She’s Electric interview on Puluche.com

In a departure from the usual Tales From Down the Front articles, I am posting an interview I gave to the US music site Puluche.com about the release of my second novel She’s Electric.

Nick Amies is a journalist and author based in Brussels who writes for publications such as The New York Times, The Economist and Red Bulletin magazine and is also a senior contributing writer for Puluche. While his freelance work ranges from international politics to architecture, his main passion is music. As well as his magazine work, Nick has written two novels, each set in an important period of British pop culture. Here he talks to Puluche about She’s Electric, his Britpop-era love story and ode to excess.

Puluche: Firstly, congratulations on She’s Electric. I found it to be an extremely interesting read. It certainly is a multi-faceted love story with a sex, drugs and rock and roll backdrop, but within a “Cool Britannia” culture which many might not know about. How does your book relate to international audiences when it’s such a Brit-focused topic?

Nick Amies: I think the emotional themes running through the book – love, loss, desperation, insecurity – are universal. When we first meet Danny, the narrator of the story, he’s a young man coming out of a long-term relationship into a world he doesn’t really understand. He’s been one half of a high school love affair as long as he can remember and now he’s on his own. He’s hurt, lonely and angry due to the break-up but also confused and lost because he doesn’t know who or what he’s supposed to be. I think that wherever you’re from, you can relate to feelings like that and it’s part of the human condition to question the reasons for our existence and what it’s all supposed to mean. As for the cultural setting, again I feel that while it’s specifically British, anyone who has ever had their life changed by music or have bought into a particular scene wholesale will identify with the characters. The music is not just a soundtrack to their lives but a way of life in itself. It comes with an identity, a fashion and a sense of belonging. Anyone who has ever been a fan of a band will know what that means. Plus being a music fan, I believe, is essentially being part of a global community. We may have different tastes but the emotions that music elicits are built into our DNA. She’s Electric is set in the Britpop era but it could have been set anywhere at any time where a musical phenomenon has moved a generation of young people.

In that case, why set the book specifically in the Britpop era?

Firstly, I followed the old advice of writing about what you know. I lived through this period and experienced a lot of things I wanted to document. Secondly, the Britpop era is extremely well suited as a setting for a coming-of-age story with all the insecurities which come with that. It was a uniquely superficial period and as such it was the best and worst time to suffer from an identity crisis, which is essentially what each of the main characters in my book are going through. On the one hand, the movement itself and its association with a new permissiveness which openly tolerated bad behavior, casual sex and substance abuse came with a blueprint. If you weren’t sure who you wanted to be, you just did what everybody else did. There was an attitude, a way of dressing, a way of behaving that was connected with the whole idea of what it meant to be young and British at the time. But on the other hand, if you were really searching for something, buying into this could really drag you further away from yourself. This is the situation facing the guys in the book. They have whole-heartedly embraced Britpop and Lad culture but, as time moves on, they realize that there is little substance behind it and that the void they have in their lives is still there behind the sex, drugs and rock’n’roll.

Is it a very personal story then? Perhaps a thinly-veiled autobiography?

I would never admit that even if it were true! What I will say is that the characters are fictitious but the experiences are very loosely based on those I and my friends were part of but everything is exaggerated for narrative purposes. Of course the cultural reference points detailed in the book such as the massive Oasis gigs at Knebworth in 1996, the 1995 Glastonbury festival and the 1997 General Election in the UK are all documented historical events. The emotional turmoil and search for identity are all written from a personal viewpoint but don’t get the idea that we were all suffering some kind of existential angst! It was the best time to be young and the most concentrated period of partying that I’ve ever lived through so we were hardly crying into our beers every night, wailing about how hard our lives were. It was a lot of fun. I think that comes across in the book. Danny and his friends live it large and enjoy every excessive minute but at some point they realize that there’s more to life than picking up a different girl every night and waking up with self-induced memory loss and that’s when the internal struggles begin.

What are the subtexts and messages in the book? What did you set out to say with it beyond reminiscing about a great time in music?

The book moves from the present to the past and back again with flashbacks from the Britpop era used to illustrate certain themes or show contrasts to the lives the main characters are leading in the present day. All of them are struggling with different aspects of their lives as adults with responsibilities and their reunion back on their old stomping ground emphasises how much things have changed. Danny is the last one to really give up on the old life and is using the reunion to see if returning to his old ways is a viable option, despite having a partner and child at home. His identity crisis has gone on the longest. I suppose there’s a message here about the risks of trying to recapture former glories or trying to relive the past at the risk of your future. I also wanted to point out that even though we get older, things don’t always get easier if you’re not prepared to leave history behind. We can only grow by letting go, which doesn’t mean we have to forget or deny the past. The sections dealing with Britpop are clearly a celebration of that time with their depictions of all the fun that was had but as that timeline moves on to 1997 it shows that the façade was beginning to slip and the party was clearly coming to an end, something the guys address with hindsight in the present day sections of the book. In short, I wanted to show that youth cultures are not built to last, much like youth itself, but you should live them to the full while they’re there just as you should embrace your youth and not pine for it when it’s gone.

Why was Britpop so important to British culture?

Youth and popular culture movements tend to rise as a reaction to the socio-political climate of the time. Before Britpop, we’d had a reaction to the years of oppressive conservatism which had become entrenched in the UK under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. This reaction gave birth to acid house and the Madchester music scene. Driven by the ecstasy explosion, these movements provided an escape route from the poverty and hopelessness that many parts of Britain were suffering from at the end of the 1980s. When that phase passed, British music retreated and US grunge flooded in. Britpop was a reaction to that as much as anything else. People like Blur’s Damon Albarn and Noel Gallagher of Oasis said that their bands’ early Britpop output was a direct riposte to the nihilism of grunge and an attempt to reverse the flood of US culture swamping the UK. So, Britpop was important in the way that it gave the country something to be proud of again and made it okay to be patriotic. Britpop got an extra boost when Tony Blair and the Labour Party finally ended 18 years of conservative rule in 1997. Suddenly it was like the heavy curtains were drawn back to reveal a new land of hope and opportunity stretching into the distance. When things like that happen in my country, we Brits tend to go a bit mad and make the most of it without really thinking about the consequences. But before it was all revealed to be a false dawn and that we’d actually been manipulated into thinking things would be truly different, Blair’s labeling of all things cultural with the “Cool Britannia” tag revitalized everything: music, art, literature and film. Even though it turned out to be a cynical marketing plan of the government’s making, the idea to tie it all together and brand it was an inspired one. It was an identity we could all get behind and one which could be sold abroad. Britain was the centre of attention during that time and I think the music, fashion and attitude which came out of that time began to influence a lot of other cultures.

And what about the music which was at the heart of it all?

The success of the big bands such as Oasis, Blur and Pulp for example inspired many others to make music with varying degrees of success and quality so to be a fan of the genre at that time was to be spoilt for choice. It was a great and productive time for British music and it also exported well. The Europeans instantly understood it and quickly grew to love it, the Japanese went crazy for it immediately and even the US succumbed to a certain degree. Its popularity in the countries which embraced it can still be seen today in the way audiences welcome back the legends and react to British bands in general as a result of that Britpop Invasion.

It’s also worth remembering that Britpop happened at a time before the internet exploded. Oasis sold over eight million copies of their debut album and followed that up by selling over 22 million copies of (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? without the help of Twitter, YouTube or online marketing campaigns. This was an age before the digital revolution so all those sales were actual CDs, records and cassette tapes. There wasn’t any downloading going on – legal or otherwise. So in that respect, Britpop still represents the zenith of the British music industry before it imploded. It is a high watermark that will never be reached again.

Is this era still relevant today?

It’s relevant in the way that punk is still relevant or the Sixties are still relevant. We are where we are musically in the UK because of Britpop. And Britpop couldn’t have happened if bands hadn’t heard the Sex Pistols or had never listened to their parents’ Beatles records. It’s a signpost on the road of Britain’s musical progress, whether people like that or not. If there had been no Stone Roses, there would have been no Oasis. No Oasis, no Arctic Monkeys and so on. So as a legacy with a continuing influence, yes it’s relevant. As a reference point on the quest of knowledge about Britain’s musical heritage, it’s relevant. But most importantly, it’s relevant in the lives of all those who love the music that came out of that era. For us, it’s as relevant now as it was then because it is such a huge part of our lives. That’s why in She’s Electric, Danny and his friends continue to celebrate those days even as middle age creeps up on them. Their lives have gone separate, very different ways but they will always have those crazy days when their friendships were formed. For the Britpop generation, it will always be relevant.

What is the true current status of the Britpop genre? The remaining bands that consider themselves a part of this movement, do they still represent the genre well compared to the originals like Blur, Suede and eventually others such as Oasis?

When the party ended, there were a lot of casualties. No-one escaped unharmed and I think that can be heard in the material that the original bands put out after Britpop came to a close. If you listen to Blur or 13 they are polar opposites of The Great Escape and you can’t compare the cocaine bluster of Be Here Now-era Oasis to the washed-out comedown of Standing on the Shoulder of Giants. So whatever Britpop was musically, it stopped existing soon afterwards. But even at the height of the movement it was a very contentious thing to say that one band or another sounded “Britpop”. There was never really one style. It was more of an attitude than a sound. When that attitude became more introspective, Britpop ceased to exist. There may be bands around now which get labeled Britpop but that’s just lazy. They can’t be Britpop because there is no such thing. That particular zeitgeist – every strand of cultural DNA from which Britpop was constructed – is history. It can never be repeated or cloned.

Knowing you as a music reviewer as well, one that can be quite critical, you recently rated Arctic Monkeys latest album AM as a perfect release. Such new releases are sadly few and far between in modern music compared to previous decades. What are many of today’s bands missing compared to a release like AM where they just get it?

It’s easy to point the finger at The Man but that doesn’t change the fact that The Man has a lot to answer for in this respect. There are just too few risk takers in the music business these days and not enough labels who are confident and savvy enough to let their acts experiment. I have a lot of respect for Domino for letting Arctic Monkeys go their own way. They could have forced them to stick to the tried and tested formula of the early days but they gave them space to evolve. They could have panicked after Humbug saw the band suffer what was essentially the first bit of backlash but they let them work it out themselves and move on to great effect. I wrote in my AM review that freedom and confidence bring their own reward and for great music to be made there has to be less emphasis on the bottom line and shifting units. Bands have to be shown love and trust, not balance sheets. Reducing the number of accountants and employing more people with a passion for music would be a start.

In your opinion, is rock music in a continuing period decline?

I wouldn’t say it’s in a continuing period of decline but I would say that it is in one of the longest periodical downswings for some time. We haven’t really seen a movement crash into the collective consciousness and change the musical landscape for a few years now. We seem to be relying on individual bands to innovate and excite rather than expecting a wave to sweep in with all the added extras like the fashion, the attitude and the message to compliment the music. Usually these things grow from a scene in a particular city. I’ve been pinning my hopes on the Perth underground for a while now, with Tame Impala, Pond and others coming from this alternative community on the Australian west coast but I think there should have been more of a collective impact made by now. Perhaps growing a local scene from Down Under into an international phenomenon is harder than if you are in New York. I don’t know. Perhaps the general problem is that the opportunities previously enjoyed by those being nurtured in the traditional breeding grounds are shrinking. The question then arises about funding and support for small venues and you’re then into a political debate. But who can say for sure? Maybe it is all crap and we’ve already been condemned to an eternity of rubbish but we haven’t yet realized it. I sincerely hope not.

She’s Electric is available in paperback and Kindle versions on all Amazon’s international sites.

This interview first appeared on Puluche.com

Arctic Monkeys – AM (Review)

In much the same way that the career of The Beatles can be summed up as pre- and post-Revolver, Arctic Monkeys are now clearly in Sgt. Pepper territory with AM. After the rough-and-ready, double-barrelled salvo of their first two albums which were littered with spiky agit-pop anthems about prostitutes, nightclub bouncers and one-night stands, third album Humbug heralded a huge paradigm shift towards a darker, rockier, more mature sound. It didn’t sit well with everyone, such was the departure from their cheeky-chappy, scallywag roots. After perhaps playing it safe with the intelligent pop of 2011’s Suck It and See, the Monkeys have returned with an album which again confounds with its change in direction but raises the bar to stratospheric levels in terms of ambition and artistry. Injecting hip-hop beats and R&B rhythms into the heavy rock sound they cultivated out in the Californian desert under the tutelage of QOTSA’s Josh Homme on Humbug, AM shows once again that this is a band which views stagnation as the death of creativity. Despite the massive leaps this album takes, it’s still very clearly an Arctic Monkeys record. The acerbic and observational lyrics which mark Alex Turner out as the most intelligent and dexterous lyricist since Morrissey’s heyday with The Smiths are still here on songs like “Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?” and “No.1 Party Anthem” but L.A. nights and the cult of celebrity now dominate his source material. Turner somehow avoids coming on like the ex-pat rock god of endless showbiz parties and manages to narrate stories of authentic experience from the surreal, corrupted heart of Tinseltown with that knowing Northern wink in his voice. It proves you can take the boy out of Sheffield but you can’t take Sheffield out of the boy. Musically, they’re a world away from their 2006 debut. This is Arctics 2.0; a band of magpies snatching gems from every genre and not only making them their own but brushing them to a blinding sheen. Songs like “Do I Wanna Know” and “One For The Road” swagger in on beats which invite languid rhymes while “R U Mine” fuzzes with stadium metal guitars and the funky-sexy “Knee Socks” has echoes of disco scattered amongst the falsettos and chugging strings. “Mad Sounds” is almost alt-country in its mellowness and delivery but also nods a well-oiled quiff at the melancholic darkness of the Jesus and Mary Chain. The playing is faultless and tight throughout while the production is crisp and professional yet avoiding the bloated excess which can come from huge success. AM is a brave, flawless move into a league of their own.

Everything the Arctic Monkeys have done before seems to have been building up to this groovy, infectious statement of intent. All the best experiments from their previous albums seem to come together here – and often within the length of one song. The wonderful “Arabella” for instance starts off like one of their standard off-kilter ballads before trowelling on the Homme-inspired crunchy rock guitars and stadium-demolishing drums. AM is a record which is unafraid to wander off into songs which are wildly diverse from one another, giving it the feel of a late-era Fab Four album. And yet, as with the Beatles at their best, this is a cornucopia of styles which still sounds brilliantly cohesive. “Fireside” with its Spanish guitars and soft vocal, is a wholly different beast from the thrilling glam stomp of “I Want it All” and the swaggeringly excellent R&B-tinged “One For The Road”. These in turn have little in common with the brilliant “R U Mine” which is a sultry and devilishly catchy rock workout. What could be a jarring selection of disparate tunes, however, is carried off with aplomb by a band at the height of their powers. Freedom and confidence are wonderful things and Arctic Monkeys have embraced both to great musical effect on AM.

When one considers how dramatically the Arctic Monkeys sound has changed over the last seven years (while still managing to maintain its innate Monkey-ness), it’s very difficult to predict what will happen next. An indication of where they may fly to next will come from the band’s attitude to the AM songs after two years playing them on the road. The band confessed that by the end of the Suck It and See tour they were sick of that set of songs which partially influenced the direction they took on AM.  But what could be the reaction to this? They’ve been spiky pop upstarts, they’ve been hairy rock monsters and now they’re a greased-back groove machine.  It’s anyone’s guess what they’ll come back as next – but this writer for one can’t wait to find out.

First published on: Puluche.com

Nobody’s Puppet: Miles Kane & The Return of the Wirral Riddler

You should really know who Miles Kane is by now. Even if you missed his turn as the precocious 18-year-old guitarist in short-lived Merseybeat combo The Little Flames or his first front man gig as singer with The Rascals, you will surely have noticed him as one half of the Last Shadow Puppets alongside a certain Mr. Alex Turner. Failing that, his breath-taking work rate during his solo breakthrough year in 2011 should surely have seen the 26-year-old Wirral troubadour pop up somewhere on your radar. After releasing his début album The Colour of the Trap in late 2010, young Miles spent most of the following year on tour. Even if you didn’t catch his own shows, there’s a good chance that you may have seen him supporting the likes of Beady Eye, Kasabian and the Arctic Monkeys.

Despite a musical CV which now spans eight years in the business, and the imminent release of his second solo album, Don’t Forget Who You Are, Miles Kane somehow still finds himself saddled with the ‘next big thing’ tag. For a tender-aged stalwart of the scene, with a long list of fans and collaborators which reads like a Who’s Who of modern rock royalty, surely it must be frustrating for recognition to only now start being bestowed on his narrow shoulders.

“For me, the last five years have been all about working in bands and learning my craft so I haven’t really been that interested in whether people have been taking any notice of me during that time,” Kane says, his chirpy Scouse accent adding authenticity to this assertion. “I was too busy being on the journey, dealing with the highs and lows and taking the learning curves at speed. I’ve started from the bottom a few times and have served more than one apprenticeship. Everything that’s gone before has been driving me to this point so if people are now taking notice, I’m more than happy with that and ready for that because I’m really happy with where I am now and the sound I’ve developed.”

That sound has come on leaps and bounds since the early days as a teenager playing in and around Liverpool’s club scene, sweating through the circuit playing jangly pop alongside contemporaries like The Coral and The Zutons. Don’t Forget Who You Are takes the 60’s rock’n’roll vibe developed for The Colour of the Trap and puts it on rigourous gym regime. It’s another urgent record, full of choppy guitars and brimming with cocksure attitude, but it’s a much more muscular effort than before. The orchestration is more lush and the choruses, as you would expect, border on the anthemic, which suggests a growing confidence. But with lead single ‘Give Up’ screaming along to a heavy, crashing beat and almost metal guitars, it appears the Wirral Riddler is in no rush to lay aside the high octane rockers in favour of the cinematic, John Barry-esque theatricals of the Last Shadow Puppets which so distinguished his work with Alex Turner from anything he’d done before.

“I’d describe myself as a rock’n’roller even though there are some cinematic, grand tracks on the album,” he says. “It was great doing the big wide-screen tunes with strings with the Puppets but my heart’s in the rock’n’roll. I like to dabble with songs which people might be surprised with though, like covering Lee Hazlewood and Jacques Dutronc, and that’s one of the great things about being a solo artist that I don’t have to run that by anyone. I’m just obsessed with music and doing tunes like that lets people know that, it shows what mood I’m in.”

It seems that being a solo artist suits the perfectionist side of Kane’s character, the trait that refuses to allow him to leave the house without being immaculately suited and booted, usually in something from his favourite designer Adrien Sauvage, even to go to the shops. The dapper Miles certainly doesn’t regret his decision to leave The Rascals in 2009, even if it meant having to build a new identity from scratch.

“It felt right to go solo after two years of considering it,” he says. “I asked Alex one day whether I should quit and he said I should do it. To be fair, I’d already decided so it wasn’t a case of Alex Turner splitting up the Rascals. I could have gone on and formed another band after the Shadow Puppets but something beautiful happened with the songs I was working on to convince me to front it myself. It’s been a beautiful time for me. I’m a completely different lad. It’s a total buzz.”

Being a rock’n’roller from Merseyside, the obvious weighty legacy of a certain band hangs over Miles as it does all bands and artists from in and around the port city of Liverpool. There’s no escaping the influence of the Beatles; it’s there in every street, in every bar, in every heart. For some, fighting against the omnipotence of Liverpool’s favourite sons could be a way of asserting their individuality. For Miles Kane, however, it’s been the opposite to a certain extent.

“I’ve never felt any pressure from Liverpool’s legacy, in fact I’ve always embraced that and have never hidden that,” he says proudly. “There have been so many great bands from Liverpool and the influence is clear but you have to tread your own path. I’ve always been inspired by the great Liverpool bands and my ambition is to try and be bigger and better than any of them. Considering the Beatles are in there, that may sound a tall order but you’ve got to be in it to win it. If you don’t want to be bigger than the Beatles, what’s the point?”

With Don’t Forget Who You Are soon to be on general release, could this be the moment that Miles Kane finally goes from being the The Next Big Thing to an accepted national hero? Whatever happens, one gets the impression that it won’t matter to him as much as the quality of the music itself. People can view him how they like. How Miles Kane defines himself is through his art and that is something which won’t stop evolving, regardless of the titles awarded him by the public.

“I just don’t really want to stop working,” he says. “I put everything I have into every record and if it’s a hit or a flop, I know there’s nothing more I could have done. I just want to make every record better than the last; I want to improve my singing, my playing, my writing. I’ve always got to be at it. That’s just how I am. It’s like the music – that’s just me. No bullshit. I approach it all the same way. Full on.”

XTRMNTR – Primal Scream (Review)

After making Screamadelica, one of the defining rock-dance crossover albums of the Madchester era, Primal Scream lost their way on their follow-up release, Give Out But Don’t Give Up. Rendered sloppy and uninspired by the heroin that had replaced ecstasy as the band’s drug of choice and hugely indebted to the more formulaic aspects of the Rolling Stones back catalogue, the Scream’s latest reinvention felt like a huge anti-climax. The band’s chameleon-like ability to reinvent not only themselves but also the musical landscape around them seemed to have been misplaced at their local dealers. Two years later, with Stone Roses bassist Mani joining the line-up, Primal Scream’s rehabilitation began with Vanishing Point, a rumbling sonic road trip which bucked the Britpop trend of the time. Vanishing Point was a brave move considering the guitar-driven, retro-fitted über-popularity of the Scream’s peers. Rather than being seen as an anomaly, the album gained widespread acclaim from critics who hailed it as a return to form. But the band’s full artistic recovery (and in light of subsequent releases, their post-Screamadelica zenith) came three years later in 2000 with the release of XTRMNTR. Even long-term fans who had gotten used to adjusting their perceptions and re-learning how to love the band every few years were taken aback by the album. Relentless, dark, savage in places, XTRMNTR left many stunned. Those looking for the lilting, soaring vocals and the addictive guitar hooks and melodies of the past were beaten back into reality by an art-punk onslaught. Gone were the dreamy paeans to lost love and the head-in-the-clouds romanticism of old; aided and abetted by My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields and the Chemical Brothers among others in the production booth, XTRMNTR would become one of the defining pre-millennium angst albums, summing up the climate of anxiety in which the world lurched irrevocably towards a new age. Its warnings of reptilian usurpers, Illuminati conspiracy theories and anti-corporate calls for anarchic revolution weren’t the ramblings of a paranoid and drug-addled mind, but poetical-political messages from a freshly coherent artist set to the sound of carpet bombing. Bobby Gillespie had woken up from his mid-90s torpor with the knowledge that Primal Scream had to right some wrongs and that any call to arms had to be accompanied by the rumbling drums of war. Combining apocalyptic codas with seismic bass, screaming horns and shredding riffs, Gillespie and his crew brought the 20th Century to a close not with a bang but with an atomic blast. It was – and still is – the band’s best work of the last 20 years.

Commendations

“Subvert normality…kill all hippies…” So XTRMNTR begins. A frantic phone rings, a creepy keyboard refrain seethes, a child’s voice exhorts the extermination of the flower power generation. It’s immediately obvious from the first few bars that you’re entering a dark, new world. Mani’s bass begins to roll and thunder over screeching electronic feedback as an inappropriately soulful Bobby Gillespie starts to croon over the building chaos like a malevolent Curtis Mayfield: “You got the money, I got the soul…can’t be bought, can’t be owned.” ‘Kill All Hippies’ slithers through dirty, blood-stained alleyways, shiftily looking for victims. It’s an unsettling precursor to ‘Accelerator’ which crashes into your head on fuzz-boxed punk riffs and screaming vocals. It’s a distorted mash-up of rave and metal with Gillespie snarling through a megaphone at the head of a baying mob. “Here we come, we’re coming fast…out the upside, into the past…forced to screaming in my head, into the future.” It’s an adrenaline rush from start to finish; a thrilling thrash. ‘Exterminator’ then bleeps into life, an R2D2 intro which then slides into squashy sequencers and monotone vocals, slipping in and out as if intoned from the windows of passing cars. Gillespie robotically laments about civilisation’s slide into slavery – “no civil disobedience” – in a world of techno control and chemical manipulation. “Insecticide shots for criminal cops…all jails are concentration camps, all judges are bought…Everyone’s a prostitute.” Despite it’s doomsday narrative, it’s a chugging, low-fi dance tune carrying the Scream’s trademark skill of delivering killer hooks amid a maelstrom of noise. The rave vibe returns with ‘Swastika Eyes’, perhaps the stand-out track on the album. Distorted sirens wail in among electronic beeps and a frantic yet groovy bassline supported by sequenced drums which clatter and click. It harks back to the bug-eyed, sweat-drenched warehouse parties which the Scream soundtracked in the early 90s, only instead of lyrics about being higher than the sun, we have warnings of the shadow government’s “elimination policy” and the “military industrial illusion of democracy.” At over 7 relentless, addictive minutes, ‘Swastika Eyes’ threatens the listener with dehydration and with a six-minute Chemical Brothers refrain coming later in the album, there is a danger that the song’s many qualities might start to suffer from overload. Thankfully, Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons mix it up enough to present it as a worthwhile addition. ‘Pills’ chimes in in its wake with a trancey keyboard coda and Gregorian chants, suggesting we adjourn to the chill-out room…but Bobby’s not finished with us yet. Oh no. Just as you’re ready for a sit down, Gillespie starts hurling insults in a pseudo-rap: “I’m gonna tell the truth, the truth about you, you’ve never been true, you’re nothing, you’ve got nothing to say, shine a light on you, you fade away.” Then his mates join in. They start bludgeoning you with a fierce dance beat and whipping you with sampled violins as Gillespie shouts over your inevitable demise.

The influence of Mani on XTRMNTR cannot be overstated. The former Stone Rose has full co-credits on XTRMNTR, his first full Scream album, after joining in 1997 when Vanishing Point had already been written. His presence is most keenly felt on the instrumental ‘Blood Money’, which – intentionally or not – opens with a drum beat reminiscient of the intro to the Stone Roses epic ‘I am the Resurrection’. Mani’s bass then strikes up an ominous lead guitar line which is part horror movie tension-builder, part chase scene. Chemically compromised Blaxploitation funk horns scream in and a jagged, almost crystal piano refrain begins to stab its way into the composition. But this is Mani’s domain and the clearest indication yet that the Scream will be a much different proposition with him in their ranks. ‘Keep Your Dreams’ is a surprising change of pace within the context of what hangs around it, with restrained trip hop beats, suppressed melotron runs and electric bells chiming throughout. It’s the closest to the heaven-staring balladry of the early albums and is a jarring, yet beautiful shift to a more sensitive side amongst the chaos and oppresiveness.

After this moment of calm, the whirlwind begins to gather pace again with ‘Insect Royalty’, a discordant slab of electronica splattered with car horn trumpets and Gillespie’s stream of distorted consciousness, followed by the Kevin Shields-controlled ‘MBV Arkestra (If They Move Kill ‘Em)’, a mystical opus of speed-freak psychedelia built on wah-wah guitars, sampled sitars and tribal drums. The album finally returns to fever pitch with ‘Shoot Speed/Kill Light’ with Mani again to the fore on what is effectively Krautrock legends Can on amphetamines. It’s a nonsense; a message-free blast of repetitive bass, electronic screeches, sampled sighs and Gillespie repeating the song title ad nauseum. And it’s great! An upbeat conclusion to a thunderously dark and apocalyptic journey. It promotes the feeling that the new millennium is coming whether we like it or not so put the pedal to the metal and go in with all guns blazing.

Next Steps

Bobby Gillespie says in the Creation Records documentary Upside Down that XTRMNTR is Primal Scream’s best album. He doesn’t add the caveat “…after Screamadelica” which would be the response of many people. It’s hard to disagree with him when placing XTRMNTR up against all the albums the Scream made after it. XTRMNTR is certainly a more proficient , expansive and challenging album than Screamadelica but whether it had as much cultural impact remains debatable. Regardless of where one stands on the argument, there is no doubt however that XTRMNTR is one of the two definitive Primal Scream albums.

Despite Gillespie’s complaint that Creation bosses Alan McGee and Dick Green “fucked us over” by shutting the label just as XTRMNTR was released, depriving it – in the singer’s opinion – of any kind of support or marketing, the record still went to number 3 in the UK album charts and eventually went gold. Its follow-up, Evil Heat, continued in the same vein but with softer, dub-tinged edges. Primal Scream would then abandon the electronica of XTRMNTR to return to a more traditional guitar-driven style with mostly mediocre results. XTRMNTR therefore remains the band’s creative, artistic – and most abrasive – high water mark.

Also published on: PULUCHE.COM

Johnny Marr – The Messenger (Review)

Johnny Marr appeared to be bruised by the lukewarm reception his first solo album, Boomslang, received when it was released in 2003. The ex-Smiths guitarist put his Healers project to one side and returned to the less pressurized role of the high-profile collaborator. By joining bands for a short period of time – influencing their sound, stealing a bit of the limelight and then moving on – Marr continued to add to his considerable contribution to music without the danger of being in the direct line of fire. Ten years on and Marr has now decided the time is right to again to front his own music under his own name and on his own terms. The result is the The Messenger and while it doesn’t break any new musical ground, it is a record which showcases all his many and considerable talents in one sleeve. If someone other than Johnny Marr were to release an album which appears to contain all the songs they never recorded while in different bands, it may sound like a lazy trawl through a career-spanning songbook of off-cuts. But Johnny Marr has been very choosy in his selection of collaborations throughout his career and as such, the influences at play here merely present on overview of the man’s immense gifts, be it a killer hook or a thrilling riff, which have enhanced the back catalogues of the many artists he has worked with. Rather than stealing from the bands he has graced, The Messenger is full of all the things that made those bands better for having Johnny Marr in them. This is not an identity crisis album, this is a record which shows all Marr’s various colours and hues. He is, like everyone after all, not just one person but a mixture of many.

The Messenger is an album clearly rooted in the musical heritage of Marr’s hometown of Manchester but at the same time it is a collection of songs which plots the diverse course of the guitarist’s odyssey across the landscape of rock since The Smiths split in 1987. The title track has a lilting baggyness to it which conjures up memories of the Madchester melancholia of the Inspiral Carpets and the more emotionally bruised aspects of New Order’s oeuvre. Marr also tips his hat to New Order’s Bernard Sumner on the surprisingly agro-energetic ‘Generate! Generate!’, delivering a verse which wouldn’t be out of place in Sumner’s Bad Lieutenant or indeed his Electronic project back in the late 80s to which Marr lent his expertise. Elsewhere, on ‘Say Demesne’, Marr explores Manchester’s post-punk history, laying an undercurrent of stark orchestration and minimalist styling reminicent of Joy Division under the more life-affirming trademark, cascading riffs. Of course, this being Johnny Marr, there are moments when no other band comes to mind than the mighty Smiths. ‘New Town Velocity’ in particular begins with a shuffling guitar intro which echoes the introduction to ‘There is a Light That Never Goes Out’ before expanding in scale and production to sound like a sibling of the Strangeways Here We Come material.

Beyond the North West of England, The Messenger is coloured by tricks and tunes that Marr has picked up along the way through his traveling minstrel years. ‘European Me’ has elements of Modest Mouse’s quirkiness while ‘Sun & Moon’ could have been a Cribs song from the days of Marr’s stint with the Jarman family. Marr also plays homage to many of his influences. The clipped, aggressive verses of ‘Generate! Generate!’ clearly take their lead from Gang of Four and Mission of Burma while ‘Upstarts’ could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with any of the great angst-rock pop songs of the 1980s. Where The Messenger falls a little flat is in its lyrical content. Marr seems less confident with the words than the music, suggesting that he has always been the quiet cool one for a reason. But even so, he makes a good effort and most of the songs have a decent enough narrative, even if they lack a little finesse or depth. A lyricist like his old partner-in-rhyme Morrissey could really make these tune fly – but there’s little use in holding out for the Bard of Manchester to swagger back into Marr’s life to raise his music to those heavenly heights of old again. Marr himself has recently said that people don’t need the Smiths to reunite for the world to be okay. On much of the evidence here on The Messenger, he’s right. Johnny Marr is back and he’s sounding good. This will do fine. For now…

The Messenger is a great Johnny Marr album and one which confirms all what his many legions of fans already know. That includes his weaknesses as well as his many strengths. It was never going to be the great missing Smiths album or one which could ever fill the mighty hole that band left behind but it is a brave and ballsy return to form – and should prove to be the affirmation he needs to go to the next level as a solo performer. Johnny Marr is an icon and a God-like musician but time will tell if he becomes a great front man. The tour which follows this album will be an important one and if he can handle life alone in the spotlight, his next batch of songs under his own name could be outstanding. There’ll be no more looking cool on the sidelines. It’ll be front and centre from now on.

First published on Puluche.com

Mersey Paradise: Novel now available in paperback and on Kindle via Amazon

When the music stops and the smoke clears, what will you have left?

Britain 1990. While the world buzzes with the hope of real change after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the youth of the UK pin their hopes on a musical revolution to turn the tide of recession and to return the power back to the people. For six friends from Norwich, being an active part of this revolution means everything. Too long have they danced to the sounds in tiny local clubs and watched from afar as the wave of destiny has swept across the land. They head for the Stone Roses concert at Spike Island on the Wirral in a rented VW camper in the hope that they will all find something that is missing from their lives there. However, this journey of discovery forces the friends to face some of their darkest secrets. Instead of a hedonistic journey into the fantasy world of ecstasy-inspired togetherness, the six are forced to accept a new reality.

Order your copy HERE! Author information HERE!

Tame Impala: We Need to Talk About Kevin

Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker is redefining what rock bands should sound like in the 21st Century. If only he knew how important that was…

It’s a testament to the spirit of the city that never sleeps that after one of the most physically and emotionally draining fortnights in recent memory, there is still a significant number of New Yorkers willing to brave the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and an exhausting presidential campaign to welcome Tame Impala to Brooklyn. Even with his knowledge of the Big Apple’s fabled levels of resistance and perseverance, it still comes as quite a shock to Kevin Parker as his troupe of Australian psychonauts roll into town to be met by legions of adoring fans at the beginning of their US tour. It seems that even superstorms and election night hangovers aren’t enough to keep those in the know from experiencing one of the most anticipated live shows of the year.

“The reception we’ve been getting is really humbling and more than a little confusing,” the laid-back front man says, his Antipodean drawl stretched out over the vowels and consonants like a lazy cat on a warm radiator. “We used to play one big gig on every tour and that would probably be back home in Australia. It would be about 500 people and that would be the highlight. Now every night is the biggest gig of the year.”

In person and on stage before a show begins, Parker looks every inch the accidental rock star, both out of place and out of time. He seems uncomfortable with having to be the focus of attention, be it in front of the media or an expectant crowd. It’s only when the music starts to flow out of him that Kevin Parker grows exponentially in stature and confidence, a musician at one with the sounds he’s unleashing from his head. It’s a sound that has resonated with tens of thousands so far on this tour. The European and North American shows have all sold out and yet Parker, when away from his sonic comfort zone, still wonders what all the fuss is about.

“We don’t dance about, we don’t play music that you can really get down to and some of the songs go on longer than a Pink Floyd epic when we play them live so it kinda confuses me as to why people actually like it,” he says with surprising honesty. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad they do but we don’t really fit in with what’s supposed to be popular. I suppose that’s part of the attraction.”

Since signing his first deal and releasing the band’s eponymous debut EP in late 2008, Parker has seen interest in what is essentially his personal pet project rocket to stratospheric levels. The buzz became global with the release of debut album Innerspeaker in 2010 which alerted the rest of the world to the band’s heady mix of 60s psychedelia, dance rock and spaced-out feedback. It was a sound which conjured up images of Cream in their heyday, Hendrix at his most cosmic and the druggy splendor of White Album-era Beatles, and one painfully at odds with the omnipotent plastic pop of the charts. Now, with the release of sophomore album Lonerism, Tame Impala’s nostalgic futurism is a seriously international phenomenon.

Not that you’d get any of the affected posturing that you’d expect from a 26-year-old musician with the world at his feet and a Who’s Who of rock royalty singing his praises. Despite nearly four years in existence, the popularity of Tame Impala is still a mystery to the band’s affable and eloquent mastermind. “Back in Perth, people don’t treat me differently, I’m still just Kevin and no-one attaches any of this bizarre, constructed rock star status to me or any of the other guys,” Parker says. “That’s why Perth is a sanctuary. I can go home and be with my friends or disappear into the crowd like I used to. Out in the world, people stop me outside venues and stick cameras in my face and want autographs, and I’m like – whoa, okay dude…I’m just this fucking guitar nerd who makes music in his bedroom…but hey, that’s cool!”

With this apparent obliviousness to the reasons behind the growing adoration and the widely-held perception of Parker as a young man most comfortable in his own company, many observers have taken Lonerism to be a collection of songs about his struggle with isolation. With titles such as “Why Won’t They Talk to Me?” and “She Just Won’t Believe Me”, it’s easy to mistake the album as a vocalization of Parker’s own insecurities. But the chief Impala maintains that it’s not a record about being alone. “Most of the songs are about other people and trying to establish connections,” he says. “Deep down, it’s hard for everyone, especially when you come to realize that you’re not one of these people who belong in the middle of the rest of the world. It’s about being a member of the human race and what a huge deal that is, being a small part of something so immense. It’s more about that than physical loneliness.”

Parker rarely reads his own press but when he does, he finds himself constantly amused. “No-one can really understand what goes on in my head, where the music comes from and what it really means so it’s kinda futile that people try,” he says. “I don’t mind them having a go – it’s a compliment in a way, especially if they’re trying to be nice but some of them get it so spectacularly wrong that we just piss ourselves laughing. I read about all these crazy cosmic references and spiritual interpretations and I’m like, what? That’s all new to me, man…”

Lonerism as an album is as contradictory as the world Parker has to operate in. It’s a record jam-packed with panoramic soundscapes of soaring beauty with Parker’s dreamy vocals played deep in the mix under fuzzy echoed guitars, lazer-beam synths and rumbling bass, tripping over danceable drums and leftfield orchestration. It’s a life-affirming album despite the fact its lyrical content hints at inner conflict and paralyzing questions of existence.

Parker may have uprooted his entire home studio in Perth and had it freighted to a small apartment in Paris to record Lonerism but he says this had nothing to do with any concept he had of an album about solitude. “My girlfriend was there and I wanted to be with her as well as work on the record. I pretty much do everything on all the records on my own anyway, so it’s not like I had this Marlene Dietrich moment and swanned off from the others to be alone. I play, record and produce the music myself and always have done. I only get involved with others in the mixing because, to be honest, I’m a fucking terrible engineer.

“The other guys have their own things going on and are cool with that. I don’t expect that input in their bands. It sounds like I’m just a control freak who won’t let anyone else have a turn in the studio but to us, Tame Impala is just Kevin’s project and everyone has their own.”

These projects, born out of Perth’s tight-knit underground music scene which centered on the notoriously avant-garde Troy Terrace, Parker’s home in the city for four years, have themselves started to make an impact internationally. Jay Watson and Nick Allbrook, part of the Tame Impala touring band, are also founding members of Pond and their project’s rise to prominence has made things a little “squeaky” in Parker’s words. “It makes it a little tighter now when it comes to planning tours and stuff but I’ve been producing Pond’s next album on my laptop on this tour so we make it work,” he says. “I play live drums for Pond and so we have to coordinate things a bit more these days with both bands taking off. But Tame and Pond are just a couple of pieces of this giant noise-making puzzle we have as a circle of friends.”

Despite the growing global acclaim, Parker and his cohorts still manage to tap into the spirit of those early days in Perth when Troy Terrace was filled with broken instruments, bong smoke and crazy levels of creativity. “When we’re at home and one of our bands is playing gigs, it’ll be like the old days,” he says with a smile. “Stuff the drums in the car and drive to the gig; drink our six-pack of warm beer backstage then play the gig to one man and his dog like its Madison Square Gardens and then go home. It’s like nothing ever happened.”

If only. However hard Kevin Parker tries to convince himself that this is the case, Tame Impala’s meteoric rise is changing things forever in the rest of the world. Whether he likes it or not.

First published in: Hash Magazine

See also: Lonerism – Tame Impala

See also: Tame Impala live at the Amsterdam Paradiso

See also: Wizards from Oz – Tame Impala live in Brussels

MERSEY PARADISE & SHE’S ELECTRIC now out as eBooks on Lulu.com

My two novels, the Madchester-era MERSEY PARADISE and the Britpop sort-of love story SHE’S ELECTRIC, are now available not only in paperback form but also as eBooks HERE. Very reasonably priced they are too…

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 3,500 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 6 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

My Top 3: Studio Gadgets – Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker

Tame Impala’s latest album Lonerism is a collection of sonic landscapes where songs blow in on dreamy electronic breezes and other-worldly ethereal orchestration. The band’s leader and mastermind Kevin Parker has made use of every conceivable musical colour at his disposal to paint a rich selection of groovy psychedelic vistas on Tame Impala’s sophomore effort. Making a record of such depth requires a lot of kit and Parker, who recorded and produced most of the album in Paris, took the opportunity to fully indulge himself in his love of vintage instruments and equipment– even to the detriment of his comfort.

“I had my whole studio freighted over from Australia,” he says. “So there I was, in this tiny apartment, unable to move for wires, instruments and production equipment. I was basically sleeping on the amps.”

The self-confessed guitar geek and effects wonk says that his much-travelled gadgets are tools of discovery in his constant quest for new sonic experiences. “As long as there are undiscovered sounds and the potential is there to find them and create music with them, I’ll never stop searching and experimenting.”

Here, the chief Impala identifies the three most important pieces of equipment used during Lonerism’s genesis and probably, he admits sheepishly, “my three most favourite things in the whole world.”

Diamond Vibrato guitar pedal

This pedal is used on pretty much all of the guitars on Lonerism. It wobbles the pitch and makes the guitar sound like a rickety little boat on the ocean. It’s that woozy sound you’ll hear throughout the album, a kind of seasick vibe which gives the impression that the whole thing is about to fall over. It also made the bass sound like a hungry stomach which was weird but cool. I love vintage gear but this one was brand new, off-the-shelf.

Sequential Circuits Pro-One synthesizer

The Pro-One is a monophonic analogue synth from the 80s and I fell in love with it from the moment I touched the first key. It sounds like it’s shooting laser beams. A lot of the lead lines on Lonerism are played on this and it just soars. I never buy instruments specifically for a song but this just seemed to fit perfectly on all of them. I paid over the odds for it though. I got into a bidding war on eBay and couldn’t let it go.

DBX 165A compressor

This is another gem from the 1980s. This compressor makes the drums sound like bombs going off. It’s like Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham playing a hip hop beat; just a monstrous sound like you’ve stuck a microphone up the backside of a drum kit. The 165A is a fast compressor, a sonic doomsday weapon. I don’t use it to control the volume; I set it tightly and aggressively and the drums become really urgent and immediate. It creates an aural attack.

First published in: The Red Bulletin

See also: Lonerism – Tame Impala

See also: Tame Impala live at the Amsterdam Paradiso

See also: Wizards from Oz – Tame Impala live in Brussels