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- Inky Fingers: Maggoty Lamb asks 'What's nu- pussycat?' and finds the devil is in the details
Music journalists think spelling 'new' in a wacky way implies bleeding-edge modernity. But no prefix can make the Boden's-catalogue folk of Mumford & Sons sound interesting
Every reader will have their own ideas as to what the major talking points of the last six months in music might be. It would probably be unreasonable to expect everyone to join me in identifying these as the extent to which Tinie Tempah actually got away with rhyming "Arms house" and "Aunt's house"; how it is possible for Jack Rose and Ali Farka Touré's two great guitar valedictions (Luck in the Valley and Ali and Toumani respectively) to sound like they're greeting each other with open arms when you play them back to back; and why it should be that both the year's most uplifting dance albums – Caribou's Swim and Four Tet's There Is Love in You – seem to have been inspired by Matt Wolf's excellent Arthur Russell documentary Wild Combination. And yet, wouldn't anything be better than reading another article about "nu-folk"?
The inherent nonsensicality of this pallid sub-genre (given that any meaningful definition of "folk music" will have continuity as its cornerstone) is actually the least of its problems. Like nu-metal and nu-rave before it, nu-folk betrays its justifiable insecurity about how much fresh inspiration it actually has to offer by the adoption of the prefix "nu".
Where the intended subtext is one of bleeding-edge modernity – "Look, what these guys are doing is so utterly without precedent that we have had to come up with a new spelling of 'new' just to do justice to it" – the actual effect is rather the opposite. It conjours up grim visions of a smoke-filled late-night committee room wherein a weary cabal of demoralised music journalists has regretfully decided that using the traditional spelling of the word "new" will simply make it too obvious how little this latest cadre of canonical wannabes has to add to the heritage it has chosen to bowdlerise.
Consider Mumford & Sons. "The London nu-folk band who came from nowhere and are soon to be everywhere" project the demeanour of four slightly more self-satisfied younger cousins of the comedian Richard Herring. "We're not a pop band," insists Marcus Mumford, stubbornly refusing to learn from Pete Seeger's mistakes, "we couldn't have gone out on a conveyor belt."
Even dressed up in Alexander McQueen and Missoni (a fashion shoot Phil Ochs tragically never got round to doing), they still look like catalogue models for Boden. And those on the hunt for a more plausible catch-all designation than "nu-folk" for Noah and the Whale, Laura Marling, Johnny Flynn, Stornoway and the aforementioned messrs Mumford's terminally tasteful UK response to the mild-mannered pseudo-woodsman chic of Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver could actually do a lot worse than "Boden-folk". Check out the celebrated sub-Sloane internet outfitters' online catalogue while listening to the first three tracks of Marling's I Speak Because I Can if you doubt me.
The best moment in The Squid and the Whale – the shockingly kind-of-OK Noah Baumbach film (let's face it, Margot at the Wedding is much better) whose title Noah and the Whale have elided with its director's first name to create their own slightly irritating appellation – comes when Jesse Eisenberg presents a song from Pink Floyd's The Wall as his own composition at a school talent show. Such brazen plagiarism is not generally an issue with the Boden folksters. They've not got the brass neck for it. The real problem is that these are people who have somehow managed to grow up listening to both Will Oldham and – say – KT Tunstall, without apprehending that there is an actual difference between them.
If you want to hear an album that genuinely does justice to the manna-from-heaven style succour that Domino Records' pre-Franz Ferdinand roster of US acoustic misfits gave to those wandering in the post-Britpop wilderness, Good News by Withered Hand (aka Scottish Arts Council-assisted troubadour Dan Willson) is the one to go for. Not so much for its explicit acknowledgement of aesthetic debt (lines about writing "the Silver Jews" on people's shoulder bags will only take you so far) as for the authentically homegrown twist the songwriting manages to put on its transatlantic influences.
Two of the stand-out US rock imports of the year so far – MGMT's Congratulations and Midlake's The Courage of Others – score the same goal from the other side of the ocean. They do this by processing time-honoured UK source material (Syd Barrett's psychedelic whimsy in the former case, the beardy folk-rock of Fairport Convention et al in the latter) through a second, less critically fireproof gauze (C86 for MGMT, Radiohead for Midlake). It's intriguing that they should have done this at a time when the authenticity of the original template for all UK/US rock'n'roll interplay is being called into question.
While blues bores will tell you that there is no new scholarship behind recent claims that Robert Johnson's entire oeuvre is pitched higher than it should be as a consequence of the original recordings being speeded up by 20%, it's certainly an ear-opening experience to hear the king of the delta blues singers sounding slower and a little bit less otherworldly on the excellent (if off-puttingly named) globalgroovers website.
The impassioned exchange of views that ensued does seem to have missed one key point of interest, though. As the legendary Gwent blues harmonica player Carlton B Morgan has correctly pointed out, a basic knowledge of elementary mathematics tells us that if the original Robert Johnson recordings that the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton based everything they did on had actually been sped up by a fifth, that would mean the subsequent British blues boom was not 20% too fast – as innumerate musicologists have contended – but 16.66%.
In this context, the confident assertion that the story of Johnson's meeting with the devil was "a myth" threatens to make them the butt of one of Satan's finest jokes. If we assume instead that Johnson's fabled encounter with old Nick did actually take place, then how better for the prince of darkness to amuse himself than by ensuring that the ensuing process of musical evolution (the one that ultimately led us, lest we forget, to Iron Maiden's The Number of the Beast) should have unfolded at a speed that was too high by a percentile ending in .666?
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Переслать - Björk and Dirty Projectors unveil collaboration ... with added vuvuzelas
Iceland's most talented export has joined forces with the Brooklyn experimentalists. But what will it sound like?
Björk and Dirty Projectors are no strangers, the latter covered the former's Hyperballad and both parties joined forces for a benefit gig in New York last year. So no surprises, but much excitement, about a new collaboration that will be unveiled on 30 June. They've even released a little teaser clip, which reveals something not unlike the hum of vuvuzelas that have soundtracked the World Cup. But we're sure the result will be a bit more melodic.guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Glastonbury 2010: Dos and don'ts for headliners
If you're thinking of playing a song from 1855, be warned. Glastonbury fans want hits, hummable choruses and hippy waffle about 'the vibes'
It's often said that Glastonbury is unique among festivals in that the headline acts are irrelevant. There's so much else to explore. Don't like who's on the Pyramid? Bugger off to Trash City then. Watch Shooglenifty and braid a warlock's beard until dawn. No one's stopping you.
Then again, try telling that to anyone who went when Skunk Anansie headlined (1999). It sucked. A truly memorable festival needs a focal point, something for the bill to build towards. It's critical for artists, too – triumph at Glastonbury and you'll become the stuff of legend, referenced by music hacks for decades to come.
Here, then, is some advice for this year's headliners. Muse, Gorillaz and Stevie Wonder take note …
Do pray for good weather
There's nothing so poignant as watching a band you love while shivering, ashen-faced, in a Pac-a-Mac. The flipside for bands is, if the weather's truly bleak, they get to "save" the festival, as happened with Radiohead in 1997, universally hailed as the best Glastonbury set ever, even by those who were glumly queuing for the long-drops at the time.
Do play the hits
Bruce Springsteen made the mistake of playing a hardcore fans' set, as opposed to a crowd-pleasing one, in 2009. "This is a song from 1855," he growled, causing 80,000 people to look stoically to the horizon and idly wonder whether hurling themselves off Glastonbury Tor might be more fun.
Do finish on time
You wouldn't think there'd be a strict curfew in the magic-steeped vale of Avalon, but there is: 12.30am sharp. Paul McCartney overran by 10 minutes in 2004, which meant organiser Michael Eavis had to pay the council a £3,000 fine. Macca later reimbursed him, which is the least you'd expect, frankly.
Do turn it up!
The Killers were muzzled in 2007 by a sound system that stubbornly hovered around "kitten fart" on the scale of loudness. It's the only gig I've ever been to where the crowd's crestfallen sighs actually drowned out the band. The reason behind this subdued set? Complaints from local residents. Which prompts the question: what kind of pompous, Neighbourhood Watch killjoy demands that the most famous music festival in the world turn it down a bit?
Do make sure you have at least three albums under your belt
When you need to unleash an arsenal of universally recognised anthems, a two-album back catalogue really isn't enough. Think of Arctic Monkeys in 2007. They were thunderously exciting to begin with, but I admit that, by the time 505 meandered to a close, mentally I was already in the green fields.
Don't bother singing actual words
The most rousing, unifying singalongs are the ones that can be enjoyed even by the drunk and ignorant. Coldplay proved this in 2005. The piano coda of The Scientist was enormously moving, even though it was basically just 100,000 people going "ooo-ooh-ooh". I remember it being a transcendent moment, although frankly – after the hellish deluge of that year – just being able to reach the bar without the aid of a narrowboat was a cause for breathless euphoria.
Do make the headlines
Jay-Z covering Wonderwall before seguing into 99 Problems, in 2008, was so brilliantly opportunistic, so media-savvy, it blinded reviewers to the fact that the rest of his set was – let's be honest – quite tedious. "It felt like invading a country," he recalled, and indeed festivals and wars have a lot in common: both are noisy and expensive, and leave behind a wasteland of casualties staring shellshocked into space.
Do pay lip service to the "Glastonbury spirit"
It's best to maintain the illusion that Glastonbury is a freewheeling socialist utopia – something Oasis failed to do in 2004. Collared backstage before their performance, Liam Gallagher said: "I fucking hate Glastonbury. I'm only here for the money." It's safe to say he didn't stick around to bash bongos in the Stone Circle that night.
Do join the bill at the last moment
Pulp in 1995, and Basement Jaxx in 2005, were both riotously enjoyable and faintly anarchic performances, made more so by the fact those bands were last-minute stand-ins for bigger acts (the Stone Roses and Kylie Minogue respectively). A good omen for Gorillaz – standing in for U2 – this year?
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Frank Sidebottom's gone. I can barely believe it
I'd loved Chris Sievey's papier-mache-headed creation since I was a teenager and playing alongside him was, like so much in Frank Sidebottom's world, 'fantastic'
"It doesn't seem real," says this text message I've just received from Rob, my fellow Oh Blimey Big Band member. I know what he means. The idea that this ageless, invincible, life-size cartoon character could actually die just never seemed within the realms of possibility. But underneath the papier-mache head was – obviously – a normal bloke, albeit an insanely, compulsively creative bloke, with a big nose and an even bigger capacity for silliness and stupidity, who was just as fragile as the rest of us. And, tragically, when Chris Sievey left us, Frank Sidebottom went with him.
I've loved Frank since I was a teenager. The initial delight was over the hopelessly amateurish cover versions of pop classics such as Every Breath You Take and I Should Be So Lucky, delivered with clanking banjos and misfiring portable keyboards. But you quickly got drawn into this beautifully naive world Chris had created, where Frank's blind ambition for fame contrasted markedly with his mundane daily duties – "shopping for me mum" and so on. A world where being dispirited by annoying things – like the electricity cutting out, or Timperley Big Shorts FC losing a game of football – wasn't even an option. Everything was "fantastic". Well, there were a few things that weren't fantastic – they were "bobbins" – but that only made the fantastic stuff more fantastic. In an era where most comedy revolves around the idea that everything is shit, Frank was a shining light of boundless optimism.
And on all the occasions I met Chris, he was the same. I've never played on stage with such a buoyant, upbeat bloke. If we hadn't managed to learn the songs he wanted to play, well, that was funny. If we didn't have time to soundcheck – which, in already-busy venues, he would do while hiding behind an amplifier with gaffer tape wrapped around his face – that was "brilliant". And any pre-gig discussions would inevitably be concluded by Chris saying "Don't worry, it'll be fine!", accompanied by a wide, reassuring grin. And it always was, because even after we'd all had a few drinks, he was an utter professional. Blundering, unpredictable, impulsive, but a professional. And incredibly funny. So funny. The repetition and apparent simplicity of Frank's stage act masked some off-the-cuff comic timing that would leave me agog.
Basically, Frank was panto for my generation. We knew that when he sang "Guess who's been on Match of the Day?", we'd shout back "You have, in your big shorts." That when he said in mock disgust, hands on hips, "Oh yes it is, ACTUALLY!" before poking his tongue out, we'd shout "Oh no it isn't, ACTUALLY" back at him. I can barely believe I'll never get to do that again. Because Frank's gone. And it almost seems crass to end this hamfisted, tear-sodden tribute in this way, but, well. You know he has. He really has. Thank you.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать
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