Essays

Brownlow’s pissed-off purr on ‘Last Call’ echoes around behind its precise, oppressive wall of New York post-punk like the revenge you can’t bring yourself to take.

Richard O’Brien reviews Me With Trees Towering by Swallows.

In April 2004, on release of their most recent and best album, Gods and Monsters, Bramwell peered out at a sold out Ritz, dipped his mouth to the microphone and sang the opening lines of ‘Coincidence’. “Love may have just come to bury me/But I’m not afraid of what I see.” We talk a lot about progress today, we’ll put with a lot for this undefined, malleable notion, but as those words seeped out there was a gravity, a break through, not just the band’s but everyone’s, as though all that’s best and highest was parting modern cultural maladies like the Red Sea.

I Am Kloot reviewed by Maxwell Liu.

America’s military adventures have always been and always will be the functions of our corporate plutocrats. They think of themselves as swashbuckling masters of their own and everyone else’s fate. They flatter themselves into believing they’ve transcended the demarcations of blood, geography and culture. But they’re merely the unconscious tools of Universal Balance in its tribal, racial and national manifestations.

By Tom Bradley.

Four or so years ago, the Libs created a musical Narnia for a country that had forgotten how to dream, and gave it a place to go, a special magic to feel. Now the good ship Albion may have sunk, but those dreamers aren’t leaving any time soon. The Bergeracs are among the best. Is it time for some new heroes?

Richard O’Brien thinks highly of the The Bergeracs’ ‘Back on Crack’.

Carruthers knows his way around a guitar, and the best way to peel off those oh-so-slow clean-picked notes to spin you right into the web he’s weaving. A prime example is ‘Finding It Hard’, containing the killer couplet ‘I wake Sunday morning in my Friday night shirt/There’s burns on my arms and they don’t even hurt’, delivered in a manner slightly reminiscent of a yobbish Jarvis Cocker. Or maybe that’s just me.

Richard O’Brien on freelovebabies.

It seems the word “Islamophobe” – and its pseudo-synonym, “racist” – has acquired the status of a declamatory WMD. Deploying the term, even by vague insinuation, can generally be counted on to shut down the frontal lobes of any left-leaning ‘culturally sensitive’ person, like some rhetorical kryptonite. Loaded as the term ‘Islamophobia’ is with connotations of oppression, real or imagined, those who brandish this word may often suppose they are righteously defending the perceived weaker party against injurious attack. In practice, they may simply be excusing the party with the weaker argument, or no argument at all.

Barging rudely into territory normally associated with Salman Rushdie and Martin Amis, David Thompson‘s latest dispatch for 3:AM takes on the apologists for censorship and their affected sensitivities.

Given the buzz surrounding Larrikin Love, you’d think they’d colonised Mars and, just to cap it off, beat up the Pope. In fact, they’re a relatively good indie band who’ve just released a relatively well-realised first album.

Richard O’Brien on Larrkin Love, and Dylan.

Rowdy riffs, punked-up drumming, and an angry Scotsman with Dylanesque hair shouting hoarsely.

Richard O’Brien reviews, The Fratellis‘ debut album.

This wasn’t a nostalgia trip. It wasn’t a cashing in on the anniversary celebrations, and it wasn’t to push a repackaging of a back catalogue. It was just rock’n’roll played the way it’s supposed to be, and that’s something that is more difficult than many of us appreciate.”

Mainey from El Diablo fanzine reports back from the Eater, TV Smith, Don Letts and 100 Punks exhibition bash at the 100 Club in London on 28 September.

“You aren’t doing anything, are you?” she announced, rather than asked when she rang. “You’re always talking about doing some writing. Well, there’s a new member at the club — very quiet chap, just comes in for a couple of drinks and reads his book quietly, Lord! We could do with a few more like him — anyway, Bill got talking to him and it turns out he’s a writer, so we mentioned our nephew with the English degree…” This all sounded very vague, and didn’t seem to be going anywhere as Rita rambled on. It didn’t sound promising.

Denis Browne remembers his time with Alexander Trocchi.

There’s the robotic love buzz of ‘For Reasons Unknown’, which sees Flowers emoting “my lips, they don’t kiss the way they used to anymore”, over washes of keyboard and guitar. Later on, the pendulous thrust of ‘Uncle Johnny”s riff saves it from the disgrace of its rhymes, and ‘My List’, practically turns your speakers into two giant waving lighters.

The Killers’ Sam’s Town reviewed by Richard O’Brien.

About The Living Things turn on trash sense of drug fetus reptilian HUB modem heart that hung up to the abolition world-codemaniacs that was processed the data mutant of PHOTOPHOB’s ultra machinery tragedy-ROM creature system ill-treatment.
Two reviews by Kenji Siratori.