Interview 2
"We're definitely creatures of the night," confides Mercury Rev drummer Jeff Mercel. But then it wouldn't take a genius to notice that anyway. Their latest album, All is Dream, is certainly something to be cherished by like-minded dwellers of the nocturnal realm, with its emphasis upon the mystical world inhabited by Jonathan Donohue's imagination. The more concrete imagery of their earlier albums has gradually been laid aside; initially with the much-lauded Deserter's Songs, and now to an even greater extent with this latest release. However, the band themselves are reluctant to try and limit the interpretations of their listeners by giving a detailed and comprehensive explanation of their work, as Jonathan testifies: "Our listeners will tell us a lot and say eThis is what I felt when I heard your record, this is what I was getting...' We're only three guys who made it and compared to the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people who listen to it, it's an important perspective, y'know, and probably a lot more accurate than just us three". However, their desire to connect with their audience as individuals, provoking individual and personal responses, does not restrict their outlook; nor their aim of making their music more accessible and available to a wider audience: "We made it to share - I mean, it's alright. We stayed home for a long time, we get a bit cagey, and then there's the time when you're ready to travel again, and tour and play these songs in front of people. It's a very different thing"....
Music: Leeds Festival 2001
Take student journalists from across the land, give them a tent backstage at the Leeds Festival and provide them with non-stop celebrities and eternally-flowing alcohol laid on by "It's a Scream" pubs. Sounds unlikely, sounds sublime, and that's exactly what happened to fifty lucky journohacks on Bank Holiday Weekend this August. I left home convinced I was going to be holed up in some shitty tent in a corner of a field, catching the odd glimpse of a celebrity as they walked by to the portaloos, next to which we'd be inevitably placed. I came back with the boast that "The Strokes Came To Our Party And We Entertained 43 Bands."...
Music: Albums
I'll be honest here, I wasn't particularly looking forward to reviewing this debut album, so imagine my delight when I put it in the CD player to find that its 13 tracks take up less than 33 minutes of time. Unfortunately of course, these turned out to be amongst the longest 33 minutes of my life. They sound like so many other current US guitar bands, that it seems slightly pointless to list them all, but I've got pages to fill so I'm going to. With their piss-take spoken eIntroduction to Destruction' and album closer ePain for pleasure' the Iron Maiden metal influences are clear, whilst at other points they are variously incarnated as Green Day, Less than Jake, Blink 182, Limp Bizkit et al. The most notable and original thing they seem to have come up with however is the decision to be all of these bands within one single song, as on the single Fat Lip; many other bands might have been able to get three or four whole songs out of the various parts of that one track, but having sat through the rest of the album I'm fairly sure that it's for the best they decided against it....
Music: Live
"Where did you park the car? Where did you park the car?". The haunting refrain of eMorning Bell' seems to have particular relevance today, since Oxford, as everyone except the most naive fresher knows, really wasn't built to have 42,000 people descending on it. And you can't help but come to the conclusion that this is all part of the joke - a band so clearly concerned with the pitfalls of modern life, perversely putting on their only UK date of the year in a place that, thanks to Oxford's fantastic parking scheme and rail engineering work at Didcot Parkway, is almost impossible to get to. You could almost hear Thom Yorke cackling to himself....
Music: Singles
The title says it all really; the sound of hazy evenings in the middle of summer. Shame it's come a bit late then isn't it? But, thankfully that's one of the few things that can be criticised about this second single from Mr Manuva's second album. One of the leading lights of UK hip hop, while his first single, eWitness (1 Hope)' was more forceful and energetic, eDreamy Days' swoons and glides with its haunting strings, backing vocals and the odd tinkle of piano, in amongst its deep bass and self-examining lyrics. Indeed, it is a remarkable marriage of laid-back beats and the sort of darkness more usually reminiscent of Massive Attack. Just a bit of a shame about the MJ Cole remix, which manages to exclude almost all of the beauty of the track....