AU Magazine Issue 57

PATRICK WOLF WELCOME TO HIS BACHELOR PARTY

#57

HE’S A LITTLE BIT COMPLICATED GRIZZLY BEAR NO BAND IS AN ISLAND

SUPER FURRY ANIMALS BEST IN BREED

LITTLE BOOTS SOMETHING LIKE A PHENOMENON

MOST WANTED SUMMER FESTIVALS SPECIAL

RESPECT YOUR SHELF: YOUR INDISPENSABLE GUIDE TO PAUL AUSTER A TO Z OF BUDDIES: AN ALPHABETISED COLLECTION OF CHUMS WWW.IHEARTAU.COM

£3.30

OHBIJOU / NOT SQUARES / KILL IT KID / THE THERMALS / THERAPY? / MARK RADCLIFFE / EELS / BADDIES / THE VON BONDIES / MORRISSEY / FILTHY DUKES / JOY DIVISION / MAXIMO PARK / FUTURE OF THE LEFT

JULY 2009

my inspiration Bruce Springsteen

As I went walking I saw a sign there and on the sign it said “No Trespassing” but on the other side it didn’t say nothin’ that side was made for you and me Woody Guthrie

This Land Is Your Land

Photography by Danny Clinch.

THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND Words and Music by Woody Guthrie TRO-© Copyright 1956 (Renewed) 1958 (Renewed) 1972 (Renewed) Ludlow Music Inc., New York, NY International Copyright Secured. Made in USA All Rights Reserved Including Public Performance for Profit Used by Permission

Issue 57 38 PATRICK WOLF “I try and live my life like a work of art.”

44 JARVIS COCKER “I don’t think that what we’ve got is really a democracy. You’ve only got a choice between two different consistencies of shit.”

50 SUPER FURRY ANIMALS “The album is so heavy I think there would be certain health and safety issues if we played it indoors.”

52 GRIZZLY BEAR “They wanted us to jump at the camera after the bubbles, but we just stood there looking tired and hungover.”

42

LITTLE BOOTS

“I've always taken reviews quite seriously, but I kind of feel now that it's out of my hands. I'm not making an album for the critics.”

AU #57 Iheartau.com

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EDITORIAL On June 6, AU will celebrate its sixth birthday. Yes, that’s all the sixes, 666, sign of the devil, er, dude. However, our longevity and the success that the magazine has enjoyed over that period is not the result of some Faustian pact.

Instead our achievements should be credited to our readers and to all those who contribute, the vast array of writers, designers and photographers, past and present, whose talent and expertise make the magazine what it is.

It’s been a slow and steady climb, but right now we feel the publication is the best it’s ever been. The ascent of AU has been mirrored by the rise of Northern Irish music in general. From Snow Patrol going global to the wave after wave of quality acts that continue to break each and every year. To mark our birthday celebrations we’re taking one of the finest of the current crop, And So I Watch You From Afar, on a regional tour of Ireland. We hope you can join us for what promises to be one hell of a shindig.

STUPID THINGS SAID THIS MONTH “You look happy.”

“I’m listening to the Gerry Anderson podcast.”

It’s the closest this generation will get to being in a Japanese prisoner of war camp.

I pretty much had to clone that guy’s shoe.

Hmmm, nice bricks.

I want a tomb when I die, not to just be buried.

Many a great night has ended in vomit.

All rats are talented.

I’ve got a hotline to the Gards!

I like cock and balls.

Why is that new character in Halo called the Master Chef?

I found my homogenous subsets again.

Tell us about pants man.

I don’t know why I’ve got an aversion to testicles.

CONTRIBUTORS PUBLISHER / EDITOR IN CHIEF

Jonny Tiernan

EDITOR

Francis Jones

SUB EDITOR

Chris Jones

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

Ross Thompson

SENIOR CONTRIBUTOR

Edwin McFee

CONTRIBUTORS

Virginia Arroyo, Philip Byrne, John Calvert, Rik Crothers, Neill Dougan, John Freeman, Lee Gorman, David Hamilton, James Gracey, Ailbhe Malone, Gerard McCann, Darragh McCausland, Kirstie McCrum, James McDonald, Kenny Murdock, Lauren Murphy, Matt Nesbitt, Steven Rainey, Shain Shapiro, Jeremy Shields, James Skinner.

DESIGN/ILLUSTRATION

Stuart Bell, Luke Carson, Tim Farrell, Neil Gillespie, Elissa Tiernan

PHOTOGRAPHY

Timothy Cochrane – www.timothycochrane.com Carrie Davenport – www.carriedavenport.com Suzie McCracken – mynewmusebelfast.blogspot.com Matthew Patton – www.pavelware.com

* OPEN LATE NIGHT MONDAYS & OPEN EVERY SUNDAY

(028) 90 329146 [6]

AU#57

ADVERTISING AND MARKETING MANAGER

Elissa Tiernan

PROMOTIONS AND MARKETING ASSISTANT

Kim Barclay

AU #57

CONTENTS UPFRONT Page 6 / The AU Stereo Page 7 / TOUR DE FORCE Page 10 / EELS Page 11 / NOT SQUARES / BLACK MOTH SUPER RAINBOW Page 12 / MAXIMO PARK Page 13 / THE VON BONDIES Page 14 / filthy DUKEs Page 15 / the felice brothers / WILLOWSTONE Page 16 / five to one – cops / robbers Page 18 / incoming – ohbijou / kill it kid Page 20 / breaking through – THE phenomenal handclap band / autokratz / baddies / god help the girl / semaphore / moderat Page 22 / hey you! what’s on your ipod?

Page 25 / ON THE ROAD WITH THE ANSWER

REWIND Page 26 / Flashback – the strange downfall of oj simpson Page 28 / history lessons – suicide Page 30 / a to z – BUDDIES Page 34 / respect your shelf – PAUL AUSTER Page 36 / Classic album – JOY DIVISION

REVIEWS Page 55 / Album Reviews Page 62 / unsigned UNIVERSE Page 63 / Live Reviews

SUBBACULTCHA Page 67 / Most Wanted Page 70 / SCREEN Page 72 / games Page 74 / comics Page 76 / Books Page 78 / Back Of The Net Page 80 / In Pictures – GALLOWS / CUTAWAYS

ALBUM LAUNCH Page 82 / – The Last Word – THE THERMALS

AU Magazine Nominated in the Irish Print Awards 2008 Printed by GPS Colour Graphics

To advertise in AU Magazine contact the sales team Tel: 028 9032 4888 or via email elissa@iheartau.com The opinions expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of the editor or the publisher. Copyright remains with the author / photographer / designer.

Send demos / mail / material to: AU Magazine, 56 Bradbury Place, Belfast, BT7 1RU For more info contact: info@iheartau.com For all general and editorial enquiries call: 028 9032 4455 AU Magazine graciously acknowledges funding support from the Arts Council Of Northern Ireland

Iheartau.com

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ADAM FRANKLIN SURGE (HI-SPEED SOUL / SECOND MOTION)

AU EO STER

THE SOUNDS ROCKIN’ THE OFFICE AIRWAVES THIS MONTH

On new album Spent Bullets, Adam Franklin – the former main man of seminal shoegazers Swervedriver – summons the ghost of Elliott Smith to conjure a record that bursts at the seams with hazy melodies, wistful lyrics and vocals of mountain stream purity. However, it is the opening ‘Surge’ that most compels, Franklin’s former band evoked in those swathes of guitar and the textured brilliance of the chorus. FJ

PHOENIX LISZTOMANIA (HOLY GHOST! LOVES PARIS REMIXOMANIA) (KITSUNE) The first track from Phoenix’s box fresh new album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (aw yeah) gets a supercharged disco makeover from Brooklyn duo Holy Ghost!.

While it’d be nice if HG! came up with a follow-up of their own to last year’s fantastic single ‘Hold On’, remixes like this bide the time nicely. The original’s stop-start jangle-pop is recast as a glitterball ass-shaker, with Thomas Mars’s vocals sitting surprisingly well over the sizzling synths. CJ

THE MUMMERS

THIS IS HEAVEN (GLOW) (BIG BASS DRUM) Remember when Björk went all big band and flamboyant for ‘It’s Oh So Quiet’?

Well The Mummers – Raissa Khan-Panni and a multitude of chums – don similarly glitzy garb on their orchestral pop opus Tale To Tell. The show-off showstopper on a positively magical album is ‘This Is Heaven (Glow)’, a headover-heels trip into the light fantastic accompanied by a battery of parping horns, twinkling keys and lush strings. FJ

BADDIES HOLLER FOR MY HOLIDAY (MEDICAL) First single ‘Battleships’ was a mere warning shot in comparison to this, as ‘Holler For My Holiday’ sees the Southend quartet explode with a blast of brain-mangling ferocity. Imagine, if you will, that QOTSA and The Futureheads had copulated on a floor strewn with Talking Heads vinyl – this, then, is the bastard anthem they would have conceived. Throw in some “woo ha woo ha” choruses and you’ve got two-and-a-half minutes of certifiable punk-pop bliss. VA NOT SQUARES AYE YO PA (RICHTER COLLECTIVE) It’s debut single time for Not Squares, but can the band bottle the tsunami of energy that they unleash every time they get onstage? ‘Course they can. While the homemade Wrok EP was charmingly ramshackle, there’s some real heft behind this one, a

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double A-side with ‘IYOUUSIT’. The rhythm pitches and lurches as Rachel Keenan’s synth twitters and the quartet declaim… something or other over the top. It doesn’t matter what, it sounds like it means something. This band already does. CJ MODERAT SEAMONKEY (BPITCH CONTROL) Come join German supergroup Moderat (Modeselektor + Apparat) in the murk and the mire. This sixminute slice of thumping techno is notable for two things. One; the subtle way in which the textured synths and sonics ever so slowly entwine themselves around the seemingly unstoppable beat. Two; the fluttering breakdown two-thirds of the way through and, more importantly, the way it crashes back in with an entirely different, but even better, rhythm. Sehr gut, meine Herren. CJ MARINA & THE DIAMONDS I AM NOT A ROBOT (679 / ATLANTIC) Depending upon whom you believe, Marina & The Diamonds could well

be either the next Kate Nash, or Kate Bush. Early tracks such as ‘Obsessions’ and ‘Mowgli’s Road’ suggested that she shared creative DNA with the latter.

Such suspicions are reaffirmed on the lead track of Marina’s new EP, The Crown Jewels. Melodic quirks shift ‘I Am Not A Robot’ decisively out of the ordinary and, my, just listen to how magnificently the Welsh-born lass warbles. FJ

– but anthemic isn’t often one of them. ‘Arming Eritrea’, the explosive first track on this issue’s Album Of The Month Travels With Myself And Another, goes some way to putting that right. Not being experts on the politics of eastern Africa, we’re not quite sure what Andy Falkous is hollering about, but it’s a glorious racket all the same. Welcome back, chaps. CJ

WE WERE PROMISED JETPACKS QUIET LITTLE VOICES (FATCAT) The fledgling Scottish foursome delivers a rush of blood to the head on this stomping masterclass of hookladen indie-rock. Anthemic, energetic and as difficult to dislodge as sticky toffee from the cavity of your tooth, ‘Quiet Little Voices’ plays for keeps.

And there’s plenty more of similarly soaring quality on debut album, These Four Walls. VA

DIRTY PROJECTORS REMADE HORIZON (DOMINO) Bitte Orca, the latest beguiling puzzle box of an album from Brooklyn’s Dirty Projectors, might take a while to fully decipher, but the brilliance of ‘Remade Horizon’ is immediately apparent. The song is sprung from the same Afrobeat terrain that Vampire Weekend have made such fertile play of. Here, all manner of instruments summon a most pleasing cacophony, as Dave Longstreth’s serpentine vocal rushes to a collision with the chanted-to-the-heavens choral melody. FJ

FUTURE OF THE LEFT ARMING ERITREA (4AD) Future Of The Left are a lot of things – loud, pissed-off, angular, righteous

Photo by Carrie Davenport

ASIWYFA

tour de force

ASIWYFA AND ADEBISI SHANK GEAR UP FOR AU’S MASSIVE SIXTH BIRTHDAY TOUR Words by CHRIS JONES Here at AU, we like a good shindig. For our launch party back in 2003, Therapy? laid waste to the Mandela Hall in Belfast. On a sunny Sunday in 2006, our third birthday saw the cream of NI bands take over the Spring & Airbrake, Limelight and Katy Daly’s in Belfast in an all-day, threeroomed extravaganza.

And last year’s fifth birthday saw us repeat the trick in Derry, as Sandino’s played host to Fighting With Wire and the best of the new breed. This year, however, we’re going one better.

To

celebrate six years of publishing, AU is teaming up with Livewire Promotions to take two of the best Irish bands from north and south on a tour across Ireland. The first two weeks of July will see the tour hit Tralee, Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Derry and Belfast. Representing the north, we have the mighty And So I Watch You From Afar. They’ve barely been off tour all year, bringing their seismic brand of instrumental rock to fans across the UK and Ireland, and the AU tour comes hot on the heels of European dates with stoner rock legends Clutch.

ADEBISI SHANK

Joining ASIWYFA is another loud, intense instrumental band, the frankly astonishing Adebisi Shank. Last seen in Belfast as guests at ASIWYFA’s huge album launch gig at the Mandela Hall, the Wexford trio infuse their mathy, technical sound with a large dose of punk energy, often at the risk of injuring themselves as guitarist Lar and bassist Vinny leap around – and off – the stage. Each gig on the tour will also feature local support, while rising stars the Panama Kings will fill in for Adebisi at the final date in Belfast.

Speaking to AU, ASIWYFA guitarist Tony Wright says he’s looking forward to getting out and about around Ireland, playing small venues (and a new town, Tralee) at a time when they regularly sell out decent sized venues across the water. “The last shows we did with Maybeshewill in Cork, Limerick and Dublin were all fuckin’ brilliant,” he enthuses. “We’re a bit ashamed of ourselves in the fact that we’ve been over to England about 10 times more than we’ve played shows in the south of our

Photo by Matthew Patton Iheartau.com

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the headliners may as well pack up and go home. When they’re on form, there’s no following them. ASIWYFA, however, are not just any band, and Tony baulks at the suggestion that Adebisi will be throwing down the gauntlet, challenging ASIWYFA to outdo them.

ADEBISI SHANK

“No, it’s almost the opposite,” he says.

“When we were in Brighton doing the Great Escape festival we were on after a band called The Computers, and they were fuckin’ awesome – just proper punk rock. They completely psyched us up, and on the LaFaro tour [in England and Scotland], they are my favourite band on the planet and getting to go on after them every night was just absolutely mind-blowing.

“It just pumps you up, and with Adebisi as well, you don’t feel like you’re in competition. You know you have to raise your game, but in no way in a competitive sense. In a totally non-cocksucking way, we all have the utmost respect for each other. We really respect what they’re doing and hopefully likewise. It’s great because I get to watch a band that I absolutely adore and jump about and go nuts, and then I can jump about and go nuts with my own band!”

Mark our words, dear reader, so will you.

Photo by Matthew Patton

THOSE DATES IN FULL country, but we’re looking to change all that. We’ve been getting down a lot more and the crowds are steadily growing.

Letterkenny, Limerick and Dublin were all sold out and the crowds were all totally

“It’s really important,” adds Adebisi drummer and Richter Collective (BATS, Not Squares, Enemies) label boss Mick Roe. “For a long time, there seems to have been a Northern Irish music scene

“It’s great to finally have things building up between the north and south and starting to get a gig network going.”

Tony Wright, ASIWYFA up for it and going totally bananas. It’s great, because it’s smaller venues and the crowd are totally in your face and absolutely insane. It’s brilliant, it’s just like starting over again. It’s so much fun to be able to retrace those steps in different places.”

and a southern Irish music scene. Bands would go up and down but there’d be no real communication like there seems to be starting now, with the State and AU clubs and other stuff like that. I think it’s starting to take off, anyway.”

The two bands have played together

before, notably at the first ever Club AU in Belfast last year, and are good friends – Tony even tells us that he and Mick have planned a trip to Italy for later in the year, staying at his aunt’s place. (“Me and him are just going to go over and drink red wine for a week. We planned it as a bit of a joke, but now it seems to be becoming reality.”) The AU Sixth Birthday Tour, however, will be the first ever time the bands have been out on the road together, and Mick is audibly excited when we ask him about the prospect. “We’ve never toured with them before,” he admits.

“We’ve only played a couple of one-off shows in Dublin and Belfast, but never got out around Ireland. We’ve been meaning to do it for quite some time but never got round to it yet. It’s gonna be fun!”

There’s no doubt that the crowds will have fun as well, as these two bands are known for their facemelting live performances. Adebisi, in particular, have made something of a career – in the North at least – of show-stealing support performances, the kind that make you feel

WHERE AND WHEN TO GET YOUR ROCK ON

July 2 ASIWYFA, Adebisi Shank & support Club Head Bang Bang, Tralee July 3 ASIWYFA & support Lower Deck, Dublin July 4 ASIWYFA, Adebisi Shank, I’ll Eat Your Face, Burn Us Both, Trev Moran Pine Lodge, Cork July 5 ASIWYFA, Adebisi Shank, I’ll Eat Your Face, My Mothers Son Baker Place, Limerick July 9 ASIWYFA, Adebisi Shank & support Mason’s, Derry July 10 ASIWYFA, Panama Kings & support trans Festival, The Waterfront Hall, Belfast

And is there anywhere in particular that the ASIWYFA man is looking forward to playing? “I’ll be honest with you, I’m looking forward to every single one. It’s brilliant getting down. We get on really well with our southern buddies, and we’ve made a lot of friends down there the times that we’ve been down. Every time we’re down, people are just so nice to us, and they all love our accents! Seriously man, the girls go wild for the northern accent!”

Romantic opportunities aside, Tony reckons that the importance of the northsouth link-up and an Irish tour is not to be underestimated. “It’s great to finally have things building up between the north and south and starting to get a gig network going,” he says. “It’s been long overdue and I think it’s really positive. That’s all we try to do – anything in a positive way, and the more connections that open up between the north and the south, the better. An infrastructure for a gig network – it’s ridiculous that we don’t have more stuff in place. So this is an absolutely golden opportunity – we can’t wait.”

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ASIWYFA

Photo by Matthew Patton

Photo by Matthew Patton

ADEBISI SHANK HEART AU “Fuckin’ AU is great stuff, like! I can’t believe it’s six years old. That’s a long time for a print publication, you’d be hard pressed for a good magazine to be running that long in the Republic, anyway.

It’s ridiculously impressive that it’s managed to stay in print. And it’s great that it is available down here as well, because I remember the first time it came down here and the only place you could really get it was in Road Records. I’ve been an avid reader ever since!”

Mick Roe

THE SUPPORT ACTS I’LL EAT YOUR FACE Joining the Cork/Limerick leg of the tour is Cork’s “party grindcore” duo I’ll Eat Your Face. Making the kind of noise that you would assume must come from an army of men, their riffs and powerhouse drumming are accompanied by a fairly ludicrous sense of humour. They describe themselves as a “two-man party pack, brimming with excellence and straddling the divide between the sound of a building site and an 8-year-old’s birthday party”. They don’t take themselves too seriously then, but they are a huge amount of kick-ass fun. www.myspace.com/ illeatyourfaceireland BURN US BOTH Another addition to the bill in Cork, Burn Us Both are a four-piece who boast a way with a meaty riff, a turn-on-a-dime rhythm section and some full-throated vocals. Passionate, anthemic alt.rock. www.myspace.com/burnusboth

PANAMA KINGS Former AU cover stars, they should need no introduction, but the Kings are a stellar addition to the Belfast bill. After having built a serious fanbase in NI, they’ve spent the last few weeks spreading their seed across the water, getting playlisted

by BBC 6 Music, doing an acoustic session for them and playing gigs aplenty up and down Britain. Off the back of their latest single ‘Golden Recruit’, they’re also kicking off June as tour support for Ash across the south of England. www.myspace.com/panamakings AS ALWAYS, KEEP AN EYE ON WWW.IHEARTAU.COM FOR MORE TOUR ANNOUNCEMENTS.

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plenty of sunlight. I didn’t take four years to make this new album. In fact, it came about in three or four weeks. Most of it was pretty spontaneous. It’s the sound of a guitar band playing in a basement: there is a sort of blues rock thing going on at times, but there’s also something softer going on too. It’s alternately tender and terrifying. One of the things I wanted to do was bring a little sex and danger back to indie-rock. After all, that’s where the term ‘rock and roll’ came from, and it seems that it’s sorely lacking these days.”

Deceptively simple (“It might sound easy until you tried to sit down and play the guitar parts”), Hombre Lobo feels like a reaction to the sprawling double album Blinking Lights, not only in the sense that it’s two-thirds shorter, but also that it’s darker, more raucous, more rough-edged.

According to E, it’s not a deliberate attempt to either recapture the charge of Souljacker or to stomp all over the lush arrangements of Daisies Of The Galaxy.

CRY WOLF

EELS RELEASE HOWLING NEW ALBUM

“It’s

no fun living in the past all the time,” says E, main man in Eels.

It’s been four years since the release of the band’s last album proper Blinking Lights, and during that period he has collated two singles and B-sides collections, written his autobiography, and embarked on several world tours. He also made Parallel Universes, Parallel Lives, the startling documentary about his late professor father. “It was part science show, part family drama, part rockumentary,” says E, dryly. “The three don’t normally go together.”

E describes the emotional clearout as a taxing but necessary process. “I was a little worried about what I was doing and how it all added up, but in retrospect I think it turned out pretty well. It was useful for me, and I’m glad I did it, but it’s much more fun to be doing something current.

I’m so excited after four years living in the past to finally be back in the future.

It’s the excitement of making something that didn’t exist in the world yesterday.

Dealing with something that’s really new is something I haven’t felt for four years.”

The “really new” is Hombre Lobo, a murky, disquieting record whose front cover is adorned with the tagline “12 songs of desire”. E is in town to ride the press junket pony train to promote it, an experience with which he is clearly uncomfortable. Despite the fact that our conversation is punctuated with awkward pauses and deathly silences, E speaks enthusiastically about his latest work.

“I would like people to embrace it with arms open, feeding it and watering it and letting it grow as the lovely plant it is. It’s a wolf plant.

Very rare. You have to keep it warm. Give it

“I don’t sit down and write a song and imagine that a certain kind of fan would want to hear it. I’m imagining myself as the fan and asking what I would want to hear.

I don’t go out of my way to do something different just to dazzle people with my versatility. It’s just something within me.”

E is versatile, regardless of how ardently he might protest. Hombre Lobo marks another step in his ongoing development as a singleminded artist with, it seems, scant ability to switch off.

“I spent a whole year as an exercise to see if I could go without writing a song. I did it but I kind of cheated because I went on three world tours so I didn’t have time anyway. I don’t think I could sit in my house and not come up with any ideas for a year. It’s probably related to some kind of obsessive compulsive disorder or something.” Ross Thompson

MICHAEL JACKSON

H

onestly, where do you begin poking fun at Michael Jackson?

The guy is a walking one-man mental museum. There have been so many messed up episodes over the years that to list them all would use enough paper to coat the Taj Mahal (in case you are wondering, that is a scientific fact). Now he’s on the comeback trail, with a run of 50 live dates set to take place at the O2 Arena in London. We’re sure there are bookies everywhere who will give you good odds on how many gigs Mr Jackson will actually finish. We’re dead optimistic and think he will actually complete the full half century, despite him having the look of a man who may fall apart at any given minute. We’re not just talking mentally falling apart either,

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we’re talking full-blown, coming away at his physical seams type falling apart. After all, he appears to be held together by nothing more than sticky tape and a prayer. The opening four dates have already been moved back for ‘production reasons’, and some doubters are saying he might not even get through the first night. Naysayers begone!

It’ll be the most talked about comeback since Elvis in ’68. Though whether it’s talked about for the right reasons or the wrong ones, we’re not sure. We feel that poor Michael just needs a little rest before all the action, so we’ve hidden him inside the very pages of this magazine. The first person to find his whereabouts and email info@iheartau.com will win a six-month subscription. Cha'mone!

Word is beginning to filter out about the next British Sea Power studio album.

The band are currently recording at Scott Wilkinson’s farmhouse and the frontman took time out to update The Quietus as to the band’s progress. “Both Martin [Noble] and Neil [Wilkinson] seem to be turning out their best songs so far. I’ve become involved with the most epic song I’ve written and it has devastated my social life.

The last few weeks I’ve been working 12-hour shifts daily on this beast. Hope it works out. Am excited.”

HOMBRE LOBO IS OUT NOW ON POLYDOR. WWW.EELSTHEBAND.COM

TOP TEN SONGS FOR MICHAEL JACKSON

WE MUST HIDE…

Post-punk’s high priests, Gang of Four will be celebrating the 30th anniversary of the seminal Entertainment! with four UK shows. Unfortunately no Irish dates have been confirmed at present. However, given the opportunity of hearing both the classic album performed live in its entirety and the prospect of some box fresh new material to boot, the trek should be absolutely worthwhile.

1. Marmalade

Falling Apart At The

Seams 2. N.E.R.D.

Everyone Nose 3. You Me At Six

Call That A Comeback?

4. Cocteau Twins

Fifty-Fifty Clown 5. The Offspring

Stuff Is Messed Up 6. Smashing Pumpkins

Frail And Bedazzled 7. MC Frontalot

A Very Unlikely Occurrence 8. Faith No More

Falling To Pieces 9. Bruce Springsteen

The Big Fifty 10. Soundgarden Zero Chance

Liam Gallagher has gone up in AU’s estimation after the Oasis man took a swipe at The Enemy. Seems like Liam was displeased by comments attributed to Tom “little fucker” Clarke in a recent interview. Apparently, Clarke seemed to suggest that the Manc rockers were past it.

Liam was having none of it and tweeted his outrage.

Rock. And. Roll.

Muse have revealed the title of their much anticipated new album via their band Twitter. “Drum roll please...

The new Muse album title is...

The Resistance.”

Photo by Carrie Davenport

THE COOL KIDS?

NOT SQUARES PREPARE TO LAUNCH DEBUT SINGLE

O

n a Friday night in the middle of June, Belfast’s Stiff Kitten venue is going to have its arse handed to it by three of the most exciting live bands in Ireland: Not Squares, Adebisi Shank and LaFaro. The occasion? The launch of Not Squares’ debut 7” single, the rather splendid ‘IYOUUSIT’/ ‘Aye Yo Pa’.

drum or shout somewhere, I can say I’m Not Squares. It’s this idea that one or two or three or four or five people, or more, can represent that name. It’s the idea of a collective, I guess, and instead of fencing your territory and saying, ‘If one member leaves, we can’t function’, it needs to be more fluid than that.”

“Adebisi Shank are fucking brilliant,” enthuses Not Squares drummer Keith Winter (above, far right), as he and bassist Ricki O’Rawe (above, front) spend an hour with AU in the bowels of Queen’s University Student’s Union. “I mean, the energy they give out is unrivalled, really. I don’t think I’ve seen it for a while.”

“That was born out of the fact that all our friends kept coming to the shows,” says Ricki. “It was like, ‘Are these guys Not Squares as well?’ Obviously, they are.”

There’s a touch of false modesty in that statement, perhaps, because his own band runs them close. Last month, the Belfast dance-punk quartet passed only the first anniversary of their debut gig, and yet though still a part-time operation, they’ve built an impressive fanbase in Northern Ireland and further afield.

“We’ve got a really good group of friends who support us everywhere we go, and dance, and we always wanted it to be like that,” says Keith. “We started a band to make music so everyone could dance and have a good time. And also, when we go anywhere else [they have played all over NI, as well as Dublin, Edinburgh and London], we treat it as locally as we do in Belfast. And I think that attitude maybe comes across.”

When they played to a bunch of schoolkids in a club in Omagh, says Ricki, “Some of them loved it, some of them were really confused and some of them were just getting handjobs in the corner. Literally.”

Granted, arrangements for the band’s frequent forays out of town have been helped by goodwill for the four members’ previous bands – Tracer AMC, The Killing Spree and Gaju, amongst others – but they wouldn’t have made much of an impact if they weren’t such a vital proposition in their own right, one that detonates when they get onstage. Added to that energy is the music itself – think Liquid Liquid and early Liars – and a subtle sense of ideology and inclusiveness driving things along.

“If Rachel [Keenan, keys] goes and DJs somewhere by herself,” says Keith, “she can say she’s Not Squares. If I go and

The single is being released on the Dublinbased Richter Collective label, who also intend to put out the band’s debut album later in the year. It’s a relationship that was first established after Not Squares played a gig with Dublin’s finest post-prog-punk scientists, their new labelmates BATS. “Those guys have been brilliant,” says Ricki. “I was thinking about it the other day, how much they’ve helped us. They’re so enthusiastic. The first time we played with them, they were like, ‘Come and play with us, waaaaargh!’ This energy. Like, ‘I’m ringing Richter Collective tomorrow’, and we’re working with Richter Collective now.”

The band go into Start Together Studios in Belfast after the single launch to record that album. Up until now, their recorded output has consisted solely of the lo-fi Wrok EP, released on limited edition cassette tape and as a free download from their Last.fm page. Now, they have the chance to go wild.

“We want to get a really good, energetic document of a lot of stuff that people will know from our gigs,” says Ricki. “But then there’s also things that’ll be on there that we haven’t been able to do live. We definitely want there to be some interesting songs on there – just to experiment in the studio a wee bit.” Chris Jones

DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT THE MUSIC MEANT? WITH TOBACCO FROM BLACK MOTH SUPER RAINBOW What is your earliest musical memory?

Listening to one of my dad’s folk records on the wrong speed and thinking it was right.

Who was the first act to disappoint you?

I used to love Reverend Horton Heat in high school, and when they put out Space Heater, it was over for me.

What piece of music moves you to tears?

Music can’t make me cry, but if it gives me enough of a headache, my eye might water.

What’s your favourite song to dance to?

‘Vasoline’ [by Stone Temple Pilots]

Who was the first band you ever went to see live?

Butthole Surfers in 11th grade.

What was the last good record you bought?

Longmont Potion Castle – Longmont Potion Castle 7 What was the first act you became obsessed about?

Jon Spencer Blues Explosion

Who is your all-time favourite band or artist?

Longmont Potion Castle Which of your own songs are you most proud of ?

‘Street Trash’

EATING US BY BLACK MOTH SUPER RAINBOW IS OUT ON JUNE 8 ON MEMPHIS INDUSTRIES

What record would you use to seduce someone?

Fucked Up Friends [his own solo album].

‘IYOUUSIT’/ ‘AYE YO PA’, IS OUT ON RICHTER COLLECTIVE ON JUNE 15.

NOT SQUARES PLAY THE TWISTED PEPPER, DUBLIN WITH ADEBISI SHANK ON JUNE 11.

THE SINGLE LAUNCH WITH ADEBISI SHANK AND LAFARO IS AT THE STIFF KITTEN, BELFAST ON JUNE 12.

WWW.MYSPACE.COM/NOTSQUARES Iheartau.com

[13]

of that. The most appropriate thing for us is to write pop, you can call it whatever else you like, but it’s got loads of hooks in and it’s meant to be fun. There might be sorrow in the lyrics, or an angry and aggressive edge to the music. It’s meant to excite people when they hear it. I think, once we decided that, the album grew out of that sensibility.”

The restlessly creative David and Stephen Dewaele, aka 2ManyDJs, are returning to their roots somewhat with the launch of their very own online radio station. Of course, it was from the original Radio Soulwax that the 2ManyDJs phenomenon evolved, but this latest incarnation of the station promises to take things to an altogether higher sphere. Run from the act’s website – www.2manydjs.com – Radio Soulwax Mk2 will bring together brand new mixes, special guests, themed hours and a unique visual element to create a one of a kind broadcasting experience.

Reaching the third album mark is a notable achievement, especially in what Smith describes as “this current climate”.

“I’d love to pretend that I was an artist, locking myself in my room with my thoughts, like some alchemist. I take what we do pretty seriously, but at the same time I’m still just part of the world… I worry about my future, I wouldn’t really want to go back to the jobs I was doing [before]. I was living on £100 a week, teaching parttime and being on the dole in the summer.

The band was one of the only bright spots I had.”

PAUL SMITH’S PHILOSOPHY OF POP

MAXIMO PARK MAN ON AN UNDERRATED ART FORM Slipknot’s Corey Taylor has refuted suggestions that the band’s music encourages young people to self-harm.

“If you’re setting out to hurt yourself, it’s not the music that’s causing it.

There’s something else wrong. We get a lot of kids that cut themselves but I go out of my way to try and stop it. It may feel artistic to carve our names in your arm but to us, it’s just hurting yourself. As bleak as Slipknot can be, it’s supposed to be positive in the long term and the last thing we want is for anyone to hurt themselves. [I] used to be one of those kids and I always try to explain to them that I know what it’s like to feel like you’re the last person on Earth.

All you have to do is reach out and someone will be there.”

“I know there is the argument of the Frankfurt School and [Theodor W.] Adorno that it’s just drugging the people.

Having studied things like this, I think, ‘Fair point mate, but I’ve only got a limited amount of time on this earth and I’d rather spend it enjoying myself’.”

AU

is downstairs in the Queen’s University Students’ Union, in an all but deserted Bunatee bar.

We’re chatting to Maxïmo Park frontman Paul Smith and conversation has taken a turn for the intellectual. Smith is trying to reconcile neo-Marxist political theory with the virtues of pop music. Having spent an hour in his company, we should point out that Smith is in no way pretentious. Rather, he has a deep-rooted appreciation of popular music and the profound and immediate ways it can affect us. He’s also just about to ‘out’ himself as a Take That fan.

“Pop in its purest form is just a way of expressing yourself,” he insists. “I love that thing of listening to something and immediately there’ll be a part of it that catches your ear, some hook. If something stirs the human soul to even a small extent then it’s worth persevering with. For three minutes, I want our songs to affect people’s bodies. The best pop music has a sentiment you can empathise with. I like that Take That song [starts singing ‘Greatest Day’].

The words are quite simple, almost clichéd, there are certain chord changes and yet it gets me. How can you devalue something that gives people so much pleasure?”

It’s curious to hear Smith align his band with Manchester’s most polished practitioners of the pop art. However, he insists that the realisation that Maxïmo were pop was the crucial factor in determining the direction of latest album Quicken The Heart.

“The songs we make are pop songs,” he affirms. “We needed to remind each other

HEARTWORK IN PRAISE OF RANDOM OLD-SKOOL LP ART

MOTHER FOCUS – MOTHER FOCUS

L Details have been confirmed for Paul Banks’ solo album. The Interpol singer will make his bow under the alias Julian Plenti when he releases Skyscraper on August 3.

[14]

AU#57

ike many of our classic Heartworks, this album cover makes literally no sense whatsoever. Stepping back and looking at the sleeve as a whole doesn’t help it to coalesce into any sort of meaningful picture, and it’s only when you start to look at the various components that you start to comprehend just how absurd it is. Take the ship for example, it still has its blueprint design attached to it, and seems to be powered by both wind and coal. It also has hefty armaments that are firing, get this, giant irons with what looks like religious iconography on the bottom. WTF does that mean?! Maybe it's a missionary ship, traversing the seven seas, using massive home appliances to straighten out the sins of all the pirates they encounter.

That almost makes some sort of sense, then you notice the pin-up girl at the foot of the picture, completely naked with only a scroll to protect her modesty, and you just have to give up any hope of understanding what is clearly the work of a deranged mind.

Regardless of the role the band served in saving his past, when Smith looks ahead, he is adamant that Maxïmo Park will only carry on so long as it is continuing to function to its optimum level.

“If we don’t write any good songs for the next album then there won’t be one,” he says, decisively. “I’m not into producing a piece of crap for popular culture, just for the hell of it. I think we’ve got something worthwhile to offer and, if we don’t, we’ll stop. So, as time goes on, who knows. I don’t want to be defined as just the singer for Maxïmo Park.” Francis Jones

QUICKEN THE HEART IS OUT NOW ON WARP. WWW.MAXIMOPARK.COM READ MORE FROM THIS INTERVIEW AT WWW.IHEARTAU.COM

Visit my stall at the next Black Market in The Black Box, Belfast

Sp e cia i n m li z i n g i ni a ture p er s on a li z e d L eg o f ig ures

TAKING A POP AT JACK THE VON BONDIES MAKE THEIR NEVERMIND

I

t’s been five years since their breakthrough long-player Pawn Shoppe Heart and The Von Bondies, after unshackling themselves from their major record label, have seemingly found their musical focus. Spanking new album Love, Hate And Then There’s You brims with rough-edged pop gems, even if the lyrics appear carved from the bitterness of frontman Jason Stollsteimer’s recent divorce.

with fellow Detroitian Jack White back in 2003. White was seemingly riled at Stollsteimer’s suggestion that Jim Diamond, and not White, had produced The Von Bondies’ debut album. “It was just a blip in my past. There have been so many other things happen for better and worse. I don’t think about it unless some shithead says it at a concert. I never knew him – the NME is so full of shit. I don’t know the guy. I got attacked in a bar,

“I HAVE A HORRIBLE THING ABOUT PREMONITIONS IN SONGS AND IT’S NEVER GOOD. I SHOULD HAVE PREMONITIONS ABOUT CURING CANCER OR WINNING THE LOTTERY.” “This one is definitely getting close to what was my teenage inspiration,” Jason explains. “My favourite pop band of all time is Nirvana. If you listen to ‘Come As You Are’ [from Nevermind], it just sounds so slick. So in my mind, with this record, we made a version of an album like that.”

Seemingly distancing himself from the Detroit scene that also birthed The White Stripes, Jason continues, “We came from a shitty garage-pop background where people don’t tune, but that’s not what I’m about – it’s just the city I came from. I believe in good, sing-along, rock and roll records. I’m proud of this record.”

The album contains a number of tracks that seem to allude to Jason’s marital breakdown. ‘Blame Game’ and ‘She’s Dead To Me’ are particularly vitriolic, while ‘Pale Bride’ sketches out a lost love.

Jason claims, however, that his ex-wife didn’t inspire any of the songs. “The funny thing is that I wrote ‘Pale Bride’ two years before I had a fight with my wife. I have not written a song about her since. I’m sure I will on the next record. I have a horrible thing about premonitions in songs and it’s never good. I should have premonitions about curing cancer or winning the lottery, but they’re always detrimental. [The hit single] ‘C’mon C’mon’ is like a fighting song, but even though it came out in 2004, it was written before the ‘incident’.”

Stollsteimer is keen to shrug off the notorious ‘incident’ – a bar room fight

from behind, by a guy I had met once or twice.” Indeed, White eventually pleaded guilty to an assault and battery charge.

“He was just someone who beat up guys in bands. I was the fifth guy from a band to get beat up in a two-year span.”

AU looks to end the conversation on a lighter note – we’re intrigued to know why our island has just been treated to such an ‘extensive’, seven-date, tour? Jason admits his personal life may have been influential.

“I was here for three months of the year anyway. I date a girl from Dublin and I go to Sligo and County Antrim all the time.”

Aw, shucks. John Freeman

LOVE, HATE AND THEN THERE’S YOU IS OUT NOW ON MODEL CITIZEN. WWW.MYSPACE.COM/VONBONDIES

BEN ALLEN www.myspace.com/benallenjeweller email: benallen7@hotmail.com

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JULY FRI 3 - MoveMeNt: - MusiC for the hard style geNeratioN SAT 4 - Progressive house - old sChool MusiC Iheartau.com

[15]

relatively unknown vocalists was very much a deliberate tactic.

“Basically, what we didn’t want was for the album to be released and to have a big sticker on it saying, ‘Featuring Ian Brown’, or whoever,” says Tim. Which is not to say that the band is totally averse to the idea of getting some big names to guest next time around.

“Yeah, it would be good if we got David Bowie and Björk,” says Olly, as he attempts to stifle a laugh.

Whether the band succeed in securing the services of the Icelandic pop princess and Thin White Duke remains to be seen. But beginning work on that second album is definitely high on a packed agenda that includes the first releases on their Kill Em All record label – ‘All Them Witches’ by Plugs was the label’s debut offering – a spate of remix work – Lady Gaga, Hockey and Temper Trap are amongst recent acts to have got the Filthy Dukes treatment – and a run of 22 festival dates “from Newquay to Kuala Lumpur,” as Mark tells us.

Indeed, as Olly confirms, finding the time to pursue their various activities is perhaps Filthy Dukes’ biggest obstacle. “We don’t spend a lot of time fishing at the weekends, that’s for sure!” Francis Jones

NONSENSE IN THE DARK IS AVAILABLE NOW ON FICTION

TAILORED TO PERFECTION

WWW.FILTHYDUKES.COM

THE BESPOKE SOUND OF FILTHY DUKES

A

can listen to an album now and identify a [Roland] Juno 60; you just know the sound of it. And that’s what people are picking up on.”

The amiable London trio – Olly Dixon, Tim Lawton and Mark Ralph – are

“Stylistically, people tend to clump us in with a lot of the other contemporary dance bands,” surmises Ralph, peering out from beneath his baseball cap.

“But, if you check out the songs that we were listening to when we were making the album you’d see that we’re

somewhat misunderstood lot, are Filthy Dukes. A few months back the band released their debut album, Nonsense In The Dark and, although reviews were generally favourable, the band were somewhat nonplussed by the comparisons the record elicited.

“We made the music that we wanted to make without worrying about being part of a scene, or fashion.” huddled around a dictaphone, upstairs in the band’s changing room in the Limelight in Belfast. Post sound check and pre-performance, they’re keen to talk about what flavours are actually served up on their sonic smorgasbord.

“The comparisons with Justice seem a bit lazy,” sighs Dixon, before a reluctant pause. “I get the Simian Mobile Disco thing to a degree, though.”

“Or, people say that we sound like Human League,” sputters an exasperated Lawton. “Well we use exactly the same synthesizers as them.

But, there’s a real breadth of sound that you can get out of those instruments. I

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coming from a different place. We were listening to a lot of Krautrock, progressive Seventies rock, Jefferson Starship and Tangerine Dream.”

The band insists that their record is more traditionally song-structured than dance-focused. What’s more, in the long term, they believe their wariness to replicate the latest vogue in fickle dance fashion will prove advantageous.

“It’s a tricky thing with dance music, the trends change so quickly,” observes Olly. “When we started it was all about Justice. But Justice do such a fantastic job of being Justice, why would you want to copy them? It’s much better to just do your own thing. We made the

WWW.KILLEMALLCLUB .BLOGSPOT.COM/ music that we wanted to make without worrying about being part of a scene, or fashion.”

READ MORE FROM THIS INTERVIEW AT WWW.IHEARTAU.COM

The customised sound of Filthy Dukes is evident on each and every track and is epitomised by their decision to employ a disparate cast of vocalists.

Utilising the network of friends and acquaintances they’d gathered running the Kill Em All club night at Fabric, the record features everyone from Samuel Eastgate of Late Of The Pier and Orlando Weeks of The Maccabees to rising electro-pop star Tommy Sparks and Philadelphia hip-hop crew Plastic Little. The choice of credible, but

HELLO

my name is AND SO I WATCH YOU FROM AFAR Bassist Johnny Adger came up the band’s unwieldy moniker as a means of evoking Orwell’s omniscient Big Brother. But it’s also a statement of intent: “Like when you’re standing back, watching and waiting for that moment when you go in and wreck the place,” says Johnny. “Anyway, everyone remembers that band with the really long name, so it’s done us a lot of favours in that respect”.

and reflected the way we felt. It has come out as a dark and morose album, I guess,” James concedes. “In some ways last year was amazing of course, as we had so much success. We started to make a little money and people listened to our music. But at the same time we lost people that were close to us, so there was good but some bad too.

And some of those things came up when we recorded this album.”

It is with great sadness that AU reports the death of former Wilco man Jay Bennett. The multiinstrumentalist played with the band from 1994 to 2001, contributing significantly to albums such as Being There, Summerteeth and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot before eventually falling out with Jeff Tweedy and leaving the band. At the time of going to press the cause of death was unknown. Bennett was 45 years old.

In concert, the brothers are a raucous, highoctane, rabble-rousing delight – straining to reach out and drag the audience into the very core of their songs. “We don’t always feel that energised, but then when we get to the club it seems to come from somewhere.

In the UK [last year] we were doing a show every single night, and we were really tired, but we were so excited to be there and the crowd was really good – that gave us energy.”

CLOCKING OFF

DEPLETED FELICES’ NEW ALBUM A EULOGY TO AMERICA

The audience at Morrissey’s recent homecoming shows at the Manchester Apollo marked the star’s 50th birthday by treating him to a rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’.

The outspoken singer still found opportunity amidst the celebrations to lambast the music industry, introducing ‘The World Is Full Of Crashing Bores’ by stating, “I’ve been waiting for a time when someone says no to a Brit Award, says no to the phoney Mercury Music Prize and until that day the world is full of crashing bores.”

“I’ve

been one time in my life, for one night on last year’s tour. It was awesome, there was something about the people – there’s something in the air. I had my first Guinness in a pub and it just felt so right for some reason. I didn’t want to leave.”

James Felice is enthusing to AU about, you guessed it, his only visit to Ireland.

Comprising of three siblings and a bass player called Christmas, The Felice Brothers are currently promoting their latest offering – the sombre, and brilliant, Yonder Is The Clock.

After last year’s breakthrough album The Felice Brothers, James feels the stakes have been raised. “We knew for the first time in our lives that we had to make an album that people would want to hear. With the self-titled [album], we recorded it but didn’t know if anyone would listen. But, with Yonder…we knew it had to be something

special that worked as an album, not just a bunch of songs.”

The Felice Brothers’ sound is a raw, emotional hell-ride through the underbelly of America. Raised in the Catskill Mountains of New York state, the brothers’ vision of poverty, sorrow and fragile love is played out over tempestuous campfire Americana and glorious murder ballads – like Dylan and The Band catapulted into a Mark Twain novel. Indeed, James is happy to pay homage to the author, “The [album] title is from a short story he wrote from the book The Mysterious Stranger, and we all love Twain.”

Perhaps articulating the comedown after the Obama election high, Yonder Is The Clock is a gloomy vision of America. “We didn’t set out to make a record about the state of America today, it was more just personal

However, the band are currently touring in the US without drummer/co-vocalist Simone Felice, who has a period of extended leave, as James explains. “He’s had this project that he wanted to do for a very long time called The Duke And The King [with George Clinton collaborator Robert ‘Chicken’ Burke]. Right now, he’s gonna do that but who knows what’s going to happen in the future. He’s family, you know, so he can do whatever the hell he wants and we can do whatever the hell we want. I’m sure he’ll be back at some point.”

And The Felice Brothers are likely to be back on this side of the Atlantic in the autumn, with James desperate to sample the craic again. “We’re not going to go to Europe and not go to Ireland.” John Freeman

YONDER IS THE CLOCK IS OUT NOW VIA TEAM LOVE. NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY BY THE DUKE AND THE KING IS OUT IN JULY VIA LOOSE MUSIC. WWW.THEFELICEBROTHERS.COM

THE REPUBLIC OF LOOSE

Scarlett Johansson and Pete Yorn have teamed together for the Break Up album, a collection of songs inspired by the recordings Serge Gainsbourg made with Brigitte Bardot in the Sixties.

The record, Johannson’s second release following last year’s Tom Wait’s covers album Anywhere I Lay My Head, was actually completed back in 2006.

STONE ME

BOUTIQUE FESTIVAL PROMISES TO SHOWCASE FINEST IN NATIVE TALENT

T

he summer music festival market might be a packed one, but there’s always space on AU’s itinerary for events of distinction, events like the Willowstone Arts and Music festival. Billed as the North’s “first boutique festival”, Willowstone will take place amidst the idyllic surrounds of Delamont Country Park, near Killyleagh at the end of the month.

And with a line-up that boasts the likes of Panama Kings, Ed Zealous, NI Soul Troop and Heliopause, it’s not just the scenery that’ll prove breathtaking. Oh, and we should mention that there’s a certain Dublin based band of musical vagabonds headlining the main stage, a collective of sleazoid

funkateers they call Republic Of Loose.

However, music is not Willowstone’s only charm – it’ll also offer you the opportunity to partake in myriad workshops and activities, everything from game design to basket weaving, the excitement quaffed down with some beverages courtesy of the Hilden Brewing Company. In this, its inaugural year, Willowstone promises to make first impressions count.

ED ZEALOUS

THE WILLOWSTONE ARTS AND MUSIC FESTIVAL TAKES PLACE ON JUNE 27.

WWW.WILLOWSTONEFESTIVAL.COM Iheartau.com

[17]

ROBOCOP Shot to bits by baddies with bad fashion sense, good cop Alex Murphy found himself wrapped up in tin foil, thereby becoming Robocop. Famously solving the case of Who Shot Officer Alex Murphy, Robocop later went on to tangle with people evading their tax, punching one man through a wall for not declaring the sale of a 1998 Nissan Urvan in his documentation. He got a medal in the form of a fridge magnet for that one.

T

ONES

3

2

JUDGE DREDD Joe Dredd is well known for shooting people with his big gun, riding around on his big motorbike and dispensing gravelly-voiced justice with his big chin. He’s a big man in the big city, Megacity One, and he takes big criminals to task for their big crimes, normally getting into a big fight before sending the big boss off to the big house. Later, he has a big cup of tea and a big dump before having a big cry into his big photo album. He’s big.

INSPECTOR GADGET Bumbling detective Ignatius Gadget-Tweedy is a sort-of betterlooking version of Robocop in a hat.

Though a kids’ cartoon favourite, Gadget was lately convicted of killing a woman in the porch of his LA mansion, apparently discharging his boxing-glove-on-aspring into her face at close range.

Wearing an eccentric wig in court, he was led away in manacles as Marky Ramone commented that he had often threatened his band with various comedy gadgets while producing their classic album, Thundercats Are On Next.

1

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AU#57

ROBBERS

COPS

DAN AYKROYD Did you know that Dan Aykroyd is not only an actor, writer and celebrity skull-shaped mystical vodka drink spokesman (and we’re not making that up), but also a cop? Well, a cop of sorts: he’s technically a reserve commander for the police department of Harahan, Louisiana. Apparently, he carries his badge with him at all times, as well as his Ghost Buster’s backpack and a bag of slugs, the animal he considers to have the ‘tastiest souls of all’.

CHIEF WIGGUM Is it just us, or has The Simpsons not been funny for like, 10 years? Back when only total capos had Sky TV, the Simpsons was the televisual equivalent of caviar: free to those who can afford it, very expensive to everyone else. AU grew up in a deprived household, where the only glimpse of Homer and co. was provided to us on long-play video tapes of The Simpsons and The X-Files brought around by charitable pals. Anyway, Chief Wiggum is funny. Sorta.

JESSE JAMES Jesse was a bit of a frigger who killed about 20 people and didn’t even have 10 fingers, but he’s become a bit of a legend since snuffing it. His name inspired other Jesses including Jesse Owens and famous Jameses like Rick James, James Brown and the crap band James.

Like most legends, JJ went out like a sucka, capped in the back of his noggin by a honky named Bob. He got served fo' sho'.

ROBIN HOOD According to Wikipedia, Robin Hood doesn’t exist, but we’re pretty sure we saw a movie where he was played by a fox in a leotard. If you’ve ever been to Nottingham you’ll realise that hanging out in the forest, mugging people and living in a tree are preferable to remaining within the city limits.

Historians maintain that Robin went on to form The Jackson 5, injecting Michael with a serum that eventually made all that stuff happen to his face.

THE KRAYS Zippy and Bungle Kray were born in a house on Gumdrop Lane in London sometime in the 20th century and initially showed promise as budding UTV presenters, until an off-colour remark from Julian Simmons drove them into a life of crime in the East End. All sorts of celebrities mingled with the brothers, who held court in a nightclub made entirely out of jelly and drank from the skulls of Moomins. They once stole an entire planet, but got caught with it up their jumpers while leaving the solar system by security guards.

WINONA RYDER What is it about the lifestyles of the rich and famous that drives them to ever more tawdry and embarrassing excesses? Does the cavalcade of zeroes printed on a bank statement dizzy the mind so much that the only relief is to punch hookers senseless, rob luxury handbags and snort enough coke to paralyse a giraffe?

Does having an infinity pool bring on such ennui that the only relief is to pillage the boutiques of Beverly Hills?

These people need a good, hard slap to straighten them out. Still, Winona is hot. What was our point again?

RONNIE BIGGS You have to hand it to Ronnie: he robbed a train and spent the rest of his life sitting on the beach in wee white pants, hanging about with the Sex Pistols and ordering margaritas while rolling his ‘R’s with sensual abandon. It was almost a disappointment to hear that he’d been nabbed and sent to the slammer, where his adventures have been limited to what colour of pants he should wear today.

Ronnie was the inspiration for Ronald McDonald, whose original catchphrase was ‘You slaaaaags’.

Weird science by Philip Byrne

5

FIVOE

5 TO 1

WWW.LAVERYSBELfAST.COM Laverys Bar | 12 - 16 Bradbury Place | Belfast | Bt71RS | 028 9087 1106

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The Bunker 11pm DECKADANCE with Gregz McCann

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LAVERY’S CLUB NIGHTS WEEKLY EVENTS

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KITSCH

Classic pop, disco and rock

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Iheartau.com [19] Clutting edge indie and electro

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OHBIJOU MEMBERS: Casey Mecija (vocals,

guitar, piano and ukulele),

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harmochord, glockenspiel,

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FOR FANS OF: The Acorn, Beth Orton,

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CHECK OUT: Beacons, out now on

Bella Union Records.

WEBSITE: www.ohbijou.com Two years ago, two Toronto sisters ended up on the cover of Toronto’s most popular entertainment weekly, Now Magazine. Those sisters, co-leaders of local septet Ohbijou, appeared out of nowhere at the time, promoting their then debut album, Swift Feet For Troubling Times. This cover, combined with myriad acclaim once the album had time to settle, catapulted the collective to the title of Toronto’s indie darlings, only a short while after they formed.

Now, fast-forward two years and the band has readied their follow-up effort, one that has been picked up by Bella Union Records for a UK and Ireland release this month.

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“We initially discovered Bella Union because we’re big fans of the music they put out,” explains vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and one of the sisters, Casey Mecija. “The label recently released Glory Hope Mountain by our good friends The Acorn, and they had nothing but amazing things to say about [label boss] Simon Raymonde and the label.

So we got in touch with Simon and, fortunately for us, he liked it!”

There’s good reason for Bella Union to pounce on Ohbijou, as they may very well be your new favourite Canadian band. The pure, sweet dew hidden beneath good pop spurts out of Ohbijou, through dual childlike vocals, a slew of instruments including cello, mandolin and viola and strong, mature songwriting. Orchestral elements pop through folk melodies, recalling everything from Sufjan Stevens to Regina Spektor. It’s brittle, absolutely lovely pop music – songs to cuddle to, fall in love with and warm up by the fire beside.

The record, titled Beacons, is a statement of intent that builds on Swift Feet for Struggling Times, presenting a band that has grown up together, from inception to maturity. “To me, the record is definitely a product of the times during which the songs were written and recorded,” says Mecija.

“The themes are much more uplifting and hopeful than our first record, and the arrangements, in reflection, are more triumphant and full. This is because we’ve grown quite dramatically as a band

over the span of these two records. We’ve branched out with our arrangements and sounds, partly because we had more time to record it, and partly because we’re learned what works and what doesn’t more since the first record. You could say Beacons is more experimental.

“Still, I wouldn’t say we feel more confident recording now than we did independently on the first one. Recording is always a little frightening if anything, mainly due to feelings of pressure to make something even better than the last record.

But that fear is always coupled with excitement.

We certainly learn lessons along the way, and we felt better prepared to record this one, and it shows.

Of course, we learned a pile of new lessons while recording Beacons that will influence the next one as well.”

Ohbijou made their UK bow in May, touring with their friends The Acorn, as well as performing at The Great Escape festival in Brighton. After returning home to release the new record in Canada, the band will hit the UK once more in the autumn. But by then, the mainstream should have taken notice. “At an Ohbijou gig, you can expect to see six or seven people cumulatively playing up to 15 instruments,” reveals Mecija. “Plus, expect to see antics as well. But those will remain a surprise.”

Shain Shapiro

»»» INCOMING

KILL IT KID MEMBERS:

FORMATION: FOR FANS OF: CHECK OUT:

WEBSITE:

Chris Turpin (vocals, guitars, harmonica), Stephanie Ward (vocals, piano), Adam Timmins (bass guitar, guitars), Richard Jones (violins, backing vocals), Marc Jones (drums).

Bath, 2008.

The Raconteurs, Tom Waits, Son House.

Debut single ‘Send Me An Angel Down’ out now on One Little Indian. www.myspace.com/killitkid

Prior to the formation of Kill It Kid, lead vocalist Chris Turpin had trodden his own broad musical path, performing solo whilst studying music at Bath Spa University. There he met Adam Timmins and initially they performed together as an acoustic duo before the remainder of the band was gathered during various course collaborations. “Each year our course gets in a guest producer to work with a band and run a sort of workshop going into production. We were lucky enough to be the band selected by John Parish [Eels, PJ Harvey] to work with,” explains Turpin of Kill It Kid’s earliest endeavours.

Those initial recordings were enough to pique label interest and, little more than three months after

forming, the band were signed to One Little Indian.

They immediately set about recording their debut long player. “We had just five months to put the album together,” confirms Chris, “so it’s what the five of us were doing at the birth of the band, which was quite liberating, but also absolutely terrifying!”

The accelerated, not to mention “terrifying”, circumstances in which Kill It Kid created their debut album are not at all evident in the music. The songs are slow-paced, soulful and bursting with folk-country melodies, the whole enveloped in a deep Delta blues sound. Fittingly, the band’s moniker comes from a dusty recording on which Blind Willie McTell can be heard hollering, “Kill it kid!”

“When I heard his records I got totally absorbed,” recalls Chris, of those sacred first encounters with the blues legend’s music. “It [the band name] is our way of paying homage to him”. However, despite the avowed inf luence, you mustn’t think of KIK as mere Delta blues revivalists. They are so much more than that. Turpin believes his band have succeeding in fashioning “a new sound out of the old country,z blues and jazz records of the 1920s to 1940s. We’re trying to build on this anthology of music, but approach it with an aim of making it our own.”

Their style has brought comparisons to the likes of Two Gallants and The White Stripes.

AU also detects a smattering of the Bob Dylans about them. Oh and did we mention the vocals?

Turpin’s wood-smoked and melancholy voice is woozily reminiscent of Antony Hegarty whilst Steph Ward counters with sweet vulnerability.

With such an abundance of raw material to work with, it’s no wonder that producer Ryan Hadlock [Foo Fighters, Regina Spektor] was happy to take them under his wing and record their debut album.

Turpin describes the experience of working with Hadlock as, quite simply, “fantastic”.

“He told us ‘I just want you to be who you are and I’ll stick mics in front of you’. Who wouldn’t love that?” The fruits of their collective labours will be ripe for release this October and Chris cannot wait to let the wider world experience what Kill It Kid have to offer. “We are proud of what we've done and it’s ace that people will be able to share that.” Virginia Arroyo

Iheartau.com

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»»» INCOMING NEW ACTS

BREAKING THROUGH THE PHENOMENAL HANDCLAP BAND MEMBERS: Daniel Collás (keyboards,vocals), Sean Marquand (keyboards),

Quinn Luke (guitar,vocals), Luke O’Malley (guitar), Laura

Marin (vocals,percussion), Joan Tick (vocals,percussion),

Patrick Wood (drums,vocals), Pier Pappalardo (bass),

Nick Movshon (bass).

FORMATION: New York, 2005.

FOR FANS OF: Sly And The Family Stone, Parliament, Tom Tom Club.

CHECK OUT: The single ‘15-20’ / ‘Testimony’ is out now on Tummy Touch.

WEBSITE: www.myspace/phenomenalhandclap After years of searching New York for musical ingredients, two DJs, Daniel Collás and Sean Marquand, think they’ve created a perfectly funky recipe. When AU describes the sound of The Phenomenal Handclap Band as “Funkadelic for a new generation”, Sean is in vociferous agreement. “Can we just stick with that?

Funkadelic’s first few records cover so much ground; you could make scores of records based on their ideas. Those guys were perfectly comfortable mixing soul and psych rock.” The PHB’s blend of funk, breakbeat, soul and a smidgeon of prog rock takes the vibe to a further level. “If we had to describe it, I’d say our sound is a representation of every record we ever loved, and hopefully a few steps beyond that.”

The single ‘15-20’ / ‘Testimony’ is a riot; the former is all booty-shakin’ taunts (“It’s a story about a bank robbery and the consequences thereof,” says Marquand) while the latter is unadulterated dirty funk. A debut album, encompassing a multitude of musicians (“We had almost 30 people play on the album, but we’re just eight musicians on stage”), including Jaleel Bunton from TV On The Radio, follows in the summer and Sean wants the world to hear it. “The record was intended to be our dissertation. It’s 12 songs that follow a musical narrative that we’re thrilled people will actually be able to listen to soon.” And The PHB will no doubt be thrilling an Irish crowd at Oxegen on July 12. John Freeman

AUTOKRATZ MEMBERS: David Cox (vocals, guitars), Russell Crank (machines, guitars).

FORMATION: London, 2006.

FOR FANS OF: The Presets, Fischerspooner, The Whip.

CHECK OUT: Debut album Animal out June 22 on Kitsuné.

WEBSITE: www.myspace.com/autokratz The circumstances in which David and Russell autoKratz first met were anything but auspicious. In a bit of a state, outside a London nightclub, Russell vomited onto his future compadre’s shoes. Nice. In fact, the only thing that saved him from a hiding that evening was the fact that he was wearing a Devo t-shirt.

Double nice. Still, despite the unfortunate, if hilarious, beginnings, the duo have gone on to form a righteous electro double-act, their acclaimed mini-album Down & Out In Paris & London serving up volley after volley of winning beats and bleeps.

Signed to Kitsuné – home of electro elite such as Digitalism, Klaxons and Simian Mobile Disco – the twosome are about to drop their debut, Animal, this month.

Beast would have been a more fitting title for a record that contains rip-snorting anthems of the calibre of ‘The Idiots Are Winning’, ‘Can’t Get Enough’ and ‘Stay The Same’. However, autoKratz are savvy enough to know that you can’t always go full throttle and there is studied songcraft amidst the unashamedly banging fare – get a load of the profoundly epic ‘Speak In Silence’. They’ve marked out their territory in decisive fashion then and AU, for one, wouldn’t be surprised if Animal sees autoKratz crowned kings of the electro jungle. Francis Jones

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BADDIES MEMBERS: Michael Webster (vocals, guitars), Simon Bellamy (guitar,

vocals), Danny Rowton (bass, vocals), Jim Webster (drums, vocals).

FORMATION: Southend, 2007.

FOR FANS OF: Queens Of The Stone Age, The Hives, Future of the Left.

CHECK OUT: Debut single ‘Holler For My Holiday’ out now and free

download track ‘I Am Not A Machine’ available from the

band’s MySpace.

WEBSITE: www.myspace.com/baddies So, just how were Baddies conceived? Well, two of them actually met in the womb –singer Michael and drummer Jim are identical twins. It’s a fact that adds just another layer of scary neatness to the band’s immaculate image, all buttoned-up and pristine in their matching, prison-blue Alexander McQueen suits. Even scarier than their Stepford band look is how quickly they’ve managed to reach the ears of pundits and public alike, with the Southend quartet securing countless European festival dates this summer. New single ‘Holler For My Holiday’ builds on the momentum gathered by debut release ‘Battleships’, the latest salvo delivering a combination of anthemic hollering and anxious, punk-rock guitars. Somehow it manages the neat trick of sounding simultaneously angry and upbeat. Profusely praised by anyone who has encountered them, the band’s as yet untitled debut album, scheduled for release at the end of September, is feverishly anticipated. Virginia Arroyo

GOD HELP THE GIRL MEMBERS: Stuart Murdoch (music), Catherine Ireton, Brittany

Stallings, Dina Bankole, Neil Hannon, Asya (vocals).

FORMATION: Glasgow, 2008.

FOR FANS OF: Camera Obscura, Belle & Sebastian, The Divine Comedy.

CHECK OUT: Debut album God Help The Girl out June 22 on Rough Trade.

WEBSITE: www.godhelpthegirl.com Conceived by Belle & Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch back in 2004 whilst touring the none-more-indie, Scottish group’s Dear Catastrophe Waitress album, God Help The Girl is a musical narrative that takes in elements of Sixties girl groups, Northern soul, Eighties indie and classic pop. The long-term aim of the project is that this music will be incorporated into a full musical film, the screenplay of which Murdoch is currently producing. Featuring a 45-piece orchestra – pristinely arranged by Withnail And I composer Rick Wentworth – God Help The Girl unfurls a star-pricked canvas, dazzling with its lush sound, beautifully embroidered melodies and celestial array of vocalists. The cast of singers was assembled in rather curious fashion, with Murdoch running a competition on the iMeem social networking site whereby potential vocalists could audition by adding their voice to demo recordings of ‘Funny Little Frog’ and ‘The Psychiatrist Is In’. This process brought Brittany Stallings and Dina Bankole to Murdoch’s attention and saw them added to a roster which featured established names such as Neil Hannon and Asya [of Smoosh]. However, it is another auditionee, Catherine Ireton, who takes centre-stage here, her sweetly lilting voice lifting the songs of God Help The Girl into a truly rarefied realm. Francis Jones

SEMAPHORE MEMBERS: Louis Brennan (vocals,guitars), Loris Barbisan (bass) and

Marco Ryan-Testa (drums).

FORMATION: Rome, 2005.

FOR FANS OF: Sparklehorse, The War On Drugs, Kalli.

CHECK OUT: The album Semaphore is out now on Stabokki!.

WEBSITE: www.myspace.com/semaphore2007 London-based trio Semaphore’s startling debut album is a maudlin thunderbolt, with Louis Brennan’s subterranean baritone despairing at a fucked up society.

“I suppose it takes quite a grandiose swipe at a lot of things I dislike, but I’d be foolish to think I’m any better than,” he tells AU. A Dubliner, Brennan met his band mates in Rome via a love of “classic rock and country, and stuff that would probably make us seem a lot less cool,” and bravely admits that “one of my favourite songs – and I’m serious here – is ‘Total Eclipse Of The Heart’ by Bonnie Tyler. In terms of composition it’s a gem, and it’s got a cannon on it at one point, which is also a nice touch.”

Starting out as unfocused sub-grunge noise, Semaphore began to shed band members and pare back their sound. “To get the kind of dynamics we wanted in the songs we had to take things away, rather than add them, so the elemental sound was a product of that.” The results are stunning – Brennan sounding like a weary, worldly Tom Waits against a backdrop of billowing guitars. And Louis has already mapped out the future for Semaphore. “Get rich, get bad drug habits, enjoy a brief moment as darlings of the critics and public, before being ripped to shreds by those who put us on a pedestal. That’s the plan.” John Freeman

MODERAT MEMBERS: Modeselektor (Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary –

production), Apparat (Sascha Ring – production, vocals).

FORMATION: Berlin, 2002.

FOR FANS OF: Modeselektor, Apparat, Burial.

CHECK OUT: Moderat, out now on BPitch Control.

WEBLINK: www.myspace.com/moderat When it comes to choice collaborative albums, Sascha Ring, aka Apparat, has form. In 2006, the German electronic musician got together with Ellen Allien, the producer, DJ and BPitch Control label boss, to make the sublime Orchestra of Bubbles, and here he is repeating the trick with another titan of German electronica, Berlin duo Modeselektor. Moderat, as the trio have called themselves, can be traced back to 2002 when they released a solitary EP, but it’s not until now that an album has appeared. In the intervening years, both acts’ stocks have risen enormously – Apparat with Orchestra of Bubbles and then his third solo album, 2007’s excellent Walls, and Modeselektor with the patronage of celebrity fan Thom Yorke, who sang on their breakthrough record Happy Birthday! and invited them to tour with Radiohead. And the Moderat album has turned out much as you might expect, even with high hopes.

The self-titled debut is a modern techno record in keeping with their label’s fine history, with Apparat contributing the flair for detail and lush sound design that have become his trademark. But there’s also that sense of fun that Modeselektor are known for, and a deep, bass-heavy theme that indicates that the trio have been listening to their fair share of dubstep and dub techno lately. Rhythm and Sound vocalist Paul St. Hilaire makes an appearance on the frantic ‘Slow Match’, while ‘Rusty Nails’ and the closing ‘Out Of Sight’ ally Ring’s ethereal vocals to the depth charge bass and brittle beats of Burial. The trio are touring heavily throughout the summer; you’d be well advised to add the nearest date to your diary in case they disappear for another seven years. Chris Jones Iheartau.com

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WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND? ANDY GRAHAM

WHAT’S ON YOUR IPOD? JUST WHAT DOES THE PERSON ON THE STREET LISTEN TO? AU FINDS OUT...

Words and P hotos by Suzie McC racken

Franz Ferdinand Ulysses Does It Offend You, Yeah?

Let’s Make Out Lily Allen Everyone’s At It Interesting Fact: Apparently Andy was born on the vernal equinox. Sounds painful. Oh wait, Google says that means the first day of spring.

HENRY WINKLER The Waterboys Fisherman’s Blues Bruce Springsteen Girls In Their Summer Clothes Patrick Park Life Is A Song Interesting fact: The Fonz does not need an interesting fact. He’s the ruddy Fonz!

INSIGHT AND INSANITY FROM THE AU FORUM RE: GREEN DAY - 21ST CENTURY BREAKDOWN Has anyone been a bold boy and downloaded it?

After hearing the first single, my hopes weren’t too high, but it’s managed to drop below even those levels.

THE_DOCTOR199 I got it.

I love it. :D MRJB3

JOHN MCCORMAC Sonic Youth Shaking Hell The Birthday Party Junkyard Princess Superstar Perfect Interesting Fact: John recently returned from Düsseldorf where he saw Sonic Youth live.

I’ve no plans to intentionally listen to it.

My inner child has taken the news pretty badly, I’m told.

RECKONER Have to BUY it for my brother, worst money to soon be spent, ever.

SILVERCORD RE: MANICS NEW ALBUM ARTWORK DEEMED INAPPROPRIATE BY SHOPS Did they say anything about the music being inappropriate? Or just not very good?

ROSS

AMY ESDALE

JAMES MARTIN

HELENA MCCORMAC

HorrorPops Miss Take Laura Marling My Manic and I No Cash Gasoline

Miles Davis Kind Of Blue Al Jarreau Summertime Primus Eclectic Electric

Sonic Youth Death Valley ‘69 Blondie Heart of Glass Leslie Gore You Don’t Own Me

Interesting Fact: Amy only discovered Gordon Brown was the UK Prime Minister three weeks ago, whilst she was trying to flaunt her, admittedly shabby, political knowledge.

Interesting Fact: James has wowed a crowd with his talent for playing an awesome bass solo, but with a spoon.

Utensils are mental, apparently.

Interesting Fact: Helena played the role of a Swedish action painter at the last Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

In fairness, the front cover looks like the girl from Crystal Castles said the wrong thing to her boyfriend.

GUNSTAR Wouldn’t you know that Asda (Walmart) are leading the crusade against this?

What a load of utter utter bollocks. It’s a fine album an’ all.

CAKE RE: WHAT ARE YOU READING?

JODIE ROBINSON

SOPHIE BURNS

SUZY COYLE

Lady Gaga Paparazzi La Roux In For The Kill Coldplay Yellow

Bon Iver Blood Bank Matt Costa Mr. Pitiful The Waterboys Fisherman’s Blues

Duke Special Nothing Comes Easy Colin Devlin Strategies John Martyn Solid Air

Interesting Fact: Jodie can tie a strawberry lace into a knot using her tongue – she once managed five knots in just 30 seconds. Before you ask, yes, she does have a boyfriend.

Interesting Fact: At the time of questioning, Sophie was nursing a brand new tattoo. It reads ‘I Love You’, in Hungarian. She thinks it’s a pretty cool coincidence that the tattooist happened to be Hungarian.

Interesting Fact: Suzy’s band has a mascot in the form of a ventriloquist’s dummy named Monty. I had a look at a photo and can certify it is the creepiest thing I have ever seen.

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Trying to Read Stephen King’s The Stand. Fourth try. Have started several but haven’t finished any book in ages.

CMCB Great book!

I’m currently reading my own obituary.

STEVEN DEDALUS JOIN THE FUN AT WWW.IHEARTAU. COM/FORUM

Iheartau.com

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ON THE ROAD WITH...

THE ANSWER This month, drummer James Heatley on the BAND’s gruelling campaign through the wilds of Europe.

Then there’s the enemy – the drink, the drugs, the women. There’s danger around every corner. Always trying to take you down, but let’s not say too much about that.

Here’s a statement to ponder: rock ‘n’ roll is war!

There are other similarities: your instruments are your weapons. ‘This is my drum kit. There are many like it, but this one is mine. It is my life…’. The tourbus is your tank. Your bunk, well, it’s your bunk.

‘Surely, he can’t be serious,’ I hear you say. Well, I am serious, and don’t call me Shirley. That joke doesn’t really work in print, does it?

Let me explain my outburst – at the start of each tour, we all bring DVDs, albums etc to share and help get us through the months ahead. Recently, Cormac (our singer) introduced us to Band of Brothers and as the days of the tour started to pass I realised that being on the road is a lot like being at war. For war, you start off training, getting fit and making tactics and plans. To me, this is just how we prepare for tour.

Rehearsing every day, building up the stamina until we are ‘gig fit’. Then, organising the set and coming up with fresh ideas for the songs to make it special live – ammunition to win the crowd over.

You pack just enough to survive, and you are off. Like an army, tearing your way through as many countries as you can, as quickly as you can, doing as much damage as you can along the way. This never goes according to plan, though. For one, the majority of the time is spent waiting in the trenches – at airports, on buses, at hotels and venues. Waiting for it all to kick off.

Like any soldier, you have to make sacrifices – leaving your family, friends (do we have any left?) and home

“BEING ON THE ROAD IS A LOT LIKE BEING AT WAR.” behind, fighting for what you love and believe in. Sure enough, as in war there are casualities along the way. I know better than anyone, having broken my hand whilst on stage just last month. Others weren’t so lucky – on the first night of the AC/DC tour in America we hit a massive deer (the animal kind, not a fat old woman) during a blizzard on the road to Chicago. It destroyed the front of our bus but didn’t survive to tell the tale.

And sure, you lose people along the way. For example, when recording the ‘Tonight’ video in Frankfurt, the bus pulled over momentarily to let Cormac off for the next scene. Our guitar tech VB woke up and jumped off the bus thinking it was a food stop. An hour later, we got a phone call from his wife in America to ask us to pull over – he saw us pulling away and ran into the nearest shop for help. It happened to be a BMW car showroom and he was giving chase in the car behind us!

But then there’s the upside to it all. You get to travel the world, see places you would never have gotten to see and meet new people every day. And you have your ‘core’ around you to help you through it all – the band, crew and most importantly the fans.

And, if you are lucky, sometimes you get to meet with the generals – the great men who have went before and seen it all (this is just a clever way for me to namedrop).

There are too many to mention, but some of the greats we’ve met included Alice Cooper in Phoenix, Arizona (although we talked more about golf than music).

Every few days (the boss) Brian Johnson [of AC/DC] will come in and examine the troops – seeing how we are and making sure we have everything we need to get through the next few days of our tour of duty.

To be honest, it’s not really like war at all. Not unless war is one giant party and you are having the time of your life. I thought that statement would get your attention, though. Did it work?

Iheartau.com

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FLASHBACK

FLASHK BAC

15 Years Ago THE STRANGE DOWNFALL OF O.J. SIMPSON, JUNE 12, 1994

Words bY STEVEN RAINEY ILLUSTRATION BY ELISSA TIERNAN

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It was the greatest movie never made. Hands gripping the steering wheel, our hero speeds away from the police cars trailing him. As helicopters circle in for the kill, he bravely attempts to complete his last dash for freedom, framed for a crime he didn’t commit. Alas, the pursuit is too much for our hero and the hunters finally catch up with him.

Head resting against the steering wheel, the police encircle him and bring to an end his race for glory. Fade to black.

EXCEPT IT wasn’t some awful made for TV moment, ending up on some digital channel that no one actually watches – this was a man’s life. And that bit about being framed for a crime he didn’t commit?

That might not have been strictly accurate either…

With 15 years hindsight, this still seems completely wrong, as if the whole world tilted off its axis for a little while, and never really went back to normal service. O.J. Simpson, the famed American football player, and star of television and cinema, became the focus of the entire world’s attention when he seemingly did something unthinkable – murder.

Two bodies found, the car chase, the bizarre trial, his acquittal – it all seemed unreal. The script wasn’t good, and the plot twists seemed more than unlikely, but we were all gripped.

The facts, as much as one can pin them down, centre on the star’s fractured relationship with his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson. Their divorce had been granted on the grounds of “irreconcilable differences” and spousal abuse. Two years later, the mutilated bodies of both Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman were found by neighbours alerted by the sound of a barking dog.

Evidence found at the scene pointed to O.J. Simpson, and lawyers convinced the LA Police Department to give him time to turn himself in. Needless to say, this is not what happened. The subsequent car chase became an incredible spectacle, the media getting involved in an unprecedented fashion – at one point a local radio station broadcast a message by Simpson’s former football coach, John McKay, who urged him to turn himself in, rather than commit suicide.

book as If I Did It: The Confessions Of A Killer.

Then the downfall of our hero takes another completely unexpected turn, with Simpson being arrested for robbery, kidnapping, coercion and conspiracy in Las Vegas. This baff ling event concerns Simpson leading a group of men to a hotel in Las Vegas, where they stole various items of sports memorabilia. When Simpson was arrested, he claimed the items belonged to him. Before long, allegations of a conspiracy were being thrown about, and reality seemed to shift out of place once again. However, this was the end of the line for Simpson, who was found guilty and sentenced to a minimum of nine years in prison for his involvement in this incident, 13 years to the day since he had been acquitted of the murder of his ex-wife.

Whether there will be another chapter in this story is uncertain at this point. What is for sure is that this was the biggest and most visible celebrity meltdown in public. O.J. Simpson had been beloved by many, a cherished public figure for many years before he spectacularly self-destructed in full view.

But was he partly a victim of the times? When Simpson first came to prominence in the late Sixties, the world was a different place. Back then, we liked our heroes to be virtuous and proud, a shining beacon of all we could be. But by the end of the 20th century, we have turned on our heroes, preferring to see them crumble, and then picking through the wreckage. ‘Celebrity’ has become interchangeable with ‘Spectacle’, and we all sit by the sidelines and watch people fall from the pedestal we have set them upon.

Eventually, Simpson was apprehended, and

"Could he have known that he would gain a kind of immortality by self-destructing that he could never have imagined attaining by sticking to the rules?" over the subsequent months, his trial became one of the biggest media feeding frenzies of the decade. Already labelled ‘The Trial of the Century’ before it had even begun, bizarre details were picked over with intense scrutiny, whilst Simpson continually proclaimed his innocence.

Eventually, the jury settled on a verdict of not guilty for the two murders, and Simpson had apparently cleared his name.

But it refused to go away in the years that followed, with the story becoming more and more surreal, hitting a highpoint in 2006 when it was announced that Simpson was preparing to release a book entitled, ‘If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened’. This alarming and incredibly ill-advised move brought Simpson back into the media spotlight, and once again, it appeared that everyone in the world had their opinions on this man seemingly intent on self-destructing in full public view. Eventually, the book was cancelled, with the rights ultimately being bought by the Goldman family, who published the

Michael Jackson continues to be a creature of gruesome fascination, Amy Winehouse ploughs ahead in her apparent descent into oblivion, Katie and Peter get divorced and we call it a publicity stunt and scream for more, and the rise and fall and rise again of Jade Goody defies explanation altogether.

As O.J.’s sweaty hands gripped the steering wheel of his car, could he possibly have known that he was helping to birth the 21st century’s morbid fascination with failure? Could he have known that he would gain a kind of immortality by selfdestructing that he could never have imagined attaining by sticking to the rules? As the police put the handcuffs on him, was he thinking that he had just ushered in an era where public suicide would become a more worthwhile endeavour than working towards any kind of achievement?

Or was he perhaps wondering how he would have done it… if he had done it.

Iheartau.com

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HISTORY LESSONS WORDS BY JOHN calvert ILLUSTRATION BY Neil gillespie

RY HISTO NS LESSO

Suicide

“When the Jews were shipped off to the concentration camps, to Dachau, Auschwitz or Treblinka, they would arrive and there would be a beautiful station and they looked like quite nice places. But then they'd walk past the nicely painted walls through a door right into hell. And that’s exactly what Marty and I were doing with Suicide: we were giving them Treblinka.”

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SPEAKING TO the Jewish Chronicle in 2008, Alan Vega provided an all-too-fitting metaphor for Suicide’s incomparably sinister sound. It’s from this limbo, these tranquil auditoria at the gates of hell, that the duo’s avant-electro-pop seems to emanate.

Suicide’s visionary stand was to entomb rockabilly’s benign vitality in a petrified futurism, challenging Fifties America, the country’s very own “nicely painted wall”, with an unshakable sensation that all was not well, like how nursery rhymes are creepy. If you listen closely, place an ear to the door, you can hear it in the mechanistic functionalism of Martin Rev’s primitive drum machine and Farfisa organ; the muffled horrors of industrialised mass murder; but by Suicide’s approximation the victims were America’s youth, systematically culled in Vietnam or alienated and victim to the wretchedness of bluecollar slavery. Then, the door would occasionally be wrenched from its hinges, with terrifying results.

It was down to Suicide that music became, for a brief period in late-Seventies New York, the preserve of the shock artists – diaspora from the normalising Soho Art scene and an insufficiently

radical punk scene. Prefiguring no wave’s extremist art-sleaze were Martin Reverby, a freejazz buff and lapsed classical musician, and Alan Vega, a former physics student turned installation artist. After meeting in 1974 in a gallery managed

by Vega, the two formed Suicide in the very bowels of the city, to preface both no wave and CBGBs-era punk.

Whether punks drawn to the band for its nihilistic-sounding name or perhaps simply leisure-drinkers in the wrong place at the wrong time, bewildered patrons found themselves stooges implicated in a perverse Dadaist prank. In his mission to jolt the audience from their apathy, Vega was known to wield a motorcycle chain while Rev mooched in the background in sci-fi shades. With no guitars, drum kit or traditional vocals, the initial confusion evolved into rage in the face of Vega’s refusal to break character, or Rev’s utter indifference. Vega told The New Yorker in 2002, “If we were the future, it was a future that nobody wanted. There was nothing about us that was familiar.”

In the course of their ephemeral existence they would face bottles, lit cigarettes, police tear gas and on one occasion an axe launched squarely at Vega’s head. These scenes were documented on the many CD reissues, including the startling ‘23 Minutes Over Brussels’, in which a support slot for Elvis Costello descended into anarchy when Belgian skinheads turned on the duo. “[The act] pushed me to the edge of a nervous breakdown,” admitted Vega years later. “We had a reputation as the band everyone loved to hate, and I kind of enjoyed that.

But there were times when we thought we were insane.” It was at a Stooges show in 1970, with Iggy stabbing himself with broken drumsticks, that Vega witnessed up close the power of self-abasement. “It showed me you didn't have to do static artworks; you could create situations, do something environmental. That's what got me moving more intensely in the direction of doing music.”

It was an environment generated with the bare minimum of information. Taking their cues from the reductive compositions of Philip Glass, Suicide’s minimalist aesthetic comprised two components. Firstly, there was Alan Vega’s cadaverously reverbed vocals that often glitched with a close delay, as if transforming him into a human electrical current, predating Kraftwerk’s man-as-machine schtick by about a year. Rather than the Germans’ tech-fetishism, however, the chilling modulations recalled Marx’s depiction of the proletariat as f lesh extensions to the factory machinery. In Vega’s hands, the reverb effect, traditionally used to create the illusion of space or to replicate the invigorating atmospherics of a live venue, somehow became a mechanism for triggering a claustrophobic response, the oppressive sensation of being trapped, boxed in with the murmuring ghost of Elvis, in a two by six foot chamber.

Alloyed with Vega’s vocals was the electronic– hydraulic hypnotism of Martin Rev’s drum machine and locked-trajectory organ. With aimless repetition and the absence of narrative comes a mood of despondency and desolation, the needling whirr of Rev’s scuffed kit speaking of obsession, monomania; of madness and a lurking evil. From one track to the next, the Roland CR-68 would swish, ripple and wheeze, hiss or throb, but with an interminable certainty it never diverted its focus, inducing what the Velvet Underground’s John Cale described as a state of “hyper-alert oblivion”, similar to night terrors.

An even more appropriate analogy is provided

by Keith Levene and his description of Public Image Limited’s avant-funk as “like looking at a white wall – if you keep looking at it for five minutes you’ll see different patterns appear; different colours, right before your eyes.” Rev’s ‘burden’ device was closely aligned with the ideas of the Auto Destructive Art movement, of which they were dedicated followers. Point Five of Gustav Metzger’s manifesto stipulates that “Auto Destructive Art should re-enact the obsession with destruction, the pummelling which individuals and masses are subjected to.” In David Lynch’s The Elephant Man (1980), Joseph Merrick dreams of the churning apparatus of Victorian industry, masticating human spirit and resembling the elephant that trampled his mother.

It’s just one example of the many aesthetic bloodlines it’s possible to trace between Suicide and the psychological milieu explored

by Lynch.

Like Lynch, Suicide’s work has its closest relative in Pop Art – the art of manipulating popular iconography, with all its charged associations, in order to derive new meaning or expose subliminal directives. While Warhol revelled in the kitsch democracy of mass production and the dreamy imagery used to sell products, Suicide saw an unintended wickedness ingrained in conformist America’s veneer, and duly exploited it. In Suicide’s headspace, the great open road of American mythology ends in a back basement on the Lower East Side, and all the good-time teens have been slaughtered in

Warhol’s ‘Red Car Crash’.

If Pop Art was an ageing concept by the midSeventies, the mode of communication was nothing if not futuristic. Produced by Craig Leon, Suicide’s self-titled debut was more exotic than a thousand hours of prog fantasia. There’s the proto-ambient shimmer of ‘Cheree’, the denatured bebop of ‘Girl’, Vega’s numb incantations on ‘Che’, ‘Johnny’s sci-fi surf rock and the keynote ‘Ghost-Rider’. Long since returned to his mother in a body bag, he stalks the back roads “looking so cute” and all the while he’s “B-b-b-b-beep screaming the truth / America America is killing its youth”.

Positioned at track six is Suicide’s hopeless, punishing masterpiece, ‘Frankie Teardrop’.

Famously described by critic Emerson Dameron as "one of the most terrifying, riveting, absurd things I’ve ever heard,” the track narrates the tale of a murder-suicide, the perpetrator a beaten-down factory stiff. Frankie’s working “Seven to five / just trying to survive” and so, “Well Frankie’s getting evicted / Frankie’s gonna kill his wife and kid”.

It is Suicide’s most deranged moment and their most explicit plea to the establishment for mercy, for which Rev saved his most insidious sound – a stultifying pulse, like a robot’s heartbeat, or the pressure of Frankie’s unendurable working day.

Vega’s method enactment, seemingly spasmodic and random, disguises a bravura exercise in mounting panic, orientated around the nagging refrain “Let’s hear it for Frankie”; Vega turned zombie quiz show host. The vocalist’s trick of ruminating minutely adrift of the beat replicates a modern world gathering speed, out of time and hurtling towards cataclysm. It also has the effect that no matter how many times you listen to ‘Frankie Teardrop’, it’s difficult to anticipate Vega’s awful screams, signalling respectively the murder of Frankie’s infant, his wife‘s demise, Frankie’s suicide and worst of all, what The Guardian’s Garry Mulholland called “the greatest scream ever unleashed in music’s name” – Frankie’s pained howl on entry to hell. Vega uses his final transmission, faltering amidst a swirling vortex in Satan’s refinery, to tell us that “We are all Frankies… we are all lying in Hell”. Featured at number 14 in Nick Hornby’s 31 Songs book, Hornby confessed that “I didn’t even listen to it to write this (I didn’t feel the need, believe me the memory is still vivid), I just don’t want to be terrified by art anymore.”

Their second eponymous release was an attempt to deliver the pop dues promised by Rev’s pretty melodies. As a consequence, the synthesizers that before were cyclical and banal were annotated with chirpy embellishments that served to leaven the intensity. Still, many incidences of punk subversion remained, with the languorous watercolour tone of ‘Dream Baby Dream’ distorted when Vega affixes “Forever” to the refrain; a sugared euthanasia pill.

The duo parted ways in 1980 with the advent of Vega’s solo outing and his French chart hit, ‘Jukebox Babe’. Reforming for the first time since A Way of Life in 1988, 2002’s American Supreme offered a morbid opportunity to see how the still-fresh pain of a violated Manhattan Island might be assimilated into Suicide’s demonic circuitry. Vega resumed his preoccupation with the American death machine whilst Rev dabbled in techno and, bizarrely, hiphop scratching, f lourishes that couldn’t smother the typically ominous tone or Vega’s imagistic brilliance. Irrevocably lost to history, though, was Suicide’s volatile live act, now formal affairs attended by desensitised hipsters or converted musos. Bereft of a cowering audience or airborne axes, their sets have become PTA meetings in celebration of a relic. It is a sad de-fanging of the world’s most surgically effective punk band, who, without resorting to adolescent chagrin or The Clash’s brand of literal, vindicated sermonising, concocted a shorthand for fear; of a nation in pain.

WE ARE ALL FRANKIES THE LEGACY OF SUICIDE Bruce Springsteen

Vega’s depictions of spectral youth were hugely influential on the haunted sparseness of Nebraska, as evidenced in ‘State Trooper’, with its Vega-esque shrieking. Regularly finishes his sets with ‘Dream Baby Dream’.

Soft Cell

Relocated Suicide’s conceptual sleaze to London’s gay West End, so that the synth-duo might document the illicit thrills and sad realities of neonsoaked Soho.

The Jesus And Mary Chain In thrall to Suicide’s commandeering of pop innocence, the gothic miserablists used nuclear feedback, reverb-drenched vocals and a touch of Vega’s eroticism, in a twisted pastiche of fundamental rock ‘n’ roll.

Liars

No wave revivalists. Jettisoned disco-punk for a second album foray into abrasive, unsettling electro-minimalism, produced by Williamsburg godhead David Sitek.

Pulp

Suffused their sound with Suicide’s eerie ironies, the synth-flecked melancholy evoking a deadened golden age, made even more poignant in the context of Sheffield’s faded glory.

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A TO Z

A TO Z

Buddies

“Lean on me,” sang soul supremo Bill Withers in 1972, “when you’re not strong, and I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on.” These inspirational sentiments should serve as a lesson to us all for, truly, a friend is something to be cherished. Not only are they there to pick you up when you’re down, laugh at your ‘hilarious’ anecdotes and buy you pints down the pub, but a good friend can often become as close as family. Buddies are like a crazy drug trip: everyone should have at least one good one (Disclaimer: AU in no way endorses crazy drug trips, good or otherwise). So join us as we celebrate these fine examples of the noble tradition of comradeship. And afterwards, why not make a point of giving your best pal a big, platonic, non-sexual hug. Go on, seriously. You’ll feel better for it.

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WORDS BY neilL dougan ILLUSTRATION BY ELISSA TIERNAN

A IS FOR ADAM AND PAUL

Lenny Abrahamson's bleak 2004 comedy follows hapless Dublin junkies Adam and Paul on a typical day of heroin withdrawal and desperate attempts to score. The shambling, broke pair drink cans in the park, have a series of run-ins with various angry characters, mug a boy with Down's syndrome, crash a car and get barred from a shop for “feelin' bread”, before the film's heartbreaking finale. Drug abuse has never looked so unappealing.

BIS FOR THE BLUES BROTHERS

Comedian pals John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd formed this blues-and-soul revival act in 1978, first appearing as musical guests on Saturday Night Live before making the leap from the small screen to movies, albums, video games and – somewhat inexplicably – Grammy awards. Belushi in particular – previously unfamiliar with blues music – threw himself with gusto into the role, just as he did with his love of heroin and cocaine, a combo that was to ultimately kill him in 1982. That didn’t stop the band making 1998’s appalling Blues Brothers 2000, a movie so bad that the soundtrack consisted solely of the sound of Belushi slowly spinning in his grave. Probably.

E IS FOR EBONY AND IVORY

“…live together in perfect harmony.” Ugh, Paul McCartney. The man has written some sentimental gloop in his time but this 1982 duet with Stevie Wonder really takes the saccharine-sweet biscuit. Nominally it’s about the black and white keys on Macca’s piano, but if you listen very, very closely you might just spot the incredibly subtle underlying theme of racial integration.

Very admirable, Paul, but maybe next time you could do us all a favour and convey your message of peace and love through the medium of mime. Or interpretative dance. Something silent, anyway.

F

IS FOR HUCKLEBERRY FINN AND TOM SAWYER

In Mark Twain’s classic novels The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer and its follow-up Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, the titular best pals get up to all sorts of scrapes and japes in their hometown of St Petersburg, Missouri. Whether it be witnessing murders, faking their own deaths, finding buried treasure or simply helping slaves to escape, there’s never a dull moment for these likely lads. Sadly, they both grow up to be crack-addled down-and-outs in Twain’s lesser-known follow-up, Tom And Huck Pimp Their Rears For A Fix. Note: previous sentence may not be strictly true.

G IS FOR GHOSTBUSTERS

Classic buddy action here as a posse of New York ‘para-psychologists’ get together to rid the city of its burgeoning spectre infestation. With its array of ghouls, demonic canines and massive Marshmallow Men, as well as a sparkling script and top-notch performances from its cast (including a spectacularly deadpan Bill Murray), this is pretty much the perfect film. The only thing missing is a cracking theme tune

by Ray Parker Jnr. Oh no, wait, it’s got that too. I ain’t ‘fraid of no ghost!

H IS FOR HOLMES

AND WATSON

C IS FOR BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID

Hollywood heart-throbs Paul Newman and Robert Redford teamed up in this hit 1969 f lick, which follows the two leaders of the Hole In The Wall gang as they rob their way across the wild west (and even into Bolivia), trying to keep one step ahead of the forces of the law as they go, while also finding time to vie for the attentions of the comely Etta Place. AU doesn’t mind admitting that the iconic ending – the freeze-frame which fades to sepia as the pair come out guns a-blazin’ when they’re finally cornered – has us welling up a little each time we see it. Sob!

D IS FOR DEREK AND CLIVE

The foul-mouthed alter-egos of bezzie mates Dudley Moore and Peter Cook caused controversy aplenty in the late Seventies with their bizarre, stream-ofconsciousness comedy rants. Considered outlandishly offensive at the time, and in fairness it’s not hard to see why, with skits about becoming aroused by the sight of the dead pope and retrieving dead lobsters from Jane Mansfield’s backside. Note to readers: don’t play this stuff in front of your folks. It’ll just be embarrassing for all concerned.

Poor old Doctor Watson, always on the receiving end of the snooty Holmes’s slightly condescending explanations for his super-sleuthing. Not that the doctor was complaining, seeing as how he was seemingly in a constant state of rapt admiration for the detective’s inquisitorial genius, conveniently overlooking the fact that Holmes was a cocaine and morphine fiend. Interesting fact: Holmes never actually said “Elementary, my dear Watson.” Well, ok, it’s not all that interesting. Sorry.

I IS FOR THE IDIOTS

Lars Von Trier’s controversial 1998 film followed a group of friends who seek to release their ‘inner idiot’. How do they do this? Why, by pretending to be handicapped in public of course, a pastime the chums refer to as “spazzing”. Also features an erect penis and a brief shot of unsimulated sex. How utterly lovely. Interestingly, while this film almost collapsed under the weight of the critical accolades sent its way, Johnny Knoxville’s 2005 vehicle The Ringer, which has practically an identical plot (well… sort of) flopped completely and was also, amazingly, described as tasteless. Funny old world.

J IS FOR JIMBOB AND FRUITBAT Better known as Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine, the dynamic duo of indie-pop scored such hits as ‘After The Watershed (Early Learning The Hard Way)’ and ‘The Only Living Boy In New Cross’ and, despite scoring a UK number one with 1992: The Love Album, were perennially under-rated and these days never seem to warrant a mention. Perhaps it’s because their post-baggy beats and early-Nineties keyboard sounds haven’t aged particularly well. Or maybe it’s because of Jimbob’s unfortunate ‘shaved-head-but-with-a-long-curly-fringe’ haircut, a barnet that is, admittedly, best forgotten.

K IS FOR CAPTAIN

KIRK AND MR SPOCK

Boldly going where no man has gone before, the hardy crew of the Starship Enterprise is led by Captain James T Kirk and his able assistant, the half-human, half-Vulcan Mr Spock. Much of the show’s initial appeal lay in the dichotomy between the two characters – the slightly impulsive, emotional Kirk finding his counter-foil in the detached and logical Spock. That, and the latter’s pointy prosthetic ears.

Mmmm… Vulcan.

L IS FOR THE LONE

RANGER AND TONTO

In The Lone Ranger, which ran for five seasons on US TV from 1949 to 1957 (as well as an earlier incarnation on radio) the mysterious titular hero roams the plains of the old west with his trusty Native American comrade, Tonto, upholding law and order and imposing his noble moral code wherever he goes. Incredibly, the Ranger’s blatant sporting of a black bondage mask (which he probably nicked from Zorro anyway) was completely missed by the censors of the day, resulting in horribly warped minds for an entire generation of innocent children. Shocking stuff.

M IS FOR MOWGLI

AND BALOO THE BEAR

Disney’s classic kids’ f lick The Jungle Book, based on Rudyard Kipling’s 1894 collection of stories of the same name, saw friendly bear Baloo teach his poor little orphan chum Mowgli the ways of jungle living, notably through the classic tune ‘The Bare Necessities’. The song espouses the joys of the simple life, but by the looks of the corpulent Baloo he’s been living on a lot more than prickly pears and pawpaws, the pudgy git. We’re all for education through song, but this is sheer hypocrisy on Baloo’s part. A disgrace.

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N IS FOR NODDY AND BIG EARS

Created by Enid Blyton in 1949 and still entertaining children today, the stars of Britain’s longest-running television show are a little wooden man (that would be Noddy) and his big-eared companion, er, Big Ears, a creature of indeterminate origin who appears to be some kind of gnome. Together they get up to all sorts of racy antics in the seething hotbed of vice and sin that is Toytown. AU’s favourite episode is ‘Noddy Goes Postal’ where the timid little fella finally cracks and goes on a rampage with an assault rifle, shooting down PC Plod, Mr Wobbly Man and the rest and leaving them to slowly choke to death on their own blood before finally turning the gun on himself. Or was that just a dream?

O IS FOR THE ODD COUPLE

Setting the template for so-called ‘buddy movies’ was this knockabout 1968 jape starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau as two divorced men, driven by circumstance to live together despite their mismatched personalities.

Needless to say, all manner of hilarity ensues. Lemmon and Matthau went on to collaborate regularly over the years, proving that resenting your co-stars is not necessarily a pre-requisite for a successful acting career. Someone should have told the cast of Sex And The City. Miaow!

P IS FOR PINKY AND THE BRAIN

“Gee Brain, what do you want to do tonight?” “The same thing we do every night, Pinky – try to take over the world!” Classic Nineties cartoon capers from the loveable lab mice. Pinky is, to put it mildly, something of a dolt, while the Machiavellian Brain plots ceaselessly to take over the planet by increasingly convoluted means. Put them together and you have comedy gold. Also features a quality theme tune that contains the line “To prove their mousey worth / They’ll overthrow the earth”, which has been officially recognised as a better lyric than anything Noel Gallagher has ever penned.

Q IS FOR QUANNUM

DJ Shadow is not only known for re-writing the rules of hip-hop with Entroducing and being ginger. Oh no. He’s also the co-founder – along with his muckers Lyrics Born, Lateef the Truthspeaker, Gift of Gab and Chief Xcel – of Quannum Projects, a Bay Area collective that’s released quite a lot of funky shit since its inception in 1992. So basically while you and your mates were out drinking cider and sniffing glue, these guys were making a mint and being pretty damn cool with it too. Enough to make you sick, isn’t it?

S IS FOR SUPERWOLF

Winning 2005 collaborative album by Will Oldham, aka Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, and his long-time chum Matt Sweeney of Chavez and, er, Zwan. Sweeney penned the tunes and Bonnie the words, resulting in a dark and sparse alt-folk effort. Includes two absolutely storming tracks, opener ‘My Home Is The Sea’ and the utterly beguiling ‘Bed Is For Sleeping.’ Just like a latter day Ike and Tina Turner, really, but with more facial hair and less domestic violence.

T IS FOR TURNER AND HOOCH

Suspiciously released just months after the extremely similar K-9, this knockabout caper sees detective Scott Turner (Tom Hanks) teamed up with an unusual partner – a huge, slobbering mutt named Hooch. Oh, it’s a hilarious mismatch at first of course, as Hooch drools on the furniture and chews up everything in sight, driving the fanatically neat Turner to distraction, but soon the crime-fighting canine helps his intrepid cop pal crack the murder of local junkyard owner Amos Reed. Probably Hanks’s best film – either this or Big anyway, and don’t anyone dare say Forrest Gump, alright, because it was complete rubbish.

Seriously, it was crap.

AND STIMPY

Deranged, hilarious, beautifully animated and occasionally downright disturbing cartoon from the mid-Nineties, featuring the strangely-accented, borderline psychotic chihuahua Ren and his bubbly, happy-go-lucky companion, the plump feline Stimpy. If you happen to have never seen this (what the hell is wrong with you?) and you want an idea of just how mental it was, consider the episode ‘I Love Chicken’, where Stimpy falls in love with – and marries – a raw chicken carcass, which a jealous Ren subsequently cooks in the oven, makes into sausages, and eats. And they let kids watch this stuff. Amazing.

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Controversial stand-up Pryor gave his fledgling acting career a boost when he teamed up with Wilder for a run of comedies stretching from the late Seventies to the early Nineties. Of these, Stir Crazy (1980) was probably best, and fortunately was completed prior to the infamous freebasing incident of the same year, when a crack-addled Pryor accidentally set fire to himself. Of course setting oneself alight is bound to be a low point in anyone’s book, but it was still arguably more enjoyable as an activity than sitting through the pair’s next effort, 1989 dud See No Evil, Hear No Evil.

X IS FOR X & HELL U

IS FOR USA AND UK

Don’t you know that Britain and its Yank cousin have a ‘special relationship’? Don’t you feel special, just knowing that? Doesn’t it make you feel all warm inside to know that any time the US chooses to put into operation its latest crackpot scheme (be it a “war” on “terror” or the invasion of a small desert country to steal their oil), whoever happens to be Prime Minister of Britain at the time is virtually guaranteed to go along with it, like the good little lapdog that he is? Yep, that’s pretty special alright. Special enough to make you wish you were French.

V IS FOR VIC AND BOB R IS FOR REN

W

IS FOR GENE WILDER AND RICHARD PRYOR

From their Big Night Out to classic Friday night crazy-fest Shooting Stars, Vic Reeves and his partner in lunacy Bob Mortimer long ago secured their place in the comedy hall of fame.

Shooting Stars in particular was a tour de force of absurdity, introducing such strokes of genius as the ‘Dove from Above’, the catchphrases “Eranu” and “Uvavu” and babygrow-clad score-keeper George Dawes. Best of all was the climactic challenge at the end of each episode which saw one guest celebrity per week forced to attempt ever-more-ludicrous tasks.

Our favourite was when John Peel was given one minute to force himself into a baby’s pram and cover himself with a blanket, something of a career highlight for the revered Radio 1 DJ.

This oddly-monikered electro-rap outfit consists of a trio of Aussie chums – MC Weapon X, singer Ken Hell and DJ A-Style – who together are the unacceptable face of so-called ‘urban’ music, churning out mindless drivel like 2008 single ‘Don’t Stop Movin’, a bottom-of-the-barrel crap-fest so idiotic it makes Blink 182 sound like Radiohead.

They supported 50 Cent and G-Unit and thus are probably quite ‘gangsta’, so we can only hope they don’t read this, otherwise it could be ‘cap in the ass’ time for AU. Yikes.

Y

IS FOR YESUKHEI AND TOGHRIL

‘Who the hell are Yesukhei and Toghril?’, we hear you ask. Tsk – don’t you know your Mongolian history at all? Yesukhei was Genghis Khan’s father, and Toghril was Yesukhei’s blood brother, later acting as patron and ally for ol’ Genghis himself. Seeing as how a group of international geneticists discovered in 2003 that Genghis has some 16 million living descendants today, these folks are all probably related to us in some remote way, so next time you lose the rag, throw a tantrum and end up going on a massive pillaging spree, you can blame your mad Uncle Yesukhei’s crazy Mongolian genes.

Z

IS FOR FRANK ZAPPA AND CAPTAIN BEEFHEART

Childhood friends who both grew up to be hugely inf luential musicians, Zappa produced Beef heart’s sprawling epic of weirdness Trout Mask Replica, as well a putting it out on his Straight Records label. The pair also released a collaborative album, Bongo Fury, in 1975, which included live favourite ‘Muffin Man’. The only thing more extraordinary than the music the pair made (not to mention those titles) is the fact that both claimed to have been completely straight when they made it.

Jesus, imagine what they would have sounded like on drugs. A scary thought.

Iheartau.com

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RESPECT YOUR SHELF

CT RESPE R YOU SHELF

The AU Buyers' Guide:

Paul Auster Few writers mix the magical and the mundane quite as deftly as Paul Auster. The prolific novelist may have set many of his 14 books in his native New Jersey, but these are stories of much more than concrete and glass. Bizarre coincidences and freak occurrences crowd his work, making the ordinary seem very extraordinary indeed. It’s an ever so slightly off world where planes frequently fall out of the sky, people can levitate and George Bush was never elected. When you use words like “psychoanalysis” and “transcendentalism”, people usually make a dash for the library exit, but have faith that the novels listed on this double page spread rank among the most unusual and haunting you could ever read. Jump right in, pilgrims, drink deep, set yourself free…

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Words by ROSS THOMPSON ILLUSTRATION BY ELISSA TIERNAN

THE NEW YORK TRILOGY (1987) Literary theorists call it the “narrative onion”. As you read a book, layers of plot, symbolism and interpretation peel backwards until you may or may not find truth at its centre. The renowned academic Shrek the Ogre made a similar analysis. Each of Auster’s books work in this way. A chance happening – a car crash, a discovered photograph, a man with amnesia – hooks the reader, intriguing them as to what will happen next. You follow the clues like a detective, and get a lot more than a hot broad and a Singapore sling. A triptych of interlocking novellas, The New York Trilogy has a startlingly cold opening in which a crime writer answers the phone only to hear somebody ask for Paul Auster. Our man Quinn acts without thinking – he pretends to be Auster, a neat play on the idea of the author living vicariously through his own fictional character. This might sound like smart-assery of the highest order – a fact that is compounded when swots start fancy talking of metafiction, intertextuality and the like – but what follows is a riot of ideas. In part a meditation on the meaning of identity and the slippery nature of language, in part a cracking thriller, think of The New York Trilogy as a pop-up book where the words jump out rather than the pictures.

La Triviata: City Of Glass was later adapted into a graphic novel by acclaimed superhero comics artist David Mazzucchelli.

Opening Lines: “It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.”

MOON PALACE (1989)

THE MUSIC OF CHANCE (1990)

What must it feel like to lose your mind? Such is the question posed by Moon Palace, arguably Auster’s finest, most complete work to date.

A recurrent theme in his writing is when seemingly ordinary men are plunged into the mouth of madness. Take Ben Sachs, the enigmatic, elusive Harry Lime character in Leviathan, a writer turned Unabomber figure who disappears whilst on a mission to blow up the various Statue Of Liberty replicas dotted around the States ( I didn’t know they existed either). Or take Nathan Glass in The Brooklyn Follies, a middle-aged loner returning to New York to die of lung cancer. Moon Palace, however, places madness right at its centre.

Marco Stanley Fogg, named with typical Auster precision, is a college educated but disillusioned orphan who very deliberately sets about destroying his own life. Opening himself up to the mercy of fate, he effectively renders himself homeless, and embarks on a life of vagrancy in Central Park. Not the most inspiring – or, for that matter, cheery – of beginnings, but Moon Palace transforms into one of the most consistently surprising novels in the American canon. Arranged like a set of finely decorated Chinese boxes, as each chapter unlocks you will be pulled deeper into a downwards vortex of revelations. When Fogg is employed to write the memoirs of Thomas Effing, yet another terminally ill man, the story shifts focus to the tale of a disappeared painter and a stash of missing loot. Disclosing what happens next would spoil it – this is a book of discovered, not revealed truth – but once you reach the closing paragraph you will definitely want to make the journey all over again.

Whereas Moon Palace, littered with references to Pocahontas, Columbus and the lunar landings, is a book of exploration and discovery, The Music Of Chance is a vision of the world closing in, shrinking in size, corking its victims in a bottle without a ship on which to sail away. Jim Nashe, a fireman whose wife has just abandoned him, impulsively decides that faux domesticity isn’t to his taste, buys a car and hits the open road.

Psychiatrists call it a 'fugue', when an apparently balanced individual leaves home for no particular reason and wanders aimlessly. For Jack Kerouac and James Dean, shaking off the shackles of modern life seems to offer physical and spiritual freedom.

For Nashe, however, it’s more of a curse than a blessing. Bored, lonely and suffering a little from car-seat fever, he picks up a hitchhiker, a poker whiz named Jack Pozzi (get it?). He’s on his way to a poker game with two eccentric millionaires in their mansion; winning is a dead cert but Pozzi needs a fee to get past the front door. By loaning Jack the money, Nashe sets in motion a series of unfortunate events which see them both punished in the cruellest, most maddening fashion. A ghost story without any actual ghosts, a horror novel without any gore, The Music Of Chance is an existential treatise with all the dull bits removed. Profoundly disturbing in its depiction of the universe as random and utterly meaningless, it will lodge itself in your mind for a fortnight afterwards.

La Triviata: The character Marco Stanley Fogg’s name refers to intrepid adventurers Marco Polo, Henry Morton Stanley and Phileas Fogg.

Opening Lines: “It was the summer that men first walked on the moon. I was very young back then, but I did not believe there would ever be a future. I wanted to live dangerously, to push myself as far as I could go, and then see what happened to be when I got there.”

MR. VERTIGO (1994) It may not be the sweetest book in Auster’s back catalogue – that prize would go to Timbuktu (1999), told from the perspective of a runaway dog – but this magic realist fable comes close to being the warmest.

Walt, another orphan, is a “pus-brained ragamuffin from honkytonk row”. Barely staying alive by scraping loose change off the streets of Saint Louis, he is taken in by the mysterious Master Yehudi, a kind of cross between Yoda and Mr Miyagi.

This verbose mentor offers to reveal the secrets of the universe and teach Walt how to fly, but only if he first endures a series of tests: being buried underground for days, having the tip of a finger chopped off, listening to an entire Oasis album without losing the will to live. To reveal if Walt does indeed acquire the power to float would let the cat out of the bag, or the rabbit out of the hat, but this tale of rags to riches and back again has more surprises up its sleeve than that. Curiously, Mr. Vertigo becomes less about the odd couple’s travelling circus act and more about delivering a potted history of America. From the Great Depression to the Chicago Mob, from baseball to vaudeville, Auster writes a love letter to the country he chooses to call home.

La Triviata: Look closely in one scene from the film adaptation (1993) and you will see Nashe reading a book by one Paul Auster.

Opening Lines: “For one whole year he did nothing but drive, travelling back and forth across America as he waited for the money to run out.”

THE BOOK OF ILLUSIONS (2002) In many ways, this eerie yet elegant book feels like a collection of Auster’s greatest hits. Key plot points might seem familiar: after he loses his wife in a plane crash, college professor David Zimmer loses himself in a fug of alcohol and selfloathing, only to be saved by a series of obscure silent movies whose star has been missing for years. The book is partly a fictional account of the eventful life of Hector Mann, a Charlie Chaplain slapstick genius, and partly a devastating but ultimately transcendent study of the crippling effects of loss and grief. While familiar, it also feels brand new.

The way in which Auster plays with plot, the rhythm of reader expectation and reward, the twists and turns that are both trivial and seismic… it’s a wonderful book that seems to be gently leading you with one hand, whilst the other pushes you off a cliff. The more you read about Zimmer and Mann’s splintered family trees, the more you want to clamber up them. The view from the top branch is pretty awesome.

La Triviata: Vertigo is most often caused by an imbalance within the inner ear. Levitation is caused by wires, illegal drugs or Jedi powers.

La Triviata: The novel doesn’t feature any quotation marks. Try looking for them if you don’t believe it.

Opening Lines: “I was 12 years old the first time I walked on water. The man in the black clothes taught me how to do it, and I’m not going to pretend I learned that trick overnight.”

Opening Lines: “Everyone thought he was dead.

When my book about his films was published in 1988, Hector Mann had not been heard from in almost 60 years.”

GUIDED BY CHOICES: THE AU DEFENCE Naysayers may sniff that, as a novelist, Auster is too cold and calculating, that his books are literary games rather than stories. This is only partly true. Yes, the author excels in clever wordplay (the character John Trause’s surname is an anagram of you know who) and self-reflexive plots, and occasionally these are constructed a little too much like the Tower of Babel to withstand a hefty nudge. But if you like your books to be arranged like a maze with well-trimmed hedges, you will find plenty to enjoy in Auster’s back catalogue. Man In The Dark (2008), his most overtly political book, gives an alternate outcome to the election George Bush cheated in 2000.

Oracle Night (2004), meanwhile, is an unsettling account of a near-fatal accident and a magical notebook. Yes, Auster keeps returning to the same touchstones – absent fathers, absent minds, absent friends – but these are so smooth and warm to the touch that you can hardly blame him.

PAUL AUSTER’S FIFTEENTH NOVEL, INVISIBLE , IS RELEASED LATER THIS YEAR.

Iheartau.com

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CLASSIC ALBUM

IC CLASSM ALBU

Joy Division Unknown Pleasures (1979)

Words by steven rainey ILLUSTRATION BY ELISSA TIERNAN

[38]

AU#57

The echoes of a dying star map out the future, pointing towards hope and hopelessness – death for one, but something left behind for the living to hear. And so it was with the doomed and doom-laden music of Manchester’s Joy Division, perhaps the most critically lauded band of the last 30 years. Unknown Pleasures, their incredible debut, captures the young men, the weight on their shoulders.

As with many things that have attained ‘classic’ or ‘legendary’ status, Unknown Pleasures remains a difficult work to critically assess. The burden of history lies heavy upon this album, and one must force oneself to disconnect from the three decades of reverence which threaten to obscure the impact of this record. Indeed, simply thinking of it as a record is difficult, such is the gravitas that every note carries.

Some facts, then. A f ledgling Manchester band, Ian Curtis, Bernard Sumner (then Albrecht, or Dicken, depending on who you ask…), Peter Hook, and Stephen Morris, inspired by the nihilism of the Sex Pistols and the creative explosion of punk, pick up instruments, and start composing songs inspired by the drone of Black Sabbath, and the darkness of J.G. Ballard.

The results are sluggish and uninspiring. More akin to heavy metal than punk, the band – then known as Warsaw – grab themselves as many gigs as possible, and try to convince anyone who will listen of their greatness. In the shadow of the success of the Buzzcocks, music industry attention begins to focus on Manchester, and every band wants a slice of the pie, from Slaughter and the Dogs to Ed Banger and the Nosebleeds.

Sample, featured two of their songs, ‘Digital’ and ‘Glass’, both of which represented a quantum leap for both the band and the evolution of music.

Wilson’s masterstroke was to pair the band with producer Martin Hannett, the man behind the Buzzcocks’ legendary Spiral Scratch EP. In Joy Division, he found the raw material he had perhaps been searching for all his life. Introducing the band to state of the art studio technology, he used the blueprint of their songs to stretch them out in a way that had never been done before.

Spaces between the notes began to have as much significance as the notes themselves, whilst everything was textured, echoes of sound lurking in the far end of the spectrum. His work with the band was genuinely revolutionary, but the best was yet to come.

When Unknown Pleasures emerged in 1979, it can be said that nothing had ever sounded like this before.

Hannett had completely redefined the role of basic instrumentation in a rock band context, and created something so staggeringly new that we are still feeling the effects of it today.

There are moments on the record that hint at the past – David Bowie here, Kraftwerk there – but the sound of the album is so radical that it brought music crashing into the future, a perfect realisation of sound in contemporary rock music.

Over the course of 10 songs, Hannett created soundscapes that clung to every note, imbuing the album with hidden meanings, suggestions of a decaying industrial Manchester that would soon become a thing of the past. His isolation of sound leads to a situation where instruments exist within their own context, providing their own dialogue with the listener, each part separate, but inextricably linked to the whole. Ambient noise f lickers and slashes along the way, pulsing and fading into the darkness.

But what of the band itself ? What was their contribution to all of this? Hannett’s inf luence is pervasive, but there would be no record if it wasn’t for the songs created by the band. Ian Curtis tapped into a vein of songwriting that hinted at the dark, brooding poetry of Jim Morrison, but left behind his sluggish imagery and tendency for melodrama. Truly, Curtis’ lyrics are without precedent, a thoroughly modern articulation of 20th century dread and alienation.

And the voice rendering those lyrics, a deathly baritone croon, cut through the swirl of sound, letting you know that this was real, not some adolescent pose. All the while, Sumner’s guitars and Hook’s bass manage to simultaneously provide texture and melody, whilst Morris pounds away like a human drum machine.

Then the magic begins. A TV presenter and bon vivant, Anthony H. Wilson has “nothing short of an epiphany” after witnessing a Sex Pistols performance in 1976, and convinces his superiors at Granada Television to commission a cutting-edge music programme which will rival the BBC’s Top of the Pops. Thanks to the sense of one-upmanship at Granada, So It Goes is broadcast between 1976 and 1977, giving exposure to most of the major players in the first wave of punk.

Fuelled by this initial rush of music, he starts promoting his own club, which eventually leads to the foundation of a new independent record label, intended as a two-fingered gesture towards the London based music industry. That record label is called Factory, and one of the first bands on the label is called Joy Division.

However, once again, the credit must go to Hannett, for it was he who gave these songs the clothes they wear and sent them out into the world. For all the texture and ambience of the record, the band still thought of themselves as an aggressive punk band, and were aghast when they heard the finished product, lamenting the lifelessness and weakness of what they had created. Their voices were to be the only ones raised in dissent, as the music press were stunned into silence by what they heard. Punk, for all its bluster and bravado, had failed to produce anything new, even at its best continuing to sound like revved-up rock and roll. This band from Manchester had created the future, and the British press were ready to embrace it, with the culturally attuned record buying public right behind them.

Warsaw’s evolution into Joy Division was not a smooth one; with their self-released EP An Ideal For Living capturing attention, but still sounding like a work in progress, the chugging chords and self-consciously ‘arty’ lyrics were not quite meshing in the way one would hope them to. However, Wilson agreed that the band were right for the label, and the first release, A Factory

Of course, we all know how this story ends, Curtis’ unf linching look into the heart of darkness becoming all too real. But that was all to come, and Unknown Pleasures – for all its gloom – was the sound of the glittering future, heralding the arrival of a golden age. And 30 years later, it has lost none of its power, a record out of time completely within the embrace of the eternal.

"The sound of the album is so radical that it brought music crashing into the future."

Iheartau.com

[39]

[40]

AU#57

IN SEARCH TRUE OF LOVE PATRICK WOLF Words by Ailbhe Malone

It doesn’t work the first time. AU ends up interviewing the Vodafone voicemail service. It’s alright. Theremins do funny things to Nokias. Take two, the next day, provides a real person, albeit a surprised one. Patrick’s been doing interviews for two days straight, and he wasn’t expecting this one. Sorry.

The child of bohemian parents, Wolf’s back-story is now almost myth. Born Patrick Apps, he began recording music at 12 and joined Leigh Bowery’s music/performance art collective Minty at 14, although at this stage he tires of talking about his “difficult” teenage years. “To tell the truth, I’ve been talking about this since I was 19, so at 25 I’d just rather talk about the present tense, if that’s ok?” The present tense it is.

“I really liked it when I had really long blonde hair extensions, like Britney. I felt the most feminine then.” Currently, his hair is short and suicide blonde, and his outfits more Gareth Pugh than the Pollyanna ribbons of 2007. Wolf’s appearance changes rapidly, from a 12-year-old who built his own Theremin and attended the Royal Academy of Music, to the sulky, rangy teen on the cover of his debut Lycanthropy [2003], then the fey, flamehaired sprite who sits on a carousel for his last record, The Magic Position [2007]. Does he feel a need to constantly re-invent his image?

“I don’t really feel the need to always constantly create. I guess I’m naturally doing that all the time anyway. I think it’s about adding a visual dimension to the work.” Wolf’s visual presence isn’t hard to miss. Formerly a constant member of the young London party scene, his daily life and friendships are chronicled by the paparazzi, from his friendship with Miquita Oliver to dinners at the Hoxton Bar and Grill.

“I feel really irresponsible to just go out of the house in my pyjamas, if there are photographers around.

I need to perform as I would on stage. I know it’s a cliché, but all the world’s a stage, and I try and live my life like a work of art. If not, I’d feel very boring.”

He’s not alone in trying to re-imagine pop music as ‘art’, as it were. Though he recently DJed at a Wonky Pop night at Matter in London, Wolf doesn’t recognise the term, and he doesn’t see other so-called ‘wonky pop’ artists, such as VV Brown, as his contemporaries. He is, however, a fan of Lady Gaga. The similarities between the two are evident. Both came from a performing arts background (Wolf studied composition at Trinity College in London, Gaga at the Tisch in New York), and both explore the links between selfexpression and pop music.

“I’m really glad Lady Gaga has come along,” says

Wolf. “I think we really need her in England to shake us out of this boring r‘n’b mentality that’s all about fast cars and really boring production and masculine misogyny. I think she’s brilliant. I’ve met her a couple of times and I think she’s a really interesting person.” Like Gaga, Wolf has been compared to exuberant, flamboyant male solo artists as well, most notably Mika. Wolf smartly quashed these comparisons with the swift, though not pithy, denouncement that “Mika is a twat”.

Wolf and Gaga share another trait – a propensity

half-Irish. I was born in London and spent a lot of time in Cork, going backwards and forwards between the two during the summer. So, I grew up with a big Irish heritage. My family on my mother’s side is from Clonakilty.”

In a way, the new record, The Bachelor, is a search for a solid ground; a return home. His family play on the record, and the instrumentation nods to his Irish heritage. “My mum plays spoons on the record, and there’s Irish fiddle and Irish whistle on the album.

I’ve done so much travelling, in America and Australia. I just needed to make an album where I was re-establishing my roots again.”

Detailing Wolf’s time on tour, heartbreak, and the “whole thing of party, drugs, drink, silliness”, The Bachelor is, without a doubt, dark. There was enough material to make a double album, which was the original plan, but Wolf decided that it would be “too heavy”. Instead, part two The Conqueror is being held off until early next year. “There are so many things that you want to do, that sometimes you have to add six months onto it. I don’t know if I’ll tour the two together, I’ll find out when I get there.”

Thematically, The Bachelor is quite heavy. It’s about domination and submission; about finding a balance. Yet, it doesn’t sound that way. The album

“I FALL INTO FASCINATION WITH A LOT OF THINGS IN THE WORLD, BUT LOVE IS SOMETHING THAT NEEDS TO BE WORKED ON.” for courting trouble over the amount of skin they show on stage. After Perez Hilton mocked him for performing a striptease at a gig, Wolf wrote with vitriol on his MySpace blog, citing works of art as his reference: “Has nobody seen Orlando by Sally Potter? Read the Leigh Bowery biography?

Watched Jubilee by Derek Jarman? I come from these worlds, these are my heroes, heroines; a naked body does not offend me in any way, it can be used as a communication device, a performance piece.

It need not be perfect and there is no such thing as perfection when it comes to the body.”

is uncluttered by back-story or concept, even though they’re there. ‘The Sun is Often Out’ is a song about the suicide of a friend, but instead of gloom and navel-gazing, it’s a lucid Brian Wilson. ‘Vulture’s depiction of sexy, satanic, night-time hi-jinks in LA is immediately followed by ‘Blackdown’, an ode to domesticity and familial fidelity. There’s an overarching feeling of a search for stability, for a guiding light. That’s where the White Witch comes in. Guesting on three of the 14 tracks, actress Tilda Swinton hovers over the record, working as, in Wolf’s own words, “the voice of reason”.

While Wolf cultivates an image of a sybarite, a free spirit, he’s fundamentally split down the middle, whether he’ll acknowledge it or not. He simultaneously tries to distance himself from his past, while at the same time reconnecting with it.

Even in terms of nationality, he sways between Celtic and Anglo-Saxon. Wind In The Wires [2005] was an effort to embrace his “Cornish roots”, and Wolf explains that, “I feel kind of half-English [and]

“Tilda Swinton is on it because I wanted a narrator on the album. I wanted a voice of hope, because I suppose in a way it’s quite a dark album. I needed somebody to come in and be a maternal influence; a maternal voice. Tilda was just the perfect person.”

Hope is the main theme, in fact; or, if not hope, then propulsion, a drive towards a constant new, unimagined and yet-to-be-experienced sublime. This isn’t anything new. As long ago as his first album, Iheartau.com

[41]

PATRICK ON

PARENTING “I think that as a parent it’s very important to allow your child to make their own decisions, and to make their own choices. If I had a child, and they wanted to have a sex change, or they wanted to work in a bank, or they wanted to be a mass murderer, then that’s their choice.”

PATRICK ON

CHART POP “I find both Girls Aloud and Sugababes hilarious.

Sugababes are a lot rawer, a lot darker. Girls Aloud are a lot slicker, Sugababes are more like rude girls.

I’ve been stuck in a lift with Mutya, before, actually.

Her nails were hardcore. I like that first song that they did [‘Overload’], and ‘Ugly’ is a good one.”

PATRICK ON

BAKING

“If I was to make a dish that reminded me of being young, I think I’d make bread and butter pudding – that’s the dish I make as my party piece every year.

With Bailey’s in it. I’d give Bailey’s to my child, but then I wouldn’t make a good father. It would shut them up anyway.”

PATRICK ON

MAJOR RECORD LABELS “Bandstocks is a good way of financing my album, and a good way of not having to work with an A&R person. I get complete creative freedom. It’s good to establish a relationship with my fans again after working with Universal, which was more fragmented. [Bandstocks] wasn’t difficult to set up at all. It was really simple. The album was almost finished; I just needed some finances to get it finished and to get on the road and moving.

It was the perfect thing to hand at the time.”

[42]

AU#57

Lycanthropy, Wolf faced constantly onward and outward, remoulding himself into who he wanted to become. The liner notes to Lycanthropy read: “Lycanthropy for me is a survival instinct. In the face of a full moon, barriers, bullies, intellectuals, boogiemen, fear and failure, you grow.” Is that statement, made six years ago by a 19-year-old, still relevant to the now 25-year-old? Yes. “That album was very much about recreating yourself to be less of a victim and more of a hero.

That’s an album statement that I’ll stand by.” ‘To The Lighthouse’, from Lycanthropy, exhibits Wolf’s credo in song form. Detailing Wolf’s relationship to the novel by another Woolf (Virginia, this time), it’s “about going to the lighthouse, going to a place of hope.” Wolf doesn’t identify with the Ramsay family in the novel, close-knit and childish, or Lily Briscoe, the stubborn, uncertain painter. Instead, he

“Relationships”, says Wolf, “are hard work, but you treat them with respect and you protect them. You work to cherish a bond between two people. I fall into fascination with a lot of things in the world, but love is something that needs to be worked on.”

The contrast between “fascination” and “love” neatly sums up the differences between Wolf then, and Wolf now. The Magic Position (2007) was an outburst of joy, chronicling the first flushes of blossoming infatuation, while The Bachelor sings of a new, more mature love. Wolf compares the two by saying The Magic Position was a “Boney M kind of love, while [The Bachelor] is a Bob Dylan kind of love.”

Despite singing of promiscuity and loneliness, and of sitting “in this flat in Kensington looking at my harpsichord and my piano and my instruments and

“THERE’S NO POINT WRITING SONGS UNLESS YOU’RE EXPOSING PARTS OF YOURSELF.” equates himself with the lighthouse keeper – aloof yet central to the plot, isolated but integral. The book, he explains “got me through a lot when I was younger. I think it’s a message of hope.”

It can’t be easy, surely, to constantly display one’s emotions, like a plumage, to all and sundry. Though Wolf offers the obligatory “you can only really write what you know about”, he neatly sidesteps a question about how the other participants in his private life feel about being included in his music. Upon further inquiry, he insists, “I enjoy exposure, and exposing my emotions. There’s really no point writing songs unless you’re exposing parts of yourself, divulging information from your private life.”

However, he still won’t reveal how the subjects of his songs feel when they hear their own relationships being lauded (if lucky) and deconstructed (if unfortunate). Wolf’s heart has basically been the main font of inspiration for his past two records.

Surprisingly, he doesn’t fall in love easily.

my empire, my farm, my pigs, all my albums and the success I’d had in America and realising there was no-one to share it with – no-one,”Wolf remains uncynical and unjaded. Love remains the most important thing for him. It is the embodiment of hope, the thing he propels himself towards. It is the light that shines from the lighthouse, over the bay, watching each and every participant weave their tangled way homeward.

“Of course I believe in true love. Of course. Maybe you meet the right person for you when you’re 14, or maybe when you’re 80. The idea of true love is what makes the world go round. My parents have been together for many years now, and it’s not something that came easily, but true love is a real thing. For sure.”

THE BACHELOR IS OUT NOW ON BLOODY CHAMBER MUSIC WWW.PATRICKWOLF.COM

e: info@phantom.ie

Hear us on 105.2FM Dublin - UPC Digital Channel 935 - DAB Digital Radio - Online Iheartau.com

[43]

Words by Lauren Murphy

[44]

AU#57

Victoria Hesketh is just your average 25-year-old. She grew up in Blackpool, Lancashire, where 'Kiss Me Quick, Squeeze Me Slow' T-shirts are a prerequisite for non-natives, the biggest thrills are found on the rollercoasters at the Pleasure Beach, and knotted handkerchiefs on heads are about as exciting as fashion gets. She likes buying shoes, and swears by beans on toast as a hangover cure. She hates flying, and she gets terribly starstruck when she meets famous people. The thing is, she happens to meet famous people quite a lot.

OK, Victoria Hesketh isn't that average, after all.

In fact, it's been quite a while since a young British female artist has generated so much hype – both at home, and especially in the USA, where she's already had a Carson Daly-hosted MTV special dedicated to her. It's a sentiment that journos, bloggers and even fellow musicians alike seem to share: these Boots are going to be big.

But this particular Little Boots is pretty worn out at the moment. Right now, she's in a "middle of nowhere" hotel in Germany. Last week, she celebrated her quarter-century in Tokyo, Japan.

"It was a lot of work, but a lot of… oooh, excuse me… fuuuuun," she says, not even trying to stifle a colossal yawn. Before that, it was a short stay in Los Angeles to film the video of her new single 'New In Town', a fizzy burst of sheer pop exuberance and one of the album, Hands', best tracks. Next, she's off to London, then New York, then London again, then possibly Berlin, and then God knows where else. It's not surprising that she can barely suppress her fatigue.

"Am I enjoying it? When I remember to enjoy it, I do," she says wryly. "You get so caught up, you forget. That sounds ridiculous, but it's true. You have to pinch yourself and say, 'By the way, um, this is amazing'. But it's been just kind of crazy for the past while, in general, anyway…"

The buzz around the Boots has been a thunderous drone since her performance on Later… with Jools Holland last November. Her one-woman performance on piano, stylophone and Tenori-on drew interest from the music-loving populace and had them wondering who this multi-tasking, blonde bombshell actually was, but Hesketh is no stranger to the limelight. Having written her first song at the age of 13, her musical career thus far has been a varied one; she was formally trained in classical and jazz music, although she's sceptical that that influence is discernible in her current sound. She also auditioned for Pop Idol as a teenager – something she admits is true but doesn't elaborate on – and then went on to form indietronica band Dead Disco.

"It doesn't annoy me when people mention [Dead Disco]," she says. "I just like to acknowledge it, but not focus on it, because it's not really like what I'm doing now. It doesn't feel relevant. I can understand why people ask about it, though."

Similarly, her triumph atop the prestigious BBC ‘Sound of 2009’ poll is something of a mandatory question in interviews these days. How does it feel to be one of the most talked-about musicians on the scene right now?

"It's exhausting, more than anything," she laughs wearily. "No, it's fine, it's great. I'm very grateful

GET ON YOUR BOOTS… Little Boots is named for the fact that she apparently has peculiarly small feet – AU thought it rude to ask – as well as the workings of a mate who bestowed her with the moniker after seeing the film Caligula (Latin for 'little boots'). She's just one of many acts named after items of clothing, however…

for the opportunity. It's flattering that people want to talk to me, or talk about me."

please everybody. So I've tried to do an album that kind of has a bit of everything, kind of all the elements of me."

It must be intensely stressful at times, though?

"Yeah, there's a lot of pressure in it," she agrees, "and there's a lot of expectation on the record, especially in England. Y'know, not everyone's gonna like it, but I'm really happy with it, and I hope that most people enjoy it."

Enjoyment won't be a problem for anyone with ears not made of burlap sacks: it would be all too easy to have churned out a flimsy record on the back of the hype bandwagon, but Hands is a solid, slick and clever collection that embodies Hesketh's imperative wish to make a "big pop album". Still, worrying about actual sales is a source of stress in the singer's life right now.

"I mean, of course I'm concentrating on this one, but if I don't get enough sales to make a second album, I will be very upset," she says. "I'm not really worried about reviews as much. I've always taken reviews quite seriously, but I kind of feel now that it's out of my hands. I'm not making an album for the critics. I mean, they've all got behind me, and that's great – but it's impossible to please all those people and then everyone else, so… people at home can decide for themselves."

Although she claims that picking a favourite track is like "picking one of your children", a collaboration with The Human League's Phil Oakey (on 'Symmetry') is one of Hesketh's personal highlights.

The Pet Shop Boys have also been in touch to declare their admiration, while Annie Lennox offered her advice, should it be needed, when the pair recently met backstage at Jools Holland. As far as pop royalty goes, Hesketh is definitely in line for the throne. Yet she grew up in the Nineties, during an era of unremittingly cheesy pop, when Ace of Base ruled the charts, 2Unlimited regularly dominated Top of the Pops, and Haddaway lyrics could be found in the lyrics section of Smash Hits or BIG! magazine. What were her own personal pop icons as a kid, and have they influenced her stylish demeanour?

"I did like Kylie a lot, I still do," she admits. "I used to really like All Saints, actually, but not their style – I loved their songs. Spice Girls, Natalie Imbruglia, that sort of stuff… I used to like Garbage a lot, too.

But I don't really think about anyone else, to be honest. I think any 'image' comes from the music, so I just try and express myself through the music, or clothes, or artwork, or whatever it is."

It's also unsurprising that the final product has turned out so accomplished – behind the production desk were Greg Kurstin of LA-based alt-poppers The Bird and The Bee, and Joe Goddard of Hot Chip. She claims that Kurstin in particular was a good influence. "He's an incredibly exciting musician," she enthuses. "I've known him for about two years now, and we're really good friends as well as work partners. He made me feel very comfortable in the studio."

It's clear that Hesketh is no throwaway pop starlet; a genuinely accomplished musician, particularly on the Tenori-on ("No, it's not as fun as it looks"), there's undoubtedly depth to her glossy exterior. But the current wave of excitement around her – and similar female artists like Florence & the Machine and La Roux – is almost a repeat of the hysteria that surrounded singers like Lily Allen and Kate Nash.

Has she ever crossed paths with either of them, perhaps had a few sage words whispered in her ear?

It may have been Goddard's sway that steered the album towards some of its dancier moments, then – ‘Remedy’ and ‘Meddle’ are both urgent floor-fillers with crunchy rhythms and catchy, repetitive hooks, which may go some way to explaining her crossover appeal. Her songs have been remixed by the likes of respected house DJ Fred Falke, Pete Tong has played her on his radio show, and she's already appeared on the cover of dance monthly Mixmag.

What exactly is it about Little Boots that appeals to such a cross-section of music fans?

"No, maybe they should. Maybe there should be like a 'Next Big Thing' hotline, or something," she laughs heartily. “‘Worried about getting a number one album? Call this number…’”

"It's difficult to know, really, because I'm kind of hovering between the two," she explains. "I'm worried that there might be a backlash with the album, because some of it's very pop, and some of it's more weird and dancey. But it's just impossible to please the indie kids, the electro kids, the disco kids, and y'know, the pop kids. It's impossible to Joy Zipper This is a sweet one, actually. Dreamy Long Island rockers Joy Zipper named themselves after singer/keyboardist Tabitha Tindale's mother. Yes, her actual name is Joy Zipper. Note: this bandnaming method will not work for everyone.

They could have been a completely different band if she'd been christened 'Un', too.

Blood Red Shoes This Brighton-based duo were named for a reference in a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie, when Ginger reportedly claimed that her white shoes had turned red with blood because she'd been practising in them so much. Eww… gross.

Well, what is the best piece of advice you've been given since your fledgling career exploded, then?

“The best piece of advice? Hmmmm… let me see," she muses, pondering for a full minute. “I know.

It was from my mum. She just said, ‘Be yourself’, that's all." Sometimes, it would appear, mummies really do know best.

HANDS IS OUT JUNE 8 ON SIXSEVENINE RECORDS. WWW.LITTLEBOOTSMUSIC.CO.UK

Bootsy Collins Former Parliament/Funkadelic member Bootsy made his name as a rather brilliant funk bassist, but why's he called Bootsy?

We don't know, but he's got a brother nicknamed Catfish. That's pretty cool.

Fuck Buttons A button is a fastening device on an item of clothing, and Fuck Buttons are a two-piece musical act who specialise in ear-splitting noise rock and experimental, ambient electronica. No connection whatsoever. Still, check out their debut album Street Horrrsing – it's a good 'un.

Iheartau.com

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JARVIS COCKER Words by F rancis Jones P hotography by Timothy Cochrane

NOSTALGIA IS A POWERFUL THING. TINTING OUR PERCEPTIONS AND COATING EVERYTHING IN A GAUZY ROMANTIC FILM, IT ENSURES THAT THE PAST APPEARS A MOST BEGUILING COUNTRY. HOWEVER, OUR DESIRE TO PRESERVE OUR MUSICAL HEROES IN ASPIC CAN PROVE CREATIVELY SUFFOCATING. WE IMPLORE THAT THEY STICK WITH A TIRED-OUT SHTICK, PLAY THE HITS AND FOLLOW THEIR OWN FOOTSTEPS. REPEAT, REPEAT, REPEAT. AD INFINITUM. AND WHEN THEY REFUSE, WELL, WE DON’T LIKE IT. JUST ASK JARVIS COCKER.

“SOME OF THE REVIEWS of this record have got on me nerves. It’s almost like, ‘How dare he do something that isn’t exactly the same as what he did before’. Well, what would be the point of that?

It’s done. Go and listen to Different Class if you want that. It is still available in the shops.”

“I’ve not had ‘Cocker The Rocker’ yet, or ‘Jarvis Is Off His Rocker’, though maybe we’ll get those soon,” is his withering response to the reviews the album has so far received. “It’s almost as if people are blaming Steve Albini for it and that’s not the case.”

The Jarvis is not for turning (back). The release of his new album, Further Complications, sees the former Pulp frontman continue to stretch his musical sinews. The Steve Albini-abetted longplayer is a raucous slam-dunk of a record, one which more than flirts with rock. However, as the man himself astutely offers, “I’m sure if you sent Further Complications to Kerrang!, whoever reviewed it would probably say it was pussy music, if you compare it to Slayer, or something.”

So, it’s definitely not that kind of rock. But, nor is Further Complications a mere variation on the witty, indie-pop sophistication of Pulp. So what is it? Well it is, quite simply and inimitably, Jarvis. Expect then a sizeable helping of intelligence, humour and rampant lust, with a side-order of pleasingly agitated guitars.

“It’s not as if I’m doing jazz-funk,” chortles Jarvis.

“I haven’t done that dreadful thing of ‘reinvention’.

If you listen to all my records – if you could be arsed putting yourself through that experience – you’d be able to tell that it is the same person. D’yer know what I mean? If only because there’s that same, horrible, out-of-tune voice on it. So, fuck ‘em.”

Fuck ‘em indeed. The popular image of Jarvis Cocker is crystallised circa 1996 – pursed lips, jutting elbows, a bony arse in Michael’s Jackson’s beatific face and all that. However, the Jarvis that greets me in 2009 is slightly different. He’s still indecently skinny, the jacket is reassuringly Open University lecturer and those huge, Michael Caine off of Alfie glasses remain. Today, however, they frame a face that exhibits telltale signs of time’s passage. Trenches have been dug into the forehead and bags are beginning to inf late under the eyes. Oh and there’s the beard, Hemingwaystyle with long streaks of grey running hither and thither.

However, contrary sod that he is, Jarvis refuses to grow old gracefully. No soppy ballads and easy listening armchair for him, oh no. Instead, Further Complications finds him fashioning some of his most rambunctious music to date, I mean there’s even a track here called ‘Fuckingsong’.

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Don’t point the finger at Albini, alright? Instead, the new album’s sound should be attributed both to Cocker’s refusal to succumb to repetition and the realisation that he had at his disposal a band who could rock with distinction.

“When we were touring last year, we would end the sets with a cover version and often they were rock songs. For the first time in my life, I found that I could play that kind of music quite authentically.

I’d rejected rock music, really. When punk came through, rock was seen as the establishment and that was the thing you were rebelling against – rock orthodoxy. So I’d thrown it all out. I kind of

like the workmanlike attitude and the workmanlike demeanour and clothes. He wears overalls because he views himself as an artisan, not as some kind of Jim Steinman or Phil Spector genius.”

In an interview several years ago, Cocker stated that culture should not be there simply to pacify, that it should instead seek to invigorate. Further Complications holds fast to this ideal, the production lending a certain corrosive edge to the music and the lyrics nudging us in the heart, the head and the conscience. On ‘Slush’, Cocker manages to comment on global warming without ever coming across as overweening, or preachy.

“It’s a very dodgy place to go and I’m always worried when I go into that,” he acknowledges.

“Sometimes, though, there’s something that you want to say. But, you always have to have some personal attachment to it. The ‘Slush’ song came

“THAT COMBINATION OF DOING SOMETHING MUNDANE WHILST AT THE SAME TIME CONTEMPLATING YOUR OWN MORTALITY - THAT’S BASICALLY ME ALL OVER.” got educated in van rides whilst we were on tour, subjected to things like Pink Floyd: Live At Pompeii.

There was a lot that I still thought was shit, but other material I thought was interesting. It kind of became a challenge to me to write something with that sensibility to it without it becoming some kind of joke and for it still to be recognisably me. But, as you can see from the record cover, I haven’t gone the whole hog. I’m not wearing spandex trousers and a leather jacket! I’m worried about playing these songs live, though, in case I have a heart attack or something!”

about because I’d been on this expedition up the west coast of Greenland last year [The Cape Farewell expedition]. The music to that song was written on that boat. To me, that validates it. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh I’ve read three articles in The Independent and The Guardian and now this is my eco warrior song’.

The decision to cast Albini in the producer’s role also has a mundane explanation. When Cocker was invited to play at last year’s Pitchfork Festival in Chicago, bassist Steve Mackey suggested they try recording some songs with the native production legend.

“And that’s been the same with every song that’s strayed there, like ‘Cunts Are Still Running The World’ off the last record, which was about bankers and which has proven quite prescient. Look where the banks have gotten us two years later. Even when you look back to something like ‘Common People’, from the Pulp days, it kind of addresses class issues, but really the starting point was a small thing, me meeting this spoilt, posh girl at college. For me, that’s the thing, the details bring out the story. But, you’ve got to have that first-hand experience to base it on.”

“He’s a facilitator, that’s his thing,” is Jarvis description of Albini’s modus operandi. “He tries to make himself as invisible as possible during the recording process. It’s a refreshing attitude to have because the traditional producer is like, ‘I’m gonna make you guys stars, you listen to me, I know how to make records’. His attitude was more, ‘You guys know what you sound like, I’m gonna try and record you as faithfully as possible’. I like that. I

One topic of which Jarvis certainly has first-hand experience is, well, Jarvis. At the centre of the new album is the self-deprecating critique of ‘I Never Said I Was Deep’. It is, he says, what he’d like etched on his gravestone. “Especially if I can persuade them to just bury me, like, three feet deep, as opposed to six feet deep. Then it’ll be true!” he laughs, before wistfully adding, “I imagine that I’ll probably be cremated.”

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We can’t help noticing that in Jarvis’s possession is a copy of David Eagleman’s Sum. It’s a book that questions what happens to us when we die.

I ask Jarvis whether we should draw any obvious conclusions from his choice of reading material, whether he’s been brooding on the passage of time and the approach of the reaper.

“Somebody gave me that the other day,” he says, simply. “It’s a good book to have when you’re travelling, actually. Because the chapters are so short, you can read a few on the tube, or wherever.

I like that, that combination of doing something mundane whilst at the same time contemplating your own mortality. That’s basically me all over. To be deep whilst doing something pointless, that’s the way I live my life.”

As regards getting older, well, right now, only one thing is bothering him – getting his photo taken.

He is happy to oblige our photographer’s request for some nice, close-up shots, but mutters that it feels like, “having my picture taken for a passport! When you get to my age having your picture taken isn’t the most pleasurable thing. Especially when they’re close-ups! It’s just a sad fact of life, really.”

Time may be advancing, but that famed Cocker libido remains in full working order. There’s a whole lot of lusting going on in Further Complications, the randy highwayman on the prowl on the likes of ‘Angela’ and ‘I Told You Twice (Leftovers)’.

“Y’know, I’m just trying to make some use of it [his libido] before it completely disappears,” is how Cocker explains away the abundant desire evident on the new album. I quote him the analogy that when a man finally loses his sex drive it is like being “unchained from a gorilla”, and ask whether such a

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prospect is appealing or appalling to him.

“It horrifies me that it’s still there. I’d like to move into comfortable middle age. That would be a nice neutral place to be, I could just make cups of tea and be kind to people. Desire is a bitch. It leads you into… ” He pauses, considers his words carefully, “If you could stop yourself from wanting things, life would be so simple. Unfortunately, it would also be incredibly boring as well. You just have to deal with it, really.

“I hope that’s what this album’s about. This guy said to me yesterday, Oh, it’s an incredibly dark album, blah, blah blah… and that kind of got on me nerves. To me, it’s one of the most light-hearted things

stressed out. I think you’ve gotta have a reasonable level of security to allow yourself the luxury of creativity. In the end, art is ephemeral. It’s not essential. You can live without music, you won’t get ill. Your life might be more boring, but it’s not like going without water, or food, in which instance you’d die pretty quickly.”

So whether or not these straitening times will result in a creative renaissance is, for Jarvis, a moot point. And, as the aforementioned ‘Cunts Are Still Running The World’ attests, the recent news about fat cat bankers and nest-feathering politicians came as no real shock.

“What a surprise,” is his sardonic appraisal of the recent exposure of institutionalised greed. “I think

“I’D LIKE TO MOVE INTO COMFORTABLE MIDDLE AGE. THAT WOULD BE A NICE NEUTRAL PLACE TO BE, I COULD JUST MAKE CUPS OF TEA AND BE KIND TO PEOPLE.” I’ve done in a long time. That’s kind of what the album is about. ‘Further Complications’, it’s like, shit happens, deal with it. That’s what life is, you can’t expect it to be all happy clappy and everything to go according to plan. It doesn’t. But, it’s still good and it’s definitely better than being dead! D’yer know what I mean?”

Commonly trotted out as a truism is the idea that strife actually fuels the creative process, that when “shit happens”, well, creative shit happens too.

Given the parlous state of the world today – war, economic meltdown, political corruption and pigborne pestilence – the time should be ripe, so the theory goes, for some sort of cultural howering. It’s an argument that Jarvis angrily dismisses.

“If you’re going through a bad time you can’t think about other things, you’re too depressed, or

it’s time to clear all this shit out, to be honest. A lot of people are disillusioned with the political process.

I believe in a democracy, but I don’t think that what we’ve got is really a democracy. You’ve only got a choice between two different consistencies of shit.

I would advise at the next election that everybody doesn’t vote. I don’t know what the exact figure is, but there is a certain number of people required to turn out for it to be considered valid. If nobody votes then that’ll show that there is no faith in the system. They’ll have to come up with something a little bit better, which is what’s necessary, really.”

This necessity for change is, he believes, equally relevant to the music industry. The lumbering

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JARVIS IN A DIGITAL AGE IN WHICH OUR HERO EMBRACES NEW TRENDS AND TECHNOLOGIES TWITTER Why Twitter? Why do you need to tell someone that you’re eating a bacon sandwich? Spare them that. Distil it into a song, or a book, or something. But, just don’t give it to people raw, it’s horrible. I think, when people Twitter, they think they’re saying, ‘Hey, I’m just like you guys, I’m normal, I love cappuccino too’. What they’re actually saying is, ‘Look, I’m so important that you need to know about every time that I go to the toilet. I’m so great that you want to know this’. Well, I don’t. I wouldn’t ring me mother up

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and say, ‘Hey, mum, I’m on a train’. I wouldn’t do that, I’ve got more respect for her than that.

THE IPOD With the advent of the iPod, people have become like stamp collectors. In the way that people sit around asking, ‘How many songs have you got on your iPod?’, ‘11, 000’, ‘Oh, well I’ve got 12,000!’. I’m flabbergasted. I’m a musician, I listen to music, I make music, it’s an essential thing in my life. I’ve had a computer for a decade and yet I’ve still only got about 2,200 songs on it. It flabbergasts me when people have got something like 30,000 songs on there.

You probably can’t listen to all that in your life.

People will die and there will be stuff on there that’ll never get played. There are downloads languishing in some dusty corner of their computer. Then someone will die and they’ll never get to hear that remix of Amon Düül’s seminal single, or whatever.

REALITY TV To me, your real life is sacred. It’s the most important thing you’ve got. That’s why reality TV shows get on me nerves so much – they just trample on people’s lives. They say they’re reality TV, but they’re not. They stage-manage reality and I think that’s an abomination.

THE IPHONE It would be much easier to go on tour if you could play your music on your phone. You wouldn’t have to bring the equipment with you and you could save on haulage. Can you imagine, though, if five blokes came on stage and all started playing their iPhone? It would be fucking terrible, wouldn’t it? It’s bad enough when you get some knobhead with a laptop. Ever see that? Someone trying to give it loads with a laptop? I’m just dying for him to spill a pint over it. But, yeah, some blokes hunched over their iPhones, I’m not fucking paying for that!

machinery of the majors is proving ill-suited to these quickmoving times and Jarvis, for one, feels little sympathy for their plight.

“I think contemporary pop music has been killed off by the likes of X-Factor and Pop Idol and all that. I think the independent sector is in pretty good shape, but I can’t really find it in me heart to give any sympathy to the major record labels. I think they’re in their death throes, really. Music has been a commercial enterprise for such a long time, it became so big because teenagers bought the records, and then everyone kind of hopped on. Now, that there isn’t as much money to be made, that’s gonna have a quite profound effect. All this crap that people say about the music industry dying, like we’re all supposed to start crying because a few A&R men are out of a job? You can’t get that upset about that. Maybe now – as that commercial criteria doesn’t really exist anymore – people don’t really expect an album to sell too much. It’s more like you release a record and that gives you an excuse to go on tour, d’yer know what I mean? It is a fundamental shift in the way that people think about it.”

Whether it be the state of the music industry in general, or the direction of his own music, for Jarvis there’s no point looking back. Not even if there is money to be generated playing the nostalgia game.

“Well the market’s saturated isn’t it, really?” is his verdict on the spate of Britpop band reunions. “Every no mark’s on it. I’ll be interested to see what the Blur shows are like. But I can’t really get excited about the fact that Shed Seven are back on the road. In fact, they probably never went off it!”

There are a number of reasons why Jarvis refuses to revisit the past and why he’ll not be penning his account of Britpop any

“I DON’T THINK THAT WHAT WE’VE GOT IS REALLY A DEMOCRACY. YOU’VE ONLY GOT A CHOICE BETWEEN TWO DIFFERENT CONSISTENCIES OF SHIT.” time soon. There is, of course, his admirable desire to continue progressing artistically. Oh, and there is also the fact that, “due to the brain damage”, he can’t remember much.

“The trouble is that any kind of memoir thing requires you to have a memory. And, also, in a way, the songs that I’ve written have been my memoirs. They’ve grown out of me life. I prefer that kind of memoir, ‘cause that’s life with all the boring bits edited out.”

It is only when conversation turns to those heady days of Britpop, those already “well documented” years, that Jarvis proves a reluctant interviewee. He’ll confess only that, “I didn’t know what was happening. Totally lost touch with the plot of Coronation Street and stuff like that. But, I don’t really want to go on about it.”

NVTV Music Podcast

Fortnightly video podcast featuring best of Irish and international music.

And So I Watch You From Afar were surprised when asked to perform a few songs acoustically, but as always they rose to the challenge and delivered in style.

Available through itunes. Just search store for ‘nvtv’.

Other sessions still available include Biffy Clyro, Frank Turner, The Futureheads, And So I Watch You From Afar, The Answer and many more For more info, check out: www.myspace.com/kickoutthejamsnvtv Also, tune in your box for broadcast every Tuesday on NvTv, Belfast community tv. (www.nvtv.co.uk).

A selection of previous sessions are viewable online at www.iheartau.com.

Made in association with AU magazine.

Jarvis is too concerned with the job in hand, too focused on his music and the many other diverse opportunities that come his way – from appearing on Stars In Their Eyes to guest editing the Today programme – to bother backtracking.

“I’m really lucky to do things like that. It’s great for me because it gets my brain going. If you think about music all day you just go daft. You must have heard it, if you’re in a pub where musicians go and they’re all talking about amplifiers, or guitars. Jesus, that’s dull. D’yer know what I mean? At least I get to engage with actual, more interesting people.”

It is music, however, more than anything else that allows Jarvis Cocker to make sense of his life. Music is his “raison d’être, if you will”. He briefly considered retiring after Pulp’s underrated and largely unloved last album, We Love Life (2001), but it was no more than a fleeting thought. After all, he’s been a musician since he was 17, “man and boy”, and it’s all he’s ever wanted.

“From a very early age. Very unrealistic, but that’s the best way to live your life, I think. What else could I have been, an economics teacher?!”

FURTHER COMPLICATIONS IS OUT NOW ON ROUGH TRADE RECORDS WWW.JARVISCOCKER.NET

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SUPER FURRY ANIMALS Words by Gerard McCann

Way back in 1996, when Britpop was in its prime, five Welshmen wielding a potent mix of psychedelia and bubblegum pop unleashed Fuzzy Logic on the masses. Amongst many fly-by-night pretenders and a healthy scene in their homeland, few would have foreseen the mischievous Super Furry Animals going on to create some of the most original and remarkable music of the era. Chart and critical success play only a minor role in a tale that finds its origins in good, old-fashioned songwriting and unrelenting inventiveness, not to mention sticking it to the man when the opportunity presents itself.

Signed to Alan McGee’s Creation label, SFA’s stock grew over the course of Fuzzy Logic, Radiator and Guerilla, their rapid ascent and improvement as a band correlating perfectly. Creation’s demise saw 2000’s Mwng released on the band’s own Placid Casual imprint; sung in their mother tongue, the album even received praise in the Welsh parliament. Life on a major label brought success on an altogether different level, as the Mercury-nominated Rings Around The World and its follow up Phantom Power saw the venues get bigger and singles like ‘Juxtaposed With U’ and ‘Hello Sunshine’ reach out to a larger audience.

Following the release of the relatively sedate Love Kraft the band’s contract with Epic expired on the back of lukewarm reviews, while 2007’s Hey Venus was a stab at perfect pop which to many was unfairly overlooked. It was also their first release for indie institution Rough Trade, a move that has coincided with a return to the wilful abandon of their earliest efforts. Latest release Dark Days/ Light Years, their ninth studio album, is a welcome addition to the great Welsh songbook.

“My mate Baz described it as Guerilla’s uglier, older brother, which is probably the best description I’ve heard.” Gruff Rhys’ mate may have a point, though Dark Days/Light Years is far from an ugly album. Now 10 years old, Guerilla threw a lot of people at the time due to its mixture of superb pop singles such as ‘Northern Lites’ and ‘Fire In My Heart’ with leftfield experiments like the monstrous techno of ‘Wherever I Lay My Phone (That’s My Home)’ and the drum and bass of ‘The Door To This House Remains Open’. As a collection of tracks that have been knocking around in the Super Furry consciousness for close to a decade, Dark Days/Light Years has been greeted like an old friend by those who have been underwhelmed with recent releases.

Asked if he feels that SFA have taken a less mellow approach with Dark Days/Light Years as compared to the last couple of albums, Gruff says, “Generally speaking, Love Kraft was exploring a more orchestral and beautiful sonic path, while Hey Venus was an attempt at pure, classic songwriting. Dark Days/Light Years is a collection of energetic jams and computer loops that we’ve collated over the past nine years, turned into pop songs played by five men making a racket.” With so many ideas knocking around in their studio, how does the SFA quality control department filter through the debris? “Obviously, if it’s a crap song we don’t bother recording it,” states Gruff, confirming what many have suspected down the years. “Likewise, if we record a good song badly we probably wouldn’t release it; whether anyone else likes it is a different matter and out of our control”.

So what has been done differently this time around?

“We wanted to avoid ballads and slow numbers, as the vibe for this album was to be more for a house party rather than a sit down and listen,” says keyboardist Cian Ciaran. “Not that you

can’t do both with this album, at the same time even, but the main difference for us between this album and past efforts was the way we approached recording. We set ourselves a timeframe, partly due to circumstance. By having such limited time to record and mix everything it gives you no time to think – you play your take and move on. It helped achieve urgency and excitement on the album; there was only one slow track to record and that wasn’t really slow at all.” The slow track is ‘Cardiff In The Sun’, a paean to their hometown and one of many standouts on an album which is their most stylistically varied since its prettier, younger brother, Guerilla.

Released digitally (coinciding with a live internet gig showcasing the new tracks) and followed a couple of weeks later with the CD release, were the band reluctant to release the album physically?

“Not at all,” says Cian. “On the contrary, we like the visual aspect that a physical release gives you.

The artwork this time was a collaboration between Keiichi Tanaami and [long-time cohort] Pete Fowler, something we’re very excited about. Having a physical release gives the artwork an outlet and a format to be enjoyed, hopefully.”

A principled bunch, Super Furry Animals famously refused the corporate big bucks when Coca-Cola offered ridiculous wads of cash in return for the use of Phantom Power’s ‘Hello Sunshine’ in an ad campaign. Out of step with the general doom and gloom generated by the current financial crisis, Dark Days/Light Years is the sound of a band having fun in a time of global hardship.

With all that is currently wrong with the world, did it ever cross their minds to create an angry, political album?

“The challenge is to record an all-powerful, unifying song that would live up to the political challenge and not demean or patronise the cause with badly written lyrics or music that would turn certain people away. When we learn to write that song, we will definitely sing it”. Gruff is obviously forgetting that SFA are responsible for ‘The Man Don’t Give A Fuck’, a Bill Hicks and Steely Dansampling tour de force which stands among the best protest songs of the Nineties and is their traditional live finale. Cian puts a positive spin on the subject of climate change being put on the back burner while our financial woes are prioritised.

“Ironically, it’s probably more important than

“THE VIBE FOR THIS ALBUM WAS TO BE MORE FOR A HOUSE PARTY RATHER THAN A SIT DOWN AND LISTEN.” These days, SFA seem to be getting as much enjoyment out of naming tracks as playing them – ‘Inaugural Trams’, ‘White Socks/Flip Flops’ and ‘Crazy Naked Girls’ are just a few of Dark Days/Light Years’ best titles. ‘Inaugural Trams’, a Krautrock-inspired celebration of the ‘integrated transport hub’, features a German rap from Franz Ferdinand’s Nick McCarthy. Cian says, “He was kind enough to contribute to the album even though they were on tour. He made the recording on the 32nd f loor of his Tokyo hotel.” Gruff disappoints with the news that ‘The Very Best Of Neil Diamond’ was inspired by a homemade banner he found in a Cardiff thrift store and that he’s not in fact a massive fan of the ‘the Jewish Elvis’. “I’ve never explored his music really, apart from that anti-dope smoking tune he wrote in the Sixties [the cringe-inducing ‘Pot Smoker’s Song’].”

Gruff has recently been very active outside the confines of SFA, with his solo album Candylion and also Neon Neon, his collaboration with LA based producer Boom Bip. While making concept albums about John DeLorean threatened to overshadow his nine-to-five, AU asks Gruff if his recent endeavours have had any inf luence on Dark Days/Light Years. “It’s possible – everything you do inf luences you in some way. On a personal level, I have had the opportunity to try out mellower, more sensitive music in Candylion and conceptual disco with Neon Neon without dismaying my bandmates in SFA.”

ever with the current financial crisis to ‘go green’,” he says. “It’s surely a good thing that individuals and governments can save money and the planet at the same time.” This sounds like confirmation that we’ll not be seeing the return of the infamous gas-guzzling SFA tank that was used for travelling around festivals back in the day.

Nine albums down the road, asking for Cian’s favourite track from the SFA back catalogue proves a fruitless task. “That’s like asking me to choose between my children, if I had any!” he retorts.

Gruff is a bit more open on the subject: “At the moment, for some reason, it’s ‘The Piccolo Snare’ from Phantom Power. It changes from day to day, though.” And are there any live plans for Dark Days/Light Years? According to Gruff, “The album is so heavy I think there would be certain health and safety issues if we played it indoors. We are working on a solution right now that will hopefully get us back on the road before too long.”

In the meantime, there is still plenty to enjoy and explore on their latest psych-pop odyssey, but let’s hope they find a solution to those darned health and safety issues pretty soon.

DARK DAYS/LIGHT YEARS IS OUT NOW ON ROUGH TRADE WWW.SUPERFURRY.COM

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G R I Z Z LY BEAR Words by Ross Thompson

GENRE-BENDING BROOKLYN OUTFIT GRIZZLY BEAR ARE ALL OVER THE SHOP AT THE MOMENT. YOU CAN BARELY LISTEN TO THE RADIO OR OPEN A MAGAZINE WITHOUT HEARING OR READING SOMEBODY FROTHING EXCITEDLY ABOUT THE INHERENT GREATNESS OF THEIR NEW ALBUM, VECKATIMEST. THERE IS, HOWEVER, A VERY GOOD REASON FOR THIS: GRIZZLY BEAR’S NEW ALBUM, VECKATIMEST, IS REALLY, REALLY GREAT. WHICH IS WHY YOU ARE OPENING THIS MAGAZINE TO HEAR THIS WRITER FROTHING EXCITEDLY ABOUT IT, AND HE MAKES NO APOLOGY FOR THAT. TRY NOT TO GET YOUR FINGERS WET… “I’m sorry if I’m not being particularly communicative,” says Daniel Rossen, one of the band’s two main vocalists and songwriters, “We stayed up late last night partying after the Jools Holland show. Then we woke up this morning to find a crew of photographers for the NME in our hotel room.” Rossen’s voice may be ringed with sleep, but he still musters the energy to laugh at the thought of that morning’s dismal photoshoot: “Originally, they were going to put us all in bear costumes, but they just ended up bringing a little bubble machine. They wanted us to jump at the camera after the bubbles, but we just stood there looking tired and hungover.”

else around right now. Put on the opening track, ‘Southern Point’, with its ghostly invitation to an unspecified location, back to front acoustic riffs and sudden rumba of drums, and you feel as if you are setting foot upon an undiscovered country. The beach shingles spread beneath your feet, the sea air chafes your face, and you see dark things stirring in the forest that borders the top of the beach. It’s not that Grizzly Bear do not sound like anyone else; it’s more that they do, and there are echoes of Simon And Garfunkel and The Beach Boys, but they’ve taken those familiar sounds and broken them into tiny jigsaw pieces. If the listener completes the puzzles, they will see pictures of places they’ve never been.

Note to self: during the next 30 minutes of conversation, best avoid making jokes about hibernation, salmon and pic-er-nic baskets.

“The songs came about in lots of ways,” Rossen says, by now warming up, “but it wasn’t necessarily a unified vision. We didn’t set out to make a particular record. Everyone put their own stamp on songs. Sometimes Ed [Droste, the band’s other songwriter] or I will come in with a full song and say, ‘There it is’, but we don’t really have a standard formula. In fact, we don’t like the idea of a standard formula. We don’t have a drums day or a vocals day. Sometimes we’ll write specific vocals and sometimes we’ll just riff around in the studio.”

Grizzly Bear are in town to promote their new record, Veckatimest, a colossal kaleidoscope of choral harmony, backwoods country and found sound. To save you some googling, it is named after one of the Elizabeth Islands off Massachussetts.

It’s an appropriate metaphor: the band’s third fulllength proper doesn’t sound or feel like anything

SCENE AND HEARD: BROOKLYN’S THRIVING MUSIC COMMUNITY

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE Hailing originally from Baltimore, but now seen mooching around Brooklyn, Animal Collective made music for nearly a decade before hitting the bull’s eye with recent record Merriweather Post Pavilion.

“There are so many bands big and small in Brooklyn right now,” says Rossen of the New York borough which seems to produce new acts on a weekly basis. “I don’t know that there’s a cohesive scene as such, but you just tend to meet people, in bars, at festivals, wherever. It opens the doors for a lot of other people. It gives people a focal point to take it vaguely seriously.”

CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH Gorgeous, repetitive riffs combined with keyboards and Alec Ounsworth’s distinctive vocals – pitched halfway between David Byrne and Thom Yorke – make for a swirling, sea-sawing sound.

Rumours of a split have been debunked by festival appearances and the promise of a new album.

Here then, are just a few of the Brooklyn residents who have opened that door; who are making a big noise, both inside and outside their city walls.

DIRTY PROJECTORS Experimental indie dance rock project spearheaded by Dave Longstreth. Recently contributed the fantastic ‘Knotty Pine’ to

Don’t be too fooled by this talk of a carefree, ramshackle approach to recording. The fact that it has been three years since its predecessor Yellow House should indicate just how meticulous Grizzly Bear were with their material this time around.

Granted, part of the reason for the delay was the huge weight of expectation that accompanied the band’s latest product. Yellow House was met with such glowing praise from the critics that it would have been difficult to avoid being so pernickety.

“There was some internal pressure within the band because it’s been so long since the last record.

Again, we really took our time with Veckatimest to make it as good as we possibly could. One of the reasons we went away from home to the Catskill mountains was so that nobody was forced to record if they didn’t want to. It’s not a bad way to make a living: somebody is cooking in the kitchen, somebody else is tracking in another room. It made us feel less like useless kids who are not really adding anything to society. I still have a real fondness for Yellow House, but we had a lot more fun making this record. Maybe it’s because we’ve spent a lot of time together during the past couple of years, but this one felt more loose, more optimistic.”

Whilst making Veckatimest, Grizzly Bear did not follow the classic template of booking a studio and banging it out in a couple of sessions. Texture and depth are the key things here. The songs are rough as tree bark to the touch, but warm at the same time.

They sound as if they are made from twigs and glue and shiny things found in a magpie’s nest. It may be meant to be optimistic, but to be frank it’s difficult to pin any emotion to its distinctive sound. Each of the 12 miniature symponies swirling within its 50 odd minutes continually slip between parallel universes and up and down rabbit-holes.

the Dark Was The Night charity compilation. Rossen’s verdict: “Fucking amazing – so good.”

JAPANTHER Recently featured in this publication, it’s about time that the punk rock twopiece released something new.

MY BRIGHTEST DIAMOND Multi-instrumentalist Shara Worden makes dark, stormy, ominous music which bridges a gap between rock and classical styles. Also features on The Decemberists’ latest The Hazards Of Love and the Dark Was The Night collection. Seek out her cover for Radiohead’s ‘Lucky’, recorded for coolster weblog Stereogum.

Alligator and Boxer albums are one of the most thrilling live acts around. Mixing Bruce Springsteen and Nick Cave is no easy task, but The National pull it off.

TV ON THE RADIO Covering more styles than Noel Edmonds has paisley-patterned shirts, TVOTR splice Beck, Prince, Radiohead and David Bowie. Their Dear Science album is a genuine must purchase.

YEAH YEAH YEAHS Regulars around New York’s hip parade, Karen O et al. took everyone by surprise – and by storm – with their new, electronic-influenced album It’s Blitz! earlier this year.

THE NATIONAL Consisting of two sets of two brothers and singer Matt Berninger, the band behind the acclaimed Iheartau.com

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This is the stuff of folk tales and strange childhood nightmares. The chinking bottle bank piano chords and gorgeous harmonies which are layered through ‘Two Weeks’, the most radio-friendly track therein, secede to the creepy orchestral manoeuvres of ‘All We Ask’. The soft, falsetto vocal beckoning you through the woods is a breadcrumb trail which leads to a gingerbread house with a witch inside. Stay too long and you are likely to be gobbled up. It is this topsy-turvy tendency to leap between melody and discord, light and shade, particularly on the creepy chaos of ‘Fine For Now’, which makes Veckatimest so compelling.

“It wasn’t a deliberate attempt to make the record that way, but it turned out like that. We thought of it as a journey or a complete experience. It’s not as if you introduce more abrasiveness to fill a void left by too much mellowness. We mainly recorded in three different rooms. You can hear a fire crackling in some songs, and others were recorded in an old, creaky, eerie church. Also, you want to create a complete palette where everybody gets to indulge their own odd interests. To be honest, we just have really eccentric tastes in music. Somebody might want to introduce hip-hop elements, and I’m into Forties and Fifties jazz.

It’s a combination of all ears, I guess.”

This democratic approach to songwriting and recording has been a constituent part of Grizzly Bear’s

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genetic makeup since the band was first formed.

“It started as a solo project for Ed a long, long time ago.

Chris Bear brought me into the band to help promote Horn Of Plenty. At that time I had written a lot of songs, so pretty soon it became an open, collaborative thing.

We spent about three years on the road playing show after show. It was weird: I didn’t know Ed at all when we started out. We played one rehearsal and then five days later we were on a major tour together.”

From small acorns big groups grow. Years of slogging it out on the live circuit, most notably supporting Radiohead on a major tour, have won Grizzly Bear many plaudits and rhapsodic reviews, yet Rossen remains reticent.

“I’ll be honest, the last time we played in Europe it didn’t go too well, so it would be good to do well there this time around. I don’t have grand dreams of conquering Europe, of taking over the world, but it would be nice if I felt the shows were a little more successful this time.”

At this point, Rossen apologises profusely and breaks from the conversation to answer the door.

The band are doing a lot of interviews today, perhaps with more journalists scribbling punning headlines of the ursine variety. Noise in the

background has been steadily swelling from a dim babble to a raucous hubbub. Rossen apologises again upon his return, intimates that he’s still not entirely comfortable with the whole promotion process, the strange game of flirting that goes on between the press and a band when a new album is released.

“The more interviews you do, the more you’re worried you’re going to say something idiotic or totally pretentious. You also don’t want to say something nasty about another band so they can’t pick out something to use as a quote or a headline. So you get stricter and stricter, and therefore more boring with every interview.

That’s what we did this morning with the NME piece.

We agreed beforehand that we were going to keep it as boring as humanly possible. It did indeed make for a very boring interview and a very boring photoshoot.”

Veckatimest, you may have gathered, is pretty far from boring. Both refreshingly modern yet old and worndown like a well-thumbed diary, it could be this year’s For Emma, Forever Ago or Fleet Foxes. That’s how good it is. Certainly not for the listener who fancies no more investment than gently tapping their foot, it requires patience, perseverance and, occasionally, bravery. Take the trip. You won’t regret it.

VECKATIMEST IS OUT NOW ON WARP. WWW.GRIZZLY-BEAR.NET

RECORD REVIEWS PG. 55 // UNSIGNED UNIVERSE PG. 63 // LIVE REVIEWS PG. 64

UM ALBT HE OF NTH MO

FUTURE OF THE LEFT TRAVELS WITH MYSELF AND ANOTHER

at Falkous at the band’s gigs, not to mention the sly pop hooks and nagging riffs that prove that Future Of The Left – and Falkous himself – are about more than just volume.

4AD

Andrew Falkous is an angry man. We know this for two reasons. The first is his fondness for lengthy, witty and volcanically pissed-off blog posts on the band’s MySpace page. A few weeks ago, for the second album running, the new record leaked onto the Internet and Falkous was not amused. “Approximately eight and a half weeks before release and only three since the fucking thing was mastered and whilst members of the band don’t have shiny little embossed copies, there is a promotional CD of the record on sale at eBay for twenty five quid,” he ranted. As a result, you can pre-order the record before its June 22 release date and receive the mp3s straight away.

Secondly though, and of course more importantly, there’s his track record of making extremely angry music, both with his first band mclusky, and now with Future Of The Left. This second album only enhances his reputation for rage and, to be honest, if you’re already a fan of either mclusky or Future Of The Left or (ideally) both, you won’t need me to sell it to you. Quite simply, it rules. It’s just over half an hour long, it’s fearsomely loud, and it’s chock-full of the neat little one-liners you’ll be screaming back

The switch between mclusky and Future Of The Left was, in basic terms, just a change of bassist and a change of name. However, ex-Jarcrew bassist Kelson Mathias brought with him more than just his instrument, as the debut album Curses (2007) proved.

Future Of The Left are still hacked off, but there’s a sense of fun there, a playfulness; musically at least.

Mathias’s basslines can be elastic and danceable as well as levelling a venue with sheer force, as mclusky bassist (and apparently Falkous’s nemesis) Jon Chapple was wont to do. The other major change was the addition of a synth. I say addition, but it’s more of a supersub – a tactical switch for the guitar that depends on the song.

It’s synth or guitar, never both. Travels With Myself And Another develops on both these ideas.

‘You Need Satan More Than He Needs You’ is key.

It’s about a half-hearted, well-adjusted Satanist – the kind of minion that makes sure he’s sorted out a babysitter and wet weather gear before he ventures out to the Satanic swinging session. “What kind of orgy leaves a sense of deeper love?” indeed. Comedy lyrics, then, but delivered with the raw-throated conviction that is Falkous’s trademark, and boasting a thoroughly evil synth riff and wickedly funky groove.

‘Throwing Bricks At Trains’ is another synth-led triumph, an enigmatic tale of teenage delinquency, the bricks being “sad reminders of former glories”.

Then there’s ‘Chin Music’, apparently an ode to the West Indian fast bowlers of the Eighties. A worthy topic for a song to be sure, though in truth it’s hard to discern from the lyrics alone. The song is a perfect example of one of the band’s biggest strengths – its understanding of minimalism and restraint. Thus, the verses only need a meaty bassline, drums and Falkous’s roar to make their point, the guitar not being employed until the chorus. But when it is, it makes its presence felt – that little riff attacks with gusto and stays in your head for days.

And there’s where we’ll leave it, because just about every one of these 12 songs bears singling out. Yes, they are loud and angry and have witty lyrics and as such they aren’t exactly reinventing the wheel, but is there anyone else doing balls-out post-punk with as much flair and conviction, and quality control as this?

If so, send it our way. Chris Jones

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘ARMING ERITREA’, ‘YOU NEED SATAN MORE THAN HE NEEDS YOU’, ‘CHIN MUSIC’.

FOR FANS OF: MCLUSKY, LES SAVY FAV, SHELLAC. Iheartau.com

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TORTOISE BEACONS OF ANCESTORSHIP

THOMAS TRUAX SONGS FROM THE FILMS OF DAVID LYNCH

WE WERE PROMISED JETPACKS THESE FOUR WALLS

THRILL JOCKEY

SL / PSYCHO TEDDY

FATCAT

Tortoise began their slow trek towards greatness at the beginning of the last decade of the 20th century. Now as we stand at the end of the first generation of the 21st century, they re-emerge after a period of absence to remind us that they are still on that quest they began almost 20 years ago.

Opening track ‘High Class Slim Came Floatin’ In’ introduces itself with precise bass and percussion, all manner of subtle rhythmic shifts in evidence. And with this track, Tortoise stake out their territory once more: this is music for Tortoise fans, and everyone else can collect their coat on the way out. There’s nothing here they haven’t attempted before in some shape or other, but the sheer skill and precision with which they operate is consistently engaging. At times recalling their 1998 masterpiece TNT, the jazz leanings of the band are very much at the fore, and over the course of the album, the musical interplay between the various band members is the star of the show, rather than any standout track, or overriding concept/aesthetic.

And whilst it can be indulgent, and at times it just resembles a load of meandering noise in search of a point, there is still something hopeful and optimistic about this album. As we stand at the end of this decade, Tortoise alone remain out of the post-rock bands they were always lumped in with. Perhaps by pursuing sheer creativity for the sake of it, they have avoided the po-faced seriousness that has always haunted post-rock, and neatly sidestepped into the cul-de-sac that is jazz. Either way, they seem to be enjoying themselves, and for that we can all be thankful. Steven Rainey

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘GIGANTES’, ‘D CHELLY’.

FOR FANS OF: MILES DAVIS, FOUR TET.

PHOENIX WOLFGANG AMADEUS PHOENIX V2

First of all, kudos for the wonderfully silly album title and a sleeve that promises the dropping of brightly coloured bombs. And what a fine metaphor for most of this record. For a band so defiantly ‘pop’ as this, it’s a wonder that these Parisians aren’t all over the radio, but maybe they are just too stylish – or arch – for that.

Anyway, this new album, their fourth, follows on from It’s Never Been Like That’s Strokes-frolicking-in-aFrench-meadow sound to incorporate a few more of the electronic textures that they started out with. That shift could be attributed to the involvement of coproducer Philippe Zdar of Cassius, who also worked on the debut United (which spawned the glorious dance-pop almost-hits ‘Too Young’ and ‘If I Ever Feel Better’), and yet again the band have come up with a freshly squeezed summer record.

As ever, Thomas Mars’s deadpan vocals have a touch of melancholy floating just under the surface, but the hooks and pinpoint melodies come thick and fast, particularly on the opening trio of ‘Lisztomania’, ‘1901’ and ‘Fences’. The two-part ‘Love Like A Sunset’ is this album’s equivalent of INBLT’s ‘North’ – a lovely, woozy, seven-minute confection – but elsewhere it’s energy, ideas and effortless cool all the way. This will soundtrack plenty of summers. Chris Jones

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘1901’, ‘LISZTOMANIA’, ‘FENCES’.

FOR FANS OF: FLEETWOOD MAC, THE STROKES, PACIFIC!.

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Well, here’s something: instead of concentrating on the release of his nigh-on completed fourth album, erstwhile anti-folkster Truax has temporarily bailed, only to grace us with this collection of songs found in the work of cinema’s strangest. It’s a project that makes an odd kind of sense: Truax and Lynch have made careers out of epitomising idiosyncrasy – the former renowned for creating his own bizarre instruments (‘Hornicator’, anyone?), the latter the man who gave us Twin Peaks – and this re-imagining certainly swings to the kind of macabre shuffle that marks Lynch’s screen worlds. Although hardly an essential purchase, it certainly proves a recommended and fascinating curio for fans of either artist. James Skinner

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘I PUT A SPELL ON YOU’, ‘IN HEAVEN (LADY IN THE RADIATOR SONG)’, ‘TWIN PEAKS (FALLING)’.

FOR FANS OF: DAVID LYNCH, THOMAS TRUAX.

BLACK MOTH SUPER RAINBOW EATING US MEMPHIS INDUSTRIES

Attention, fact fans! Apparently the Flaming Lips song ‘I Was Zapped By The Lucky Super Rainbow’, was written about Black Moth Super Rainbow because Wayne Coyne is a fan. You can see why. There is obvious endeavour here to create something substantial and lasting, yet it’s still immediate enough to stand comparison with their peers. The music is a mix of swirling psychedelia and pastoral folk underpinned by a driving drumbeat and all manner of synth sound effects.

‘Born On A Day The Sun Didn’t Rise’ sounds uncannily like Maps, ‘Twin Of Myself ’ will remind you of The Beloved and the perma-sunny ‘Bubblegum Animals’ could be the title track to the new Lips album. Frontman Tobacco (possibly not his real name), overdoes the vocoder delivery, but the record holds together every bit as impressively as the curiously over-hyped Animal Collective album. Promising! Kenny Murdock

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘BUBBLEGUM ANIMALS’, ‘TOOTH DECAY’.

FOR FANS OF: MAPS, MGMT.

ASTRID WILIAMSON HERE COME THE VIKINGS ONE LITTLE INDIAN

Somehow, remarkably, the Scottish quartet have landed a debut that delivers on their early promise and which suggests they might well prove worthy successors to the likes of Frightened Rabbit and The Twilight Sad. These Four Walls is driven by a determination to say and do, its songs more contagious than swine influenza. First track, ‘It’s Thunder And It’s Lightning’ is a thrilling statement of intent. Here, the ambience deftly switches from light to shade, throat-slitting guitar meeting Adam Thompson’s melancholically vital voice, before the chorus detonates with an explosion of anthemic joy.

Elsewhere, ‘Quiet Little Voices’ and ‘Moving Clocks Run Slow’ are exuberant and fun, however you suspect that the fledgling outfit have deliberately tried not to make an archetypical indie-dance record, hence the addition of more gentle, acoustic numbers. The truth is that they actually sound much better when they let go their outrageous youthful energy. Virginia Arroyo

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘QUIET LITTLE VOICES’, ‘MOVING CLOCKS RUN SLOW’, ‘ROLL UP YOUR SLEEVES’.

FOR FANS OF: ORANGE JUICE, DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE, FRIGHTENED RABBIT.

BACHELORETTE MY ELECTRIC FAMILY DRAG CITY

After two listens to Bachelorette’s debut long-player, My Electric Family, it is tough to ascertain whether one is stuck in one’s subconscious, or in an alternate reality of sorts. Through an arsenal of synthesisers, loops and pedals, these songs swoop and swirl through heavyhanded clouds of shoegaze, alt. folk and lullaby chants, so much so that the individual songs disappear and a calming, warm blanket of sound overpowers. And this is the strength and the challenge here; Bachelorette is almost so good at procuring the deepest, darkest cracks of dreamlike whimsy that all other ideas are lost in these swathes of sound. It’s a sonic sleeping pill – homogenous, engrossing and effective, and best if taken sporadically. Shain Shapiro

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘INSTRUCTIONS FOR INSOMNIACS’, ‘MINDWARP’.

FOR FANS OF: WEST INDIAN GIRL, GRANDADDY.

MALCOLM MIDDLETON WAXING GIBBOUS FULL TIME HOBBY

A former folkie going electric is not by any means an original career path, but it is a journey littered with potential bear-traps, like alienating your original fanbase and failing to attract new listeners. Hailing from the Shetlands but now Brighton-based, Astrid has produced an album of finessed, middle-of-theroad, radio-friendly rock that would be all the better for a few rougher edges. Opener ‘Store’ is a polished, bouncy slice of pop that deserves single status and ‘Shut Your Mouth’ keeps up the pressure with its rousing, vibrant chorus. ‘How You Take My Breath Away’ veers into melancholic, torch song territory and from then on Here Come The Vikings starts to lose its way. Bright and sparky in places, but more work is needed to hold the listener’s attention. Jeremy Shields

Reportedly his last album before an extended sabbatical, Waxing Gibbous is again where the dreary bogs of Malcolm Middleton’s psyche are laid bare before a frequently unremarkable musical backdrop. Between clumps of inert acoustica are ‘Zero’ and ‘ I Don’t Wanna Sleep’, satisfactory examples of well-judged folktronica, and gallivanting opener ‘Red Travelling Socks’, which engenders a short-lived vitality. Alas, any peppercorn of passion contracts next to Middleton’s chokingly reflexive tone. He invites indifference when he sings: “Everything I do is redundant / Everything I write is a lie” on a song entitled ‘Ballad Of Fuck All’. All you need to know, really. John Calvert

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DOWNLOAD: ‘STORE’, ‘SHUT YOUR MOUTH’.

FOR FANS OF: AMY MACDONALD, SANDI THOM.

DOWNLOAD: ‘ZERO’, ‘RED TRAVELLING SOCKS’.

FOR FANS OF: ARAB STRAP, FRIGHTENED RABBIT.

ALBUM REVIEWS

JARVIS COCKER FURTHER COMPLICATIONS ROUGH TRADE

Tuned in, turned on and ready to rock out, the second solo album by the former Pulp frontman and fulltime icon of indie-cool is almost great. The lyrics are quintessentially Jarvis, witty, risqué and astute, with his impassioned scrutiny of human mating habits seeing him come across as a randy Richard Attenborough.

Much has been made of Steve Albini’s role as producer, however, whilst the melodies often sport a black eye and bruises this ain’t dirty rawk, not by a long stretch.

For, alongside the guttural blast of ‘Fuckingsong’, or ‘Homewrecker’, there are the likes of ‘I Never Said I Was Deep’ – a brilliantly humourous ode of selfdeprecation – the tender love-song / eco-commentary of ‘Slush’ and the full-on dancefloor seduction of ‘You’re In My Eyes (Discosong)’. Meanwhile, the brash riffage of ‘Angela’ and Stones aping ‘Leftovers’ cast sweaty, furtively funny glances at the female of the species, almost as if Jarvis is auditioning fo the role of spiritual successor to Serge Gainsbourg.

Ultimately, though, while you suspect that there is a classic solo album to come from Jarvis Cocker, Further Complications isn’t it. It delights, yes, but disappoints too – ‘Hold Still’, ‘Caucasian Blues’ – and is a little too scattershot to fully hit its mark. Francis Jones

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘I NEVER SAID I WAS DEEP’, ‘FUCKINGSONG’, ‘YOU’RE IN MY EYES (DISCOSONG)’.

FOR FANS OF: SERGE GAINSBOURG, SCOTT WALKER.

NEW CASSETTES THE ART OF… NEW LABEL NEW DANGER

If you’re a keen fan of indie-dance, then this might bridge the wait for the next We Are Scientists or Bloc Party album. New Cassettes deliver cheery, carefree fare, their songs displaying a zest for spiky guitars, harmonic choruses and hooky tunes. And though they may not be anything new, there’s undoubted potential here. Just check out the anthemic riff on ‘Hearts Don’t Beat Right’. What they do, they do exceedingly well. Virginia Arroyo

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘HEARTS DON’T BEAT RIGHT’, ‘YOU WON’T STOP’, ‘RECOVER/RETREAT’.

FOR FANS OF: BLOC PARTY, THE FUTUREHEADS, WE ARE SCIENTISTS.

THE ATOMIC BITCHWAX TAB 4

LITTLE BOOTS HANDS 679 / ATLANTIC

She may be the most talked-about new artist of 2009, but Victoria Hesketh is an old hand at this whole music malarkey. The Blackpool lass’s background encompasses jazz, indie-pop and even teenage Pop Idol indiscretions, but her debut album is as lacquered with synths and as buffed with slick electro riffs as is humanly possible – perhaps due, in part, to the spit ‘n’ polish talents of Joe Goddard (Hot Chip) and Greg Kurstin (The Bird and the Bee).

One of the main explanations for Hesketh’s abrupt popularity has been her capacity to adapt songs to suit several genres. There are as many tracks here that beg to be unleashed on club dancefloors (the breathy, Kylie-esque ‘Remedy’) as there are tunes

likely to top the mainstream charts (new single ‘New in Town’ is undoubtedly the standout). Elsewhere, The Human League’s Phil Oakey bolsters Hesketh’s oft-fragile vocals nicely on ‘Symmetry’, while ‘Tune Into My Heart’ temporarily unwinds the taut pace and throws a fistful of glitter from the speakers. If there’s one hitch with Hands, though, it’s that the constant barrage of synth and Tenori-on has an almost dulling effect in the mid-section, rather than giving the impression of a sharp-heeled stiletto in your ear. Still, it’s a creative and firmly likeable debut.

Lauren Murphy

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘NEW IN TOWN’, ‘GHOSTS’, ‘SYMMETRY’.

FOR FANS OF: KYLIE MINOGUE, LADYHAWKE, THE HUMAN LEAGUE.

ENTER SHIKARI COMMON DREADS

LE GALAXIE TRANSWORLD EP

AMBUSH REALITY

BATTLEPULSE

TEE PEE

While County Down’s The Answer have proven that classic rock can be delivered with both guts and panache, The Atomic Bitchwax appear to be merely third-rate Rush plagiarists. TAB 4, their fourth album, opens with the sinuous ‘Revival’ but then merges into a seemingly endless twiddly guitar solo, with half-arsed AOR melodies thrown in. Only the final track, the smart blues of ‘Pawn Shop’, offers any solace. But it’s too little, too late. About 30 years too late. John Freeman

Common Dreads is Enter Shikari’s mooning to an era of economic crunches, recession and paranoia. Their second album opens a bizarre Pandora’s box where all our society’s common dreads blindly collide. And the result is an absolutely nutty record, pure and mad trance metal, double pedalled chaos with drum and bass, crazy synths, hardcore spirit and rapid-fire guitars, all topped with frontman Roughton ‘Rou’ Reynolds’ bawled protests. Loud, mad and utterly overwhelming. Virginia Arroyo

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DOWNLOAD: ‘REVIVAL, ‘PAWN SHOP’, ‘MIDDLE MAN’.

FOR FANS OF: RUSH, EXTENDED GUITAR SOLOS.

DOWNLOAD: ‘JUGGERNAUTS’, ‘NO SLEEP TONIGHT’, ‘THE JESTER’.

FOR FANS OF: REFUSED, PENDULUM, THE PRODIGY.

Dublin’s Le Galaxie come racing out of the blocks with their debut EP – the opener and title track is an inspired, lunatic mesh of vocoder vocals, frenetic disco beats and otherworldly guitars’n’synths.

‘Beyond Transworld’ sees frontman Le Michael Galaxie taking evident pleasure in the nonsense line “We will dance with the people of light” as his bandmates whip up merry electro hell. ‘The Fury’ offers no respite, dramatic orchestral samples lending it the air of a parallel universe Bond theme.

Impressive. Neill Dougan

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘TRANSWORLD’, ‘THE FURY’.

FOR FANS OF: KRAFTWERK, HOT CHIP. Iheartau.com

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FAITH NO MORE THE VERY BEST DEFINITIVE ULTIMATE GREATEST HITS COLLECTION RHINO

You know where you are with Faith No More. It’s a subversive world of flaming faeces, spring-loaded funk bass, thrash-metal guitar and neo-demonic vocal performances from Chuck Mosely and Mike Patton.

Although he joined FNM in 1989 – after eight years and two albums with Mosely as vocalist – Patton’s lyrics and delivery define the band just as much Jim Martin’s crunchy riffs and Roddy Bottum’s keyboard lines. The record features 16 Patton numbers and only two from Mosely – although ‘We Care a Lot’ and ‘R’n’R’ are early gold. As a pioneering rock act with crossover appeal before the advent of music on the Internet, FNM have countless bootlegs and unofficial recordings floating about. This collection includes their best cuts (‘Epic’, ‘Caffeine’, ‘Be Aggressive’ and ‘Digging The Grave’) from their best albums. Perhaps it loses points for excluding ‘Surprise! You’re Dead’ (a great song) and ‘Jizzlobber’ (a great name). But the bonus disc is where die-hard fans will finally find ‘Sweet Emotion’ (not an Aerosmith cover) and ‘New Improved Song’, which were given away with Kerrang! in 1989 and Sounds in 1988. Alec Moore

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘EPIC’, ‘DIGGING THE GRAVE’.

FOR FANS OF: MIKE PATTON, METALLICA.

ASSEMBLE HEAD WHEN SWEET SLEEP RETURNED

GHOST FREEDOM OF THOUGHT

TEE PEE

BREAKIN BREAD

Assemble Head are psychedelic mind-benders of the highest order. Bursting full of fuzz guitars, swirling synths and reverb-saturated vocals, When Sweet Sleep Returned is the latest offering from these twisted sonic manipulators. The record takes you on a familiar psychedelic journey but one that never seems to get boring. Mixing elements of Led Zep, The Who, Seventies Floyd and a dash of Crazy Horse, the band have remained true to their influences while retaining their integrity. Definitely recommended. David Hamilton

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘TWO STAGE ROCKET’.

FOR FANS OF: SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE, COMETS ON FIRE, HOWLIN’ RAIN.

JUST JACK ALL NIGHT CINEMA MERCURY

Just Jack has always exhibited a knack for summoning the exuberant spirit of Friday night. And while All Night Cinema certainly retains this feeling, the sound has now been extended to capture a looser, sunny afternoon vibe – check out the Jack Johnson-esque phrasing and laid-back beats of ‘The Day I Died’.

Elsewhere, those who prefer Allsop’s groovier, ‘Starz In Their Eyes’ persona will find themselves drawn to the multi-stringed ‘Embers’, the crying-out-to-be-asingle ‘Doctor Doctor’ and the dance-tastic ‘Goth In A Disco’. All in all, a more than commendable return.

Virginia Arroyo

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘253’, ‘ASTRONAUT’, ‘THE DAY I DIED’.

FOR FANS OF: JAMIE T., MARK RONSON, THE STREETS

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AU#57

Not to be confused with the two Japanese bands, the dubstep pioneer and any number of others that have used the name, this particular Ghost is a London-based hiphop producer from Glasgow. This is his second album, and it will appeal to fans of DJ Shadow and Nightmares On Wax – mostly instrumental, Ghost’s is a complex, cinematic sound, with enough flair and musicality to lift it out of the ordinary. The vocal contributions, mainly from English MCs, are fine as well, particularly on ‘Elevate’, in which Jehst contributes a faintly clichéd ‘state of the nation’ lyric, but with plenty of dexterity and charm – and over a beautiful, wistful production. There’s nothing particularly new here, but Ghost has succeeded in putting together an 18-track record with barely any filler, which is some feat. A smoker’s delight, and recommended for fans of the genre. Chris Jones

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘ELEVATE’, ‘RETURN JOURNEY’, ‘FEEL PAIN’.

FOR FANS OF: DJ SHADOW, NIGHTMARES ON WAX, J DILLA.

SIGUR ROS VON ONE LITTLE INDIAN

Before the Vanilla Sky soundtrack, testimonies from superfan Brad Pitt, signing to a major label and gradually becoming one of the biggest bands in the world, Iceland’s finest made this debut album and just about no one heard it. It came out to little fanfare in 1997, three years after they formed, and only now is it getting a proper release outside Iceland. Of course, the hardcore fans already know all about it, but it gives the more casual follower a chance to find out where it all started. And the answer to that is ‘in a very weird place’, as ‘Sigur Rós’ is one of the strangest, most unsettling opening tracks you will ever hear – 10 minutes of ambient sound punctuated by some terrifying screams.

Unsurprisingly for a low-key debut release, there is a lot of experimentation here as the band worked out their sound. That results in several tracks that meander prettily without ever making much impact – ‘Hafssól’ and the title track especially – and also a few that sound like a totally different band. ‘Myrkur’ is wonderful, celestial shoegaze with the galloping rhythms and fuzzed-out guitars of Ride or Slowdive.

But the tracks that are the most recognisably Sigur Rós, ‘Hún Jörð...’ and ‘Syndir Guðs (Opinberun Frelsarans)’, must rank alongside the very best of their storied career. Von may be a touch patchy, but it’s more than just a fans-only curio. Chris Jones

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘MYRKUR’, ‘HÚN JÖRÐ...’, ‘SYNDIR GUÐS (OPINBERUN FRELSARANS)’.

FOR FANS OF: EFTERKLANG, SLOWDIVE, MOGWAI.

THE PRESENT THE WAY WE ARE LOAF

Primarily the brainchild of Rusty Santos, The Present is a New York-based trio specialising in abstract sonic odysseys. Kaleidoscopic compositions drifting and morphing from dense apocalyptic mayhem to translucent beauty are the order of the day.

Shimmering, futuristic, nightscape noises and industrial conveyer belt drones combine to hypnotic quality on this, their second album. From the deranged Deaditelike vocals of ‘Saltwater Trails’, spookily swirling in a cluster of churning feedback, to the Vangelis-inflected ‘Space Meadow’, with its ethereal and glistening electronic moodiness, The Way We Are is a challenging monolith of a record, but one that constantly clutches at your attention as it lulls you into the midst of its own bizarre cosmos of absurdity and hallucinogenic wonder. James Gracey

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘SPACE MEADOW’, ‘THE WAY WE ARE’, ‘SALTWATER TRAILS’.

FOR FANS OF: TELEPATHE, LOTUS PLAZA, EXCEPTER.

ALBUM REVIEWS

PATRICK WOLF THE BACHELOR BLOODY CHAMBER MUSIC

Patrick Wolf ’s first release since his split from Universal, The Bachelor is a richly textured and intensely cathartic experience. Gone is the poppier, cheerier Wolf of The Magic Position; in his stead comes a mature, introspective version, digging deep into the wounds of his flirtation with commercialism and emerging stronger as a result.

A torrid fusion of dark, futuristic electro-pop and romantic, traditional folk, this album simmers with frustration, regret and, ultimately, hope. An eerie intro gives way to the propulsive strings and dramatic guitar flourishes of ‘Hard Times’; ‘Oblivion’ and ‘Count Of Casualty’ visit grubby electronica recalling Bright Eyes circa Digital Ash In A Digital Urn, while ‘Vulture’ pounds and skitters like an emotion-drenched Passion Pit. Folkier numbers like ‘Thickets’, ‘Blackdown’ and the title track work remarkably well, sharing a looping, hypnotic quality which adds to the album’s pulsing, rhythmic feel. Redemption comes in the form of stirring closer ‘The Messenger’, which finds Wolf returning home, settling down and finding love. Musically complex and emotionally raw, The Bachelor is honest, exhausting yet utterly spellbinding. Miss it at your peril. Lee Gorman

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘VULTURE’, ‘THE BACHELOR’, ‘HARD TIMES’.

FOR FANS OF: DAVID BOWIE, BRIGHT EYES, THE ARCADE FIRE.

PLACEBO BATTLE FOR THE SUN DREAM BROTHER

Placebo’s sixth album, following the 1.1 million-selling Meds, opens with ‘Kitty Litter’. It’s a determined lifter and razor-sharp. Despite a 15-year career with worldwide success, it shows that Placebo haven’t retracted their claws. In the past, the casual listener’s relationship to a band like Placebo has been like the police interrogator’s relationship to Sharon Stone. The goods are on display and they’re attractive, but you’re almost duty-bound not to give in and declare your lust.

Battle For The Sun might be the album to change this. ‘For What It’s Worth’ builds upon a straight, almost run-ofthe-mill riff but distinguishes itself with the vocal hook, while the typically introspective lyrics (“Now I’ve stared into the void / So many people I’ve annoyed”) of ‘Bright Lights’ are ameliorated by the guitar line, which bounces along like some kind of strange emotional sonar. New drummer Steve Forrest, Placebo’s third, introduces ideas like the Casio intro of ‘Julien’ and the disco beats and stick action on ‘Breathe Underwater’. And if you can bear Brian Molko’s reedy voice, you might consider this Placebo’s best album. Andrew Linden

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH’, ‘BREATHE UNDERWATER’.

FOR FANS OF: MANIC STREET PREACHERS, AIDEN.

MEAT PUPPETS SEWN TOGETHER MEGAFORCE

This shouldn’t be happening. The Meat Puppets are yesterday’s news, old men who used to be in a band in a long forgotten age that no-one cares about anymore.

Then they re-form, and start touring. Standing in the audience, we continually shout, “PLAY THE HITS!” and then they’re supposed to split up, leaving us completely unfulfilled.

But they’ve torn up the rulebook, finding new ways of doing things and adding to rather than subtracting from their legacy. The Pups, following in the footsteps of Dinosaur Jr.’s triumphant return, blast back with Sewn Together, a record which achieves the unbelievable trick of sounding exactly what you would want a new Pups album to sound like. From the opening notes, you realise that this is a band who have cast their eye over their considerable back catalogue, and tapped directly into the thing that made them special in the first place.

The intense fury of their first album has subsided, but the sprightly pacing and twinkle in the eye that made II and Up On The Sun so crucial remains. The country elements still fight for space with the punk bits, but they’ve rarely sounded as integrated as this, Curt Kirkwood in particularly fine voice.

Really, whatever spark it is that has re-energised the Meat Puppets should be bottled and given to bands half their age. We’d all reap the rewards of that one. Steven Rainey

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘SEWN TOGETHER’, ‘I’M NOT YOU’.

FOR FANS OF: THE GUN CLUB, VIOLENT FEMMES.

GEORGIA’S HORSE THE MAMMOTH SESSIONS FIRE RECORDS

Consider the following. The day Will Oldham dropped the ‘Palace’ moniker, the day Bill Callahan fell in love, the demise of both Arab Strap and Guided

By Voices and the day Cat Power wised up. Great artists, all missing indefinitely. Dark days indeed.

Georgia’s Horse will remind you of the halcyon days of late-Nineties Americana. The music is barely there, an oblique chord chiming awkwardly from a battered electric guitar, a simple piano melody hammered on the blackest of keys, a gently strummed acoustic backed by subtle strings, straining to be heard above the beauty and fragility of Teresa Maldonado’s voice.

Dig out your copies of Moon Pix, Red Apple Falls and Lost Blues to re-affirm that the notions of maturity and change are tainted concepts in the world of great music. The Mammoth Sessions is a thing of startling grace. Don’t ever change! Kenny Murdock

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘SNAKE & SPARROW’, ‘BARON SAMEDI’.

FOR FANS OF: CAT POWER, SMOG, COWBOY JUNKIES.

DINOSAUR JR. FARM PIAS

They have everything to lose, really. After years of disappointing comeback albums by bands who should know better, Dinosaur Jr. threw their oar in and announced that they were back on tour with the original line-up. Jaws promptly hit the floor; this was the grouping of individuals who apparently hated each others guts for far more years that they were ever together in the first place, remember?

Then Beyond came out two years ago, and jaws hit the ground again; it was far better than we could have expected, a storming album that lived up to their legacy. In the real world, where we follow the rock and roll rulebook, their next move should be to churn out an album which is either more of the same, or a completely underwhelming album which disgraces the proud legacy they’ve created over the years.

Of course, Dinosaur Jr. were never a band for following the rules, having torn up hardcore, and stuffed it into the mouth of pop, poking goth in the eye as it went past.

Farm kicks ass from the word go, somehow managing to be even better than Beyond. The riffs are meatier, the

melodies more soaring, and the pace more unrelenting.

Which just means that the stakes are set even higher for them next time around. Never has a band caused such distress by being good – they can’t let us down after this! Steven Rainey

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘PIECES’, ‘I DON’T WANNA GO THERE’.

FOR FANS OF: MUDHONEY, NIRVANA, THE BIRTHDAY PARTY.

BRITISH SEA POWER MAN OF ARAN OST/DVD SPECIAL EDITION ROUGH TRADE

The documentary film Man of Aran was released in 1934. By then, the way of life portrayed in it was outdated by 30 years. BSP’s modern soundtrack is fitting, therefore, and almost knowingly anachronistic.

On CD, it’s slow to start, and errs on repetitive, but when furnished with images from the film, the isolation of the Aran Islands is beautifully evoked. ‘Spearing the Sunfish’ is an almost prog-rock epic, an homage to the power of the sea. Sparse instrumentation clashes with vivid and exuberant shots of waves crashing onto the shore. However, the most evocative track is not a BSP original. A cover version of Jeff Alexander’s ‘Come Wander With Me’ is eerie, creating a barren landscape with hidden potential. Above flanged cymbals and keening strings, everyday tasks become ritual. Hopeful strains lilt from the cliffs as the currach comes in, and though Aran has changed since, its spirit lives on through this soundtrack. Ailbhe Malone

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘COME WANDER WITH ME’, ‘SPEARING THE SUNFISH’.

FOR FANS OF: SIGUR ROS, MEW, BUILT TO SPILL.

GRIZZLY BEAR VECKATIMEST WARP

Following the praise heaped upon 2006’s Yellow House, expectations are high for Veckatimest. If that unwieldy title doesn’t bode well, fear not: the New York quartet’s third album is quite splendid, an intoxicating melange of otherworldly melodies, slow-burning tunes and stupendous vocal harmonies.

‘Southern Point’ is a strident opener, but proceedings really burst into life with the plink-plonk piano riff of ‘Two Weeks’, a rare burst of exuberance on an album that is, like its predecessor, by turns disquieting and quietly soothing. Highlights are many, including the dissonant folk of ‘Dory’, the fantastic ‘Fine For Now’, which builds to a tremendous crescendo, and the insistent groove of ‘Cheerleader’. Special mention must go to the choppy, instantly distinctive guitar work of Daniel Rossen, best exemplified by the magnificent ‘While You Wait For The Others’, possibly the ’Bear’s finest song to date, and one that will sound absolutely immense live – although, in a mystifying track-listing balls-up, it’s buried away in what used to be known as ‘side two’. That aside, it’s hard to pick fault with an album that, like Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion earlier this year, constitutes an ambitious career high that reveals more and more delights with each listen. Neill Dougan

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘WHILE YOU WAIT FOR THE OTHERS’, ‘TWO WEEKS’, ‘FINE FOR NOW’, ‘CHEERLEADER’.

FOR FANS OF: ANIMAL COLLECTIVE, DEPARTMENT OF EAGLES. Iheartau.com

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THE VASELINES ENTER THE VASELINES

SPECK MOUNTAIN SOME SWEET RELIEF

BASHY CATCH ME IF YOU CAN

SUB POP

CARROT TOP

RAGS TO RICHEZ

Just in case the name didn’t make it clear, song titles such as ‘Rory Rides Me Raw’ should – so-called ‘twee’ Glasgow duo The Vaselines were hornier than a box of bullfrogs. This classy comp collects their recorded output, early singles being the pick of the bunch and suggesting that the band peaked too soon. ‘Son Of A Gun’ and the aforementioned ‘Rory…’ are darn near irresistible, charming pieces of clattering, folksy pop. By the time of their sole LP Dum-Dum, they were laying on the noise under the influence of Dinosaur Jr. and Pussy Galore, which was a shame. Those bands could rock harder but they couldn’t come up with a tune as sweet and carefree as ‘Molly’s Lips’. James McDonald

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘SON OF A GUN’ ‘MOLLY’S LIPS’.

FOR FANS OF: BEAT HAPPENING, NIRVANA, TEENAGE FANCLUB.

TELEGRAPHS WE WERE GHOSTS

Sweet relief is found here twofold. There are the wistful dream-pop melodies that coast you off like cigarette smoke on a summer breeze, a blissful state of being that recalls moments from late Nineties summer records like Air’s Moon Safari. Then there is the cathartic relief found in Marie-Claire Balabanian’s lyrics, like the purgative realisation of failure found in ‘Backslider’ or the momentum-building release of ‘Angela’. Reverb and sultry keys bind the soulfulness of the record, which won’t cause any great stir, but has enough to replace a valium next time you have a serious need to chill out. Matt Nesbitt

Midway through the first listen and AU is seriously concerned as to what they could say about Catch Me If You Can without sounding rude. Take, if you can bear it, the ill conceived and unlovable ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire’, or any of the number of excruciatingly ill-executed grime tracks that comprise the album’s first half. None of these are what you’d call keepers. But then, suddenly, ‘Life’ slams us with its high-spirited dose of gospel-fired party music. And from here on the good times floodgates are well and truly open with wave upon wave of creativity, melody, lethal riffs and groovy beats bearing down on us. Worth catching, if only for the second half. Virginia Arroyo

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DOWNLOAD: ‘FIDELITY SHAKE’, ‘BACKSLIDER’.

FOR FANS OF: AIR, MAZZY STAR, BUFFALO SPRINGFIELD.

DOWNLOAD: ‘BLACK BOYS’, ‘SORRY’, ‘WHAT ABOUT ME?’.

FOR FANS OF: KANO, KANYE WEST, DIZZEE RASCAL.

SEMAPHORE SEMAPHORE STABOKKI!

BROKEN RECORDS UNTIL THE EARTH BEGINS TO PART 4AD

SMALL TOWN

When done properly, break-up albums can achieve the kind of emotional charge heard on classics like Beck’s Sea Change or Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. The parting of ways between frontman Darcy Harrison and bassist Hattie Williams renders Telegraphs’ debut as a vehicle to document the end of their relationship and with titles like ‘The Argument’ and ‘Your First Love Is Dead’, We Were Ghosts is no party. Flaunting urgent, angular guitars, theatrics akin to Evanescence and Dave Eringa’s sleek production, it could just pass muster with the emo crowd. However the grating, one-dimensional subject matter makes it difficult to see where Telegraphs’ inspiration will come from in future. Gerard McCann

While Giovanni Trapattoni is hardly setting the Republic’s football team alight, three-piece Semaphore – who comprise a Dubliner, a Roman and a drummer of Italian-Irish descent – are an altogether more beguiling proposition. Forged from late-night blues and blackened country, Louis Brennan’s intoxicating baritone pours over a troubled world of addiction, corruption and greed. “A bottle to forget and a Bible to be saved,” he intones on the standout ‘Revolving Door’, before guitars jolt like the cold light of day. On ‘Miss Cool Talker’, Brennan paints pictures of “that street walker that could be your daughter” as his pain bubbles to the fore. Like The Bad Seeds at their most relentless, Semaphore are troubled souls for troubled times. John Freeman

After teasing us for the best part of a year with a couple of cracking seven-inches and whispers of spectacular gigs, the Scottish seven-piece finally unleash their debut, and it’s a belter. Distilling the chaotic spirit of Godspeed into 10 stunning chamber pop vignettes, Until The Earth… rages and swoons as dramatically as early Arcade Fire, its prominent strings and horns acting as lead instruments rather than lazy commercial backing tools. Between the opening swells of ‘Nearly Home’ and phenomenal closing waltz ‘Slow Parade’, the septet take in careering Balkan folk, gorgeous piano balladry and epic indie rock without missing a beat. Those end-ofyear lists are beckoning already. Lee Gorman

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DOWNLOAD: ‘WE DANCE IN SLOW MOTION’, ‘FOREVER NEVER’, I DON’T NAVIGATE BY YOU’.

FOR FANS OF: EVANESCENCE, BIFFY CLYRO, FALL OUT BOY.

DOWNLOAD: ‘REVOLVING DOOR’, ‘IN THE MORNING’, ‘GROUND ZERO’.

FOR FANS OF: TOM WAITS, NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS, WILLARD GRANT CONSPIRACY.

DOWNLOAD: ‘SLOW PARADE’, ‘A PROMISE’, ‘NEARLY HOME’.

FOR FANS OF: ARCADE FIRE, BRIGHT EYES, MY LATEST NOVEL.

THE WARLOCKS THE MIRROR EXPLODES

ADAM FRANKLIN SPEND BULLETS

A HAWK AND A HACKSAW DELIVRANCE

TEE PEE

SECOND MOTION / HI-SPEED SOUL

THE LEAF LABEL

The latest offering from this LA-based seven-piece is a beautifully cacophonous affair that detonates with a psychedelic blast and never looks back. Shades of My Bloody Valentine course through the veins of this record, as it listlessly unfurls with an ominous and hazy beauty and moves towards its rapturous climax. Echoic and pounding drums, throbbing bass and languidly spasmodic guitars wrap around the strangely isolated vocals of Bobby Hecksher, threatening to smother them in a veritable wall of majestic sound. Each track drifts melancholically along and envelops the next, as the record gradually builds to a swirling mass of free floating, discordant and melodic noise that seems to grow richer with every listen. James Gracey

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘THE MIDNIGHT SUN’, ‘THERE IS A FORMULA TO YOUR DESPAIR’, ‘YOU MAKE ME WAIT’.

FOR FANS OF: THE MORNING AFTER GIRLS, THE BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE, BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB.

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AU#57

Following last year’s collaboration with Interpol’s Sam Fogarino, ex-Swervedriver architect Adam Franklin has returned with a wizened sophomore album of tactile, beautifully understated treasures. The mellow alt-rock on earlier tracks soon expands into unfastened long form travelling on meditative tempos. Braided guitars quietly converse with Franklin’s translucent vocals, weaving a kind of amniotic dream-folk. Rather than default to droning shoegazer obliqueness, Franklin brings to bear a structural coherency and allegiance to composition. ‘Winter Girls’ could be a saved Elliott Smith in Gnashville and ‘End Credits’ is carried on a plangent waltz and divine melodies. On curtain-closer ‘Two Dollar Dress’ Franklin re-engages with his former Creation days, his pretty, drowned words pressing softly against the vector of a bristling Kevin Shields-esque quiver. John Calvert

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘WINTER GIRLS’, ‘CHAMPS’, ‘END CREDITS’.

FOR FANS OF: SWERVEDRIVER, JIMI HENDRIX, AIR.

A Hawk And A Hacksaw are Jeremy Barnes and partner Heather Trost, who together with a large, everchanging ensemble craft impressive Eastern European folk songs. After relocating to Budapest in 2007 in order to be closer to their musical cohorts, the duo became fully immersed in the folk music traditions of the region. Délivrance showcases this influence without hesitation. Opener ‘Foni Tu Argile’ sets the tone perfectly as a new arrangement of a traditional song from Greece, heavy on percussion and flamboyance.

What follows through all 10 songs is a mixture of original compositions and new arrangements of traditional pieces. While the timbre may not be to everyone’s liking, there is something joyous about Délivrance that Western musicians could learn from. A seductive oddity. David Hamilton

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘FONI TU ARGILE’, ‘I AM NOT A GAMBLING MAN’.

FOR FANS OF: EASTERN FOLK, DEVENDRA BANHART, COCOROSIE.

ALBUM REVIEWS

SONIC YOUTH THE ETERNAL MATADOR

Still, Sonic Youth refuse to act their age. Even with the addition of ex-Pavement bassist Mark Ibold (a youngster at 47), the band’s average age is currently 50.4. Kim Gordon is closer to 60 than 50, for crying out loud. And yet they are still as relevant and worthy of your attention, 28 years after forming. Only The Fall and perhaps R.E.M. come anywhere near that level of sustained excellence – U2 ceased to be artistically interesting in 1997.

No, Sonic Youth remain one of the best bands in the world and on the evidence of this record, their 15th, they’ll be carrying on for some time yet.

They may be slowing down, mind you, the three years since Rather Ripped marking the longest gap between albums in their career. But then frontman Thurston

MORTON VALENCE BOB AND VERONICA RIDE AGAIN BASTARD RECORDINGS

Moore managed to fit in a solo album in 2007, so we’ll let them off. And while Rather Ripped was surprisingly accessible considering the uncommercial route they had been going down this decade, The Eternal retreats a little from its predecessor’s chiming guitar pop. Instead, this is more like a return to the band’s late Eighties/early Nineties heyday, when Daydream Nation, Goo and Dirty provided a slightly more cerebral, New York counterpoint to the grunge coming out of Seattle.

The opening two-minute ‘Sacred Trickster’, charges out of the blocks as a statement of intent, but it’s a slight red herring. More typical is the sexy grind of ‘Anti-Orgasm’ and the anthemic ‘No Way’ and ‘What We Know’, the latter sung lustily by guitarist Lee Ranaldo. Elsewhere, the band stretch out and give the songs some air.

Kim Gordon positively smoulders on the slinky, winding ‘Malibu Gas Station’ and the epic closer ‘Massage The History’, while the glorious

THE ANSWERING MACHINE ANOTHER CITY, ANOTHER SORRY

‘Antenna’ floats wistfully for six minutes over layers of Moore and Ranaldo’s trademark guitars, anchored by some typically locked-in drumming from Steve Shelley.

You could call this a late career highlight, but that might be doing it a mild disservice, as it stands up superbly next to the best of the back catalogue.

Added to the wonderful Rather Ripped, the band’s entry into late middle age seems to have energised them. This couldn’t sound any more like Sonic Youth, but that’s because they have alternative rock pretty much perfected. Chris Jones

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘ANTENNA’, ‘WHAT WE KNOW’, ‘ANTI-ORGASM’.

FOR FANS OF: ALTERNATIVE ROCK.

SUPER EXTRA BONUS PARTY NIGHT HORSES SELF – RELEASED

HEIST OR HIT

Bob and Veronica are the alter egos of vocalists Anne Gilpin and Robert Hacker Jessett, two lovers who embark on a madcap excursion, which en route takes in religious conversion, an overdose and a swim up a busy London high street. Concept albums can be awkward types, but this is a journey with some divine musical accompaniment. There’s country, doo-wop, Eighties pop, and the inevitable duets and a should-have-been hit in the shape of ‘Falling Down The Stairs’, with its immensely grooveable bass riff. ‘I Must Go’ eases in with a melodic trumpet refrain and then lets loose with some World of Twist-style space rock. Imagine going on a road trip with a twisted Saint Etienne remaking Withnail and I and you’re on your way. All aboard! Jeremy Shields

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘CHANDELIER’, ‘FALLING DOWN THE STAIRS’, ‘JOHN YOUNG’.

FOR FANS OF: STEREOLAB, GOLDFRAPP.

Produced by Manics knob-twiddler Dave Eringa, this Mancunian quartet’s high velocity debut is an urban smorgasbord of crap parties, late night taxi ranks and litter-strewn, early morning street life: the sound of the city. Although largely derivative – the blistering ‘Tomorrow’ will have The Strokes texting their lawyers, while ‘Obviously Cold’ pilfers from the Buzzcocks with youthful glee – the combination of furious punk energy and heart-seeking melodies are largely irresistible. Stellar early singles ‘Lightbulbs’ and the bubblegum brilliance of ‘Oklahoma’ are included, Eringa ensuring the new beefed-up versions bulge in all the right places. The Answering Machine sound like all of your favourite bands rolled into one, and why should they be sorry for that? John Freeman

A year after winning the Choice Music Award, Super Extra Bonus Party return with their creative mojo clearly intact. What’s most impressive about Night Horses is how it manages to be diverse without turning out disjointed. SEBP have become a super-versatile sonic monster, leaving their grubby claw prints all over rock, dance, electronica, hip-hop, even pop. Opening track ‘Super Team Go!’ lays out their template, full of dancey beats and embossed guitar layering, all topped with memorable upbeat tunes. Plus, Night Horses features five-star collaborations, including rapper Captain Moonlight on the superb ‘Tea With Lord Haw Haw’, Heathers on the breezy pop of ‘Comets’ and Cadence Weapon on the single ‘Radar’. Let this be your favourite mix-tape of 2009. Virginia Arroyo

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DOWNLOAD: ‘TOMORROW’, ‘OKLAHOMA’, ‘OBVIOUSLY COLD’, ‘CLIFFER’.

FOR FANS OF: THE STROKES, BUZZCOCKS, DUTCH UNCLES.

DOWNLOAD: ‘NIGHT HORSES’, ‘COMETS’, ‘MARK HUGHES TOP CORNER’.

FOR FANS OF: THE GO! TEAM, HOLY FUCK, THE VINNY CLUB. Iheartau.com

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UNSIGNED UNIVERSE

UNSIGNED UNIVERSE

YOUR INDISPENSABLE GUIDE TO NEW RELEASES FROM THE LATEST UP-ANDCOMING ACTS WORDS BY VIRGINIA ARROYO

IN FOCUS: BAND: COUNTERVELA LOCATION: DERRY/BELFAST MEMBERS: CIARAN COLTON (VOCALS/ GUITAR), MICHAEL AHERN (GUITAR/ SAMPLES), BRIAN COLLINS (BASS/SAMPLES), CONOR MULLAN (DRUMS).

FOR FANS OF: TOOL, DEFTONES, DREAM THEATER. RELEASE: DATE CREATED EP.

Names like Tool or Opeth come to mind when listening to your music, but just who are your major influences?

It is a cliché, but there’s loads; I’m really into The Cinematic Orchestra, contemporary classical and electronic music whereas Ciaran and Conor would have a more metal/rock background including bands such as Metallica and AC/DC. Brian, our bassist, is a bit of an enigma – if it’s good, he likes it. We all love Meshuggah and Tool… and Michael Jackson.

Probably an Austrian review that bizarrely compared us to the Beastie Boys! We’re frequently compared to bands we’ve never heard of. In some instances, people who see us can’t believe we haven’t been influenced by ‘band X’. It’s nearly always a different band, mind you, so we’re safe from being accused of being rip-offs.

A lot of people approach us saying they really want to watch/listen to us under the influence of certain illegal drugs. We get that a lot, actually.

What is the most ludicrous description of the band you’ve heard?

What are your forthcoming plans, is there an album on the horizon?

We’re hoping to return to Scandinavia to build on last November’s Finnish tour and we also have an Irish tour coming up in September with our Finnish buddies Farewell. There are also plans to tour mainland Europe, Ireland and the UK to promote Date Created. We are also writing for a debut album which will be recorded at the end of the year. There are a few tracks completed so far and personally, I cannot wait to finally record ‘Sleeping With An Electrocuted Horse’.

MEL WIGGINS MY BROTHER’S KEEPER EP

COUNTERVELA DATE CREATED EP

THE CITY’S LAST NOISE BENEATH THE WAVES

After 10 years in Canada and London, Mel Wiggins finally relocated to Northern Ireland to pursue her admirably pure goal – to sing songs about the things that matter. Through her lyrics, she denounces injustice and seeks to nurture a sense of solidarity. Little surprise, then, that several charity organisations have asked her to write songs for them. But her poignant and stunning lyricism, close in spirit to that of Foy Vance, is not the only appeal of My Brother’s Keeper. Mel’s sugar-spun voice kindly strolls you through these narratives and adds a delicious frisson to the stirring subject matter.

Weighty guitars, clever riffs and a schizophrenic flip from calm to rage are all part of the complex and fiendishly woven tapestry of Date Created.

Ciaran Colton’s voice oscillates from raucous to serene in slices like ‘All Here That’s Safe And Sacred’. Deftly tracking the footsteps of bands like Tool and Deftones, Countervela have created something powerful and captivating. Meshuggah, Nine Inch Nails and Pantera are other likely influences, whilst some jazz and progressive elements are apparent, too.

Boasting a list of influences as lengthy and diverse as Jeff Buckley, Yes, classical romantic music, The Mars Volta, The Cure, Radiohead, Metallica, Flaming Lips, Edith Piaf and MGMT, we worried whether this would prove an unholy mess, or a work of blessed genius. Thankfully, The City’s Last Noise have here produced the latter. Their sound is somewhat naïve but fearless, angular, but willing to experiment, the whole propelled by relentless, counterintuitive drums and playful bass lines. Electronic synths, flourishes of psychedelia and a nails-scraped-across-a-blackboard falsetto further colour their expansive palette.

The sound twists and turns, at once heavy and complex, filled to the brim with emotion, intelligence and wit. Poignant guitars have their role, but so too do electronic flourishes and multilayered soundscapes. This is Countervela.

The band’s Michael Ahern tells AU about their new EP, Date Created, and forthcoming tours.

WWW.MYSPACE.COM/MELWIGGINSMUSIC

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What do you hope to achieve with the new release?

As much as we see this as a legitimate release in its own right, there’s no escaping the fact that we have had no new release in over two years. Date Created is needed to show people where we are now and where we are going. I certainly believe we’ve come on a long way since our debut. We simply want to spread the word.

WWW.MYSPACE.COM/COUNTERVELA

WWW.MYSPACE.COM/THECITYSLASTNOISE

LIVE REVIEWS

LIVE REVIEWS

Panama Kings: Photo by Mike Burnell

THE GREAT ESCAPE BRIGHTON Over 300 acts, desperate to make an impression on thousands of gig-goers and industry bods. Eight of them from Ireland, north and south. 34 venues. Three days. One wristband. And perhaps most impressively of all, several metric tonnes of seagull splatter. Yes, it’s The Great Escape.

Now in its fourth year, the Brighton-based festival has been coined as ‘SXSW-on-Sea’, and for those who don’t have the time/money/inclination to make it to Texas every March, it’s a satisfying alternative. Buzz bands rub shoulders and share stages all over the city with both established acts and old stalwarts, while there are also a number of additional events – talks, debates and outdoor performances included – during the day, in a bid to prevent the masses from developing gambling habits on Brighton Pier’s fruit machines.

Thursday kicked off like a sea-battered squib when the queue to see intense shoegaze revivalists The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart proved too long to gain entry. Instead, it was off to the Pavilion Theatre, where troubadour of the moment DM Stith was accompanied by a string duet, drummer and guitarist for his tenuous, meandering folk-flavoured songs.

Playing tracks from new album Heavy Ghost, the New Yorker certainly impressed – although perhaps a snugger venue would have suited him better.

On the other hand, Northern Irish heroes And So I Watch You From Afar drew a packed and appreciative

crowd into the shoebox-sized sweat pit The Volks, while their compatriots Panama Kings rocked out later than scheduled in the Ocean Rooms, where they were followed by ace Futureheads-meets-QOTSA foursome Baddies, one of the tightest acts witnessed all weekend. On the downside, the malevolent presence of the dreaded ‘technical hitches’ were a frustrating element of the weekend, causing many sets to run late and subsequently rendering even the most carefully-scheduled plans redundant.

Nonetheless, it did mean that the possibility of stumbling upon unexpected highlights was more likely. Seeing the amazing Gurrumul – who sings mainly in his native language of Yolngu – in the tiny Unitarian Church was a religious experience of sorts. The blind Aboriginal singer/guitarist’s set, embellished by a double bassist and guitarist, was so pristine and beautifully melancholic that it prompted the venue manager to immediately declare it “one of the best that The Great Escape has ever seen”. Austrian teen pianist Soap & Skin was similarly stirring in the same venue, mixing up elements of Björk, Sigur Rós and Kate Bush, while across the street, swoonsome Canucks The Acorn brought Day One to a quietly satisfying close.

Friday’s highlights came via a varied assortment of sounds and styles. Despite being on the receiving end of some dodgy mixing, Micachu & The Shapes were as brilliant and offbeat live as they are on record. The twee indiebilly (indie-meets-rockabilly) of bouncy Londoners Betty & the Werewolves was equally enamouring, and the quirky punk of

Vivian Girls continued the female domination in The Pavilion Theatre – the trio even returned to the stage later on to enhance Abe Vigoda’s excellent world music/punk hybrid set.

Saturday saw yet further delays, not least during the Irish Music Showcase at The Prince Albert pub during the afternoon, where Valerie Francis and Iain Archer played, replacing Villagers (who had sadly cancelled all three planned gigs due to illness). A dodgy keyboard also meant that Fight Like Apes ran 40 minutes late, but their sweaty, crash-bang-wallop performance (wrestling match included gratis) was worth the wait, and further proof that they’re one of the most exciting bands on the British Isles right now.

Brakes, meanwhile, were forced to cut their superb set short due to Little Boots “turning up two hours late for soundcheck”, but guitarist Tom White made it to the The Parlure in time to play guitar for loveable oddball Patrick Wolf, whose theatrical inclinations and magnetic stage presence (head mic, bird-like outfit, a shock of bright blonde hair) make him a sheer joy to watch – and that’s before mentioning the material from his incredible new album The Bachelor.

But what is it about The Great Escape that makes it essential for any European music fan worth their sea salt? Is it the breadth and scope of the eclectic line-up? The chilled-out vibe? The fact that you’re guaranteed to have a brilliant weekend, albeit one spent being stalked by chicken-sized seagulls?

Look, it’s all of those things, and more. Plus some of the best chips you’ll ever eat. See you next year, Escapees. Lauren Murphy Iheartau.com

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LIVE REVIEWS MORRISSEY THE WATERFRONT HALL, BELFAST Casting an imposing shadow over the stage is a huge picture of a topless sailor. Muscles bulge and lips are clamped tight around an improbably huge cigar. With a cap perched jauntily on his head, he looks like an exile from a Jean-Paul Gaultier advert.

It’s an image of exuberant, playful defiance and the perfect accompaniment to this, Morrissey’s Years Of Refusal tour.

The band strides out, resplendent in crisp white shirts and black dickie bows, with guitarist Boz Boorer and keyboardist Christopher Pooley sporting quintessentially Morrissey NHS-style specs.

However, it is the besuited and pristine figure of the dapper Don himself to whom attention is inexorably drawn. This former slip of a boy cuts a much more bulked-up and daunting figure these days. Curiously, these bodily changes seem to have manifested themselves in his music, the feyness of old replaced by the bullish physicality of the latest album, the songs brazenly charging where once they would have ducked and feinted.

Throughout Morrissey spurs his charges on, cracking the microphone lead like an over-zealous lion tamer as they give ‘This Charming Man’ a thoroughly punkrock seeing-to. What is lost in Rickenbacker jangle is more than made up for with full-on rock dynamism.

Which you prefer is a matter of personal taste, but there’s no doubting the vigour of this performance.

What’s more, the passage of time has led Morrissey’s voice to an exceedingly interesting place, his vocals rich and full as a tankard of treacle.

The audience respond favourably, though the banality of the between song chant of “Morrissey, Morrissey, Morrissey” soon becomes tiresome. It’s little surprise, too, that the majority react most fervently to renditions of Smiths’ classics such as ‘How Soon Is Now?’ (altered lyrics and all – “So you go and you stand on your own / And you leave on your own / What, big surprise!”) and the tender, tongue-in-cheek humour of ‘Girlfriend In A Coma’. Still, newer songs such as the exhilarating ‘Something Is Squeezing My Skull’ and a gloriously resolute ‘I’m OK By Myself ’ flaunt an altogether different set of virtues.

What is curious is that so much of the set is drawn from 2004 ‘comeback’ album You Are The Quarry, with no less than five songs performed. Still it’s always a pleasure to hear the majestic twinning of acrimony and alienation that is ‘This World Is Full of Crashing Bores’ and the heartfelt blast of ‘Irish Blood, English Heart’, a song that takes on added resonance here.

Elsewhere, there is a jaunty rendering of ‘Ask’, the sorrowful lament of ‘Seasick, Yet Still Docked’ and a brisk ‘Best Friend On The Payroll’. In between songs, Moz takes the opportunity to press the flesh, the audience surging forward, lemming-like, each time he approaches the edge of the stage. When he throws a shirt into the crowd it is ripped to shreds by the hyenalike hardcore down the front.

Quips are something of a rarity, though he does take the time, as ever, to censure the music industry’s shoddy treatment of him – “You see, you don’t need the music press, you don’t even need radio” – and rather surreally riffs on the opening monologue to Shameless – “I’m not saying the Chatsworth estate is heaven, but…”.

A thoroughly elating performance then, and proof positive that there’s still plenty of fire and brimstone in that almost 50-year-old belly. Francis Jones

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Photo by Carrie Davenport

LIVE REVIEWS

EASY STAR ALL-STARS CQAF FESTIVAL MARQUEE, BELFAST

Photo by Carrie Davenport

The last Saturday night of the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival has become a red letter day in the calendar of the reggae loving population of Belfast, and this year it is the turn of the Easy Star All-Stars to turn the Festival Marquee into an emporium of quality Jamaican dub. Live reggae at its best can be blissfully intoxicating, enveloping a venue and an audience in a bass-heavy blanket of unity, and as accomplished and proficient as the Easy Star All-Stars are, it’s only with their finale of Radiohead’s ‘Karma Police’ that the rafters are really lifted. The refrain of “I lost myself ” thunders through the evening air, probably to be heard as far away as Bangor.

In the end, though, when it’s a good Sunday night out you’re looking for, an aptitude for fluid pop-craft trumps originality as the essential. Their funk-pop confectionery flourishes in a live setting, helping to vanquish the sensation of déjà vu that percolates their debut LP. A cover of INXS’s ‘Devil Inside’ is entirely appropriate and the Strokesian ‘Private Affair’ and roller-boogie strut of ‘Rich Girls’ are both irresistible.

When greeted with the sweetly sincere ‘Fernando Pando’ and a gorgeous slow-dance rendition of ‘Love is Colder…’, their obvious plagiarisms rapidly shrink in importance, as they eclipse their support act Amazing Baby by merit of a fearsome yet accessible star wattage. Observing the frequent proud smiles traded between the band, it’s clear that, rather than being imperious fashion-whores, The Virgins are a group of civilian pop-lovers who can’t believe their luck, and a breath of fresh air before the real thing emerges. John Calvert

The All-Stars’ recorded output has been dominated by chart-topping and critically acclaimed interpretations of Pink Floyd and Radiohead’s magnum opuses Dark Side of the Moon and OK Computer and their versions of tracks from these albums dominate the set, the familiar chimes of the Floyd’s ‘Time’ and the singalong ‘Breathe’ going down well. The vocal acrobatics of ‘The Great Gig In The Sky’ are always a tricky feat to accomplish and Kirsty Rock has a very impressive go at one of rock’s signature vocal solos.

JEFFREY LEWIS AND THE JUNKYARD THE SCALA, LONDON

The All-Stars are a tight musical unit, horns floating like butterflies and killer bass riffs stinging like bees, tantalising the audience with forays into the diverse canon of a reggae wonderland. The band’s latest release is a reggaefied version of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and whilst the new single ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’ gets a warm reception, covers of other iconic tracks such as ‘Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite’ don’t make the same kind of impact.

Despite that, though, the night ends up a success, mainly due to the band’s aura and a quite delirious atmosphere. Jeremy Shields

CAMERA OBSCURA ANDREW’S LANE THEATRE, DUBLIN Andrew’s Lane Theatre doesn’t like Camera Obscura.

For a start, they don’t quite fit on the stage. A sixpiece band, with a seventh as a session musician, they’re all shunted into the middle, with the drum set fading into the wings. Not only that, but the venue’s sound system has got it in for them. The speaker quality is patchier than an Amish quilt. When it’s loud, the microphones squawk and reverb fills the room, and when it’s quiet it’s difficult to hear anything but the main vocals. It’s not an auspicious start. Dressed in red checked gingham, frontwoman Tracyanne Campbell looks like a lonesome southern belle. She sings like one too. Live, Camera Obscura’s songs owe more to Eddi Reader and Emmylou Harris than more obvious fey Scottish comparisons (Belle and Sebastian, for example).

The set consists mainly of tracks from their new album, My Maudlin Career, a record which the crowd aren’t sure whether or not they like. It could be the wonky sound, or it could be unfamiliarity, but when Campbell sings slower and newer tracks such as ‘James’, tumbleweed rolls leisurely through the packed room. Up-tempo numbers however (if one can continue this dubious train of Western-themed analogy) turn the gig into a barn dance. The incorrigible drum intro of current single ‘French Navy’ raises spirits and the roof, while old favourites ‘Lloyd, I’m Ready to Be Heartbroken’ and ‘Let’s Get Out Of This Country’ elicit whoops and dancing. A swift encore break, and the group return for two more songs. They finish with a jaunty version of ‘Eighties Fan’, but it’s the penultimate track that steals the show. A hush falls over the venue as the opening chords of ‘Country Mile’ strike. Plaintively solo, Campbell’s voice sings, “Don’t you worry, don’t get in a state / I don’t believe in true love anyway.” It’s as still as a church on Christmas Eve, and as sweet as a chocolate factory. This is Camera Obscura’s last stop on a long tour. World-weary travellers, it’s high time for them now to rest their feet. Ailbhe Malone

televangelists of New York cool; counterfeiters. You‘ve got the Duran Duran-commemorating ‘Murder’, the Olsen-esque ‘Hey Hey Girl’ and at the conclusion of the irritatingly starchy ‘One Week Of Danger’, you’d settle for just one song.

THERAPY? THE ACADEMY, DUBLIN “If you work in finance then please die,” announces Therapy? singer/guitarist Andy Cairns in front of a packed house in Dublin. As the trio launch into a savage rendition of newie ‘Clowns Galore’, we realise that while they may only be three songs into their set, they’re on world beating form tonight.

It’s been four years since the NI heroes last played a headline show in the Republic’s capital and the re-energised band are giving it everything they’ve got, playing their current record Crooked Timber in full.

What’s most striking about the new material is how exciting it all sounds live. ‘Exiles’ is a stately affair, ‘Enjoy The Struggle’ boasts more rock action than the Thing from the Fantastic Four and current single ‘Crooked Timber’ is a brooding, melodic masterpiece. Therapy? also deliver more than a few forgotten gems for their old school fans with rare performances of ‘Fantasy Bag’ and ‘Teethgrinder’ B-Side ‘Summer of Hate’ (with the crowd taking great delight in shouting the “Fuck Woodstock” chorus) and the band seem to be enjoying them just as much as the punters. As we race towards the finish line we get a pleasingly Troublegum heavy encore.

After a thrilling ‘Nowhere’ the band say their fond farewells (and hint at a special 20th anniversary show next year) and it’s clear that they haven’t been this fired up in years. Welcome back boys. Edwin McFee

THE VIRGINS SPEAKEASY, BELFAST Is it ever less than intoxicating when New York comes to town? Emitting a grotty cosmopolitan glamour, Donald Summer is a gangly coquette with a complexion like scarified wax, relaying tales of bedding uptown debutantes and unruly ketamine trips in the gloom of the Speakeasy.

Of course, a Manhattan loft address and a dying liver don’t make you Lou Reed. It’s a wan artistic statement and lyrics like “let’s have a cocaine brunch” don’t exactly counter their reputation as catwalk-garnish; the

Lewis’s skill does not lie with his vocal ability. Instead, the downtrodden, patched-up songwriter sings like he speaks; scratchy, well worn and grandiloquent. Yet the affable singer peppers his melodic chatter with enough weight to prop up a ship, so much so that how he sings is irrelevant, so immersed is this packed house of punters in the songs. Take a solo tirade weighing the pros and cons of suicide, a new song Lewis wails through with aplomb three songs in. His band is seated on the ground, blinded from much of the crowd, with Lewis in the forefront strumming what looks to be a broken guitar.

After five minutes of pondering whether it would be better to jump off a bridge or drink poison, something clicks. The room is utterly silent, enraptured in the lyrics. No one moves, not even to the bar. It’s that still.

And herein lies the power of Jeffrey Lewis. Very few songwriters can pick up a guitar and start talking quickly, and in such loquaciousness churn out life-affirming and vivid imagery that rivals the true greats. And this is how it is, from start to finish. Lewis grabs the crowd and holds on for dear life, barely a soul breathing or talking out of turn, as we are all worried of missing that next line containing the meaning of life. And Lewis, careful to include enough old material to keep the lot compelled, reveals exactly why he is loved; dearly so. Whether it’s turning suicide into a comedic farce or writing about growing up in suburban New York, Lewis takes us all with him, submerged in his pathos – almost drowning in it. Utterly amazing. Shain Shapiro

THE HOLD STEADY THE ODYSSEY ARENA, BELFAST The soul-crushing arena support tour is a rite of passage for any enterprising underground band on the come-up. The Hold Steady, though, appear like they’re trying it on to see if they like the fit as they square up against an unpromising gaggle of bored looking Counting Crows fans. Either that, or their own shows got to be like shooting fish in a barrel and they fancied a bit of challenge. As a result, tonight’s set feels more like a job than the usual joyful vibe of the Hold Steady live experience. They take the fight to the crowd, barely pausing for breath in a greatest hits set jam-packed with anthem after anthem from their formidable back catalogue. Craig Finn’s onstage banter is kept to a minimum in favour of cramming more songs into their short time slot. Highlights include an extended ‘Your Little Hoodrat Friend’ and a swaggering ‘Stevie Nix’, and it’s to the band’s credit that they don’t rely solely on arena-friendly rockers, allowing time for a slow-burning ‘First Night’. By the end of the closing left-right of ‘Slapped Actress’ and ‘How A Resurrection Really Feels’, the crowd ain’t so bored any more and has filled out considerably. Job done – someday all this will be theirs. James McDonald Iheartau.com

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Club Au Vs stAte.ie presents: Club

VS.

in tHe AttiC:

sAturDAY 20tH June | lAVerY’s | brADburY plACe | belfAst | Doors 9pM | ADM. £5 [68]

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ORBITAL

T MOSTED N WA

SUMMER FESTIVAL SPECIAL NUMBER ONE:

PICNIC TIME! IRELAND’S FIRST BOUTIQUE FESTIVAL STILL LEADS THE FIELD Surely only one festival can come out top of a list like this. Now approaching its sixth year since starting as a one-day event back in 2004, the Electric Picnic has managed to maintain its singular atmosphere and eclectic approach, pretty much defining that pesky tag ‘boutique festival’. It’s the kind of festival where the faithful spend the nine months prior to it in fevered anticipation, and the three months afterwards slowly digesting it. Put simply, it’s the highlight of the year.

For those not in the know, the festival takes place in the leafy surroundings of Stradbally, Co. Laois, about an hour’s drive from Dublin. In its first year, it managed to attract acts of the calibre of Super Furry Animals, Jurassic 5 and Soulwax, but it was 2005, when it became a two-day event, when things really took off. Kraftwerk and Nick Cave were among the headliners, and The Arcade Fire’s set – shortly before they went stratospheric – became the stuff of legend. In 2006, the festival expanded to cover three days (well, two and a half), and since then it has been well established as Oxegen’s slightly more refined, discerning younger brother.

The main selling point is the atmosphere, which is often compared to Glastonbury, though on a much more manageable scale. In the last couple of years, concerns

that the organisers were unable to draw the same quantity of major acts as Oxegen have led to a slight shift in emphasis, and while the music still dominates, it’s all the other stuff that goes on that gives the festival its unique character. Cabaret, theatre, cookery demos, comedy, a funfair and the kind of ambience that puts you in mind of a particularly exciting summer fête. The Body & Soul Arena (expanded for 2009) is the hippy heartbeat of the place, while the Village Green takes care of your genteel side. The food is also superb, by the way – salmonella burgers are in short supply at EP. This year, the musical line-up is as varied as ever. At the time of going to press, only 47 acts had been announced – expect plenty more goodies over the next few months – but the early highlights include disco legends Chic, with their first ever Irish performance, Orbital, Flaming Lips, Fleet Foxes, MGMT, The Sugarhill Gang, Four Tet, Explosions In The Sky, dubstep kingpins Skream and Benga, 2ManyDJs and many more. Book early, eh?

Chris Jones ELECTRIC PICNIC TAKES PLACE AT STRADBALLY, CO. LAOIS, ON SEPTEMBER 4-6 Tickets: €240 for the weekend www.electricpicnic.com Iheartau.com

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OXEGEN Due to its size, facilities and (let’s be honest) a good proportion of its clientele, Oxegen has lost a bit of its lustre in recent years. The emergence of the bright and shiny Electric Picnic can’t have helped, either.

So in an effort to regain some credibility, they’ve properly pulled out all the stops this year with a quite incredible line-up. And with good reason – Oxegen is very much the modern, corporate festival, so the music has to be good. The punters will be pulled in good and proper with headliners as big as Snow Patrol, The Killers, Kings Of Leon and Blur (an Irish exclusive), but just look at what else is on offer: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, TV On The Radio, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, of Montreal, The Horrors, Mogwai, M83, The Specials, ASIWYFA… AU is impressed.

We’ll gloss over Lady Gaga, James Morrison and Razorlight, shall we?

T MOSTED WAN

OXEGEN TAKES PLACE AT PUNCHESTOWN RACECOURSE, CO. KILDARE ON JULY 10-12.

TICKETS: €224.50 FOR THE WEEKEND. WWW.OXEGEN.IE

PUKKELPOP

TRUCK

DOWNLOAD

Like Glasgowbury (see facing page), Truck is an independent festival that prides itself on its small-scale and friendly atmosphere. It’s been running every year since 1998 on Hill Farm in Steventon, rural Oxfordshire (except in 2007, when it was postponed and moved to Oxford Brookes University due to flooding). The name either comes from a compilation CD found by founder Robin Bennett called Keep On Trucking or (more likely) the fact that the main stage is constructed from three large flatbed trucks. Despite the cosy 5,000 capacity, there are six different stages, including one set up in a cowshed. Clearly, this is no ordinary festival. This year’s headliners are Ash and local heroes Supergrass, with other bands so far announced including ASIWYFA, Panama Kings, Errors, Red Light Company, Chew Lips and YACHT. Expect that list to be significantly bolstered in the next few weeks.

Since Reading and Leeds embraced indie, there has been only one serious option for British and Irish metallers: Download. Held at Donington and basically a continuation of the old Monsters Of Rock festivals, this is no place for shrinking violets, which is why our eyebrows raised appreciably when we read that General Fiasco are on the bill. Apart from them, though, it’s business as usual – this year’s headliners are Faith No More, Slipknot and Def Leppard (spandex-tastic), whilst elsewhere you can get your fill of old-school rawk with Mötley Crüe, Whitesnake and ZZ Top, nu-metal with Korn and Limp Bizkit, proper modern metal with Meshuggah and Opeth and goth fun with Marilyn Manson. Further NI interest comes with the appearances of Therapy? and The Answer.

TRUCK FESTIVAL TAKES PLACE AT HILL FARM, STEVENTON, OXFORDSHIRE ON JULY 25 AND 26.

TICKETS: £70 FOR THE WEEKEND. WWW.THISISTRUCK.COM SONAR

DOWNLOAD TAKES PLACE AT DONINGTON PARK, LEICESTERSHIRE ON JUNE 12-14.

TICKETS: £135 FOR THE WEEKEND, ARENA ONLY (CAMPING TICKETS SOLD OUT).

WWW.DOWNLOADFESTIVAL.CO.UK

Just look at that name. Good, innit? This “progressive” Belgian festival deserves a mention just for that (though Holland’s Pinkpop runs it a close second). Boasting eight stages and a capacity of around 150,000 (nearly twice as many as Oxegen, to put that in context), this one is a huge deal. Maybe Belgium isn’t so boring, after all. As well as the sensory overload of being at such a huge festival, you also get a top-drawer line-up, this year headlined

by Faith No More, Kraftwerk, Arctic Monkeys and dEUS (they’re Belgian, innit). Also appearing are the ASIWYFA boys, My Bloody Valentine, Dinosaur Jr, Snow Patrol, Wilco, Deftones, Vitalic and many, many more. Top banana.

PUKKELPOP TAKES PLACE IN KIEWIT, NR HASSELT, BELGIUM ON AUGUST 20-22.

TICKETS: €135 FOR THE WEEKEND. WWW.PUKKELPOP.

SONAR There are plenty of dance festivals around, but none that quite compares to Sónar. Like Primavera Sound and Summercase, the other big Barcelonabased festivals, there’s no camping, but this is urban festivalling on a huge scale. 80,000 people descend on the Catalan capital for three days and nights of utter madness. ‘Sónar by Day’ takes place in the city centre and is more like your average music festival – bands and DJs during the day. Simple. ‘Sónar by Night’, however, is a different proposition altogether.

This takes place a bus ride away and is split into four separate – enormous – areas. We haven’t yet been, but we are told that the sight of tens of thousands of people raving their heads off all night, in a huge hangar with an incredible PA, is worth the trip. Not to mention the stellar line-up. This year’s highlights include SebastiAn, Orbital, Richie Hawtin, Animal Collective, Carl Craig, Fever Ray, Crystal Castles, Martyn, Grace Jones etc etc…

SONAR TAKES PLACE IN BARCELONA ON JUNE 18-20.

TICKETS: €140 FOR THE WEEKEND, DAY AND NIGHT. WWW.2009.SONAR.ES

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SZIGET

DOT DOT DOT… THE BEST OF THE REST IN LIVE MUSIC Wednesday, June 3 Dan Deacon & Ensemble Andrew’s Lane Theatre, Dublin (also June 4) The Mighty Diamonds Tripod, Dublin Thursday, June 4 Manic Street Preachers, In Case Of Fire Olympia, Dublin (June 6, Ulster Hall, Belfast)

SZIGET

EUROCKEENNES

Eastern Europe is an excellent choice for an alternative festival experience. We’ve heard good things about EXIT in Serbia, T-Mobile INmusic in Croatia and Open’er in Poland, but top of our list would have to be Sziget in Budapest, Hungary. It’s not for the faint of heart, though. For a start, it lasts for a full week, so camping is strictly for the well-prepared.

However, because of its unique location on an island in the middle of the Danube, right in the heart of the Hungarian capital, you could dip in and out over the course of a week’s stay in Budapest. The line-up tends to be a bit patchy, and not exactly cutting edge (though Squarepusher, Klaxons and Calexico are confirmed for this year) but with nearly 400,000 punters expected and countless other activities on offer, it’d be one hell of an experience. And just think of all the cheap food and beer.

Another good name, this one is a pun (and Lord knows we at AU like puns) on the words ‘rock’ and ‘européennes’ (European in French). It was conceived by the forward looking politicians of Belfort, eastern France, as a way of making their area that little bit cooler (or milking the youth vote, possibly). Job well done. Apart from having that je ne sais quoi that only the French possess, the organisers clearly know their onions on the line-up front. This year, the 100,000 capacity festival boasts The Bronx, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, Kanye West, Torche, Mos Def, Friendly Fires and loads more. Plus, it takes place at a nature resort, so it really is impossibly beautiful.

SZIGET TAKES PLACE IN BUDAPEST, HUNGARY ON AUGUST 12-17.

TICKETS: €150 FOR THE WEEK OR €180 WITH CAMPING. WWW.SZIGET.HU

CELTRONIC If you’re an electronic music fan and your budget doesn’t quite stretch to Sónar in Barcelona, a long weekend in Derry could be in order. Each year, the Celtronic festival takes over the city for a weekend, offering up high-calibre acts from home and abroad to play in venues such as Mason’s, Sandino’s and the Nerve Centre. The cream of this year’s crop includes gauzy electronica maestro Ulrich Schnauss, German house DJ Dixon, French electro king Brodinski, Lurgan’s Boxcutter and his fellow Planet Mu star Milanese, folktronica artist James Yuill, ace remixer Duke Dumont, Belfast techno producer Phil Kieran playing a rare live set and London disco dons Horsemeat Disco. The lure of the north-west is strong.

CELTRONIC TAKES PLACE THROUGHOUT DERRY ON JUNE 24-28.

TICKETS: TBA

EUROCKÉENNES TAKES PLACE AT MALSAUCY, NR BELFORT, FRANCE ON JULY 3-5.

TICKETS: €85 FOR THE WEEKEND. WWW.FESTIVAL.EUROCKEENNES.FR

GLASGOWBURY According to its own slogan, Glasgowbury is “small but massive” and it’s getting bigger. 2009 marks the tenth year of the Sperrins-based festival, named after its head honcho Paddy Glasgow, who in 2000 decided to put on a gig to raise some money and awareness for the Ulster Cancer Foundation. Almost a decade on, it’s grown into a full day, multi-stage celebration of Northern Irish music, with several southern bands (Ham Sandwich, Hybrasil, The Dagger Lees) joining in the fun last year. This year’s bill has yet to be announced, but expect just about every NI indie and rock band worth their salt to be there, plus several from elsewhere, from little-heard up-and-comers to wellestablished stalwarts like last year’s headliners Ash. A scenic setting high in the mountains, a community vibe and loads of great bands make this an ideal low-cost (and family-friendly) alternative to the bigger festivals.

GLASGOWBURY FESTIVAL TAKES PLACE AT EAGLES ROCK, DRAPERSTOWN, ON SATURDAY JULY 25.

TICKETS: £25 OR £30 WITH CAMPING. WWW.GLASGOWBURY.COM

Friday, June 5 The Handsome Family Errigle Inn, Belfast Saturday, June 6 Wire Whelan’s, Dublin Ham Sandwich Purty Loft, Dun Laoghaire Fighting With Wire Square Peg, Warrenpoint Sunday, June 7 Junior Boys Academy, Dublin Monday, June 8 Carrie Rodriguez Auntie Annie’s, Belfast Mahjongg Upstairs @ Whelans, Dublin Wednesday, June 10 Humanzi Auntie Annie’s, Belfast (June 11, Strange Brew, Galway; June 12, Electric Avenue, Waterford; June 13, Twisted Pepper, Dublin) Sonic Boom Six, Pocket Billiards, The Lobotomies McHugh’s, Belfast Friday, June 12 Not Squares, LaFaro, Adebisi Shank Stiff Kitten, Belfast Mr Scruff Button Factory, Dublin Republic of Loose O’Keeffe’s, Clonmel Saturday, June 13 Shackleton, NakedLunch Black Box, Belfast Ham Sandwich Whelan’s, Dublin

Friday, June 19 In Case Of Fire, Mojo Fury Auntie Annie’s, Belfast The Prodigy, Hot Chip (DJ set), Zane Lowe, Japanese Popstars, Noize Control Donard Park, Newcastle Halves Whelan’s, Dublin Jinx Lennon Pavilion, Cork Saturday, June 20 Oasis, Kasabian, The Enemy, Prodigy Slane Castle, Meath Fujiya & Miyagi Tripod, Dublin Sunday, June 21 Neil Young The O2, Dublin Monday, June 22 Kasabian, Fight Like Apes St. George’s Market, Belfast Wednesday, June 24 Xposure: The Good Fight, The Benjamins, Ended 31st + Not Squares DJs Auntie Annie’s, Belfast Friday, June 26 Bundoran Sea Sessions Festival (feat: SFA, Andrew Weatherall, David Kitt etc) Bundoran, Co. Donegal Alias Empire, Le Galaxie Whelan’s, Dublin Kowalski, Cutaways 4M, Omagh Bell X1, Villagers The Marquee, Cork Saturday, June 27 Willowstone Arts & Music Festival (feat.

Republic Of Loose, Ed Zealous, Panama Kings, Heliopause, NI Soul Troop etc) Delamont Country Park, Killyleagh Sunday, June 28 AC/DC, The Answer Punchestown Racecourse, Naas Monday, June 29 The Answer Mandela Hall, Belfast

Imelda May Vicar St, Dublin (also June 14)

Saturday, July 4 Shine: Simian Mobile Disco (DJ Set) Fake Blood, Alan Simms, Thursday, June 18 Space Dimension The Thermals, Pavilion Controller Auntie Annie’s, Belfast QUB SU, Belfast

Iheartau.com

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SHORT CUTS Ghost with the most…

According to Dan Aykroyd, the third Ghostbusters film is currently at the scripting stage, and original stars Bill Murray and Sigourney Weaver are on board. Now there’s something you don’t see every day…

EEN SCR

A hard cell…

Speaking of things you don’t see every day, Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor are lovers!

Based on a true story, forthcoming prison comedy drama I Love You Phillip Morris sees the Scottish thesp playing a prisoner who falls in love with his conman inmate.

Big Screen

THE FUTURE IS REWRITTEN TERMINATOR SALVATION ARRIVES IN TIME

B

y the time you read this, unless the world has been devastated by a nuclear war orchestrated by intelligent machines rebelling against civilisation, an upgraded Terminator movie should be playing in your local multiplex or fleapit. With Judgement Day looming once again, it’s time to cast a glowing red eye over the franchise, to observe and report the various events that have brought humanity to this point.

Female readers called Sarah Connor should look away now…

Before he went on to sink ships and bag an armful of Oscars, cocky young whizkid James Cameron inadvertently

WORDS BY ROSS THOMPSON

firmament let alone a movie star, was grunting, swinging a sword and showing off his lacquered walnut physique as the almighty Conan. Not content crushing his enemies and hearing the lamentation of their women, Schwarzenegger had his heart, then entirely human, set on higher goals: international acclaim, a star on Hollywood’s walk of fame and (gulp) a job in politics.

These two men may have been poles apart, but their paths were soon to converge when a low-budget sci-fi picture plopped into both of their laps. Few could have predicted, even with the aid of a flux capacitor and endless plutonium,

“THE TERMINATOR WAS AN ASTONISHING PIECE OF FILMMAKING AT THE TIME, AND IT’S STILL SURPRISINGLY COMPELLING TODAY.” found himself directing a movie. The movie in question was Piranha II: The Spawning (1981), an indescribably bad B-picture in which the toothy fish develop the ability to fly (and breathe above water, but forget about the science) and munch on unsuspecting tourists. But hey, we’ve all got to start somewhere.

When the original director walked off the project, Cameron, then in charge of special effects, was shown to the director’s chair – he hasn’t relinquished it since.

At this point, Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger, barely a pinprick in the

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that it would be the first instalment in one of the most lucrative franchises in film history. Named The Terminator (1984), and co-scripted by Cameron, the central conceit was a simple one, and easily relatable to anyone who has ever tried to install a piece of ‘user friendly’ software. In the near future, an artificial intelligence network named Skynet kickstarted a global war, obliterating most of humankind and enslaving the rest.

However, things always get a bit trickier when you throw in time travel and quantum physics. Let’s see if we can get this right: a man from the future is sent back in time to prevent a cyborg assassin

from the same period hunting and killing the woman who will give birth to the hero who will lead a resistance against these machines. Ahem. It’s a circular, self-devouring plot that, when you stop to think about it, has more holes than Pete Doherty’s arms. Good thing then that not many viewers stopped to think about it.

Not that they were given a chance.

From the very first glance of Arnold’s bare buttocks (you have to be naked to safely travel in time, apparently) to the final showdown in an industrial works, The Terminator, much like its titular character, never lets up. Schwarzenegger was always dismissed as a poor actor with scant ability to emote, which made him perfect for the role of a robotic entity with no feelings of mercy or remorse. But his performance in this movie is bang on the money. Not because he cannot act, but because he can. Sure, Schwarzenegger’s repertoire might be slim, but when it comes to playing a stone cold killing machine, he’s the shizzle.

Audiences lapped up The Terminator upon its release, and it went on to gross over 10 times its original, very modest budget. Arguably, it tapped into growing fears of the escalation of technology, particularly Star Wars – no, not the film, the American space defence program – and the skeletal clutches of a Cold War which refused to die out. It was an astonishing piece of filmmaking at the time, and it is still surprisingly compelling today. Sure, the special effects are shonky in parts, but the action sequences – most notably an all-out assault on a police station, which sees an entire squadron wiped out – are as frantic and pulsequickening as when first watched on a neighbour’s brother’s pirated videotape.

Absolutely clawless…

Despite being weaker than a cup of tea made with invisible teabags, Wolverine raked in truckloads of cash during its opening weekend.

Not only is it a dead cert for a sequel, but it also has a spin-off: Deadpool, featuring the mercenary played by Ryan Reynolds, is in pre-production as you read this. This is not good news.

Buying time…

A Director’s Cut of Watchmen has dropped on DVD Stateside, adding on another 25 minutes of extra footage. Check back next month for our full feature on the film that almost didn’t get made.

New Blue Eyes…

Start spreading the news: Martin Scorsese has supposedly agreed to helm a biopic of the legendary – and reportedly ‘connected’ – crooner, womaniser and drinker Frank Sinatra.

Hex appeal…

Josh Brolin is set to take the title role in an adaptation of Jonah Hex, DC Comics’ Wild West gunslinger. Undertaker, prepare a lot of coffins…

If it ain’t broke, don’t remake it…

New versions of Fright Night, Footloose and Cliffhanger are all in the works. The phrase ‘quality control’ springs to mind.

The satiric verses…

What are they thinking?

Film 4 have given Chris Morris, the controversial troublemaker behind Brass Eye and Nathan Barley, the chance to make his first full-length film. Entitled Four Lions, it is said to be a loosely comic thriller involving four young Muslims becoming Jihadis. Daily Mail journalists are currently setting phasers to ‘outraged’.

What’s more, the writing was intense and thought-provoking and frightening for anyone who grew up during the Eighties, when the threat of a Third World War was all too real. That coda, in which (* here be spoilers! *) the Terminator has been squashed and Sarah Connor stares down a lonely highway at an approaching storm, seemed to promise that all was not resolved, both within the movie’s ongoing story, and the real world.

Jump forward in time seven years, and Cameron and Schwarzenegger are about to redefine the phrase ‘high concept’ and reinvent the summer event movie. With Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991), Cameron took action pictures to a whole new

is virtually indestructible. Largely because of Judgement Day, special effects in filmmaking took a giant leap forward – the boffins took the technology developed for The Abyss and that tedious Michael Jackson video where he morphs into all the races in the world, and pitched it forward. Watching a man made from liquid metal slip between prison bars, or shape his fist into a deadly blade, was breathtaking. The future had arrived with a bang, and with a 20 minute car, motorbike, helicopter and truck chase down a busy Los Angeles freeway.

Second, turning Schwarzenegger into the hero of the piece opened up several interesting avenues. How

“LET’S HOPE THAT SALVATION LIVES UP TO THE HYPE. IF IT DOESN’T, THE SERIES WILL BE WELL AND TRULY TERMINATED.” level by pushing all of the bigger, louder and faster buttons on his director’s remote. Again, the premise is straightforward: when a new Terminator (the T-1000) arrives in town to kill the young John Connor, another Ahnuldt lookalike is sent by the future John Connor to protect his former self. Again, this doesn’t sound so good on paper, but it rips up the screen, let me tell you.

There are a couple of neat twists.

Firstly, the T-1000 is the pinnacle of android science. Constructed from polyalloy, it can emulate anything or assume the identity of anyone it touches that does not have moving parts (therefore, anyone apart from Jeremy Kyle and Chris Moyles) and

could Sarah Connor trust a man who looks identical to the one who tried to murder her several years before?

What would happen if he failed in his mission to protect the teenage John? Could a Terminator really have a sense of humour? It gave Judgement Day real heart, a necessary foil for a film which contained pretty distressing scenes of Armageddon burning through city streets and children’s playgrounds. Few other films, perhaps Jurassic Park (1993) aside, share its sense of scale and wonder.

After this, the Terminator saga got a little lost up its own alternate future.

Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines (2003), landlocked in script and

budget disputes for the best part of a decade while Cameron walked, was a poorly conceived rehash of its previous model. This time there’s a female Terminator, the slinky T-X, but aside from looking like an unemployed dominatrix she’s not given very much to do but strut about and look angry. Top marks, however, should be given to its downbeat ending, in which the heroes don’t save the day, and World War III breaks

out. Most recently, television show The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008) debuted to mixed reviews and got cancelled before being renewed for a third series. The Terminator had been outdated. Production shut down.

People stopped worrying about the apocalypse.

Which brings us to Terminator Salvation (2009). It’s directed by McG, the man behind The OC and the Pussycat Dolls’ television show.

Longtime fans initially baulked that an expert in frosted tips and body bronzing couldn’t possibly handle a story about the destruction of the human race, but he did give the world the Charlie’s Angels films, so he should know a thing or two about inflicting torture. Starring Christian Bale as the now adult John Connor, the script focuses on events after Skynet has thrown a huff, as the last dregs of humanity retaliate against the Terminators. Screenings were not available at the time of going to press, but the trailers have been as big and thumpingly loud as the series demands. Various kinds of automated skin-jobs and creepy metal tentacles bring all kinds of pain to their flesh and blood counterparts, and as for that rumoured Schwarzenegger cameo… well…

Let’s hope that Salvation lives up to the hype. If it doesn’t, the series will be well and truly terminated.

Images taken from Terminator Salvation: The Official Movie Companion and The Art Of Terminator Salvation – on sale now from Titan Books.

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BIONIC COMMANDO

ES GAM

CONSOLE YOURSELF!

OUR REGULAR ROUND-UP OF THE NEW RELEASES: HOW TO TELL CLASSIC PONG FROM A GAME WHICH JUST STINKS … WORDS BY ROSS THOMPSON BIONIC COMMANDO

to gad about on this metal vine to your heart’s content without creating any framerate stuttering.

Swings and roustabouts…

Part Spidey, part Indy, part Inspector Gadget, Spencer makes for a formidable action hero. Voiced by Faith No More’s Mike Patton, who seems to be making a tidy sideline at this sort of thing these days, the eponymous commando is butch and cavalier and pithy as they come. But sadly, a few things threaten to spoil the party. First off, there’s the difficulty level. Anyone familiar with Capcom’s illustrious back catalogue will already know that they like to set gamers a challenge, but there is a difference between challenging and plain unfair.

Snipers, for example, are especially

(Capcom, PC / PS3 / Xbox 360)

Nathan "Rad" Spencer is ticked off.

Really ticked off. Recently released from a high security prison for a crime he did not commit, the disgraced super soldier returns home to find that Ascension City has been all but decimated by the terrorist group BioReign (where do these extremists get their titles? “I’ll be there in a second, love. I’m just filling out an application form. They’re looking for a new henchman at ScumPlosion”).

Offered the chance to clear his name, Spencer enters the crumbling metropolis

“part spidey, part indy, part inspector gadget, nathan spencer makes for a formidable action hero.” to wipe out the enemy before they can do any more damage. So far, so Rambo, but Bionic Commando has a unique selling point which distinguishes it from all the other surly grunts in the platoon: Spencer’s mechanical arm, an extendable litter lifter useful for pitching rubble at baddies and swinging about from pillar to lamppost. Much has been made of this innovative gaming dynamic, and for the most part, once you get used to the controls, it’s a lot of fun. The first time you leap off the side of a tilting skyscraper and stretch out your clamp for an overhanging beam is undeniably thrilling. Impressively, developers Grin have managed to implement a system that enables you

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tricky to dispatch, particularly when it seems that they can see through rocks and pillars, and when you’re already trying to outrun a gang of rampaging metal gorillas. It would be more evenly matched if you were given more ammo, but it seems that recession has hit the gaming world too, as upgrades and bullet canisters are few and far between.

Second, Bionic Commando looks very pretty indeed, a vision of collapsed freeways, teetering cable cars and buildings with exposed metal framework, but it’s an illusion of an open world. In fact, it’s pretty linear – stray too far outside the designer’s chosen path and you will be crispy fried

by radiation. It’s an unusual choice to offer the player apparent freedom than wheek it away again when things start to get interesting, but them’s the breaks, as they say. That said, proceedings are redeemed by a clever achievements system which sets certain challenges as you battle through waves of enemies.

Use your arm to toss one neo-Nazi at another and – bingo! – you’ll receive a healthy dose of gamer points. If you don’t mind your releases being rock hard, and occasionally unforgiving, hang around with Bionic Commando and you will find this an enjoyable, if not entirely stellar, diversion.

BYTES: Super Extra Bonus Party…

Turns out that Broken Steel, the latest wad of DLC for Fallout 3, will not be the last. Bethesda have announced two further packs, Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta. Both are scheduled for release later this year. Once again it’s time to say goodbye to sleep, relief breaks and anything resembling a social life.

BIONIC COMMANDO

A real money spinner…

Activision are currently working on their latest music-related release.

DJ Hero, due to drop this autumn, will come bundled with a turntable peripheral, and has already been endorsed by Paul Oakenfold and DJ Shadow.

It should feature tracks by the likes of Beastie Boys, Gorillaz, Jurassic 5 and Marvin Gaye. Meanwhile, Lute Hero is due out early next year…

Give me the skinny…

Mysterious images of a new, slimline PS3 have appeared online. Sony are currently keeping mum about the matter, but pics will soon be on the cover of next week’s Heat under the headline ‘Console Shock Weight Loss’.

Wheelie dangerous…

An American high school recently conducted an

THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK: ASSAULT ON DARK ATHENA

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE

(Activision, DS / PC / PS3 / PSP / Wii / Xbox 360)

Logan’s run…

After being de-clawed by the lacklustre Wolverine movie, we held out little hope for the latest console appearance of everybody’s favourite hairy mutant. The film is a muddled, lame-brained clunker of the worst kind, where the permanently irked Logan seemed more intent on giving bad guys a nasty Chinese burn rather than impaling them on his retractable claws. Fortunately, this tie-in is much more bloodthirsty.

Whereas the Wolverine film depicted him as about as dangerous as a teething puppy, here he is free to unleash his famed berserker rage.

The claret flows freely as you rip arms out of sockets, bisect bodies

with a pleasing schnikt, and implant drones on spikes and broken branches. This might explain the big red ‘18’ on the front cover. Most releases of late have been decidedly meh, but Wolverine is surprisingly enjoyable, and just what the doctor ordered after a day of pushing pens and staring out the window.

Gameplay is in the same vein as Devil May Cry, as you hack, slash and thump through level after level of expendable minions, offing each one as you see fit. Wolvie’s rich variety of moves is not complemented, however, by the lack of invention in level design (get power pack, open door, proceed), which can grow tiresome if you are looking for something a little more cerebral to chew on. But in spite of the danger of repetitive brain injury, and the continuity errors (watch out for a magically disappearing vest), this is an entertaining romp which does exactly what it says on the Adamantium tin.

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE

THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK: ASSAULT ON DARK ATHENA (Atari, PC / PS3 / Xbox 360)

Verging on the Riddick-ulous…

Way back in 2004, Vin Diesel was gearing up to step into Bruce Willis’s sleeveless vest. Quick of wit and slow of voice, the chrome-domed tough-nut was trumpeted as the next big action hero, but a couple of poor movie choices soon put pay to that idea. One minute Vin was nursing babies in The Pacifier, a family friendly vehicle which had the temerity to knock off Kindergarten Cop; the next, he was chugging postMatrix philoso-balls in sci-fi hodgepodge The Chronicles Of Riddick.

Two things remain interesting about this film. One, it boasted the distinctly odd casting of her royal highness Judi Dench – imagine if William Shatner materialised in a British costume drama. Two, the accompanying videogame, Escape From Butcher Bay, first released on the original Xbox, was a critical hit, all but eclipsing the film which inspired it – a neat reversal of the cack-handed manner in which film adaptations of videogames are normally handled.

Now reincarnated on a new generation of consoles, Riddick is back for more hard man shenanigans and gravely-voiced witticisms.

Think of this as a double feature, if you will, comprising an update of Butcher Bay and the brand new adventure, Dark Athena. Developed

by Starbreeze, the Swedish studio behind The Darkness, it relies upon the same mixture of brutal violence, detective work and stealthy sneaking about. Butcher Bay is like an adultsonly version of Prison Break, with Riddick plonked in a penitentiary that not even Louis Theroux would visit. Full of twitchy, tattooed inmates desperate to shank our hero just because they dislike the cut of his jib, the atmosphere is dark and distinctly oppressive. Most intriguing is the way it defies categorisation, as it combines RPG style tasks with First Person Shooter action.

The fisticuffs, meanwhile, are in your face (literally) and reminiscent of Condemned 2 – try not to wince when you grab somebody by the neck and insert a shiv into their eye socket. It makes for a strange hybrid which at least brings something a little different to the party. To be fair, Riddick is beginning to show its age, and is perhaps not quite as groundbreaking as it once was, but it proves to be an offbeat, different gaming experience.

BYTES: experiment using the Wii Wheel and copies of Mario Kart to prove that driving whilst doing things like sending text messages is dangerous. Eating mushrooms, however, was allowed.

Dead meat extract…

EA will shortly follow up Dead Space, our favourite game of last year, with new instalment Extraction, an on rails shooter for the Wii. Three

cheers for motion sensitive strategic dismemberment.

Board rigid…

Activision have confirmed the development of a new Tony Hawk skating project. Entitled Ride, and released across all platforms, it works with a motion sensitive skateboard peripheral. Much less strenuous than actual skateboarding.

Competition

Is there anything more amusing than comedy monkeys? Particularly when they are smacking the face of preening movie stars? There’s a lot of this simian slappery in Night At The Museum 2, in which Ben Stiller is once again tormented by a menagerie of stuffed exhibits come to life. Seeing him getting thwacked by simians just about makes up for the abomination that was Tropic Thunder. Courtesy of our friends at Majesco Entertainment, we have three copies of the accompanying platformer Night At The Museum 2 to give away on Xbox 360. To win a copy, simply send your name, details and the title of your favourite famous monkey to ross@iheartau.com.

Iheartau.com

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ICS COM

BIG MOUTH STRIKES AGAIN

DEADPOOL TEAMS UP WITH HIS OWN ZOMBIFIED HEAD IN LATEST OUTING WORDS BY EDWIN MCFEE

H

that as Wade teams up with the one person in the Marvel U that’s just as chatty as he is – a ghoulish, undead, brain-hungry version of himself.

Ever since his first appearance in issue 98 of New Mutants back in 1991, the wisecracking antihero Deadpool has been a huge hit with fanboys. This year sees the character scale new heights of notoriety with an appearance in the movie X-Men

“Yes folks, Deadpool teams up with his own head,” laughs the writer. “This book ties into events from Marvel Zombies 4 and Wade has somehow acquired his own zombified head from an alternative reality and, since the head is where the mouth is, you get double the wisecracks and double the banter. It’s really a win-win situation all around. Of course, zombie heads can get

ot on the heels of his big screen debut in X Men Origins: Wolverine, Marvel’s ‘Merc with a Mouth’ lands a second title. We talk to novelist and current Punisher scribe Victor Gischler to hear about his plans for the fan favourite character.

“the rumours that he’s going to have his own column in the new yorker are totally false. as for the rumour that he’s dating lindsay lohan? Now, that might be true.”

Origins: Wolverine (where he is played by Mr Scarlett Johansson, Ryan Reynolds) and Marvel has confirmed a spin off film is in the works too. Not to be outdone, the publisher is also launching a second title (Deadpool: Merc with a Mouth) featuring Wade Wilson and it promises to deliver more WTF moments than an episode of Rock of Love once it launches in July, as he’s set to team up with (drum roll, please) himself. Yes readers, as most villains in the Marvel Universe will agree, the only thing worse than going up against an un-killable man like Wolverine is going up against Deadpool, an un-killable man who won’t shut the hell up. However, said villains will discover there is something even worse than

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cranky and try to bite your parts so ya gotta take the bad with the good.

“Merc With a Mouth kicks off with a six-part arc titled, appropriately, ‘Head Trip’. AIM operatives hire Deadpool to steal a key component of a bio-weapon before Hydra can get their hands on it. Deadpool finds himself caught in the middle of these two organisations and it turns out that the secret ingredient of the bio-weapon is the head of the zombie Deadpool. So in short, the book is an action-packed buddy picture with himself.”

So will the zombie head of Deadpool eventually be getting his own series at some

stage too (come on, like you all weren’t thinking that)?

“Hmmmmm… a title for a zombie head?

Not sure I know anything about that, but I can say that the rumours that he’s going to have his own column in The New Yorker are totally false. As for the rumour that he’s dating Lindsay Lohan? Now, that might be true.”

Victor has been a huge success on the Punisher series and done the unthinkable by seamlessly carrying on from where Garth Ennis left off. Landing the Deadpool gig is a dream come true, so we ask him about how he became involved with the book.

SUPER SHORTS This month, the annual Derry comic convention is back in action and if you’re in the north-west on June 4-6 then we definitely recommend you check out what they have on offer. The 2D festival boasts guests such as Liam (the Incredible Hulk) Sharp, David (V for Vendetta) Lloyd and much, much more, and by the time you read this a full line-up will be made available on their website www.2dfestival.com.

After waiting for what seemed like an eternity, director Ken Branagh has announced his primary cast for the up-coming Thor movie. While many pundits were predicting that sweaty WWE wrestler Triple H would nab the role and lay the smackdown on the Frost Giants of Asgard, the part has ended up going to relative unknown (but reassuringly lantern-jawed) Chris Hemsworth. Thor’s evil half brother Loki has also been cast and the God of Mischief will be played by the much respected theatre actor Tom Hiddleston. The movie is set to be released on May 20, 2011 and we’re stroking our plastic replica of Mjölnir in anticipation (Mjölnir is Thor’s hammer by the way. Get your mind out of the gutter).

Deadpool can handle a pack of rabid ninjas a lot better than he can handle a pretty face. It’s interesting and fun to toss these complications at Wade. Also, every issue of every comic book needs at least one pretty girl in it. That’s a federal law, I think.”

And when pushed on other Marvel characters to write, Victor plumps for a personal favorite of this writer’s – Tigra (hey, who doesn’t love a furry hot chick with a tail?).

“I’ve been trying to get Axel to let me do a Tigra arc for Max for ages,” he grins. “I’ll keep working on it [laughs].

Daredevil has always been a favorite too.

I’m game for most anything.”

As Victor prepares to launch his title this July, he reveals that he’s going to have an extremely busy summer, all things considered.

SUPER SHORTS If you feel like taking a chance on a comic this July, then we heartily endorse this year’s Hero Initiative book. The charity (which helps comic creators who have fallen on hard times) is extremely worthwhile and worthy of your support and issue one of Hero Comics features a new 32-page American Flagg! story with a super cool cheesecake cover courtesy of J. Scott Campbell.

Congrats to former Top Cow president David Wohl who has just been made editor-in-chief at Radical Comics. Well done that man.

“That’s simple. Axel Alonso [one of Marvel’s editors] tapped me on the shoulder and said we should start batting round ideas for Deadpool. So we batted the hell out of those ideas and made them cry for mercy. Also, I think in a few of my novels (such as Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse) I was able to show my skills combining action with edgy, quirky humor. So we thought I might be a good fit for another Deadpool book. We plan on giving him lots of new challenges that consist of him trying to kill people and them trying to stop him.

And people will try to kill him, folks. This happens a lot. Also, creatures will try to eat him, and pretty girls will make him go huminahuminahuminahumina. So he has all that to deal with and it makes for a full day. I think what most of us would consider challenges, Deadpool thinks of as ‘business as usual.’”

As well as having a blast and living out his inner lunatic in public, Victor has nothing but praise for the series artist and legendary Star Wars artist Bong Dazo.

“I’ve said this before, but it needs to be said again. Bong is an effing genius. I’ll try to imagine the scene in my head, and I’ll think it’s pretty good. Then Bong comes along and comes up with something 10 times better than what I had in mind. Bong’s the real star.”

Of course, by having two Deadpool titles (the other series is written by Daniel Way), there can be a danger of overexposing the character. Just look at the Batman books, for example. While the mainstream may think of Bruce Wayne as being an interesting kinda dude, true comic fans see him as the four colour equivalent of vanilla ice cream. Does Victor worry that his book will cause a backlash?

“Well I’m going to try to breathe as much new life into the book as I can,” offers the writer. “One of my own inventions is Dr. Betty, the pretty face who adds a bit of excitement to Deadpool’s life and she maybe has a few surprises later on.

“Yeah, it’s going to get pretty crazy,” he explains. “I have a crime novel called The Deputy hitting stores in August, and in September a novel called Vampire A Go-Go ... a sort of parody of horror tropes and Da Vinci Code-type novels. I was invited to Armadillo Con in Austin and am looking forward to that and I also have some screenplay projects I’d like to try too. I’m pretty damn busy, now that I think of it.”

As we finish our chat with the writer, we ask him if he found it hard to move from writing The Punisher (a book that’s so grim and gritty it’s like listening to the Glasvegas record on repeat for a week) to the relatively happy-go-lucky (well, for an insane dude who can never be killed) character of Deadpool.

“It is a departure, but a departure I like,” he concludes. “I always feel more creative when I can mix it up a bit and smartass Wade Wilson is the perfect way for mixing it up.”

DEADPOOL: MERC WITH A MOUTH IS OUT IN JULY AND IS PUBLISHED

BY MARVEL COMICS. WWW.MARVEL.COM.

MY FAVOURITE COMIC WITH:EDGE

“I’ve

always loved comics, basically since I can remember.

Comics, along with [the band] KISS, were really the first things that I discovered.

For some reason I latched onto those things. I loved the artwork and, also as long as I can remember, I’ve been able to draw, so I could try and look at what I was reading and draw it – that was really fun for me.

I’ve always drawn comic book characters and had a really good time with that. Maybe it was the artwork, maybe it was the larger-than-life characters and all these different powers that made comics seem so cool to me growing up and looking at what we do now as wrestlers, it’s as close as you can get to being a real life superhero.

time-streams – I dunno, it’s fun to me. It’s cool to see heroes as villains and vice versa. Spidey and Thor have also stayed as my favorite books too. They’re kinda timeless, aren’t they?”

EDGE IS A WRESTLER AND COMPETES FOR WWE

“As a kid, everybody loves Spidey and I certainly did too. Thor was also a big favorite and when I was a child the Incredible Hulk was huge. As I grew older, I got into the darker characters. It’s been a nice journey throughout the years to kind of grow up with the characters. I’ve always loved Daredevil though. I really adored Kevin Smith’s take on Daredevil. I really like Exiles too. Something about popping in and out of Iheartau.com

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to music concrète that your old friend and musical kindred spirit John Peel’s show used to lurch between?

KS BOO

We are somewhere between a specialist music programme and mainstream entertainment programme. One of the things we don’t like to do is be snobbish about music – like in that film High Fidelity, we don’t want to sneer at people because they don’t have the breadth of knowledge that we have.

So we didn’t want our programme to be a forbidding place to visit, and between us there’s very little music that we don’t cover. John [Peel] played a massively eclectic selection of new stuff, but we try and do that in conjunction with a massively eclectic selection of old stuff as well, which actually is something I wish John had done more of in his shows. I admired him enormously and I loved him as a bloke, but when I listened to his show I did think, ‘This is all great, this new stuff, and it’s really intriguing to hear, but I also want to hear him play, you know, Tyrannosaurus Rex and put it in some kind of context’.

I have to admit that, as someone who was a massive fan of Peel, and who had the privilege of recording four sessions for him [with Tunic], I found some of his later shows quite tough going.

I did too! Although I kind of defend his right to do that. I’d like to think, though, that John really saw value in the music he played. Sometimes you would wonder, you know, does he really like that? There is music that is worth hearing once in your life, just because it is such an extraordinary sound. That’s the thing – on daytime radio, you accept that you can’t play, say, 10 minutes of industrial trance… but sometimes it is worth hearing 10 minutes of industrial trance, just so you know that it exists.

RADIO HEAD

MARK RADCLIFFE: A LIFETIME IN MUSIC Is there a broadcaster working on national radio today with a more idiosyncratic career trajectory than Mark Radcliffe? It seems unlikely.

From interviewing the elusive Kate Bush to winning Celebrity Stars In Their Eyes (as Shane MacGowan), from taking over from Chris Evans on the Radio 1 Breakfast Show to co-presenting programmes for a decade with (let us not forget) a former bassist from The Fall; his has been a journey almost impossible to predict.

In Thank You For The Days, he plots a course through all these extraordinary moments, and more besides.

Here he talks to AU about the BBC, Nirvana, and shepherd’s pie…

WORDS BY MARK GORDON

In

the book you talk of how you were influenced

by Richard Sinton at Piccadilly Radio in Manchester, who firmly subscribed to the belief that “there were only two kinds of music: good and bad, and just because something wasn’t to your taste didn’t mean it was the latter.” Could you reconcile this notion with those afternoons at Radio 1, when you had to play the fourth single from the latest Steps album, enslaved by ‘yoof ’ playlists?

Throughout my career I have been constantly disappointed at the lack of adventurous musical selection on daytime radio at the BBC and everywhere else. I am not saying you should go onto daytime radio and play a load of Swedish thrash metal, but there are records that don’t offend the people that do want a kind of ‘daytime radio sound’, whatever that means.

So radio should be more adventurous and lead people a bit, rather than just slavishly following the taste that people already have.

I suppose the flipside of this was that you had a massive opportunity to play the stuff you were really excited about to a huge national audience.

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Exactly. On the other hand, I do have to say that there were points at Radio 1 where there were a lot of DJs playing a lot of dance music which didn’t particularly touch my life, and in retrospect I can see that that stuff was perhaps more important that I gave it credit for. I have to say, though,

me and Stuart [Maconie, Radcliffe’s co-presenter on Radio 2 and the author of one of the most witty puns of all time, in the title of his book Cider With Roadies] play exactly what we like on the night-time show.

We might play a maximum of four playlisted records, and that’s more or less total freedom.

How do you reconcile an eclectic playlist with the kind of extreme tangents into everything from gabba

To pick up on the original food analogy from the book, I’m not saying you should only eat shepherd’s pie as I think that’s denying the variety of things that are presented to you, but what I am saying is, if you try crayfish and you don’t like it, that’s fine! If you don’t like it, don’t have it. Don’t keep trying. And in the same way, sometimes you want, you know, 10 minutes of industrial throb and you

might want to try crayfish – and other times you want to hear Diana Ross and the Supremes and have a shepherd’s pie. Now, those two positions don’t seem to me exclusive to me, I think you can combine them both.

I was reading your description of the David Bowie concert you went to in 1973, and contrasted it with your descriptions of bands like Bon Jovi. It made me think that seeing Bon Jovi live was probably not too dissimilar

to McDonalds, in that it was based on the construct that as a punter you could travel anywhere in the world, walk into a Bon Jovi show, and have exactly the same experience as you would anywhere else – from China to Aberdeen. So what made the Bowie show the antithesis of this?

struck me as very interesting. You wrote that “coming into contact with John Walters made me believe utterly in the BBC”. Was that to do with the idea that only an organisation such as the BBC, which wasn’t inherently hamstrung by commercial pressures, would allow someone like him the space to exist in?

I certainly think that age had a massive part to play. I mean, I would have been about 14 and had just been awakened to the power of music. I don’t think you ever really receive music into yourself in the same way as that ever again.

There are concerts that have perhaps come close to it, and things that I’ve had a more considered aesthetic opinion on. Although… some of them aren’t necessarily that considered, actually.

Sometimes the maverick spirit needs to be engendered where there is a bit more creative space, a bit more leeway given to people. Where people say, ‘Yes, of course we could employ producers who would get people to the studio on time, get the programmes knocked out in time and all that, but what we actually need are some people who are going to spend six months on one piece of radio, which, when it’s finished, is a piece of genius’.

If the BBC is not going to set a standard for everyone else to aspire to, then there really is no point in public funding – surely the point of public funding is that you do things that a commercial operation would never do.

I remember seeing Nirvana from the side of the stage at the Reading Festival in the early Nineties and it being a thing of such power. There was, of course, the potency of all the publicity around it, the character of Cobain, and grunge sweeping the world and everything… but the sheer physical power and volume of it was just on the edge of something so exciting that it was almost quite frightening.

The last 12 months have seen countless articles dissecting the BBC, from those who lambast its public funding, to individuals who believe passionately in it as a force for good, so when I read your description of the legendary John Walters, John Peel’s producer, it

with people like Kate Bush, she never did music to become famous – that’s the least favoured bit that she wants, that’s the off-cuts that are left over when she’s finished what she’s doing, i.e. the music.

These people recognise that that’s the same reason that I do it.

THANK YOU FOR THE DAYS: A BOY’S OWN ADVENTURES IN RADIO AND BEYOND BY MARK RADCLIFFE IS AVAILABLE NOW (£12.99, SIMON & SCHUSTER LTD).

When I scan through the book, one thing becomes apparent – the people that you interview, from Bowie to securing the first radio interview in a decade with Kate Bush, all seem to implicitly trust you as a broadcaster.

Why is that?

I am quite clearly not one of those DJs who is using music radio as something to pass through en-route to reality television or daytime quiz shows. Music is absolutely the central point to me, and

“Sometimes you want 10 minutes of industrial throb and you might want to try crayfish and other times you want to hear Diana Ross and The Supremes and have a shepherd’s pie.”

BOOKS SHORTS Comprising some 600 individual entries, Simon Goddard’s Mozipedia is billed as the “definitive guide to everything you ever wanted to know about Morrissey and The Smiths but were afraid to ask.” This meticulously researched and exhaustive tome details all imaginable aspects of Steven Patrick’s career with information not only on every song from the Moz canon, but on his sources of inspiration, collaborators, lyrics and myriad items of trivia.

Mozipedia is published August 6.

The first ladies of punk, The Slits, are set to get the biog treatment in the forthcoming Typical Girls? The Story of The Slits. Derided for their lack of musical proficiency, the quartet were a bold and fearless group, welding elements of dub, funk and African rhythms to the standard punk frame to create some of their era’s most innovative music.

However, their cause wasn’t helped when they appeared topless except for a smattering of mud for their debut album Cut’s notorious cover. Such issues and the band’s place in the punk scheme of things are reassessed in Zoë Street Howe’s authorised book.

With the music industry “buggered” – his description, not ours – Setanta Records founder Keith Cullen decided to turn his hand to novel writing.

The result is God Save The Village Green, a brutal depiction of the struggles of one London-Irish family from the mid-Sixties through to the early Eighties. AU can confirm that it’s harrowing, but effortlessly engaging stuff.

The sepia-tinged world of northern English indie in the Eighties is astutely recreated in The Last Mad Surge Of Youth, a novel which draws on author Mark Hodkinson’s own experiences of the music industry to instil a sense of authenticity in its coming-of-age and what comes after narrative. Advance publicity is already making comparisons with John Niven’s marvellous Kill Your Friends, so it’s surely worth checking out.

Iheartau.com

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HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU(TUBE) MARK OF GENIUS

WORDS BY NEILL DOUGAN

Regular readers of AU will know of our appreciation of the work of Mark Edward Smith, frontman of The Fall, writer of inscrutable lyrics like “The boy is like a tape loop and he has soft mitts” and general all-round legend. When he’s not churning out album after album of rowdy musical mayhem, Smith has been known to pop up on telly, making random guest appearances of headscratching incongruity. That’s when he’s not reducing hapless interviewers to quivering wrecks, of course. Here, for no particular reason other than the fact that we think he’s pretty funny, is a selection of MES’s most memorable off-stage moments. Enjoy-ah!

KICKER CONSPIRACY

PEEL SESSION

TRANSMISSION POST-TLC

What on earth must the football fans of Great Britain have thought when they tuned in to hear the final scores on BBC1 on November 19, 2005? For on this momentous day, instead of the usual straightforward, deadpan list of results delivered in the standard polite Beeb accent, they were – somewhat incredibly – treated to Smith’s rendition of the scores in his slurred northern drawl. Marvel as he invents team names (‘Southampton Town’ anyone?), takes the piss out of presenter Ray Stubbs (“Why have you got a number one haircut? It’s like what the murderers in Strangeways get!”) and causes general merriment.

Beat that, Sky Sports News!

October 26, 2004: the music world mourns the loss of John Peel, and Mark E Smith is summoned to appear on Newsnight (along with Michael Bradley of The Undertones) to sing the departed DJ’s praises.

Smith being Smith, it doesn’t quite go to plan. Veteran presenter Gavin Esler is left perplexed by The Fall man’s inappropriate silences and his surly, abrupt answers, including the following audacious curveball: “Am I allowed to speak now? Yeah, whatever… whatever you said. Are you the new DJ?” Also, look out for the 2.16 minute point, when Mark does something absolutely inexplicable with his mouth. Peel, one suspects, would have thoroughly enjoyed this.

Lauren Laverne, bless her, was pretty good in Kenickie and is sort of fairly alright-ish, sometimes, as a telly presenter, but she met her match in March 2007 when she attempted to quiz MES about The Fall’s latest album on Channel 4’s rubbish Transmission With T-Mobile.

A bored-looking Smith bats away Laverne’s queries, chiding her when she tries to ask him about his wife (“Don’t get funny now”) and deliberately confusing her with Jo Whiley (with whom he had previously clashed at an NME awards do). He also manages, in the space of a three minute interview, to dub Ian McCulloch a “slag” and dismiss Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand and LCD Soundsystem as plagiarists. Impressive troublemaking.

WWW.TINYURL.COM/MESFINALSCORE

WWW.TINYURL.COM/MESNEWSNIGHT

WWW.TINYURL.COM/MESTRANSMISSION

WEIRDWIDEWEB

HEY YOU, UP IN THE SKY

BROWSE THE TIME WORDS BY NEILL DOUGAN

Ah, you gotta love this. We might be beset on all sides by war, pestilence, famine and economic meltdown, but what could be wrong with a world that has an actual, honest-to-god Cloud Appreciation Society?

Not only that, it has its own manifesto which defiantly states: “We believe that clouds are unjustifiably maligned and that life would be immeasurably poorer without them.” Photos of clouds, chat about clouds, cloud merchandise, cloud art… basically all the clouds you could ever want. Fluffy white goodness for all.

WWW.CLOUDAPPRECIATIONSOCIETY.ORG

HIP TO BE SQUARE

C FOR EFFORT

Sometimes you want a website that, like Ronseal’s quick-drying woodstain, does exactly what it says on the tin. Rejoice, then, for the bluntly self-explanatory Look At This Fucking Hipster, a collection of pics of ludicrous fashion victims in all their glory. The haircuts alone are enough to bring tears to your eyes.

Pity, scorn and amusement (in roughly that order) are the appropriate reactions. By the way, if anything in your own wardrobe happens to resemble any of the clothing on show here, it’s time to take a long, hard, searching look at yourself.

The Cynical-C Blog is maintained by quite a witty and clever bloke called Chris who casts a sceptical eye over this world of ours and comes up with some rather amusing results. There are, for example, regular updates on sightings of our saviour (‘Where’s Jesus?’) and a compendium of one-star Amazon reviews of classic films, records and books (‘You Can’t Please Everyone’). Or just click on ‘Random post’ and treat yourself to a slice of sardonic, knowing humour to get you through your day. Aaah… cynicism eases the pain.

WWW.LATFH.COM

WWW.CYNICAL-C.COM

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STORY OF THE VIDEO DUTCH SCHULTZ

BAND: DUTCH SCHULTZ TITLE: ‘ON THE SHELF’ PRODUCER: BANDWIDTH FILMS Belfast rockers Dutch Schultz have provided an unashamedly bizarre video to accompany their track ‘On The Shelf’. Honestly, it’s like a zoological version of Eyes Wide Shut. The band’s Willy Mundell tells AU all about it.

What’s the main concept for the video?

Why are you wearing animal masks?

The first idea for the video was to have an orgy of naked bodies all wearing animal masks rolling round each other, suggesting we all have a basic animal instinct for sex. But we decided to forget the whole sex part of it after already focusing on the sleazy side of life in our

first video for ‘It Bends In The Middle’.

We didn’t want people to think all Dutch Schultz has to offer is sleaze and sex.

The animal faces idea stayed, though, ‘cause we thought it would look good.

Why was it filmed with a fisheye lens?

Because that’s the other animal you don’t get to see. We were going to copy The Prodigy’s ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ video and look in a mirror at the end and have a flying fish looking back at the viewer, but finally we didn’t.

This is your second music video with Bandwidth Films. What’s it like to work with them?

It’s a bit hard, there’s lots of sitting around waiting on camera set-ups for like 15 minutes, fucking ages. And Will [McConnell]’s assistant brought me a

GET YOUR CLICKS

cup of tea that wasn’t just so warm, but you have to put up with this kinda shit I suppose. Apart from the tea, they’re very nice to get on with, sort of.

Your previous music video caused quite a stir – what do you think will be the response to ‘On The Shelf’?

There’s nothing really that would offend people in the video, unless animal rights get onto us for false impersonations. If they do, I’m the pig sticking my snout in the bowl, and I think I played the part well. I hope the imagery and sound cause a stir in people’s pants and makes them wanna boogie!

Did you enjoy shooting the video?

Yes, it’s always good fun working with Bandwidth. Besides, some of the looks we got from passers by made us laugh,

plus you could hurl abuse at them, even give the old granny a slap in the mouth and they can’t identify you. They’ll go running to the police – ‘Help, a pig slapped me and a frog stole my purse!’

Sure they did, granny.

Any particular anecdote about the experience you’d like to share?

[Bassist] Bernard was up a tree during filming, he lost his balance and instead of falling his leg got stuck between two branches. We thought we could help him down, or go for lunch. We went for lunch.

WATCH THE VIDEO ONLINE AT WWW.TINYURL.COM/ONTHESHELF WWW.MYSPACE.COM/ DUTCHSCHULTZMUSIC

WORDS by neill dougan

OUR GUIDE TO THE BEST ONLINE PLACES FOR THE THINGS YOU NEED.

THIS MONTH: CAMPING STUFF

OUTDOOR MEGASTORE A “megastore”, eh. Well, it must be good then, right?

Actually, it is. As well as all the usual jazz, this also has some particularly fancy camping gear for those of you who want to get down with the kids but simply can’t bear to leave the trappings of civilisation behind for even a few days. We’re talking portable toilets, gas-powered heaters, an array of camping stoves, even lightweight carry fridges to keep your beers nice and chilled. Sort yourself out from this site and it’ll be like you’ve never left home. You big posh gits.

WWW.OUTDOORMEGASTORE.CO.UK

ONE STOP FESTIVAL

Festival season is upon us again – woo hoo! Time for between one and five days (depending on the festival) of booze, tunes, ludicrous levels of sleep deprivation – and, of course, camping. A fraught experience at the best of times, in Ireland or the UK it’s especially risky because there’s a medium-to-high risk the weather gods might choose to send down a deluge of biblical proportions. Make sure you’re kitted out at simplyhike.co.uk where you can purchase tents, backpacks, sleeping bags and all manner of zany accessories, all without getting off your lazy arse.

Now that’s getting into the festival spirit.

Make sure and pay a visit to this little site before you head off for your weekend of debauchery, specifically tailored as it is to the festival enthusiast. Here you’ll find a load of cool stuff like fancy camping chairs such as the ‘wondawedge’, funky festival wellies (probably a good bet given the – let’s face it –likely event of a quagmire) and a good selection of fancy flags (always handy for recognising your camping spot on those occasions when you’re so wasted you can’t even find your way out of a portaloo). Hell, there are even solar phone chargers for when your mobile inevitably dies and you lose all your friends. A few carefully chosen purchases here and even the most challenging of festival circumstances will seem like a walk in the park.

WWW.SIMPLYHIKE.CO.UK

WWW.ONESTOPFESTIVAL.COM

SIMPLY HIKE

Iheartau.com

[81]

IN S URE PICT

Ryan & Nadine

Sydney

Jaqueline & Lauren

Graham, Frank Carter & Ciaran David & Toni

Eva Spence (Rolo Tomassi)

Michael & Chris

Gallows

@ the limelight, BELFAST

WORDS & PHOTOS BY RICHARD W CROTHERS

We’d heard mixed reports about Gallows' last visit to Belfast, with some saying that their support act, Cancer Bats, showed them up on stage. Not a chance of that happening this time. First on was Wounds from Dublin.

A great new band that have been opening alot of eyes and ears. Second up was Sheffield's Rolo Tomassi a great warm up for Gallows. However, the night belonged

to Gallows, every member of whom put in a huge performance, but frontman Frank Carter was something very, very special. Stage-diving, running across the crowd as if they were stepping stones, standing on the bar and hanging upside down off the roof above the crowd, all that while singing. The crowd left the gig buzzing and muttering the name Frank Carter.

Laura, Lisa & Laura

Emma & Amanda

Paul

Stephen & Jude

Marty & Craig

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Frank Carter

Shane, Gerry & Chris

Sam & Chris

Paul Cutaways

Don

Clodagh & Katie

Grace Cutaways

Andy, Alan & Steve

Jane & Louise

Ryan

Adam & Aideen

Ryan & Grace

CUTAWAYS ALBUM LAUNCH @ STIFF KITTEN, BELFAST

PHOTOS BY WILL NEILL

Celebrating the launch of their artfully packaged debut album was a chance for indie-pop trio Cutaways to take over the Stiff Kitten for the evening. As well as their sparkly tunes, they also brought with them finger puppets, face-painting and the cutest little

merch stand you ever did see. The support bill wasn’t bad either, Panda Kopanda and the storming Desert Hearts providing the entertainment before the hosts and hostesses arrived on stage to do their bright and shiny thing.

Jess & John

Zara & Nichola

Walter, Daniel & Phillip

Meaghan & Julia

Dave & Michael

Sarah, Dee & Rab

Gary & Andy

David, Peter & Danielle Iheartau.com

[83]

THE LAST WORD… : WITH HUTCH HARRIS OF

THE THERMALS When was the last time you were in hospital?

I nearly cut my finger off last year, or have you not seen the nearly nude pictures on the internet? Kathy [Foster, Thermals bassist] took me to the hospital and made funny faces at me while the doctor stuck me with a needle about a thousand times.

What was the last thing you laughed out loud at?

Probably my cat rolling around in the dirt and acting like a total idiot.

Who is the last person you would want to be stuck on a desert island with?

Probably Jesus Christ, because he’s probably be going on all the time about how he’s the Son of God and why should he have to pick coconuts because he’s the Son of God, etc.

If you were on death row what would you want for your last meal?

Dude, bummer question. I’m gonna have to say Mentos and Diet Coke, with a pop rocks chaser, cause I’m gonna beat The Man to the punch.

That’s how I’m going out. In a sugary sweet blaze of glory.

When was the last time you cried?

I just cried a little bit right now thinking about my sugary sweet death.

What was the last thing you won?

Every day of my life is a beautiful gift from God. I win just by waking up in the morning.

When was the last time you got angry?

I get angry every morning, for no real apparent reason. Listen, this is a lot

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of laughter, crying and anger so far.

Should I go lie down on the couch for the rest of the interview?

Where did you go on your last holiday?

I went to visit my folks in San Jose, California and then went to San Francisco for New Year’s. It was a blast, partied every night. Let me tell you, it was not like being on tour. Partying every night is slightly more work.

What was the last record you bought?

Brightblack Morning Light – Motion To Rejoin. I love this band! Seriously, this is the stoniest shit out there right now. Not sure if it’s as good as their last one – less bluesy – but it still has that great foggy vibe. Really good recording.

When was the last time you were ashamed?

Why would I share my shame? My shame is for me to wallow in, repress or enjoy as I please. It’s much too scandalous for public consumption.

When was the last time you threw up?

Probably the night I took ecstasy and then drank all night at The Aalto. Uh, let me tell you, it was like white light.

But I was blasting Leonard Cohen’s ‘Avalanche’. Perfect!

What was the last good thing you saw on television?

I got a human giant DVD from The Onion when we played their South by Southwest gig, it’s pretty sweet. But uh, sketch comedy about Pitchfork? Nerds!

What was the last thing you downloaded?

The songs ‘Do Me Baby’ and ‘Poison’

from Belle Biv DeVoe. This is what Kathy and I grew up on! Awesome cheesy Nineties sex jams. Well, it’s one of the things we grew up on. And yes, I did download them illegally, thank you!

When your records have been illegally downloaded as much as ours have, it’s really hard to feel bad about it.

What was the last good book you read?

Strange Fascination, by David Buckley.

David Bowie, the definitive story!

Biographies can be pretty dry but chronology is very important to me when I’m checking out someone’s history. It’s amazing how many great records Bowie made in such a short time period.

What does the last text you received say?

“What are you doing?” The text itself isn’t as important as the time of the text, which was close to 1am. That means it was a booty call.

What was the last bad job you had?

I worked at a place in San Jose that lowered cars and put on hydraulics with switches, for San Jo gangsters and wannabes. I mostly just filled orders from wannabes in the Midwest ordering switches. It was owned by an old couple but managed by their abusive, loud-mouthed son. A lot of tough guys worked there and one guy swore he has gonna hire someone to kill the manager.

One day I left for lunch and never came back. A few months later someone came in and killed the old man who owned the place. We figured the guy was sent to kill the son but made a mistake! True story! My friend Heather who got me the job (and was there long after I quit) was there the day he was shot.

When was the last time you broke the law?

A few hours ago when I bought some weed and a few minutes ago when I smoked some.

If the world was about to end, what would your last words be?

“Where’s my witness?!”

famous last words Richard Feynman, physicist, (1918–1988) “I’d hate to die twice. It’s so boring.”

Pablo Picasso, painter, (1881-1973) “Drink to me.”

Caligula, Roman Emperor, (12-41 AD), as he was being murdered by his own soldiers: “I live!”

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The end of the dirty dozen, end of the football season excitement, James from The Apprentice, a multitude of birthdays, Jamie Oliver’s pasta sauces, waving bugger off to the neighbours, secret party shenanigans, Andres Iniesta.

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