Features

From the lofty vantage point of SE1, I haven’t heard much buzz from South By Southwest this year, or at least very little in the way of real surprises and completely new discoveries (If you know different, of course, please share).

Around the release of his last studio album, "Beware", Will Oldham embarked on a small project. According to the writer Kelefa Sanneh, in a New Yorker profile published in January 2009, Oldham intended, “To promote the album with singles, a photo shoot, and a handful of interviews, if only to prove that record promotion doesn’t really work, at least not for him.”

A funny year for music so far, personally speaking. It seems that, despite the many albums I’ve liked, there have been a good few that’ve been, one way or another, kind of disappointing: albums I’ve looked forward to very much, then neurotically restrained myself from writing about, due to my self-imposed rule about negative criticism generally wasting time and space. There’s still too much stuff to enthuse about, after all.

Apologies for the spotty service here recently: deadlines, deaths and a mildly debilitating virus have meant there hasn’t been much time to look after the blog in the past week or so.

Quite a good run for the Kranky label of late, with a bunch of albums I’ve enjoyed a lot from Ken Camden, Jonas Reinhardt and Disappears. For the past week or so, though, I’ve been really taken with “Endless Falls” by Loscil, discreetly asserting itself as maybe the pick of the bunch.

Quite a lot of major action in the playlist this week, but before we get there, a quick plug for two Club Uncut shows in London we’ve just had confirmed.

A couple of neat psych-ish things today that I’ve been meaning to write about for a while. First up, Coconuts, an Australian group relocated to New York, whose scouring dirges make them one of the more incongruously-named I’ve come across recently.

I’m sure most of you have heard the grim news about Mark Linkous in the past few days. I can’t really add much to the memorials that have accumulated about him and his music; on the odd occasion when I met him – all well over a decade ago now – he always came across as a gentle and reserved man, who told harrowing personal stories but at the same time didn’t seem to give that much away about what he was actually like. I have, though, dug out this Sparklehorse piece I wrote for NME in 1996. As is so often the way of these things, it’s hard not to see an awful poignancy in his last couple of quotes.

Thinking back to Brass Eye’s 2001 “paedophile special”, and in particular the furore it caused among certain sections of the media, it’s easy to see how misunderstood Chris Morris often is. Typically outraged, the Daily Mail described the episode as “a spoof documentary on paedophilia.” Which is missing the point. The programme was a savage attack on the media's own thoughtless, knee-jerk reaction to a serious issue. It clearly didn’t stop, though, large sections of the press demonstrating their own thoughtless, knee-jerk reaction to the show. It seems likely, I’m afraid, that those same sections of the media will be up in arms about Four Lions, Morris’ directorial debut, a “jihadist comedy”, no less, focussing on four wannabe suicide bombers in Sheffield. Which is a pity, as Four Lions is an extremely good film; far more than **just** a comedy about suicide bombers.

At the time of writing, the Oscars are three days away, and some folks, it seems, are getting jittery. Avatar, James Cameron’s lumbering 3D epic – seen by many as a shoe-in at Sunday’s ceremony – doesn’t appear quite the sure bet it was a few weeks ago. The reason? The significant head of steam built up by Kathryn Bigelow’s bomb disposal drama, The Hurt Locker.