A retail monolith spreading its spiny capitalist fingers across the boggy English fields on which it sits, laying plastic parking places, lurid yellow Lego resting pads for the corralled cattle who come to spend their hard earned pennies. There is only one long endless entrance snaking along paths of parked automobiles they glare at you with their sleek German badges or there cavernous roving rear ends, hemming you in to an obtuse angle so as you feel so oppressed you must leap on the nearest outlet for pent up frustration and spend. It smells of Shit, as you approach the parade passing Prada’s and Fred Perry’s, you bolster for position with the Burberry identi-kit couple of well healed country folk, against the women patting her prize puppy into a purpose fit hand bag and against the surly youths who sulk in mock boredom at the tedium of the now. But pervading over it all is a dank sewerage smell wafting into your air, rinsing of rushed council applications and unsellable land well buried in imported soil to mask the creosote dumps and the treatment flow. But the smell oozes from their well clad pores as if the very cash in their pockets was rotting away so quickly they must pass it off for £600 trousers or the smell of the decay would become too much. But they pass off their rotting cash to provide them with a passing comfort and when the resentment comes these possessions too will start to fade and the stench will return. You see it on the faces of the older ones; it’s become a habit yet without the thrill, like the candy shop you always wanted as a child but with ill-fitting dentures and a worrying blood sugar level. You stop to feel pity for them and think maybe you could grab one while they are young, give them some advice and show them a road that doesn’t end in a purpose built house on a corporate owned village build with a wilful despair in your heart and the stench of regret festering in their gut. But you have no time for regret, you have shopping to do....
You see I wanted to write a nice piece all about the love of music as we approach the end of the year and the rounding up process begins but more than family or Children or charity and good will to all mankind this is a season of pure greed of commerce and of everything that makes me feel nauseous and disgusted. Forced back to the retail outlet from which I had purchased a new suit, to have them remove the security tag they had mistakenly left attached was a eye opener of what rebuilding this country’s economy would really mean, the cold hard front of more money being spent on cards forcing money and power back into the pockets of the banks that were only last year squabbling at our doors for acts of charity.
The system has all the bells and whistles, it has the designer jackets and handbags we have been conditioned to desire and with their sale the cyclic movement of cash that is forever pushing power upwards and throwing down mindless trinkets to leave smiles on our conned faces. Nothing has any real value, it is all set, it is all created in our minds and the minds of those who look at us, it is all pretence and a mockery of any true integrity. There is no other option, all the ways of opting out have been labelled, sub categorised and vilified in benign and childish ways. There is no true form of pure expressionism any more, everything has been designed and is equally fake as the garnished glare of a retail stores which beckon us in like monsters with spend-lust. Only in your own heart will you know your ideals because nobody will ever believe your attempts to stand against anything and it would make precious little difference if they did. We are born into the game and we will be judged no matter what we do, saying you don’t care if your judged doesn’t work either for them it only goads them more. Retreat into yourself, make your own games have your own rules and win your own private victories and maybe even then we are only fooling ourselves , but it’s all we have to stand against the monolith that begs us to want it. And don’t let the season drag you further into a fit of wanton desire because Santa’s laughter mocks the poor and we have the ability to give gifts greater than money can buy. I guess that is why I have tended towards retreating into myself because in a small circle when you are more in control of the invading parameters we can have a better handle on our successes and failures, we can measure our growth on our own terms and can seek validation from the smallest of things. I have had small victories this year that would seem completely inconsequential to most everybody else but for me they are deeply more rewarding than actually being able to afford the suit that might at a passing glance look like one that Ryan Gosling wore. Validating your life against somebody else’s brings nothing but heartache and sadness, so driving home from a hard day at work with the stereo blotting out the buzz of other peoples foibles and misfortunes I can bask in the personal feelings of triumph and progression that mean something to me. I can meet the eye of someone who loves me and not need to spell out every detail of my accomplishments because they can see that look in my eye that I know I have worth. I’m a lucky man and I think that a lot more people could inherit this luck if they started looking in the right place to find it and then the lucky masses would no longer smell the rot and could move on unhindered and unchained through their beautiful lives.
I’m spending long hours re-listening to the best of this year’s music, formulating my favourites and deciding where I think the most artistic merit has been displayed, it is a complicated procedure but I have to say that the process of reviewing and this writing has become a very welcome part of my existence. Remembering what you love and sharing it with others is one of those great and free gifts I spoke of earlier and getting things off your chest, be it only to the cold glare of Microsoft Word is a coping mechanism that could be a lifesaver. Precious little in the way of new music this late in the year except a surprise pops up from some usually big hitters.
‘El Camino’ by The Black Keys There is no doubting that this Ohio duo have the blues, it courses through them with chest beating power but from basement recordings to rubber factories to major motion picture soundtracks and superstar DJ producers the band have come a long way from their grass roots raw blues power. This duo are really the last great survivors of the, ‘The’ bands era who were heralded as revitalising rock music, The Strokes were cool The White Stripes were intense and mysterious but the Keys had always exuded a natural talent for shredding riffs and telling blues the way it should be told, straight down the line, no holds barred. With this album I can’t help thinking they have polished away their edge, the riffs are still there and there is still a swagger to the sound but it seems to be more glitzy disco than spit and growl blues bar. With their last album ‘Brothers’ the bar was raised pretty high and although I’m sure there are enough tunes on this offering to keep the ad agencies happy I’m feel like fans might see a watered down version of ‘Brothers’, ‘Step-Brothers’ maybe. Working with Dangermouse as a producer we could have expected to see some more beat driven tunes like with the side project Blackroc but instead there is just a polish but then again DJ Dangermouse has his Gnarls Barkley side as well as his Grey Album. Very listenable but will have you reaching for the back catalogue and not regretting that you did.
And with a chill in the air there are of course some festive musical treats other than The evil that is ‘The Buble Christmas Album’ or maybe the caustic foulness of ‘Jesus – A Baby With A Beard’ by Kunt & The Gang, some actual records with actual humans.
‘50 Words For Snow’ by Kate Bush In some ways this could be seen as more of a landscape painting than a musical release, a festive frosty fantasy in a twisted tone poem. As a true treasure of the British quirkiness her love for Christmas has been on public display before with her song ‘December Will Be Magic Again’ but now she turns a whole album to the season and singing a love story for snowmen and icicles. Sometimes the actual listening can be more oddball than snowball and lyrically veering off into abject weirdness can only be excused because it’s Kate Bush for god’s sake, in a time when wearing a dress made of meat can garner hails of being “cutting edge” we have here someone telling us much more than she was ‘Born this way’ she is telling a quirky tale of her personal love for a magical time. Personally I do feel there is too much ethereal and not enough sexy but Ms.Bush has been busy this year and with her album this year ‘Director’s Cut’ she shows us her raunchy side allowing this album to be a snowy field of pure musical exploration by a English gem.
Across the pond we have a slightly more Candy-cane celebration as we don the obligatory Christmas jumper gather round the fire and listen in to a sing-along might be like if you just so happen to be a Hollywood movie star and your musician friends just popped by for egg-nog and a third album release,
‘A Very She & Him Christmas’ by She & Him The dear Americans do have a tendency to pour sugar over things so the already saccharine season might be worrying in their hands but these are no ordinary Americans. Not Surprising that these two impish beings would choose to put out a Christmas album as it was Zooey Deschanel’s singing in the film ‘Elf’ that brought her to the attention of Mr.Ward and with two albums under their belts this duo gave a well honed partnership that suits the season. Festive songs can be vomit worthy and all twinkling lights and Rudolph or they can be whiskey drinking piano side smoothness and this certainly fits into the latter category. The bastardisation of genre’s continues as Buble massacres jazz but here we see a fine handling of festive cheer, jazz vocal and a real style that is as cool as it is rejoicing. There is a strong sense of not taking themselves too seriously in this partnership Zooey never wanted to find fame for her songs but Mr.Ward thought she was too much of a talent to be left unheard and they obviously like working together in what I can only assume is a comfortable arrangement with little pressure and a lot of enjoyment. Trying to not be totally clichéd and cynical this Christmas I will be drinking whiskey and crooning along to this little Christmas gift.
That’s all for now folks, I will now retreat into rhetoric as I hobble together my festive 50 and attempt to nail holes into the year and make plans for renovations in the next. I’m worn down and tired and already sick to the back teeth of Turkey but I have a lot of great albums to look back on that as always have been my constant companions. So until next week, keep warm and have fun, eat mince pies and be merry keep an open heart and open ears.
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