Albums
The Charlatans : Us and Us Only
Everyone knows what they think of The Charlies, as those of us who have never met them call them. If you like them then you will like this and if you do not like them then you will not like this. Personally, I think they're alright. And this album, well, it's alright. The bit where they sound like they're impersonating Primal Scream impersonating the Stones on Forever is alright. The little swirly xylophone bits on Good Witch/Bad Witch are alright. The only song that continues their proud tradition of alright song titles, I Don't Care Where You Live is, well, it's alright innit? But they want to be so important and so relevant it hurts: it's there in the portentous lyrics, laden with "Oh!" and "I love you!" - the sure sign of a guilty white-boy indie band realising they've neglected naked emotion in the past. (see: Blur, Supergrass, Urban Threat Experience). And who can say, maybe they'll succeed. Maybe the merry-go-round vagaries of the music press will randomly elevate this album to classic status, maybe their diehard fans will prefer this to their best, eponymous album of a few years back. Whatever. The rest of us will continue to respect them for The Only One I Know and One To Another, continue to note the very organic progression from one album to the next, and continue to not give a flying fuck one way or the other what they do next. But it's alright, really.
pb
Nine Inch Nails The Fragile
Dedicated to Linda Bamber, Queens.
Nine Inch Nails are not a fun band to listen to. The new album from Mr. Reznor and friends is a rather nasty affair. That is not to say that it isn't a rewarding listen as he conjures up an evil sounding world in which everyone seems to be on the permanent edge of suicide (token Nick Drake reference). It isn't pretty, but sometimes when your editor is moaning at you about burglar alarms and shit, you just want to listen to someone who sounds angry enough to explode and take everyone else with him. Nine Inch Nails have produced the soundtrack to the worst urban threat experience you've ever had. as you walk down a rather ill-lit street on matriculation day in your gown and people who actually live in Oxford make vaguely threatening gestures towards you, Trent Reznor is probably screaming "Just how damaged have I become?" in the background. If you are of a violent disposition then listening to Nine Inch Nails probably has the same effect on you as playing Tekken has on hyperactive children. If you are an obsessive Nick Drake fan then this album will probably inspire you to write hilariously incensed letters to the Oxford Student. Go and get this album, but please don't hurt anyone, and please don't write in any more.
HHHHI pw
James: Millionaires
James should be a musical legend. Few bands boast anything like as distinguished or consistent a back catalogue of albums or hits, from the effervescent cliché of Sit Down to the eccentricity of Laid, the list is long and the music monumental. Millionaires contains moments of genius, and sees the melodic maestroes give the pop genre a typically distinctive reworking. Shooting my Mouth Off combines dance, lyricism and crescendo with a surety born of many years' evolution, while Someone's Got it in for Me is emotion in its simplest musical form. Slick and catchy, Millionaires is denied classic status by over-production, Brian Eno's usually decisive intervention has on this occasion prevented the songs hanging together as a unit. Never the less it remains among the most transcendent new music around and will reward any cash handed over with a aural massage worth ten times the price. James deserve to be millionaires, why not give them a helping hand?
HHHHI dl
DL 4/5
Various:Still the joint...
And your votes please for most pointless, unimaginative, most audaciously exploitative release of 1999....Jesus Christ, how much more milking can the poor old Sugarhill cow endure? Its crumpled udders have already been abused by every big beat DJ, Oxford undergraduate and Word journalist this side of Nu Yawk. Now its carcass has once more been exhumed to suffer serious mistreatment at the hands of Freddy Fresh and the Scratch bloody Perverts. What about human dignity, you might cry? What about all the money from gullible kids, say the record companies? It's not exactly that all these remixes are exactly bad, (Roots Manuva and Plaid rise a few feet above the mire) although most are stultifyingly dull - it all just seems so unnecessary. No-one who wants to hear the original records will buy this; no-one except the most tragic Coldcut completist will buy it for the remixers involved; no-one, in fact, other than those motivated by the inexplicable hypnotic effect of the word 'Sugarhill' will go near this. The elevation of that label to position of sacred cow (see above) is violently at odds with the recycling ethos and anti-establishment attitudes of the scene it helped to start. The Americans have the right approach to Grandmaster Flash and the rest: sample it, rip it up, mess about with it. The British, by contrast, wank all over it, get Paolo Hewitt to write the sleeve notes, and wait for the money to roll in. It's enough to make anyone a Socialist.
IIIII pb
Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros:Rock Art and the X-Ray Style
Speaking of which, here's the grand old man of polit-rock himself; older, not much wiser, slightly more like an embarrassing dad down the disco. I don't see why, when The Clash's 'interface' with reggae in the seventies seemed so genuine and vibrant, that Strummer's hip-hop 'moment' in the nineties makes you want to wince. But my love for his former band has deafened my ears to the sounds of a man Diggin' the new, as one of these songs has it, and blinded my eyes to the horrible cover art by celebrity mate Damien Hirst. That artist's involvement pretty much distills the problem with this album, too: the mixture of right-on politics and enthusiastic embracing of everything from reggae-tinged rockabilly to folk-tinged rockabilly sits uneasily with the impression that, were it not for Strummer's status as 'punk legend' (a painfully inappropriate contradiction in terms), this would probably never have been released. To a Clash fan, the lyrics are stumbling and humourless, the choruses are lifeless, and the energy is almost all gone.
Not that there isn't anything worthwhile here: Tony Adams and Nitcomb are decently rabble-rousing and moving respectively, whilst Techno D-Day survives the awful title to come on like a punk Black Grape. Sadly, whilst Strummer used to rail against the kind of middle-age softening that dominates this album, he seems to have fulfilled the most famous lyric from his own song, Death or Glory.... Now I believe this, and it's been proven by research, that he who doesn't act his age will be left in the lurch.
HHHII pb
14th Oct 1999