Arctic Monkeys: The Plot Thickens

Well this is my first post in a couple of weeks, after my gallivanting around the USA. If you're bothered, I had a wonderful time. We spent a lot of time singing "Forget You" by Cee Lo Green and, for some reason, "Loving You" by Minnie Ripperton. Well, I did at least. Got a funny look from a rollercoaster engineer for the latter. Go figure.

Anyway, when I returned, I was immediately greeted with something I had been hotly anticipating for some weeks: a new Arctic Monkeys track and video. One tipped to be the first single from the band's forthcoming album, now revealed to be named Suck It And See.

I was worried as soon as I heard about it. I hope you read two of my most recent posts, one about how bloody awful the first track revealed from their new album was, and the other about how sublime Alex Turner's solo soundtrack for the film Submarine (saw it - brilliant) was. The highly disparate quality of the two left me feeling a tad uncertain about one of Britain's most important bands.

So, heart fluttering in desperately hopeful fanboy anticipation, beads of sweat forming under my collar in the harsh, unforgiving glare of the Surrey sun, I sat down to watch and listen to "Don't Sit Down' Cause I've Moved You Chair".



Now, I can't speak for you, but my reaction upon hearing that went something like this:

YES! YES! SODDING YES! THANKYOU BOYS! AAGGHHHHHH!!!

I was overjoyed hearing this. Over the moon. Just like with their last album, Humbug, there's gonna be a whole army of jaded, close minded indie fans who are still stuck in 2005 and never wanted the Arctics to progress beyond the sound on their debut who hate this track and the forthcoming album with no real reason behind their dislike. The band have adapted again, they've moved, it would seem, into even heavier rock territory than on Humbug , but that's not inherently a bad thing. It failed horrendously on "Brick by Brick", but on this track it comes off sublimely well, thanks largely, I think, to Alex's hilariously surreal and nonsensical lyrics. There's something very British about it all. I had a bit of trouble being able to enjoy the "YEAH YEAH YEAH!" of the chorus first of. But it won me over. In a big way.

As I said when I was negatively reviewing "Brick by Brick", one track can't give an indicator of the quality of an entire album, but I'm hoping to high heaven that this one does. Then we'll be in for a treat.

There's also been a wee bit of controversy about the newly unveiled album cover for Suck It and See.

It's been variously called lazy and genius. Some people love the simplicity and think it's a bold statement, bidding you not to judge it by it's cover but just "suck it and see". Other's think it's a cop out. I think everyone just needs to chill out. So they've opted for a minimalistic album cover. And? There's plenty worse out there folks.

Arctic Monkeys: Cause for Concern?

It's been pretty much non-stop excitement for Arctic Monkeys since 2005. They become one of the first bands to truly make their name on the internet. They sell out the London Astoria before they even release their debut album. Their first single, "I Bet You Look Good on The Dancefloor" goes straight in at #1 and showed that indie music in the UK was alive and kicking. Their debut Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not become the fastest selling UK debut in history and gets a 10/10 review in the NME. Instantly, they were the biggest and best band in Britain.

Second time round, their album Favourite Worst Nightmare received almost unanimous critical acclaim, even though most people were saying it wasn't as strong as the debut (something I flagrantly disagree with, and struggle to understand in a lot of ways) Then they headline Glastonbury. On their second album.

The mood changed on their third album Humbug however. It was an even stronger departure, a lot of folks said, than Favourite Worst Nightmare. Alex Turner revealed that during the recording process they'd been listening to Hendrix and Cream, and were decmaping to the Mojave Desert to record with Josh Homme. There was a palpable change in the wind in the British music press - the NME especially. It was full of spiteful accusations of the band disappearing up their own arse. "Fans" all over the place were infuriated that the band had "betrayed" their original sound and aesthetic. I was livid at that. Anyone who had listened with any thing approaching an attention span to Favourite Worst Nightmare would have seem Humbug coming a long way of - a stunningly natural progression of the band's sound, which also saw some of Alex Turner's deftest and most eloquent lyrical turns. Matt Helders' highly publicised bromance with P Diddy may have put a few off but hey, let's keep our eyes on the prize here.

So I have utterly adored everything Arctic Monkeys have ever turned their spry little northern hands to. If you'd asked me a few weeks ago, I would have said the band had never written a bad song. They're one of those bands, as far as I'm concerned, where even the B-Sides are of unspeakably good quality.

Then... this happened:



Now, on numerous levels - by the band's own standards and as a song on it's own - that is crap. Genuinely crap. It's not the worst song ever - it's not Justin Bieber or Cliff Richard. But by the standards of one of the most adept, eloquent and able bands of my generation, chanting "I WANNA ROCK AND ROLL" over mediocre thumping just does NOT cut it.

I have no issue whatsoever with the band further maturing and adapting their sound; I've never been someone who refuses to move on from the first album. As far as I'm concerned, the band have gotten better with each album. Also, I have no problem with them being influenced by classic rock acts like Hendrix, Cream and The Doors. Sure, there's plenty of bands around who influenced by those bands and suck like a malnourished calf at it's mother's glorious teet, but there's also been an unhealthy aversion to being openly influenced by those kind of bands in modern indie music.

However - "Brick by Brick" sounds brainless and crass. It sounds like something off the new Beady Eye album. It sounds lazy. It's Matt Helders singing the verses, not Alex Turner, but when a band containing one of the generation's greatest lyricists releases a song containing a refrain of "I WANNA ROCK AND ROLL!", I'm not having it. It's not a carefree, youthful expression of energy and abandonment. It's crass, pure and simple. The chorus is catchy and a tad lush, I'll give them that, but beyond that it's formulaic and makes you think that there may be such a thing as too much Queens of the Stone Age. At the end of the day, they're still a bunch of skinny white northern lads from Sheffield, not drug addled lone rangers traipsing through the American West, re-enacting Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with LSD naturally running in their blood (a lesson someone should probably taught Kasabian a couple of years back) If they delve into the kind of territory I'm worried they might, I quite simply don't think I'll be able to take them seriously.

But let's remember of course, this is just one song. A song that isn't even going to be a single. And a song that's not even led by the band's lead singer (and may bot have even been predominantly written by him). I desperately, desperately hope that it's not indicative of the overall nature of the album. I have a strong suspicion that the band are on unfathomable cart loads of drugs, which could result in a terrifying lack of quality control or a psychadelic masterpiece. I have a deep rooted faith in Arctic Monkeys, and I hope that this track is just a forgettable album track (even though, in my mind, they've never written one of those before) I've loved watching the band's progression, and even if this album is crap, I hope it won't herald the end of them, but that it will become a mediocre building block in the legacy they should end up leaving behind that makes me appreciate the other blocks all the more. Or maybe it will be awesome. Again.

The Flaming Lips: Free Radicals

I hope you've heard of The Flaming Lips. If you haven't, watch this and sort yourself out:



Good! The Flaming Lips are one of my favourite bands, for a whole list of reasons I won't entirely go into. They're just the coolest middle aged men ever. Wayne Coyne is basically the musical version of Robert Downey Jr (though I think that he's probably still taking drugs)

Anyway, this post in inspired by the fact that Wayne and co have just announced that they're going to be releasing a new song for free every month in 2011. It's similar to Kanye West's "G.O.O.D Fridays" scheme last year, where he released a new track every Friday between summer and Christmas. It was, I have to say, pretty awesome.

They've also announced that their first release may very well be a collaboration with chillwave heavyweight Neon Indian; so we should be in for a whole load of crazy. But this announcement from a band as high profile (in indie terms) as The Flaming Lips just got me thinking about the way bands release music.

We all know that we live in a world where paying and waiting for music is becoming an increasingly alien concept to people, teenagers especially. And in such a climate, bands are under increasing pressure to find new ways to release their music, keep it interesting, show their fans that they're passionate about their music in a real way. That's just what The Flaming Lips are doing here. So I've got 4 thoughts about The Flaming Lips' model of release for the coming year; thoughts that I hope are relevant to both them and other musicians who do similar things:

1. It creates anticipation
Like I said, the idea of queueing up outside a record store in the pissing rain for hours to get hold of your favourite band's record is alien to pretty much everyone my age (18) When music can be downloaded (legally or illegally) in seconds now, no one has any sense of anticipation for music any more. In such a world, a band has to hype up anticipation even more. It's (rarely) enough to rely on one release date to create some genuine anticipation. But when you know there's new music to look forward to every week (like with Kanye) or every month (now with The Flaming Lips) though, that gives the excitement back. Maybe it's reduced version of the old kind of anticipation people used to have over a much longer period of time, but it certainly does the trick. It's a counter to being satisfied with whatever plops itself in the charts.

2. It's on their own terms
Again, illegal downloading is what comes into play here. The horrendous over-accessibility afforded by downloading means that acquiring music has been put onto the terms of the downloader. They get music when they want, where they want and who they want. Couple this with internet record leaks and grainy YouTube videos, and artists have so little control over how their music is distributed and controlled. With a scheme like this, it puts that control back in their hands. Sure the tracks will be available on P2P sites soon enough, but it's been released entirely on the terms of the artist.

3. It keeps the artist on their toes
Wayne Coyne himself has said that the prospect of putting out another album in the conventional way this year didn't really appeal to the band. It's great to see a band (especially one as middle aged as The Flaming Lips, though Wayne Coyne is a silver fox if ever there was one) challenging themselves in new ways, changing the way they do things. It keeps them fresh and means they're not going to keep churning out albums just because that's what bands do. And a logical conclusion of that is...

4. It stimulates creativity
Doing things in a new way, against a different time frame and with a different focus will always stimulate your creativity because you've got to go about things differently. If you keep doing the same processes and routines then, even in a band, and one as trippy as The Flaming Lips, creativity starts to fizzle out. This whole thing has already got them onto talk of a collaboration with Neon Indian, so this new avenue of releasing and creating music has, in turn, meant they get to collaborate with another artist, which will send both the Lips and Neon Indian off into awesome new realms of psychadelic creativity. Over the last couple of years, Beck has been running his "Record Club" project, where he gets a load of the indie communities greatest together (participants have included Thurston Moore, MGMT, Devendra Banhart, Wilco and err... Wolfmother) and they cover a classic album in a day. It's yielded (largely) very good results. It stretches the artists involved, throws up fantastic creative interpretations of great music and spills over into the rest of the world. Beck is set to produce Thurston Moore's forthcoming solo album (and I pee a little in excitement whenever I think about that...)

I don't think it's gimmicky or a commerical ploy (the tracks are free remember) As they're such a big band, they can afford to release everything for free in a given year, I'm not saying that's a precedent for other, smaller bands of course. But The Flaming Lips really love their fans, and really take themselves seriously as a group.
So I'm massively excited for the forthcoming releases. This way of releasing stuff is great for them and, whilst I do love listening to whole Flaming Lips albums, its going to be a great experience for me as a fan.

Now watch this hilarious video from the brilliant site The Black Cab Sessions:

Flaming Lips from Black Cab Sessions on Vimeo.

She & Him - "Don't Look Back"

I posted on She & Him a little bit before Christmas, and then this afternoon I came across the video for their single "Don't Look Back" and just really felt like sharing it because it massively brightened up my Sunday :D

The video's pretty crazy really, Zooey Deschanel going all Stepford Wives on us. It's all bouncy, hip shaking, shoulder shimmying 60s flare, and makes me feel a bit like I'm watching the 60s bit from Joseph and The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. I keep expecting Hard Day's Night-era Beatles to wander in. Zooey's singing about the fact that you've got to move on and strike out in new directions in life, but you still like the reassuring presence of the past behind you. Pretty apt for her and musical partner M Ward in their line of nostalgic modern folk.

This video might just be Zooey Deschanel hopping about, incredibly aware of the fact that she is possibly the most beautiful thing to ever be anywhere at any time ever, inflaming the fantasties of every post-Juno indie kid around, but hey - I'm not complaining.

This is a disarmingly lovable song, and I hope it brightens up your day!

Going for Stroke...

If you like listening primarily to indie guitar music made by white guys after the year 2001, then you basically owe your entire musical life to The Strokes. Their 2001 debut Is This It? rewrote the rulebook for guitar music and it's undoubtedly the most influential album released this millenium.

The indie super giants have been wayward for a fair while now though, indulging in various side projects and constantly teasing us with talk of a new album, which keeps being pushed back.

Then, early this morning, we got what seemed to be our first real taste of their next album. Frontman Julian Casablancas shared with the world what he says is the album's artwork. And here it is:





?




Now, as everyone who has written about this today will tell you, Julian Casablancas is not renowned for being a prankster. I'm not gonna hugely lay into it if this is the album cover (NME writer James McMahon does that rather amusingly here), but there are some album covers which are brilliant in their knowing terribleness. This is not one of them. To me, it doesn't come off as irony. Or does it? To be honest I'm not entirely sure. I don't know what it suggests about the sound of the record, but then I don't really know what to expect from this record. After Is This It?, The Strokes released two incredibly average albums - a fact which is conveniently glossed over most of the time. But even when acknowledged, it does nothing to dispel the fact that they are the most influential indie band of the decade.

In last week's edition of the NME, the band were hailing "The Return of the Great British Guitar Band". Now, obviously The Strokes are very much an American band, but there is, I sense, a craving for a new, exciting, classic guitar band. There are a lot of names being thrown about. The greatest chances we have are The Vaccines and Yuck, and perhaps Tribes if they ever properly record anything. I hope, pray and beg that Brother (a bunch of twats who somehow end up more sub-Oasis than The Enemy) experience no degree of success whatsoever. The US have also spawned some classic sounding fuzzy indie guitar rock over the past year like Wavves, Dum Dum Girls and Male Bonding, who all released incredibly well received albums. There are also a few others who are destined (if the music loving community is sensible) to prosper- Cloud Nothings and Cults being my two favourites!

So I guess I'm kind of saying "do we really need The Strokes right now?" Part of me feels like they've left it too long. I just don't see where they'd fit into the current indie landscape. Six years is an incredibly long time in music nowadays, and just look at how much indie guitar music has changed since 2005, when they released First Impressions of Earth. Mumford and Sons are the biggest selling "indie" act in the world right now! Kings of Leon, The Strokes' Southern pseudo-proteges are now a platinum selling stadium rock act who have climbed so far up their own arse that Bono has decided the only way to stay Top Overblown-and-Twattish Dog is to write a musical about superheroes. Does that sound like a world that five scruffy , rock and roll loving New Yorkers wearing leather jackets and scuffed Converses belong in?

But on the other hand of course, they're The friggin' Strokes! They wrote Last Nite! They're meant to be one of the greatest live bands of our time (I'm very much up for seeing these guys live...) Maybe we DO need them and we just don't know it! I'm in love with The Vaccines right now, but they COULD let me down. As could a million and one other new bands we all put our faith in. Despite the mediocrity of Room on Fire and First Impressions of Earth, I don;t think any of us can shake that first sublime encounter with Is This It? Right now is one of those times where you just so desperately WANT to believe...

It's ten years since The Strokes defined a decade. Could they define another one? I'm afraid I have no conrete answer for you folks. Only hope. And that pretty decent Julian Casablancas solo album. The world has changed, but there's never anything new under the sun. Only time will tell. But I do hope. Oh yes I do hope...

Elbow - "Lippy Kids"

I received some rather nice gifts over Christmas and I hope you did to. However, possibly the best thing I've received from anyone over the past 72 hours has been the unveiling of a new track from one of the world's greatest bands - Elbow.

I was sat on the sofa, late Boxing Day morning, in my pants and dressing gown, twiddling my thumbs whilst cleaning up went on around me when I decided to check on t'internet to see if anything had been going on in the musical world, and I literally squeaked a little bit when I saw that Elbow had unveiled the first song from their recently named upcoming album Build A Rocket Boys! - the follow up to 2008's massive crossover success The Seldom Seen Kid. The song is titled "Lippy Kids" and well, here it is:



Now if you don't find that stunningly beautiful then either:
a) listen to it again, or
b) ask Santa for a soul next Christmas

Having become a massive fan of the whole of Elbow's back catalogue (I'll admit I hadn't heard of them until they released "Grounds for Divorce" as a single, but I investigated and fell in love with them before they rose to success, so my indie cred it kept in tact folks) I was incredibly worried that after the massive success they experienced with The Seldom Seen Kid, they would compromise their sound somehow. When they stated recently that they'd written this album with big venues in mind, my insides became a little more wary. But I kept faith. And I was right to do so.

Gosh this song is beautiful. Lyrically, it's classic Guy Garvey. Eloquent yet colloquial, wise yet human, restrained yet emotional. "Lippy Kids" finds Garvey watching a bunch of youths messing around on street corners and, rather than criticise or have a go like many others would, or delve into his remembered teenage fears and try to warn the kids a la Arcade Fire on The Suburbs, he just stands and admires them from afar, as someone who clearly lived the exact same way years ago. He wonders mildly "do they know those days are golden?", putting him at a mature and wistful adult distance, and then lovingly and with a sly grin in his voice imparts a golden pearl of wisdom - "build a rocket boys".

That's such a beautiful lyric. It's Guy Garvey, of course it bloody is, but still. "Build a rocket boys". He's telling these kids to live beautiful, aspirational lives. And that last word "boys" just brings him so close to them, let's you know that Garvey is singing as a greying, aging man of experience.

Musically, one could argue that it's not exactly the "arena sound" that they'd mentioned. It's only one song, and the rest of the album could sound different, but I think this could fit in an arena. Or a pub. A phonebox. A street corner, seeing as that's where it's set. The music never runs away and crescendos, escalating into a massive chorus - but you don't have to be singing "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" to fill an arena. This song's an exercise in restraint. Garvey never runs up to these kids and tells them what he thinks. He maintains a respectful distance, but the feeling swells in his chest, huge and beautiful like a pair of wings, one of those beautiful things that remains forever unsaid. It's similar in a way to Arcade Fire on The Suburbs - lyrically but also musically. There's a tendency among indie fans to love bands who make music that sounds majestic and massive, but to then recoil when that music is put into a massive venue like Wembley or the O2. But that's pure indie snobbery. I saw Elbow at Wembley in March 2008, at the height of their new popularity. They were stunning and when I reflect on that gig, it made me realise something. That's a massive venue and it was pretty much full. And yet it was such a personal experience for me as I got to see a band I had fallen in love with. Their music possesses a quality that is the key to great pop music - it has universal appeal but at the same time strikes a personal chord which makes that music immediately becomes yours.

Elbow are a band for Wembley Arena as well as dirty suburban street corners in Bury. And hopefully they'll prove that again in 2011.

Build a Rocket Boys!

Born Free

This may shock you but I, Rhys Laverty, am about to write a blog praising a rap video for being violent.

MIA is best known for her alternative hip-hop hit "Paper Planes" in 2008, and the Diplo Street Remix featuring Bun B and Rich Boy. I thought it was a fantastic piece of hip-hop. However, I kept my distance from MIA. I was never quite sure of her, never quite willing to really fall in love with her, or understand why she was always rated as one of the most influential and innovative artists around.

Then, last week, "Born Free" was released.

Her latest single is a 9 minute piece of abrasive alternative rap which samples the song "Ghost Rider" by cult post-punk favourites Suicide. Eclectic and alternatively cultured as that may sound, the fuss about it comes from the video:

http://vimeo.com/11219730

It's a 9 minute short film. And it is incredibly graphic. It was dropped on us without warning and we realised suddenly that it was NSFW (Not Safe For Work). It shows a group of US soldiers violently rounding up a load of gingers, driving them out to the desert, shooting a child in the head, making the gingers run across a mine field, beating an escapee to death and ends with one of the gingers being incredibly and graphically blown to bloody smithereens.

It was removed from YouTube. It sent shockwaves and ripples throughout the indie music world. Why?

It's because it is genuinely shocking. It is genuinely unexpected. Genuinely unpredictable. And that is why I think it's brilliant. I don't think it's violence for violence's sake. It's not like Saw: The Musical. It's so hard in the indie music world to be to be shocking nowadays. All forms of media are utilised to supplement an artists music, every conceivable issue is being covered and the lines between genres are crumbling constantly.Innovation is everywhere, and that is awesome, but it's hard to be shocking and to make your innovation stand out against everyone else's. Also, I think its explicit and "excessive" (is it really?) content are a mockery and subversion of most rap videos nowadays- overtly sexual and gun toting but meaning absolutely nothing.

MIA has managed to do something totally attention grabbing. She's made a bold a clear statement about discrimination, oppression, US supremacy, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland and countless other racial conflicts. Those issues are talked about so much nowadays, in the media and in music, that we grow numb to them. And yet, paradoxically, we really have no clue of the atrocities Western Nations, the ones presented as "the good guys" and guilty of. MIA has thrown those ideas back into the frame, through her art. Sonically, the song reflects the graphic nature of the issues presented, and I genuinely enjoy listening to it. The lyrics are simple yet brilliant too, a defiant protest about every person's inherent right to be free.

I've seen today that an anti-bullying charity has slammed MIA for promoting discrimination against gingers:

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Showbiz-News/MIA-Ginger-Genocide-Music-Video-Born-Free-Slammed-By-Bullying-Charity-Defended-By-Actor/Article/201005115623553?f=rss

But they are totally wrong. This video is showing us in a raw and graphic way that discrimination, violence and torture still exist in our world. On a grand scale- like the US invasion of Iraq- and on smallar scales- like bullying. Born Free, both video and song, is a brilliant piece of 21st century political protest art.

But perhaps you disagree. Watch the video and feed back to me.

Is it just violence for violence's sake? Is showing a twelve year old being shot in the head really an honest form of political protest?