Rock isn't dead. It just smells funny.

Five decades after Decca booted The Beatles out of an audition and assured their manager unequivocally that "guitar groups are on the way out," panic erupted across the blogosphere when it was reported that in 2010 only three of the Top 100 best-selling hits in the UK could be deemed 'rock'. One was a Journey song from the 80's, propelled into the mainstream by Gleeks, one was by Train (nope, me neither) and one by Florence and the PR Machine (who is, let's face it, about as 'rawk' as Cilla Black). Even broadcaster Paul Gambeccini took a swipe at this genre in crisis.

"It's over, in the same way the jazz era is over," he announced, blaming record labels for chasing instant profit rather than investing in artist development. This year, certain music critics seem keener than ever to drive a nail through its coffin as they look in dismay at a Top 40 almost bereft of guitars. As declining sales figures are regurgitated and meaningless pie charts are produced, you'd think from the hysteria that rock's supposed depletion and predicted extinction is about to result in our children being subjected to the aural terror of Nicki Minaj for their remaining days.

You'll have heard Noel Gallagher bemoaning the lack of a unique frontman (presumably he means someone like him) to reinvigorate guitar music.

"That's all rock and roll is; retelling this great fucking story," grunted the soon to be inexplicably crowned Godlike Genius. You remember him. Never one to stray too far from his musical ancestory, he's an egotistical Neanderthal who once played guitar in a Slade tribute act. These days he produces excrement, or albums as he prefers them to be known, remarkable only for their complacency and the fact that each subsequent release is virtually indistinguishable from the previous one. Oh deary me Noel, if it's enthusiasm for guitars you're after, perhaps you could check out the still healthily-attended Download Festival. Black Sabbath are on this year, and they're practically prehistoric. You'd love 'em.
His imbecilic sibling was equally as unenthusiastic in an interview last year.

"I really despise this new fookin' disease of indie fookin' shit, fookin' student music," Liam argued, spitting out mouthfuls of chips and Tennents Super.

Then the drummer from the Kaiser Chiefs (yes, the drummer, ahahahaha) recently tweeted that guitar music "is at an all-time low. Very few bands which started when we did have stood the test of time," he continued, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the hits are eluding them as well.

Finally, someone from The Enemy (Christ knows what his name is, it hardly matters) tweeted: "People are so out of touch it pains me. I've still got the kitchen and bathroom to decorate but looks like we'll have to save music again." Oh, you must remember The Enemy. They're the ones who wrote such seminal, era-defining classics as ... ummmm, Er??? Oh nevermind.

If you think rock is dead, it's more likely that you're guilty of being too selective in what you choose to be exposed to. This is 2012 and it's significantly easier to seek out exciting new music than ever before. If you can't find any good rock bands after just one morning online, then you're simply not trying. Last time I checked, releases from Enter Shikari, The Maccabees, The Black Keys and Tribes were all residing in the upper regions of the album chart, but even if no bands are currently aping U2 and filling stadiums with bloated, crowd-pleasing hits, so what? It may well be the case that musicians as wonderfully weird as The Cocteau Twins or The Cure might get overlooked in today's mainstream, but why should we care whether or not music is designed for mass appeal? Waiting for another Oasis or Nirvana to come along and storm the charts is just daft. Who would you rather your heroes be - Captain Beefheart or Olly Murs?

Spotify, You Tube and, yes, illegal filesharing, mean that using increasingly irrelevant singles chart statistics as a barometer for public taste is inaccurate in itself, but let's remember exactly which guitar bands the nation has clamped to its easily impressed bosom during the last few years. Firstly, there's the sort of sanctimonious, whitewashed, festival-scaling indie that Jo Whiley masturbates over, like Coldplay, Keane and Snow Patrol. These are bands whose musical arsenals are now brimming with simpering, mid-paced songs about seas rising and tears streaming and lights guiding and bells ringing and choirs singing and lords a-leaping, most of which are now to be forever synonymous with Syco-invented sob stories, Dermot hugs and Glastonbury sets which closely resemble, as one Twitterer put it, "a Nazi rally styled by kindergarten teachers who once did an E."

Then of course there was "landfill indie," basically a glut of offensively bland, aesthetically challenged new-wave-of-nu-beige plagiarists like The Fratellis, The Twang, The Rascals, The View, The Wombats, The Pigeon Detectives, The Feeling, The Automatic, The Courteeners, The Hoosiers, The Holloways and, calm down girls, The Kooks. I'm unable to accentuate the extent of my contempt for The Kooks in simple words, so instead I'll refer you to their Wikipedia page:

"The original members... met as students at the Brighton Institute of Modern Music. The inspiration to form a band came to (Luke) Pritchard as he and (Paul) Garred were out shopping for clothes one day in Primark. Speaking to MTV, Garred said, "We had this vision on how we wanted the band to look and stuff—so we bought some clothes and these hats." With no demo of their material Garred and Pritchard went in search of a gig, and according to Garred, they were able to book their first show simply because the manager liked their hats. "So we went in to get a gig, we don't have a demo, and this guy told us, 'Well, you can't get a gig if you don't have a demo, but I like your hats, so I'm going to give you a gig.'"

OH GOD. SERIOUSLY, JUST FUCK OFF.

Last, and by all means least, there's Scouting For Girls. Oh yes. Scouting For fucking Girls, with their unbearable niceness and tiresome singalongs. A journalist once wrote that Scouting for Girls were "like the sound of Satan's scrotum emptying." Frustratingly, I've never been able to better that description.

You must remember this assembly line of woefully abysmal groups. You'd usually catch them being introduced by unjustifiably enthusiastic TV presenters on late-night Channel 4. Seemingly unaware of how excrutiatingly mediocre they were, too incompetent or intimidated to innovate, simply too blinded by dollar signs to be anything other than adequate, they continued to mass-produce their populist, radio friendly unit shifters, now unwanted anywhere other than the V Festival or Poundland. If, when they say rock is dead, they mean that this formulaic, derivative, post-Libertines form of 'rock', then I say good riddance. Let it die. In fact, stab it until it bleeds. In fact, stab it until it bleeds and then take turns to rape it senseless. In fact, stab it, rape it, set it alight, snort the ashes, then bury whatever remains beside the rotting corpse of Johnny Borrell and crank up the techno.




Want some rock? Let's start with the new Divorce/Jailhouse Fuck split 10-inch on the SixSixSixties Label.







Or perhaps you'd prefer the ferocious riffage of Retox from their 'Ugly Animals' album of last year.







You could download the Maria And The Gay album from their bandcamp page. You can check out the awesome bands which the Italian Beach Babes, Dirty Water, Upset The Rhythm and Sacred Bones labels churn out. Go into a record shop (if you can find one) and buy a record by The Horrors. They released one of the best albums of last year and hardly anyone noticed. Go online and listen to Arabrot, Duchess Says, Odonis Odonis, Wooden Shjips or Bitches.




...



Or Foot Village, Male Bonding, Thee Oh Sees or Iceage.






Or Hella, Sissy and the Blisters, Fidlar, Cerebral Ballzy or Sex Church.






Or go with the NME's tips for glory (if you must) and put your faith in Menswear... I mean, Spector. Quit waiting for punk to happen again. It won't, but music has rarely sounded as exciting as it does now. If you're bored of middle-aged rock nostalgists, tweet about a new and exciting find rather than feigning enthusiasm for festival line-ups which are permanently clogged up with reformed old bands re-enacting an overrated past and topping up the pension fund in the process. Just stop whinging about rock being dead.

It's depressing that the NME persist in allowing mediocre guitar bands to inflict their gloomy outlook on the state of guitar music, rather than dedicating space to the countless creative visionaries that don't get enough exposure. It's a shame they resort to putting pop stars who are actually dead on their front cover. It's a shame that they place additional pressure on new artists to secure a hit by declaring them to be merely an updated version of something that was overhyped last year and has since sunk without trace (This Many Boyfriends are The New Cribs, Binary are The New White Lies, Dry The River are The New Mulligan and O'Hare... and so it goes on). It's a shame they think that The Vaccines are the future. In any case, artists working within genres other than 'rock' are more likely to be the natural successors to people like Bowie or Joy Division precisely because they innovate rather than imitate. They are pushing musical boundaries, not squeezing into a pair of skinny jeans, banging on about the past and reviving cliches which are best left for dead. And they certainly don't HAVE to compete with the homogenous, autotuned flatulence clogging up the charts.

Besides, any journos who remain insistent that there's not enough rock infiltrating the mainstream ought to be careful what they wish for. X Factor runner-up Marcus Collins is about to release a cover of 'Seven Nation Army' by the White Stripes as his debut single.

Now shut up.

The Iron Lady

A frail, elderly lady leaves the house she's been confined to, unnoticed by her personal security. She enters an avaricious, society-less society which she once helped spawn, but now barely recognises. Returning, she prepares breakfast for her husband, berates him as usual ("Much too much butter") and then selects an appropriate suit for his day ("Yes... definitely the grey," she enthuses). Bizarrely, a huge amount of Phyllida Lloyd's portrayal of Britain's first and only female Prime Minister is set in this stultifying present-day scenario, with Baroness Thatcher stumbling around a largely empty house, half-pissed, haunted by hallucinations of her long-deceased husband, and suffering flashbacks triggered by a simple phrase or an inanimate object. The fact that career 'highlights' are randomly recalled through the fog of dementia obviously affords the director an artistic license, but whilst distorted truths and factual inaccuracies can be vindicated, this horribly disjointed film avoids an uncomfortably large amount of the more unpalatable aspects of Margaret Thatcher's divisive politics.

"I cannot die washing up a teacup," a young Maggie warns uncompromisingly to Denis, and her ascension into government is depicted as one of rags-to-riches, as if to demonstrate that she wasn't assembled from scrap metal by Satan himself, or that she, I dunno, married a millionaire or something. The grocer's daughter and dutiful housewife is meticulously re-packaged before us and her makeover into an electable leader is covered in some length. But from here, 'The Iron Lady' skips clumsily from the slow-paced scenes of senility, grief and paranoia in her latter years to galling blink-and-you'll-miss-'em montages of both turmoil and triumphs, usually overlaid with heroic-sounding speeches and much flag-waving. Most resemble a Greatest Hits medley or a sort of "OK Mags, let's have a look at your best bits" compilation.


What's most astonishing is what's not in it. There's no room for such prominent figures as Kinnock, Lawson or Scargill. There's also no mention of Westland, Greenham Common, mass privatisation, the selling off of council housing, and no "The lady's not for turning" either. The Northern Ireland hunger strikers are barely mentioned ("You watched ten men starve themselves to death and never even flinched," is one of the few remarks included from the Labour front bench that isn't merely a sexist gibe), and nor is Section 28 (“Children… are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay,” she once warned us, as her government allowed already disgraceful child poverty rates to soar). There's no mention of her denouncing Nelson Mandela as a terrorist, nor is there room for her friend Augusto Pinochet; a man who presided over mass executions, torture and rape. It's also largely bereft of the dismantling of entire UK industries, her brutal slashing of public spending, wholesale privatisation, deregulated greed and opportunism, and even the consequences of her assault via a militarised police on trade unionists and working people. There's some brief coverage of the strike by the National Union of Mineworkers, but nothing of the communities she crippled. There’s no context, no debate, no aftermath. It's a bloody mess in more ways than one. 

The Falklands War and, in particular, the chilling moment that the fate of the Argentinean cruiser The General Belgrano was sealed is granted more airtime. "Sink it," she hisses callously. She's exonerated moments later, of course. The IRA bombing of the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton and her attempted assassination becomes an actual LOL moment as Dennis emerges in slow-motion from the debris of a bathroom, post-blast, frazzled and clutching an obliterated shoe in each hand. And rather than investigate her hostility towards Europe, the irreconcilable differences between Thatcher and Geoffrey Howe and his subsequent resignation manifest themselves during a humiliating bollocking in a cabinet meeting over sloppy wording and spelling errors, with Mrs T behaving like a psychotic headmistress. "I wouldn't have spoken to my gamekeeper like that," mutters one minster afterwards.

The Iron Lady is quickly melted down. The ability to recite the current retail price of Lurpak wasn't quite enough to convince anyone she was even on the same planet as her electorate, let alone 'in touch' with them. The Poll Tax was her most blatant attempt yet of waging a class war, and this time even her spineless sycophants had had enough. Civil disobedience was organised in defiance of her selfish ideology, and as Thatch is wheeled through the middle of yet another violent demonstration, you conclude that where there was harmony, she really did bring discord. The end of her tenure is predictably Dianafied. As she exits Number 10, it's on a carpet of rose petals and Tory tears to the sound of 'Casta Diva' (it translates as "pure goddess") from Bellini's Norma, and sadly not (although it does briefly appear elsewhere) the Notsensibles 1979 hit 'I'm In Love With Margaret Thatcher'. As one reviewer has suggested, "This depiction of The Iron Lady is as deeply nuanced as you would expect from the director of Mamma Mia!" If we're re-writing history, you wonder if this is merely the first draft. What's to be next? 'Maggie: The Musical' by Ben Elton? Don't laugh.

'The Iron Lady' is a massive missed opportunity. You shouldn't profess admiration for a political leader based solely on their gumption or obstinance, anymore than you should elicit sympathy for them now because of a decline in their mental health. You simply cannot depoliticise Thatcher. Surely it's the repercussions of her actions on her public on which she should be judged, and those are greatly overlooked here. Voices of dissent are relegated to scraps of archive footage. Any alternative to her own agenda is seen as resulting in chaos and bloodshed.
Sure, she had to overcome deep-rooted prejudices and snobbery, but Meryl Streep's Thatcher would not, you suspect, be impressed with being revered as an icon either.
"It used to be about trying to do something," she replies to a dinner guest who has referred to her as inspirational. "Now it’s about trying to be someone."

As a depiction of the devastating affects of Alzheimer’s on a reclusive widow, it's strangely moving in parts. But as a political biopic and an examination of Thatcherism and her legacy? No, no, no. It's not quite a whitewash, nor is it a hatchet-job. It's just a bit... well, nothing.

And nothing is very much what's left at the end. The ghost of Denis has literally been packed up and carted orff to the knackers, and she's left alone at the kitchen sink, no longer needing to activate every household appliance to drown out the voices of ghosts. Birdsong is now all that is audible to her. Washing up a solitary teacup, you're almost convinced she's human.

A Festive 50: Some favourite tracks from 2011

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arabrot - Madonna Was A Whore

Battles featuring Matias Aguayo - Ice Cream

Bjork - Crystalline (Omar Souleyman Remix)

Blackout Beach - Be Forewarned, The Night Has Come

The Caretaker - Camaraderie at Arms Length

Cashier No.9 - Lost At Sea

Com Truise - Brokendate

Death Grips - Beware
Dirty Beaches - Lord Knows Best

The Dreams - Aloha Miami

Duchess Says - Narcisse

Enzyme X - Nathaniel

Factory Floor - Two Different Ways
Gang Gang Dance - MindKilla

Goreshit - Looming Shadow Of A Tree Long Gone

The Go! Team - Buy Nothing Day

PJ Harvey - Written On The Forehead

Hella - Psycho Bro

Husband - Love Song
Iceage - White Rune

Keep Shelly In Athens - Campus Martius

Kuedo - Scissors

Little Roy - Dive

David Lynch - Pinky's Dream

Maria and the Mirrors - Travel Sex
John Maus - Believer

Mazes - Shit Priest

Metronomy - The Bay

Modeselektor feat. Otto Von Schirach - Evil Twin

Mogwai - Drunk and Crazy

Muscles Of Joy - Coins Across His Hips

Ngunni Lovers Lovers - Cheza Ngoma

Oneohtrix Point Never - Replica

Peepholes - Tunnels

Planningtorock - The Breaks

Prurient - A Meal Can Be Made

Psychologist - Comes In Waves

Retox - 30 Cents Shy Of A Quarter

Rockwell - Aria

Shabazz Palaces - Swerve... The Reeping Of All That Is Worthwhile (Noir Not Withstanding)

Sissy and the Blisters - Mystics

Soft Metals - Psychic Driving

Trailer Trash Tracys - Candy Girl

tUNe-yArds - Gangsta

US Girls - If These Walls Could Talk

Veronica Falls - Come On Over
Kurt Vile - Jesus Fever

Wu Lyfe - We Bros

Jamie XX - Far Nearer
YACHT - Dystopia (The Earth Is On Fire)

45 Cover Versions

Live on national television on Saturday evening, Leona Lewis began a disgraceful butchering of Trent Reznor's song 'Hurt'. Eradicating all traces of poignancy and injecting it with several tonnes of mediocrity shipped in from Cowell's underground bunker ("Activate key changes! Turn on the blubbing!," you imagine him cackling through booming loudspeakers inside a control tower), its remains were then spat out, having been neutered and beige-popped, into a cavernous arena full of screaming wankers who now regard Harry Styles an icon. Simultaneously enraging and delighting Twitterers (but mostly enraging them), 'Hurt' was transformed into the sort of histrionic karaoke-friendly "ballid" that's presumably more palatable to the likes of Tulisa and her Lidl Mixers. Let's just say that she didn't remind us of a young Johnny Cash. So, as this year's nauseating Fix Factor splutters towards an anticlimax for another year, here are 45 cover versions which don't, y'know, completely suck. I've observed the following rules:

1. Only one song per artist.

2. No Live Lounge nonsense.

3. Obviously no Mark fucking Ronson either.

 

Here are six of the best...

Fall - Lost In Music


Bis - Shack Up



Katzenjammers - Cars



Melt-Banana - Monkey Man



Vermin Twins - I Want Yr Sex



Glass Candy and the Shattered Theatre - Johnny Are You Queer




And here are another 39...

Associates - Love Hangover
Bangles - Hazy Shade Of Winter
Birthday Party - Cat Man

Blondie - Hanging On The Telephone
Bowwowwow - I Want Candy
Johnny Cash - I See A Darkness
Chromatics - Running Up That Hill
Clash - I Fought The Law

Cramps - Domino
Creepers - Baby's On Fire

First Aid Kit - When I Grow Up

Friendly Fires - Your Love
Human League - Rock 'N' Roll / Nightclubbing

Joan Jett & The Blackhearts - Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)
Grace Jones - La Vie En Rose
Kingsmen - Louie Louie
Metronomy - Toxic

Elton Motello - Jet Boy, Jet Girl
Nirvana - The Man Who Sold The World
Pale Saints - Kinky Love
Pixies - Head On
Residents - I Can't Get No Satisfaction
Schneider TM/KPT.michi.gan - The Light 3000
Silicon Teens - Memphis Tennessee

Slits - I Heard It Through The Grapevine
Patti Smith - Gloria
Soft Cell - Tainted Love
Sonic Youth - Superstar
Spiritualized - Anyway That You Want Me
St. Etienne - Only Love Can Break Your Heart
Stranglers - Walk On By
This Mortal Coil - Song To The Siren
Tiga - Sunglasses At Night
Trespassers William - Vapour Trail
Tricky - Black Steel
Urge Overkill - Girl You'll Be A Woman Soon
Vaselines - You Think You're A Man
Scott Walker - Jackie
Robert Wyatt - Shipbuilding

2012: A good year for The Roses?

"I'm slightly mystified by the great appeal of the Stone Roses," sighed an exasperated late night DJ on Radio One at the end of 1989 as they gained multiple entries in his Festive Fifty. "I was gonna say that they sound to me at times like Herman's Hermits, but that's not quite true either. I do that just to annoy you."





It was a dull bank holiday weekend at the end of May 1990 and a number of friends were venturing towards a place called Spike Island. Not only did their destination not sound particularly seductive, it wasn't really an island at all, more a sort of toxic wasteland near the Mersey, surrounded by chemical factories. They'd gone to watch a band whose eponymous album had rarely been ejected from the sixth form common room tape deck that year. Back when the Top 40 was organised by an elderly team of accountants named Stock, Aitken and Waterman, it had been thilling to watch The Stone Roses battle it out alongside chart heavyweights like Milli Vanilli and New Kids On The Block (and yes, they're also touring next year) on Top Of The Pops. 'Fool's Gold' and 'I Am The Resurrection' were formidable indie disco floorfillers. I probably wasn't "allowed" to go to what promised to be the baggy generation's Woodstock, but then again I don't really recall wanting to attend that desperately either.

In the Melody Maker the following week, Everett True commented on the baggies who were out in force. "There's no shortage of floppy Reni hats, Ghandi glasses, newly-pressed flared jeans or Stone Roses tee-shirts on view," he observed. "There's also an interminable amount of Inspiral Carpets / Shaun Ryder look-alikes." By the time they'd performed though, he recalled that both band and audience were "strangely subdued."

"If Alexandra Palace was an ignominious failure," he concluded, "good intentions blown away on a sea of bad sound, Spike Island was even more so. The grander the scale, the harder they fall."
"This is bollocks," one attendee was overheard to moan. "You can't hear nowt. It's like being at a fucking Tammy Wynette concert."

It was a total fiasco. Turns out I didn't miss much after all.

Five years later, in a career plagued by misfortune and ineptitude, John Squire decided to go mountain biking in California. This decision would prove to be a pivotal moment in the career of another band from the north of England who'd spent 14 years on the sidelines. Fracturing his collarbone in an accident allowed Pulp to snatch their Glastonbury headline slot and deliver a triumphant performance which would catapult them to fame and fortune.

"We're in a different universe to The Stone Roses, but I was looking forward to seeing them," said Jarvis Cocker shortly afterwards in Vox Magazine. "So I wasn't pleased with the way we got to be on the bill, but we couldn't turn it down. Like, we'd just written a song we played there called 'Sorted For E's And Wizz'. Again, I'm not that into fate but the title came from me talking to this girl about when she went to Spike Island. That was her main memory, all these blokes walking around saying: 'Is everybody sorted for E's and Wizz?' It just seemed like a totally appropriate place to play it for the first time."

For the Roses though, it all ended just over a year later at Reading, not with a bang but a whimper. Or rather, a Simply Red session musician and a sort of tuneless howl. The muffled screams you can hear are presumably the result of people hacking off their own ears, as their live experience is taken to previously unreached levels of discomfort.

"It ain't over until the flat laddie sings," a passing Britpop singer was heard to mutter.

And so to 2011, and in a hotel just a few minutes walk from my office, the original members have gathered in front of the press for the first time in 15 years to announce their reformation. (Do we still need to organise these conferences? Can't you just tweet the details?) Yet I find myself completely unwilling to give any fucks. Firstly, let's take THAT album. 

Upon its arrival, even the debut from Kitchens Of Distinction faired better in the NME reviews section. Jack Barron declared it to be "as inviting as a bathtub of purple jelly left over from the S*x*i*s," and even dismissed a colleague who, "after chomping a hit of LSD-impregnated graph paper" had claimed it was the greatest record ever made. "There again," Barron continued, "he thought he was having a conversation with Bugs Bunny at the time and I definitely don't have a tail."

Public Enemy, Frankie Knuckles and Derrick May were making more relevant music. For an album embraced by the acid house revellers, it contains few traces of anything musical from punk onwards.

Yet a decade later, that same record was charging it's way up those meaningless 'Best Ever' lists which magazine editors seem to take delight in clogging up their pages with, and by 2003 it had inexplicably been heralded a "generational touchstone" by a band who had supposedly saved British rock music, a life-changing opus which had taken pole position in the NME's Best Albums Of All Time list with relative ease. By 2006 it was an artefact that had "crushed doleful, Thatcherite inertia under waves of very positive, very uplifting and very British psychedelia," and which had "made every other band in the country redundant." And as they grace their front cover again for the first of two consecutive weeks, the NME's excessive coverage to bands who no longer exist appears to include the frankly astonishing claim that they actually invented rhythm.

Whilst part of the way we process popular culture is to re-evaluate, disregarding the worst and elevating the best from any particular period or genre, it feels as if the music press have been fervently intent on upholding the reverence of bands like The Roses for the last two decades, to the extent that we're all too often engulfed in a tidal wave of nostalgia.

But should I really be wasting valuable time and energy on slagging a tour that I could simply turn a blind eye to? After all, very few other bands from that era could shift 220,000 tickets in just over an hour. I probably shouldn't, especially since I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the reunited Pulp this summer, and that's despite that, as he handed out sweets to the kids and asked them about which discos they frequented, Jarvis's supply teacher attire meant his audience probably feared he'd more likely quiz them on coastal erosion or plate tectonics than play a gig.

The thing is though, Pulp never vehemently denied the possibility of a reconciliation at every available opportunity, and Pulp's repertoire amounts to considerably more than half a dozen tracks which could be convincingly hailed as musical brilliance, a bucket load of filler, five years spent arsing about in Wales, an horrifically bloated second album and some of the most atrocious live shows imaginable.
Even so, why is there such a need for veteran acts to consistently dominate the festival headlining slots, all bereft of new ideas, pretending to like each other again and willing to piss on their own legacy in order to pocket some filthy lucre to top up their retirement funds? Research by Music Week reported found that, of the headline artists announced in the first part of this year for seven of the summer's biggest music festivals, just two out of 19 broke through during the past three years. Yet in 2007 more than half of the 20 headline acts at the same festivals were relatively new artists. This year, Pulp notched up six festival dates in the UK alone. Primal Scream accumulated even more, and they're touring a record that's 20 years old. Ker-ching, indeed.

In an era saturated with re-issues, re-packages, revivals, remakes and rehashes, there's barely time to listen to all the new stuff, in the hope that it might turn out to be as incredible as the record from Colin Stetson or The Caretaker or Death Grips or Dirty Beaches or Prurient or Cut Hands or Dub Phizix. The most popular digital commercial radio station in the UK is reportedly, wait for it, Absolute 80's. I mean, seriously, why? I want to know what music will be like in 2012 and who the innovators will be. I want to stumble across a band as mind-meltingly wonderful as Congolese musicians Konono No.1, like I did at this year's Field Day. Or Factory Floor. Or Omar Souleyman. I have no time or indeed any desire to spend an entire morning abusing my redial and refresh keys in an attempt to re-live a misremembered past by idolising a massively overrated group from my formative years. My point is that these reunion shows, much like Spike Island, will have very little to do with music at all. And that, as the recently reunited Steps would say, is a Tragedy. As Simon Reynolds writes in his terrific book 'Retromania', "History must have a dustbin, or history will be a dustbin, a gigantic, sprawling garbage heap."

Watching the Roses now as supposed rock messiahs, it's obvious that these people were single-handedly responsible for ushering in an era where boorish, "proper" blokes dressed in casual sportswear played "real" music. Like, with an guitars an' shit. They influenced a deluge of stupefyingly dull sounding bands who thought that overwhelmingly mediocre dad-rock was the way forward. Most of them have now, thankfully, faded into obscurity. (Oh. Hi Kasabian, I forgot you were still lurking at the back). Furthermore, watching Ian Brown's ridiculously arrogant monkey dancing, it's clear they are also to blame for the existence of Oasis (their reunion tour is currently pencilled in for 2015). I suppose it could be worse though. The Seahorses could reform.

Tyler, The Creator

Tyler, The Creator's second album has been met with mostly positive critical acclaim. Slant Magazine praised “Tyler's snappy lexicon and accomplished musicianship” for ensuring that 'Goblin' is “a masterpiece for those capable of stomaching it.” HipHopDX stated that the record “achieves an engrossing dystopian vision... that refuses to compromise.” The NME declared him “a rare talent – a brutally funny motherfucker with an imagination that squirms like a tub of maggots, old enough to know that words leave bruises but still young enough not to give a fuck about the consequences.”

It's the language, however, which has since caused a furore, with the LA Times complaining that “so much ego-maniacal nihilism, while fascinating and at times revolutionary, wears thin very quickly". The Guardian also declared it “a self-defeating waste of talent,” concluding that it's “not an odd future but the ghost of hip-hop bullshit past.” The Fader even tallied up over 200 uses of the word “fuck” on the album, recorded 70 mentions of “bitch,” over 30 of the word “dick,” and, perhaps most depressingly, “faggot” is deployed at least nine times. 

Sara Quin of Canadian indie popsters Tegan and Sara added to the controversy, by deciding to air her grievances about the rapper on the band's blog, demanding that his “misogynistic and homophobic ranting and raving result in meaningful repercussions in the entertainment industry.” She continued that whilst his “sickening rhetoric” is “celebrated on the cover of every magazine, blog and newspaper, I’m disheartened that any self-respecting human being could stand in support with a message so vile.” Quin also implied that Tyler was somehow exempt from criticism for fear from his detractors of being labelled racist.

“I’ve asked myself a thousand times why this is pushing me over the edge. Maybe it’s the access to him (his grotesque twitter, etc.). Maybe it’s because I’m a human being, both a girl and a lesbian. Maybe it’s because my mom has spent her whole adult life working with teenage girls who were victims of sexual assault. Maybe it’s because in this case I don’t think race or class actually has anything to do with his hateful message but has EVERYTHING to do with why everyone refuses to admonish him for that message.”

No sooner had Tyler tweeted his retort (“If Tegan And Sara Need Some Hard Dick, Hit Me Up!”), GLAAD waded into the debate, commending Sara for her rant and pointing out that despite denying allegations of homophobia, “his Twitter feed and rhymes are rampant with anti-gay slurs and references... Tyler’s attempts to be provocative as well as his indifference towards the consequences of his actions are irresponsible." GLAAD then referred to an earlier debate over rapper Lil B's lyrics, in which they warned that “…words matter. Slurs have the power to fuel intolerance.”

Just as Eminem's lyrics were scrutinised for causing similar outrage a decade ago, resulting in gay rights campaigners demonstrating outside his shows and a students' union in Sheffield banning his music completely, many fans feel that those critical of his vitriolic outbursts are failing to separate the author from the work of fiction.

“Hey, don’t do anything that I say in this song, okay? It’s fucking fiction. If anything happens don't fucking blame me, White America,” he announces on 'Radicals', which could easily be perceived as a sort of disclaimer. Just as Slim Shady was created as an abhorrent alter ego through which spite and disgust could be articulated, is Tyler also playing an intentionally psychotic character? After all, much of the venomous dialogue purports to be an exchange between Tyler and a therapist, or possibly his own conscience. He isn't actually advocating this hated or encouraging anyone to emulate it.

Of course it's debatable to what extent Tyler is 'trolling' or delivering a parody, and the lyrical content is rife with gratuitous violence. Lines such as “Rape a pregnant bitch and tell my friends I had a threesome...” and “Go 'head admit it faggot, this shit is tighter then butt rape...” may leave a sense of disgust, but is it worse than the violently homophobic lyrics that Sizzla, Beenie Man and Insane Clown Posse have confronted us with in the past? Surely if you're going to accuse him of homophobia, you'd also have to assume he's a psychopath, a rapist and a serial killer? In fact, you'd also have to say he endorses arson, necrophilia and cannibalism. So are we guilty of taking songwriting too literally here? I mean, Ice T didn't actually kill any cops, right? Did Johnny Cash really shoot that man in Reno? Should Nick Cave be prosecuted for all those murders? Sure, some of the narratives do sound juvenile, but then it was written during his adolescence. As a result, much of it is self-deprecating, defensive and paranoid. Much time is taken up playing “Xbox in piles full of wet socks," poking girls on Facebook, incessantly masturbating and fantasising about “stabbing Bruno Mars in his god-damn oesophagus.”

But is this all fiction? Steve Albini, on an online forum, has revealed he encountered the Odd Future collective on an airport shuttle in Barcelona. "They piled in," he writes, "niggering everything in sight, motherfucking the driver, boasting into the air unbidden about getting their dicks sucked and calling everyone in the area a faggot. Then one of them lit a joint (or a pipe, I didn't look) and told the driver to shut the fuck up nigger and smoked it anyway. Interspersed with McDonalds requests were shouted boasts about how often they masturbated and fucked bitches nigger and got paid like a motherfucker fifty grand like a motherfucker."

Albini does go on to make some very relevant points. 

"I am well aware, thanks, that good people can make ugly art and that ugly people can make good art. Ultimately the function of art is to express something and move an idea from one person to another, and the tools of that can include revulsion and discomfort. Having been in a few bands myself, thanks, I know that the uninitiated can mistake these devices as windows into the soul of the creator. Ultimately they are, of course, but necessarily in the crude autobiographical way they are often interpreted." He concludes, however, that "they go out of their way to make it clear that this is not just a case of regular people making music about assholes, but assholes making music about being assholes."

Tyler's response? "Me Nor Anyone i Know In My Age Group Know Who You Are, Old Ass. Surprised You Knew how To Use A Computer. And What's Good With RAPEMAN?"

Tyler had also retaliated in an NME interview, attacking his critics for failing to listen to the “word play or the patterns we use” or the context in which they're used. “A lot of people take stuff too seriously. So some of the time it's actually for them, my subconscious doing it on purpose, just to piss them off... It's not our fault if they're fucking dumb enough to believe this shit...”

He concludes: “I'm not homophobic. I just think faggot hits and hurts people. It hits. And gay just means you're stupid.”

"They don't get it 'cause it's not made for them," raps Tyler on one track. Maybe that's it? I daresay that predominantly white, liberal-minded rock critics are not the target demographic here. Maybe we just don't “get it.” Whether he's a parody or a 'troll', it's clearly a deliberately abrasive and confrontational album, but given that the Odd Future collective have a lesbian member, should we all accept that 'faggot' is used as street slang, re-appropriated from those who use it in aderogatory manner towards homosexuals in particular? Is it all just tired sensationalism? Most importantly, is it actually OK to like this record?

Live Music Review: Sleigh Bells @ Heaven

(Londonist, February 2011)

http://londonist.com/2011/02/music-review-sleigh-bells-heaven.php

A mix tape containing Abba, Mary J Blige and Fleetwood Mac ends abruptly, and as they gaze with trepidation at the tower of Marshall amp stacks above them, a furious torrent of unidentifiable death metal pours down upon tonight’s audience. They’ve already warmed to TEETH!!!, who were a riot of primal screams, pounding percussion and Kill Bill-style sirens. They’ve also danced themselves dizzy to JD Samson’s MEN, who manage effortlessly to be simultaneously confrontational and euphoric. However, half-blinded with white light and deafened by a high-decibel barrage of distorted bass crunches, the onslaught provided by Sleigh Bells is something else entirely.

Tearing straight into 'Infinity Guitars' and 'A/B Machines', Alexis Krauss is initially only visible as a hooded silhouette against a bank of strobe lighting, but still compelling to watch. During ‘Kids’ she prowls menacingly along the edge of the stage and, much like Alice Glass or Alison Mosshart, enthusiastically whips her hair, leans into the crowd and grabs at the sea of outreached arms below. Derek Miller prefers to lurk in the shadows, casually embarking on a full-scale invasion of the auditory canals. Such is the cacophonous wall of sound which ensues, it’s often difficult to determine whether he’s playing a guitar or firing a machine gun at us.

Having served their apprenticeships in both hardcore punk and bubblegum girl-pop, it’s easy to see why label boss MIA gave her nod of approval. It’s essentially Atari Teenage Riot juxtaposed with Destiny’s Child (and we’re frequently reminded of the potential greatness of that rumoured collaboration with Beyoncé, should it ever surface). Tonight, a celebratory 'Crown On The Ground' ends with Alexis diving headfirst into the pit of raised hands. And that’s it. Ten short, sharp blasts of visceral ‘Treats’. No messing, no compromising and no encore. You wouldn’t want it any other way.