Music
You'd expect that the follow up to a widely-acclaimed album like Original Pirate Material could only be a disappointment, but A Grand Don't Come For Free is no such thing. Original Pirate Material was hailed as one of the most inventive albums of the decade, and labelled the saviour of British rap. Its observations of the ordinary lives of common people through witty rhymes over heavy garage beats, without any of the guns and pimping of American rap, garnered praise from highbrow press and club DJs alike. You'd think that the magic formula would be impossible to repeat, which is exactly why A Grand Don't Come For Free is a completely different concept.
The album - all pills, mobiles and posturing lads - comes from the same back street brawling territory as the first, but this time it cuts through the bravado to hit closer to the heart. You can't help but relate to the inventive, yet generic lines as Mike deadpans: "I'm having trouble enough remembering my opinions without trying to remember my reasons for them."
A Grand Don't Come For Free is in many ways a better album than his debut. The strong garage beats that were the backbone of the first album have been stripped down to focus on the narrative, while attention to the routine parts of British life is tighter and more personal.
The story that the album details is relentlessly gripping and entertaining in its routine nature. It's more raw, and the rhymes more stilting, mimicing the rhythm of real life as it splutters from one crisis to the next.
There is none of the over production which infects similarly styled music and this time Skinner has found wider influences, as seen in tracks like the catchy and Blur-esque first single Fit But You Know It.
The best moments of the album come in the softer touches such as Could Well Be In, when you see the ordinary feelings behind the rude-boy façade. The story drifts through the ups and the downs and builds to the best tracks on the album: Dry Your Eyes and Empty cans, which form a kind of epiphany on the normalcy of ordinary life.
Overall the album is a great undertaking - a closely observed love letter to the mundane nature of living only for Friday night.
Ultimately if Original Pirate Material was The Streets story of a night out then A Grand Don't Come For Free fills in on what happens in the rest of the week.
Keane make beautiful music. There, I said it. It's been billed as 'girly indie' - they don't play guitars, they rarely play bass, mostly it's just piano and drums - but hell, does it sound good. Emerging from a glut of recent bands who parade the same style of genre, Keane have something that puts them head and shoulders above the rest. A combination of catchy piano hooks, beguiling choruses, Tom Chaplin's vocals - choirboy-esque with a dash of Jeff Buckley - this is a band that makes compelling and heartfelt music.
Reinforced by the recent radio hit singles Somewhere Only We Know and Everybody's Changing, the new album more than justifies the hype that surroundeds its release, with no real weak track across its deftly assembled fifty minutes.
Comparisons with other British bands are inevitable for this talented triplet, with Coldplay and Radiohead the most famous names bandied around. But the truth is that Keane manage to maintain a definite sensitivity that Radiohead, for all their ingenious creativity, seem to have lost in recent years.
If I have one criticism of this offering it's that I probably couldn't hear another album's worth of the same style of songs. Keane need to find another direction, or else they'll degenerate into a depressing, lovelorn cliché. But then, there's enough on this mature and adroit debut to suggest a newdirection is well within their capacity.
I hate crowd-surfers more than music editors hate having their witty headlines cut. You know who you are, you know who I mean: the people who get lifted up at gigs, then lobbed forward by the enraged crowd, like the comatose zombies that they are, to the front where hopefully a butch Hell's Angel security guard will smack them down from a great height. I know it looks cool on TV and I'm sure it's fun and all that, but it's also utterly stupid. Stop kicking me in the head! Seriously!
Idiot crowd-surfers ruined Reading last year, and nobody messes with my Metallica, especially if they're doing it by smashing my head in with their steel toe-capped boots! But it's not just me that I'm worried about. Mostly, but not entirely.
You see, I'm fairly strong and, after a few brutal metal gigs at the Meanfiddler in London, not to mention the standard über-violent school rock shows at the local
girl's school (the latter being the worst), my thick skull is pretty much immune to anything but an anvil.
But not everyone at a gig is like that. If you decide that it'd be really cool to crowd-surf and you kick some mini-mosher girl in the head, she's not going to simply retaliate by ripping every one of the thirteen piercings from your ape-like skull. No, she's more likely to go into a coma and turn into the vegetable that you are... Just keep those boots out of my face, comprende?
The Cribs -
What About Me
At first glance, this may sound like another copyist band hopping on the Franz Ferdinand 'art-rock' band wagon, fused with a noticeable (but small) influence of American punk-rock, but there's something compelling about this song that makes you not want to hate it. Maybe it's because the Cribs hail from Wakefield, maybe it's the catchy guitar, maybe it's the shameless "ooh ooh ooh" chorus, but there's enough here to suggest a reasonable amount of success for this band. Even if they do come from Wakefield.
Chris Wilson
Katy Rose -
Overdrive
The American answer to the question: "Don't we need another transatlantic sullen brat whining her journal entries over intermediate level guitar?" No. We don't. And to be honest these musings about "Girls on methodrine naked on a TV screen" don't even have Avril's teen angst finesse. Now you know that's got to be bad. Get back to "licking the blood right off your street" darling and leave the prepubescent market to the big girls and their producers.
Abby McDonald
The Blueskins -
Stupid Ones
Do you like Supergrass? Then you'll probably like this. If you've not heard The Blueskins before, they're like The Hives, but not so manic, or like The White Stripes, but with more body. In short, there's nothing new here. However, this shiny-happy-rock-n-roll-pop song might be just what your summer calls for. The catchy chorus and Beach Boys style backing vocals make this a fun feel-good track that you'll be singing all day. Don't be afraid to go buy it - Stupid Ones may not be innovative, but it certainly will get your foot tapping.
Sophie Brighouse
After At Risk's triumph last week, the second round opens with We Don't Yodel - though sadly they might have been better if they had been performing that famous Swiss art. I'm not going to be too harsh on them because I have been told that they were late replacements and hadn't had much time to get sorted, but it showed. A couple of crowd members started laughing at them during their first song. Their very limited musical ability was exemplified by their drummer, who has only just started playing drums. But that was the problem - they had some ideas, but didn't have the skill to show them off. Maybe next year?
Up next were Rocking Horse, a four-piece who have created quite a buzz recently. They even had two singers who could both sing (and were quite fit girls).
They had some decent songs and some stage presence, but they seemed to totally love themselves. This proved their downfall, as some smug looks really put off the judges. While their bouncy, disco opener set them off well they then proceeded to become a bit post-rock and noodley. They should have stuck to the No Doubt impressions.
Finally, This Town Needs Guns have a crap name, but their Incubus-meets-Emo-meets-Thom Yorke stylings won the day, despite the singer being slightly off form tonight (a dodgy Pizza Hut apparently the culprit). They sound very á la mode but consequently rather like they're straight off the Emo-conveyor belt. They need more stage presence but actually have some decent tunes, including a wicked riff in their last song, and the ability to play something other than 4/4 timing - a pleasant change.
Overall, TTNG just beat Rocking Horse, who might have progressed in last week's heat. TTNG have a decent chance for the final but will need a stronger vocal performance to take the prize.
With Carbon/Silicon fronted by Mick Jones (The Clash) and featuring Tony Jones (Sigue Sigue Sputnik), and support from Sarah Blackwood (ex-Dubstar)'s new band Client, I couldn't pass this gig up, even though I didn't know what to expect.
Client have the image: sharply dressed, cold and sexy. They're heavily indebted to the likes of Human League and Depeche Mode. With Sarah on board, there shouldn't be a problem standing out from the crowd, but there's nothing like No More Talk: the harsh, emotionless near-spoken vocal wastes her talent.
The headliners look like an old pub/wedding covers band but you can't argue with pedigree. Most people were there for the men more than the band though - with several heckling calls for old favourites like White Riot.
Unfortunately Jones' vocals were barely audible, so while it seemed there were good songs struggling to get out, they didn't make it. Thankfully they included lengthy instrumental jams, but even these got boring after a couple of songs.
Things picked up a bit for the end, with a shower of balloons. Still, it wasn't just the hair in the crowd thinning by the encore. Jones stopped to shake many hands before leaving; several members of the crowd probably fulfilled life-long dreams in seeing him. When they come to remember tonight though, it'll just be "Mick Jones from The Clash". Carbon who?
Featuring some of Oxford's finest musicians, the University Sinfonietta plans to showcase its versatility in this term's concert. The programme, which ranges from intricate baroque to dissonant contemporary, will most definitely appeal to a wide range of musical tastes. The first piece in the concert, chronologically speaking, is Bach's Brandenburg Concerto Number 4, which includes strings, harpsichord, and three soloists - Jonathan Storey and Elizabeth Burgess on recorder and Claire Osborne on violin. While it really resembles more of a concerto grosso than a solo concerto, the three soloists definitely reveal Bach in all his delicate complexity, and the ensemble complements them with a rich, full sound.
The concert then proceeds to an interesting though less known piece, Juan Crisotomo Arriaga's Overture 'Los Esclavos Felices'. Arriaga, an early 19th Century Basque composer, is sometimes dubbed the 'Spanish Mozart,' and perhaps with good reason - He wrote this overture at the ripe age of 13. Los Esclavos Felices was actually a complete opera, but unfortunately most of it has been lost. Arriaga's premature death at the age of 20 perhaps prevented him from fulfilling his complete potential; nevertheless, his overture stands as a testament to his great talent.
Next up is a more widely known 20th century artist, who transformed classical music by daring to break the conventions of harmony, rhythm and tone. Austrian-turned-American composer Arnold Schoenberg is famous for his experiments with atonality and dissonance. While this concert's featured Schoenberg piece - The Chamber Symphony no. 1 - precedes his break with tonality, it still offers a fair amount of harmonic strangeness. Unlike traditional symphonies, this work is cast as a single movement which seeks to unify the various moods and characters of the usual four, thus making for a truly interesting sound.
Finally, the concert brings us right up to the present with Japanese composer Karen Tanaka's Hommage en Cristal. Born in 1961, Tanaka studied piano early and then turned to composition, for which she has won many prizes and become quite famous. Tanaka is known for incorporating technology into her work, as well as for using music to demonstrate her love of nature and concern for the environment. Her work is often described as having a glassy sound, and this particular piece, which features a piano and strings, seeks to exhibit this crystalline quality.
The eclectic programme promises that no matter what your musical tastes, this concert will offer something for you. The Sinfonietta is a highly selective group drawing from several of Oxford's musical ensembles, and the quality of their sound definitely reflects the musicians' skill and dedication.
20th May 2004