if everybody knows how it’s gonna end//why doesn’t someone stop me;
Number of music magazine reviews completed: 5 of 8
Number of said reviews which slag off Belle & Sebastian: 1
But it’s a work in progress and, to be fair, it’s a little difficult to curse the name of that heinous blotch on the face of Scottish music when you’re writing about scuzzy, feedback-heavy, shouty music for spotty fifteen-year-olds who think that song titles with swear words in them are cool”.
The devil makes work for idle hands. As I wait to see final proofs on my own magazine, I’ve already reported one particularly heinous copy-and-paste enthusiast to Myspace abuse. Practice random acts of evil: it makes your day pass so much more quickly.
It’s been snowing on and off all morning here and while more rural ares of the country are bedding down under fluffy white blankets of the stuff it’s yet to lie anywhere within sight of my fifth-floor office window. City Centre winters are such a cop-out: what makes it in the way of snow is rendered to slush by rock salt and buses before most of us have even stirred from our beds. Heads down, trudging into biting winds and freezing horizontal rain the fairytale winters of our childhoods seem a lifetime ago. The trains might not be running, but you’re still wanted in the office by 9am.
I love to curl up on the sofa with the fairylights on; listening to the rain outside while I sip from a mug of tea. It feels lovely and homey in November, when the leaves are changing colour and the nights are drawing in. In recent years, however, January has become a ferocious beast which roars in the night and consumes the wheelie bins; bringing with it an ominous cold that seems to reach with icy fingers into your very soul. The chill in my feet I can’t quite get rid off puts me off for the rest of the day.
I suppose if I didn’t love my new black Converses so much I could wear more waterproof footwear and would feel a little warmer.
I’m listening to Ys and envying California the wild beauty of Joanna Newsom. Such spellbinding stories seem to belong more to the untamed edges of my own country than the Sunshine State: perhaps the closest our own music has come is Edwin Morgan’s vocals over the crashing sonic waves that form the last minute or so of Idlewild’s The Remote Part album.
I hate that, when I think of Scottish music, what automatically springs to mind is disgust and twee deedeedee deedeedee deedeedee the boy with the Arab Strap. But that’s my own failing, not yours.
Shuffle. Of course the subtleties in most of my favourite music, the sassy bar-room brawls and lovers and losers driving cross-country in the back of some ancient Cadillac, won’t even translate for the Scottish accent. What sounds like freedom through the eyes of Craig Finn or Jesse Malin sounds inauthentic in our tiny back yard; like a hand up a skirt, a jaikie brawl or a dream on the dole. My winter malaise and dissatisfaction talking.
running down a busy street
she was drunk when she kissed me
…she’s just that kind of girl.
I close my eyes, take a breath, and wait for summer and adventure to roll around again.
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oooh, I like the lyrics you quote at the end. *looks hopeful and thinks mix CD thoughts*
Dude, I’m already trying to cull back from 27 tracks! Don’t think Lucero are your sort of thing really though.
Y’know I’ve been thinking about the latter theme of your post for a goodly while now, albeit from a slightly different perspective (that of the wannabe songwriter). Obviously I still haven’t got round to writing anything about it because I’m a neglectful blogger
I find that one of the things that really draws me into country music is the familiar themes and events that are placed within a different context to that which I inhabit – it’s that familiarity cloaked in new perspective that really gets me excited.
It also leads to tremendous frustration, because my musical hero’s (Ryan, Whiskeytown, Jesse, Neko Case) all display a grit that would sound absurd and try-hard coming from my very white middle class background. Similarly the seedy pictures painted by Tom Waits and Bruce Springsteen would also ring hollow. And so I’m left trying to find a voice and a subject matter that rings true, without disappearing into the bland and whinging middle class void we used to know as “emotional hardcore”. Only with acoustic guitars, obviously (christ if that makes me a wannabe English Dashboard Confessional then I’m quitting this game right now).
It’s a conundrum, and probably one that I’ve been considering more since I slipped into a musical diet consisting soley of Neko Case, with side portions of The Band a few weeks ago. Undoubtedly I haven’t expressed it all that well, but that’s the peril’s of updating from a porter cabin that is threatening to take off in a Wizard of Oz style.
Right I’ve polluted your comments page enough for one afternoon Miss Pixie. I’m fairly sure there was a relevant point in there somewhere, but I’ll be damned if I know where
*Mr Noo* xx
When I think of Scottish music I tend to think of The Proclaimers and those two accordion blokes that are always playing just as you turn on the telly every Hogmanay. Jackie Bird always seems dead excited about them, but I’m not sure if anyone except her knows their names. What do they do for the rest of the year?
I used to love Belle & Sebastian with a passion, but I’ve no enthusiasm for anything past the third album. (I didn’t at the time either – no matter how much I tried to convince myself they were as good as Tigermilk.) Now I’ve listened to all those old songs too much and they don’t do anything for me any more. I haven’t listened to them in ages, as my lastfm account would probably testify. If it was, like, a witness in my trial for the crime of B&S apostasy.
Have you heard Isobel Campbell’s album with Mark Lanegan? It was one of my favourite albums of last year. Oh, and I went to see Joanna Newsom in concert on Sunday. It was absolutely brilliant. Shivers down my spine and all that.
I read Chris’ review on Delusions of Adequacy: it sounded like an amazing show. Ys in its entirety with a full orchestra?? Somebody tried to sell me a ticket last week but I really couldn’t have afforded it. Reading about it now, it sounds like it was a must-see. Bah.
Haven’t heard the whole of Campbell/Lanegan, but I love what I have. I’ve always loved Isobel’s voice – “Lazy Line Painter Jane” is the only B&S song I can stomach – but I always found her solo stuff lacked something. Turns out it was Lanegan playing grizzly bear to her Goldilocks. Or something. Ooh, there’s a line to bear in mind if I’m doing that review!
Pedant alert!
The female vocals on Lazy Line Painter Jane were provided by Monica Queen.
Sorry.
Bah! Proves I fail at the first rule of, well, anything:
…Know thy enemy.
I’ve allways though there are a number of traps in translating the american rock and country languages to our own songs.
One thing to remember, is that a lot of it, the songs about the open road, the yearning, the adventure, the blacktops and the highways…they’re as much a dream for the american songwriters as for us. A romantic vision that we write about and sing about because we can’t quite achieve it. Theres nothing fundamentally wrong with writing about those same dreams. The trap is that we can takle it all as fact, and take the language for granted; where as on Springsteen ‘thunder road’ is a wonderful song about everything rock and roll promised but never deliverd, to us, to me, its…..its not a dream so much as a pose.
And posing is for opostars and Bono.
As much as i love country music, and pretty much all forms of rock and roll, i rarely find a british country band that i can take seriousley, because they all get caught in the trappings and trimmings, the pose. What was country, and punk, and any of it, if not a reflection of who the people were.
I like honesty in music, i like music to reflect who the artist is and where they come from.
Thats not to decry any attempts at incorporating the sounds and some of the trappings of ‘other’ music into your sound, because thats a process thats vital. But, again, those different sounds and voices should be used to help express your own, not pretend to be someone else.
There was a point there, half made.
Oh, and i want to hear either Tom Waits or Mark Lanegan do a version of GOD ONLY KNOWS. That would be the best.thing.ever.
that is all.
I have some Lucero now, and it’s growing on me. I really quite like What Else Would You Have Me Be?
Christ, but I hate hate HATE Joanna Newsom. Her voice makes me want to gargle with battery acid. Or at least pour some into my ears.
It’s funny, I always ‘translate’ things back into a Scottish accent, and get angry when it doesn’t fit. But in fairness, I can’t quite fit myself back into it (and not just ’cause I’m fat!) and that’s probably why it makes me crazy. I don’t think anyone will ever quite capture the thingyness of what was then. You’ll come close I think, but my thingyness is different to yours innit?
Yay! Someone else who thinks Belle & Sebastian are the sonic equivelent of a teabag dunked in lukewarm water for ten seconds.
I can find the true nature of Scotland in a Mogwai album, or maybe some Teenage Fanclub. Edie Reader’s Burns stuff is magical. I don’t even think it has to be Scottish though. Sigur Ros, some Brian Eno and Flying Saucer Attack give me the same sense of time and place in the this country as any homegrown artist.
Jay said
Now I *have* to go and find that James album….
Did James cover it too??
Um… I hate Teenage Fanclub too…
Don’t know about a cover, but they have a song called “God Only Knows” on their “Gold Mother” album which was released in 1990. Listen here
Ah! Stringer was talking about the Beach Boys cover :p
Aye but it doesn’t stop it reminding me of that version
About the cold…it could be worst.
My boilers broken; I have no heating.
Ys is a terrible, terribly fashionable album.
Well, we’re terribly fashionable around these parts. Can’t you tell??
the best review of it is in no depression
as for fashion…me and her parted long time ago
Ah, a real magazine which doesn’t post its content for free online. How annoying.
I get what you’re saying about Newsom you know: you might have noticed that I didn’t include the album on my review of the year or anything, when anything less than top billing seems like an indie rock crime. Newsom’s debut was my favourite album of 2005, but I have difficult listening to Ys in one sitting: it’s bloated, over intricate. But I do love the first track, and the album itself was a perfect soundtrack for the wilderness my head was in when I posted.
aye
it’s like being forced to eat a lobster, when what you really want is roasted cheese.
and cider