When One Makes Many - the new relativism

You couldn’t have scripted it better. Just as the furore over the welfare reorganisation comes into force up pops the epitome of the ‘scrounger’ trailing dead children, sexual depravity and a host of other large and small push points for the majority for the Mail and, by extension, those who support the changes, to point and say ‘See, that’s the kind of people we are funding’. So it was no surprise that Today featured Mail journalist AN Wilson using the case as an outrider to support the changes nor that the Telegraph has joined in the fun.

One point to hypocrisy. On the same program two days earlier Iain Duncan Smith had rolled out the familiar (and repeated in reference to his interview ever since) line that he would not discuss the matter on the basis of the one quoted example of a gentleman living on £53 a week. This position was thought eminently reasonable by both the Mail and The Telegraph, yet here we were on the flip side of the argument doing just that. Whilst the challenge to IDS to live on £53 a week is indeed facile, the use of the Philpott case as a battering ram for cutting welfare transcends the usual bullshit rough and tumble that has become UK politics and marches straight into offensive.

At heart the British public is being conned. Sometimes I think the British public likes to be conned, more comfortable with shouting at each other from fixed positions than thinking about the problem and debating the merits of different approaches. The middle class laugh at the Jeremy Kyle show but every day on Twitter their version is played out, entrenched views flying backwards and forwards making equally invalid claims and strident statements that move our culture nowhere and create a vista of hate and bile that seemingly grows day on day.

In one respect this should not be a huge surprise. Any viewer of Adam Curtis’ excellent ‘Century Of The Self’ can discern a move towards the primacy of the individual without resorting to that tired Thatcher quote about society. An investigation of social media postings reinforces this truism; that the majority now believe, somewhat perversely, in the triumph of their own views over those of any other sans debate. Never mind that those views are formed by download from the media organisation of their choice and are therefore 'borrowed' rather than created. Hence a family member of mixed race posts on her Facebook an article from ‘The English Patriot’ about immigrants without seeing an irony, fully inside the tent for now until those she support gain power and send her back to where she came from. (Which, given the answer is Essex would be interesting). The quality and depth of debate from the Commons to the pub have been downgraded to such an extent that it is not alarmist to suggest that we are heading towards a society where single issue politics are decided by an unholy combination of Facebook likes, Retweets and glib soundbite scoring from those in power who really should know better. The caricaturing and reduction of the role of the civil service in the political process is just one facet of this culture that allows reasoned thought to exit as public relations policy and U-turns under apparent ‘public’ pressure take hold.

This leaves us with a poor culture and a poorer society. It is irrefutable that societies with less social division and a smaller gap between the richest and the poorest function more productively and deliver a better quality of life and sense of fulfilment to their members. The current welfare debate ignores such facts to score quick political gain in those areas where votes can be harvested, all parties are engaged in a struggle for power rather than a quest for a better society for all. Ultimately, that approach leaves us all poorer, whether by cash in pocket or the wreck of the society that those of us with money negotiate. Spending power does not equate to happiness, if we could step back for a moment and consider and think before opening our mouths it is not that fanciful to think that we could yet rediscover a collective way to deal with the problems that we face.

Pyschedelic noise explosions

I'm very happy to announce the return of the excellent Tripwires to the Loudhailer roster. Having been with the band at the beginning when this still quite astounding video for 'Cinnamon' got a few folk in a twist nearly two years ago, the lads made the (currently) extremely brave decision to decamp to New York to make their debut album and snag a deal with French Kiss. The album will be with us in June and my totally unbiased decision is that it was time well spent as it has all the hallmarks of a record that we will still be talking about in a decade. Big claim? Sure, but sometimes these things are true. The band go on tour with another Loudhailer member, Towns, throughout April and May in what can only be billed as a psychedelic noise pop explosion.

As if having one new band wasn't enough Loudhailer also welcomes Matt Berry to the fold. His debut 'Witchazel' was a revelatory delight to me given that I knew him, as many did, for his comedy work, in particular his repeated scene stealing moments in 'The IT Crowd'. If you haven't seen his first appearance on the show then I heartily recommend stopping what you are doing for a few minutes and clicking here. The new album, 'Kill The Wolf' maintains his interest in the pysche sounds of the late 60's, making him a fellow traveller to the wonderful Mary Epworth who recently returned from the clusterfuck of South By South West and will tour the UK from next week. Mary dates are here and Matt's UK tour (featuring Mark Morriss of The Bluetones in his band, a friendly face from my Hall Or Nothing days) are here.

I was lucky enough to spend some time in the studio with Editors last week. It has been a while since we last heard from them but the album is pretty much in the bag now and announcements on the debut single will be with all very soon. I have heard it. It rocks. I can also now say that they are playing Glastonbury. More on this soon.

It's all about the money, money, money

This week's seemingly unrelated comparison brings me to my two favourite things (after my daughter and my wife), football and music. As a young football fan I fondly remember the days when the then First Division was, to some degree, an open book. Within the likes of Liverpool and Arsenal and (later into the 90s) Man United, the likes of Watford, Everton, Spurs and more could challenge for the top and come close if not be successful. Not winning the league wasn't seen as a devastating indictment of the manager or team, even relegation (and as a Man City fan you got used to that) wasn't the end of the world. How things change.

Strangely, the alteration of music and football seem to have run in parallel. Britpop forever changed the expectations of what an 'alternative' band should manage, the Premier League similarly ruined the idea of skill and teamwork triumphing over money. Where Watford could achieve a second place with Graham Taylor in the 82-83 season, Swansea, who strike me as their modern equivalent, will be aiming for 8th or 9th. Post Britpop every new band was either 'destined to be huge' or chucked on a scrap heap, the days of My Bloody Valentine not grazing the charts but being respected are long gone, the same could be said of football players.

Listening to Radio 5 in their hysterical build up to yesterday's North London derby, probably a fight to the death for who finishes somewhere between 3rd and 6th (!), an interview with Theo Walcott brought this all into focus. Walcott was, like so many indie bands, heralded as the future, in footballing terms somewhere between the second coming of Christ and George Best at the age of 17, brought into the England squad for the World Cup to sit and watch. He's never truly recovered because, even in this excellent season, expectation will always run ahead of what he can do. Any reader of the indie runes will recognise this as a pattern that repeats endlessly for bands, I still recall someone telling me that The Twang's debut album sales in excess of 200,00 in the UK must have been a 'disappointment' given the hype with which they had arrived. Beggars belief doesn't it?

This led me to consider a debate that is once again whirling around my circles, why do so many bands fail at the second album? Partly, as well documented, this is down to pressure and that age old trueism that bands first albums tend to be made up of songs that they have had time away from the glare of public expectation to write and refine but it occurs to me that a pattern seems to be in place that is not often discussed.

As with Premier League football, the team around a successful first album band are often poached before the second album comes into view. Thus second album artists can find themselves in a room of unfamiliar faces come second album time, all those who were instrumental in building their public profile and advising them on how to negotiate the perils of being in a band departed to a new 'club' and the chance of more 'titles'. This may explain why we currently look to the likes of XL with their settled management team (the Man United of the record industry if you will) as paragons of best practice. Further, as with football as any Chelsea fan in particular will be aware, no one is allowed to fail. All this hype around Bowie and yet we seem to forget that the career we are lauding would simply not be possible now. Given his up and down critical path he would have been dropped before he even became famous.

Quite how you change this I don't know. Certainly a little more proportionality across the board would be a start, the space hogged by the five or so 'must see' bands could be apportioned across a lot more acts of interest (and this applies as much to radio as print and online) giving a better picture of the music scene. More focus on allowing musicians to create and experiment, to fail and recover, is a necessity if you want to create any more long terms artists. You can't expect people to turn down better jobs in a climate of instability but, again, perhaps a little less 'shit or bust' and a little more career long perspective from those in the labels wouldn't go amiss. If that culture was more prevalent then you have to believe that some would forgo the bigger pay packet to create something long lasting.

In Loudhailer world Spring seems to be here with a lot of the acts already on tour or putting in dates.

Velcro Hooks, whose exceptional video for 'A Love Song For TS Eliot' premiered on Artrocker Tv last week come to London with the Howling Owl massive on Thursday and The Joy Formidable end another massively successful UK jaunt at the Roundhouse on Friday in the company of Night Engine. The coming weeks and months bring newcomers The Elwins to the UK for the first time, Mary Epworth tours in the wake of last year's very well received 'Dream Life' debut and there are dates for Glasvegas and Editors in the pipeline. More on those when they are confirmed.

I'm A Believer (and what's happening this week)

Two very different pieces of writing have led me to a single conclusion this week. The likelihood of a link between Alexis Petridis' review of the Palma Violets debut album and the Daily Mail's vicious response to Hilary Mantel's thoughtful dissection of the role of Princesses in history would appear slim and yet looking at both examples there it is, pure and simple; an inability to accept truth. In the case of the review, Alexis' rejection of the band as the saviours of indie, in the case of the Mail, a desire to represent a thoughtful look at media presentations of royal women as an attack on an individual. In both cases, the only loser is truth.

Granted, the Palma Violets review is somewhat out of the ordinary. Using half of the review to discuss other reviews and presentations of the band may seem out of kilter to some but given that the 'story' of Palma Violets is as much about the hype as the music, (and the need of the UK music media to acclaim something every year as the saviour of something), for a broadsheet cultural section to discuss this in the context of the album does not seem particularly odd. Further, with that review following the music monthlies and weeklies, Alexis has put a new voice into the debate and opened up a forum for discussion that is sorely needed as we watch potentially excellent bands put to the sword year on year by unrealistic expectations. This is what I want the upper end of music criticism to do; remove the 'will they, won't they' approach to coverage of bands and instead focus on the meaning of their music and their presentation within the context of culture.

Any discussion of the Daily Mail distorting the truth is, frankly, a waste of words. However, the fuss that has been generated by a two week old Hilary Mantel lecture following the Mail's undoubtedly opportunistic decision to front page it a fortnight later reveals a similar unwillingness to look at something in depth. Whilst the blogosphere abounds with outraged Mail-ites (and more) buying into the wholesale idea that Mantel launched a personal attack on the princess few seem to have bothered to both read and THINK ABOUT the lecture she delivered. As with the Palma Violets there is a refusal to engage with an argument, its simply easier to shout and point and, ultimately, miss the point. Somewhere in all of that is a delicious irony given that a piece about the reduction of women to vessels for the projection of meaning and power has seen a response based on the ugliness of its female author.

Britain has never been easy with intellectual debate. For all our Shakespeare's and our Dicken's from country gossip and witch hunts to penny dreadfuls and the tabloids the overriding culture of this island, whilst complicated, has revolved around a mistrust of anyone who wants to think about things too hard or pull away from the consensus to suggest that the Wizard may actually be a little man behind a curtain. Whilst Mantel's piece about royalty (and therefore power) may be more important in the grand scheme of things, to those of us who care about nurturing and encouraging a truly interesting alternative music scene Alexis' review was equally important. If there is no truth, there is no meaning......

Aside from making tenuous connections between historical novelists and up and coming indie bands this week sees our own new hopes play a very special gig tomorrow. Night Engine's achievement in selling out the Borderline is notable, few new bands manage such a thing so early in their lives. Night Engine are NOT the saviours of indie, no one is or should be, but they are a fantastic band with a wonderful attitude to and engagement with their music and I am very much looking forward to seeing another milestone in their story tomorrow evening. This lovely interview with Fader is a good way to get started for those new to the band.

Monday sees Balthazar release their album, 'Rats'. Another excellent live band, this album continues to reveal little mysteries to me on repeated listens and I love the way that Jinte and Maarten, the two songwriters, have created a world with their music, evocative of smoky bars and stolen looks.

Elsewhere, The Joy Formidable end the week with a support to Bloc Party at Earls Court before setting off for the second leg of their UK tour, more on that next week and there will be news on Jack Daniel's plans for this year in music and, hopefully, a couple of new additions to the Loudhailer family to announce next week. And a new Velcro Hooks video. What more could you want?

Come Back To Camden?

As an A & R in the mid to late 90's I spent nearly all my life in Camden and Kentish Town. Between the Monarch and Dublin Castle and up the road to the Bull & Gate I saw many of the bands that defined the Britpop years in their formative moments. Add in The Falcon and you had the circular motion of A & R's most weeknights. It's pretty much all gone now, no George and Nicki's for pre gig food, no gathering of the clans at The Good Mixer, no Blow Up at the Laurel Tree.

The Falcon went years ago and The Monarch is no longer the jewel in the crown of London's small live venues in terms of pulling power. That pull has gradually shifted east over the last decade to Hoxton Bar & Kitchen, The Old Blue Last and, now Birthdays and the Shacklewell Arms. That's the nature of London, as the demographics and property prices shift, the scenes move with them.

So whilst to me it is sad to hear of the closure of the Bull & Gate as a live music venue it doesn't represent a failure of live music at grassroots in London. If anything there seem to be more venues in London at that level than ever. What is interesting in the statement from Fandango published in Music Week is the crack at a 'storm of free gigs' in East London. As with discussions of freeness, the increasing expectation that gigs should be free is far more dangerous than where they happen. Whilst a 'Save The Bull & Gate' campaign may have emotional pull, a more useful approach would be to win the argument that bands starting out need investment and, at a basic level, paying to watch them is a necessity.

NOW IS THE WINTER OF OUR DISS COMMENT

As a child growing up in Lancashire I had fond memories of the 'stick' that exists (still) between Lancashire and Yorkshire over the Wars Of The Roses. This persisted to my student days in Leeds where, working in a city centre pub over the summer, I took great delight in our cricketing triumph over the White Rose. It was only when I looked into the real history of the wars and the central figure of 'crookback' Richard that I realised that the Wars Of The Roses were less Lancashire / Yorkshire than North v South, a situation that has defined large parts of my life for good and bad.

Growing up in Blackpool in the 80's the North / South divide was ever present. We sat watching mobile phone wielding yuppies drinking champagne on the news whilst around us friend's parents lost their jobs and, in some cases, their homes to the ravages of a recession that seemingly didn't touch the South East. But we had The Smiths, The Tube, Brookside and Yosser Hughes. If nothing else, we were being heard and, more importantly, whilst the South East handed us Wham and Spandau Ballet we held the big cards, the cultural powerhouses that would define popular culture for the next generation, The Smiths, Joy Division, Factory Records, The Housemartins and Kitchenware Records. It happened again in the late 80's when the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays joined forces with the Hacienda, our cousins over the Pennines at Back To Basics and Gatecrasher and changed clothes and behaviour irrevocably. And again when Oasis did it in the mid 90s. We may have been poorer economically but we were streets ahead culturally.

Contrary to the efforts (and pr) of the Blair government, the North / South divide has never gone away. From an economic divide it has widened to a cultural divide and seems now to have become so entrenched that the travails of the North's culture are not even worthy of comment. This excellent piece in The New Statesman details the destruction of arts funding in the North East whilst a more trivial example has been playing out on Twitter today.

The shock and disgust of some that The Courteeners should have secured a midweek Number One with their new album is revealing. Empirically, this is a band that can comfortably sell out the MEN Arena in Manchester, an 18,000+ capacity barn whose audience buying one copy each would easily put them in the end of week Top Ten on current sales. This makes such comments ill informed at best. However, it is the deeper conviction that this music does not 'deserve' such exposure that highlights the cultural disconnect between the critical elite and the tastes of 'ordinary' people, especially when such people tend to be from outside of the South East 'hub'.

For the record I used to work with The Courteeners (on their debut album) and saw this story play out in a slightly different context. The band won the inaugral Guardian Album Of The Year award, due almost totally to the efforts of their fanbase in a public vote. The howls of derision from the commentators on the paper's notoriously deranged CiF focused on such obvious targets as 'landfill indie' and 'bloke rock' and leaned heavily on a stereotyped view of the band and their fans as beery, stupid and, crucially, Northern. Like 'hilarious' transcripts of the Gallagher's - 'ey oop r kid, how's it going mi lad' etc - all the posting massive really revealed was their prejudice towards anything that originated or succeeded North of Watford.

So, the tale repeats. It seems appropriate that a Northern band should stand at the top of the charts on the week that the much maligned, critically destroyed monarch from the Middle Ages should return. No crookback King, a victim of Tudor propaganda, the reverberations of the war remained for a century, leading to the rape of the North under Henry VIII following the pilgrimage of grace, a further Northern attempt to have their culture heard and respected by the powers that be at Westminster and in the City. misrepresented by the arch propagandist Thomas Cromwell. As the new rape of the North gathers pace under Thatcher's children it has to be hoped that, in adversity as ever, the North will continue to excel at projecting their limited power to greater levels.

Northern Exposure and Southern Clubs

Another name adds itself to the Loudhailer roster this week in the shape of The Elwins. From Canada the band are gearing up to release their first single and album in the UK via Shellshock later in the year and are planning a visit to the UK to coincide with that first burst of activity around May time. More to follow here as plans firm up but a welcome addition to the gang given their penchant for perfect pop songs and wry humour that reminds me of some of my favourite mid 80s bands. For now you can get ahead of the pack by visiting their website.

The Elwins will be playing SxSW this year along with a few more of the roster. I haven't had the opportunity to go to Austin for a few years but I have fond memories of past visits; Elbow supporting The Black Crowes may not be the most obvious double bill but was one hell of a night at Stubbs, still my favourite Austin venue, The White Stripes in the back of a pool hall was a life changer and The Polyphonic Spree's rampage across the city demonstrated how to seize the agenda in five short days.

One of the Loudhailer mob already making massive waves in the USA are The Joy Formidable. Just released album 'Wolf's Law' has racked up the positives in reviews terms on both sides of the Atlantic and it is nice to see critics note the progression from the debut album. Ritzy, Rhydian and Matt represent many of the values I recognise in a truly great band; a desire to push their art to the limit on each recording, a willingness to try and engage with the wider world in their themes and lyrics, a healthy disdain for the shortcuts that sometimes deliver fame more quickly (if only fleetingly). With reports from friends in the UK regions suggesting that they have returned for their UK dates in even more imperial form than I remember it is somewhat annoying that current commitments don't allow me to make a jaunt to one of the shows in my native North. As with many I guess I will just have to wait for the Roundhouse show on 8th March to see the band in full flight but it seems a hell of a long way away at the moment. Their Cardiff show tonight is almost guaranteed to be a stormer. If you are going, much envy from this direction.

Presents continue to drop into my world. As I was writing this the latest version of the new Night Engine video for 'Seventeen' dropped into my inbox. I can't overstate how excited I remain about this lot. Back in the early days of last year I went to a rehearsal in Putney and ever since I have been imagining a world in which their music takes over. Being old enough to have seen that happen with bands more than once I figure I have as good an assessment of how that can take place as the next man. Of course it really isn't vital that they achieve the immediate uplift of the Strokes or Roses before them but they tick many of the same boxes; running counter to the prevailing wind, completely sure in themselves of what they are doing, already possessed of a band culture created from not just their music but an overall world view and, in each member, containing personalities and abilities that far outweigh many of 'minimum requirements' for a successful band. All that aside though, 'Seventeen' makes me want to dance and the unreleased as yet 'On And On' comes with a chorus that stirs my heart in a way akin to Blake's visions . If you haven't already I would suggest spending a few minutes listening to some of their music, which can be found here.

As ever there is much more going on here than the above. From last week's post if you haven't searched out Balthazar you really should, back in the UK on tour with Local Natives in February, all dates and more info here, Golden Fable, who are increasingly owning the blogosphere are on the road through February with details here and Dark Flowers turned up on The Quietus for a wonderful Q & A which gives a lot more insight into their 'Radioland' album which can be read here alongside picking up a lovely album review from Rob Fitzpatrick in this month's Q.

The week's question for me has revolved around how to regenerate the sense of excitement in music. The whispers of festival headliners led me to think about how we have now completely lost the sense of division in music and how that is making the progress of new bands far more difficult than it once was. To add to that The Rolling Stones popped up in the NME Awards list. I may be a big fan of the band (well, up to and including 'Goats Head Soup') but there is something that doesn't quite sit right for me in their inclusion.

We seem to have removed all the barriers that once allowed progression for artists from their beginnings to mass acceptance via a series of steps. Thinking back to The Beatles much of their initial appeal to kids was the very fact that the establishment, forever embodied in the person of the Decca A & R who rejected signing them, thought their music was faddish and destined to disappear as fast as it had appeared. Living in a world where any new artist, however controversial (see OFWKTA as the most extreme recent example) gains critical acceptance and scrutiny at the outset from the broadsheets alongside the more expected likes of NME and music sites has led to a new world in which the old dividers of 'grandads' not being welcome at shows had vanished. It sometimes feels like our generation won't let go of the zeitgeist and the cynic in me feels that we often repackage 'our' version of great music and sell it on to the new generation by controlling the media agenda, leading to a repetition of musical norms that have now become so cliched as to be almost meaningless. As a writer said to me last week 'is 'Band takes drugs' really that much of s atory anymore?'. It would seem it is if you scan the coverage of some of the new names for 2013.

Can music really be cutting edge when it is being discussed by a 40 something writer to a 40 something audience and is based on rock 'n' roll conventions that have been around since the late 60's? Would NWA have carried the same menace had The Times interviewed them rather than been appalled by them on the release of 'Straight Outta Compton'? I am not necessarily a subscriber to the whole 'teen dream' approach to popular music but I did feel my heart sink a little last year at a Savages show when I realised that I wasn't in the minority as a 40 something audience member. You could argue its a desire to retain an old way of being but I miss the sense of a youth driven and youth exclusive culture that pisses off older people in the main. And, yes, I realise I wouldn't be invited were it to happen.....