sentimental, but this was not like that. It was ace, in fact, and the two leads in it were superb. Apparently, they did their own singing and playing and everything, which is fairly impressive.

The only trouble was that I was absolutely boiling, partly because I was wearing a suit, partly because I was (and am) full of the cold, and partly because the cinema was completely full. I mean, not one seat was free, so all that body heat turned the theatre into an oven. By the end of the movie, I thought that I was going to pass out...

So, we didn't go to see Final Destination 3 (Dane informs me that it is pants, but then I don't expect it to be top notch drama.

Maybe we will go to see that for my birthday next tuesday.

I don't say that so that you will send me gifts and cards and nice texts... well, maybe that's a little part of it, but yes, it is my birthday next tuesday, and I am amazed at how quickly the year has rolled around. This time last year, Ali and I were in Scotland staying in the coolest B and B and eating the nicest meal I have ever had in my life.

Anyway, we will go out for a meal and then go and see either FD3 or Goodnight, and Good Luck .

More cogitating lies ahead...

...

2006-02-15T12:44:00.000Z

For any Ross boss completists out there (hello, all 2 of you), here is the book review that Scope decided not to print. I suspect it was because I thought that Brophy's book was a load of old guff. You may get the impression from this review that I was holding back in saying what I really thought, and you would be right...

100 Modern Soundtracks. By Philip Brophy. A Review by Ross Thompson, University of Dundee, UK. London: BFI Publishing, 2004. ISBN 1-84457-014-2. 34 illustrations, ix + 262pp.

It is hard to believe that cinema used to silent. Sound plays such a fundamental role in the filmic experience that to remove it now would be akin to deleting a vital figure in an equation. For example, the most iconic films of the last century are intrinsically linked to a particular piece of music. Think of the infamous moment in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho when Marion Crane is murdered in the shower. This scene, and the repetitive eek eek eek that accompanies it, is instantly recognisable, and has arguably been parodied more times than any other piece of film in the history of Cinema. Bernard Herrmann’s music, such as it is, works on several levels: it mimics the sound and motion of the knife as Janet Leigh’s character is stabbed to death, it emulates the as yet unknown killer’s manic thought processes, and it echoes the screams of the onscreen heroine - and presumably the audience looking on.

Think also of John Williams’s minimalist score for Jaws, the seesaw note progression that accompanied the shark’s point-of-view shot as it sped through the water towards a ship or a pair of dangling legs. The story goes that when director Steven Spielberg first heard Williams play the piece on a piano, he thought that the musician, who was known for his grandiose compositions, had lost his mind. However, Spielberg soon realised just how effective Williams’s arrangement could be. When removed from its proper context, it sounded dull and lifeless. When juxtaposed alongside the film’s underwater photography, it took on a kinetic, almost primal power. Reduced to little more than an accelerated heartbeat, the relentless music of Jaws ramped up the tension of the shark attack scenes to an unbearable degree. The film pretty much invented the notion of the “Summer Blockbuster” and went on to become one the most successful of all time. There is no doubt that the music played an integral part in that achievement.

It is this aspect of filmmaking that Philip Brophy tackles in 100 Modern Soundtracks. By “soundtrack”, he means several things: “The soundtrack is a world caught in eternal disequilibrium by two meta-forces: film scores – the commissioned composition of music for specific scenes – and sound design – the conceptualisation of how dialogue, sound effects and atmospheres are edited and mixed to provide the sound for a scene” (p. 1). As Brophy details, a soundtrack depends not only on the popular songs or original music that heighten and alter the emotions of a scene, but also the clangs, booms, ticks, pops and whirrs that are employed to make this artificial world sound like the real one.

Each of these categories can be used to startling effect. In each of Quentin Tarantino’s films, background music plays just as important a part as the script. Tarantino is renowned for reanimating the careers of failing actors (Bruce Willis, John Travolta), but he is equally adept at reinventing the way in which the audience views the purpose of incidental music in a film. All of his key sequences, which more often than not involve extreme violence, are played out against music of some kind. His choices can be unusual: the burst of Dick Dale’s thunderous surf guitar that opens Pulp Fiction or the Japanese pop songs that pepper Kill Bill. What is most fascinating about Tarantino’s technique is that he often juxtaposes the darkest imagery against the most saccharine music. The male rape scene in Pulp Fiction will forever be associated with the Revels’ ‘Comanche’. An instrumental that once sounded innocuously groovy becomes seedy and disturbing. The aural is now inseparable from the visual.

Sadly, Brophy has chosen not to include any films from Tarantino’s canon in his list. This is a glaring omission, more so given the commercial success of the soundtrack CDs for nearly all of Tarantino’s films. In fact, at several points Brophy’s text is a rather puzzling read. In this “thoroughly a-literate book”, to use the author’s own words, Brophy takes a somewhat scientific approach to the subject matter, but in doing so he not only omits several key pieces of information, but also dilutes the effect of sound within film (p. ix). He invites the reader to “think with one’s ears”, but he neglects to engage the heart (p. ix). It could be that this is due to the limited wordcount, as each entry is allocated a few pages of discussion. That said, on several occasions Brophy excels under this restriction. His discussion of Vangelis’s sweeping electronic score for Blade Runner, whose synthesised voices and instruments mirror the artificial intelligence of the “Replicant” characters at the film’s centre, is right on the money. As is his analysis of the Coen Brothers’ modern Film Noir Blood Simple, where a ceiling fan functions “as an emotional metronome” and “throbs as an entirely unnaturalistic yet crucially fixed phoneme in the story” (p. 42). The movie could also be recommended for an extended, dialogue-free inhumation sequence whose eerie silence is broken when the supposedly deceased begins to cough and splutter.

An equally powerful use of silence can be found in David Lynch’s Lost Highway. Brophy’s study of that picture provides another of the highpoints of this text. In one of the film’s many disquieting (pun intended) moments, Fred Madison walks into a darkened area of his home, and does not reappear for what seems to be an impossibly long time. Even though nothing happens, the scene is one of the most intense ever committed to celluloid. As Brophy puts it, “the strange sonic nothingness in Madison’s apartment is thick, fibrous, lichenal” (p. 156). The room is not really silent at all, but vibrating with refrigerator hums and radiator whines. The staging (and the soundtrack) perfectly captures the “ill ease of its psychodrama” (p. 157). If Brophy was permitted more breathing room, he might have compared it to the nightclub sequence in Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, in which the music is so loud that it obscures all other sound, including the dialogue. In true Lynchian style, only some prints carried subtitles.

Elsewhere, Brophy turns to “how songs can be used to culturally locate a story” (p. 49). In Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights and Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, pop, disco and rock are used as more than just an emotional accompaniment. They accurately pinpoint the era in which each film is set. Goodfellas in particular couples musical genres with the rise and fall of Henry Hill, the drug addicted wiseguy that helms Scorsese’s gangster opus. As Brophy highlights, the soundtrack also ties in with Hill’s nostalgia for those wild days when he was not living in protective custody.

Sadly, there are missed opportunities. In discussing Anderson’s ensemble piece Magnolia, Brophy cleverly likens the film’s theme of cancer to the nature of the soundtrack itself: “voices and music leak through thin walls; TVs crackle indifferently, indignantly and incessantly, oxidising the most private domains” (p. 162). However, while Brophy notes the resonance of Aimee Mann’s contributions to the soundtrack, he misses the fact that Anderson deliberately wrote the script with her music in mind. Several scenes are inspired by pre-existent Mann songs, and key pieces of dialogue are lifted from her lyrics. More than a piece of movie trivia, this knowledge offers another way in which the film can be viewed and interpreted. Anderson’s interpretation and reimagining of Mann’s lyrics is an almost unique way of writing for the screen.

Tarantino aside, purists might also balk at the idea of certain films that are included here. Brophy favours John Carpenter’s own soundtrack for Escape From New York over that of his seminal horror film Halloween. Eyebrows will definitely be raised at pieces on the 1998 remake of Dr. Dolittle and Resident Evil, an abysmal waste of an idea which, as far as I am concerned, is more enjoyable when watched on mute. However, contrary to our list-obsessed media, Brophy does not intend to provide a definitive collection of the “best” soundtracks of all time. He has chosen films that suit his concerns, and while some work better than others, the overall result is in places vividly realised. Occasionally, Brophy’s prose is impenetrable, where he captures the science of the soundtrack but not the soul, but there are many illuminating moments. Major chords in the midst of discordant avant-garde jazz, if you will.

"I Will Follow You Into The Dark"

2006-02-15T12:31:00.001Z

A glance at itunes informs me that the one song that I have listened to more than any other this past year is 'I Will Follow You Into The Dark' by Death Cab For Cutie.

It made its way onto Ali's compilation CD, and although its relevance might not seem immediately apparent, I thought that I would post the lyrics here for Valentine's Day.

Love of mine some day you will die

But I'll be close behind to follow you into the dark

No blinding light or tunnels to gates of white

Just our hands clasped so tight

Waiting for the hint of a spark

If heaven and hell decide

That they both are satisfied

Illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs

If there's no one beside you

When your soul embarks

Then I'll follow you into the dark

In Catholic school

As vicious as Roman rule

I got my knuckles brusied

By a lady in black

And I held my tongue as she told me

"Son fear is the heart of love"

So I never went back

If heaven and hell decide

That they both are satisfied

Illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs

If there's no one beside you

When your soul embarks

Then I'll follow you into the dark

You and me have seen everything to see

From Bangkok to Calgary

And the soles of your shoes are all worn down

The time for sleep is now

It's nothing to cry about

Cause we'll hold each other soon

In the blackest of rooms

If heaven and hell decide

That they both are satisfied

Illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs

If there's no one beside you

When your soul embarks

Then I'll follow you into the dark

Chairman Meow!

2006-02-15T12:31:00.000Z

Chairman Meow!
Originally uploaded by Ross Boss.

For part of Ali's Valentine's gift, I made her a compilation CD with this picture on the front cover.

I know that it's an oldie, but it's a goodie.

I thought that I would share the image here as it is pretty funny.

And the more you look at it, the funnier it gets.

...

2006-02-14T16:09:00.000Z

So, a Happy Valentine's Day to each and every one of you.

So far, most of my day has been spent in class, which has not been much fun since a. it is for the most part interminably dull, and b. I currently have a sore throat and am losing my voice: it feels as if a little tiny man wearing a hedgehog coat is living in there just now.

Tonight, to get in the romantic spirit of the event, Ali Pup and I are heading out to an Italian restaurant, and will then probably head on to the cinema. Sadly, there is not anything particularly seasonal on at the flicks (a few years ago, for example, it was Two Weeks Notice, which I really liked despite myself), so it is a choice between comedy decapitations (Final Destination 3), weighty terrorist drama (Munich) or emotional biopic (Walk the Line).

What do you guys think?

I don't think it will really matter, as we have not been to the cinema in ages, so it will just be cool to go there, no matter what we see.

That said, tomorrow I could be ranting and raving about the piece of crap that we spent good money on, so we'll see.

In any case, let's keep it cheery, and keep it romantic.

Happy Valentine's, all you lovers out there...

Mutated Waffle.

2006-02-02T12:18:00.000Z

Scope, the online academic journal run out of Nottingham Uni, has just printed my review of a Scott Bukatman book.

I thought that I would cut and paste it to here, for no reason other than... hmmm, I just thought of doing it.

It's a bit waffly, but then all academic articles are.

Matters of Gravity: Special Effects and Supermen in the 20th Century
By Scott Bukatman

Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8223-3119-5. 55 illustrations, xvi + 296 pp. £17.50 (pbk)

A Review by Ross Thompson, University of Dundee, UK

In his introduction to Kingdom Come, Alex Ross and Mark Waid's graphic novel about a future war between superheroes, Elliott S. Maggin writes, "In the waning moments of the twentieth century, the superhero is Everyman" (5). The modern age has become accustomed to the superhero. Phenomena of science and physical dexterity no longer hold the same element of spectacle that they once did. Maggin continues, "Look at the way we live: travelling over the Earth at astounding speeds with unimaginable ease; communicating instantly at will with people in the farthest corners of the globe" (6). In the previous century, mankind watched astronauts shoot off into space and walk on the moon. Their puffy, oversized, dome-helmeted suits gave them the look of comic book characters. What once appeared far, far away was now much closer, and much less mysterious as a result.

The moving image is no longer seen as a form of benign witchcraft. It has become everyday, passive entertainment. Scott Bukatman negotiates this territory in Matters of Gravity, a popular culture dominated by special effects, where computer-generated imagery creates a world where anything is possible, and nothing, least of all other planets, is out of reach. His writing covers a range of disparate subjects: the futuristic experience offered by Disneyland, or the music video for Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice", in which a jubilant Christopher Walken dances in a deserted hotel lobby. Tellingly, the most curious element of this short is not that the character leaps over a banister and sails through the air. It is the fact that Walken dances. "I didn't know he could do that," the viewer thinks, somewhat ignoring the graceful arcs he performs mid-air.

Elsewhere, Bukatman analyses the technique known as "morphing". This process, which he describes as "continual remaking of the self" was adapted for two science fiction films by the American director James Cameron (134). In The Abyss (1989), a pool of water sprouts a fluid tentacle, which elongates along the corridors of a deep sea station before its tip ripples into the shape of a human face. For Cameron's next film Terminator 2 (1991), the novelty was even greater. Audiences were enthralled by a cyborg made entirely of liquid metal impersonating those whom he executed.

The first thing that the reader notices is the musicality of Bukatman's prose, which is witty and playful whilst losing none of its analytical power. He has a talent for studying complex concepts without getting mired in clumsy literary theory. When a sentence veers too close to the snootily intellectual, Bukatman subverts it with a self-deprecating comment or a wry aside. He knows he is on thin ice speaking of comic books and popcorn movies in language that others might reserve for the "Classics" and the "Masters". In that respect, his writing is reminiscent of that of the late critic Tony Tanner, who produced expansive and deeply compassionate portraits of authors such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Burroughs at a time when American Literature was not considered a fashionable area of study.

The comic book, for example, perhaps the area on which Bukatman's writing is strongest, has always acted as a purging of teenage and adult neuroses. "Identity is the obsessional center of superhero comics, as revealed by endless processes of self-transformation and the problematic perceptions of others", he posits (54). While the act of donning a mask has symbolic resonance, a metamorphic dualism that would excite most philosophers, the power of the medium runs much deeper than that.

Like the lowly humans they disguise themselves as, superheroes are driven by insecurities, yearnings and self-doubts. For example, there is the way in which comics company Marvel presents the emergence into the brave new world of puberty as an unremittingly painful period. Bukatman argues:

the Marvel heroes were rarely gifted by birth or by choice; they were instead transformed in young adulthood by (sort of) varied forces: radioactive spider bites, cosmic ray bombardment in near Earth orbit; gamma ray bombardment at a military testing ground […] The Hulk, for example, got big and hairy and his voice changed. Go figure (54).

For the most part, these young people do not view their new powers as a blessing, but as a curse. If the gawky, bespectacled teenager Peter Parker believes that his life is bad before he is transformed into Spider-Man, then it is much worse afterwards. Endlessly plagued by a league of villains hell-bent on destroying his home city of New York, Parker and his alter- ego Spidey is constantly saving his loved ones and fellow civilians whilst trying to maintain some resemblance of a social life and keeping his true identity (the "real me", to employ the patois of anaemic American teen dramas) a secret. Stan Lee, the comic book Svengali who claimed to have created the Spider-Man franchise could not resist inserting the moralising maxim "With great power comes great responsibility" into the story, but Peter Parker wants neither of those things. He is given power at a stage in life when most normal teenagers enjoy being irresponsible. Therefore, the main selling point of the Spider-Man comic, as Bukatman highlights, is that anyone can relate to it.

Perhaps out of all the superheroes, it is the X-Men (Marvel, again) that most poignantly balances the superhuman with the human. While the students that attend Professor Xavier's school for the gifted are identified on the surface by what Bukatman calls "hypermasculinity" and "supersolidity", inside they are just as fragile as the "normal" society from which they seek shelter. Persecuted by the families that do not or will not understand their "gift", characters such as Longshot, Shadowcat and Colossus take refuge at the Xavier mansion, where they can find community with others just like them. The individual character arcs of these so-called "mutants" are symbolic of the hostility and suspicion on which significant periods of American history have been built.

Put simply, the X-Men, taken individually or as a collective group, could be adopted for any abject group in society, but the most straightforward answer is also the most satisfying. Bukatman writes, "Mutants, while they want to fit in, know their birthright is to exist 'outside' the normative. They are categorical mistakes of a specific type; they are, in short, adolescents" (69). Take, for example, the character of Cyclops, whose eyes emit lasers that are so powerful that he must wear a protective visor at all times. "The struggle of Cyclops involves holding back this energy, containing it within himself. To release it would be to destroy his own sense of being (the woman he loves can never see his eyes)" (68). The X-Men series is full of similar metaphors for the insatiable desire for something that you cannot have.

Elsewhere, Bukatman's other observations are just as illuminating. His piece on Cyberpunk author William Gibson is peppered with intriguing sideways shifts in logic. Bukatman namechecks the Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan, but his analysis of creating prose (on either an antiquated typewriter or an electronic word processor) is evocative of the work of Paul Auster, particularly the novella City of Glass, in which New York blocks are likened to paragraphs in a book, and a homeless man spells out words by walking the city's streets. His moving discussion of the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 is an effective companion piece to the comic book genre, which features scenes of mass destruction on a regular basis. Furthermore, before the September 11 tragedy took place, American movies frequently featured their cities being decimated. In the aftermath of the assault on the two towers, films like these appeared less often. In a reversal of the conundrum discussed at the beginning of this review, cinema could not match up to real life.

Bukatman's strongest quality is that he takes his subject, not himself, seriously. His essays are compelling because he imbues them with humour, not with archness. Bukatman knows that the notion of a comic book -- underpants worn outside tights, overt phallic symbolism -- is pretty ridiculous, and questions why a grown man would buy so many in the name of "research", but his enthusiasm for the material is infectious. At one point, Bukatman states, "Nothing kills a good critical analysis like an author who beats you to it" (47). Bukatman guides the reader to the truth, but in most cases permits them to see it for themselves, with or without x-ray vision.

...

2006-02-01T13:38:00.000Z

If anyone out there are as big a Frames fan as I am (in terms of enthusiasm, that is, not girth), then you will be glad to know that some kind chap has put up a few live bootlegs from America up on the web.

They are available for download here.

I have them both, and they are very good quality.

Check them out, if you are so inclined.

Warning: Might Contain Sarcasm Part Two.

2006-02-01T13:05:00.000Z

Sad Will
Originally uploaded by Ross Boss.

Thanks to Dermo for this one...

Warning: Might Contain Sarcasm.

2006-02-01T13:02:00.000Z

Sad Jennifer
Originally uploaded by Ross Boss.

As I continue to look back and reflect on the busy beaver-ness of this past year or so, here is an old post circa the announcement of my upcoming nuptials that caused the female population of the world to wail and gnash their teeth uncontrollably.

Homeowner.

2006-02-01T13:01:00.000Z

Homeowner
Originally uploaded by Ross Boss.

It's weird to think that I own my house. Well, Ali Pup owns half of it.

Or, to be more exact, the bank owns it, but I like to call it "mine". It's also weird to think that we have been abiding there for eight months now. The guts of a year have passed since we first picket up the keys and started decorating the place.

A theme that I shall return to frequently in the coming weeks is one that rarely seems to be off my mind at the moment: time seems to be moving too fast, and there is no way to stop it. Anyway, on a more cheerful note, here's a photo of me in my (then) new place, pre-decorating hi-jinx.

I'm An Actor, Get Me Out Of Here.

2006-01-31T09:19:00.000Z

Has anybody else been watching Prison Break?

Now that Big Brother is over, we need another show where people are locked up in a big house and are cruel to one another.

I have to say that although Prison Break is pretty daft, it's actually quite enjoyable if you take it for what it is: undemanding entertainment. It is fairly contrived (the all-over body "Magic Eye" tattoo was perhaps pushing the boat out a little too far), it rips off other, better films left, right and centre (the tattooed clues are an obvious nod to Memento, while the whole nasty guards, creepy, overacted homosexuals and pretty much everything else is The Shawshank Redemption), but those quibbles aside, it is junk food for the brain.

Of course, it doesn't scrape the dizzy heights of CSI or The O.C., but it's still pretty good.

What does anybody else think?

Incidentally, when that gobby idiot Pete Burns was kicked out of Big Brother, and jeered at in quite spectacular style, the producers missed a perfect opportunity to crib that joke from The Simpsons:

Crowd: Boo! Boo!

Pete Burns: Are they saying "Boo" or "Boo-urns"?

Crowd: Boo! Boo!

George Galloway: I was saying "Boo-urns".

I realise that if you have not watched either Big Brother or The Simpsons, then you will have no idea what I am talking about. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Right, classes to teach...

Winners Never Quit.

2006-01-27T10:15:00.000Z

Following on from the news about the late, lamented Grandaddy, it seems that there are fractions inside the camp of another of my favourite artists, Pedro the Lion.

Now, anyone who is a fan of the "band" will know that the music is basically all written, recorded, arranged and produced by a dude called Dave Bazan. He essentially is Pedro the Lion. However, T.W. Walsh has contributed a great deal to the last few albums, Achilles Heel (which is okay but not superb) and Control (which is superb and definitely not just okay).

So, the long and the short of it is that T.W. Walsh has left, leaving Dave Bazan to drop the Pedro moniker and record and tour under his real name.

I don't know what this means for Dave's future. He has always been someone who has defied expectations at every turn, making a left when you expect him to go right. His albums are wonderful, particularly It's Hard to Find a Friend and Winners Never Quit, as they are almost like little novels, each story telling a different chapter in the life of the protagonists.

Winners Never Quit, for example, seems to be about two warring brothers. Control is about a dysfunctional, fast failing relationship, one of infidelities and bad thoughts that ends in murder.

Bazan has always been embraced by the Christian community (myself included), but he continually pushed the envelope of what is acceptable. There is the rather superficial detail of him swearing in his songs, which one, depending on their opinion, will either think of as a concession to the material or a defiance of the Christian faith. I have one foot in both camps, I suppose.

That aside, he does make beautiful, deeply moving music. Control is fantastic in its unflinching portrayal of American society:

If it isn't making dollars

Then it isn't making sense

If you aren't moving units

Then you're not worth the expense

Winners Never Quit is wondeful in the fact that it pushes the listener to the darkest places before reaching, finally, towards some form of redemption:

Count it a blessing

That you're such a failure

Your second chance

Might never have come

I don't know what will happen next for Pedro the Lion / Dave Bazan, but I hope that it will be good.

So You'll Aim Toward The Sky...

2006-01-27T10:07:00.000Z

It's a sad day here at Broken Sounds HQ.

Whilst reading Sean's blog I discovered that one of my favourite bands, Grandaddy, have decided to split.

I suppose that I should have seen it coming. Their last full length album, Sumday, was not their greatest work, but I am rather adamant that their previous work, The Sophtware Slump, is one of the most accomplished collections of music ever recorded.

I must have listened to The Sophtware Slump dozens and dozens and dozens of times, and there was a period when I was living in Scotland that I barely listened to anything else. For those of you who have not heard it, it is a wonderful, wonderful album that pretty much defies categorisation. The closest that I could get to it is "not so much alt country, as ctrl-alt-del country", which I may use sometime in the future.

Grandaddy, you see, take computers and synthesisers and mix them with conventional guitars and instruments to create a unique sound...

See? Even that sounds rather poncey.

I don't really know how to describe their music. It's just really, really great. Now, when I listen to The Sophtware Slump I am amazed at how fresh it still sounds, some five or six years after it was released, but also how quickly it zaps me back in time to University in Scotland, sitting at my computer desk in my bedroom in my freezing flat, my hoodie pulled up over my head and my headphones in my ears, listening to tracks like 'He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's The Pilot' and 'Chartsengrafs' on repeat.

Over and over and over again.

I remember driving the minibus to and fro gigs with my band, listening to that album repeatedly, and being totally lost in the music.

I remember seeing Grandaddy play twice (once at T in the Park, once in Glasgow), and how they were two of the best concerts that I have ever seen. They were absolutely fantastic.

It's a sad day, therefore.

Goodnight, you kings of Modesto, you princes of California.

If you want to hear sad songs about lonely computers, men called Hewlett, and forests full of junk, and have not done so already, buy The Sophtware Slump here.

So you'll aim toward the sky

And you'll rise high today

Fly away

Far away

Far from pain

Favourite Things 2005.

2006-01-26T11:56:00.000Z

Continuing on the tradition of last year's post, here is my review of 2005.

It's late once again, but hey, it's not as late as last year's...

All in all, 2005 was a weird, weird year. Other adjectives that one might use are: busy, exciting, scary, sleepless, tiring, sad, joyful, resplendent, wonderful, difficult...

So much has changed this past year that I feel as if all of my bones have been broken, then re-set in a completely different shape.

I kind of feel like a different person, but I kind of feel the same too. All the things that I dislike about myself remain, but a few new ones have been added too, but I generally feel much happier, much more content, and have mellowed considerably.

Taking into account that I was quite mellow before, this is something of an achievement.

Fact: even though I have never partaken of drugs, I have on several occasions been quizzed by security guards as to what I have in my pockets.

For example, in the past twelve months, I have written up a PhD draft, got married (and therefore a mortgage and numerous bank loans), moved house (and built about 15 pieces of furniture), and finished half of my teacher training. I have made new friends, lost others, said goodbye to some pets, travelled across the world, interviewed some of my favourite bands, and seen a lot of brilliant films and even more craptacular ones.

And thanks to my friend Dane, I got addicted to Tom Waits, which resulted in months and months of constant listening, a phase from which I am yet to emerge. Thus, good old Tom features quite heavily in my end of year poll.

Here we go...

Favourite Things of 2005

Movies (Overall, not a fantastic year for films, it has to be said)

8. The Island

7. Land of the Dead

6. Sideways

5. War of the Worlds

4. The Descent

3. Sin City

2. Batman Begins

1. King Kong

Records (That I Heard This Year)

12. Ryan Adams - Destroyer

11. Jenny Lewis - Rabbit Fur Coat

10. Ben Folds - Live in Berlin 2005

9. The Frames - Live in Chicago

8. Elbow - Leaders of the Free World

7. dEUS - Pocket Revolution

6. Tom Waits - Bone Machine

5. Tom Waits - Rain Dogs

4. Ben Folds - Songs For Silverman

3. Clem Snide - End of Love

2. Calexico + Iron and Wine - In The Reins EP

1. Tom Waits - Mule Variations

Televisual Addictions

8. Desperate Housewives

7. My Name Is Earl

6. Lost

5. Seinfeld

4. The OC

3. The Sopranos

2. Deadwood

1. The Shield

In: Falling Asleep On The Train

Out: Falling Asleep In The Bath

In: Walkers Sensations Roasted Onion And Balsamic Vinegar Crisps

Out: Walkers Sensations Thai Sweet Chili Crisps

In: Chicken BBQ Feast

Out: Volcano

In: Resident Evil 4

Out: Smash Brothers

In: "Let's get this show on the road."

Out: "So be it."

How was your 2005?

Another Day, Another Nightmare About Zombies.

2006-01-17T12:58:00.000Z

Haven't written anything for the site for a wee while, but have been working on new links etc on the side panel.

Have a few more cool things to put up, but can't do them in school as the sites I need to use are blocked by the network (no, they are not porn), so I will have to do them at home.

Woken up by yet another nightmare about zombies this morning. This one was set in Bangor, which, as far as I know, is not yet home to hordes of the shuffling undead. In my dream, however, the town had been taken over by the recently exhumed, and the streets were amok with lumbering, groaning deadites looking for tasty human flesh.

It transpired that I was part of - don't laugh - a crack commando team whose job it was to protect any remaining civilians from these vile scum. I had on the full garb: armoured jacket, helmet, green and black clothes, lots of weapons: knives, guns and even a BFG (one for the Doom fans out there).

Our team was working through an area of the town when we were set upon by a throng of deadites far too large for us to fight. Quite a lot of my comrades got bumped off early on as they met with particularly grisly deaths (my dreams, it has to be said, are often Rated R and not for young eyes). Cue squelching sound effects and lots of screaming.

I headed back to the base, and snuck in through a secret entrance, but halfway through walking up the stairs I realised that it had been overrun too.

I heard groaning from both up and down the metal steps, then realised that I was a goner.

My guns refused to work (as they often do in dreams: insert impotence symbolism here), but I had a big machete (a BFK, if you will), with which I preceded to hack away at the oncoming zombies and zombettes. Cue more squelching sound effects and lots of blood.

I woke up halfway through the hacking and squelching, just as some crumbly begger was about to take a bite out of my neck, a little out of breath and somewhat disturbed.

Some might say that these nightmares have something to do with me watching the occasional Horror movie, but I have had dreams about zombies before I ever saw a film about them. They have been troubling my sleep ever since I was a little boy, and I don't know where and when they originated.

Anyone else dream about being a commando fighting the undead?

It's Art If It's Tastefully Done.

2006-01-05T14:21:00.000Z

Yo ho ho,

Have a gander at this.

Go there, type in broken sounds and see what happens...

At last! I have achieved something worthwhile!

Back To Skule (Again).

2006-01-05T13:17:00.000Z

Holidays are over, and it's back to the grind for another month or so.

Yesterday, getting up out of bed was easy, a piece of cake, and I'm not even a big fan of cake.

Today, though, was a completely different story. When the alarm on my phone went (not long after my head hit the pillow, it seemed), I couldn't believe it, and was not keen, not keen at all, to clamber out of my nice warm bed. It was freezing outside, and I really was not in the mood for dealing with uncooperative pupils.

That said, today has not been too bad: the classes are fine, and the pupils are manageable, but I once again feel as if I am a shuffling, shambling member of the undead. Every day this happens (which is quite a lot), I promise myself that I will go to bed early that night to get lots of delicious sleep, but it never happens.

Well, let me qualify that: I am going to bed and therefore sleep much earlier than I ever have done (sometimes even before midnight), so this is a huge leap forward in my sleeping patterns, if one could call my nightly exertions of tossing, turning, thrashing and nightmares about zombies could be called "sleeping patterns". In fact, I recently watched The Descent, pretty decent scary movie about women potholers being hunted by creepy, evil Gollum-like humanoids. I woke up in the middle of the night to find myself standing beside the bed swatting at invisible creatures, fearing that they were crawling underneath the bed and were going to kill Ali.

Anyway, I am meandering way, way off the topic at hand, which, it seems, has slipped clean out of my hand and bounced across the floor under a cupboard. The point of this aimless epistle is that I am now back to work. The female English teachers (12 of them versus one of me: that's my kind of odds) are sitting around chat chatting (not, however, about stilton and port as normal), and I am little jack horner in the corner being unsociable and typing up this nonsense. It is lunch and I am somewhat fed up talking to people (in the case of some classes, talking at them), so I am taking some "time out" before I head back into the fray.

It's only first form this afternoon, so it wont be too taxing. A stern word is all it takes to silence the little lambs. In the case of other classes further on up the food chain, this stern word must be accompanied by a slightly menacing look: pursing of the lips, furrowing the eyebrow, perhaps raising the finger.

Ahh, the ways of being a teacher. As you can see, I am wit wit wittering, so I should be qualified to be a teacher already.

Anyway, I shall cease.

Welcome To 2006.

2006-01-01T18:47:00.000Z

Sorry for the gaping void in my blogging schedule over the past two weeks. This fortnight has been hugely busy and enjoyable, so I have hardly been near a computer at all.

So, I just wanted to pop in and say "hi" and "happy new year" to all of you from everyone here at Broken Sounds HQ. I trust that you had a good one, whatever you were up to. We had a cool, quiet time in with a bunch of friends. It was a somewhat subdued, but rather pleasant way to spend the celebrations.

A lot of stuff has happened over the past while, and I am itching to get it all written up when I get a chance to be near a computer with free internet access when I head back to school this week.

Here are some of the highlights:

First Christmas in a new home.

Going to see The Frames (and hanging out for a bit with Glen Hansard).

Getting and giving lots of nice gifts.

Somebody crashing into my car.

And, as they say, many more.

See you soon...

Ross.

Goodnight, Minnie Mouse.

2005-12-22T16:01:00.000Z

Last night, when we came back from dinner at a relative's house, we discovered that Minnie, our hamster, had passed away.

This is a sad occasion, as we have had her in our company for two years or so, and she has been the nicest, most friendly hamster we have had so far.

She was curled up in her little bed, so she must have died in her sleep, but at least she died happy and warm and safe.

I know that some people don't like the idea of hamsters (or "rodents", as they call them), but Minnie really was great fun to have around. She was immensely sociable, and always came out of her cage to say hi whenever I or Ali came home from work. She never really bit (unless you had just eaten a pizza or crisps or something and your fingers smelt of food), and she was rarely angry, so we will miss having her around.

We put her body in a wee cardboard box and buried it deep in the front garden late last night.

To paraphrase a good friend of mine, Minnie was a very bright light.

R.I.P. Minnie Mouse 2003-2005.

King Kong, Merrily On High.

2005-12-20T11:20:00.000Z

The past couple of Christmases have not been the same without a big and brash Peter Jackson action movie.

Last festive season was sorely devoid of orcs and elves and rangers and oliphants (coincidentally, I once met a very obnoxious girl with the surname Oliphant, which suited her in both personality and girth), so I was very excited at the prospect of seeing King Kong this time around.

I was a little worried (just a little, mind) that Action Jackson would drop the ball after the three huge hits of the Rings trilogy, but I should not have been. King Kong was rather fantastic: a full-on, old-school boy's own romp full of very inventive and rather violent action setpieces. And it has dinosaurs in it. I mean, how can you not love a film that has dinosaurs in it. The talking beavers in Narnia just don't compare to dinosaurs. I mean, fair enough, the T-Rexes don't speak, but they still kick ass.

I loved King Kong. Loved it, loved it, loved it. Even though there is a very icky, feet off the floor bit in it with giant insects. Seriously, if you are at all squeamish about things that creep and crawl, I would not recommend watching this scene. Especially for the kiddiwinks. I was a little surprised at how far Jackson pushes the envelope on that bit. I mean, the bit in Temple of Doom where Indy has to tromp through that hall full of bugs is nothing on this. It is supremely gross.

Speaking of Narnia, I was not that fussed on The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. It just did not do it for me (Sorry, Colleen). I don't quite know what it was that I found lacking in the film, but the hole was there, and unignorable.

I am not big in to comparing movies, especially ones that are so completely different, but King Kong is for me the better film of the two. More accomplished, perhaps, and perhaps even more interesting. While I do like the Christian analogy of Narnia (put that in your pipe, Polly Toynbee), I really enjoyed the "love story" between Naomi Watts and the big Simian. It did not seem weird at all that affection and perhaps something more could blossom between a lady and a overgrown, hairy ape (Insert joke about two celebrities of your choice here: how about David Furnish and Elton John?), which made the ending all the more effective.

Suffice to say I'm looking forward to the DVD next year.

In fact, I may have to go see the movie again before the holidays are out...

...

2005-12-19T09:45:00.000Z

Here's the unedited version of the Glen Hansard interview.

I don't think it's my best work, but there you go. Win some, lose some...

The last time that Irish band The Frames played a gig in Belfast was around twelve months ago, just shortly after the release of the album Burn the Maps, arguably their most challenging yet most rewarding work to date. These gigs always prove to be celebratory, hugely emotive affairs, so fans will be overjoyed to know that The Frames will play in our city again this December. That is, if they can make it unscathed through yet another exhausting, whistle-stop tour of Europe.

AU chats to Frames frontman Glen Hansard about the forthcoming gig across a wire from Belfast to Prague. Glen is, as ever, friendly, polite and enthusiastic. It is difficult not to be charmed by his charisma and lust for life. After spending half an hour in his company, AU is enjoying the warmth of a heady, ready-brek glow. Glen is everything that the stereotypical rock star is not. Arrogance and aloofness do not appear to be in his vocabulary, or his genetic makeup. He listens patiently to each inane question as if it is the first time that he has been asked it, even though AU knows that he has heard everything that we have written down one hundred times before. He does not knock other artists. Rather, he raves about them: Leonard Cohen and Van Morrison will be familiar names to anyone who has ever heard Glen play a solo set, but what is more surprising is that he also effuses about – and yes, you are reading this correctly – David Gray.

“David Gray has made some fantastic records,” Glen says, without a hint of sarcasm.

The Frames have been playing together in one form or another for around fifteen years. That’s a pretty impressive statistic. Most pop careers have risen, fallen and hit the thorny comeback trail in a fraction of that time. In fact, fifteen years is equal to the amount of time that many of today’s deluge of identikit pop singers have been alive. Fifteen years is roughly twice the time that The Pixies faced one another in the same studio or on the same stage, and that’s counting their recent reunion tour. In this light, one wonders what has kept The Frames going for this length of time, and what keeps them going still. When AU asks Glen Hansard what the band has been doing during the twelve months since they last visited Belfast, some clues begin to appear.

“Pretty much exactly what we were up to then: touring and more touring. We have already been to America three times this year, and that was fantastic, but playing at The Point in Dublin last week was amazing. For some, The Point has this great prestige attached to it. When people heard about that gig, they phoned us up and said, “Wow, you guys are playing the Point, you must really have made it”. I kind of thought that myself. I mean, we’re a band that plays venues like Whelan’s or Vicar Street. We don’t play The Point.”

Even though The Frames had been playing dozens of sell-out shows across the length and breadth of Ireland for years, none of this prepared the band for the enormity of the experience.

“At first I was amazed at how small the venue felt, but then I was so overwhelmed by it all that I couldn’t sing. I lost my breath at the end of ‘Revelate’. That’s never happened to me before, and the first time it does it’s in front of thousands of people.”

Glen laughs as he remembers the scene: “After we finished playing, I just collapsed. The guy from the St. John’s Ambulance saw me lying on the floor, and came over and gave me oxygen. I had seen those guys backstage at festivals when the likes of Green Day were playing, but I never thought that I would need them.”

One of the reasons that the group was catapulted into playing such a big league venue was the critical success of Burn the Maps. It’s funny to think that the record received so many glowing reviews, because at first this deliberate left turn confused many fans. By no means could it be said that The Frames had done a Kid A, even though the coda of the track ‘Ship Caught in the Bay’ comprises an onslaught of Aphex Twin clicks, beeps and loops, but Burn the Maps definitely marked a brave foray into darker, stranger territory. If previous record For the Birds was an early morning soundtrack awash with lilting, vaguely Celtic melodies, then Burn the Maps sounded like its more sinister twin: the perfect accompaniment to a nocturnal jaunt through a spooky wood full of knotholes and gingerbread houses.

After getting over the initial shock that the band had largely dispensed with the somnolent beauty that imbued For the Birds, the rhythms and judders in Burn the Maps begin to itch and prick the skin. On opening track ‘Happy’, the layered harmonies sound as if they are thrumming within a shell cupped to the listener’s ear. Once again, the lyrics are built on recurring theme of self-doubt: “Come and help me out I’m sick from the fire / From inserting a laugh where there’s none”. Does Glen find it easy to write about his own failings?

“It’s coming more with age,” Glen says. “I feel more comfortable writing about myself, but I’m also getting bored with expecting people to listen to me complaining about my problems. I hate all that moany-boy navel-gazing. I hear myself and think, “You really need to lighten up, man”. I mean, I can’t listen to reggae music, but I like the philosophy behind it: just sit back and enjoy life.”

Lyrically, ‘Happy’, and the rest of Burn the Maps, seems to be about what happens when you can’t just sit back and enjoy life, what one does when putting on a brave face, keeping your pecker up, holding your head high and other clichés don’t work. As in live favourite ‘Rent Day Blues’ from the album Dance the Devil, many of the tracks seem to be about quitting or leaving a place or a relationship. In ‘Sideways Down’, there is the line “Maybe I should just move along”. In ‘Locusts’, Glen sings, “I’m moving off / I’m packing up”. Look inside the album sleeve and you will see a photograph of Glen gripping on to a rope that disappears off the edge of the paper. If this is supposed to be a metaphor, then it is intriguingly unclear what it might mean: is this a picture of a man at the end of his emotional tether, or is it one of a man defiantly ringing a victory bell?

“It’s more accurate to sing about your inner self. It’s the blues, man. Ironically, even though you are singing about your stuff, it has an uplifting effect. I mean, I can listen to a Leonard Cohen album and it makes me feel happy.”

Fans will know that Frames concerts are peppered with verbal interludes of Glen spinning tales about the inspiration behind his songs. This works both as entertainment and as an insight into the songwriting craft. If pressed further on the subject, however, Glen is entertainingly elusive.

“I wouldn’t be able to tell you what informs my lyrics even though I write them,” he laughs. “I was watching a Bruce Springsteen DVD recently, and he was asked a question about the meaning behind one of his songs. He said, “Now, was I thinking that when I wrote it? Not at all. Was I feeling it? Every bit of it”.”

It is this intensity of feeling that has endeared The Frames to a large and devoted fanbase, both here and overseas. They frequently play in places as far-flung as Prague and Czechoslovakia. Their popularity was significantly boosted by the release of the single ‘Fake’, the first track to be lifted from Burn the Maps. Oddly, the radio friendly quality of the song (read: it has a wonderful, instantly memorable melody) and its chart success put some folks off.

“That was the mad irony. ‘Fake’ wasn’t popular with some Frames fans. It was one of those weird times. In Europe they heard it on the radio and really got it, but in Ireland it was different. We lost some people to it, but there was a whole new audience that came to us too, which was mad.” Glen laughs again as he remembers the scene: “There were kids in the front row of our gigs wearing Kylie Minogue t-shirts.”

Once again, Glen refuses to be disparaging about any other artist, or any of the band’s listeners.

“The whole idea of popularity is based on the idea that there will always be someone who is more underground than you. It’s about wanting to be part of a club that you will never be part of.”

Even the fact that ‘Fake’ magnetised many younger listeners to the band does not seem to faze him.

“Listen, you should never dismiss your audience, no matter how young they are. I cared more about music when I was sixteen than I ever will again. When you are young, you are untouched by things, you are full of wonder. As you grow up a thicker skin grows around your heart and your soul, and you stop feeling things.”

It is this openness and abundance of affection for his audience that continues to attract new listeners to The Frames. One fan recently wrote on a music website that the appeal behind the band’s majestic yet intimate live performances was that, in spite of the adulation he receives, Glen remains human and down-to-earth.

“That’s good to know,” Glen says, sounding genuinely flattered. “What other option is there? What else can one do? If you are not singing about human, then you are lying.”

It is this ability to stop the heart and soul from hardening that infuses Frames concerts with such hypnotic power. What amazes AU is how many great songs they have in their onstage repertoire - like a magician continually pulling and unending string of brightly-coloured ribbons out of a top hat. What can fans expect from the upcoming show in Belfast?

“A lot of Burn the Maps, as well as some new songs. On tour we’ve been playing four or five new songs a night. We are never ready to record a song until it has been road-tested live a few times. Quite often, I write a song and then when we perform it live it becomes a completely different beast.”

One of these songs is ‘People Get Ready’, originally mooted as a track on Burn the Maps, which, like other Frames songs, starts off quiet and gradually builds to a passionate crescendo.

“Yeah,” Glen says, laughing again, “We call that “The Wedge”.”

At this point, it has become clear just what has fuelled The Frames for the past fifteen years: a simple, honest-to-goodness love for the music. The thing that caused Glen to lose his breath while playing is the same thing that causes an audience to lose theirs when they hear the band: a passion for writing and performing heartfelt songs. Like Bruce Springsteen, The Frames feel every bit of it each time they play a gig, regardless of whether it is at the moon-crater-sized Point in Dublin or in a small coffee shop in Prague. In the early song ‘Fitzcarraldo’, Glen sings, “I have chose the long road / That leads me out to God knows”, before adding, “So I can’t stop right now”. Hopefully, The Frames will not be stopping any time soon.

Winter Here Kids.

2005-12-08T14:42:00.000Z

Okay, folks,

This year's Christmas compilation is ready for burnin' and sendin', as Craig David might say.

Just have to finish working on the cover, finalise the running order and then pop it in the post.

So, if you are looking for a copy, gmail me your home address, and I will fire it out to you.

Not that long to go before we can launch headlong into the Christmas spirit.

Ho ho ho...

...

2005-12-01T15:00:00.000Z

It's round about this time of year that I start thinking about putting together a Christmas compilation.

Actually, I tell a lie: I have been thinking about it since about August, but now I am nearing the time when I can allow myself to talk about it.

I don't want to leap into the Christmas spirit too prematurely (one thing I detest in life is how Christmas adverts come on the tv in October), but these things take weeks and weeks of meticulous planning.

If you want to read about last year's compilation Let It Snow, you can do so here. I don't think that this year's one (with the provisional title of Silent Nights will be just as cool, but it will still be pretty cool.

If anyone is interested in receiving one instead of your traditional card, do let me know...

...

2005-11-29T10:06:00.000Z

If anybody is interested, the interview with Glen Hansard went really well.

Unlike other artists that I have spoken to, he can talk (and talk and talk), so there is no problem getting cool soundbites from him.

I shall post the interview in full when I get it finished.

Ross.

Pimp My Ride UK.

2005-11-29T09:59:00.000Z

Well, Ali and I finally got a new car.

Our old one, the Great Red Shark, had a faulty steering rack which was slowly dripping oil onto our driveway.

It would have cost us over a grand to get this simple fault fixed (all the mechanics we went to see told us that we would have to replace the entire steering rack... ummm... no), so we decided to cut our losses and trade the baby in.

It was a sad day when we went over to the dealership near to where I work at the moment.

We have had the Great Red Shark for about 2 years now, and she has served us well: she drove us to Scotland and back on several occasions, down South on a few more (including the trip during which we got engaged), and all around Northern Ireland.

She was a good car, and we will miss her.

But we have been very fortunate. We now have a lovely blue Honda Civic. The model is a Max, I believe, and she is an absolute peach.

A blue peach, but a peach nonetheless.

The gearstick is mounted at the bottom of the dashboard, so it kind of feels like you are driving a spaceship a la Battlestar Galactica, which is quite cool, and the stereo system (always very important in a car, even more so than, say, the suspension) is ace.

More importantly, the steering rack is electric, so there is no oil (leaking or otherwise) involved.

So, goodbye Great Red Shark, hello Blue Velvet...

Haste Ye Back.

2005-11-29T09:53:00.000Z

Hi folks,

Sorry for the long delay in writing here. The past few weeks have been incredibly busy, and the whole teaching malarkey is sapping most of my free time.

I am enjoying it (most days), but there is always quite a lot to do.

I don't mind that, as I would rather have lots to do than be loafing about on my fat ass all of the time, but it somewhat precludes typing in this blog.

It is a situation that I mean to rectify.

I wish that I could type up some of the essays and short stories that I receive. They are so funny. One of the creative writing exercises (about finding a deserted house in the forest) that I handed out resulted in a deluge of short stories about cats being impaled on a bedpost, vampires, and a deeply Freudian piece about a boy and his father being chased by a man with a chainsaw along a dark, narrow tunnel.

Go figure.

Anyway, normal service should return as soon as possible, whenever I get my head together.

Take care,

Ross boss.

What Happens When The Brain Just Stops.

2005-11-18T21:44:00.000Z

Hey,

It's been a funny, up and down, yo yo kind of week.

"You Hit Like A Ponce."

2005-11-16T12:44:00.000Z

Hey.

Thanks for all of your comments and opinions on Lost.

I have now watched the entire first season, which, I have to say, gets much, much better towards the end. I don't want to give anything away, as the narrative of the programme hinges on the smallest of details, but it just grows tremendously exciting in the final episodes.

The closing episode (which is twice the length) in particular is very cool, and contains some interesting twists and surprises that you may or may not see coming.

It sounds funny me saying this now, as I was so vehemently against it before, but something clicked just after halfway through the series and it became more satisfying and enjoyable. I am a big fan of the character Hurley, and the episode in which you find out his life story is sweet, funny and rather sad too.

The only thing that I will tell you is that Hurley's past has a weird but intriguing connection to the hatch in the jungle with which Locke is so obsessed.

Locke and Hurley are probably my favourite characters. Hurley, because he is dead funny, and Locke because he is a weird combination of a father figure and Colonel Kurtz.

The other night, Ali and I discussed which of the characters we fancied. I won't tell you who she plumped for (but you can probably guess), but I would go for the Australian girl, with or without the baby bump.

Anyway, I am rambling. All I wanted to say was stick with it until the end. You may already suspect that you do not find out a great deal in the final episode of the season, but what you do find out opens up numerous narrative avenues for the next season.

I think series 2 could be great.

Thanfully, someone in Ali's work has the first few installments on DVD.

Hurrah!

...

2005-11-08T15:53:00.000Z

I used to think that the tv show Lost (currently about halfway through its first season here) was a frustrating borefest, but then Ali Pup borrowed the entire first series on DVD (someone in her work "acquired" it), and I am actually beginning to enjoy it.

After a cracking pilot (boom boom) episode, it really flagged for, like, 6 or 7 episodes, but it really begins to kick in around episode 14 or 15. There are still things about it that annoy me (the monsters in the forest, for example, might really suck, and their occasional appearance continually reminds me of that fact), but overall it is beginning to get creepier, darker and more involving.

I imagine that if nobody else watches Lost then you will have no idea what I am talking about.

Are there any other fans of the show out there?

Crash Into Me.

2005-11-08T15:36:00.000Z

Last Friday, when classes finished for the foreseeable future (well, until next February), a few girls and me went out for a meal to celebrate, have some fun etc.

Claire, Rachel, Mary-Rose and myself headed up to Belfast for a Chinese (thankfully, it was much more enjoyable than the last Chinese meal I had which, to use that adjective again, was horrific) and a few fizzy pops.

It was a cool send-off, as there was a real silly-sad end of term feeling in the air. We had a lot of laughs and taked nonsense for a few hours, then Rachel met up with her boyfriend, and I left the other pair down to a club in Belfast.

I was absolutely wrecked, as I had stayed up late working on an assignment that was due in that morning, so I left them there and then started to drive home.

So, I am toddling up the dual carriageway that runs along the back of Castle Court shopping centre (this will not mean anything to anyone who does not live in the area) when I saw, a little bit in the distance, a car spinning in the middle of the road.

For some reason, I got the impression that it was a taxi driver having an accident (maybe this was because I witnessed a rather inebriated taxi driver hitting a roundabout at full pelt a few years previously), but then I realised that the car was actually spinning backwards, not forwards.

It continued to spin, and its wheels made the nastiest noise I have heard in quite some time. I started to slow down, but then the car straightened itself and started to bomb towards me (i.e. up the wrong side of the road) at top speed.

There was another car in the lane beside me, so I floored the accelerator and turned down to the left. The demon car went in a big loop around the car to my right, then began to spin again, doing j-turns behind my car.

(You should understand that at the moment joyriding is a particularly popular pastime amongst disenchanted young men from the Belfast area).

So, I cut down to the left, past the shopping centre car park, then out a side street, whereupon I saw said joyriders hurtling up the carriageway, once again headed straight for my car.

I had to cut through 2 sets of red lights to get away from them, and when I did, they sped out into the junction, started spinning again, narrowly avoided hitting the other traffic and those bollards that you get at the end of lane dividers.

I cut down some more side streets, down through the centre of town, and out onto the motorway which leads home to Bangor.

And I was absolutely terrified. I don't mean to be melodramatic, but I have not been so frightened in quite some time.

It's funny when they talk about your life flashing before your eyes (in my case: nintendo, pizza, sleeping, dvds), but your body does go into this weird, panicky "uh-oh" reaction and the adrenalin kicks in.

I don't know what would have happened had the joyriders' car hit mine, but one would assume that it would not have been pretty. There was a lot of other traffic about, so it could have turned out very badly.

I stoped off on the way home to warn the police, but they did not seem all that bothered, and the dude on the other end of the line had a distinct "oh, I haven't heard that one before" vibe to his voice.

Anyway, I made it home safely and that's the main thing, raring to get back to my nintendo / pizza / sleeping / dvds activities.

It gives me the willies when I think about it though...

Back To Skule.

2005-11-08T15:31:00.000Z

So,

Here I am writing to you from my first school placement. I shall not say where I will be situated for the next 3 months or so (for legal reasons, child protection and all that cal), but it has been pretty good so far).

Obviously, it is rather weird being back in school for the first time in years, though I would say that the experience would have been much worse had I been forced to return to the institution that I actually attended. My feelings on that hellish place have been well documented, so I shall not elaborate on that here, but this school appears much more pleasant and welcoming.

To be honest, it would not be that hard.

These past few days have been taken up with getting sorted out with timetables, meeting my teacher tutor, observing the classes that I shall be taking etc, and so far, like the rest of the course, it is flying by.

I don't know what kind of teacher I will make, or if I will even be employed as a teacher at all, but at the moment it is looking pretty good. It is much better than what I could be doing.

Like working in Waterstones, for example.

Or the bookshop in which I worked before that. Wild horses could not drag me back to that establishment and that employer. That was horrific.

...

2005-10-31T13:32:00.001Z

Duke Special, Glen Hansard
Island Arts Centre, Lisburn

It is safe to say that the crowd do not know what to expect when the man that calls himself “Duke Special” ambles into view. Hiding behind a veil of mascara and dreadlocks, he tentatively approaches a vintage gramophone to the left of the stage. He winds up the device, slides a disc out of its sleeve, carefully places it onto the turntable, and drops the needle. Log fire crackles and disembodied voices emanate from the auditorium speakers, and Duke Special begins to play his piano.

What follows is a rather fantastic set of bittersweet tunes. Located somewhere between music hall, ragtime and the theme from Cheers, Duke Special’s songs are incredibly tactile: the music is pretty, but the lyrics are spiky with longing and regret. “Some things make your soul feel clean,” he sings in a powerful voice that is at odds with his meek appearance. Duke Special’s performance is theatrical but not false, and he even manages to breathe new life into the much-covered ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ by transforming it into a slow, desperately sad ballad. The moment when he sings “something so good just can’t function no more” is so intimate that it stings your heart.

After a quick equipment reshuffle, Glen Hansard strides onstage to what can only be described as a hero’s welcome. Anyone who has ever seen either him play live, with or without his fellow Frames, will know just how euphoric these performances can be. Glen always gives value for money, and tonight is no exception. Opening with a particularly stirring version of ‘Say it to Me Now’, he romps through twenty or so songs from an extensive back catalogue. I am sure that it is tremendously uncool to rhapsodise this wildly, but I can honestly say that tonight marks one of the best gigs that I have ever attended. It doesn’t matter that Glen forgets the chords to ‘Locusts’, or that he inserts the pun “he left you in Coleraine again” into ‘Fake’. I’ve heard the joke before, but it’s a good one, and it’s still funny.

You see, cynics have pointed to the fact that Glen’s most ardent fans – and that includes me, folks – will applaud him just for tuning his guitar. But that misses the point of just how joyful and celebratory his performances can be when he is firing on all cylinders. Tonight, he injects nuclear amounts of energy into ‘Seven Day Mile’ and ‘Revelate’, and, on a cover of ‘Hungry For Your Love’, even manages to make me appreciate the work of Van Morrison. Believe me, that is quite some feat. There are too many little explosions to list in full here, an indoor fireworks display sends catherine wheels reeling to the core of me and, given the hushed reverence in the auditorium, the rest of the audience as well. Glen spills out jokes between and often during songs, but this does not obscure just how competent a performer he has become. He plays a work-in-progress that contains the lines “You won’t disappoint me / I can do that to myself”, and my heart stings again.

It is an evening full of these twinges. Glen, accompanied by his Czech friend Marketa, performs the Daniel Johnston number ‘Some Things Last a Long Time’, and I pretend to scribble notes to steel myself from welling up. When the gig stretches beyond the curfew, and Glen and Marketa, sans microphones, sit on the edge of the stage and lilt through an impromptu version of ‘Hallelujah’, the crowd is so quiet that you could hear my jaw drop. It is the perfect coda to an evening that is rich with magic and wonder. Some things, it seems, make your soul feel clean.