I doubt Howler would agree with me, but for those among us who prize both the craft writing about as well as making music, Jazz Monroe’s jeremiad against mediocrity for Drowned In Sound is about as good a record review as you;re likely to ever read.

I know, I’m weird like that – I really and truly do get as much of a kick out of reading a well-formed piece of music writing as finding a well-written piece of music, but honestly, this is just on another level. Especially so, since you consider it’s not coming from the “professional”  sorts of places you’d expect it to – The Atlantic, New Yorker, Rolling Stone, these are the playgrounds in which writers indulge themselves every now and again by deigning to write about daft little subjects like music.

It’s far more than the precision-tooled mauling it appears. It’s a sincere blast against three-out-of-five bands, against masking a lack of talent behind a curtain of beige flacidity, against – frankly – not being fucking good enough. My favourite bit:

“Ours is a violently apathetic, mediocre generation, and as such, it deserves gods, poets and eccentrics for figureheads. Feisty as, oh, a vicar’s washing basket, America Give Up is music for people who think guitar music is dead. Music, without doubt, for people who, whether before or past their time, have given up on music. It’s a lop-sided sex routine in the washed-out toilets of a washed-up toilet venue. It’s McDonald’s apple pie and series three of The OC and Cool Original Doritos without dip on an innocuous sick day”

Anyway, go and read it, it’ll make you worry a bit, especially if you’re in a band. Then go away and work out how to improve what you do, and make it so good that even Jazz Monroe would like it.

You know that debate about whether music criticism is still valid? Over.

The New Yorker’s done a playlist of Thatcher songs (which is quite good, so you should read that too) but it reminded me of this S*M*A*S*H track.

For those of you too young to remember, this lot lasted about five minutes, made Welwyn Garden City famous for slightly less than that, upset some people for liberal usage of (gasp!) sweary words and released this track – their only good one – on a single that was promptly deleted the next day. I say it’s their only good track, but actually the Gunshot remix on the flipside was EPICALLY good, and much, much more menacing. But, since no-one’s put that one up on Youtube yet, this will have to do.

In case anyone else is feeling nostalgic, Taylor Parkes’ 1994 interview with them is – all at the same time – a chilling reminder of those dark musical days, a standout piece of music journalism, and hilarious.

I hated this lot as a teenager (that manufactured NWONW scene made me feel a bit sick), but it makes me smile now – it even sounds a bit sweet these days, the excitable little rapscallions.

Amid the usual torrent of guff that the world and their civil partners are writing about PJ Harvey, Tune-Yards and all the other more famous folk coming to the Sydney Festival, AA Bondy‘s getting a bit overlooked. Let’s correct that shall we? Excellent.

I’d only heard snippets of him before catching him live, on a scorching back patio at SXSW (at the very awesome Donewaiting blog’s party, pictured) a few years ago. In the blazing sunshine with just him, his guitar, a microphone and what looked like a generously-measured tumbler of whiskey, it was one of the most quietly brilliant gigs I’ve seen, not just at SXSW – where the mad little shows come thick and fast – but anywhere. Not a show to kick your stomach in, or to blow your eardrums or your mind, but it’s been one of those times-spent-with-music that has just stuck out in my mind like a rough-throated hangnail ever since, and not just for the really drunk local who kept urging Bondy to run for President.

He’s doing two nights in Sydney during the Festival, his first ever visit to Oz, and I am going to take the virtually risk-free step of guaranteeing that he’ll be so fucking excellent that you’ll take that sniffy expression, cry all over it, and watch it disintegrate in the salty wash.

Seriously, it’ll happen just like that.

He’s not just coming for the weather though (and right now, that’s a fucking good job too – summer my arseless chaps) since his latest long-player’s out, which makes you obliged to buy it. It’s called Believers and it should make any right-thinking folk’s list. Maybe it’s the crack in the voice, or the trem in the guitar, or the warbling steel, or the fact it’s so rich and brown and peeling at the edges that it’s either the equivalent of an old photo of your cowboy grandfather or a piece of the best cake ever… no fooling, it’s a fine, fine piece of work. Take a listen and tell me the show won’t kill you stone fucking dead.

So, no then – I’m not really brooking any other opinions here, or looking for outside counsel of any kind. You know why? Because I’m fucking dead right, is why. You’d better buy the tickets now, just to be safe, like.

AA Bondy – The Heart Is Willing by fatpossum

Photo credit: Praise Bettie

I’ve been idly nosing around some of the session sites out there, and there’s some awesome work out there at the moment, none more so than Slow Club’s frozen session for They Shoot Music, Don’t They. I like to think that – if it was a race – we made Slow Club even colder than this when we caught them a couple of years back in Anstruther, Scotland for Off The Beaten Tracks, but it sure appears that they’ve forgotten how bloody cold it’s possible to get during a couple of takes in the open air by the sea.

Two lovely, lovely tracks captured here from one of my favourite bands of recent years – with or without the frosted coating, they’re still the sweetest little rascals around.

[See the originals at They Shoot Music, Don't They, who also have LOADS of other awesomeness for you to enjoy with your eyes and mind]

Just a quick one, since I can’t help but stare at anything to do with that Lulu car-crash - The Telegraph has got an interview with LouLars, which is the only one I’ve seen done post-release, not pre-. As a result, Lou’s on his spikily best form:

“You know a lot of time these guys that interview us, they think they’re more literate than I am. That would be a real bad mistake,” he snarls, having misinterpreted a question to locate offence where none was intended. “Don’t kid yourself about me, you know what I’m saying? I’m not a good guy to f—- with.”

Chuckle.

Anyway, he goes on to show that – contrary to all utterances and appearances – he might actually have a human soul underneath all those folds of skin and grumpiness, and for that alone it’s worth a read.

Ultimately, though, while that record was a serious candidate for possibly the maddest, weirdest and worst record ever written, and while Metallica still make me laugh like a drain any time they say, do or play anything, I still can’t bring myself to dislike Lou Reed. He’s a miserable, contrarian, arrogant pseud who would benefit, as a human being, from being roundly humiliated every now and again, but you can’t deny that the bloke’s got balls the size of family Volkswagens.

I really like that even though he’s clearly the Mr. Burns of Rock, he’s still got the sheer moxie to go through with this sort of madness, even though literally everyone in the world (who isn’t in Metallica) must have said to him he was off his cakehole and to just go back to bed for a bit.

Sadly for all concerned – alright, mainly me – I had no idea you’d need actual accreditation to take photos at this, so apologies for the lack of pics. Serves me right for not checking, and for having totally gotten used to just showing up at shows back in Edinburgh and merrily snapping away regardless. Serves me right, lesson learned.

I also learned tonight though that Felicity Groom is chuffing excellent live. While the few other folk I know here had all bundled off to Homebake, I was left scrabbling around looking for something to see on Saturday night, and took a bit of a punt on this. Cursory glances at an entertaining video shot in a kids playground and a quick scan of the player on her facebook page singled it out as worth a nod, but I honestly wasn’t expecting much. That served me right, too.

Flitting between solo acoustic and full band numbers, it’s a little scorcher of a set, cracked and slightly bonkers, veering wildly all over the road and hanging its head out of the window. It’s been a while since I saw Edinburgh’s Jesus H Foxx in the flesh, but they were channelled here tonight, with inventiveness and lunacy and glee spilling out all over the floor in great big lumps – there was even a big dollop of acapella for good measure.

Elsewhere, sharp snaps of noise buttress Groom’s killer lungs – you find yourself wanting to choke on the name, but it’s bloody hard not to think of Florence when she howls. Better though, obviously. Or - at least – as good as when Florence was actually good, if you get my drift. Closer ‘Finders & Keepers’ – the one from the playground – is just a bloody glory.

“I’m going to take you on a journey”, Groom announces at the start. I’ve no idea where we went, but for damn sure it wasn’t where I expected to end up. Happily lost, what a singular pleasure.

So I finally get round to my first gig in Sydney (or in Australia, or in the southern hemisphere for that matter) last night, featuring Kill City Creeps at the last night of their month-of-Saturdays residency here. Strange place, The Beresford – it seems to be packed to the rafters with average Saturday night folk as well as those out for the gig itself, which makes it both an odd mix of a crowd and rammed full of absolutely hammered women dancing like goons. More gigs should be like this, clearly – especially as (I’d guess) most of those dancing wouldn’t normally pick beefy glam-ish stomping, or blues-y Jesus & Mary Chain fuzz as their normal Saturday night soundtrack.

Nice to see that it can take La Blogotheque just as long as the rest of us amateurs to turn sessions round, with this WU LYF performance in a dank Parisian cave from June. I’m still undecided on WU LYF, but this video’s a proper little smasher – the monotone claustrophobia of the venue and the camera-shy schtick of the band both get the best out of Blogotheque’s trademark (and peerless) tight-in camerawork – you can’t shake the feeling that this is a very difficult band to see, which works on a number of levels.

 

“Like the stirring scenes of suburban Texas in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, these songs find meaning in daily mundanities– in houses and gardens, phone lines and street lights, names carved in trees and leaves pressed by footsteps.”

Marc Masters’ may be on the brink of tears in his review of Days by Real Estate (he gave it an 8.7 out of ten – Pitchfork, 18 Oct ‘11)

“a ponderous ballad that starts out tranquilly before gliding across a luscious carp of xylophone chimes, strings and dashing, deep seated percussion. This penchant for musical toploading is Svanängen’s party piece, but it’s occassionally wearisome; his inability to resist the lure of a slow fruition can be as tiring as it is magnetic.”

Billy Hamilton’s letters-per-word ratio doubles overnight after his review of Hall Music by Loney, Dear (he gave it a 7 out of ten – Drowned In Sound, 19 Oct ‘11)

“grizzled… old… cold, hard, industrial… strange… mad… rusty… old… vintage… untaxed, uninsured… unstoppable… essential… wild… rattling… turbocharged… reckless… textured… shot… off-kilter… corroded… vintage… mournful… cracked… crooked”

Helen Brown gets her adjective freak ON in her review of Bad As Me by Tom Waits (she gave it five stars out of five – The Telegraph, 20 Oct ‘11)

“Paul Epworth’s production is impeccable throughout; showing again what a canny, culturally-aware mind can do with Welch’s big-hearted melodies and eccentric spirit – this time channelling Bowie, Frida Kahlo, Virginia Woolf, Fleetwood Mac and Spiritualized.”

Camilla Pia wants you to know about all the stuff she’s ever learned, as well as her opinion on Ceremonials by Florence And The Machine (she gave it four out of five – The Fly, 28 Oct ‘11)

“a sputtering, cacophonous masterpiece, the unhinged id to the comparatively orderly ego of fellow Washingtonians Minor Threat”

Not sure whether sixteen minutes of hardcore by Void warrants a Freudian reading by Hank Shteamer in Pitchfork, but… ok, whatever (Pitchfork, 28 Oct ‘11)

In case you’ve been under a rock or know no-one with a functioning sense of humour, you’ll be aware that the least-likely-to-succeed pairing in the history of recorded sound, Lou Reed and Metallica, have got an album coming out on Monday. Understandably, brows have been furrowed, eyes have been widened and – predictably – daggers have been sharpened in anticipation. The album’s now available to stream in its glorious/hideous entirety, so you can now decide for yourself if you agree with Lou Reed’s assertion that it’s the finest record he’s ever made.

However, you should be aware that geologists are now having to scour the land and the sea to find new natural reserves of pomposity and self-delusion, since all existing seams have been so well mined on this overblown festival of faux-avant-garde wankery that there is now none left to spare.

Or to put it another way – if you enjoy this record, you are a fucking jackass.

Here’s what the hacks have to say:

THE GOOD

“Lulu is the second greatest record ever made in the history of the human ear drum. Number One: Metal Machine Music.”

J. R. Moores, Drowned In Sound, 27 Oct ‘11

THE MEH

“It’s best to think of this as Metallica’s version of ‘Passengers,’ U2‘s experimental 1995 collaboration with Brian Eno — an interesting but not ultimately successful side trip”

Matthew Wilkening, Ultimate Classic Rock, 21 Oct ‘11

“The best thing about this record is that it exists, and Metallica are to be congratulated for exploring their more avant-garde side. It suits them.”

Jeremy Allen in NME’s First Listen, 19 Oct ‘11

THE PIG FUCKING UGLY

“It’s impossible to deny how laughably overblown the whole thing gets”

Ross Watson, The Skinny, 24 Oct ‘11

“It wastes so much of life’s most precious commodity: time. We have but a short period on this earth and Lulu, spread over 95 – yes, 95! – tedious and excruciating minutes simply eats into time that could be more constructively spent watching the grass grow or perhaps wanking into a sock.”

Julian Marsalek, The Quietus, 20 Oct ‘11

“Sounds like your dad’s drunk friend reciting his self-penned erotica over a melting ReLoad cassette”

Kyle Anderson, Entertainment Weekly, 26 Oct ‘11

“There are approximately three enjoyable moments on the album, and they all cop to the aforementioned assertion that Metallica should have kept making the Black Album or Load over and over again until their mullets grew back.”

Daniel D. Snyder, The Atlantic, 25 Oct ‘11

“I was ceaselessly reminded that corporate forces stopped artists from doing what they truly desired; they pushed musicians toward predictable four-minute radio singles and frowned upon innovation, and they avariciously tried to turn art into a soulless commodity that MTV could sell to the lowest common denominator. And that did happen, sometimes. But some artists need that, or they end up making albums like this.”

Chuck Klosterman, Grantland, 25 Oct ‘11