music

The Horrors, ‘Who Can Say’

The Horrors

Strange House was an awfully enjoyable debut, big on the eyeliner and silly on the goth-garage growly histrionics, but that was about the size of it – silly yet enjoyable. It’s amazing what a pinch of Geoff Barrow can do. The surly Portisheader has twiddled the knobs, kicked against the pricks and, er, twisted the appendages for The Horrors’ second album Primary Colours and – against any odds you care to chalk up – we’re left with a fantastic record. Still garage rock, still psychedelic, still fronted by a bit of a Brett Anderson, but this time The Horrors are Joy Division with Krautrock propulsion. It can’t all be Barrow because basic songcraft has hepped up a notch – still, credit where it’s due.

‘Who Can Say’ piques the gossip buds with the idea it’s all about frontman Faris Badwan dumping polymath Peaches Geldof. When Faris gets all Shangri-Las in the middle talky bit – “And when I told her I didn’t love her anymore, she cried” – you even feel sorry for Bob’s bonny bunny. All that aside, it’s fuzzy, echoey and seedily real.

We had a talky bit in the car too:

“Are they Horrors?”

“That’s the name of the five of them together, sort of like The Beatles on your t-shirt.”

“Beatles?”

“Yes, and The Horrors all play instruments on this song. One of them, the second one along in that picture, sings. One plays the guitar, another plays the bass – which is like a guitar with fewer strings – another plays drums and the last one the piano.”

“I’ve got a pink piano.”

“I don’t think The Horrors have a pink piano.”

“No, they have a black one.”

“You’re probably right.”

Better off this way:

Jarvis Cocker, ‘Angela’

Jarvis Cocker

It’s pretty big of us to give space to Jarvis Cocker, what with the bearded beanpole ripping us off all over the place, but we’re pretty forgiving types. And come on, old Jarv is having a rough time of it right now – his marriage is kaput, the new album barely tickled the Top 20 and Pulp show no signs of “doing a Blur” and rebooting flagging finances.

Now I hate to fly in the face of the true wisdom of this place, but Junior reckoned ‘Angela’ was “lovely” and, well, she’s wrong, isn’t she? It’s surely a seedy account of a man suffering a mid-life crisis – and nothing autobiographical about it, of course – set to unlovely, galumphing rock. It sounds unfinished, although we might just allow it some raw, primal energy. Yeah, OK, it sounds unfinished.

Most of Further Complications bleeds that crisis, albeit with some zip and humour. It’s a more considered, Anglo take on Nick Cave’s Grinderman, with the same regular recourse to macho guitars – hiding that paunch with feedback. Jarvis could’ve done better with the melodies, but when Junior’s chanting “An-ge-la” long after the song’s finished, who am I to argue? Much.

A dry stick at the end of a branch:

Little Boots, ‘New In Town’/Saint Etienne, ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’

Little Boots
Saint Etienne

*Tap, tap* Is this thing working? One, two, one, two. “When you were yooooouuuung…”

There’s something in the air. Music goes in cycles, doesn’t it? I’m hoping you’ve got some evidence, because I’m whistling in the wind here. Strikes me, though, that the ’91 feeling is abroad, that Balearic’s back, that everything from rock to dance and all grimy stop-offs in between is daubed in pop, in that cred-shedding musical vernacular that makes all good records sound like hits.

Little Boots is exercising her sunny beats just as Saint Etienne are once more hawking Foxbase Alpha around to anyone who’ll listen – mainly 36 year olds who were there the first time, but perhaps a few Boots fans will jump on board too. Victoria Hesketh (er, yeah, Little Boots) is a lovely breathy singer like Sarah Cracknell, a cooing frontwoman for some capital dance-pop grooves and a poster-girl-in-waiting for the shy end of the indie boy spectrum. It’s a link of sorts!

Junior’s no shy indie boy, but she’s sweet on Victoria: “I love her singing, I love the picture.” There’s a story behind Saint Etienne, however, and she wants to hear about how she “saw” them at Koko a few weeks before she was, erm, born. “Was I dancing in Mummy’s tummy?” I rather think she was.

New In Town:

Only Love Can Break Your Heart:

[1] Scissor Sisters, ‘Comfortably Numb’

Scissor Sisters

In many ways – visual, musical, camp – Scissor Sisters were a shot in the arm for a moribund pop scene. The teen bracket was thriving, sure, mainly through the reality parade, but Jake Shears, Ana Matronic, Babydaddy et al negotiated a glitzy path to the heart of the big record buyer. A crossover triumph. Their showtuny, Elton John-infused (and frankly pretty flimsy) debut album was neck and neck with the more prosaic Keane in the year’s bestselling chart, laying bare 50 Quid Man’s lesser-spotted appetite for gay-as-a-window flim-flammery.

They waved their jazz hands over the parapet with this impudent romp over Pink Floyd’s dour classic. We heard the Bee Gees, KC & The Sunshine Band and – perhaps most of all, but less acknowledged – Frankie Knuckles. What initially appealed as a Night Fever throwback turned out to be a modern house monster with pop bells on, a gleeful destruction of Roger Waters’ puffed-up, jacked-up sense poem, but a destruction somehow executed with poignancy and cheeky respect.

I think it’s respect anyway. The euphoric hand claps after “But you may feel a little sick” don’t suggest much forelock-tugging.

Reactions from Junior tread the thin line between the surreal and Keanely prosaic – “Are they cutting?” “Is it Lily Allen? Is it soldiers?” “Where’s the lady?” Junior’s in the back of the car, but I can hear her clapping along, sending up Pink’s peril and “Uh-huh-uh-huh”ing where called upon. “I sang lots of that,” she tells me as the song echoes away, so there’s your proof. A crossover triumph.


Come on, it’s time to go:

[3] Franz Ferdinand, ‘Take Me Out’

Franz Ferdinand

A tremendous, not-so-inevitable skew on the new-new wave mania scorching the pop earth in the early Noughties, Franz Ferdinand swaggered in all-literate-like with Wiry rhythm and Blondie hit chops. That audacious aim to “get girls dancing” found full flower here in Junior’s neck-crick nodding in the back seat as the enormous riff kicked this song off proper.

Is there a more pleasing sight than two grown men throttling their guitars to synchronised steps? Alex Kapranos and Nick McCarthy were the new Rossi and Parfitt, the new Mud, the new Shadows – well-turned out gents who knew the value of fancy footwork, the limitations of rock shapes. If ‘Take Me Out’ – the tripartite axe-slinging beauty – could get them skipping in time, the girls would be a cert.

Der-der-der:

[4] The Libertines, ‘Can’t Stand Me Now’

The Libertines

“An ending fitting for the start” – the CD clicked and spluttered in the car stereo until this song became a succession of quickfire tuts. “Is that the Easter Bunny?” asked Junior. I wouldn’t like to see Pete Doherty prancing around my garden, hiding foil-wrapped items among the pine needles.

Earlier she’d sought confirmation that it was two people singing. Fair enough, it’s hard to tell with Doherty and Carl Barât, their voices interchangeable as they exchange barbs and pleas and let their life’s work crumble around their ears. This almost-swansong comes from a patchy second album, but the debut’s vim and swagger trumpeted a band of huge promise – promise squandered by a ghoul-faced buffoon of a smackhead with idiot “light fingers”. Here’s to that solo album, Peter!

Is this record really so great? Does it just profit in context? Something stirs me – the control-free guitar, the sourness and release of the singing, the bye-bye harmonica (“I’ve got a pink one of those, Daddy”). It’s the Noughties ‘Ballad Of John And Yoko’, served up to the same mixed feelings.

The boy kicked out at the world:

[5] Green Day, ‘American Idiot’

Green Day

Junior reckons “it’s too noisy.”

Me? I can’t stand Green Day. Punk? Pah. Just snotty, stary, immaculately-scruffily coiffed Americans opening the door to the limp likes of Sum 41 and any number of other anarcho-veneered, Studio Line-spiked college brats.

Imagine my irritation when ‘’American Idiot’ kicked a hole in our heads with a chorus strong enough to fell Big Daddy. It’s like your Harley cannoning down the road, leaving you flat on your arse, thinking, erm, “Rats. I swore I’d never like a Green Day song.” Thank God the lyrics are so trite.

Sing along to the age of paranoia!

[6] Secret Machines, ‘Nowhere Again’

Secret Machines

Why does everything have to have a name these days? Why does music have to be put in a box, a genre, a scene? Why does every rock critic have to christen a movement, splicing terms together like so many mini-Paul Morleys? Can’t good music just be good music? The campaign starts here.

So, this is a mighty slice of KrautProg from the two brothers and their mate who made up Secret Machines before one brother split to form the equally splendid School Of Seven Bells.

Junior told me her Barbie liked it. When quizzed on what else Barbie likes, she replied, “High School Musical”. Isn’t it nice to see a doll with such eclectic taste?

You’d be surprised how we race:

[7] Kylie Minogue, ‘I Believe In You’

Kylie Minogue

All things considered, at the end of the day, when all’s said and done, in the final analysis, weighing up the pros and cons, when it all comes down to it, if I’m pushed, I’d say ‘I Believe In You’ is my favourite Kylie single. Not ‘Shocked’, not ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’, not ‘I Should be So Lucky’, not ‘Love At First Sight’ – no, I believe in ‘I Believe In You’.

So does Junior. And, if pushed, if asked if she likes Kylie’s singing, she says, “Yes.” And what else does she like? I meant what else does she like about the song, but… “Mermaids. And Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella.”

From top to toe, this record’s gorgeous. Lush and dreamy. I like to think it’s the Kylester’s answer to John Lennon’s ‘God’, but it is, of course, the work of 2004’s main chart sales flava – Scissor Sisters. Who’d have thought Scissor Sisters had it in them?

But I-i-i believe in… me, Yoko and me:

[8] Girls Aloud, ‘Love Machine’

Girls Aloud

Frankly, I think I’ve written enough about Girls Aloud. I love them, Junior loves them, we all have a mad dance-off. I look ridiculous and Junior looks as if she could oust anyone who’s not pulling their weight.

‘Love Machine’ is a fairly straightforward beat group pastiche, that batters its ho-hum roots with manic enthusiasm, barmy lyrics and those excellent “oh”s. And Cheryl doing the claws.

Let’s go, eskimo: