National Treasures - Praising the Manics

At the time of writing it's the 20th anniversary of the Manics debut Generation Terrorists - a sprawling two disc mess of Situationism, left-wing polemics, small town boredom, classic rock cliche and fragments of nihilistic beauty. How many other bands would have the guts to start their career with, to make an obvious Clash comparison, a cock rock Sadinista. A self described mess of eyeliner and spraypaint for a useless generation, Guns 'n' Roses with an appetite for construction. But where glammed up God Ol' Boy Axl spat lazy homophobic and sexist slurs, the Manics Richey and Nicky pretended to get off with each other in videos and James duetted with porn star Traci Lords on a song about men's oppression of women. At this point in their career they often were described as sell-outs by a sneering press for ripping off different Yank rock poses to everyone else. In an era of studied apathy, here was a band who refused to pretend not to care and dumb themselves down, playing this (admittedly life affirming) trad rock by numbers because it was it was the most popular form. If they'd formed now....they couldn't form now.

The spirit may remain in every self conscious, wordy young World's Forgotten Boy on a mission but its not a popular enough form of expression now to be hijacked by a team of four young Adornos in Hanoi Rocks clothing. In typical High Fidelity list style I'm going to cherrypick 20 essential Manics tracks:

1.Motown Junk
The White Riot period. A repeated loop of the word "Revolution" crashing into a punk-rock riff Mick Jones'd have been happy with. Whats most striking here is how young they sound, the touching way James high voice struggles to fit all the syllables in on typical Wire/Edwards shock statements like "I laughed when Lennon got shot" (a line now omitted live, probably for the best when they played the same bill as McCartney). "We live in urban hell" may have worked on people with no knowledge of Blackwood, but actually its a lovely place. If Blackwood is urban hell then Pontypool is a horrific sci fi metropolis.

2.  Motorcycle Emptiness from Generation Terrorists
Obvious choice maybe but it sounds like nothing else by anyone else. Amid the nihilistic weird cross breed of studio polished punk and airbrushed cock rock, a six minute beauty with a cosmetic similarity to Journey's overplayed Don't Stop Believing. In a just and fair world the Glee brats would've brayed "Culture sucks down words" instead of "Just a small town girl" while grinning inanely and Melodyned to an inch of their life. But now's not the time for cultural snobbery and bitterness, this is really one of their classics. Irresistible and faintly mournful in a way a lot of great pop music is, only the sorrow here isnt that their baby done left them but the emptiness of a capitalist society. Sure, "this wonderful world of purchase power" rings out as a bitter punchline to their overpriced boxsets and multiple editions, but they're just small town boys born and raised in Blackwood after all. Albeit ones who tastelessly mocked Billy Bragg for walking the walk when they were all still at school. When the synth strings and raindrop piano falls around the beginning of the post bridge guitar solo I could forgive them anything.


3. Stay Beautiful from Generation Terrorists
And the fan favourite. Their deathless manifesto, and, as they still seem as into the R'n'R dream and rock myth as ever, ideally the last song they'd ever play. Can't even pick any holes in this one, every second of it pitch perfect, great guitar solo and shout along chorus. It was very hard to pick essentials off Generation Terrorists - honourable mentions go to the bold failure of the Bomb Squad mix of Repeat; the feminist Springsteenian power ballad Little Baby Nothing; the oft underlooked Methadone Pretty and the closer Condemned To Rock 'n' Roll which predicts the second album they said they wouldn't do and Richey's joining of the stupid club.


4. Life Becoming A Landslide from Gold Against The Soul
It boggles the mind that people who'd heard their debut could accuse them of selling out (AGAIN!) for making another radio friendly and quietly subversive pop rock album. One of Richey's finest lyrical accomplishments, and some of Sean Moore's best drumming. After being replaced with a drum machine on the debut he proves his work here, driving the song along from the hushed introduction and choruses to the distortion pedals being engaged on the second verse. "I don't want to be a man" isn't some Peter Pan of rock cry but a cry of despair at the joint cruellest sex, and "My idea of love comes from a childhood glimpse of pornography" is, let's face it, a show stopper. Predicts where they'd go next in many ways.


5. Donkeys from Lipstick Traces
One of the reasons I love the Manics so is a masochistic one. They tuck a lot of their best tracks away as B sides. No one ever went hungry underestimating the masses, though, but this could've been a hit too, a lot better then something like Drug Drug Druggy where Bradfield shouts melodramatically about dancing like a robot on the parent album. A beautifully world weary sigh contrasting with all the overwrought angst, ending in a beauty of a solo.


6. Faster from The Holy Bible
Any excuse to go on Top of the Pops in a balaclava with your name written on it. Notable for getting a sample from Ninteen Eighty Four into the charts at the beginning of a song ending in an infuriatingly catchy chant of "Man kills everything". The post-punk drums and bass, scything riffs and feral delivery are a million miles away from From Despair to Where's "70's Rod Stewart does 99 Red Balloons" chic.


7. The Intense Humming of Evil from The Holy Bible
Again hard to pick just one from this album, its all great and essential listening, but the dark heart of the album, Richey's musings on the Holocaust and the only time the Manics have made something thats actually unnerving to listen to. Bradfield's voice and guitar live out the lyrics, taking on different characters and crying out the pain of all those who died in the camps, the six million screaming souls. You can tell from the opening that its going to be a shade or two darker from the rest of the, already breathtaking, album - a hum of eery sampled strings and pounding industrial percussion beneath words from the Nuremberg Trials. Then, the final smack in the face, Richey reminds us of the atrocities brushed under the carpet - "Churchill no different, wish the workers bled to a machine". As he'd written earlier in the album, everyone is guilty - he'd been inspired to write this by reading the sickening words of historical revisionists like David Irving, conflicted by the establishments equally sickening urge to suppress their voices and present one unconditional, unquestionable version of history. 


I couldn't possibly agree that Churchill was no different to Hitler, and to me it's a stupid statement. I completely disagree, but history has underlooked Churchill's sins, his turning the army on miners (as less fondly remembered Tory successors would also do) and gassing of Kurds. I'd have overlooked it too, shamefully, if I hadn't heard this song and tried to work out what he meant. Another great thing about this band - they're not ashamed to wear their influences and beliefs on their sleeves. Far from ashamed, they're proud to. Another reason they should be cherished.


8. Everything Must Go from Everything Must Go
The band's semi - apology to those Cult of Richey types who'd say they should've broken up once he left, set to Hal Blaine's immortal Be My Baby beat. Swooning strings, weeping guitars and one of the many great Bradfield vocal performances, at times subtle and times roaring with the same ferocity as the Holy Bible but in different settings. The tragedy of knowing that they knew that, for all the bruised optimism of "Escape from our history", they never would completely.


9. A Design For Life from Everything Must Go
The reason they'll go down in history. Its almost overplayed but the beauty undented by this fact. The soaring Spector strings are in full force again as are my childish put downs of the band - fastforward from "We don't talk about love" to Your Love Alone Is Not Enough and (It's Not War) Just The End Of Love. It doesn't matter, because in two short verses and two choruses they say a lot. Even more is said without words when the spiralling strings arc downwards into the final choruses. There's something in my eye.

10. If You Tolerate This, Then Your Children will Be Next from This Is My Truth
Another deserved big hit, a number one about the Spanish civil war blessed with comet in the night sky strokes of guitar, a passionate vocal performance, an eerie video and some more great Wire lyrics. The same album would contain such monstrosities as "Disco dancing with the rapists" but "On the streets tonight an old man plays with newspaper cuttings of his glory days" is a beautiful line. Again accompanied by accusations of selling out but the odd whiff of stadium rock aside this album is Nicky Wire's Holy Bible, a melancholy album with the recurring theme of depression and feelings of uselessness.

11. Ready For Drowning from This Is My Truth
One that should've been a single in place of the turgid, shouty repetitive You Tore This Song From My Arse. Equal parts the band exploring the history they were trying to escape from and addressing the homeland they had a troubled relationship with. The band have progressed from erroneously labelling Blackwood an urban hell and slagging off Wales to celebrating the country. For me, the Manics and John Cale are just two great reasons to be proud of my Welsh roots (along with my mum's family; Dylan Thomas; Glamorgan sausage; the Super Furry Animalsl Plaiyd Cymru; Aneurin Bevan and RS Thomas who is quoted in the album title, the last two I was made aware of by the album). This song largely seems to be about the flooding of Capel Celyn to supply Liverpool and the Wirral with water, another in a long line of examples of England's mistreatment of Wales. All Wales have done in revenge is allow the Stereophonics and Lostprophets to exist and peddle trad rock dirge.

12. Prologue To History from Lipstick Traces 
Another from the Greil Marcus referencing B side collection, opening with some fantastic 90's house-y piano crashing into some Manics arena-punk with elements of the baggy bands like The Charlatans and Happy Mondays they'd claimed to despise at the time. James sounds genuinely angry here, and his furious delivery makes lines like "A brand new Dyson - that is decadence!" even funnier than they are written down. Which is still funny.

13. The Masses Against The Classes - Single
The first No.1 of the new milennium, quite an accomplishment, hot on the heels of playing the Milennium Stadium and being huge for a while (while never quite breaking America). Opens with a lift from Twist and Shout via Bowie's Let's Dance. Responding to accusations of being too commercial by, er, making a very commercial arena punk track. Occasionally marred by live renditions with hilariously naff Phoenix Nights organ.


14. Found That Soul from Know Your Enemy
Around this time they decided they needed to be less commercial, so recorded in a less expensive studio. This track, with aggressive vocals, pounding one note I Wanna Be Your Dog piano and powerful rhythm section, is the best of this period by far. This is of course the period where, being less than consistent as per usual, having spent their early years decrying sexism and homophobia they went and played nice for Castro with his long history of human rights abuses. That said, a Western rock act playing in Cuba is a big deal and one from the valleys just makes it all the sweeter so its hard to condemn them too much. I wonder if he bought the deluxe £200 edition of National Treasures?

15. There by The Grace of God from Forever Delayed
Another bit of proof they don't really know what they're doing. The Manics tend to only look back fondly at material that has sold a lot. This was a pretty big hit yet they still ignore it as its neither politicalised punk or swooning stadium rock with a string section. Instead its a gorgeous, subtle track with beautifully restrained guitar and lush electronic textures. Note the incongrous Marilyn Manson Coma White reference in the first line, someone Nicky Wire seems to have a thing about (see also the bizarre line "Brian Warner has a tasty little ass" on Know Your Enemy. Come on Wire, you can do better than Reznor's puppet).

16. 1985 from Lifeblood
They have also disowned Lifeblood, claiming it was a critical and commercial failure despite the almost universally positive writeups and the fact it spawned two number two singles. Lifeblood is, along with the Holy Bible, my favourite Manics album (Journal For Plague Lovers would be number two). This is one of their "Should've been a single" tracks, a beautifully reflective little thing with melodica, Peter Hook bass, heavily treated guitars and sighing, nostalgic lyrics. A great opening track too. All of the album is essential but its nothing like the rest of their stuff, probably why they don't like it. There is an element of a frustrated music journalist about Nicky Wire sometimes, a man who loves music and has a great passion for it but likes to put everything into tiny little boxes, and Lifeblood is hard to pidgeonhole. It's identifiably Manics because it has Bradfield's voice on it and the odd burst of effective guitar wankery (see the majestic solos on A Song For Departure), but is another album like This Is My Truth, a wintery album of elegaic pop songs to look inward to. Gorgeous stuff.


17. Bobby Untitled from Nicky Wire's I Killed The Zeitgeist
I Killed the Zeitgeist is tragically underlooked, listened to only by Manics fans and this is a gorgeous little song, its up to you whether its a love song or about Bobby Sands or another song about Richey. That skinny little ghost just won't go away, as you'll see, colouring reactions to everything the band does in some way. Even when I decried those who harp on about "tragic, beautiful doe eyed little Richey Manic" in faintly homoerotic terms, struck by his beauty and the fact he was a rock cliche who realised he was a rock cliche, I'm doing it myself now. In a section that doesn't need to mention him at all. I Killed the Zeitgeist is a lovely album with hints of early Primal Scream, Pavement and Jesus and Mary Chain about it, Nicky's C86 fandom coming through. It's a more important album in the Manic catalogue than given credit for, his new confidence as a songwriter allowing him to write "comeback hit" Your Love Alone Is Not Enough. Bradfield's solo album The Great Western is just as good, following on from Lifeblood in many ways, but not as interesting. It's a pleasant listen, though, and only a fool would say it wasn't well written.


18. Indian Summer from Send Away The Tigers
Listen to this to know why Send Away The Tigers is my least favourite Manics albums. This is a pleasant enough little pop song til you realise its a deliberate rewrite of A Design For Life to attempt to sell as much as Everything Must Go. See also the same album's dull Autumnsong, where Bradfield is reduced to singing "Now baby what've you done to your hair" in a song which has stolen the riff from Sweet Child of Mine. Not even attaching fierce intelligence to tired good ol' boy rock. And Your Love Alone Is Not Enough, not enough, not enough. Around this time, disturbingly, instead of writing two verses they just recorded one verse and pasted it into the song twice in Pro Tools

19. This Joke Sport Severed from Journals for Plague Lovers
With Richey pronounced dead they set to work putting his lyrics to music and unsurprisingly it was better than the last album by miles. The ghost, of course, is never quite laid to rest. Why would it be? The death of one of your closest friends is undoubtedly very hard to recover from - even harder the lack of an absolute full stop. This doesn't excuse the shameless exploitation of his memory that goes on a bit - see the timing of footage of a smiling Richey to line up with "You could've been anything if you wanted to" (paraphrasing) in the X Factor style cover of The The's This Is The Day chosen to promote National Treasures. Even if they weren't responsible for the video, you still have to step in sometimes and say "No, you're not using our loss as a cheap heartstring plucker".
Of course I have one sore point with this album - why record a sparse, bare bones album as live with Steve Albini then overdub glitz with Dave Eringa? Then if you're going to do that, why not release any singles from the album when its streets ahead of your last one and full of catchy, non derivative tunes. It doesn't suffer for this for the most part, though. This is a particular standout, starting off just James double tracked over guitar and sounding intense enough just in this manner. Then a false ending, headrush and reverb, and it re-enters with pounding tribal drums and an ominous wall of strings. 

20. Postcards From A Young Man from Postcards From A Young Man
The followup also echoed Everything Must Go the same way Send Away The Tigers did but this time it sounded like they were doing it for the love of it - resulting in a higher proportion of Manics classics on the album. This highly concentrated piece of Mass Communication was nothing like the Tamla Motown Metal Wire promised before the album was released - in the same way My Guernica doesn't sound like the Jesus and Mary Chain and Send Away The Tigers isnt a return to Generation Terrorists territory. Bless him. Instead its a testament to the remarkable work of Bradfield, Jones and Moore from the opening strums to the fantastically grandiose strings and choir ending with an echo of Queen's Somebody To Love. For all I and anyone else slags them off, this is as good a song to sum them up as any. "This life sucks your principles away, you have to fight against it every single day" tacit admission of and apology for their more questionable decisions and fixation on Hits Hits Hits at expense of their own soul. But still, when James roars "This world will not impose its will I will not give up and I will not give in" over the music of his friend and cousin and a mass of session players, you believe that they will stick around. They will be infuriating, they will be interesting, there will be moments of genius and they will Stay Beautiful.




 

R.I.P. Christopher Hitchens

I heard with some sadness on Friday that the great polemicist Christopher Hitchens had died of cancer. It wasn't entirely surprising, but from his recent appearances (including a particularly moving one alongside Richard Dawkins) showed that while he'd become physically frail his mind was undented. The man remained, and will remain, an inspiration. Looking about at the obituaries that accompany the falling of such a giant, there are no surprises, and they can pretty neatly be separated into three separate categories - the sick cluckings of Christian voices - fake love thy enemy homilies, speculation of a deathbed conversion and words on Hitch being in hell; fawning obits of the like that would no doubt, if he was anything like his public persona, have made him sick; and last and most obnoxious of all, "it's what Hitch would've wanted" obits casting an eye on his troubling shift to becoming a Bush-loving neocon, occasionally shooting barbed potshots at the Religious Right who had accepted him into their ranks. As you can tell, my writing on the subject will be the third of those - well, I'll aim for that, but it'll be quite balanced as I do like the man's writing.

That old chestnut - "I didn't always agree with his political views". I didn't, many of us who lean to the left didn't. We were actively irritated by his toeing of the Bush party line. On this particular subject he managed to make his brother, Peter Hitchens, perma-scowling Daily Mail columnist ever so slightly on the right of Martin Webster, seem reasonable. He started favouring "humanitarian interventionism" - all men are entitled to their opinions, but when it results in Guantanamo Bay and the death of 113,00 civilians its time to throw your hands up and admit you're wrong. He didn't, of course, he just sneered at those who'd let such petty thing as facts get in the way, hanging all his faith that he was right on lies (familiar?), and made another proto-EDL remark about Islamo-facism. This was, of course a common theme - check his track record on Yugoslavia. He was an outspoken atheist who brought up his twelth Jewish roots whenever challenged for supposedly anti-Semitic remarks, as if that ever mattered.

Now, at the risk of being fair to a dead man who can't defend himself, something Hitchens would never have done or cared about (and why would he?), some of the ones flagged up as anti-Semitic categorically aren't - circumcision, where there is no medial impetus, IS genital mutilation - just the same as the mutilation of young girls but less frequently frowned upon as it has become accepted in Western society (and to be fair, it is less damaging). Its an interesting point that, according to commentators of different religions and political backgrounds Hitchens is a right winger, a leftist, an imperialist, a socialist, a Zionist and an anti Semitic anti-Zionist who has particular dislike for Catholics / Muslims / Jews depending on who you listened to. All this adds up to two things - he's a blonde fat thin man with red hair and a clean shaven beard, and also his own man - not easy to pin down into one box. This was refreshing in a world of "creative free thinkers" churning out books of each other's opinions differently worded, and toeing the party line.

So while I and many people didn't agree with his views and thought he was a hypocritical idiot for holding them and espousing them with all the theatrical fervour of a Bible belt televangelist, that was actually part of the appeal. Here was a man who had no truck with the "left/right" divide thats all well and good and tidy but often bears no resemblance to reality. There really was something of the Orwell about him, a man with similarly flawed logic often bordering on the hypocritical, probably why he idealised him. Both had a way of expressing opinions many of their core readership would despise in a way you'd respect, couched in ornate writing, referencing everything from the halls of Academia to Trotskyist tracts to pop culture and inserting self referential asides that managed to be both boastful and self deprecating. He remembered that free speech included his own ideological enemies as well as his friends. The man could write, and the man could debate. Often it wasn't even that he was right but that his opponents were so wrong. Look at the vultures circling, the "good Christians" spewing passive-aggressive bile in a way that Jesus would've been disgusted by if he'd existed. I will miss him and you probably will too if you've read this far. Let's not remember him as an arch polemicist, let's remember him as a flawed but very intelligent and inspiring man.

After all, it's what he would've wanted.

And imitation, I think you'll find, is the sincerest form of flattery.

A Tribute to Rowland S Howard

When Rowland S Howard left this “planet of perpetual sorrow” (to quote his own words) two years ago he was overshadowed by the deaths of others less talented and the general new year festivities. Not for me, naturally, I was inconsolable for a few days. As much as I enjoy these festivities moping over deceased Australian cult icons is one of my hobbies I'll prioritise over anything. Now it’s two years later and I'm still a little annoyed about how it went down. Especially at this time of year, the thoughts return.

How is it that Rowland hasn't received all the posthumous garlands and “I was always into him” claims that others, less talented both subjectively and objectively, have received? While dying at 50 isn't exactly the poignant entry to the Forever 27 club vultures and hacks salivate over, his was still a tragic enough death - dying of a disease he was too poor to be treated for days before he was due to Make A Comeback. So why hasn't he received the posthumous praise that'd make me shut up, or moan about that instead?

For the last two years now I've been writing posts on blogs no one reads, eulogies to Mr Howard. See, he was my Johnny Cash, my Diana, and his death taught me something about empathy. No one wanted to be the one to tell me that Rowland S Howard had died. To recap, Rowland S Howard was one of the best guitarists to walk the earth. Objectively. There was no heads down ponytailed blues rock wanking or bursts of "Look mummy no originality" shredding. He could do divebombing art terrorist sheets of noise and feedback, though, nd he could do it without recourse to FX pedals or anything more than a White Fender Jaguar and a small amp. He could make the damned thing peal out sheets of noise as melody and melody as noise that could bring tears to a statue. Nevermind making the baby Jesus cry - his tone made the baby Jesus real.

Then there's the voice. He was, in an age of X Factor wannabes a great interpreter. A voice that made White Wedding sound properly sinister and sexy and out Lou Reeds Reed himself on a cover of the Velvets' Ocean. He turned Life's What You Make It into the cry of a man aware of his own mortality that left me sobbing - although Pop Crimes only came out after his death over here and context is often everything. He turned those clogged pipes onto songs about lust, death, love, lust, death, theft, lust, death, religion lust and death and made every cussed word as beautiful and tarnished as you could imagine.

He was also a great songwriter, writing the love songs that they play in singing greeting cards in some Bible belt nightmare of hell. No one else on the planet sounds like him, and plenty of us have had a good go at it. Even down to the looks, something that should be irrelevant that isn't - an androgynous face with a boxer's broken nose in the middle of it. Onstage with The Birthday Party the flailing and the jump backwards. When Nick Cave is going around fighting people and Tracey Pew is in leather trousers and a cowboy hat humping his bass, still being the most fascinating thing onstage is quite an achievement - but he was. Right up to the end.

I wrote the bulk of this a while ago before they'd started paying attention and realised what they'd lost but gradually it happened. There's a film about him, Autoluminescent and just seeing the trailer reduces me to a snivelling wreck - could be one to watch alone, its unlikely it'll hit any cinemas near me anyway. Australia's Homebake festival now has a Rowland S Howard stage. Two years on, though, and he's still not had proper tribute paid by the rest of the world, and he touched us too. The serious music press are celebrating either the emperor's new clothes or tried and tested coverstars ranging in age from The Strolling Bones to the Arctic Monkeys (!!!). I'm going to write a tribute to the man every year whether anyone but me reads it or not. The Horrors, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and S.C.U.M, acts the critics are dribbling over at the moment - none of them could exist without him. Nick Cave's career would definitely be different, as without him The Birthday Party would've been just another goth band. I realise its blasphemy even as I write it and they'd be a bloody good goth band, but still.....

There's no time to celebrate mediocrity. We'll all be dust ourselves at some point.

Jesu, Joy of My Desiring

A less thought out post than the ones I was aiming to do but the large amounts of writing I'm doing for my course (on misogyny in hip hop and rock lyrics; Alan Moulder's production techniques; and the contextual roots of industrial music) kind of put a stop to the idea of me writing at any length some of the big ideas I had for a while - til I've got that last one out of the way in any case.

I would, though, like to share with you a recent discovery of mine. Well, I say a recent discovery, I've been into this act's work for quite a while. One of the highlights of last year was setting out for a night out with Jesu's Star blasting in my ears, and I've been quite fond of the Silver EP for quite some time but lately with nights growing longer, the skies darkening and winds going cold I've found myself drawn to Jesu. For those readers who don't already know about Jesu, it is the project Justin Broadrick embarked on after breaking up industrial-metal pioneers Godflesh. Broadrick has many projects on the go, and most of them are excellent - even while in Godflesh he found time to work on Ice Techno Animal with Kevin Martin; play on Scorn's first album Vae Sollis with Mick Harris and Nick Bullen (the other two original members of Napalm Death, a lineup preserved on the excellent side 1 of Scum); and generally remix and appear on many other projects. As he continues to do.

In Godflesh tracks like Flowers you can trace the roots of Jesu, a more shoegazy project marrying the slo-mo grinding beats and walls of down tuned guitar with twinkly synths and twisted pop melodies. For the most part on Jesu (itself named after the final track on the final Godflesh album), Broadrick uses clean singing as opposed to the vocal delivery on Godflesh tracks somewhere between a hardcore bark and death vocals. For the most part, Jesu is excellent and the Silver EP was a great start point, from the title track sounding like Disintegration era Cure at their most deathlessly majestic but made even gloomier to Star, still one of my favourites from Jesu, where that down tuned pop really comes in.

This could be a pop-punk track from Green Day or Blink 182 (yeah, where its 80% pop - 10% rawk - 10% punk), you can hear that in the chord sequence, the melody, the lyrics and Justin's breathless delivery. But its delivered over a machine beat straight off a Godflesh track, with that same Jesu guitar sound spilling over into atonality at times. It was my first real exposure to his stuff but I can only think how startling it was to long-time fans that here Broadrick is, making a piece of pop genius - one that is just begging to be used in an American sitcom in a "realising you have to literally run to your love to make it happen" scene.

Then that slams into Wolves, with a wash of droney guitar textures wrapping itself around a brutally slow, punchy machine beat as the bass throbs gently away. The high pitched guitar melodies soon entwine with a big down tuned riff, and you may find yourself involuntarily swaying and headbanging very slowly. His vocals are mixed low at first, soon rising up semi-triumphantly when the drums drop out only to be buried again, and it just evolves slowly. I've noticed this track lasts 8 and a half minutes and Broadrick rarely seems to do anything under four (bloody stoners....), and as I'm usually a lover of short songs that say what they need to and get out quick I'm surprised I've fallen for this (and Nadja) so much lately. Infinity held my attention as one long, hypnotic track for the full 45 minutes of its duration. The final track Dead Eyes is if anything even better, mostly instrumental with treated vocals buried deep under the distorted beats and guitar, throbbing bass and washes of backwards electronics. Another one to cause the involuntary slow motion head banging, for me at least.

Listening to some of his other work (bits of the self titled, Conqueror and Ascension) I'm equally impressed with all of it, and very pleased with my recent discoveries. If you're not yet a fan, then check him out and if you are, feel free to give me some recommendations of what I'd like by him or others.

The Bordellos - It's Lo Fi! Folk Off - Track by Track

Music made by three music fans for an audience of three music fans.

http://bordellos.bandcamp.com/
Hear the sound of festive coke adverts, time to start gritting the roads - you know its this time of year because The Bordellos are releasing a free EP no bugger will listen to. To a deafening silence, a mini album entitled, originally Bandcamp Mini Album was released online earlier in the year - no one wanted to pay anything. They didn't even want to stream-rip the preview tracks we put up. In this climate I'm not particularly sure I blame them - who wants to take a chance with money these days (even though it was priced less than a ticket from Dalehead Place to Town Centre, ridiculously - bus ticket inflation is a particular bugbear of mine).

Neverless we''ve put together a mini album for you and here's a track by track runthrough by way of sleevenotes for this free download only collection:

1. Dark Folk Song
Brian Bordello takes this one on his own, singing moodily backed only by his acoustic guitar. The idea was to have something of the Nick Cave about it - not in sound, obviously, but definitely in mood.

2. Wish List
Cannibalised and reconstituted from a never recorded Bordellos song dating back about 5 years or so, with new bits added on the end - by new bits, thats about 3 minutes of the song. Something of an epic for that - maudlin third album Velvets acoustic pop with some ace harmonica and a thrumming bassline. To me it sums up what we're about completely. We're underrated and underpaid, still we refuse to change our ways.

3. Vicious Circle
This one is me on my own so it'd be in bad taste to say anything too good about it, just me singing over bass with a bit of guitar here and there. This one is available in lo-fi video somewhere in the internet in a full band guise sang by Brian Bordello, nothing like the haunted piece of misery it became.

4. Lennon Never Died
He did you know. This is another oldish one, originally featured on a Huckleberry EP no bugger downloaded even though it was free, a few CD-Rs got sent out too. Seeing a pattern - the buggers won't even take it when we give it away, and they're often the same to bemoan bands being safe and unchallenging. Not entirely sure what this song is actually about, you'd have to ask him - my dad that is, not John Lennon.

5. Peach
Jolts some life back into the old dog - the EP that is, not John Lennon. Another relatively upbeat one with surf guitar, dirty bass and snarled lyrics. It took more takes to do Ant's backing vocals than anything else, ridiculously.

6. Tom Waits Blues
Sang this song, which he wrote in 5 minutes on the bus, the day the excellent Bad As Me came out. Nothing Waits like about this at all, sadly, but great harmonica from Ant.

7. Primal Whisper
Originally a track hidden in the bundle when you download Bandcamp Mini Album. As no bugger did, it fits the mood of the album so we let it stay.

8. Holy Love
Apparently it was meant to be called Unholy Love but I mistitled it. How I'm supposed to know it's called Unholy Love when he sings Holy Love I've no idea, but this is one of my two favourites along with Wish List. It's very short and prompted Ant to say it wasn't enough like Noel Gallagher, he'd have extended it, put a solo in and another chorus. On the whole we don't do solos, though. Mini-zither featured on the last two tracks, a gift my dad got off my mum from a toy catalogue still being used now.

So there you have it - 8 apparently "lo-fi" tracks recorded in Ant's living room as per usual. Not sure it'll take off, mind, these are human performances with fluffed notes, background noise, instruments falling over and the sound of people with emotions making it. It is not buffed to a landfill indie sheen, and there was no use of Autotune at all. If you're reading this blog it's probably because A) you were directed to it by The Bordellos Facebook or Myspace, B) you like the same music as me or C) both - so I'm preaching to the converted a bit here. Just sick and tired of the celebration of mediocrity that passes for bold new art at the moment. Don't get me wrong, this is no touchstone and it won't change the world but its a set of free songs by music fans for music fans - check the cover where we spell it out, a collection of Brian Bordellos albums scattered on the floor with the stupidly cute cat Oscar stood on them. Give it a chance, you may like it - and if you like this, you'll love what we've got around the corner.

Luke Haines - 9 1/2 Psychedelic Meditations on British Wrestling of the 1970s and early 80s

So the notoriously prolific Luke Haines has made an album of songs about "placing 70s wrestlers in psychedelic situations". Its the kind of perverse move Haines is known for in a career of expertly written pop songs about terrorism, child murder, fake psychics and often forgotten pop stars. It's a strange topic but somehow unsurprising - what's even less surprising is how good it is.

Big Daddy Got A Casio VL Tone is probably the best example of the musical perversity onshow here, with an intro akin to The Fall's Man Whose Head Expanded giving way to synthesized flutes and "Are Friends Electric" synth/guitar stabs. Seemingly out of nowhere, he switches to pastoral acoustics before falling back into quirky synth pop.
Similarly, Linda's Head switches between dreamy psych-folk choruses and swaggering, propulsive verses with a fantastically "That'll do" guitar solo tossed off in the middle.
One of the standouts, Gorgeous George is, fittingly, a gorgeous ballad albeit one directed at a wrestler and featuring the line "The cat's in the bag and the bag is in the river". Rumbling surf guitar and swaying strings back Haines distinctive sneering croon, and it is a melody anyone would be proud of. Haines voice is often underrated but few people could sing his songs and pull them off.

The real heart of the album, of course, is penultimate track We Are Unusual Men - a statement no one is likely to argue with. This track sums up the album, with swings into synth pop in the chorus before a passage of sampled wrestling dialogue sure to mist the eyes of anyone who watched it all first time around leads into a reprise of Gorgeous George. The Plumber, mentioned earlier in a brief spoken track, re enters proceedings, and it all falls into place - maybe it'll fall into place for you earlier, I can be quite slow at these things. Haines really has written his Rock Opera in Key Of Existential Misery. More than that, he has written his Melody Nelson - and it just happens to be about 70s wrestlers.

We Are Unusual Men is, in its own way, highly nostalgic, looking back to a time of less choice where people had to make an effort to connect with each other. Sadly, a handful of TOTP appearances aside with Auteurs and Black Box Recorder, the great British public in their infinite stupidity have largely ignored Luke Haines work. Typical, really - he is that most British of songwriters, speaking a language of pop culture references and neighbours wall overheard gossip. He is not as cold as they'd have you believe - this is a deeply emotional album but not one full of infantilised soulfulness and self pitying wallowing. This is emotion concealed by a sense of reserve, a self deprecating smile with quiet desperation in it.

He's very British, yes, but far from an idiotic, twee tea and crumpet caricature or Little Englander. Instead of looking back to the days when Ray Davies was a lad and celebrating the inarticulate grunts of indie lads where sincerity, passion and intelligence are unthinkable crimes, we should be celebrating him. He's one of the best we've got - especially if you like your pop melodies with a side of barbed wit.

PropaganDan on Witch House (Part 1?)

A witch house post may well be out of date by this point, micro-scenes such as this usually dying out pretty quickly. Looking around at the time of writing, it seems to be as healthy as it was when I first heard Salem, first act of this type I'd heard. Hearing Redlights for the first time through 20 Jazz Funk greats was an epiphany, I went around saying "This stuff is going to be big". I wasn't right then and I'm still not, witch house hasn't yet been co-opted by the mainstream in the same way as dubstep has been, and the chillwave/hypnagogic stuff is beginning to be co-opted by lightweight landfill indie guitar acts. The obligatory journo buzzwords attached to witch house say it all - haunted house, ghost step, any number of permutations of electronic dance music genre tags melded to something supernatural. It is, however, creeping into memedom, with witch house band name generators existing spewing out mixes of occult symbols and language with pyramids and stars.

A lot of music potentially falls under the witch house umbrella - the music consists of elements of downtempo chopped and screwed hip hop, juke, industrial music, noise, fragments of half remembered film soundtracks, shoegaze, synth pop and just about anything you can imagine filtered through an aesthetic that has more than a little in common with black metal. Sometimes there are vocals, demonic slo-mo rap or MBV like reverb drenched icy siren songs. The unifying thread seems to be that as long as you're into the aesthetic there are no rules - no set bpm or rigid boundaries of what is acceptable, unlike most electronic dance music.
One way of talking about and "legitimising" witch house would be to mention the influences of various minorities, black and gay cultures intersecting in a way they haven't really since house proper. It is for this reason that some critics distaste for the vocals pitch shifted down to drawl thug-rap epiphets says more about them than it does about the musicians. When they dismiss it as "minstrelsy" as the New York Times did, it says more about their own perception of scary black men than it does about the musicians, kids imitating their favourite (not always black) rappers because they like them.

I could call it the new punk - DIY aesthetic, no rules, largely self released material and content often offensive to some. Combine the occult imagery a lot of people are still uncomfortable with in a society dominated by the Abrahamic religions with content consisting of both hip hops glorification of sex, violence and drug use and you have potential controversy indeed! The cheap sensationalism of some people making strand of the genre and calling it "rapegaze" just pours fuel on the fire - this puerile nastiness isn't to be encouraged but no subculture is exempt from morons. Looking at the etymology of the word punk, you can trace it to a male prostitute - at least one of Salem, according to an interview with underground American gay publication Butt Magazine has been a rentboy. So it's more authentic this time around. Yes, that ugly word authentic, we'll get to that some other time, because it is really missing the point completely.
While both of these are true the fact is that in the context of this scene (that isn't a scene) ethnicity, sexuality and social backgrounds are largely irrelevant as long as you can make good spooky electronic music that touches the heart and moves the feet. A lot of the creators are anonymous, hidden behind computer screens and uploading Youtube videos of their tracks, sharing zip folders of tracks or putting them straight up onto Soundcloud or Bandcamp. The same people who complaining that there is no such thing as original thought anymore are usually the like who didn't like the old punk, nevermind "the new punk". It wasn't in their field of reference. This is why this phenomenon has been dismissed as another bunch of hipster drivel, and largely ignored. The fact it has such a silly name doesn't exactly help matters either of course - Frankie Knuckles spinning Salem's Killer?

Large amounts of witch house recontextualise existing content into new forms with no concept of "good" or "bad" taste : Tri Angle records Lindsay Lohan tribute Let Me Shine For You and Salem's apocalyptic rehaul of Britney Spears Til The End of The World co-exist with work influenced by Coil and Scorn. Lil Wayne or Gucci Mane can be mixed into beats straight out of the darkest industrial acts repetoire, and it doesn't matter. Witch house, arguably more than any other genre, is a mirror of today's magpie music culture.

Salem's King Night is currently the closest its has got to infiltrating the mainstream, and is fairly representative of the myriad strands represented in W.H. It opens with a mangled sample of Barney the Dinosaur spinning off into beats like frozen ice under choral synths. It is an album where menacing, pitch shifted rap vocals rub up against Cocteauesque vocals and distorted synth like guitar and guitar like synths skate on bass heavy beats with the needle in the red - shoegaze meets hip hop for a bout of ultra homoerotic ultraviolence in an abandoned subway tunnel. It culminates in the aforementioned Killer, one of the most emotionally stirring pieces of music I heard in 2010. The lyrics, something to do with "miles to go" and "spiders in your hair", are distorted by the heavily treated but resolutely human vocal delivery, slurring and teetering on the brink of tears. The same could be said of the music.

When you start listening out for it, its surprising where it leads you - alongside the obvious goth, industrial, hip hop and shoegaze strands, some of NIN's quieter moments could fit well between Ritualz and NoVirgin in a witch house mix. The same could indeed be said of quite a lot of various peak era Depeche Mode tracks, the Smashing Pumpkins' Eye or even a lot of stuff from Burial's critically lauded Untrue or Darkstar's North. On that same dubstep tip, quite a lot of Zomby's recent (great!) album Dedication has more than a touch of the witch house about it. Tyler The Creator and Syd Tha Kid's beats and productions on OFWG tracks have that same sparse moodiness and sinister edge, in a case of hip hop being influenced by the very thing it influenced. Even aesthetically - OF fonts and symbols could be White Ring. Still "minstrelsy" now? Words must be eaten by the highbrow when the aesthetic is co-opted by young black artists and people working in what is, from the standpoint of he who sucks the joy out of everything, "black music" - even if Zomby isn't black he's operating in a field with roots in drum'n'bass and dub reggae. However, unlike dubstep, I can't see Britney Spears repaying the interest in her and getting Salem to come up and do Til The End of The World with her. Tyler might, though.

Zola Jesus is obviously influenced by the aesthetic, and shows signs of being a majority concern too - 2010's Stridulum's blend of Rihanna, early Human League and Nico went down a storm, and this year's Conatus is doing pretty well too. Unlike the other acts in this category, she'd be equally at home singing Trust Me to Glastonbury or performing Night in the Black Lodge in Twin Peaks - I wouldn't be surprised if she was huge soon.

Even if the “evil mainstream” co opted Salem or NoVirgin or White Ring it wouldn’t matter because most of these artists really aren’t small minded and elitist in the slightest - they just like what they like. No recriminations or statements of "It's not REAL witch house!". The closest they've come, though, is aforementioned Britney cover, Heather from Salem appearing on These New Puritans Hidden and a few witch house mixes on a HIM (!!!) remix album. This means HIM (bloody HIM) were at the forefront of pushing a new form into the mainstream? I was very surprised.In a climate where even the lo fi is pretty hi fi, this is a refereshing breath of fresh air. Like punk, anyone can do it. But as Genesis P Orridge once pointed out the problem with punk was the tired old learn three chords and start a band ethic - why do you even need one chord if you want to express yourself. If you have an internet connection, you have access to some form of music software - just pop some VSTs in a DAW and you too can be making witch house! Do whatever you want, it's up to you.

Recommended Listening :
Salem - King Night
Zola Jesus - Stridulum II
Tri Angle Records Let Me Shine For You Lohan comp
NoVirg1n - Downer EP
Various Artists - Road to Duat Pale Noir compilation
Scare the bejesus out of yourself with some White Ring, dance to some Mater Suspiria Vision
And, of course, obligatory self plug, Neurotic Wreck - Cling Placid
Sadly, and unhelpfully, the majority of what I've heard I've liked. Dive in yourself if you like dark electronic music.