The Afterword

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Football

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As noted at length elsewhere, it’s been a bumper few weeks for followers of football. The European Championships have been hugely entertaining, it’s been fabulous to see fans back in stadiums, and – for those who’ve been paying attention – the Copa America has also been humming along nicely in the wee small hours.

As we build towards this evening’s game and then the respective finals on Sunday, this seems as good a time as any to ask: what are your favourite things about football? Could be a great goal, a player you hold dear, a favourite stadium, a match you personally played in, a song, a shirt, a tradition, a particular brand of half time pie – whatever you like.

You may lament the crass commercialization of the game, VAR may have sucked the joy out of it for you, or you might believe that the serpent simulation has despoiled the sport’s garden of eden to the point where it has become unwatchable – simply unwatchable – for you.

Nonetheless, for the vast majority of us, there will be something, somewhere, that football has contributed that, at one time, sparked joy in us. Here’s the place to » Continue Reading.

Friday: I’m in, love

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Friday afternoon, kids absorbed with their mates, finishing up the last knockings of the working week and looking ahead to a weekend of sunshine and f**tb*ll. What better moment to play some new.

As recently essayed elsewhere, I am currently drunk on the glory of life renewed, senses aflame, eyes and heart wide open and enjoying even the most mediocre experiences as if they were manna from the gods themselves. Does this make me an unreliable narrator when it comes to the virtues of recent music? Of course. Was I ever reliable to start with? Probably not. Will I ever stop? Yo, I don’t know.

Posted in the comments below are the 2021 tunes I’ve really been enjoying in recent weeks (Burial aside).

It’s the now customary mishmash of impenetrable Drill, uber-cliched Pop and the occasional power ballad, I’m afraid, but this is what’s on in the kitchen right now and I’m loving it, so who knows – maybe someone on here will too.

Oh, and GY!BE. Dear, sweet, ever-reliable GY!BE. Ploughing what is essentially the same narrow furrow for a quarter of a century without any apparent diminishment in returns. How on earth did they become comfort » Continue Reading.

To Be Born Again

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Salutations

It’s been a while since I’ve had the urge to write anything about music: somewhere along the way it became apparent to me that nearly everything I liked about the stuff was self-evident in the experience of it, and most of what irked me was present only in the discussion/analysis. It’s so much better to feel the sun on your face than to have someone describe to you what heat is like.

Nonetheless, in the last few weeks I felt the stirring of a long dormant impulse, provoked by a series of chance musical encounters. What follows is an attempt to get something off my chest, to order my thoughts and to transfer unto others the sheer voltaic elation currently coursing through my being. That latter point, of course, the only really good reason to write about music to start with – to take some of the joy it provokes in your heart and send it out into the world to see if it might multiply.

As always, I thank you in advance for your tolerance.

How did I get here? Well, this was this little kerfuffle over a thing called Covid-19. Ghastly stuff, kept a few of us » Continue Reading.

Bingo’s Best of 2020

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Here we are again; my now traditional annual drive-by posting to bequest unto each of you the sonic fruits of the year just gone. I recognise that it’s both regrettable and painful for all concerned, but then – so has been 2020.

Before I get started, a couple of points of order:

(i) I recognise that I have already ruinously undermined the central premise of this post (being that, like Santa himself, I visit the blog but once a year, but when I do, I bring good cheer) with my recent Maradona obituary. I assure you all that this was unavoidable – when one’s heroes die, one does not tarry with matters of mere etiquette. Nonetheless, I will take this opportunity to say thanks for the kind words from those who spared them, RIP Diego and also to note that, with the passing of Chuck Yeager, this annus has been particularly horribilis for the idols of my youth. Which brings us neatly to point two…

(ii) Can there really be such a thing as a “best of” 2020, I hear you ask? Surely, the past 12 months have been so thoroughly blighted by plagues, economic catastrophes, gigantic mega hornets, Matt » Continue Reading.

OFFICIAL COMMUNICATION: Bingo Little’s Best Of 2019

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Dear Sirs (let’s not kid ourselves here)

I am writing to you all on behalf of one Mr Bingo Little esq.

I cannot, with any certainty, forecast the extent of the cache which herein remains affixed to that name, but I am assured that in the not-too-distant past it constituted an iron-clad vouchsafe of quality such that all doors would open, hearts would flutter and underwear would drop upon its mere utterance. I trust that remains the case and that, accordingly, each of you will voraciously consume what follows, moist with tremulous anticipation.

You will, of course, all be aware that – via a combination of villain circumstance and fickle providence – Mr Little’s attentions have, necessarily, for some time been diverted elsewhere, and that in that interim the Afterword Blog has become unto him as melody to The Fall; a sadly neglected acquaintance. Nonetheless! The festive season remains the perfect opportunity for a man to step back and consider all that he has overlooked in the months preceding, and it is in that spirit that Mr Little has acted entirely in accordance with his status as a member of the much vaunted Metropolitan Liberal Elite, and entrusted » Continue Reading.

Pick Of The Flicks

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Finding ourselves, as we do, in the midst of awards season, much cultural bandwidth is currently being taken up with endless squabbling as to which movies are being cruelly overlooked/dramatically overpraised/insufficiently woke.

Personally, I prefer to think that these things are ultimately fairly meaningless, and that the amount of energy expended on hammering away at what are, after all, mere industry backslaps, could better be spent on more worthwhile pursuits, such as – well, watching/talking about more movies. They’re only movies, after all, and they’re meant to be fun.

With that in mind, I’d like to ask: what are the five best new (by which I mean “new”, rather than “new to you”) movies you’ve seen in the last 12 months? Apart from Gary, whose steadfast refusal to agree with me on matters celluloid is both wearying and distasteful.

Please feel free to symbolically link arms with an activist from the field of your choice while posting.

I’ll start:

1. Call Me By Your Name

A truly beautiful movie that has stayed with me over the months.

My initial prejudice was that this was mere homage to the sort of high class, mildly erotic European cinema that you couldn’t » Continue Reading.

I’ll Mean Something To You

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I was reflecting recently that, push come to shove, Nikes by Frank Ocean is (perhaps predictably) my favourite track of the last ten years.

I’ve banged on before about why it’s so great, so I won’t do so at length again here. It’s just sort of stayed with me – I listen to it all the time, and it always brings me this weird serenity, like it’s mine from way back. The segment where all the auto tune falls away and Ocean’s voice rises out of the haze to deliver some of the most fabulous lyrics I ever hope to hear, the switch from singing to rapping… it’s just so lovely, and inspiring and of the moment. It gives me so much hope for what music could do.

Anyway, what prompted this post is that footage has emerged this week of Ocean rehearsing the track.

His voice is just utterly gorgeous. I enjoyed it. You might too, particularly if you struggled to get past the auto tune on the main version.

Any other shouts for your favourite track of the last decade?

The Beautiful Ones

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A thread in which we will determine the most good looking band of all time.

No solo artists permitted. All time periods welcome. No adjustments made for failure to adhere to contemporary grooming mores. Can be boys, girls or a mix (tell me about the ladyboys). Any genre, but at least one band member has to be playing an instrument (to avoid a total boy/girl band whitewash). No exceptions – all band members must be counted towards the total aggregate handsomeness of the collective (aka “The Coors Clause”).

GO!

2017. What. Is. Up.

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We’re pretty much three quarters of the way through 2017, and it strikes me that it’s turning into a really quite excellent year for those of us who believe in the basic concept of new music.

We’ve had great albums from the likes of the XX, Julie Byrne, Young Thug, Vince Staples and Japandroids. Great tunes from Sigrid, Mikey Mike, Stormzy and Harry Styles.

There’s been new Mogwai, new Clark, new Four Tet and new Ryan Adams. Hans Zimmer released his best ever soundtrack work (which is saying something), we had a smattering of Frank Ocean releases and Surfer Blood delivered on their potential.

It’s been a year where I’ve found certain records have entwined themselves with the books I’ve read, to the point where I find them quite hard to separate. Father John Misty soundtracked the new George Saunders, the excellent Penguin Cafe album was on repeat as I ploughed through the His Dark Materials trilogy, and more recently the new Godspeed You! Black Emperor has proved a suitably apocalyptic backing to Niall Ferguson’s The Pity of War.

Recent weeks have seen the music coming thick and fast. I was still picking my way through the Mogwai » Continue Reading.

ANDREW WK NEW ALBUM KLAXON

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I don’t want to cause the blog to combust in an orgy of dribbling expectation (that’s a lie, for openers), but I’ve just been informed that Afterword Royalty Andrew W.K will release his first new album in 8 years on 2 March 2018.

Full details here:

“I’m going for the sound of pure, unadulterated power; every emotion, every thought, every experience, every sensation, every fear, every joy, every clarity, every confusion, every up, every down… all extruded and concentrated into one thick syrup of super life-force feeling, and then psychically amplified by the celebratory spirit of glorious partying.”

https://pitchfork.com/news/andrew-wk-announces-first-new-album-in-8-years/

Here he is giving the greatest interview ever….

And here he is making young people happy once upon a time, in scenes later captured for posterity by Hieronymous Bosch….

Roll on March.

Ending The War On Error

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On a recent thread, Bob made the point that there seems to be a contemporary trend for being very very sensitive about criticism of one’s opinions.

In an era where differing points of view have never been available in greater quantity, variety or vapidity, it seems curious that their perceived currency should have multiplied, rather than reduced, but that does rather seem to be where we are just now. Attack the opinion and you attack the author, the two are simply indivisible.

Perhaps it’s a function of the tendency for the ad hom in Internet debating – the impersonal is never more than inches from getting personal. Perhaps being given a platform for our thoughts has give us delusions of grandeur. Perhaps we’re all just narcissistic tossbags who’ve spent too much time navel gazing and expect the world to roll out the red carpet for us and our pathetic musings.

It seems a great shame to me. Very few of my own views are worth getting seriously aggravated over, other than for the sport of heated discussion. They’re just opinions, everyone has them, they don’t mean much to anyone else. Plus, if you’ve an audience of a hundred people, it’s » Continue Reading.

Nothing You Can Do Can Make Me Be Untrue To My ‘Gwai

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Yes, there’s a new Mogwai album out today (“Every Country’s Sun”).

I’m not going to review it, because I’m too busy listening to it a lot, but I will say that, based on the couple of spins it’s had so far, I think this may be the best thing they’ve done since the very early days.

After the career low disappointment that was “The Rave Tapes”, ECS appears to have seen the band head back to basics: there’s more loud/quiet, more drums and a much greater sense of impact and propulsion.

There are also tracks called “Coolverine” and “Don’t Believe The Fife”, the latter of which would be worth the price of entry alone in my book.

Oh, and there’s this – “Battered At a Scramble”. My favourite thing they’ve done in a long, long time – FINALLY, a return to that whole “great lost Siamese Dream instrumental” sound they had on “Young Team”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8ucOEj0Kr8

Current Earworms

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A thread in which to name the tunes you’ve got on heavy rotation at the moment.

I’m splitting my time between Bobby Shmurda’s 2014 classic “Hot Nigga” and “Come Down To Us” by Burial.

Hot Nigga was very much the sound of the Summer three years ago. It made my end of year “Best of” playlist, because it’s got an absolutely sick beat, and I quite like the guy near the start who solemnly intones “Shmurda she wrote”, like it’s some sort of unassailable fact of life we’re all just going to have to get used to.

What I hadn’t realised was that it also has one of the best “here I am with all my mates in the street making gang signs and generally acting the goat” videos of recent years, that Shmurda had developed a dancing style that was subsequently copied by everyone from Beyonce to Swizz Beats, or that he’d been jailed for a pick and mix assortment of crimes (most of which he’d explicitly extolled in “Hot Nigga” – the head of the unit who nicked him described it as “almost like a real-life document of what they were doing on the street”) in late » Continue Reading.

Notes From The Front Line

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FULL DISCLOSURE: This is going to be a post about a particularly full-blooded evening of karaoke I enjoyed on the Friday just past. It can be considered to be of relatively niche interest, perhaps even provocatively self-serving. It will probably not invoke feelings of warm nostalgia for your lost youth, nor will it enlighten, entertain or satisfy you in any material aspect. You proceed at your own peril.

Fans of intermittent Afterword contributor, incomprehensible hip hop enthusiast and shameless dilettante Bingo Little will doubtless recall with mixed affection and concern said individual’s oft-noted enthusiasm for the noble art of karaoke.

It was, perhaps, inevitable, that Little’s dalliances with that second most masturbatory form of evening entertainment would lead him to darker corners, and so it has proved. A chance meeting with an old colleague some months ago lead to the formation of a crack squad of Karaokeists, each bringing to the table their own unique style or lack thereof, and a commitment to tackling vocal challenges of increasing bombast and splendour.

First blood was drawn back in April, when the team undertook a punishing six hour marathon of howled choruses and botched verses, spread across no fewer than three » Continue Reading.

Summoned From The Deep

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I see you poor souls are still in the grip of an nasty looking beatle infestation, so I’m just going to drop this here and go about my biz. Blame Moose.

Music. It’s great, isn’t it? All those sounds and lyrics and feelings. But you know what I really like? That new shit. That inconsequential, disposable, all been done before and better, kids don’t know what they’re doing shit.

So, I’m over here in 2017 (visitors always welcome), and – I gotta say – there’s some ace stuff going on. I think this might prove to be a really, really good year. Yes, that Lorde tune is an authentic banger. Yes, the xx record sounds even better in the sunshine than it did in the cold. Yes, muthafreakin Japandroidsfuckyeah! Yes, Julie Byrne, Laura Marling, Penguin Cafe and all that other music I play at bed time.

But I want to talk about the last couple of months. Because the last couple of months have given us some absolute gems. Gems which I will now scatter across this blog, pearls before swine, because music is great, and great music should be shared.

Hold tight, here we go…

I’m A Professional Cynic, But My Heart’s Not, Innit: Pure Comedy and Lincoln In The Bardo reviewed

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INTRODUCTION

I was on holiday last week, which gave me an opportunity to enjoy what had long promised to be two of the great cultural highlights of 2017: new work from, respectively, Father John Misty and George Saunders.

The former’s “Pure Comedy” has, I gather, been discussed elsewhere passim. I think most Afterworders are now reasonably well acquainted with Master Tillman’s schtick, and have probably already gone some way towards determining where their regard for said schtick most comfortably resides along the tremulous and sometimes illusory line that stretches all the way from love to hate and back again.

Saunders is probably more of an unknown quantity in these parts. He is the author of numerous books of short stories, including the quite superb “Civilwarland in Bad Decline” and “Pastoralia”, and has this month debuted his first full length novel; “Lincoln In The Bardo”. Saunders was recommended to me by an astute bookshop clerk three years ago (“the Twain of the 21st Century”, breathlessly expounded said clerk), and I have subsequently devoured his full output. If you’re in the market for tales of experimental drugs that make theme park workers actually believe they’re living in medieval times, trafficked women from » Continue Reading.