The Afterword

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Lana Consummated

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I finally got to finish my date with Lana Del Rey in the early hours of this morning. After the plug was pulled early on our Glastonbury tryst it seemed the chance was gone. But, in contrast with that rendezvous, her performance at this year’s Coachella festival had her punctual, smiling and giggling with her guests Jon Batiste and Billie Eilish. And, not only are the Coachella performances streamed on YouTube, they are repeated again during, what we people living on the civilised side of the world (I.e. not California), call “the day”. So, as I write a repeat of Lana’s performance is imminent. The same is true of the other stages too, all this weekend, and then, bizarrely, the same acts do the same thing again in the same order next week (unless you’re Frank Ocean). Anyway, I thought some of you might like a “heads up” The link to the main stage is in the comments…

WTF?: How Can This Happen Innocently?

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The German F.A. has said it will change the typeface of its latest kit after it was pointed out to them that the number 4 bears a startling resemblance to half of the S.S. logo and a certain type of person might try to personalise number 44 shirts. The shirts are the design of Nike, who are protesting complete innocence. At least when The Stone Roses were designing the One Love cover they weren’t creating something meant to represent the entire German nation…

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/apr/01/adidas-bans-fans-from-adding-44-to-german-team-football-shirt?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

They Cloned Tyrone

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Year: 2023 Director: Juel Taylor

They Cloned Tyrone is a high concept sort-of-comedy which owes a little to Jordan Peele’s first two films (Get Out and Us), a little more to Boots Riley’s cult hit Sorry To Bother You and a little more again to Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon’s Cabin In The Woods, which is to say it’s an existential satire which is both extremely stylish and enormous fun. While acknowledging the debt the script owes in terms of ideas, it is in the execution that this film excels. The dialogue is often the star – it snaps, crackles and pops (is VERY sweary, with all the bad words) and is delivered with some flair by a terrific Jamie Foxx and especially Teyonah Parris (Monica Rambeau in the Marvelverse) whose larger than life performances bounce perfectly off their more serious star.

That star being John Boyega, with his Attack The Block gameface very much back on. He plays drug dealer Fontaine, who is gunned down by someone just a bit badder but then finds himself still alive and undamaged. In trying to get to the bottom of this perplexing outcome, he is accompanied by a Foxx’s pimp Slick » Continue Reading.

Creation Rebel – High Above Harlesden 1978 – 2023

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What does it sound like?:

“Has there been a better reunion in recent times than Slowdive?”, asks my boy moselymoles in his excellent concert review. Well, one candidate might be British dub pioneers™️ Creation Rebel, who returned last year after a brief four decade hiatus with the very wonderful Hostile Environment album.

One reason why I don’t post reviews more regularly is that, whenever something tickles me enough, I always assume, probably correctly, that there are plenty of people on here who know more about the act than I do who are waiting to pounce on any slip up. Tiggs’ reviews routinely feature potted bios of that guy that filled the drum stool for one song; mine, not so much. However, as I was the only person to vote for Hostile Environment in our end of year poll, I’m going to stick my head above the parapet.

I was thinking about writing up an overdue review of that particular album when I saw that those nice people at On-U Sound are releasing a sensibly priced 6 disc box set (yes, a BOX! SET! – with a wee book! That’s got your antennae twitching!) called High Above Harlesden which » Continue Reading.

Danielle Ponder – Some Of Us Are Brave

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What does it sound like?:

Ah, the dilemma of presenting new soul* to the Afterword: if it’s too adventurous or too zeitgeisty then you’re all “Take that away Mack, it’s wick-wick-wack”; If it’s too wholemeal ale traditional, then it’s “Yawn, we’ve heard it all done better before”.

This, Danielle Ponder’s debut, had a lengthy gestation while she adjusted to turning professional having spent several years gaining a reputation as a singer while working full time as a public defender and advocate in the courts of Rochester, New York. It’s true, the arrangements do occasionally betray the fact that trip hop has been around for thirty years and some of the songs meander a little, but there’s not much here that’s going to frighten the horses and Danielle is not from the seven-notes-per-syllable singing school.

Instead, Some Of Us Are Brave (the title comes from a black women’s studies book All The Women Are White, All The Blacks Are Men, But Some Of Us Are Brave) is a collection of slow songs which are both musically and thematically from the familiar tradition of the emotional trials (SWIDT?) of the soulstress, mostly co-written with her keyboard player Avis Reese (her touring band » Continue Reading.

Dream Wife – Social Lubrication

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What does it sound like?:

Coming straight out of a tradition of prickly new waveish female-led guitar bands, Dream Wife are on their third album now and their sound is well defined: hooky Wire-like guitar lines interwoven with a thrusting, muscular rhythm section overlaid with front lady Rakel Mjöll’s own now-speaking, now-singing, now-shrieking style of delivery. The songs want to grab you straight away and, having made their point, don’t overstay their welcome. You get ten songs in 39 minutes and it’s nine in 35 if you skip Honestly, the weakest track here. The new album leans a bit more into riffage and momentum than previous releases. There’s nothing here like the lovely women’s health rights ballad After The Rain that closed their last album. When the pace of the music does slow a little, the lyrics maintain the aggression. Recent hit-in-our-house Leech is an attack on those who prey on and drag out of the (especially female) talent, which feels like progress from forebears Elastica’s girl group picks on girl groupies hit Line Up. That’s not to say Dream Wife are all snarl; album highlight Mascara is a big wet sentimental kiss of a thing.

What does it all » Continue Reading.

Achtung Bingo!

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As a bank holiday treat, your boy Fred again.. is the latest contributor to the fabulous NPR Tiny Desk series. A pretty subdued set – we weren’t expecting the bonkers theatre of Chai or the infectious charisma of Lizzo or the one-big-familia parties of Natalia Lafourcada or C. Tangana – but quite luscious for all that. Also: he seems under the impression that the title means you’re supposed to incorporate the desk into the concert. Lovely!

Kevin Rowland …. LIP

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There’s been quite a procession of tributes to the newly departed on the site. So it’s heartwarming to see one of our elder stars as pumped full of life as the LGTS(FTS)H is here. It’s a long way from the best thing he’s ever done and I wish the production was a twist punchier (that fade out – like an old geezer’s piss stream), but it’s colourful and chipper and will be getting me out of bed for this month of April and for that I am gratepril..

R.I.P. De La Soul’s Trugoy

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a.k.a Dave Jolicoeur a.k.a Plug Two. Just 54. Tough one this, as when DLS came along in 1989 I was in probably the happiest period of my life and these even younger guys with their bonkers songs about helping monkeys reach bananas seemed to have the whole world at their feet. Seeing Posdnous perform solo during the Grammys’ hip hop celebration had me wondering how things were in the camp, but I never imagined this. The song is Must B The Music, from the neglected album First Serve, which Dave made with Pos..

I Blame The Parenthesis

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Typing the title (There’s) Always Something There To Remind Me into a post yesterday got me thinking about the use of the bracketed title. When I was just a tiny Foreworder, I used to scrutinise record covers and labels for hours, noting the names of writers and producers and, occasionally, being fascinated by the way titles were carved up using brackets. It seemed to me that, in many cases, the point of the little fellas was to turn what would be an unwieldy title into something more catchy while retaining the meaning: I Never Loved A Man is tragic, I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You) joyful*. Although, adding the ( ) just took up more space on the usually quite crowded label. Sometimes the space was used for parenthetical elucidation, whether simply to do with the recording (“single edit”, “live!”, “part one”, or to tell you the tune was the theme from a movie) or if the title was not English, there might be a translation, such as Se a vida é (That’s The Way Life Is), but usually it was because the artist had something else they wanted to add. Thus: The Old Man’s Back » Continue Reading.

A Selection Of Choooons From 2021, Perhaps?

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There’s a 1000 ft asteroid hurtling towards Earth, so I thought maybe this is the best time for AWers to share some of their favourite songs from this year. I propose limiting yourself to a maximum of three choices and, with deference to LoW’s definitive greatest albums poll and because it’s likely to throw up a more interesting spread, they should be from artists whose albums haven’t a hope of featuring in your picks for the AOTY poll. Like this: Alborosie – Never Let Me Down Trampolene – No Love No Kisses and..

Buyer’s Remorse

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The C*******s lights are already up on your neighbour’s roof, Jona Lewie’s clearing his throat on the shopping centre stereo and you are starting to get that familiar tingle in your list-scribbling fingers as the excitement rises in the days before Lodey fires the starting pistol in the AW poll… But what’s that other niggling thought at the back of your mind? Ah yes, the recollection that in previous years you’ve chewed the ears off your mates, raving about some new timeless masterpiece which, now that you think of it, you’ve hardly played since you bought it. I asked this one a few years back but, allowing for my own absence of new ideas and your encroaching senility, I’ll try again: are there any albums you esteemed highly in the polls of recent years which, having lived with them for some time, you feel maybe weren’t so great after all. Or, more happily, was there something whose magnificence you failed to grasp before the deadline which has, over time, become a favourite? I’ll go first. Hearing the groovy new Bruno Mars/Anderson .Paak single has reminded me that it’s very seldom nowadays that I want to hear Mr .Paak’s album which » Continue Reading.

The Seven Wonders Of The Afterworld

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The Colossus of Bernie Rhodes

A giant effigy moulded from the huge stack of leftover 7”s which stand as a testament to The Clash’s days of chart chasing hubris.

The Great Pyramid Of Squeezer

A serendipitous commission for a genie resulted in our favourite artist owning an infinitely reusable teabag

The Minging Gardens Of Babyshambles

You’ve held your nose as these scruffy, smelly, chemically enhanced chancers took to the stage: now, imagine what their back yard must look like..

The Lighthouse People at Alexandria’s Chazza

Our bescarfed philanthropist invites you to flip past multiple copies of No Parlez and Be Here Now to her selection from the LIfted hitmakers

Juno Temple’s Arty Pics

The Ted Lasso star and heir to the Great Rock n Roll Swindle millions has displayed her tasteful photo shoot

The Statue Of Deus Ex Machina

A replica of the T Rex from the last scene of Jurassic Park: although it’s 40 feet tall and had to be hoisted into place with an enormous crane, they were able to move it into position without anyone hearing it coming.

The Mausoleum At Hayley Kiyoko’s

Turns out the lady loving pop Princess likes to have » Continue Reading.

To Be Clear: I’m Not Talking About Shane MacGowan

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This is a – sort of – corollary to the thread where it was principally decided that our elder pop heroes might consider calling it a day simply because, in many cases, their voices were shot. The version of Wuthering Heights from Kate Bush’s The Whole Story came up on my shuffle – the one with the new vocal – and it occurred to me that the industry is missing a trick by not trying to flog us our old favourites with new, improved, vocals. The fact is that it is geriatrics like us who are the ones actually paying big dollar for music because we get a tingle when a Beatles album we already own gets a makeover. I presume that’s the reason for all the “It’s Al Green’s Greatest Hits, Now With Added Orchestra!” style albums they keep pumping out (“This is the kind of shiz the olds like”). A feature of the multi-decade careers our idols have now is that, in many cases, they get better at singing* their earlier material as they mature (or take lessons). Leonard Cohen’s performances in his last years were acclaimed. Partly because his older stuff never sounded so good? Nobody really » Continue Reading.

Ooh! Pop Stamps!

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All I Remember is dreading that moment when you needed to post something pronto and you realised you were fresh out of stamp supplies. On the principle that Nothing Compares To receiving something through your actual letterbox, An Post have issued these cool Irish pop star stamps, featuring Christy Moore, Sinéad O’Connor, Lisa Hannigan and Hozier. Also nice for nutters who collect sh*t. “Some” of the profits even go to the music industry’s COVID 19 Emergency Relief Fund. And there’s some online music to promote ‘em on anpost.com/festival from tonight..

https://www.rte.ie/entertainment/2021/0715/1235253-irish-music-stars-receive-the-stamp-of-approval/

“Thought Better Of It” Titles

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Listening to the new Mogwai album and staring into space the way you do, I found myself pondering one of the song titles, Ceiling Granny. The ‘Gwai’s tunes are nearly all instrumentals which means a bit of lateral thinking must be employed when it comes time to name that tune. For most of their career they have favoured conundrum style titles with the occasional tidy, comprehensible one (No Medicine For Regret) thrown in. They’ve generally eschewed puns, so often the first choice of the instrumentalist, although lately they have been creeping in (aka 47). I had the thought that while Ceiling Granny could just be a standard Moggie cryptic/in joke, it’s a fact that Ceiling Fanny is a mildly amusing pun. So I wondered whether one of the group had proposed it as a working title and then when it came to listing the tracks for the LP they had thought better of it. Last minute revisions based on taste or other considerations do arise: Happy Mondays had a song called Some C*nt From Preston which, understandably, became Country Song on Bummed (still called Bummed, though); Manic Street Preachers’ SYMM is a timid abbreviation of South Yorkshire Mass Murder; having » Continue Reading.

Piddlingly Tiny Irritations, Part Three: Naming Your Album

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So, Lana Del Ray’s new album has just dropped. That way you bristled just now in reaction to the word “dropped”, dear reader, gives me hope that you are no stranger to the sensation of rising bile that is so often engendered in pernickety souls by the most insignificant offence to good taste, however particular said infraction might be to oneself. Anyway*, here’s the thing: Lana’s album is called Chemtrails Over The Country Club and features a song called Chemtrails Over The Country Club within which the phrase Chemtrails Over The Country Club is repeated in its entirety in the chorus many times. This – yes, “just” this – annoys and has annoyed the hell out of me and drains my enjoyment from so many things I really should be able to enjoy more. I have lived my pop life getting excited by new songs and anticipating accompanying LPs but sometimes the announcement of an album title, by itself, is enough to prick my bubble of excitement. Oh, I know most album titles are a crock, with serial offenders such as Sting graduating from pretentious gibberish (Regatta De Blanc) to “I am considerably better read than yew” pretentiousness (Ghost In » Continue Reading.

We Will Sing Our Own Song. With Your Voice

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Listening to the most recent Chart Music podcast, I was surprised to hear Al Needham having a go at Ali Campbell of UB40 for singing in a cod Jamaican accent. Now, I’ll grant you, I’m just a Murphy McMurphface from Paddyland, but all I ever heard was a nasal (red, red) whine and that thing people from areas with strong accents often do which is deliberately try to blandify their singing voice because going “full Brummie” just wouldn’t do. (Although, c’mon, how cool would it be doing a duet with Cher in the Mark Williams “We want to be together” voice?). To be fair, Im not totally deaf to this – I did own most of the early singles by The Police and thought there was something odd about the vocal.. But Al spoke with the certainty of someone from the midlands and his guests agreed without hesitation, so maybe I need to take the potatoes out of my ears..?

The bigger question, really, is how much does it matter?

Obviously, in this case there is the question of racial sensitivity and appropriation. Again, as Al pointed out, UB40 are a mixed race group and, apparently, none of Campbell’s » Continue Reading.

Your Thoughts On Free VPN Extensions

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A friend has asked me about setting up a VPN with a view, I gather, mostly to streaming stuff. I use Express VPN*, which costs a few quid but does, reassuringly, have “Express” in the name. I notice there are a few free VPNs available as extensions on Google Chrome*, and was wondering whether they would do the job just as well. I don’t want to commit my friend to an unnecessary expense, but I also don’t want something inadequate. If it was just for me I could employ trial and error, but this job involves making a trip and I want to do it right first time. Do The Massive use these free extensions and are some better than others? Any thoughts appreciated.. (Other VPNS/ Browsers are available)

Made Up Pop Girlfriends

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The Back To The Future thread has me reminiscing about my own school days. I just pulled out one of my old diaries and one of the first pages I happened upon was a particularly sore memory.

“Today”, it goes “I made another effort to get in with the cool boys. I managed to stand at the edge of the group for a few minutes without being told to go. Encouraged, I took out a cigarette which I lit without anyone paying enough attention to me to notice I wasn’t actually smoking. The plan was going well – all I had to do was wait for a moment to join in the chat with one of my prepared put-downs for one of the more detested teachers and I might be in. Then I felt a nudge on my shoulder “What about you?” I had been busy concentrating on holding my fag properly and scanning the horizon to see if anyone had noticed me mixing with the cool kids, so I had lost track of the conversation. “What?” I affected what I thought was an air of confidence. “You got a girlfriend?” Oh no. Half an inch of fag ash » Continue Reading.

“Like A Horse Being Torn In Half”

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Yay! It’s time for the The Quietus to give us its list of their 100 favourite albums of the year so far. As usual, there’s a smattering of widely praised records you’ll find on most current critics’ lists (Yves Tumor, Arca, J Hus, Run The Jewels) as well as some pretty mainstream catchy pop (Dua Lipa, Georgia, Charli XCX) among the 80 to 90 acts you’ve never heard of. Curious about these, you might investigate some of the descriptions, where you will find the words “drone”, “noise”, “cacophony” and “ concrète” a bit more frequently than in the old Smash Hits polls. Number 13, Mestarin Kynsi by Oranssi Pazazu, we are told “sounds like a skipping Neurosis cd played at an uncomfortably high frequency”, Number 44, Endless Wound by Black Curse, contains “dive bomb beats that sound like a horse being torn in half”. Even better, Number 40, Jason Crumer’s eponymous album opens with “discomposing drones … that rumble away; it’s like waiting for results from an oncologist”. Very tempting! But, just as we know what to expect in different varieties of restaurants, we already know the The Quietus is the go-to place for shining light into certain less-visited corners » Continue Reading.

The A to Z of Album Openers

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Silly one for Friday night, but humour me. There are as many different ways to kick off an LP as there are ways to sink a cat. I’ve had a go at listing a few. Didn’t think too long about examples (which, I think explains the bias to the 1990s). Maybe you can think of some more, or better examples of the categories I’ve suggested. By all means junk the A to Z element – it’s just a way to get the ball rolling. I will put the larger part in the comments ->

..Now, Heaven Knows, B***ing Some ***s!

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It’s notable how the crudeness (both sweary and sexually suggestive) of language in our pop music has evolved – if evolved be the correct term – over the decades. First the coyness of the fifties and even the sixties (bar the odd “one eyed cat” style innuendo) became a grunting – but still a tad vague plea to “get it on”. Then, in the eighties Olivia Newton John wanted to “get physical” (*wink*) and a “rock” was still out of the question. Fast forward to the 21st Century and we’ve had two F**k Yous and a F**k You Right Back at number one and, in the same exalted chart position, been invited to suck on Isaac Hayes’ chocolate salty balls. The runaway favourite for album of the year is called Norman F**king Rockwell and one of its catchier numbers is called F**k it, I Love You. Not coincidentally, NFR is the work of a female artist. An unexpected consequence of my journey over recent years from mostly listening to sweaty, lairy geezers to predominantly grooving to sweet, fragrant ladies has been the massive increase in filth coming in my ears. Blokes like to sing about shagging but les femmes seem » Continue Reading.