As this is the last Sound & Vision round-up of 2013,
other than my Best Of lists that will appear on here between Christmas and
New Year, it is perhaps fitting that this time around I’m able to talk about
both the best gig I’ve seen this year, as well as eulogising over what I think
to be 2013’s best album, or more accurately a triple album. If I could have
been more organised with my leisure hours, I may well have been able to include
another film review, where hopefully I would have enjoyed the main feature a
bit more than my experience seeing Filth; unfortunately pressure of
time meant I was unable to find a window of opportunity in order to see the
Cormac McCarthy scripted The Counselor. However all the
reviews I’ve read have slated it, so perhaps I’ve done well to save myself the
entry fee, which I can spend on buying the DVD and then watching it once…
One thing I did see was ITV 4’s magnificent documentary Keane
and Viera; The Best of Enemies which provided a superb insight into the
minds of two of the finest midfielders to grace the Premier League. Whilst they
both came across as perfectionists, Viera seemed to the more urbane, tolerant,
loyal and conciliatory, while Keane was everything we knew he’d be; intense,
driven, unforgiving and unspeakably callous.
Basically, to return to Cormac
McCarthy, Roy Keane is the Anton Chigurh of football. Obviously the one element
missing from the narrative, over which Alex Ferguson’s presence hung like
Banquo’s ghost, was any acknowledgement by either the interviewer or Keane of
how his managerial career was derailed at the Mackems before he crashed and
burned at Ipswich, where a certain Mick McCarthy (no relation) seems to be
doing very well. Anyway, this blog isn’t about football, so let’s turn to
cultural matters.
Books:
Returning from the Christy Moore gig I blogged about so
enthusiastically last time, I serendipitously found a book on Tynemouth station
platform when I exited the Metro. The castaway tome was entitled Magnetic
North, which is an anthology of writing from this area published by New
Writing North back in 2005, a time when I struggled with the muse and was
effectively out of the literary game for a decade, which saddens me now as it
is time I won’t get back. It also saddened me to read this book as many of
those published were contemporaries of mine in the late 90s while I sought to
establish a credible voice and profile for my writing. It was also a chastening
experience as I realised many of those I rubbed shoulders with and sought
counsel and advice from are no longer with us.
The first section of Magnetic North contains pieces
inspired by visits to Moscow and Sofia. Andrew Crumey’s An Expedition to the Taiga
touches on the conflict between ‘civilization’ and ‘wilderness’, the
contradictions we can have in our own personalities, even the question of what
is and isn’t real. There are also poems in this section like the wonderfully
evocative Going and How I Learned to Sing by Mark
Robinson. In the section titled Small Things, I was particularly
struck by Fiona Ritchie Walker’s two poems, where she spins gold from the most
unlikely sources: public toilets and dust mites. In Small Things in the Cupboard of
Long Relationships, the late, lamented Julia Darling rummages
poignantly through a couple’s random bits and pieces. In Rural Mischief, John
Murray contributes The Warlick, an amusing tale of a prankster, but with a sting
in the tale provided by the foot and mouth crisis of 2001. Then come a set of
works inspired by songs, such as The Road and Miles to Dundee by Val
McDermid, which chronicles the relationship between a girl and her father in
four sharply observed episodes. Similarly effective is the dear departed
Chrissie Glazebrook’s The Girl with Earthworms in Her Mouth,
the story of two friends whose lives go in rather different directions, which
the spirit of the late Gordon Burn would have enjoyed as it so successfully
reimagines the life of Dusty Springfield. The stories in the final section, Bound,
were first published in a separate volume described in Magnetic North as a colourful rainbow sculpture whose readers had to construct each page.
Charles Fernyhough’s Joyful Lagers of the World is the
best one; a beautifully written tale of Carl, a man aiming to do his bit to
help save the Tow Law’s brewing industry. I found Magnetic North to be not
so much a nostalgic read, but an inspiring one; I will keep writing to show
there is some literary talent in the Cusack family.
Last time I sought to review Rory Waterman’s debut
collection Now That Summer’s Over and found that the necessary critical
vocabulary in terms of the technical detail and knowledge required to
successfully impart my response to the poems within was sadly missing. Having
read two editions of New Walk magazine, replete with the
work of contemporary poetry utterly unknown to me, that Rory co-edits, my sense
of critical inadequacy has deepened alarmingly. Suffering from stanzaphobia or
not, I simply am unable to cogently summarise the work within, impressive and
dazzling though much of it is, without returning to my A Level lit crit days
and laboriously giving a line by line metrical analysis of the form and content
rather than meaning and effect of the work published. A man has to know his
limitations and my palpable relief on finding the prose section of the
magazine, one story is included in each issue, was as real as it was
anti-intellectual. It is a great venture and I have subscribed, as well as
submitted a story but I don’t hold out much hope of it being accepted into such
elevated circles. New Walk also looks stunning; if Push is Sniffin’
Glue, then New Walk is Village Voice and I don’t mean my
book about Percy Main Amateurs either.
Snowdrops by A.D. Miller is a rattling good thriller, with a
somewhat predictable conclusion, set in Moscow in the early years of
petrodollar hedonism. The gauche, expat ingénue of a central character is
played as a patsy by a pair of Siberian Mata Haris, out to empty his bank account
and ballsack, while carrying on a pretence that this is a grand passion that
will last forever. The depressingly inevitable double-cross denouement that
reveals the long suspected equation of sex and stupidity equals cash and
corruption is a logical ending that is both necessary and unsatisfying.
Miller’s depiction of the crumbling buildings, foul weather, rampant boozing
and unchecked avarice of post Deformed
Workers’ State (I’m joking you realise) Russia struck a chord with me as I
remembered my Bratislava sojourn. Snowdrops is a thoroughly excellent book that I devoured in one sitting.
I’d never read an Ian Rankin novel before; partly because
he’s a Jambo and partly because I’d never got round to it. Indeed I think I’ve
only ever seen one episode of Rebus, though I’ve caught it several
times of different channels over the years. Having recently read one of his
stand alone novels, Doors Open, I doubt I’ll bother with him again. The banal plot
and clichéd word choices deadened my spirt from about 50 pages in, but I kept
going out of a sense of duty rather than enjoyment. A cash rich but
relationship poor former company director comes upon a plan to steal beautiful
but undisplayed paintings from the bowels of Edinburgh’s galleries with the aid
of a nefarious squad of chancers: a Professor of Art, a financier and a crime
boss, while carrying on a tug of love with a beautiful female auctioneer and a
dogged detective, who is his rival for her affections. In the end they
unrealistically nick the paintings, the Professor escapes with the loot to
Algiers, the financier sings like a canary, the gangster puts his hands up and
the auctioneer promises to wait for the playboy until he gets parole. Shite.
The last thing I’d read by Spike Milligan almost put me off
the bloke for life, but Spike: An Intimate Portrait by his
former manager Norma Farnes has almost rehabilitated him in my eyes. It’s not
that Milligan is any less foul in this book; he is still selfish, vain,
arrogant and appallingly egotistical, but his conduct is almost angelic in
comparison to that of the atrocious Peter Sellers, who is memorably and indeed
accurately described as “a cunt” by one of his children to the author. The book
is drenched in the kind of outrageous name-dropping and air-kissing luvviedom
that Private
eye would remorselessly satirise in the 70s and 80s, but it provides an
accurate portrayal of how hard it must have been for an ordinary, normal person
to deal with a genius who was half the time an unspeakable tyrant and half the
time a madcap clown.
Music:
Despite my constant desire to find and discover new,
exciting music, it is with no sense of guilt that I tell you the finest album
I’ve heard this year is Christy Moore’s 3 CD collection Where I Come From. A
fortnight after the wonderful gig at The Tyne Theatre, where I was honoured to
have Spancillhill
dedicated to me, this parcel dropped through the letterbox. Rather than assembling old tracks, Christy
re-recorded 43 songs from his epic career for this three-CD retrospective,
adjusting lyrics and adding two new songs. It's both entertainment and history
lesson, recalling the turmoil and injustices of the UK's recent past on cuts
like The
Birmingham Six, and celebrating Irish joy on The Ballad of Ruby Walsh.
The more dulcet tones of Moore's later years doesn't diminish his anger; the
naked vocal of Scallcrows 2 skewers tabloid bloodsuckers and Arthur's Day is
an unrepentant two fingered salute to the festival of excess that September 26th
has become. Wherever you look, and my favourites are the paean to Francis
Hughes The Boy From Tamlaghtduff and the Nicky Kelly inspired Give
The Wicklow Boy His Freedom. The album is a still unique mix of
politics, humour and lyricism. When Michael D gets too old for Áras an Uachtaráin, Christy will be the ideal
replacement.
This is the first time the Kildare fella has released an
album of all his own songs and although most of the songs have been released
before, he has actually re-recorded all the tracks and updated some of the
lyrics too. The main advantage of this approach is that there is complete
consistency in the sound and the feel right through the three CDs, with even
the four tracks that were recorded live fitting perfectly. There is also a
really intimate feel about the whole recording, due in no small part to the
sparse acoustic backing that allows the vocals to get the message across, which
is really what Christy Moore is all about; he has the knack of sounding as if
he is singing just for the listener. That is a rare talent. The eclectic mix of
songs is like a social record of Ireland over the years as they cover the
humour, the injustices, the hard times of the ’70s and the shameless greed and
excesses of the 2000s. An absolute joy from start to finish.
Perhaps that isn’t a phrase I would have used about
Television’s performance at The Sage in mid-November, excellent
though the evening was. If I’d had some sense and got a ticket in the standing
section at the front, I would have been able to fully integrate with the
evening, but sat at the side, I felt a sense of detachment from proceedings.
Yet, for Television, this is no bad thing as the distant, introspective nature
of their music allows space for thought and contemplation rather than
encouraging a participatory imperative. This was a performance and a thoroughly
beguiling one as well.
The aloof New Yorkers that stared provocatively at the
audience in 1977 are now old men. Tom Verlaine uses the microphone only when
singing, maintaining the aloof distance and using the in-between song time to
retune his guitar. The lack of equipment is the stunning thing; a Fender and a
Vox AC30 each are all this band requires to imaginatively transport us to the
precipice of the sublime and beyond.
Rather like the similarly aloof, angular and artistically
challenging Wire, Television's rare appearances mean that the back catalogue is
richly appreciated and effectively reinterpreted, meaning songs such as Prove It and Venus,
a highlight of the evening, sound as fresh and tense as the day they were
recorded. Of course Marquee Moon is the apex of the evening; extending into a
stunning maze of dizzying, interlocking guitar runs and lyrical poetry. It is
truly a stunning moment of magical artistry to hear this seminal band play that
seminal song; it is a joy I never thought I’d be party to. It was an honour to
hear this performance.
As ever it was also a joy to see Vic Godard doing his annual
late November Friday night gig at the Star & Shadow. Having first
ventured back up north in 2005 for the (then) Freevolution Festival,
Vic has been a regular in these parts ever since; by my reckoning it’s the
seventh time I’ve seen him and the fifth at this venue. When he first toured
again back in 2007, it was primarily the 1977 era Subway Sect material that
brought the punters out and while both Nobody’s Scared and a familiar,
tumultuous Chainsmoking end the set to uproarious applause, Vic is happy
to explore his back catalogue in greater detail, with 1981’s What’s
The Matter Boy? and 2011’s We Come As Aliens providing a
substantial portion of the set. Interestingly, drummer Paul I Was
A Teenage Sex Pistol Cook was previously in these parts with Edwyn
Collins in 2010 and so the last twice he’s been here I’ve heard him play Vic’s Holiday
Hymn. It was lovely to see Vic centre stage with his regular Sect
bandmates, rather than vying for attention with the less than shrinking Davy
Henderson with The Sexual Objects, who I doubt would be the right band to play
the Northern Soul tinged stuff. That said; it was still Ambition that had me
almost dancing. Roll on November 2014 and our next annual installment.
Another annual visitor to The Star & Shadow is
the eternally delightful Euros Childs. Touring on the back of his fantastic Situation
Comedy album, he arrived with usual backing band The Wellgreen, whose Grin
And Bear It album is another in the list of fine Scottish indie albums
that the West Coast keeps on producing. Being unavoidably stuck in The Tanners,
drunkenly dancing to the Gang of Four’s To Hell with Poverty, we
unfortunately missed The Wellgreen’s spot. However the album is a great
reminder of the lush vocals and thrilling pop sensibility that mean this band will
purposefully and delightfully continue to re-enact everything good about mid-1974,
easy listening pop music; only 40 years later. Also on the bill was
multi-instrumentalist, singer songwriter and regular flautist on Euros’s
albums, Laura J Martin, whose Dazzle Days long player was also
purchased. While I enjoyed her endearing eccentricities and diverting mixture
of the coy and coquettish on stage, the fact I’ve only listened to the album
once and haven’t downloaded it as yet may tell us something about the lasting
impression of the young lady’s music. Perhaps I’m being too harsh on her; if
she plays with such exalted company, there must be some talent.
However, both Laura J Martin and The Wellgreen were in fine
form as the backing band as Euros put in another simply stunning show, with
highlights drawn from every aspect of his career; this year’s Tete
A Tete was a classic, last year’s Roogie Boogie was a proper floor
filler and the encore of Horse Riding was simply magnificent.
It’s not often I feel the need to hug the band I’ve been watching, but that’s
what this performance made me do. A simply lovely night and some interesting
music that I may need to investigate more thoroughly before making a judgement.
Impulse buying when it comes to music can have mixed
results, often from the same record company. Having been made aware of Clay
Pipe Music (http://www.claypipemusic.co.uk/), I signed up to their website in
the hope of finding out about new releases. I’ve bought two things from them;
firstly, the brand new Dream Life of Hackney Marshes by
Jetsam, a kind of English Kronos Quartet with free jazz and improvisational
undertones, and wordsmith Gareth E Rees, author of The Marshman Chronicles
blog about the area the project is inspired by. Released only in an edition of
200 copies, it is now sold out and, well if anyone would like it, please get in
touch, as it is rather tough going and probably the purchase I’ve liked least
this year apart from the grimly glutinous Camera Obscura album. I’m a great
supporter of the avant garde and
wildly experimental, but this does not connect with me. Fractured, discordant
reed and percussive elements of Cardew, Cale and Birtwistle, allied to shards
of electronic noise and feedback, accompany Rees’s stark, brutal imagist poetry
and prose. Clay Pipe’s stated aim is to release “atmospheric instrumental
music, with a strong theme or sense of place,” which they have certainly
achieved here, even if the end product has left me cold.
However, that is not the case with the quite beautiful
rerelease of Plinth’s Music For Smalls’ Lighthouse, which
is as glorious an ambient, atmospheric album as I’ve heard since Eno’s Music
For Airports. This project was originally released in 2010 and is now
available in a limited run of 500 albums; I strongly urge you to investigate as
there are few more sublime and stunning pieces of music around than Sirens
from this disc. It is a real shame that
this was not a 2013 release as it would have run Christy Moore close for album
of the year in my eyes, or ears.
As we look forward to 2014, early indications are of
releases by The New Mendicants in January, as well as some dates, though I’ll
miss the Glasgow one as I’m up the week before to see a one-off gig by The Pop
Group (as well as Queens Park v Elgin City), followed by a Band of Holy Joy
album and Newcastle date in February. However, if Sunday December 8th’s
gig at The Cumberland Arms is any measure of future greatness, then whatever
album is put out by Trembling Bells in 2014 will be a shoe-in for the best
release of the New Year.
I love Trembling Bells; I make no bones about that fact.
Alongside Teenage Fanclub, The Wedding Present, The Mekons, Fairport Convention
and (I wish) the Gang of Four, I would go anywhere to see them. This night was,
of the half a dozen times I’ve seen them, their best performance yet. How
wonderfully encouraging was it to see a band who have released 4 albums in 4
years, able to compile a set including 7
unreleased songs, with every one of them being a winner. The evening began on a
high with handshakes, hugs and real ale in the bar downstairs with the band.
They are genuinely lovely people and it is a crime that they don’t pull the
audiences their music deserves. On this occasion, they began at an almost
stratospheric level with Just As The Rainbow, which they
dedicated to me and simply got better. The Willows of Carbeth has gone to
be replaced by the mighty Swallows of Carbeth, while The
Bells of Bulford is a towering song, trumped only by simply their
finest moment Wide Majestic Aire. The sooner that song gets released the
better.
Trembling Bells, including a marvellous surprise in the
shape of a guest spot with Mike Heron and his daughter, were simply stunning,
they are simply stunning and they will continue to be so while the muse drives
them on; please support them. I would give anything to see them perform their
last gig of the year on December 22nd in Glasgow, but on that night
I’ll be at my last gig of the year; Ray Jackson’s Lindisfarne at the City Hall
on the 37th anniversary of my first ever gig, which was Ray
Jackson’s Lindisfarne at the City Hall. I may be forced to write about it….
No comments:
Post a Comment