Kaiser Chiefs are a strange beast. Starting off as a welcome return to the light-hearted melodicism and sheer pop power of Britpop and the likes of XTC, over-familiarity and their careerist second album have left them slightly unpalatable. At the risk of sounding condescending, sure, ‘the people’ have got into them – the same tabloid-reading masses they rail against on ‘The Angry Mob’ – but the discerning music lover (ahem) has perhaps been left a little cold by their eagerness to please.
Jimi Hendrix: Not Necessarily Stoned. . .But Beautiful
A few of us from the office went last night to the launch of the Jimi Hendrix Live At Monterey DVD and CD at the Hippodrome in Leicester Square, a swanky former nightclub now used for corporate events. I was last there for a party that followed IPC’s annual editorial awards, an event made especially memorable by a spectacular fall down a particularly steep flight of stairs, after which things become very vague, my memory of subsequent events – getting home, things like that – almost wholly non-existent.
I've been preparing myself today for tonight's Boredoms show at Shoreditch Town Hall by subjecting the office to a 105 minute continuous bootleg of their show with 77 drummers in New York from the summer. But it also seems like Japanese rock is much on my mind right now, since I've finally got round to reading Julian Cope's "Japrocksampler".
A pretty tendentious post appeared on the blog last night from someone who styles themselves Sad Indeed. "After seeing the live performance download MSNBC Today show 10/24, not only is Robert Plant coming off as sad as hell - a lifetime of dedication to the mermaid has broke his heart - but Krauss and Plant had NO chemistry and were out of synchronicity," Sad Indeed spiels.
I was playing this new album by Charalambides in the office yesterday afternoon, and someone mentioned that it would sound pretty good - and, well, pretty unnerving - on a mixtape with tracks from the recent PJ Harvey album, "White Chalk".
The post seems to have finally sorted itself out, so a decent load of new records arrived at Uncut yesterday, making today's playlist feel a good bit fresher than some of late. Regular readers should be reassured that, though, Radiohead is uncharacteristically absent, I'll probably put it on after this Butthole Surfers reissue has finished. Some things shouldn't change for a while yet, I guess.
Just a quick one today: I must admit that, a few months ago, it was hard to imagine Richard Ashcroft ever being involved in music I’d like again. But The Verve reunion has thrown up a few intriguing possibilities, not least the suggestion that they may sidestep all the windy balladry and return to the sort of cosmic orientation that made the band so interesting in the first place.
"Never create anything," says, uh, "Bob Dylan". "It'll just be misinterpreted."
Just as Dylan himself has been open to an awful lot of misinterpretation over the years, it seems highly likely the same fate could befall Todd Haynes' film I'm Not There, which I saw this morning, ahead of its first public screening next Saturday (Oct 27), at the London Film Festival.
After yesterday’s technical grief, I’ve now managed to play the new Black Mountain album three or four times. There’s a lot of stuff about angels laying their halos down and demons hiding in the shadows here. Blood is spreading across the walls, witchy children have black magic touches and, pointedly, Stephen McBean and Amber Webber chant in “Bright Lights”, “We love the night and all the witchery.”
Just spent most of the afternoon in some kind of company blogging seminar (conclusion: I think I may be doing it wrong), to find the new Black Mountain album waiting for me. We're now trying to play it for the third time without it jumping. But in the meantime, here are the day's other selections: a couple of vague dogs in this lot, if memory serves.
