Music Banter

Robert Smith is a hero to some. He’s a man who has steadfastly ploughed the same miserabilist, dry-ice wreathed path for almost three decades, staying true to his dark muse and writing songs which show his shifts from high to low with scarcely a thought to such notions as fashion or commercial success. Trends have come and go, and through it all he’s been the same.

Plus, he’s done it all with a haircut and make-up combo that makes him look like the bastard offspring of Heath Ledger’s Joker, and Edward Scissorhands.

Of course, these days, you might be able to add the Pilsbury Dough Boy to that list of parentage, but of course I’m not the malicious kind. We’re none of us as young as we used to be.

The Edward Scissorhands thing in mind, though, it’s almost inevitable that eventually Robert Smith was going to find himself doing something for Tim Burton. The two of them exist in the same foggy-drenched, dark-hued artistic universe, and certainly, large portions of Burton’s fanbase will also have a Cure album or two sitting around in their record collection somewhere. Artistically, it’s the kind of thing that makes sense, and probably from a commercial standpoint too.

So Robert Smith’s done a song for Burton’s ‘Alice In Wonderland,’ a version of the song ‘Very Good Advice’ which featured in Disney’s original 1951 version. The original is a sad piece of whimsy that makes my fiancé cry whenever she hears it.

Robert Smith’s version… Isn’t.

It’s absolutely terrible, a seemingly random assortment of vaguely spooky keyboard noises competing for attention like a deranged piece of Scooby-Doo music. Then Robert Smith comes in and does his ‘tortured adolescent’ bit, twisting the tune around and it’s- ok. But then, my god, there’s this ridiculously out-of-tune organ solo that just sounds like it’s being played on a swanny whistle. I think he’s trying to go for a sort of bad-trip nightmare sounds, but it ends up sounding like he’s got The Clangers in the studio with him. Maybe it works in context within the film, but as a stand-alone experience this is awful. It just sounds like he’s cobbled a track together as quickly as he possibly can and mailed it to Burton going ‘will this do?’

Robert, please. You wrote ‘Love Cats’ and ‘A Forest.’ You can do better than this.

It’s a funny old music landscape out there these days. It seems that everyone and his dog are making music on their own. This is a consequence, of course, of laptop culture- it’s not that hard for anyone to get hold of the technology they need to record their own music to a relatively high standard. This has been a bit punk rock in some ways- there’s been this great explosion of people doing their own thing out there, with technology you can pick up more or less for free.

Once you’ve crafted your masterpiece, it’s easy to find a home for it on the web. That’s why this blog inevitably links to Myspace pages- whilst they have their limitations, it’s a remarkable forum for bands or individuals with no funds and no backing to simply stick up their work online. Of course, they’re more often than not totally ignored, but it’s the principle of the thing, isn’t it?

Here’s something that I suspect could have only ever been a one-man band: Los Angeles resident Pat Grossi, who records under the name Active Child.

It’s deeply unusual- like synth gospel played by Vangelis, layers of falsetto vocal and drums that sound like OMD or Ultravox might have gone ‘no, these sound just a bit too ’80s for us.’ It could only have been the creation of one person’s musical tastes and influences.

I know, sounds awful, doesn’t it? Strangely, it’s not. It sounds moving and sweeping. If there’s a comparison to be made with another contemporary artist, it would be Memory Tapes. Both use synths and ’80s- sounding effects in their music, and love reverb like nothing else. The difference between the two, however, is that whilst Memory Tapes makes you want to remember how the best summer of your life felt long ago, Active Child wants you to weep alone in the darkness at what is, what could have been, and what never was.

‘Body Heat (Oh So Far Away) is a beautiful, haunting piece of music, a glacial hymn to a missed lover. Grossi’s vocals recall someone like David McAlmont, if only he had a sense of restraint. This music does- something that seems to be a carry-over from the time Grossi spent in the Philadelphia Boys’ choir as a child. He’s not treating his vocals as a lead instrument, it’s one of many, often literally as there are multiple vocal tracks on each song.

‘She was a Vision’ is fantastic, too- “I came home to an empty house/surrendered my thoughts and then I burst out…it’s strange how we disappear” he sings, over a drum beat that sounds exactly like Ultravox’s ‘Vienna.’ Still, we’ll forgive him this, I think, as the music’s so good.

He’s also come up with the most bizarrely creepy song title ever, with ‘I’m in your church at night.’ What is he doing there? moping by the pews, subtly re-arranging the listed readings so they spell out his lover’s name? The atmosphere this music evokes would be a perfect soundtrack to whatever you wanted to do, if indeed you were indeed alone in a church at midnight.

And there you have it- Active Child is the sum of his influences, and something uniquely new. He’s a thoroughly modern project, and great late-night listening.

I’ve said I love Shoegaze a lot on here, and here’s the latest artist seemingly tailor-made to appeal to a demographic of me.

Incidentally, this is one of my favourite things- the moment you hear something, or see something, which you know will appeal directly to someone you know and love, and you want to share it with them. The last time that happened, it was when I saw ‘Mega-Shark versus Giant Octopus’ and knew it was designed for my old housemate to love.

Anyway, I digress. So this is Wild Nothing, a one-man band from Virginia. The 21 year-old Jack Tatum has heard the Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine, and every other Shoegaze band ever, and my god he loves them. He probably sleeps under a Pains of Being Pure at Heart duvet, and kisses his Liz Frazer doll goodnight when he goes to sleep at night. If I was a guessing man, I’d say he has an older sibling with a hell of a record collection.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticising the man. I’m simply noting he’s treading a fairly well-worn path.

This isn’t wildly original music, but it is very good. His vocals are drenched in layers of echo, and his guitars do that shimmering, gliding thing that Kevin Shields invented and used to such great effect. It’s pretty cool, and shows great promise- Tatum is, after all, just twenty-one, and likely to develop, perhaps take his influences in a new direction. At the moment he sounds a bit like Je Suis Animal.

There’ll probably be more attention paid to his cover- a fairly straight version of Kate Bush’s ‘Cloudbusting.’ His voice isn’t as good as Kate Bush, but then again, whose is? As it is, it’s fairly good. it’s nice to hear that song, and he does it well.

I prefer ‘Drifter,’ a brilliantly crafted piece of echoing guitar jangle which is the most Cocteau-ish of the songs on his myspace. It sounds blissfull, effortless, and it makes me feel nostalgic and excited at once.

‘Live In Dreams’ is also pretty cool- it’s a vaguely Smiths-y jangle with pretty flutes keeping the ambience properly shoegazey.

If I have a problem with this at all, I find myself wanting something a little different from Tatum, something that speaks more of the future. I think that’ll come with time. He’s one to watch, and in five years, maybe he’ll have done something remarkable.

I mentioned the Ten Tracks Project in a previous post, and said I should really say more about this. It’s a fantastic initiative, one of those interesting new ways for a fucked music industry to somehow connect and reinvigorate a music-buying audience.

Here’s what they do: they’ve convinced record companies to offer us monthly bundles of ten tracks for a quid. That’s ten pence a song. Not bad, eh?

Everyone knows the situation the music industry’s in- thanks to the internet, last.fm, spotify, myspace, youtube and a million other legal-and-otherwise portals, no-one’s buying music. Interestingly, a lot of really good music is still being made. I have to say, I feel that my local music scene is getting better and better, and friends of mine across the UK are saying exactly the same thing.

It’s also true that more and more bands are keeping their musical projects in the realm of hobby, not career. That’s often a pragmatic decision, more than anything else. After all, how is anyone going to make any money doing this?

Here’s one way; make the music you offer, cheaper. And that’s what they’ve done here.

It sounds counter-intuitive, but the truth is that the cost of production has gone down. People aren’t buying physical copies of albums any more, because they feel like a rip-off. No-one who knows anything about the way the internet works thinks that £12.99 or whatever a CD costs these days (see, I don’t even KNOW!) is a fair price. As a result, no-one buys anything at all.

Well, this is a way forward. It’s something of a win-win situation- the record companies get to package new artists they want to push along with bigger and more established names, we get to hear new music which we may or may not like, and we get a lot of it for a decent price. The artists benefit, too- we’d only be downloading their tracks for free, otherwise, if we heard them at all. It also fills an interesting loop that something Spotify misses- it’s easier to find new music this way, as that’s what a record company wants to push your way. I’m fine with that- I can live with the fact that a record company wants its artists to be heard. I want to hear them too, as long as it’s not a rip-off, and they’re not being forced down my throat through advertising.

The end result is, I’ve just downloaded 15 tracks for less than the price of a pint. Record companies have put new music in front of an enthusiastic listener without paying out for adverts in the NME, bribing and schmoozing their way onto some radio playlist or other, or anything else.

I’ll listen to these tracks. If I like the bands, I might buy more of them. If I don’t, well, they already got some cash from me. Now, what am I? Nothing, really. Just one person. But when this grows, well, the sky’s the limit, isn’t it?

Much as it may seem unlikely, I actually do sometimes venture outside from time to time, beyond the comforting boundaries of my flat, forsaking coffee, blankets and easily available Spotify access to see real music.

This Sunday was one of those days, and was very well spent indeed, enjoying the sights and sounds of The Hidden Door Festival, a weekend-long event held in Edinburgh’s Roxy Art House, an old church situated in the middle of Scotland’s fair capital and one of Edinburgh’s best kept secrets.

It was a remarkably adventurous event, blending artists’ installation spaces and traditional artwork, within a sort of strange maze which led this way and that, and was like a gallery, but not so. My fiancé, with her Art History background, was really fascinated by the standard of art on display, and the concepts in everything. Me, I just thought it was pretty.

What’s this got to do with music? Well, there were bands performing there too- mainly bands associated with the innovative Ten Tracks project, who I really should tell you more about. I didn’t catch everyone, but bands like The Leg, The Pineapple Chunks and Action Group were apparently very good, as indeed they always are. But we knew that already, or at least I did.

What I didn’t know a THING about was the wonderful sound of lipsync for a lullaby, a wonderful four-piece who consist of drums, cello, violin and double-bass. As one might expect in this post-Godspeed world, they sound like apocalypse itself.

What marks them out from a lot of these post-rock bands is that they have a singer, Atzi, whose voice recalls someone like Matt Bellamy of Muse in its acrobatic scaling of the heights of melody. I personally find Muse a little overblown, but that kind of vocal styling works really well with the grand sweepings of a string- based band. Overall, the effect is impressive, expansive, grand and sweeping. You allow the histrionics, because it’s good histrionics, which succeed in making you feel the visceral blast of emotions they’re depicting. They even just about get away with their last song, ‘tiger tiger’ which is a re-telling of ‘The Tyger’ by William Blake. A bit pretentious, maybe, but that’s the sort of atmosphere they’re going for- a sort of heightened, almost hysteric sense of emotion, wild storms of mood. To my mind, that was a little bit much, but the rest of their set was so good I can forgive them this.

I loved them. I suspect that if you’re any kind of decent human being, you will too.

I like Weird Things. I like the freakish, the outlandish, and the downright strange are subjects of endless fascination to me. I read the Strange Deaths section Fortean Times with a mixture of ironic amusement and rapt astonishment. I stare at pictures of strange fish from the bottom of the ocean which look like creatures from outer space. I find the bizarre, the crazy, the sheer batshit mental things in life to be a source of constant and spectacular joy.

It’s the same in music. It’s always been that way- Rock and Roll is about the Freak, the Outsider, the Strange. Witness, for example, the entire career of David Bowie- he’s striven to cultivate an ever-developing sense of ‘otherness’ in his endless succession of alter-egos and stylistic shifts, seducing us with a sense of alien glamour. Lady Gaga is a modern exponent of this art, her carefully crafted Alien Sex Robot act a wonderfully entertaining mishmash of styles and previous http://www.music-banter.com/wp-admin/post-new.phpinfluences, which are guaranteed to garner attention, foster a sort of predictable outrage, and to situate her at the center of popular culture with a remarkable amount of skill.

Yes, I like lady GaGa. People seem to find that surprising. They shouldn’t. She’s musically ok, and culturally very interesting. She’s like a mad Frankenstein carefully creating a Monster (or should that be a Fame Monster? Oh, how wonderfully clever I am, see the games I play with words!) which will make her very rich indeed.

She’s also flying the freak flag very high. It’s currently cool to be weird again. Still, she’s not a patch on Karin Dreijer Andersson of Fever Ray. This is footage from a Swedish Awards ceremony. Gaze upon it and wonder, ‘what the hell is going on?

It’s like that weird alien singer from Fifth Element with the tentacles or something, strange pop music that genuinely sounds and looks like it comes from another planet.

Bloody marvellous.

So, it’s January and all those lists of ‘best song’, ‘best album’, ‘most memorable haircut’, ‘ooh, do you remember that time in April when’, ‘and what sold the most eh?’ and so on are finally over.

Aren’t they?

Well, not really. January’s music journalism, both in print and online, is dominated by a different kind of list, this time prospective instead of retrospective. They tend to have names like ‘up and coming’ or ‘ten to watch’ and represent the music industry’s attempt to cue up the next shiny slice of product for us to consume through our greedy ear-mouths. They are also, very often, terrible.

See, this is January. The month where NOTHING HAPPENS. It’s where record companies release dud albums in the hope of maximising return because there’s cack all decent to buy instead. Plus, no-one’s going to buy anything because we’re all in hibernation, miserable and skint from the pointless yearly orgy of over-consumption, excessively-priced disposable consumer novelties like the Mr T Keyring or whatever the fuck was supposed to be a fun stocking filler this year. No-one has a clue what’s going on.

And that’s where record companies step in. They think they can plan ahead. ‘Set the Agenda.’ ‘Prime the Marketplace.’ That kind of bollocks, you know what I’m talking about. These lists are carefully crafted piles of overhyped toss, the latest fad-chasing committee-approved nonsense that is destined to flare brightly, if at all, and then vanish entirely without trace as the music-listening public moves on to something that’s actually interesting.

Take the BBC’s ‘BBC Sound of 2010′, for example. Please, take it.

Oh, my sides.
Here’s the list, and I can scarcely conceive of a more pointless collection of mediocrity. Honestly, let’s just go through the top five. I couldn’t bear to go any deeper, and I don’t think you could as well;

Ellie Goulding: A pointless vocodered nonentity with no semblance of a tune or hook, no personality beyond a big wooly hat, and nothing to reccomend her to anyone ever. I’ve already forgotten her and I’m watching the video as I type.

Marina and The Diamonds: a part Greek, part Welsh, all-dickwad singer who sings in a dreadful faux-cockney album and seems to have been conceived as a kind of demographic-spanning combination of Katy Perry, Kate Nash, Little Boots, and god knows who, Gwen Stefani or someone shit like that? She openly admits to having auditioned for girl bands, but having ‘progressed’ beyond that. Bollocks. She’s as manufactured as Joe McElderry, and is being chucked out there because someone at Sony noticed that quirky girl singer-songwriters are ‘in.’ Cretins. Oh, and that jumper she is wearing is supposed to make her look ironic and relaxed about her image, but you just know it was picked out by her manager from a selection of the Ten Worst Jumpers Ever. NEXT!

Delphic, an oh-so-original Manchester band who say they want to shake up ‘stagnant indie’ by combining dance and rock. I was going to call them Twenty years out of Date, but actually it’s more like twenty-six, if you consider that Blue Monday was released on Factory Records (from where again- oh, Manchester!) in March 1983. This is about as cutting edge as Hank Marvin. Next!

Hurts are two shop mannequins doing electro-pop, who sound like OMD only twice as tedious. I literally cannot think of anything more worth saying about them.

the Drums are the first band featured here to have anything resembling a tune, but the thing is it’s not a very good one. This bunch of slackjawed tosspots are ‘on a selfish quest to make beautiful music,’ apparently, which is a shame as they’ve not really progressed much beyond looking a bit like the Jesus and Mary Chain, staring vacantly at the camera and playing shitty deliberately lo-fi faux-credible faux-Velvets toss. ‘I felt stupid’? You fucking sounded and looked stupid too. Twats.

I could go on but it’ll be better for all of us if I don’t. I’ll ask a question instead; is this really the best that 2010 has to offer us?

No. Of course it isn’t. The real sound of 2010 is still out there, waiting to be heard. Possibly waiting to be made. People will make their own choice, they always do. There’ll be great surprises out there, too.

I can guarantee you too, that when December rolls round and the last lists of the year are written, these first lists will have been utterly forgotten.

Moving on from the shameless soul-flogging of the other day, here’s another strangely-dimensioned frontman known for unusual stage behaviour, outrageous lyrics and a few great moments of rock and roll rebellion (Brits 96. Earth Song. Take that, Jackson!), but unlike Iggy Pop, Jarvis Cocker, formerly of Pulp, still has a few brain cells left.

He’s still recording and performing interesting material (his album ‘further complications’ was a musical highlight of last year, as wry, self-reflective and witty as ever). He’s also recently begun presenting his own radio show on the BBC’s Six Music.

In this, he’s following in the footsteps of Guy Garvey of Elbow, Lauren Laverne (some of us still remember the genius of Kenickie, Lauren!) and Mark Riley, once of the Fall. He’s nailing it, too- the opening sequence, a sort of Barry White pastiche where he talks about dentures, is quintessentially Jarvis- sexy, and self-mocking. Somehow, it works, and I suspect that the ladies love it.

You see, Jarvis’ show works because he’s a willing talker, articulate and intelligent. He’s the kind of presenter, like Mark Radcliffe or Terry Wogan, whose personality makes him the kind of presence you don’t mind inviting in to your home on a regular basis. Of course, with Jarvis, he’s probably hiding in the cupboard and spying on your sister as she undresses, but somehow that’s ok. It’s only Jarvis, and your sister probably likes it anyway.

He’s also quite a knowledgeable student of music- each broadcast so far, I’ve been very impressed with the standard of music played. It’s quite high on the sweeping grandeur, and sultry crooners, which is fair enough, and quite reflective of the tastes of the man himself. Jarvis is also pretty good at sprinkling interesting titbits of musical information about odd instruments, strange quirky facts about rock and roll, life, the universe, and everything.

An interesting show. I’m looking forward to seeing how it grows.

So much for the old stuff. What’s new?

My god, I almost finished that sentence with the word ‘pussycat.’ Dangerously close to being a total idiot for a second there. Never mind, I think we’re safe again.

So anyway, here we are. It’s 2010. The Noughties are gone. The ice seems to be melting, we can all get on with our lives and set about breaking our New Years’ resolutions like real human beings again.

So what’s new?

What’s new is you need Paul Vickers and the Leg in your life.

Who are they? A bunch of crazed maniacs in day-glo panda suits who play insane jug-band blues behind walls of distortion, led by a hirsute madman with tiny dazed eyes and a voice like Tom Waits in a wind tunnel. They sing about whatever the hell they like and none of it makes more sense than Itchy Grumble, their Rock Opera/concept album about a lighthouse keeper in the Forth rendered immortal through the tears of a Witch. Any of that make sense? No? Good.

You need this band in your life. They’re truly amazing;

And here’s the proof.

For the historically minded amongst you, it should be noted that Paul Vickers, their singer, was the lead singer of briefly successful mid-nineties indie band Dawn of the Replicants, who skulked for a while at the corner of the Great Britpop Party, muttering to themselves, before disappearing entirely without trace a few years later. I heard one story a while back that said they went bankrupt because they recorded all the string parts for an album backwards, but god knows if that’s true, or what Vickers has been doing in the mean time. Prison? Rehab? Just got lost behind the bins for a while?

Whatever the truth is, I’m glad he’s back. Edinburgh has its own new version of Mark E Smith. Long May He Rant.

I love Shoegaze. I said so a while back, remember? I love everything about the genre. I love the massive walls of feedback, the whispered vocals which are often kind of about sex, or what taking drugs might feel like. Of course no shoegazer, apart from Jason Pearce of Spiritualized, was ever actually brave enough to take drugs, but they listen to shoegaze, so they don’t have to. You can realise this is true if you just consider the fact that to get drugs, a Shoegazer would have actually had to interact with someone. Can you imagine Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine stepping outside his front door and actually talking to a dealer? Thought not. No, it’s physically impossible. Shoegaze was all about introspection, which makes me, as a nerd with a laptop, wedded to the indoors, the prime audience for such a music. And the audience is expanding, too.

In this modern twitter-age, the internet and social media have created a whole generation of facile Emily Dickinsons sitting at their computers typing drivel to each other, safe in the knowledge that they’ll never really have to interact with anyone, not ever. Millions upon millions of shy flowers, endlessly reading Pitchfork and deciding whether or not to put Slowdive onto their playlist on Last.Fm. I blame the Cathode Ray babysitter- it’s clearly all television’s fault.

Still, I think it’s a good thing. We’ve got a generation of people, socially crippled and unable to deal with the outside world, but at least we’ve got a willing audience for music like School of Seven Bells who are kind of like a shoegaze band grown in a lab from the dead skin cells swept up from the studio floor during the making of Loveless, only nice, and not manky like that sounds. They’re on Sonic Cathedral Records, one of them was in Secret Machines, and their singer is a lucid dreamer, which is a VERY shoegaze thing, and unusually for a shoegaze (or Newgaze, which is apparently what you’re supposed to call it these days) band, they write their lyrics first. Remarkable. You can even hear the words, which is something that purists will frown at a bit, but I can forgive them this. I listen to them obsessively, and I think you should too.