You said something – PJ Harvey
Monday, March 9th, 2009This waltzing photograph of a song is hard to resist. Listening to it you’re brought in front of a scene pregnant with possibilities, and left to your own devices to make sense of it. The setting is ‘a rooftop in Brooklyn, at one in the morning’. Everything is seen through this frame or filter. Brooklyn [...]
Shake The Devil – Antony and the Johnsons
Thursday, March 5th, 2009Slouched hidden beside a fire-exit, Antony Hegarty looked neither courageous or a star, clutching his notebook and looking nervous as he waited for his driver to arrive. This was back in 2005, backstage at a festival in Italywhere Antony and the Johnsons were due to headline that night. He averted his gaze from all passers [...]
The Devil in Miss Jones – Something Happens
Monday, March 2nd, 2009Amongst the many half-baked explanations for Dublin band Something Happens’ inexplicable lack of global success, back in 1990, with the superb Stuck Together With God’s Glue is one that focusses entirely on lead singer Tom Dunne’s paisley shirt collection. There may be some truth to it (take a look at the video below), but it’s [...]
Crapola Galore – Are These the Worst Songs of All Time…?
Friday, February 13th, 2009An alternative title for this triumphalist rant could be “When Critics Bite Back…”, but the dangers of sounding like a Sky One documentary cross bred with a doughnut addled Rolling Stone sub-editor are for now, enough to keep me satisfied with my primary path of destruction. Sure it’s a pre-occupation as old [...]
May you never – John Martyn (RIP 1948 – Jan 2009)
Wednesday, February 11th, 2009When I think of John Martyn – who sadly passed away on the 29th of January – I think of friends, spread out across time and space, with whom I’ve listened to his music. It’s natural, because for decades Martyn was an artist to be discovered. He only periodically existed on radio/tv or in the [...]
Drop the Pilot – Joan Armatrading
Wednesday, February 4th, 2009Imagine yourself in the anonymous looking high-street of any home-counties English town, on a tuesday morning. As you stroll, minding your own business, a man in a bowler hat brushes accidentally into you. The likelihood – in our admittedly contrived scene – is that he’ll akwardly issue an embarassed apology, perhaps going so far as [...]
Police on my back – The Clash
Wednesday, January 14th, 2009It may seem like heresy (and a rip-off of a Chuck D. line), but the Clash didn’t mean shit to me when I was growing up. I was six years old in the summer of ’77, and by the mid eighties their punk revolution had already long-been mainstreamed , commercialised (some would argue also by [...]
Back to Life – Giovanni Allevi
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009There’s an oldish interview with Glen Hansard (the frames / swell season) in TMO, where he talks about poetry, saying “Poetry stirs the blood. Poetry makes men go to war. If you listen to any of the speeches from Bush or the statements from Al-Qaeda, it’s all poetry, and that’s what makes men kill. ” I [...]
Oliver James – The Fleet Foxes
Tuesday, January 6th, 2009Why do we sing? Why do we force air out of our lungs, crafted by muscles along the way in to song? The prime evolutionary argument tells us that it’s something to do with getting it on – most people’s vocal range diminishes with age, as they pass their sexual peak. But equally important is [...]
Thin Lizzy – Brought Down
Monday, January 5th, 2009The anniversary of Phil Lynott’s death is a strange one, in that it already has a clear and established mythology and ritual associated with it; one set out by the singer himself. In the song King’s Call, the Irish songwriter ostensibly talking about the death of Elvis, prefigured how he would himself be remembered. The [...]
