Sexual Variety Smacks (I)
When a man sporting a mustard yellow cravat and the sideways look of a professional deviant suggests that he wants to get to know you better "because you have brown eyes, red hair and muscular legs" it's probably time to re-evaluate both the situation you're in and the state of the bushy barnet sprouting from your head. Alternatively, you could play it cool and ask the man to dress up in a long Inspector Gadget coat and get down to a good bit of no holes barred, therapeutic slap and tickle, which is exactly what our hero, Franz, in Water Drops on Burning Rocks does. Steamy. The solution to said situation works so well in fact that by Act II Franz gives up on the idea of marrying his girlfriend and adopts, instead, the role of domestic gimp, scurrying about the apartment dressed in very tight, very high, 70s, German slap-thigh shorts, while having orders barked at him by a languishing Gadget. It's weird stuff and it doesn't let up....
Music: Morcheeba; Be Yourself (Single)
Singles always involve a certain affectation of substance. Be Yourself, Morcheeba's latest 'effort', cannot escape this pattern, the two remixes and a live version of 'Part of the Process' sounding a death knoll for creativity. I have no problem with a band reworking their music but motivations must be questioned when a group releases a single that does not even bother to introduce new work....
Music: King Adora; Smoulder (Single)
Apparently utilising the basic assumption that love will tear us apart,
Music: Morgan ;Sitting in The Sun (Single)
Traditional Chinese proverb: "May you live in interesting times". Agreed- Because whilst people remember where they were when JFK got shot, no-one will ever give a US President's commie-compressing rectum where they were when this came out. Annoyingly, the intro's pretty compelling, with reggae guitar and early Cocteau Twins echoey drum effect, razored apart by glassy girly vocals. Which is MENTAL and BRILLIANT, except then it devolves into sub-Teenage Fanclub indiedom, in a pleasantly boring, where's-me-trainers-I'm-a-student-and-I-love-Bagpuss kinda way, crocheted into place by '60's folk-harmony chorus....
Music: Lupine Howl;125 (Single)
Ah, those temperamental artistic types. Jason Pierce, formerly of Spaceman 3
Music: Coldplay;Trouble (Single)
I looked up 'Trouble', the title of Coldplay's new single, in a dictionary:
Music: Hellacoptors; High Visibility (LP)
A long, long time ago, shrouded in the mists of time Before Slipknot, the world was briefly held in the thrall of four men in tight trousers and facepaint. Their balls were big, their cocks rocked, and they bestrode their amps like the plural of colossus. To quote the archaic language of the times, they 'sure slung a mean axe'. These men were Kiss, and they were, let's face it, crap. The Hellacopters want to be Kiss. They even admit it. So, cue yelps, "baby baby"s, and an inability to spell "want to" as two words. Oh, and lest we forget, cue umpteen 'good old-fashioned' widdly widdly guitar solos, always handy when you've run out of ideas for proper tunes....
Music: Gorky's Zygotic Mynci ;The Blue Trees (LP)
The so-called 'Welsh music explosion' of a few years back was somewhat hampered by the inescapable fact that the majority of Welsh bands are utter toss. Along with Super Furry Animals, the wonderfully prolific Gorky's Zygotic Mynci provide the exception. Acoustic mini-LP The Blue Trees marks their tenth year together as a band, and although it does not quite equal last year's Spanish Dance Troupe, in terms of understated pastoral beauty it's up there with Badly Drawn Boy's The Hour of Bewilderbeast....
Music: Sneaky
THERE WAS A time when the Sneaker Pimps were habitually in The Face, flirting with Hollywood parties and providing a soundtrack for The Saint. Then they became claustrophobic and ditched the girl session singer who had become the cuckoo face of the band - the one who had sat on their songs and fascinated the press. Oops - good bye, Kelli Dayton and hello, obscurity....