Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Monday, February 9, 2009
BARBEZ AT TRAFO
Poking fun at earnest Brooklynite rockists for being, well, earnest Brooklynite rockists is a bit like taking a flaming spear to a straw target.
Their Paul Celan song cycle made me wince, though their salad bowl, saxophone n' theramin circus chaos was much, much better.
See what you think:
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
IRE AND LAMÉ
During one of our semi-regular, Youtube-fuelled Britpop reunion parties, watching Sarah Cracknell attempting to rouse the crowd during Hug My Soul at Glastonbury 1994 got me thinking.
For a time, in the mid-nineties, St Etienne flirted with being a geniunely popular pop band. Bob Stanley, Professor Emeritus of pop, probably shoulda known better. Their blend of Italianate house, the BBC radiophonic workshop and kitchen sink drama could never quite leapfrog out of irony, become the loved rather than the love letter. Liverpool band Ladytron attempted the same manoeuvre a decade later, noting the success - from the opposite direction - of self-conscious pop bands like Girls Aloud and the Sugababes. Ladytron's attempt to make a break for it was roughly concomitant with the muddleheaded critical second-guessing and pseudo-broad church of popism. This critical stance attempts a straight-faced appreciation of pop music, in and of itself, and - like Jeff Koon's puppy - ends up obscuring the problem. Not familiar with the term? It's just one of a number of fairly pervasive and bad faith journalistic (UK-style) co-options of low culture which tend to masquerade as the daredevil flouting of cultural hierachy. Ask k-punk or Owen Hatherley; they're most sane and heartening on the subject.
For a time, in the mid-nineties, St Etienne flirted with being a geniunely popular pop band. Bob Stanley, Professor Emeritus of pop, probably shoulda known better. Their blend of Italianate house, the BBC radiophonic workshop and kitchen sink drama could never quite leapfrog out of irony, become the loved rather than the love letter. Liverpool band Ladytron attempted the same manoeuvre a decade later, noting the success - from the opposite direction - of self-conscious pop bands like Girls Aloud and the Sugababes. Ladytron's attempt to make a break for it was roughly concomitant with the muddleheaded critical second-guessing and pseudo-broad church of popism. This critical stance attempts a straight-faced appreciation of pop music, in and of itself, and - like Jeff Koon's puppy - ends up obscuring the problem. Not familiar with the term? It's just one of a number of fairly pervasive and bad faith journalistic (UK-style) co-options of low culture which tend to masquerade as the daredevil flouting of cultural hierachy. Ask k-punk or Owen Hatherley; they're most sane and heartening on the subject.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Teddies
This in-between time has me feeling a little like an émigré to Hull, when in fact I've done an eighteen year stretch. Nevertheless, as a old-newcomer, it's good to know someone with an ear to the ground. Enter Han, with whom I went to the third of the Seeds and Bridges 2008 contemporary music series.
We saw Nalle, who were just wonderful, and came off like fifteen year-old, multi-instrumentalist wiccans going hell for leather in the school music room.
P.S. And if, like me, you fear the Newsome effect, stick with it, I promise Hannah Tuulikki's voice is less babytalk and more word-chewing.
We saw Nalle, who were just wonderful, and came off like fifteen year-old, multi-instrumentalist wiccans going hell for leather in the school music room.
P.S. And if, like me, you fear the Newsome effect, stick with it, I promise Hannah Tuulikki's voice is less babytalk and more word-chewing.
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