Two albums that have killed me



Morrissey: Ringleader Of The Tormentors
Understandable hoo-hah greeted Morrissey's comeback in 2004. You Are The Quarry was warmly clasped to the national and international bosom because it was so great to have him back, signed to a record label, putting a record out that seemed buoyed and enriched by his self-imposed exile in Los Angeles. (It was self-imposed. We didn't really run him out of town with flaming torches, it's just that the truth is less headline-grabbing than the myth.) But Ringleader is so much better.

Produced by Tony Visconti with strings and sound effects and noodling and crashing drums, it is an album bursting with sound. These are some of the biggest songs Moz has committed to tape, and not just, like Life Is A Pigsty and Far Off Places in terms of sheer noise and grandeur. Dear God Please Help Me and At Last I Am Born are the album's real bookends, one wracked with doubt, the other seemingly filled with a conditional joy. He's always picked the best lead-off singles (even Dagenham Dave, off Southpaw Grammar gave hope!), and You Have Killed Me is right up there with Everyday Is Like Sunday, The More You Ignore Me and You're The One For Me. Such superb lyrics: "As I live and breathe/You have killed me."

Moz is on fine form throughout, lyrically, whether being blunt ("If the USA doesn't bomb you") or obtuse ("Visconti is me/Magnani you'll never be" - reference not to the album's producer, but to Italian director Luchino Visconti, and, I presume, to Italian actress Anna Magnani, star of Roma, Citta Operta). And honest! The "explosive kegs between my legs" line has been over-quoted by reviewers keen for an angle. Yes, there's a bit of sex on the album, but he always sang about sex in The Smiths, whether he wanted to get his hands on your mammary glands, or admitted to being a man of slender means. It makes for a neat headline: Morrissey gets some. But Ringleader is so much more than that. It's frank and at the same time shrouded in mystery. Rome is obviously good for him. Someone on a Music Week vox pop on 6 Music last week said that Morrisey was "old and fat" - what an idiotic thing to say - clearly the thoughts of a 19-year-old. Morrissey looks as good as he's ever looked. Age becomes him. All of this makes for his best album since Viva Hate - far better than Vauxhall And I, the landmark most seem to compare it to.




Secret Machines: Ten Silver Drops
Second album from the Texan trio, relocated in 2000 to New York for whatever's in the water. I have only recently purchased their first, Now Here Is Nowhere, on the back of this, what many are calling their first masterpiece. I concur. Just eight songs, most of them over five minutes long (and the magnificent Daddy's In The Doldrums coming in at almost nine), this is epic rock of a most subtle and intriguing order. Singer Brandon Curtis has a rather quiet voice, which really adds intrigue to these big rock canvasses. The rousing opener, Alone, Jealous And Stoned comes on like Coldplay, with chiming guitar, but as soon as he starts singing, it takes on an altogether more personal and cracked aspect. The drums of John Garza are massive and there's a lot of racket here for three guys. (I'd love to see them live, and see how they reproduce it.) I'm hearing so many disparate reference points, ranging from Placebo (that'll be his voice) and Gene Loves Jezebel (don't be scared) to old school Simple Minds. This is big music, but not without intricate feelings. It has capitivated me - and the single, Lightning Blue Eyes, seemed quite underwhelming when I heard, or saw, it on MTV2, with its slow-moving video. Now, in context, it reveals itself to be a marvellous, hypnotic beast.

On our recent drive to Bournemouth and back, these two albums provided a satisfying soundtrack. From different ends of the musical and geographical spectrum, and yet linked by sheer ambition and scope. Add these to Whatever You Say I Am and you've already got a pretty excceptional year for albums.

The Apprentice: Week Nine

[SPOILER ALERT! . . .]

The final six, with Ruth moved to Invicta alongside Syed and Tuan, and Paul moved to Velocity alongside Michelle and Ansell, for a simple case of flat-letting in Clapham and Battersea (although at least one property was actually in Vauxhall, which tells you all you need to know about London estate agents). It was fun seeing Syed out of his depth and admitting it, albeit blaming it on the property business rather than his own shortcomings ("It's not my bag"). As an East End lad, he proved his lack of knowledge of what can only be described as Another Part Of London by mistaking a railway bridge over the Wandsworth Road for Wandsworth Bridge, which traverses the Thames. (Viewers from outside London may not appreciate the significance of this, but believe me, you'd have to be pretty stupid. And Syed is pretty stupid, despite those "flashes of brilliance" later identified by Sir Alan. How we loved seeing him wandering about, lost, shouting out, "Nicholas? Nicholas? Nicholas? Nicholas?" to passers by.) Michelle and Paul didn't get on, but that's because she reminds him of his nemesis Sharon, and because she seemed to confine him to base rather than let him sell, which is his strength. Mind you, he also had little time for the property business because unlike his usual gig, headhunting, where you can "talk a job up, talk a job down" (that sounds like a useful skill), letting a flat has too many "variables". Syed then criticised Tuan for using too many "financial terms" when selling, like "consultant" and "variables". Now I'm no economist, but they don't sound like financial terms to me.

Ruth came into her own once again, with a Brummie war cry of "In comes the Badger!" She closed five of Invicta's six deals (or leads) and did so through sheer, hard-hatted confidence. I'll have to check but I think I picked her out of the herd early on, and I congratulate myself for doing so. She's such a winner that even when she wound up on the losing team - and, by dint of numbers, up before the beak with Syed and Tuan - she was given an official reprieve by Sir Alan, who gave her the thumbs-up for admitting she's in this for herself. So, Syed and Tuan sweated, while Velocity went off for a cookery course with Raymond Blanc at what Sir Alan believes is called "Le Memoir", but is actually called Le Manoir (good idea: give Paul and Ansell more rich food - let's hope Paul didn't spill anything on any of those elaborately badged rugby shirts with the collars turned up for maximum drink-your-own-vomit effect). Tuan's minutes were numbered. As project leader, he had again failed to project or lead, and though fluent in his defence, had nothing of any coherence to say. Why should Sir Alan hire him? "Because I won't start three steps back." No, you won't start at all. Syed once again proved incapable of shutting up, even when Sir Alan warned him, and he even tried to talk after Tuan had been fired!

The big question is: did Sir Alan call Ruth "dear" in the boardroom, or was he just saying "here" in that special East End barrow-boy accent of his?

As the numbers are reduced, so is the programme, like a fine Raymond Blanc sauce at Le Memoir.


Previous reviews:
Week One
Week Two
Week Three
Week Four
Week Five
Week Six
Week Seven
Week Eight

Bring on the backlash!



The end of innocence. The day we travelled to Bournemouth to see Arctic Monkeys play an arena for the first time. It's been a short, strange trip, watching as Arctic Monkeys turned from a genuine fanbase phenomenon to a national newspaper story to what they are now: a major international band, too big for the smaller venues where people fell in love with them. We caught onto them late - I've never been too cool to admit that - after the London Astoria gig that cemented their reputation, before they had their first number one; but once we'd downloaded all the demos and live tracks, we circumnavigated their ballooning success by getting tickets for a gig in Cologne at a tiny club called the Underground in November. It remains a magical memory: we could see the whites of their eyes (and their whiteheads, actually), it was like an away match, except for a team from the lower divisions; we bonded with other English fans, sang along, felt the visceral thrill of having travelled to a foreign place to catch a band play and even queued up to see Alex Turner afterwards and paid our respects. ("You were fucking brilliant," were my exact, starstruck words. "Cheers. Thanks a lot," were his in response. He's developed his interview technique a lot since then.)

Since Cologne, we've seen Arctic Monkeys in Dublin (first night of the NME Awards Tour - non-partisan crowd, relatively small, old-theatre venue), Sheffield (utterly partisan crowd, relatively small octagonal venue, basically a college gig) and London (biggest venue thus far, Brixton Academy, very much post-album success, much beer being thrown, lots of new fans, but still exciting, thanks to the venue itself). Bournemouth International Centre, upgraded due to ticket demand, is no place to see Arctic Monkeys. Not on a Bank Holiday Monday.



These photos were taken, by me, in the summer of 2004, when I went to Bournemouth to attend that year's Annual Tony Hancock Appreciation Society Dinner. Little has changed, except the KFC pavement-ads have been worn away by the traffic of chip-eating holidaymakers. The top one shows the Bournemouth Eye, a charmingly low-rent attraction, suitably branded by the local radio station. It's a balloon. You queue up, get in. It goes up. It comes down. Yesterday, as an added bonus, it was buffeted by high winds and looked pretty hairy up there. Bournemouth is one of those places that's stuck in the past but makes overtures to the present, and the two sit uncomfortably side by side. It's still a last resting place for pensioners, but must also attract "young people" or die, hence the appearance of superpubs like Walkabout. When I was here in 2004, I had to make my way back from the dinner, on foot, through the main thoroughfare at chucking-out and chucking-up time. It was like Newscastle-On-Sea. No place for promenading old folk.

This time, it being slightly out of season, there was room to move about the town freely and smell the vinegar and spun sugar, but there was still a hint of booze and danger in the air. And what with all those visiting Arctic Monkeys fans, it was a good day for the Tourist Board. We drove down (an hour and half, door to door, M25-M3-M27-A338, which rather surprised us, and left us with more Bournemouth time to fill than anticipated) and made use of the BIC's excellent parking facilities. We strolled the pier, breathed deeply of the sea air, searched unsuccessfully for a decent restaurant along the main street with restaurants on (all closed except for the pubs and chicken shacks), then struck lucky with a bistro attached to a hotel, the Lampeter, from whose terrace, against a rising breeze, we were able to eat reasonable fish and chips and salad, overlooking Bournemouth's famous gardens. But what of the gig?



The main hall of the BIC seems to hold about 6,700, according their website. Clearly, with an album having almost sold a million in the UK, there are enough fans to fill such a soulless space. Our seats were in the upper tier, K69 and K70, as far away from the Monkeys as we have ever been. This was, if nothing else, a novelty, and we were glad to have a seat while the below-par support acts were on. (For the record, Reverend & The Maker, all deadpan Mancunian swagger and New FADs shapes, were better than Liverpool's The Little Flames, who were like a limp version of Ghost Dance or some other Goth almost-ran from the late 80s - the crowd only really cheered when the useless singer announced their last song. It's a pity Arctic Monkeys didn't try a bit harder with the supports for their first post-album headline tour. What about some of these Sheffield hopefuls we've heard so much about? Whither Milburn?) After a few incidents down in the vast moshpit with security, including the break-up of a fight, which was an ugly thing to see, even from above, and the taunting release of a number of condom balloons in response to a beach ball being confiscated, to venue-wide booing, the band finally came on to riotous, roof-lifting applause. Even from a distance, this was chest-swelling to behold. And they've upped the lightshow ante, with well-chosen backlight and what I hesitate to call "spots", what the band's worrying skin problems at the moment. In all, it's a professional show, good sound, and a relatively generous set-length: that's an hour and ten minutes, a good 20 longer than they were alloted on the NME tour. So what went wrong?

The venue went wrong. Sitting up there, too far away to see the band's faces, with weak-bladdered idiots going to the toilet all the way through the set, squeezing back into their seats like latecoming patrons at a cinema, and people standing up to dance and being firmly advised to sit back down by overworked stewards ("for safety reasons," according to the signs - the same "safety reasons" that disallowed us from even taking water into the venue in a plastic bottle, another reason for security to have to constantly roam the auditorium, like a BIC KGB). I actually don't much like dancing in the tiny area in front of a fold-down seat, and I didn't mind sitting it out, stamping on the floor and banging my knees in time to the music, but the constant to-ing and fro-ing robbed the event of any atmosphere. Also, on another note of sheer geography, it was odd to see Andy, the bass player, standing so far away from Alex and Jamie, as if to make use of the bigger stage. (He threw down his bass at the end and kicked a mic stand, clearly unhappy with what had gone before.) Alex summed it all up with his first comment. Looking up into the vast nothingness, and referring to the upgrade, he said, "Well this is too fucking big."

It was. The band played brilliantly, with Matt metamorphisising into a Rock Drummer before our eyes (at least I think it was Matt, can't be entirely sure from that distance), Jamie occasionally moving from this mark and Alex still muttering to the crowd as if playing a tiny club ("This one's called Scampi And Chips"). Biggest treat - and unexpected, reading reports from previous gigs on the Monkeys forum - was a solo rendition of new song Despair In The Departure Lounge, a plaintive heart-tugger with an arch "Del Boy falling through the bar" reference from the forthcoming EP, and already a favourite in our car. Of course, it being new, and slow, and plaintive, the crowd treated it as an inconvenience before the next hit, and greeted it with what Alex described as "blank faces." Shame, really. It confirms his skills as both a songwriter and a performer, midway between Morrissey and Billy Bragg. (And is appallingly produced on the EP, by the way.)

The drive home was one of mixed feelings. Glad the band have so many fans. Not that keen on some of them. Glad we saw them when we did, where we did. Those days are gone. Looking forward to Brixton Academy, where the thrill will be retained by the sloping floor, the urban excitement and lack of stewards. We listened to the Morrissey album, the Secret Machines album and the Monkeys EP, whose title song (also played tonight), Who The Fuck Are Arctic Monkeys?, implores, "Bring on the backlash!"

Not yet. The Monkeys are still big, but the excitement got smaller.

Switch
The time has come. I don't like to preach, so I'll simply lay out the facts as I understand them, and step back. We in the UK need to wean ourselves off non-renewable energy sources. They pollute the air, accelerate climate change (which is already barrelling out of control around our ears) and encourage reliance on centrally-generated systems. Also, one of them is nuclear power, which can't be good, surely? Any power source whose byproduct has to be buried for thousands of years before it's safe can't be an attractive choice. Some things are just wrong and nuclear is it.

In our house, we've recently switched our electrictiy supply from a partly-renewable supplier to Ecotricity, which is unique - it's 100 per cent renewable. You can do other things to save energy like not leave TVs and videos on standby, turn off lights when you're out of the room etc. but how much better to only use wind-powered energy in the first place.

They urge you to pass the message on, so that's what this is. Ecotricity, founded in 1995, has built 17.5MW of new wind energy and currently supplies enough electricity to power 12,000 homes. It's good, but it's not enough. They have 26 further wind turbines approved and ready to build (that's 15,000 more homes), and all they need to do so is sign up more customers. The target is 37,000 customers. Here's the good bit: it doesn't cost a penny more to switch over! To not do so, you would have to have a very good objection. Perhaps you disapprove of big windmills. If so, fair enough, you are entitled to that view.

Anyway, if you're even slightly interested, click on the Ecotricity link and have a read. As you were. Now, back to the reviews of telly programmes.

A tendency for Tennant

Pardon me for the tardiness of this entry, but unlike people who work in banks, I have not had a holiday. I worked, in the sitcom-writing office, all day Friday, then put in a shift on Saturday and Sunday morning, before going to work at 6 Music on both days. It has not been a relaxing Easter - barely time to consider the real reason why we celebrate it. However, there was a resurrection at Saturday teatime (may I call it that? - teatime?): the full-time return of Doctor Who. First episode, second series: New Earth. There are some reviews already up on Outpost Gallifrey, the first stop for anyone more than interested in Doctor Who. Most are positive, with caveats, and, at time of writing, only one really laid into it. Graham Kibble-White's review, lukewarm, is at Off The Telly. I think my views fall somewhere in between.

How well I remember the first episode of the new Doctor Who last year, when Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper, under the guiding hand of Russell T Davis, reenergised entire generations of old fans, and sucked in a new one. And as the Autons first attacked, we had a ghostly visitation from a hapless Graham Norton, talking to his director and still miked up from Strictly Dance Fever, which had gone out before. A techinical hitch that should have ruined this momentous occasion, but kind of didn't. It made it all the more exciting.History was made.

The handover from Eccleston to David Tennant seemed so natural and preordained (as in: who better?), it was less of a jolt than it ought to have been to see his debut in the Christmas Invasion special. As such, despite the groaning weight of Radio Times-sponsored hype, seeing him take up his rightful place alongside Rose in the Tardis on Saturday was not so earth-shattering. David Tennant, in a pinstriped suit and long coat: of course. His relationship with Rose was heady from the start - none of the lecturing and doubt that characterised her early days with Eccleston. Indeed, they were like two young lovers when they touched down in the year Something Or Other With A Lot Of Noughts, lazing on the grass, windswept and with the sap rising. When Rose subsequently found her body taken over by the Lady Cassandra (voiced again by Zoe Wannamaker) and proceeded to snog the Doctor, it was a blessed relief. Get a room.

So we like the new Doctor, we like the fizz his arrival has put into Rose, but do we like the story? It was all too reminiscent of previous episode The End Of The World from the last series - deliberately so, of course - where we first met Cassandra and the big old face in the jar (who also made a reappearance in New World, his departure giving Tennant the arch line, "Textbook enigmatic!"). I could have done with something a bit wilder and more original for episode one. (RTD, as we call him, defended this in Confidential on BBC3 - one I didn't make an appearance in - saying he wanted to reassure viewers by putting in recurring characters to counterbalance the shock of a new Doctor. I didn't buy this. What are we, babies?) Too much was crammed in and, due to the one-story-per-episode format of the new Who, it was all too conveniently dispatched and tied up at the end. Compare and contrast with the wham-bang jeopardy-and-rescue climax of the first episode of the last series, featuring the Nestene Consciousness under the London Eye. Doesn't compare. This episode frankly lurched: it looked both stunning (the vast pod chamber housing the human guinea pigs) and cheap (the hospital sets), and was both frightening (the release of the zombie-like guinea pigs) and daft (the multi-coloured vaccines). I accept the new emphasis on camp and comedy, but for my money, it leaned too much on Crackerjack style verbals and shoehorned-in modern references, like the word "Chav", which I doubt will survive that many billion years into the future.

At the end of the episode, I still liked Tennant, and I still like Doctor Who - to which I'll be tuning in, same time, next Saturday - but for a series opener, it was a bit silly, and a bit reliant on past glories. Next week's - Queen Victoria, werewolves - looks a whole lot better.