My entry for STV’s Write Factor competition thing.

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Am I the Scottish Richard Littlejohn – Nick Griffin’s favourite columnist and the man who described the deaths of “disgusting, drug-addled street whores,” or those five women with names, families and their own personal stories of trauma and addiction that saw them compelled into working as prostitutes in Ipswich before being murdered by Steve Wright in 2006, as “no great loss?”

The short answer to that is ‘no’. The longer answer is ‘nnnnnnoooooooooo,’ though perhaps with an expletive or two in front .

But why I would even ponder such a query may be the more pressing matter here. And the more involved answer to that question comes from this column, and the reason I am writing it.

For in their attempts to showcase the work of up-and-coming Scottish journalists and writers, Scotland’s ‘fastest growing major web-site,’ STV, has set up the imaginatively titled ‘Write Factor’ offering a £5,000 contract for someone who is indeed the Scottish version of the Daily Mail’s prized possession, or, in the further words of the position’s description can ‘provoke people as much as Joan Burnie or Jeremy Clarkson.’

Because that’s what a news website needs – provocation from more gossiping old-crones (yes Clarkson, you’re a crone), so adamant in their own moral superiority and so unwilling to see two sides to a story, regardless of how offensive and misinformed their own take may be.

I know real journalism’s dead and all, but do we have to say it’s been up to ‘poovery’ and then blame it on immigrants whilst setting it on fire with as much oil as can be found in the North Sea, because CO2 emissions and the subsequent climate change isn’t all that big a deal?

What you’re reading though is still a column written for this exact advertised position with STV, and one I feel needs to to be heard. For this is a plea. A plea that STV will have the sense to choose someone for this position that is able to deliver 1000 words a week to Scotland, and indeed the world, that doesn’t contrive to the Clarkson/Littlejohn/Leckie school of lazy complaints of political correctness, hypocritical views on immigration and that a Britain with such a wonderfully diverse mix of cultures, excellent education, and a real freedom of debate is somehow ‘broken’.

Such views may play up to fearful Scots, looking for someone to blame for whatever gripes and complaints they, or more likely the media has suggested they may have, about modern life, giving the organisation the audience, and thus advertising, it desires.

But it will never bring it the respect, integrity and honesty journalists should pride themselves on. Have STV just seen what Jan Moir has done for the Daily Mail and equated controversy to ratings? It’s a depressing state of affairs when the country’s second largest news broadcaster actively requests sensationalist content.

Feel free to see me as the liberal arts graduate nuisance who should get back to his Guardian that Littlejohn would surely dismiss me as. But whether it’s me or someone even more informed and dedicated to delivering polemic that sees two sides and prefers facts to irrational fear that can convince STV that this is a dangerous route to go down, my main hope is that it does.

Lest we have our very own Glenn Beck. Ooh, there’s a chill up my spine.

Frightened Rabbit
Swim Until You Can‘t See Land

Just back from a co-headlining tour of the US with fellow Fat Cat’s, Twilight Sad and We Were Promised Jetpacks, Frightened Rabbit return to our radios with a song touched by the sun of their travels. S

cott Hutchison holds back his often powering vocals, letting an almost Beach Boys guitar style mix with their more typical tumpping percussion and an interesting string arrangements that hints of where this mighty act can go. And that would be ’very far indeed’.

Their most understated work yet, but it just makes the pay-off so much more worth it.

7.9/10

Des Bishop
Assembly Rooms

Spending his teenage years in Ireland after growing up in New York has not only given Bishop a mongrel accent, but a complex mix of Queens confidence and Blarney charm all wrapped in a self-effacing confusion. It’s a confusion that invades the intimate moments of his life, as his fears become genuine, creating a show of empathy, if not quite originality.

5.0/10

With banjo, squeezebox and a folk mindset in tow, The Stormy Seas are an Edinburgh five-piece exploring the traditions of Scottish music. Keeping it acoustic but loud, they’d be equally welcome at Wickerman or T in the Park, and equally likely to make the crowd go home humming. Still plying their trade around the pubs and bars of Scotland though, it shouldn’t be long before they catch the attention of a media in love with a folk resurgence. We spoke to drummer, Graeme.

How did the band get together?
William (guitar/vocals) and I were in a much louder guitar band, called Twenty43, a few years ago, and when that broke up we didn’t do anything for well over a year. Then we started itching. Michael (guitar/vocals) and William had some ideas, so the three of us got together for a few beery acoustic jams in my front room, then we drafted in Dav on banjo who was my flatmate at the time. Ricky, Michael’s cousin, joined us on bass and that was us. We had a short and productive tenure with Suzie on fiddle, but now we’re back to a five piece, for now.

What’s the motivation behind The Stormy Seas? Why make music?
We’d all be doing something musical anyway to some degree, and it’s a lot more productive and rewarding as a group. I’m particularly interested in how the sum of five interpretations of an idea can end up. It’s also a lot of fun jumping around making a lot of noise with your best friends.

You go back to more folk roots on your work. Is that history of music important to you?
It just sort of happened that we were all listening to a lot of that kind of music when we formed; we still are for that matter. Since we started with a minimal set up, the only real parameters we set ourselves were that our music should be able to work unplugged and stripped down in a folk pub just as well as it does amplified and embellished in a club gig.

Do you feel there’s a move towards more traditional music, with the popularity of the likes of Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes and Mumford and Sons? Are people harking for simpler times and simpler sounds?
Maybe, but I’d be wary of reading to much into it. After all a song with a complicated arrangement can be completely void of emotion and heart, so i guess it depends on what you would call simple.

How would you like people to interpret your work?
Hopefully they will find some sincerity in it.

What’s the nicest thing anyone’s said about you?
We look like Jethro Tull.

Why should people listen to The Stormy Seas?
Because they might enjoy it.

http://www.myspace.com/thestormyseasmusic

The Stormy Seas play with Penny Black Remedy, Fanattica, The Red Well and All At Sea at Henry’s Cellar Bar, Edinburgh, Sat 29 Aug; The Shipping Forecast Garden Party at The Peartree, Edinburgh, Sun 30 Aug; With Cancel the Astronauts, Kung Fu at Dirty Martinis, Kilmarnock, Sat 31 Oct.

Apologies for lack of recent updates.  Blame this. It’s still not finished.

Stars and Sons – In the Ocean

Noah and the Whale offered up their take on the indie pop anthem earlier this year, with ‘5 Years Time’ giving Mighty Boosh fans a few new dance moves to show off at their underage discos. The band’s contrived image though, with tweed, trilbies and waistcoats galore, made it all just too hard to stomach.

It’s good news then that Stars and Sons have created something as equally joyous in its three minute pop ways, yet without any smug pretention to mire its good intentions.

Citing both The Flaming Lips and Amiga classic, Monkey Island, as equal influences, it’s no surprise this single revels in its fun attitude, not once getting above its hand-claps and ‘ooh-oohs’. Mike Lord won’t be wearing sunglasses indoors anytime soon.

8.5/10

Release Date: 17 Nov

Imelda May – Love Tattoo

Winner of best newcomer at the Irish Music Awards and with adoring words already from Jeff Beck and Jools Holland, you’d be forgiven for expecting big things from Imelda May’s debut album. And things do get off to an explosive start on the appropriately named ‘Johnny Got a Boom Boom’ – an upbeat jazz romp that knows the merits of a toe-tapping bassline.  May’s vocals too become enlivened on an energetic chorus that offers up a ‘boom boom’ to match Johnny’s. 

With Winehouse, Duffy and Ava Leigh (amongst God knows how many others) still trying to relive the glory of Holiday, Simone and Esther Phillips though, May has to have more up those leopard-print sleeves than just a decent voice and a good boom. She does come close to finding such distinction in a rock ‘n’ roll sass that offers up that sultry attitude of the burlesque. ‘It’s Your Voodoo’ working certainly wouldn’t sound amiss over beautiful women demonstrating just what tassels are for, but there’s till something about May that stops her lasting in the memory.

When it comes to the ballads, her voice falters, disappointingly lacking a natural Irish tone and not having the raw power of Winehouse, who despite her personal problems, still leads the pack. Love Tattoo is just too rock ‘n’ roll for the dinner party playlist, but too unsatisfying for any great devotion elsewhere. TM

5.8/10

Release Date: 24 Nov

Posted in Uncategorized ]]> http://experimentalmusiclove.wordpress.com/2008/10/31/imelda-may-love-tattoo/feed/ 0 poppycocteau imeldad http://experimentalmusiclove.wordpress.com/2008/10/06/tiny-sparks-alaska-ep/ http://experimentalmusiclove.wordpress.com/2008/10/06/tiny-sparks-alaska-ep/#comments Mon, 06 Oct 2008 01:05:34 +0000 poppycocteau http://experimentalmusiclove.wordpress.com/?p=414 ]]>

Tiny Spark - Alaska EP

Well somebody’s been listening to Mansun. Certainly, these three songs from the south-coast five piece would have fitted comfortably on the brilliant Attack of the Grey Lantern, with sprawling yet well-structured guitars that threaten to veer into prog dirges, yet stay on the right side of listenable. George Lenton’s vocals too remind of Paul Draper, with treble tones and controlled angst in each of this EP’s three songs. Lenton even shows some ambition of Cousteau crooning in opener Alaska’s sadly short-lived coda.

Go On almost becomes One Republic, but sticks to credibility with smart lyrics and a biting guitar in the chorus. But it’s Never Met That Girl that stands out as Tiny Spark’s bona fide hit. Lenton excels, and the synth strings make this almost as good as Wide Open Space. Tiny Sparks to shining stars? We shall see. It bodes well though.

7.5/10

by David Quin, age 21 and 1/2

Anybody with even half an ear to the ground in the musty backwater of pop-culture and geekery that is fanboy-land, will no doubt be aware of the feverish anticipation which is being generated by every droplet of information which appears in relation to the movie version of Alan Moore and Davie Gibbons’ seminal graphic novel Watchmen. To the uninitiated this excitement may seem odd – comic book adaptations are ten a penny these days, from the already well established (Batman, Spiderman and so forth) to the obscure (Ghost Rider anyone?), but Watchmen really is different; an incredibly emotionally and politically complex work, which refuses to paint its world in terms of crude morality, but rather keeps a studied distance from the world it portrays, never shirking from the consequences of its characters’ belief systems, adored, rightly, by those who’ve read it, and regarded in some quarters as one of the peaks of late twentieth century literature.

But this is Quin and Film, not Quin and Comics, and so, with that in mind, can we expect Watchmen to be the err… Watchmen of summer blockbusters? In a word; probably not, although, that’s not to say the signs are all bad. Director Zack Snyder, judging by his previous films, appears to have two attitudes to source material; that they must be pointless updated (in his remake of Dawn of the Dead) or treated with slavish reverence (in his adaptation of 300). Judging by trailer, he seems to be going for the latter with Watchmen, with the scenes shown more-or-less identical to their equivalent comic book panels, and Gibbons’ luridly beautiful palette of yellows and purples and browns and blues remaining intact. Although this probably means we won’t get a truly individual, cinematic interpretation of the book, it at least offers hope Snyder’s film won’t be as crudely Hollywood-ised as the previous adaptations of Moore’s work; even V for Vendetta, the, as Cahiers du Cinema put it, ‘least bad’ film version of a Moore comic, suffered from an entirely pointless romantic sub-plot and an unnecessary desire to change the lead female character from a vulnerable waif into a ballsy Hollywood heroine which made many of her actions incomprehensible.

It’s also gratifying that the major roles in the film have been given to relatively unknown actors, among them an Oscar nominee in Jackie Earle Hayley, playing the incredibly complex, psychopathic Rorschach. In a wonderful display of perverseness, the only actor who could remotely be described as a ‘name,’ Billy Crudup, (of Almost Famous almost fame) plays a character who spends the majority of his screen time unrecognisable as the blue, naked humanoid Dr. Manhattan. The damage a star’s screen persona can bring to a film can be catastrophic; indeed, the horrible miscasting of Johnny Depp as he slightly pathetic and helpless Inspector Abberlaine in From Hell, and Sean Connery as the well-past-his-prime, drug addled Allan Quatermain in The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen were two of the (many) mistakes which ruined earlier Moore adaptations. At least with the Watchmen actors, there is no star baggage, and, hopefully, this means the actors will be forced to bend to their characters, rather than vice-versa.

Unfortunately, though, at this point, this is still only hopeful conjecture. For every large detail which suggests the film may be an adequate companion piece for the comic (and, make no mistake, that’s all it will be), there’s another smaller, unsettling detail, which suggests Snyder may not quite grasp the subtleties of the book. Already he’s commissioned god-awful emo whiners My Chemical Romance to record their horrid rock cover of Bob Dylan’s Desolation row for the end credits and boasted that ‘in my superhero movie the bad guy wants world peace…and Batman can’t get it up,’ which suggests he might not quite get the complexities of the book’s moral outlook or the pathetic, insecure humanity of Nite Owl, Moore’s Batman substitute. Ultimately judgement will have to be reserved until the film’s release in March next year. Until then, we’ll have to pray every night that, coming out of the cinema, we’ll be glancing to each other, and saying, with relieved smiles, ‘Well, it could have been worse’.

That’s right. Great joy has come to Bury as Guy Garvey and his band of brilliant doom/joy merchants have been awarded the Mercury Prize. So well done them.

I’m not a big fan of the usage of ‘literally’ in many contexts, but Garvey was probaly correct in announcing the honour as “quite literally the best thing that’s ever happened to us.” It’s been a long time coming, but their finally starting to get the recognition they deserve. Whereas Coldplay and Snow Patrol have succeeded in taking over the world with similarly grand but ultimately soulless epics, Elbow have ground away in the background producing 4 of the 100 best albums of this millennium, proving themselves as ultimately the most consistent, enjoyable and credible British band of this decade.

I’m going to leave it there as I have to go meet some Americans off a plane. Read more here on this quite informative BBC article. And buy all their records as well. Elbow are amazing.