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- Wire – Red Barked Tree: Exclusive album stream
For our first album stream of 2011, here's your chance to hear Wire's first album in three years
Still tirelessly working on new material, Wire are set to release their 12th studio album, Red Barked Tree. On their first LP in three years, Colin Newman, Graham Lewis and Robert Grey continue to mix avant-garde ideas with shimmering pop choruses. We're big fans here at guardian.co.uk/music, but let us know what you think.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Ask the indie professor: Why are there so many white indie bands?
There is much debate concerning the ethnic make-up of indie bands. But is it really a problem? And if so, why does nobody complain about the same issue in country music or hip-hop?
Why are there so few non-white artists in indie? I'd be interested in your perspective. Aiden Tyler, via email
There is continuing interest in the ethnic make-up of indie. Like other music genres, indie mirrors the ethnic make-up of its audience. The number of non-white artists is relatively the same proportion as the audience, which is 1–2% in the UK. People often do not count ethnically diverse indie bands, unless the singer is non-white. I'm not going to list them because it forces you to think of artists according to their ethnic backgrounds, which is not how they choose to define themselves. It's interesting that there isn't a similar ethnic scrutiny of hip-hop or country. Or for that matter, why Balinese gamelan music is disproportionately popular with Balinese people? In some ways, this question is similar to asking why are there different cultures? Why do you like the music of your culture or a different culture best? Eventually, you are brought to the question of why does anyone like any particular form of music. Music expresses cultural values through conventional sounds. For example, in the west, minor chords are often thought of as sad – yet even our notion of a chord is formed by western ideas of tonality. If being part of a music community is sharing similar sentiments, it should be no surprise that people raised in the same culture would have a similar ethos and conceive of the aesthetically pleasing in a similar fashion.
The aesthetics of indie: the longing for a golden age, the melancholy, poverty chic, and the overall values of simplicity, autonomy and austerity. This may not be appealing to immigrant or marginalised groups who have already experienced poverty and experience genuine outsiderness as a social class. As expressed in Pulp's Common People, people who have a genuine experience of being poor do not like it when other people play poor. Indie's vernacular aesthetics do not speak to their life experiences or aspirations. Pop or hip-hop values are often at odds to the indie DIY ethos. Can you imagine an indie band singing name-dropping lyrics of wealth/status-markers such as Cristal, Louboutins or Prada? Or displaying affluence by putting diamonds in their teeth when for an indie band even putting on a suit is seen as dressing up? Aggrandisement is not part of the philosophy. On the other side, why long for the past when it includes slavery or colonial imperialism?
You might make this ethnic characterisation of indie bands, only if you don't look globally. Brent Luvaas's work on youth culture in Indonesia shows there are many Indonesian indie rock bands including La Luna, Pure Saturday, and the Upstairs. The indie aesthetics are consistent, but meaningful in a different way. Here there is a nostalgic longing for an imaginary past. For them, indie is a way to create an identity beyond a confining national model of Indonesian ethnicity. Their world music is worldly, not ghettoised. Our society is heterogeneous, with different cultures living together. So indie bands are generally white in the UK and US, but so what?
Do you have a question for our indie professor? Then post a comment below or email theindieprofessor@gmail.com.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Thank you for the solo music, Agnetha
An Abba reunion may be on the cards, but I'd be content with Ms Fältskog's last collection, the best album of the noughties
So Agnetha Fältskog has said yes to an Abba reunion. Or at least she has intimated that she would not, in the right circumstances, be averse to coming out of seclusion to participate in an event that would be worth millions. Those who have spent the last six years listening to her most recent solo album would claim, however, that Agnetha can do very well indeed without whatever a reunion with Björn, Benny and Frida might bring. The collection of songs titled My Colouring Book, which she conceived, produced and released in 2004, provides all the evidence anyone could need that she is an independent, free-standing artist of great imagination and resource, who has no need of the Abba formula in order to thrive.
I like all sorts of stuff, some of it quite "difficult", some not. But if I had to nominate the one album that made the first decade of the 21st century completely worthwhile, it might very well be Agnetha's effort, the product of a perfectly attuned old-school pop sensibility and the default setting in many different iPod situations.
In the tradition of Bryan Ferry's These Foolish Things and David Bowie's Pin-Ups, My Colouring Book is a collection of songs that meant a great deal to Fältskog during her adolescence. She is 60 now, which means that they come from the 1960s – but the 60s of a young girl who was falling in love with music before the Beatles came along.
This is the purest of pop, beautifully realised, and it is very easy, when listening to her versions of If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind, Love Me With All Your Heart, The End of the World, Remember Me or the album's title track, to summon up a poignant image of the young Agnetha at home in her bedroom, spinning the versions by Cilla Black, Petula Clark, Skeeter Davis, Sandie Shaw and Dusty Springfield, letting every note and every word engrave itself on her heart, identifying with seemingly evanescent emotions and imagining life and loves to come.
Maybe you need a sweet tooth to get full value from this, but there is nothing soft-centred about her versions of What Now, My Love or the Shangri-Las' epic Past, Present and Future. Jackie DeShannon's When You Walk in the Room would be a great song in almost any hands (not least for my all-time favourite couplet: "I close my eyes for a second and pretend it's me you want / Meanwhile I try to act so nonchalant") and Agnetha's definitive reading trounces not only the composer's original but subsequent versions by the Searchers, Bruce Springsteen (in concert) and Paul Carrack.
This is the music of the girl who grew up, sadder and wiser, to sing The Day Before You Came, Benny and Björn's masterpiece. And I'd rather have a Volume 2 of My Colouring Book than any number of Abba reunions.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать
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