A new year. How exciting!
December 2004 Archives
And, in case you were wondering, my top five films of 2004:
- Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind
- Before Sunset
- The Incredibles
- Main Hoon Na
- Collateral
(There are a few films, like Sideways, Finding Neverland, and so on, that I never got around to seeing, unfortunately)
(an honourable mention for The Motorcycle Diaries, if only because I'll always remember watching it!)
And! Music-related things I'm interested in that are coming next year!
- The Johnny Boy album. I know it can't be as good as You Are The Generation…, but I have to believe.
- The Magic Numbers. Supposedly building up a following from spectacular live performances, they currently only have a 7" single out, Hymn For Her (it's very good), but a full album is coming next year
- New albums from Saint Etienne, New Order, The Flaming Lips, and *whisper* Oasis. Yes, yes, I know, but I still hold out hope they'll come good. Despite all the evidence to the contrary.
For those of you going to this concert on New Year's Eve:
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
(my rage is equal opportunity, you see…)
Come on, did you really think it was going to be anything else? The best song of the year by a distance of approximately here from halfway to Promixa Centauri. This is a song that comes dressed up in heavy mascara and eyeshadow; that gives you a wink from across the dancefloor, and then rips your heart out. The work of Phil Spector is updated and shoved into the 853rd century, not just a Wall of Sound, but a whole World; fireworks and church bells ringing in a New Order.
And those lyrics. Bitterly cynical and British, blaming a generation of apathy and consumerism for the state of the world today, and yet. And yet. This is the song of romantics, of people who want to remake the world anew. They despair at the current state of affairs, and present Hearts of Ice to the world, but their real thoughts are given away in the first line:
"I just can't help believing, though believing sees me cursed"
I could talk about it all day. But it's Christmas Eve, so I'll spare you. Go to their website, watch the video, and get ready to buy the album when it comes out next year.
Annie is from Norway.
Annie is the reason why Pop in 2004 is better than 2003, and why 2005 is looking good already.
Annie knows that Kylie is just chewing gum.
Annie wanted to be on Top of The Pops, just like all pop stars.
Annie is a fool for love.
Annie's Anniemal is the Lexicon of Love of the decade.
Annie begins her album with the words
In the Jungle
It was true
Where all the anniemals could be
sssshhhhhhh!
lets start the record!
Annie ends her album with the heartbreaking My Best Friend. Steal a copy from HMV.
Annie is A.N.N.I.E. — Artificial Networked Neohuman Intended for Exploration.
Annie Needs No Irritating Explanations.
Considering their first album was an instrumental, it was something of a surprise to hear Electrelane bursting with language on The Power Out. The album features songs in French, German and Spanish, but the most powerful track is The Valleys, a hymn delivered by the band with what sounds like a Welsh gospel choir.
It really sounds like a valley. You can envision the small coal mining towns and the vast green spaces, sounds echoing to infinity and back. It's been cropping up on my playlist since I got hold of the prerelease late last year, so it has had some pretty impressive staying power.
Tomorrow's update might be a bit late, as I'm heading to London for a taping of an E4 TV show…
Because no rap song this year comes close to having a lyric like:
My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard,
And they're like
It's better than yours,
Damn right it's better than yours,
I can teach you,
But I have to charge
(and hurrah for The Neptunes, masters of the beat. as well)
A glorious mess, combining half-remembered Sundays dreading the start of Ski Sunday on BBC2 with the style and sass of a New York playground. I've read interviews with the founder member of The Go! Team; he's apparently unhappy with how American Thunder, Lightning, Strike sounds. To which I say: bobbins. Part of what makes this record so great is the unexpected mix of different sounds. Unlike, say, Lemon Jelly, who are quite content to stay noodling in their little Oliver Postgate world, The Go! Team rise above simple nostalgia, creating something new and exciting from battered old C90 cassettes.
I fell in love with this record at precisely thirty-eight seconds after it started. The gradual buildup at the start threatens to give way to a traditional rock ballad, but, at the last second, it turns away and instead heads down the path less travelled; walking on a trail already mapped out by Disco Inferno, but worth further exploration.
As I said last time I talked about this song, it's the way the vocals are hidden beneath the melody that really attracts me to the bulk of the song, how you get snippets of vocals coming through before they get lost in the mix again. The feeling of gazing off into a sunset on a warm evening. Nice thoughts as the temperature goes Arctic.
Shut up. These are the best two pop songs produced by a UK act this year. Infused with a New Pop sensibility (the two tribes reference is obviously between the sexes, but also a Frankie Goes To Hollywood name-check), dripping in metafiction overtones (and yes, I almost always fall for that), and backed with jaunty electropop tunes. How could they fail?
In an attempt to claw back some credibility, I must admit that I have no idea what any member of Girls Aloud looks like, let alone their names. Along with Toxic and a song yet to come, we have proof positive that Pop Is Not Dead. It was only kidding.
Vilify me in the comments.
There it sits, lurking in the middle of Universal Audio. It starts with a sad piano. Twenty seconds later, a female voice starts to sing "faces familiar full of regret / I hated this place / And all who came from it". Escape from the city, trying to get away from the scum of Notting Hill, before realising you're just the same as them. The city-virus has infected you, and no matter how far you run, you will always hear the beckoning call of the traffic and look wistfully at the streetlamps spelling out words in languages yet to be discovered.
This is that song. A random walk through the city, coming to terms with your fate, and yes, even embracing it. You can disappear and reappear in amongst the back streets and the end of days, melting into the night with a smile on your face.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20041213/ap_on_re_us/soldiers_scrounging
http://www.epic-usa.org/Default.aspx?tabid=440
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,11697828%255E1702,00.html
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20041215/ap_on_re_us/marine_columbine
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6712828/
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200412/s1266247.htm?fp_news_stor
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/16/national/16stress.html?oref=login&oref=login
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/041215/325/f8mqi.html
http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2004/12/15/war_funding_request_may_hit_100_billion/
(I know what I said, but I changed my mind)
Firstly, a moment of silence for our former Home Secretary.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
I'm sorry, I'm just in a very good mood right now. Who says that you don't get what you want at Christmas? And what a tune to soundtrack this evening of rejoicing; indie geeks channelling Daft Punk and getting their dancing shoes on. Vocoders! Washing-machine effects! It's about going to a city of stars and having a big party! Awesome!
It can be heard: here. Now, go and listen, and dance.
In the distance, there is a low rumble. If you strain your ears, you can hear the sounds of tens of thousands of comic fans logging on to the Internet, screaming "YES!", and then sobbing tears of unbridled joy.
Grant Morrison. Frank Quitely. Superman. Coming next year.
I need a tissue.
Every music poll needs a token Swedish entry. Give a warm welcome to The Concretes, then, an indie-pop band from Sweden (naturally. Because if they were from Finland, it would mess things up some what). Say Something New does the standard trick of stealing the drum beat from Be My Baby (the poor thing — it's like one of those petrol stations that you hear about; one that gets robbed one day, then the robbers come back the next day, and the next), and combines it with odd, slightly stilted female vocals. Shut up. It's nice, and indie-sounding, and I realise that this probably isn't causing you to rush to Kazaa or HMV to check them out, but every once in a while, it's good to curl up with something that reminds you of five years ago, heading down to Vinyl Exchange and Piccadilly Records on a Thursday morning to get the week's new singles (yes, while most people's grant money went on cigarettes and alcohol, mine went on CDs and concert tickets).
Call And Response's new album got lost behind the back of the huge sofa that is my hard drive. I'm currently listening to Silent Chill, and it's rather good in a Stereolab-type fashion. Please accept my apologies, o slightly-obscure American band, who provided a song that soundtracked November 2002 for me!
I did warn you it was going to get worse. I feel slightly ashamed that I like this, considering I've hated almost everything else that Blink-182 have released, but I do. I am a sucker for the gentle guitar strumming and piano bits at the start, the "we're a rock band and we're doing a ballad, so we're going to need an industrial vat of strings over here!" backing, and I fell for the way the second verse appears to be from a different song entirely; the first was all hopeful, but the next opens with the cry of "Where are you?" and then goes on to talk gibberish about spiders. Like all good pop songs, it knows not to hang around. You get two verses, then it's straight into the breakdown and fade-out. None of this dallying around, coughing and spluttering while waiting for the string section to pack up and go home (Mr. Gallagher, I'm looking in your direction).
Yikes, admitting to liking a Blink-182 song. 2004 has been an odd year…
This is just crazy. High-pitched Japanese female vocals thrown in a blender with bits and pieces of half-remembered TV show themes. Like an injection of corn syrup; the sugar high lasts for hours.
Now, I liked the original version of this, with its Thin Lizzy leanings (or outright theft, if you're going to be less charitable). But this remix by The Avalanches (when, oh when are we going to get a new album?) turns it into something very different; the guitars are jettisoned, instead an African band and choir provide the backing. And it's fabulous; the percussion provides an odd beat, while the backing vocals complement the song well, despite being as removed from a traditional B&S record as Norwegian Death Metal. Not much more to say, really, only that it's a song that you'd never expect them to release, but I'm glad they did…
Yes, I know; it's been sitting on my hard drive for over a year now. But, while it may have first come out last year, there's no denying that 2004 was the year that the Scissor Sisters became Pop's Most Likely To. Who could possibly forget the performance at Glastonbury, with the follow-up interview where Jake left almost nothing to the imagination? Or T in The Park, where he conducted proceedings in nothing but a precarious-looking blanket? The session on Radio 1 where they took the harsh angular sound of Take Me Out and turned it into a lounge lizard classic? How about when they unleashed glitterdammerung upon Brighton? Or the moment, at 3:15am, where you realise that this song would sound fantastic when mixed in Justin Timberlake's Rock Your Body?
They are Fun, they are Sparkly, and hopefully, they will scare the pants off a bit section of Middle America when they appear on Saturday Night Live tomorrow. Even if most of their songs do seem to have a melancholy air about them; I haven't managed to work out just what Laura is going on about, but it seems to involve a hairdresser at some point. I don't really care, though. It's bouncy and brings back Michael Jackson's alternative take on "c'mon". Let a thousand rainbows bloom. Or something.
I finally got around to changing the comments window to use Gill Sans this evening (for those of you who don't have the font, it won't look any different, but trust me, it looks quite pleasant on my iBook). I also wrote a MovableType plugin that adds a little avatar image if it recognises the name of the poster. Click on an entry with a few comments on it to see what it looks like. I haven't done everybody who has ever posted here, mainly because I ran out of inspiration. So if you want a little picture of you to come up here when you post (or if you're unhappy with what I gave you!), then send me a 50x50 pixel jpeg image, and I'll add it to the database.
Steel drums! A boy singing so high you could be forgiven it was a girl! Yes, it's the traditional Indie Guitar group for this year. Not a great year for indie bands, considering that the supposed new discovery was a bunch of guys doing a rather insipid Jeff Buckley impression (and Coldplay have already filled that spot, thank you very much). This, though, is quite nice; lots of the usual swirling guitars, but the aforementioned steel drums give Wanderlust a ethereal feeling, especially when combined with the vocals. It's not a song that is going to change the world, but great for a wistful four minutes.
When there's nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire.
God, that was strange to see you again
Introduced by a friend of a friend.
Smiled and said "Yes, I think we've met before"
In that instant it started to pour.
Captured a taxi despite all the rain
We drove in silence across Prunchard Plain
All the time you thought I was sad
I was trying to remember your name.
This scar is a flak on my porcelain skin
Tried to reach deep but you couldn't get in.
Now you're outside me, you see all the beauty
Repent all your sin.
It's nothing but time and a face that you lose
I chose to feel it and you couldn't choose
I'll write you a postcard; I'll send you the news
From the house down the road
From real love.
Live through this, and you won't look back
Live through this, and you won't look back
Live through this, and you won't look back.
There's one thing I want to say, so I'll be brave
You were what I wanted; I gave what I gave
I'm not sorry I met you.
I'm not sorry it's over
I'm not sorry there's nothing to say.
I'm not sorry there's nothing to say.
There are two schools of thought about this single: you either like the first half or the second. If you like the first half, then you smell and people point at you in the street. If you like the second half, then congratulations! You are a right-thinking person who welcomes the return of New Wave in all its arty, angular beauty.
Actually, I quite like both parts; the sadness of "I know I won't be leaving here with you" that ends the first section, how the song just stops and stomps while the band change direction, and of course the glitter-tinged dancing of the second half. Plus! Black shirts! White ties! I'm a sucker for a band with a well-designed image, I'm afraid…
You have to feel sorry for the BBC sometimes; they seem to have bad luck in choosing charity records. Most of the time, they're just dull and inoffensive (e.g. the latest Girls Aloud effort), but every so often, they manage to choose rather inappropriate songs. The Children In Need cover of Perfect Day, with all its heroin allusions, is the classic example, but this year's Sport Relief single has to be the most unlikely charity record ever.
You have to wonder whether anybody listened past the glorious sparkly-sheened Gary Glitter stomp and paid attention to the lyrics. At all. It's the story of a girl desperate for fame, and the things she's willing to do to achieve her dreams (Let's just say that "the champagne makes it taste so much better" is probably the dirtiest line you'll have heard in a Top 40 hit this year, and leave it at that, shall we?). And it doesn't seem to be going well, by the time the song reaches the breakdown:
Hey, Stop You made a promise to make me a star You made a promise I'll get to the top You made a promise to make me a star You made a promise I'll get to the top
There's so much going on in this record; throw-away lines like "he likes to put his own records on", the electro-house backing track, the expert use of "hey!" as backing vocals, and the nagging question of whether Stevens realises that, from a certain point-of-view, the song refers to her, whether during her Simon Fuller days (I've heard stories), or teaming up with hot producer Richard X for this track. Mind you, I wouldn't care if it the song wasn't the classic that it surely is. So congratulations to the BBC for encouraging children to sing about the joys of the casting couch…
"Did you miss me?"
Of course we did. Although we are a little worried about you. Calm down a bit; have a cup of tea now and again. Ignore the idiots who think you're the Yoko Ono of their generation. Look after yourself, and keep coming back every couple of years with another album. Even if half of it turns out to be rubbish, a meta-rock-pop half-stroke of genius like Mono makes it all worthwhile…
Today, then: a bootlegged copy of The Star Wars Holiday Special. Broadcast at Christmas on CBS in 1978, it has never been shown legally anywhere ever again. Only bootlegs exist, and George Lucas is on record as saying "if I had the time, I'd get a sledgehammer and destroy every copy in existence." This, then, is scary territory indeed.
We begin; the first unsettling thought - they didn't even splash out for the title scenes, instead having a cheap-looking "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away" slapped on-screen.
"introducing chewbacca's family" with his son lumpy. HIS SON LUMPY.
It's a wookie situation comedy! Lumpy is carving an x-wing. I'm really hoping for subtitles. But no. It's the family life of a suburban wookiee family. And even wookiees aren't allowed to eat between meals. Please tell me it isn't an hour and a half of wookiee noises.
Aww, they miss Chewbacca.The little one is excited about something. They're playing things on the holographic table.and right about now, you realise just why this has been erased from the official history. THEY'RE WATCHING A HOLOGRPAHIC CIRCUS. While a synthesiser is horrendously abused in the background. NO KITTY IT'S MY POT PIE! Lumpy is Cartman, I've decided.
Ooh, is that the plot coming back? Oh god, it's Luke. Mark Hamill seems to be wearing a lot of make-up. "Come on, Marla, let me see a little smile!" It's a wookiee! How can you tell!?
We're now in a shop. It's like Clerks! For The Imperial Guard Who Has Everything. But the shopkeeper is a Rebel spy! With a sophisticated code of "It was made by hand. SOLO!" And now Imperial shaving techniques.
Oh dear, back to the wookiess again. Star Wars cookery? "Bantha Surprise?" The horror. And it's not being played for laughs, it really is a whole cooking segment. And the cook has three arms.Make that four.
Back to Han and Chewie for a bit of action, stolen from the original film.
The Empire has declared the Wookiee planet under martial law. Perhaps they saw the cooking segment. Now the wookiees are getting presents from the shopkeeper. Lumpy seems to have got an Atari 2600. And another has been strapped into what looks like an electric chair, but it's apparently some sort of virtual reality device. PEOPLE ARE SWIMMING THROUGH SPACE. A virtual woman is now sweet-talking the old wookiee. I'm sure this is against the law, and just plain ewww. And now she's singing. Complete with dodgy 1970s compositing effects to duplicate her across the screen. Really, mere words can't convey how creep and sick and wrong this scene is.
Now onto C3PO and Princess Leia. I'm sure Carrie Fisher's drunk. She almost tripped over when walking across the set. Amd I don't want to know what a wookie-ookie is.
Han and Chewbacca have landed on the Wookiee planet! But no! Stormtroopers have taken over Chewie's house! But they're pacifying the troops by letting them watch Jefferson Starship. One of whom seems to be singing into a lollypop. But the guard is digging it! I'm hoping for a Stormtrooper hoedown by the end. When it ends. Oh,sweet blessed relief will soon be upon us.
And now a cartoon? A rather odd cartoon, in which character models seem to be a rough guide, rather than something to be adhered to. Boba Fett! Who…doesn't act like any other incarnation of of Fett that we've seen before. Oh, it was a double-cross. And the animator didn't like Harrison Ford's face. Wait, was that supposed to be an ending?
Imperial dudes wrecking the wookiee's house! It's a heartbreaking moment; Lumpy's bantha toy has been broken in two by Empire forces. Those scumbags. And now he's watching an instruction video. A freaky instruction video; making a transmitter has never been quite so scary. Or long and drawn out.
Bea Arthur as a bartender! No, just no. And now she's singing. I am never going to get rid of the mental scarring.
SHOOT HIM! SHOOT THE WALKING FLUFFBALL! Han saves the day! Lots of hugs.Ford has this look of "PLEASE! SOMEBODY RESCUE ME FROM THIS TERROR!" But Han has now gone, so we're left with the wookiees. Oh please, no. wookiee on wookie action!
All the wookies are walking through space into a ball of light. And R2D2 and C3PO have turned up. With no explanation. Oh, and here comes everybody else. CARRIE FISHER HAS JUST BROKEN OUT INTO SONG. KILL US NOW. THEY'VE DISCOVERED WORDS TO THE STAR WARS THEME. This has gone beyond strange and into the stuff of nightmares.
I will say, though, that it makes The Phantom Menace look like The Godfather in comparison…
A little tired and, to tell the truth, annoyed at the person who just sent almost 150 spam comments to the blog, so this entry will be fairly short.
Because of a very stupid lawsuit (a man called Handsome Dick Manitoba sued for trademark infringement), Manitoba is now known as Caribou. But I'm still calling him Manitoba, because it was a dumb lawsuit. Anyway, this is from his Up In Flames album, and is a splendid piece of twee-dance. Okay, now I have to beat myself with hammers for using the term 'twee-dance'. If you'll excuse me…
*THWACK* *THWACK*
Included here because it's a fun tale of a business man desperately trying to get home, with a sweet twist at the end that makes you go "awwww".
And yes, backing vocals by Lauren Laverne do go a long way in making this song one of my favourites from this year. Shut up. For 2005, I suggest we kidnap her from the Orange Chart Show or whatever it's called, and lock her away in a studio until she records a full-length album.
I do not have a Problem.
The worst thing about falling in love with a band is when they release the next album. What you want is to get the feeling you got from hearing that first album again; you want more of the same. Sadly, this just isn't possible. Even if most bands didn't tend to move in new directions with each album, you can never get that feeling back again. It might be better, it might be worse, but it can never be the same as that initial listen. A good example of this is Saturday Looks Good To Me's Every Night. I know that, technically, it's a better album than All Your Summer Songs. but it will never occupy the same place in my heart as their 2003 album. It was a soundtrack for the last few months at UNC; Meet Me By The Water accompanied me to Washnington D.C, Ultimate Stars followed my wanderings around the Pit at 15:20 each weekday, and Last Hour was playing in my head when people started driving away and when I had to say goodbye to eveyone. As much as I like Every Night, it can never be quite as special.
Still, Lift Me Up, my favourite track from their new album, is a wonderful reminder of why I fell for them in the first place. Motown by way of a thrift-store; layers of hand-claps, guitar, horns, and a marvellous organ that sounds as if it has been locked away in a garage for thirty years. And you know I'm a sucker for female singers (quick game for everybody to play at home! Guess how many records in this round-up feature female vocals?), especially ones who sing on indie-pop records. It's bouncy, fun, and features both the threat of shooting down helicopters and the use of the word 'taxidermist'. Quite splendid.
Can't Get You Out Of My Head's evil older sister; That was all about the gentle "na-na-na-na-na" which seemed so innocent when your first heard it, not realising that you'd find yourself repeating it in mixed company over two years later. Toxic is all about the screeching violins, almost atonal, jamming into your head like knives — repellent but yet somehow utterly compelling (almost, if you will, toxic. ahahahaha). Britney's voice is battered, abused, and twisted through a host of different vocal effects, coming out of the speaker in a 441kHz burst of energy; something now, a song that represents what the 21st century can offer. Pop didn't eat itself after all; it decided to feast on the avant-garde instead. Who knew that Cathy Dennis would end up being one of the greatest pop writers of her generation?
Oh, and you can dance to it. Badly, of course, but it's very danceable…
