Category: music

Radiohead – The Bends… a swift listen

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Over the last couple of years I have been listening to a lot of music online.  Streaming the 010100101010000111111s.  But recently I have taken a step back from the new, the fresh, the vital and I’ve been basking in the dusty, spinning black circles of music history.  I actually think it’s having a positive influence on my own recorded output as I’ve been putting a nostalgic bent on the new Eleventh Hour tracks – but more on that another day!

I so enjoyed listening and commenting on Abbey Road as it played I thought I’d do something similar with the next record in the rack.  And that accolade goes to…. /spins chair around and grabs next album in line… hmmmm.  Interesting.  The Bends by Radiohead.  Ha ha!  Discussions of Radiohead can be more than your life’s worth!

So… needle dropped.  Planet Telex.  I remember buying the single.  I think it was a double A-side.  Planet Telex and High and Dry.  I remember reading an article in a student magazine at the time where Thom Yorke was saying that High and Dry was “for the masses” and Planet Telex was the song the band really wanted people to take notice of.  I recall being somewhat offended by the comment.  And I still do to a certain degree.  Look… I think Planet Telex is a great song, a great influential song.  But I also happen to think High and Dry is pretty perfect.  Now, in hindsight, was Thom really slating High and Dry or was he just doing that thing that people do where they put down their own song as if it was soooooo easy to write?  So everyone else thinks… ‘wow, he must be amazing if he can write songs that good that he actually hates but we all love’.  Ha ha!  Or was he just a very contrary character.  Well… you know what… knowing what we know now it was probably a little of all of them.  But I think High and Dry is a high point and it was annoying to hear it being slagged off by its writer before I’d even heard it!

Radiohead meant a lot to the kids of my generation.  Especially the kids in bands at the time that this album came out.  It was a rosy time for the British music industry and epoch defining albums were being spewed out at a phenomenal rate.  But Radiohead always seemed that little bit more interesting than the others.  They were already a very contrary band.  A band that was so dismissive of its biggest hit to date, Creep.  A band that was always on the clever side of intellectual.  And Radiohead seemed so close to home.  Thom Yorke had gone to Uni just up the road from me.  I knew one of his ex-girlfriends.  They just seemed touchable… you know… within a whiskers grasp.  Then. Not now!

I managed to type right through a couple of songs there! Ha ha!  Anyway… High and Dry is playing now.  And I still think it’s one of the best songs Radiohead have ever pulled out of the hat.  Thom would probably smack me in the face for even suggesting it.  I kind of understand his position.  He genuinely wants to push boundaries.  He wants to be cutting edge.  Perhaps he felt a little embarrassed about the direction the band had taken in those early years.  All bleached hair and U2-isms.  Big songs.  Big ballads.  Acoustic guitars.  Quiet-loud-quiet dynamics.  Well… Thom it’s all here in spades.  Fake Plastic Trees is playing now.  This is the song that got all the plaudits.  For me it’s not quite up there with High and Dry but I notice that over the years the band haven’t been so coy about this track.  They seem prepared to admit it’s their song.  So sometimes a big acoustic song is alright then?  Ha ha!  Got you.

I know Thom used to DJ at Uni and was very much into the acid house scene.  I think Kid A probably gave him a much greater sense of achievement than this album. But Kid A couldn’t have happened without The Bends.  For it is this album that created Radiohead.  Without it they would have been the band that wrote Creep.  They would have been an EMF or a Charlatans.  The Bends changed the story.  Or it at least turned the page.  I suppose OK Computer not only furthered the story but actually relocated the whole damn library.

Listening to this album now it sounds relatively straightforward.  I have always held it in supremely high regard and it does still sound fighting fit… but I’m not too keen on the song currently playing.  Perhaps it says something for the album that I’m going to have to reach over for the sleeve to see what this song’s called.  Bones.  Hmmmm.  Not really feeling this song.  I suppose on a CD I might skip it but I’m sitting here enjoying the fact that the record is playing under the record player cover and it would be far too much of a task to ‘skip a track’.  And anyway… an album is an album.  You stick with it through the good and the bad.  And so far this album has been pretty good.

It’s actually hard for me to be objective about The Bends.  As I’ve already said, it hit me at the ‘correct’ moment in my life.  I needed this album.  And unlike the rest of the world I never needed the follow-up.  I think the typical ‘reviewer’ defines Radiohead as pre-OK Computer and post-OK Computer.   But OK Computer is always the fixed point in time.  The perfect album created by their perfect head-music band.  OK Computer didn’t have the same relevance for me.   I think I’m happier thinking of Radiohead as a cascading series of ever more eclectic waves.  We are the shore.

I was getting into some A-level style creative writing there!  Ha ha.  But I notice de duh shhhe de duh shhhe de duh shhhe de duh shhhe the needle is going round and round.  Time to turn the record over.

Hey this is more like it.  Just.  This brings back memories.  Remember MTV2?  I used to watch that channel all the bloody time.  And this video was on all the time.  Great video.  Intriguing video.  Anyone who hasn’t seen it – stop reading and YouTube it now!  Great quiet LOUD quiet song this.  Kind of defines the moment.  We were in the aftermath of grunge and this style of music was very much in vogue.  But Radiohead brought another slant to the style.  The guitarist playing those fast repetitive guitar stabs whilst wearing that plastic brace thing on his arm.  Honestly his guitar style was so influential.  You hear it everywhere.  You hear it in my music.  You hear it in Muse.  You hear it everywhere.

My Iron Lung.  I’m sure this was on an EP released before The Bends?  In any case, I’m not going to stray and Wikipedia anything.  I am writing this as the album plays and when it finishes I finish.  The ultimate time constraint.

So far I’ve got to say that Side 2 is kicking arse.  Big stylee!  Such great guitar work in this song.  And what a frenetic break in the middle.  Just an obelisk of a song.  This track has monkeys gathering around it aimlessly clanking bones about.  But one of those monkeys is gonna throw that bone in the air. . .

What I notice now with the space of 17 years is the varied ‘textures’ of this album.  I can hear the electronica that was to come.  I think The Bends is more of a defining moment for Radiohead than the historians would have you believe.

I like Thom’s vocals on this album.  He still had to sing at this point.  I mean sing in the traditional sense.  The band still had to achieve success.  Pablo Honey (the début album) was not a great album.  Radiohead were not destined for greatness.  Not then.  They had to work up to that point.  You can only truly experiment once you have reached a level where people WANT to hear the results of your laboratory workouts.  Mix those chemicals too soon and no one will be interested in the contents of the test tube.  In fact they will just insist that you clean up your mess.  Bands have to do this.  They have to reach a level of success and instil a certain confidence in their fans.  The Beatles couldn’t have just started out with the White Album.  And Radiohead couldn’t have just started out with Kid A.  And in any case, whether they like it now or not, Radiohead made a good stadium rock style band.  They could have been the Killers or Coldplay of their day.  Luckily for us Radiohead were much more than that.  Radiohead were a band that paved the way for anyone who wanted to experiment.  When someone asked you who you sounded like you could just say ‘Radiohead‘ with confidence – and that still holds to this day.  For while I am not their biggest fan I do appreciate that they are still the band to live up to.  A band who have touched greatness and seemingly been driven mad by it.  Radiohead almost seem to mirror the artists of the ’60s who took too much LSD.  It’s like Radiohead were Pink Floyd.  They had their Bends, Dark Sides, OK Computers and Wish You Were Heres.  But then Radiohead became Syd Barrett and Peter Green.  Radiohead took off … destination – another galaxy.  They became the Lennon that wanted tape loops involving the number 9.  But whole albums of it.  There was no McCartney to reign Radiohead in.  And in many ways they are all the better for it.  We NEED bands like this.

Okay… the last song.  Street Spirit.  I don’t have long left.  I’m typing like a banshee!!! This is no average final track.  This is a classic.  This is a defining moment.  And again… I hear what they were to become here.  This is monumental song writing.  And this is an important album.  I haven’t played The Bends too much over the years.  But it did change me.  Those initial listens changed me.  And I’m sure they worked their similar magic on Matt Bellamy.  And others.  For The Bends is nothing if not influential.  And for every reviewer who holds aloft OK Computer as the greatest thing since sliced bread I will open those slices of bread and point at the filling.  For it is The Bends.  (don’t bite into it!  An OK Computer, Bends, OK Computer sandwich has got to be bad for the teeth!  And I’m not sure anyone could survive the emotional, heartfelt, Jeff Buckley inspired indie onslaught!).

The record has ended.  Apologies if I have written a load of bollocks.  I had to type quickly.  And I was a little spoiled by the last record, Abbey Road.

I enjoyed listening to The Bends again.  A band at its peak of being “A Band”.  They were never ‘quite’ the same again.

Abbey Road – An Impromptu Review

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Still a lovin’ the vinyl.  I’ve just stuck on Abbey Road.  Thought I’d type while I listen.  I do love Come Together.  For me an example of why Ringo Starr is one of the greatest drummers of all time.  A very much underrated musician and the butt of almost all Beatles-related gags.  But anyone who’s anyone appreciates Ringo’s contribution.  Understated and sublime.  I’ve always been a fan of the drums… I think my own music is dominated by the drum kit and the ‘sound’ of the drum kit.  I don’t think songwriters pay enough attention to drum patterns.  They are often happy enough to just put some chords over a drum loop.  That may work just fine for dance music… but if you’re trying to capture the attention of a headmusickid you have to give them something that excites!  I remember first hearing the Buzzcocks… specifically the Peel Sessions album.  Fantastic drumming. Likewise when Caught by the Fuzz by Supergrass first slapped me square in the jaw.  The drums can not only ‘make’ a song but they can define a band.

On a side-note… what the hell was McCartney thinking when he followed the monumental Something with Maxwell’s Silver Hammer?!?  Honestly… sometimes I despair.  I will often be heard sticking up for Macca… but I can think of nothing positive to say about this bloody song.  Abbey Road is such a HUGE album… there is no place for Maxwell’s Silver Bloody Hammer.  Even if the sodding hammer was made out of solid gold I still wouldn’t allow it to occupy the same air-space as the rest of Abbey Road.  Ha ha!  Conversely by the way, I don’t feel the same way about Octopus’s Garden.  Caught you by surprise there?  Anyway… Macca kind of makes up for it immediately with his magnificent vocals on Oh! Darling straight afterwards.

So… the drums are important.   As I was saying.. they can define the band.  I think Ringo’s drumming was the perfect accompaniment to the twin colossus of Lennon & McCartney.  It wouldn’t have worked with John Bonham bashing away behind them.

I Want You.  What a song.  This song is so heavy (very much reflected in the lyrics which proclaim how heavy she indeed is!).  So… we know she’s heavy!  Ha ha!  I love how far the Beatles took music in their short time as an entity.  They redefined music in the space of seven years.  They wrote the rule book on rock and roll and then created the concept album.  They were a band poles apart with itself.  Then on Abbey Road, their final album, they looked back at everything they had ever been and took it to a new level.  With a song like I Want You the Beatles are almost heavy metal.  They had achieved a similar (if not heavier) sound before with Helter Skelter… but I Want You repeats like a heavy rock mantra.  Such a simple song.  Repeated ad infinitum.  Amazing vocals.  Creative bass.  Smashing drums.  A band at the top of its game and yet at the end of its game.  A band that wrote Revolver and Sgt Pepper and yet ended with the relative straight line of Abbey Road.  Awwww…. just listen to that distorted ending… something I have actually (unknowingly, but now I recognise the theft!) incorporated into the latest Eleventh Hour Initiative song.  Oh well…. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and other such clichéd jargon!  Ha ha!

The needle spins in the centre groove.  I have to turn the record over!  Oh come on… even that is nostalgic and sugar-coated sweetness! 🙂

George’s second song on the album.  Here Comes the Sun is another sure-fire hit.  I’ll tell you something – people will decry George’s involvement with the Beatles’ songwriting.  George himself liked to joke about it.  When Paul suggested they write together in later years George stated “He ignored me for years and now he wants to write with me?”.  Well, honestly, don’t believe a word of it.  Count the number of Harrison’s songs on albums like Revolver and Abbey Road.  I think he fared pretty well.  In terms of talent he was certainly up there with Lennon and McCartney.  He made the Beatles the band they were. I have the utmost respect for George’s contributions.  It’s funny that Sinatra introduced his version of Something with the line “This is one of the best Lennon and McCartney songs”.  Ha ha!  I bet George had to eat a couple of extra portions of Ready Brek that morning!!!

Hmmmm… typed right through Because.  And to think I could have waxed lyrical about the vocals on that track!

So… we’re now into the medley on side 2 of Abbey Road.  The opportunity for all the songs that had never been completed to be tossed into the salad bowl and hand mixed with some expensive olive oil.  I think the medley works a treat.  In fact there are moments that blow my mind.  The beautiful vocal harmonies.  The intricate Albatross-esque guitar work.  The in-turns eloquent and silly lyrics.  And the overriding feeling that everyone involved knows that this is the end.  The last notes they will ever record as the Beatles.  The fab four’s intentions have already been spelt out.  They are gone.  They have left the building (without Elvis’ blessing contrary to the reports!).  And yet Paul, John, George and Ringo were friends for one last time to create this album.  That is how it sounds.  The work of friends.  That is why I think Abbey Road occupies a certain position in fans’ hearts.  This is the album as we want to remember the fab 4.  For so soon after the final note is played there is acrimony at play.

She Came in Through the Bathroom Window.  Another silly McCartney song… but this one feels ‘right’.  This is class… and we sense we are on the wind down.  Into Golden Slumbers.  I love Paul McCartney.  Just listen to that melody.  Just listen to that voice.  Honestly, some of his best singing.  Some of the best ever singing.  Lennon gets the plaudits, but McCartney was up there.  Lennon may get voted “Best Singer of All Time”… but I won’t forget Paul.

And now I’m just waiting for The End.  The most fitting final song of any band ever?  In my opinion this song is the perfect full stop.  The most fitting termination.

A drum solo!!!  I can forgive Ringo’s “Peace and Love” bullshit for this one perfectly played solo.  His only solo.  Okay, perhaps it’ll take a little more to completely forgive his recent antics… the bloated old rock whore that he is!  😉 And… then… a guitar solo battle!!!  This is the Beatles soloing like things possessed.

“And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”

I love the Beatles.  I think I’ve just written a pretty little love letter to my favourite band.  And it took the exact length of Abbey Road to write because Her Majesty finishes… … now.  Even the sound of the needle spinning endlessly in the groove sounds musical to me.  I could have written more if I had more time… but I think I got my point across.  Perhaps I should do this more often.  Write whilst listening to a record?  It would mean all my articles would have to be written in the space of approximately 30 minutes.  Ha ha!

*Apologies for any factual inaccuracies.  I have written this whole article in the time it took Abbey Road to spin… and I didn’t refer to the likes of Wikipedia once!  This is all my inherent knowledge on display.  I am showing you just how much of a Beatles fan I am… (and how quickly I can type!).  And relax.

Album Review: Maybeshewill – ‘I was here for a moment, then I was gone’

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I am devouring new music.  I have spent a few years avoiding too many new sounds so that my own albums exist in their own bubble, unaffected by outside interests.  But now, I unwrap new music.  CDs!  I still buy a few CDs!  Stick that in your pipe and smoke it!

I have mentioned in past reviews how I prefer to critique from afar.   From across the span of a decade.  To eat and drink an album to the point where you know it intimately.. to be able to truly see its value and place in history.  Well… going against all that, I review this album from a position of no prior knowledge. I know nothing about this band. Nothing at all.  I don’t know how this differs or betters anything else they’ve done.  I don’t know what else they’ve done!  This is therefore a blind test.  This is my reasoning and justification for ignoring my previous sentiments.  I like the idea of either reviewing with ALL knowledge… or reviewing with NO knowledge.  For a little bit of knowledge can be a bad thing!  So…  Maybeshewill.  Hmmm.

From the very opening seconds of “I was here for a moment, then I was gone” I knew I was going to like this album.  It’s as if I’ve never been away from music.  I’m picking up right from where I left off.  The album opens with an immediate punch of epicness, and you know how much I adore epicness!!!  Tinkling pianos, swelling strings and a choir of “ahhhhs”.  I can indeed imagine filling the punch bowl for this creation.  A healthy dash of Explosions in the Sky and a half bottle of Hope of the States.  This is music that sits well in my frame of reference.  The beautiful opening segues into first track proper “Take This to Heart”.  A really cool stomping song that could be the theme for a Zombie film – I suggest 28 Days Later… or has that already been done? 😉 .  It has that post rock feel.  The sound of physical oxygen and carbon dioxide around the instruments.  Air being moved.  This is another quietLOUDquiet band and to a certain extent I’ve heard it all before.  But that doesn’t stop the individual tracks pricking my ears and “Take This to Heart” for instance is smooth.  It’s hard to put some of these sounds into words… but Maybeshewill‘s sound would make a good ‘spread’ for a sandwich.  I don’t know how much of this album is sequenced and how much is played live but it sounds very, very real.  This is an album after my heart… tugging at my hamstrings.  Fragments of the album sound like the theme to Dexter, which I love.  “Words For Arabella” has hand-claps and “Red Paper Lanterns” even has chimes!  Yay! This is exquisitely crafted sound.  However, like Three Trapped Tigers before it, this is well trodden ground. The post rock landscape is a dirty, desolate, solitary place with countless square miles of ground sodden with oil and the carcasses of all the ‘noise’ bands who came before.  So… do Maybeshewill do enough to get my blood flowing?

This is a different beast to the feline antics of Three Trapped Tigers.  Maybeshewill are not so heavily reliant on the extreme skills of one member of the band (Tiger‘s drummer).  This band has an all round pretty sheen.  For a post rock noise album “I was here for a moment, then I was gone” is actually quite gentle.  And my does it flow.  Like Chateauneuf du Pape down a greased, angled piece of glass.  I suppose that’s the ‘smoothness’ coming in to play again!  We are not going to escape the fast downward strummed electric guitar here.  This is no place for alternate picking!  Ha ha!  Saying that, “Red Paper Lanterns” features a beautiful guitar melody which reminds me of some of the techniques of Joe Satriani.  Strange that I’ve mentioned Satriani two reviews in a row now, for I bet he isn’t an influence on this band.  They will probably deny his existence!  Ha ha!

This album fizzes in places.  Literally fizzes… like a can of freshly opened Coke (not Pepsi).  Hmmmm… is that chugging power chords I hear on “Relative Minors”?  Ha ha!  Yes!  More!  Another very important point: the songs are short, most being around the 4 minute mark.  This means the band are compressing ideas… getting straight to the point.  There is no meandering here.  If anything, this is as close to ‘pop singles’ as you’re going to get in the world of post rock!  I appreciate it.  Although I love long songs too it is nice for a band in this genre to be making a concerted effort to be concise.

Negatives… well, I hate to harp on and I realise I’m like a broken record… but it is a little clichéd to have no vocals.  Yes, I know, I know… this is supposed to be instrumental music.  I know that post rock doesn’t have vocals.  I know it’s the antithesis of commercial rock.  I know it is an attempt to bring to rock what electronic brought to pop.  I know that Aphex Twin is a closer comparison to this music than the Rolling Stones.  However, I would like these bands to keep pushing forward.  And for me, well, I would love to hear what Maybeshewill could do with another weapon in their repertoire.  The human voice is the most versatile of all instruments… come on someone on the scene… bring it into play!!!

An exquisite album.  Well played, well thought out, well-intentioned.  I’m not sure it truthfully offers much above and beyond what we’ve already been given by the likes of Explosions in the Sky.  However, there is an increased sense of urgency on display here.  This band has the ability to rock out balls-to-the-wall and still maintain the melody.  This isn’t ‘clever’ music… this sound-scape retains emotion.  And for that reason I give Maybeshewill an awful lot of credit.  It’s hard to give a score to an album like this.  I feel I have to fit it into the huge swathe of post rock bands in some way…  like its achievement can’t make up for the fact that there are a thousand similar sounding bands at the moment.  However… I shall give it a score based on how I feel.  Take it or leave it.  Great album.  Fantastic album.  I just don’t know whether it’s game changing.  Simple as that.

Maybeshewill – I was here for a moment, then I was gone: 7/10

Album Review: Three Trapped Tigers – ‘Route One or Die’

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Context… context is important to a review.  To set the scene.  I am ironing.  Not just any ironing.  This is ironing on the scale of the conquest of Everest.  If and when I finish I will be honoured to the highest level.  I expect a telegram from the Queen!!!

I choose to listen to an album by Three Trapped Tigers called “Route One or Die”.  First things first.  These guys can play their instruments.  They are serious cats dude!  Trapped cats!  Ha ha!  But do these cats emit the sound of a trapped cat?  Or, more importantly, three trapped cats?  For that would be a bad, bad sound!!!

There are times during this album when it sounds like the band are just about to fall off the stage.  A cacophonous riot of avant-garde destruction almost on par with Explosions in the Sky at their noisiest.  I expect the aforementioned band is an influence, for this is fundamentally a ‘post-rock project’.  Post rock as a tag often puts fear into my heart.  It is a style of music which appears to have no boundaries… and yet has given itself a very tightly fenced garden in the process.  Crashing drums – check.  ’70s prog rock keyboards – check.  Manic guitar strums – check.  No vocals – check.  “Route One or Die” dwells within this garden… very safely in this garden.  The three tigers are caged in this garden.

So… as I iron another t-shirt (how may t-shirts should a man have?)… I listen intently.  I am not au fait with post rock really.  I have tinkered on its outskirts… I have driven the car by, wound down the window and breathed in the stale post-apocalyptic air.  But I have only stayed momentarily.  I enjoy the extreme drumming, almost thrash drumming in fact.  This album is at times as heavy as Metallica, sometimes even hitting Napalm Death levels of explosive noise.  The final track, Reset, is one of these moments… after it is done emulating the melody of Spinal Tap‘s Stonehenge it spanks us hard with absolutely astonishing drumming.  Adam Betts (I believe) hits those drums as if his pants depend on it.  Incredible.

Throughout the album I am reminded of other bands.  Sometimes hints… sometimes slaps in the face.  I hear Yes in the arpeggios of the keyboards.  I hear Joe Satriani in the melodies.  I hear Explosions in the Sky in the quietLOUDquietness of it all.  I hear War of the Worlds, Tubular Bells, DJ Shadow … I hear the 80’s TV programme Tripods.  I hear fantastic musicianship.  The drums are indeed the standout.  Sheer power.  This album is bringing my walls down.  Manic, threatening, belligerent racket!

The album opens with a ‘song’ called Cramm.  This track sums the band up perfectly adequately.  If you like it then sit back and enjoy the rest.  If you think it sounds like a noisy baby, trapped in a metal dustbin being rolled down the steps of a lighthouse then feel free to chuck the album straight in the nearest canal!  Ha ha!

I like the scope… I like the interest brought about by the timing changes.  This band has finesse, coupled with the ability to switch gears in an instant.  When this band hits the ‘heavy’ switch you honestly feel like Chicken Licken waiting for the sky to fall on your head.  Again… I think the drums are incredible.  This is noise rock… but it could almost be categorised as a new era heavy metal rather than the electronic tag it’s usually filed under.  These are real people playing real instruments and they absolutely slay!  Massive. I would like vocals, more than just a few ahhs on the final track.  I appreciate this style of music exists only without a vocalist, but I think it would be interesting to break a section of that garden fence.  Or at least let one of the three tigers dig a small tunnel beneath it.

This is heavy, demanding, intelligent music that drives home a good ironing session.  I am ironing faster than ever before!  Music for ironing?  Yes.

A score.  Hmmm.  This is a post rock noise album.  And it does what it says on the tin.  So… probably a straight 5/10.  But I like the drums.  I like the stutters.  And most importantly… my kitten is loving it!!!  Extra point!  If the tigers had given me a couple of lyrical themes they might have got another point.  But hey… 6 is bloody good! As I keep saying ad nauseum, I’m fed up with the 7-10 point scale.  Use all ten bloody numbers people!

Three Trapped Tigers – Route One or Die: 6/10

Disorganised Cacophony

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Hello.  Firstly, apologies.  I have neglected my duties here and I’ve probably lost a few ‘Confession’ fans in the process.  However, I have not been idle.  No no no.  I have been putting full effort into promoting my side-project with Bill Ryan – “The Eleventh Hour Initiative”.  There is no way you can have failed to have noticed this as I have basically pasted the banner on every available surface.  If I could I would have come into your houses, slapped some wallpaper paste on your flat screen tvs and stuck the damn posters right there in front of you.  You can’t escape!  Ha ha!  Buy the Eleventh Hour Initiative’s debut album, “Escapism”.  It’s really, really good.  Would I ever lie to you?

So, back to the day job.  I am Confession of the Whole School.  I have mentioned that I have been secretly beavering away on a brand new album.  Well… it is nearly finished.  I have about 2 songs left before I will seal the deal, but for the moment I think it’s safe to at least admit the album’s potential existence.  The final 2 songs will take some time to record so you have ample opportunity to buy and devour the Eleventh Hour album!

You are my dear fans.  The intelligent, forward minded who read and listen to me.  I just wanted to let you know where I’m at right now.  I’ve bought up a lot of vinyl.  Tonight I have been listening to “Highway to Hell” and “The Bends” on vinyl.  Proper, already dusty vinyl.  And I have loved every second of it. I have also been watching a lot of great films.  No, I should rephrase that… you don’t just watch a film like “Taxi Driver”… you absorb it.  You take inspiration from it.  I take inspiration from everything to be fair, but never more so than from albums and films of this calibre.  I may just post some reviews up soon and share my opinions on some of these pieces of art with the world.  For that’s what they are.  Whether it be Bon Scott’s rough edged, double-entendre tongue or Scorsese’s majestic, filthy grime.  Every second is uplifting.  Even the downs are reinvigorating.

The new Confession of the Whole School album is to be titled “The Galton Detail”.  There!  I’ve said it!  It’s out in the open now.  The secret’s power has been diminished somewhat and the element of surprise has been destroyed!  Ha ha!

Here is a taster of  what to expect from “The Galton Detail”.  It is a track called “Disorganised Cacophony”.  Enjoy.

Album Review: PULP – ‘HIS ‘N’ HERS’

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I’ll be honest right from the start.  I’ve drunk a fair bit of wine.  So much so that my fingers look like lightning across the keyboard.  A FrEnZy I tell thee!!!!  Ha ha!!!!

London is burning.  The rioting is spreading.  Don’t get me started on my feelings about the cretins involved in this mindless nonsense!  All I hear on the news channels is people sticking up for the behaviour of these idiots of society.  Well… as people in my own city plan their own riots (for possessions you understand… looting for POSSESSIONS… there is no political ideology on display here!!! 😐 ) I shall sink into the deepest recesses of music.  You will all know me by now.  You will know I can ramble.  Well… I have precisely one hour to put some thoughts onto the interweb.  This will be stream of consciousness stuff so expect wrongness.  And inconsequence!

What comes to mind then…. I mean to write about.  Hmmm.  More wine first vicar!

How about a ‘discussion’ of an album.  Hmmmm.  What album though.  I get the feeling that in my time with you – and I hope it will be years – I will discuss a huge variety of albums!  Rubber Soul seems the next  ‘apt’ album to discuss in terms of my recent road trip.  Or perhaps a punk album, maybe the Sex Pistols in light of the riots.  Or the Kaiser Chiefs… clever blokes 😉

No… I shall write about an album that is important to me.  An album that changed my life – for a while.  Perhaps for ever really. His ‘n’ Hers by Pulp.

Back-story.  I was well into rock music in my youth.  You could even go so far as to call me a ‘metaller’.  Ha ha!  Seriously… I was well into my Sabbath, Maiden, Aerosmith etc etc ad infinitum.  That wasn’t a problem.  I enjoyed it.  It was important to me.  Then along came grunge.  And grunge changed everything.  So much so that I’m sure I’ll write some entries about certain grunge albums in the future!  I started a band.   I drafted in someone I met at school.  He approached me one day with an armful of grunge albums and lent them to me no questions asked.  He’d just moved into the area and I’m sure it was a way to make a friend (the guy with long hair and a leather jacket was probably the safest bet for him!!!).  Ha ha!  Anyway… I did indeed borrow those albums… and I loved them.  I think it was stuff like Nevermind and Ten, pretty mainstream really…. but do you remember those times – were you even born then?!?  It was refreshing.  It changed the landscape of music.  Me and ‘the guy who lent me those albums’ became great friends.  Hmmm… perhaps warrants a new paragraph?

So we started a band.  I claimed I could play the guitar.  Well, compared to him and his mates I was like a flippin’ guitar hero.  Ha ha!  What we needed was a bass player… so he bought a cheap bass.  I taught him to play it and a band was in the making.  He went on to become a really great bass player, perhaps I’ll get a cheque in the post one day!  Ha ha!  No, seriously, that guy had talent and we actually made a great partnership.   I went to Uni and converted a couple more people to my cause.  A keyboard player (who I at least converted, if not actually taught, to play the guitar) and a drummer.  We were a punk band I suppose.  Punk in as much as we couldn’t play… but also punk in as much as I was well into the Pistols and the Buzzcocks at the time.  And elements of Nirvana’s first album, Bleach, came into play.  Nirvana… remember Nirvana?   The frightening thing is that some people genuinely think that Dave Grohl is just the front-man of the Foo Fighters.  They don’t even know he was the drummer of a really important rock band?!?  But that’s just the way of the world.  Isn’t it?  Memories fade.  And sometimes memories are poured onto a computer screen when one is drinking wine!!!

So I was a rocker in a punk band.  I was rocker in a punk band with all the trappings.  Easy.  Very easy.  Then Brit-Pop happened.  I was slowly converted to the likes of Blur and pretty much instantly to the likes of Oasis.  It’s difficult in hindsight to remember how totally game-changing “Definitely Maybe” was at the time.  It not only created a band wagon but it created the biggest band and the very biggest wagon!!!  Seriously… you should have seen the size of the wheels!?!  You needed to clamber up a 6 foot supermodel’s shoulders just to reach the cab!  Ha ha!  So my band at the time graduated to the title of “indie pop band” – as did every other band of the day!  All bands became Oasis!  We started to hang out in indie clubs.  Perhaps I’ll tell stories of those times one day.  But we enjoyed our particular brand of insulated imaginary fame!  Ha ha! Then I heard a song.  I cannot remember where it figured exactly in the time line.  But it was probably on Top of the Pops, or in the indie clubs.  I heard the song “Babies” by Pulp.  Babies.

That kind of changed everything.  That one song.  I was converted instantly.  This band was a revelation.  Even just to look at – they were extreme.  A weird mix of modern and complete nostalgia.  David Bowie, disco and Brit-Pop.  A gangly front-man….. a girl playing the keyboards – and an angelic sound.  As with the other bands of the time it’s hard to listen to the music now and recognise the dynamite, neon-flamed abuse of the senses that erupted at the time.  They were extraordinary.  Completely.  So much so that I can still taste the first few times I heard that song on my tongue.  I still remember the first time!  😉  And I have an infamously bad memory!!!  The song “Babies” is a track from an album called His ‘n’ Hers by a band called Pulp.  Now… if I was going to be ‘cool’ I’d actually big up their previous album, “Separations”  – another magnificent album.  But, I have to be honest with you my faithful readers, this is a confessional site and His ‘n’ Hers was in many ways my confessional album.

The album was actually a huge way into Pulp’s career… and yet it feels like a debut album.  Actually strike that… it feels like a reboot.  In the same way that Nolan rebooted Batman and all the superheroes are currently receiving reinventions, Pulp recognised what worked and what didn’t from their past – and started again from square one.  The violins and the electronics are still there. The moody reflection and autumnal tones are still very much in play.  But Pulp finally found that magical ingredient so often missing before – a good song.

The album kicks in with ‘Joyriders’.  A track which to this day I still remember all the words to.  I just love the way the song smacks you in the face immediately.  There’s no intro.  This song signifies an album with straight-ahead intentions.

“We can’t help it we’re so thick we can’t think.

Can’t think of anything but shit, sleep and drink”

A song that seems SO relevant in the current climate of disillusionment and destruction.  People making excuses for their actions.  It’s like Jarvis is a prophet – like he should be bowed down to.  Jarvis.  Jarvis Cocker!  I DO bow down to Jarvis Cocker.  Never has someone made so much from so little.  And yet… that is unfair.  He has that certain ‘something’.  You can’t quite put your finger on it… but he has IT.  I wished I was him at the time.  Maybe I still do now!  Ha ha!

This majestic album then hits you with “Lipgloss”.  It’s at this point that you realise the lyrics are genius.  They are like a diary.  Fair enough, a diary from someone who is having a more interesting life than you.  But in any case, I certainly remember listening to the lyrics and experiencing a revelatory moment.  Songs could be SO from the heart that they BECAME the heart.  Heart and soul. Heart and soul.  ///throws up!

Acrylic Afternoons is perhaps the true highlight of the album.  This song needs to be experienced – preferably lying on your bed in a darkened room (only really an activity you can perform as a student).  I had similar experiences in that ‘darkened room’ with Portishead and Jeff Buckley, but  I’m sure I’ll talk about them another day.  Acrylic Afternoons is almost perfect.  It’s fragile… gentle.  A world away from Iron Maiden or the Ramones.  And yet in some ways infinitely more powerful.  That’s what pains me about music reviews.  It’s so easy to spout verbal shite about music.  To be all verbally dexterous with your verbiage. But the honest reality is that you just have to hear it for yourself.  You may not like it… but you have to hear it.

This diary of an album continues until we come to the song “Babies”.  A song so good I will name it twice.  Babies Babies.  I won’t say too much about this song.  I CAN’T say too much about this song.  It’s just too important.  This single, solitary song underpins everything I have ever done.  It defines Confession of the Whole School to a certain extent.  It changed my life.  Set me on a different path – it HAS to be that important.  I (wrongly) relegated all of my heavy metal albums to the bottom drawer of my wardrobe for years.  Yes… years!  Seriously, Babies had that much of an impact.  It changed me!  It still changes me.  It remains one of the greatest songs ever written.  Check out the video!  It is tongue in cheek and unpretentious (considering the vastness of the song), but it is funny and witty and defines the band.  It also features the never to be topped dancing skills of Mr Cocker!  Common People may represent the band for the masses…. but for the believers, “Babies” is the song to beat!  🙂


So… I’m running out of time. Have I even started the album review yet?  “Babies” reminds me of so much. People I no longer see and things I no longer do.  It is MY song.  And for that reason I will never allow a bad word to be said about it!

The next song on the album is called “She’s a Lady”.  This song betrays the roots of Pulp.  For you see Pulp had to deal with being a ‘band’ when being a ‘band’ wasn’t cool.  They had to exist through acid house, rave, dance and all things electronic.  They adapted.  This is more evident on Separations… but it is indeed evident here on His ‘n’ Hers too.  She’s a Lady isn’t one of my favourites, but it has its moments.  Every song on this album does.  Because this is a classic album.  This album is up there with Definitely Maybe, Parklife and Dog Man Star.  For me it is the crowning glory of Brit-Pop whilst perhaps not being Brit-Pop at all.  It is a contrary album.  So, let’s just forget She’s a Lady shall we?

Happy Endings is another torn page from the Cocker diary.  An epic of Human League like proportions.  Jarvis is just perfect.  The perfect singer who can’t sing.  As are Jonny Rotten and Alice Cooper.  You don’t have to be able to sing conventionally to win my heart. In fact I insist!  If you win the X-Factor I will disown you!  I promise.

“Happy Endings” is the companion piece to Blur’s “To the End”.  It is a magnificent song with the cutest keyboard solo ever!  Ha ha!

Then comes perhaps the stand-out single from the album.  Another song that instantly reduces me to tears.  Because it really is THAT GOOD!

Do You Remember the First Time?

“I can’t remember a worse time.”

The perfect “indie”TM single.  This song, along with Suede’s whole first album, cornered the market in swirling sexual indie rock.  There was no point anyone else even trying afterwards.  “Do You Remember the First Time” could be summed up as a Buzzcocks single for the ’90s. A song the Buzzcocks, in their prime, might have written.   Sheer diary.  Sheer poetry.  Sheer class.  Sheer riff-age.  Sheer perfection.

Pink Glove continues the veiled lyrics.  The secret written word that you can’t believe someone is actually singing. So close to the bone.  Like a bloody post-mortem!  Excuse me while I nip downstairs for more wine. —- Back.  Yep… The lyrics to Pink Glove almost make me cry.  You know something’s good when you can say that.

So… all that really leaves me to talk about is the final track on the album – “David’s Last Summer”.  An epic.  A 7 minute epic.  Having now written a few epics myself I can appreciate the influence this song may have had on me.  I’ll never be a ‘speaker’ of words, I’ll always be a singer – so I couldn’t say the song is ‘vocally’ an influence. But it is certainly an inspiration.  Not one I ever think about.  But it must have had an impact on my younger self. As did a song like Rime of the Ancient Mariner.  The idea of a song as a series of movements.  The idea of words as a series of moments.  They can tie together or they can drift apart.  There are no rules.  Listen to David’s Last Summer.  There are no rules.  And yet the song totally sticks to the rules.  Its own rules… but rules nevertheless.  And so… my self-imposed time limit comes to an end.  Sorry if this ‘so-called review’ has been a little obtuse.  I should be better prepared for these things.  The old rock CDs were eventually allowed out of that drawer, and everything returned to normality.  With age comes the realisation that you don’t have to be embarrassed by the music that you love.  In fact you should do everything in your power to promote it.  Pulp can easily live alongside Wolfsbane, for example.  For although they sound completely different, there is a drive and determination fuelling all of the best bands.  Whether they do it with a bark or a gentle yap is kind of irrelevant.

Hmmmm…. a score?  You want a score?  That is very difficult.  I’m tempted to give this album a 10/10.  However there are moments of distinct 5/10… yet they are so very few and far between.  Floating, bobbing carrier bags in a glittering ocean. Hmmmm.  For me this album is close to perfection.  It is certainly dating. I don’t deny that.  And yet it was dated when it was released. Even then it harked back to the glam of  ’70s Britain.  Platform boots and singers driving into trees.  Hmmm.

PULP – HIS ‘N’ HERS: 9/10