No.323- Jil is Lucky, Jil is Lucky, 2009

Retrieved from the detritus of the STANDARD Magazine mailbag, early 2011

I was thinking about Paris the other day, and how great it was to be able to get all these amusingly shit Europop CDs for free. This has changed my mind; no degree of ironic detachment and casual xenophobia can excuse the name of this band (I can’t bring myself to type it out again), nor the jaw-droppingly rubbish cover. Whilst the latter might be excused on the grounds that it seemed like a good idea for three-MDMA-buoyed minutes in 2009, the music… oh christ, the music… in a word, don’t.

No.319- A Heart Full of Sorrow, Yussuf Jerusalem, 2010

Received from some PR company or other, Paris, 2010

I can’t be bothered to write much today, so here’s a record that’s really not worth writing much about. This is very, very, very bad indeed, a quivering Hipster outsider fist into previously uncharted territories of solipsistic whingeing. You may have a soft spot for third-rate gothic grunge, but even so, I’d be surprised if you could tolerate more than two of this ghastly album’s nine songs in a single sitting. I might actually go and sell this at the computer exchange down the road before it closes. Byeee.

 

No.252- Hail to the Thief, Radiohead, 2003

Bought second hand on the day of release, Petersfield, Summer 2003

 

‘That’s it,’ Alex sighed as the CD spun to its ultimate, near unlistenable conclusion, ‘I’m finished with Radiohead. This is waaaaaaaank: anybody wanna buy it for three quid?’ I raised my hand and chucked him the coins, convinced that the apparently charmless Hail to the Thief might make a better case for itself with repeated listening: after all, Kid A was my favourite album, and that hadn’t exactly made the most winning of first impressions. I’d even numbed myself into enjoying its even more forbidding follow-up, Amnesiac. Hail to the Thief would take time, I told myself, but it would be worth it.

Well I tried. And I tried. And I tried. And I triiiiieeeed- and you can guess the rest (I hear the Rolling Stones’ lawyers have been getting pretty medieval recently). Anyway, after about seventy attempts, I gave up on Radiohead’s sixth album: it had neither the estranged indie-rock directness of OK Computer nor the agenda-setting beauty of Kid A. Hell, it didn’t even have the schizophrenic shoddiness of Amnesiac. From its (presumably, vaguely) politically incensed title to its messy, cryptic and tangentially topical sleeve art to the slightly weird, whiney little songs it contained, It was self-parody, pure and simple- and I for one felt cheated. Previously, I’d believed that even at his most difficult, Thom Yorke was two steps beyond everyone else, that it would all make sense in the end. This record not only destroyed that idiotic illusion, but put me off Radiohead completely.

I couldn’t sleep last night, so I gave myself a crash-reeducation in the ‘Head discography, from 1995’s The Bends (which hasn’t, I’m sorry to say, aged well) to last year’s The King of Limbs (which, oddly, I much prefer to 2007’s rather wet In Rainbows). It was weird: I can’t have listened to most of their albums for almost a decade, and much of what I’d previously seen in them was no longer there. On the other hand, I discovered a lot of nuances that had completely passed me by at the time: I’d never for example, have believed that I’d come to prefer Climbing up the Walls to anything else they did in the ‘90s, or that the subtly delightful In Limbo could become my favourite track off Kid A. Oh yes, and Kid A itself: while I can no longer truthfully say that it’s my favourite record of all time, I was shocked to hear quite how superbly it has stood the test of time. It occurred to me last night that, along with DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing or The Avalanches’ Since I Left You, it makes up one third of the Rosetta stone of contemporary pseud-pop.

How, then, did this over-packaged wet fart stand up to my deeply serious retrospective analysis? Well, d’you want the good news or the bad? I can’t get my head round Twitter or any of that stuff, so you can’t answer. Good news it is, then: after all my youthful indignation, ‘turns out that Hail to the Thief is actually a darn sight better than Amnesiac. The Bad News is that sadly, that isn’t really saying very much. Hail to the Thief remains an extremely irritating album for all the reasons stated above: it’s an unsatisfactory pot-luck of electronic skittles, stadium-rock guitars and actively wretched lyrics. Its obliquely anti-American semi-posturing looks all the more embarrassing and tentative in the post-Dubya era, and its half-arsed experimentation just sounds awkward and petulant.

Time has, however, granted the slight sweetener of distance: in isolation, Where I End and You Begin, Punchup at a Wedding and Sit Down/Stand Up come across really well. The latter is the only point on the album where Radiohead come close to the sort of formal skewering they perfected on Kid A: it’s no Everything in its Right Place, to be sure, but its freefall ambience, climactic, almost John Barry-ish buildup and architectural cut’n’paste electronica are lovely enough in themelves. I just wish I could say the same of anything else: Joy Division-y single There There is okay, if utterly unremarkable, and Sail to the Moon has an exquisite first few bars before descending into inconsequential Thom Yorke self-parody. The rest is, frankly, fucking awful. 2+2=5? No it doesn’t- no wonder this record doesn’t add up…

No.247- The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Pink Floyd, 1967

CD-R with anally professional finish, leant to me by somebody at my dad’s office, Autumn 2001

I’m as much of a sucker for a rock myth as anyone, but I’ve always found the counter-culture canonisation of Syd Barrett a bit hard to accept. For starters, the poor sod was an extremely troubled individual, and obsessive public scrutiny was never going to help stabilise his tragic condition. Then, of course, there’s the music: his output between 1966 and 1971 must be the most over-analysed body of work in pop music. Some of it- the stuff which created the myth- is great (the first three Floyd singles, bits of The Madcap Laughs), some of it vacantly, disturbingly uninvolved (most of Barrett, Vegetable Man) and the rest… well, that’s this record, which I find extremely annoying.

Whimsy is all very well, but for The Daily Record, this is just too much. A lot of psychedelic records pull themselves back from the edge of risibility by virtue of songwriting or production. This doesn’t: occasionally, you can hear a fragment of a good tune that is swallowed up by pointlessly wacky riffs and annoying bits of twiddling. I don’t hear the much- discussed “charm”, either: what I get is a bandleader incapable of focus leading everyone else in the studio down a series of increasingly noodly and irritating tangents. The only saving grace amid the obligatory Tolkein references and “far-out” proto-space rock is the rather lovely Bike, which is up there with Arnold Layne and Terrapin as musical justification for Syd Barrett’s enduring popularity.

I don’t understand why I’m incapable of enjoying this record: other people who hate Pink Floyd just as much as I do say it’s the best thing since penicillin, but I find it unlistenable. One twat’s idea of “fragile genius”, I suppose, is another twat’s vision of “annoying twaddle”. I’d give it to you if I could, but I borrowed it. Eleven years ago…

No.154- The Doughnut in Granny’s Greenhouse, The Bonzo Dog Band, 1968

Christmas present from JW-A, December 2006

As regular readers of this blog will know, I’m a sucker for dated novelty records. Gimmicky Europop, Comedy Swing, Sitcom cash-ins, forgotten TV themes, I love ‘em all. To keep my tastes consistent, I really, really want to like this record- but I can’t. It crosses the line between redundant humour and gratuitous zaniness- and I fucking hate it. I’m willing to indulge old peoples’ memories of the swinging bloody sixties ‘til the cows come home, but honestly… when they start repeating punchlines from Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band songs and Monty Python sketches, THAT’S when I draw my generational trump card and use it to draw the line.

While I adore (if that’s the right word) Vivian Stanshall’s psychotically funny/heartbreaking solo LP Men Opening Umbrellas Up Ahead, this is just too irritating to take; as my granny used to say, it’s neither clever nor amusing.

No.104- If You’re Feeling Sinister, Belle & Sebastian, 1997

Purchased at The Record Store, Petersfield, Summer 2003

Listening to this again has only confirmed what I didn’t quite dare admit when I bought it: I hate Belle & Sebastian (from the bottom of my heart). I’m all for archness, irony and all that clever-clever stuff, but I find them completely intolerable. It’s not as if I didn’t try, either; I bought this record precisely because I wanted to be the kind of person who liked Belle & Sebastian. Oh the horror.

I’m only two songs into my long and justifiably neglected copy of If You’re Feeling Sinister and already I want to set fire to the CD player. I would dearly love to write an 800 word polemic justifying and analysing my views on this supposed “classic”, but I’ve got to turn this off before I start self-harming. This is in no way a joke.

No.80- Ghosts from the Past, Bang Bang, 2009

Dunno… possibly a (very kind) gift from Elisabeth Donovan, December 2009

As you can probably tell from the photo, I’m slightly pissed (for any American readers, that is to say “drunk to the point of losing one’s facilities”, rather than angry- I’m actually (or inevitably) uncharacteristically chirpy this evening). This post will therefore be far from as comprehensive as yesterday’s splurge on Pulp’s Intro compilation.

From Pulp to Bang Bang- from the sublime to the… well, the fuckawful, if I’m honest.

God I hate this sort of music; cutesy European schmindie-folk. The cover’s noirish look promised me an album by an axe murderer-type! I feel short-changed- even though I didn’t pay a penny for this promo CD, which incidentally isn’t worth the card it’s printed on.

Ack. I’ll go and chuck up the rest of my inebraited bile elsewhere, I think.

No.72- Django Django, Django Django, 2012

Purchased at Rough Trade, Talbot Road, January 2012

I was looking back over the 71 albums I’ve written up here, and realised that in about a quarter of the posts, the key phrase is something to the tune of: ‘in spite of how crap this record is, it is one of my favourite albums of all time blahdiblahdibla’. Practically every other record is “revelatory” or to use one of my favourite Digby-does-authority-isms, “tremendously enjoyable”. So, apologies all round for my fanboy clichés.

Anyway, to paraphrase myself, in spite of how crap this record is, it is most decidedly not one of my favourite albums of all time blahdiblahdibla. Once again seduced by the hype machine (why oh why does that keep happening?), I bought Django Django’s début album on the strength of having been mildly impressed by its opening track, Hail Bop. It sounded like a fairly savvy attempt to imagine what would happen if the Beta Band decided to cover a White Stripes hit, and managed to approximate this with a degree of aplomb. Naturally, I was intrigued as to what the rest of their LP would sound like.

The answer, as if it wasn’t obvious, is exactly the same; red’n’whiteboy blues filtered through a very post-Britpop layer of neo-psychedelia. Interesting for one song, but somehow both boring and immensely irritating after three. Bolt ten more of these “experiments” onto that number, and I’d happily smash the ghetto blaster wide open if I could pull myself out of the inertia Django Django have plunged me into.

I’m usually all for a bit of Bo Diddley Beat-ing (not, I hasten to add, “Bo Diddley beating”, that’d be horrible even if he was still alive), but this is just nauseating. Every song sounds exactly the same, and even on the numerous occasions that the band introduce some exotic instrumentation it just gets swallowed up by the morass of triple-tracked vocals and chugging rhythm guitars. The only lasting impression it leaves (other than a force-five migraine and a lingering sense of its own pointlessness) is an urge to listen to The Beta Band’s Three EPs- y’know, just to make sure Django Django haven’t hijacked Steve Mason & co’s back catalogue as well as all their ideas.

I’m turning this off. Now.

No.35- The End of an Ear, Robert Wyatt, 1970

Purchased at Fopp, Cambridge Circus WC2, last Sunday

Tonight I’m pushed for time; there’s been a domestic crisis.

In short- I love Robert Wyatt. He is English pop’s very own Marxist Uncle Bulgaria. This album, though, is unlistenable; just DON’T.

SELECTED HIGHLIGHTS: None.

No.27- Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind, Vashti Bunyan, 2007

Purchased at Reckless Records, Berwick Street, W1, November 2007

This album represents a serious error of judgement for my record collection and I. 2006 was the year the dreaded nu-folk went overground, and pop history was rewritten to incorporate precious “troubadours” like Vashti who had been ignored the first time round for very good reasons. Her song Just another Diamond Day was used to soundtrack a vodaphone commercial, and became an improbable chart hit. Suddenly, twee was in, and record companies were racing to sign bands so cutesy they made Belle & Sebastian look like AC/DC.

I’d like to be able to say that my cynicism has been consistent since then, but as this compilation’s presence in my home attests, this would not be entirely accurate. I’m as much of a sucker for fads as anyone, and under the malign influence of two of my best friends, I admit that I briefly dabbled in the gormless wilderness of 1970s folk.

Some things just stick in your mind charts Vashti Bunyan’s progression from failed pop-puppet to full-blown folkie over the course of the 1960s, and actually (though I’m loathe to admit it) isn’t all that bad. The songs recorded with Rolling Stones svengali Andrew Loog-Oldham are pretty excellent; the title track shuffles along with a baroque bounce, I want to be alone is a tunefully enigmatic assertion of independence, and Coldest Night of the Year is terrific Phil Spector-ish seasonal schmaltz. Despite the fact it comes perilously close to Incredible String Band territory, I also quite like Winter is Blue, and I can halfway imagine I’d like to walk around in your mind on the soundtrack to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, although I’m not entirely sure why.

Most of the album, though, is made up of the sort of nauseatingly precious music that makes me want to go out and start setting fire to cats. The lyrical clichés of folk- falling leaves, (significant) brackets in the titles, characters with names like “the wanderer”- are all present and correct. There’s even a song called 17 Pink Sugar Elephants. Give me strength, and hide the petrol- the neighbour’s cat has come over the wall!

I’m happy to have got this out of the way. Despite its moments of interest, I’d be more than content if I never heard this album again in my life.

SELECTED HIGHLIGHTS: Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind, Coldest Night of the Year, Winter is Blue