Aye-m Scoattish.

• Reflections on whether the age of the Scotrock is, or at least should be, over.

Being in a band forces you to mature fast. Not long after first putting your music out into the world, the realisation that no one cares sets in. Why should they? No one owes you anything. There are a million things going on in the lives of others. Why would you ever have dreamt that your music would play a part even 1/100th of the size in their lives that it has played in your own? Given the brutality of it all, I think it's important to support local acts. I buy CDs when I can. I offer courtesy Facebook likes to bands that friends show me even if their music doesn't particularly interest me. If it makes them look more legitimate and makes it easier for them to win real fans then I'm happy to help.

On that note, I feel pretty uncomfortable about this blog post. I don't enjoy being cynical. I don't think it's especially productive, particularly when cynicism is directed at low-level acts. For a while I toyed with the idea of making this post something of a name 'n' shame. I planned to turn each bitchy criticism into a little red hyperlink, highlight an example of what some new band was doing so horribly wrong. Eventually my sense of support and community won over and I decided against it. In the interests of full disclosure, at this point I would also like to admit that the I am guilty of all the sins listed in this article, and in many cases my complaints are born partially out of jealousy about the fact that so many of my peers shamelessly pander to the zeitgeist so much better than I do. Nonetheless, I ultimately hope that something positive can be taken from this post. While it may cause many to deservedly hate me, I hope it might provide inspiration for others. 

So what am I complaining about? I recently received an email from a friend entitled "why do I hate this so much?". The music was identical to virtually every "hey, check out this new band my friend started" song I get sent these days. Thick Scots accent? Check. Delay-soaked Telecaster riffs? Check. Uncomfortably sincere lead vocalist? Check. Quietverseloudchorusquietverseloudchorusepicmiddle8loudchorusend? Check. I attempted to reply to my friend and to pin down exactly where his gut-reaction hatred came from. This post is an extended version of my reply.

I think the best place to start is the Scottish accent. While the accent alone can't be held responsible, all my other criticisms seem to form neatly around it. Now, it goes without saying  that local accents have always been a part of folk music (it almost feels wrong to refer to them as a "part" of the music given that they most likely simply existed unconsciously in the music). Following that, The Proclaimers also made the accent widely popular in the 1980s. Roddy Woomble settled on his natural accent around the turn of the century with the release of Idlewild's 100 Broken Windows and The Remote Part. Nonetheless, without undertaking any research, it seems to me to be the case that accent overemphasis really took off with Fatcat Records' big three - The Twilight Sad, Frightened Rabbit and We Were Promised Jetpacks - sometime towards the end of the last decade. These acts, in conjunction with their lesser-known contemporaries, provided inspiration for a slew of imitators and now, in 2013, we're left sifting through the dross. 

What is it about the use of our accent that can inspire anger in certain listeners? I believe that it's because it is little more than a mild form of emotional blackmail. Before it became over-used, the accent was a symbol of sincerity. This is probably due to its close connection with folk music. It made heart-on-sleeve, emotional lyrics okay again after the mid-2000s, which saw Wales provide the world with a series of bands that sang in nasal, emo, fake, American Pie accents. Coupled with the genuinely excellent music on early records released by the bands discussed above, the Scottish accent earned global respect.

However, respect quickly became cashing in. "This is what people like now? Better turn off the American and switch to Scots! People dig emotion? And metaphors? And weather? I bet they'll like alliteration too: waves, wind and water (and drowning, of course) sound great together! Are you cold? I'm cold! We're in Scotland man! Better write a song about how hard it is to be warm and/or getting stuck in the rain! I'm true to emotion and true to Scotland. Like. Me." I think that the anger comes from the fact that what was once a symbol of sincerity is being abused in a completely hollow manner no more genuine than the American Pie emo already mentioned. Whilst I'm being slightly hyperbolic, my complaints aren't far from realistic. I once played a show with a singer who spoke with a strong English accent. When he got up on stage and began singing a tonally-perfect Simon Neil impression, I had to stop listening, head for the bar, and buy a strong drink. While the accent and lyrical style is the primary focus of my frustration, I think that the whole package - delay lines, telecasters, and unnecessary start/stop riffing - has become stale. It's particularly frustrating that imitators' musical style of choice seems not to follow innovative furrows ploughed by the likes of The Twilight sad, but instead that of Scotrock's most bland act, Twin Atlantic.  

Identifying problems is easy. Coming up with solutions is harder. What would I like to see the next time a friend sends me a link and asks me to "check out this sweet band"? Ditching the accent would be problematic. Intentionally abandoning homegrown accents would be just as transparent as intentionally overemphasising them. I think singers should be encouraged simply to sing naturally, but it's a shame that this has become "singing in his/her accent". So to get Scotland out of it's rut, I think we need to change our approach to making music and break away from the emotional niche that we've been bludgeoned to a tearful death with. I think that CHVRCHES' overnight success must be partly attributable to the simple fact that they offered something new. Personally, I would like to see music with an element of danger. Something with a bit of passion, sleaze and aggression. If the next band in my inbox is Scotland's answer to DFA1979, LCD Soundsytem, Les Savy Fav, Fugazi - or better yet all of the above and something new - our country will be a far more interesting place.

The Greatest Hits Fan Club.

• Reflections on whether it's truly possible or wise for contemporary music fans to view classic artists as their "favourites".

Those who are unfamiliar with the hilarious blog Texts from Dog should familiarise themselves with it immediately. I like to think that my relationship with my flatmate is not unlike the relationship between the characters on the site, although I'm not sure which one of us is the dog. Despite sharing the same physical space, we make surprisingly little physical contact. Communication is primarily via passive aggressive texts and Facebook messages. We like to piss each other off.

In December I think I crossed a line. I crossed it so far that it was worth saving the response: 

"In 10 years time. I can see only about 5 of those acts still going with "any decent music." The Hipster-shite you listen to will be here today, forgotten about tomorrow. Just like hipsters."

Apparently suggesting to a die-hard Springsteen fan that the reason Rolling Stone was the only publication to name Wrecking Ball as the "best album of 2012" was because both artist and magazine are for old men isn't a good idea. Now, I should state the I am a fan of Springsteen. The comment I made was designed purely to annoy. But the exchange got me thinking about the relationship between fans of music today and older artists.

I've found that music fans like to hide behind popular musicians. I've been told on more than one occasion that I "automatically lose" any battle of musical taste because my favourite band came into being after the turn of the millennium and isn't The Smiths/Bruce Springsteen/The Beatles/Neil Young/Insertyourdad'sfavouritebandhere. It's as if nostalgia places such artists atop a pedestal that no modern music could ever hope to topple. It's as if music died with the Smiths. Such hiding is not only boring, it's disrespectful to a lot of the great music being produced today. Not only do I think that 20 year old "my favourite band is the Smiths" types are boring, I would also argue that they just don't "get" the band they claim to be such a fan of.

I like The Smiths, as well as the Beatles and all of the bands I listed above, but I would never go beyond calling myself a "greatest hits fan". I do in fact own a Smiths greatest hits CD, but as I grew to appreciate the band my collection expanded into Meat is Murder and The Queen is Dead. Nonetheless, I would feel disrespectful removing myself from the "greatest hits fan" bracket. I feel that it's important not to do so because so much of what makes music great is culture. I remember speaking to a friend who must have been my age or younger when the Smiths first became popular. He said that Morrissey was a cultural phenomenon. Not only was he an excellent singer and songwriter, but no one had any idea whether he was gay, straight, or both. I also imagine that hearing Johnny Marr's guitar playing less than a decade after the Sex Pistols had tried to ruin music must have been incredibly refreshing. While the Smiths' music still sounds great, I don't know if any one of my contemporaries will ever appreciate the cultural wave that made it important when it first came alive. I'm sure the same could be said for the likes of Motown's heyday. Today the records sound as good as they ever did, but I bet they don't feel the same way they did in Civil Rights Era America. 

I can't stress enough how much respect I have for all of the old bands I've talked about here and how much I enjoy their music. I also understand how important they are and have learned a lot from listening to them. The first time I was put on to Neil Young's Country Home I immediately thought "holy shit, so that's where Idlewild got Younger than America from." When I first listened to Born to Run from start to end I thought "so that's where modern rock and indie got... pretty much all of modern rock and indie from!". I also understand that there are countless more artists that influenced history's great musicians and hope to stumble across them in time, too. I'm sure that there are a lot of transcendent themes in the music, but I'm also fairly certain that something will get lost. I would therefore urge any young music fan to seek out new and interesting sounds and not be content with what their parents listened to simply because it's clothed in nostalgic legitimacy. I don't know what music will define the 2000s and early 2010s. I can only speak for myself in saying that I will look back on this period of time and remember listening to a lot of indie punk and being angry about being stuck in a jobless recession. Nonetheless, I can say with confidence that we should strive to make new bands our favourite bands, because it's our job to make them the bands our generation will be remembered for. 

The Thrill is Gone?

• Reflections on whether we can grow out of musical puppy love. 

This month I've been listening to Foals' new album, Holy Fire. It's a good listen. They show some balls that have previously been hidden. Other times they just embrace the rhythm to corny-as-hell-but-enjoyable effect. Unfortunately the second half just dies. Slowly.

The new album wasn't what interested me, though. Not really. Listening to the band's latest album led me back to listening to their first. Antidotes came out in 2008, towards the time I was finishing high school. I fell in love with the album. At the time it really felt like I was experiencing something unlike anything I'd heard before. The spacy, cryptic songs inspired some part of my imagination that struck a chord with me and where I was at the time. In hindsight, I of course realise that songs like Hummer (which didn't in fact make the final album) and Cassius really are as obnoxious as my friends at the time pointed out. They belong as the soundtrack to terrible high school parties dubbed "raves" or "Skins parties" by high school girls with too much money and not enough imagination. Nonetheless, it remains the case that I can only describe the feeling that listening to that album again conjured up as something close to love. Something hard to put into words.

This in turn moved me to think of music more broadly. I began to wonder if I'd felt that feeling since. Certainly I can remember it clearly as a teenager. When I first heard the technical prowess of Funeral for a Friend's Hours, or when Bloc Party's Silent Alarm rescued me from emo I was enamoured. The Xcerts' debut, In the Cold Wind We Smile, with its mix of power pop perfection and reflective lyrics hit me pretty hard in the summer I left school, as I was waiting to begin university. Looking back at the music I've discovered since coming to university, however, I realise that examples of such album affection are few and far between. I suppose that Johnny Marr's guitar work on Modest Mouse's We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank came close. Titus Andronicus's The Monitor was pretty important for me a few months ago. I wrote pretty extensively about it at the time. For all that I truly enjoyed albums such as these, I just don't know if I've been caught up and smitten in the same way I was with Antidotes. 

Maybe as we get older we get more cynical. Maybe we just hear too much: perhaps music ceases to surprise us. Whilst my desire to seek out new music absolutely hasn't waned, I hope that I'll fall in love with albums again. The comparisons to love and the repeat references to high school might however provide a source of optimism. I used to think that I would never feel again what I felt for my first girlfriend. It wasn't that I hadn't had strong feelings for other girls, but the thrill was gone. Nonetheless, I've since been proven wrong. I hope that I'm proven wrong about music, too.

A Waxen Revival.

• A quick reflection on the "Vinyl Revival".

I would never consider myself to be "manly". I like to read novels, not Nuts. I played in the wind band in high school, not on the football team. I drink gin and tonic, not Strongbow. Nonetheless, a week ago I found myself stripping various lengths of wire. With tools. 

Admittedly a lot of pretty decent wire was lost in the process, but eventually I succeeded. I was attempting to wire up my flatmate and I's first hi-fi system, complete with record player, digital radio (courtesy of my grandmother's kitchen), iPod dock, 2 speakers (courtesy of my parents' attic), and an amplifier. Whilst we might be somewhat late bandwagon jumpers, we're part of what many are calling a vinyl revival. 

A 30 second Google research session involving pulling data erratically from various sources indicates that vinyl sales increased 5% in 2009, 55% in 2010, and 43.7% in 2011. Last year, however, sales only increased a further 10.3%. Whether this means that growth has experienced a temporary blip as we enter the octuple dip recession or whether the vinyl market is saturated is unclear. 

The dubious statistical evidence on which I base this analysis and my amateur statistician/economist status probably mean that no rash decisions should be made just yet. Regardless, there's no reason to let optimism die until we reach the end of 2013 and we have a new set of stats to look. For the time being, it's interesting to ask why a vinyl revival makes sense. With Urban Outfitters selling vinyl (only Arcade Fire's first LP. Only to be listened to on record players that looks like a Blitz evacuee's suitcase) it would be unreasonable to deny that hipsterism hasn't played a part in all this. Nonetheless, more substantial reasons appear to exist. Some believe that as the initial hysteria surrounding MP3 is dying away, people are again realising that the tangible, permanent element of a music collection has a certain value that simply cannot be replicated on an iPod. Anyone who has watched or read Hi Fidelity can appreciate that collecting and organising is in the blood of any music fan. Phrases like "limited release" or "special edition" have an undeniable attraction. I was moments away from impulsively spending £30 I don't have on latest The Joy Formidable record because of all the cool stuff that comes with it.

LPs also have a particular advantage over CDs - their size. When an album sleeve is 12" rather than 12cm it's easy to see why it's called "album art". Our flat has three Ikea record sleeve frames hanging behind the TV which not only provide a cheap means of decorating the walls, but an ever-growing record collection also means an ever-growing supply of artwork which can easily swapped in and out depending on our mood. (For those interested, currently up there are Greetings from Asbury Park, The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place, and Black Sheep Boy. Springsteen may have to make way for Hospice in the near future.)

What's more, underlying all this is the fact they vinyl simply sounds better. A sound engineer  friend once explained to me why this is the case, but I didn't understand it. "It just does, okay" is the best summary I can give here, but the point still stands unless, of course, you're listening to vinyl on a record player that looks like a Blitz evacuee's suitcase which also, by the way, comes fitted with an EU plug despite being sold on Urban Outfitters' UK website. (Whether this is due to the nature of mass production or because having "the wrong plug" is now cool is unclear). Finally, with most modern records coming packaged with a free digital download of the album there is no risk of losing the portability of your music collection by choosing to invest in a record player (or by digging out a very old one).

All in all, the vinyl revival is a fascinating phenomenon to witness. Superior sound quality and the inclusion of free downloads mean that it has real potential to be more than just a fad. Perhaps the real test will be whether it can survive the likes of Spotify. It's all very well to say that music fans prefer to pay £15 for a record rather than £10 for an iTunes download because of the advantages it brings, but where the choice is £15 for a record or every record you ever wanted ever for free then choice becomes less clear. Of course, question marks hang over the long term sustainability of Spotify, too. Perhaps all that can be taken from all this is that the music industry is at a turning point. Perhaps it isn't worth jumping on the vinyl bandwagon just yet, but it's certainly worth keeping an eye on.

5 Alternative Top 5s for, but not necessarily related to, 2012.

Since I started this blog my mission statement has been "I can't compete with Pitchfork, so why bother?" So why compile a list of the 10/40/1000 best albums/songs/gigs of 2012 when a million other publications have produced better ones? Nonetheless, I thought putting together a few end of year lists would be fun.

Instead of doing a more traditional "best of the year" list, I've decided to compile 5 top 5s that I want to compile. Are they related to 2012? I think one is. I hope that they are nonetheless funny, informative, and a little bit different. To help me with making these lists I've drafted in two of my closest musical allies: Tyrone Stoddart and Finlay Bernard. Tyrone is a long-term friend and band mate. He somehow manages to simultaneously have the best and worst sense of humour of anyone I know. Finlay has something that was vitally important to this project. He has the largest one I've ever seen. It's meticulously maintained. It is however unfortunately so big that women find it intimidating.

His music collection. 

He has a large music collection.

Pervert.

Music I just did not get this year.
I try not to be a dick in life. It helps. I named this blog Pointless, Harsh, and Long after the Dirty Projectors lyrics over on the right there, but I like the dual meaning. I think that the majority of blogging is indeed pointless, harsh and long, and I hope that I distance myself from that, even if only a little. But every now and then being a dick is important. It's also good for the soul. Patiently allow me to get 5 things off my chest:

1. The Lovely Eggs - Wildlife
• Wildlife is one of the worst albums I have ever had the displeasure of hearing. I imagine the band's sound could only be replicated by handing instruments to the nastiest, sleaziest nursery-age children that money could buy. You would indeed be buying them, because their parents would have sold them on the black market.
  
  
2. Holly Herdon - Movement
• I wish I loved Movement - it would allow me to say boundlessly pretentious things like "I can totally hear her Skype calls coming through these songs".
  
  
3. Swans - The Seer
• I patiently waited 10 and a half minutes for the introduction to this song to end.
  
  It didn't.
  
  
4. Fiona Apple - The Idler Wheel...
   
   

   I'll admit I only came to the snappily titled The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do recently, based on the attention it has been getting in critics' best of 2012 lists. I might grow to love it over time, but for now I just don't get it.

   
   

   I was immediately struck by how well Ms. Apple can write lyrics - her phrasing is exceptional - but when listening to the album I simply feel stressed.  Maybe it's because Apple and her jazz background are smarter than I am, but an hour or so of almost atonal piano music makes me feel like I'm listening to a woman's dissent into madness. Not in a cool Brand New way, but in an "I've chosen to listen to the soundtrack to The Shining as a bit of light entertainment" kind of way.

   
   
5. San Cisco
• Full Disclosure: I've not even listened to this band. I loathed them from the second I saw that the screenshot for a YouTube video for a song called "Awkward" featured some Topman-looking indie brat singing with an iPhone text messaging box superimposed next to his head with the words "do do do do do doo do" in it.
  
  
  Am I getting old and grumpy? Probably. But if the band's record label are going to describe Awkward as a "viral megahit from down under" I don't want to listen to it.

Best Opening Tracks.
And so ends our connection to 2012, and also, thankfully, our connection to being a massive dick. Despite what iTunes has done to the way we listen to music, it should not be forgotten that albums, in their entirety, are works of art. My favourite albums are those which feel like journeys. When the last song ends I like to feel like I've been part of something, that something significant has taken place over the court of the record. Of course, every journey must have a beginning, and these are some of our favourites.

1. Hornets! Hornets! by The Hold Steady, opening Separation Sunday.
• Separation Sunday is perhaps the best example of the album-as-journey idea I led off with. When How a Resurrection Really Feels closes the record it's impossible not to feel as if you've borne witness to a significant development in the life of the record's main character, Holly.
  
  Hornets! Hornets! sets the tone perfectly. Craig Finn's raspy narrative "sung" solo, talking about girls who are "gonna have to go with with whoever's gonna get me the highest", sets the tone perfectly for the seedy, drug filled story of redemption to follow.
  
  
2. Pots & Pans by Les Savy Fav, opening Let's Stay Friends.
• Pots & Pans stands apart from the magnificent chaos that is Let's Stay Friends. It's driven by mid-tempo purposiveness, huge, delay-soaked guitars and some of the finest drumming on the record. It's sort of how I imagine Coldplay would sound if they had balls.  It acts as a mission statement as much as it does an introduction:
  
  "The people said no. The drummer said yes. This tour is a test."
  
  
3. Perth by Bon Iver, opening Bon Iver, Bon Iver.*
• The true power of Perth as an opening track is apparent when it's used to open Bon Iver's live sets.
  
  *yup, it's called "Bon Iver, Bon Iver" and it's by Bon Iver.
  
  
4. Jenny was a Friend of Mine by The Killers, opening Hot Fuss.
• Just as it's unwise to go full retard, it's unwise to go full Vegas. Before the Killers went full neon lights and suspect facial hair, the massive Jenny was a Friend of Mine opened their perfect debut.
  
  
5. Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes, opening Elephant.
• Seven Nation Army has become this generation's Stairway to Heaven. Everyone you went to high school with can "play" it on guitar. It's used in football chants. When you search it on YouTube one of the suggested results is "Seven Nation Army dubstep". It's easy to forget that, when played properly, it's actually a really great riff and that's why it became so popular in the first place.

Best songs under two minutes long.
It's easy to tell if a short song works. It should leave you feeling like you need more. The beauty of such songs though is that they can be listened on repeat without feeling tired.

1. True Colours by Gallows. [0:39]
• PUNK MUSIC.
  
  
2. Black Sheep Boy by Okkervil River. [1:19]
• It wouldn't be a PH&L blog post without gratuitous Okkervil River adoration. Black Sheep Boy is of course in fact Tim Harden's track, and in many ways is everything an Okkervil River Song is not: short and to the point with no flowery lyrics. The contrast is fascinating, especially when it is borne in mind that this tiny song led Will Sheff to create an entire double album about the troubled "Black Sheep Boy".
  
  
3. Self Esteem by Andrew Jackson Jihad. [1:37]
• Some songs simply don't need to be long, as this fine folk punk demonstrates. Could you cram this much John Darnielle-y lyrical artistry and crash cymbal love into just one minute and thirty seven seconds?
  
  
  No. You could not.
  
  
4. Stranger Calls by Honeydrum. [1:52]
• Three things that we're intensely passionate about: Lobster Festivals, Donald Sutherland, and good value music.
  
  
  The French Canadian province of New Brunswick has given the world all three. Honeydrum's excellent shoegaze pop 7" is available for a mere $1. The title track fits comfortably into our sub 2:00 criteria.
  
  
5. Fashion Coat by The National. [2:03]
• Okay, so we're cheating with this one. The studio version of Fashion Coat actually comes in at 2:03, but our roguish amateurism is why you're still reading... right?
  
  
  High Violet, the band's latest album, is a masterpiece of atmosphere, helped in no small way by its excellent production: Matt Berninger's baritone singing often sounds like the voice of God. But returning to 2003's Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers reminds us just how good the band's songs and textures, stripped of all expensive studio tricks, actually are. The succinct Fashion Coat is exemplary.
  
  
  "Everywhere I am is just another thing without you in it."

Best unreasonably long song titles.
We started compiling this one on a purely objective basis - most characters wins. But that just got boring. All the winners were either obscure post rock bands or Sufjan Stevens.Instead, we've compiled 5 tracks with long titles, but tracks that are also worth listening to.

1. The Sad But True Story Of Ray Mingus, The Lumberjack Of Bulk Rock City, And His Never Slacking Stribe In Exploiting The So Far Undiscovered Areas Of The Intention To Bodily Intercourse From The Opposite Species Of His Kind, During Intake Of All The Mental Condition That Could Be Derived From Fermentation - Rednex.
• We said worth listening to, but we couldn't not include the outright winner. At 305 characters (including spaces) Rednex win.
  
  It's just a shame that everything about the song is terrible.
  
  
2. The Boy Bands Have Won, and All the Copyists and the Tribute Bands and the TV Talent Show Producers Have Won, If We Allow Our Culture to Be Shaped by Mimicry, Whether from Lack of Ideas or From Exaggerated Respect. You Should Never Try to Freeze Culture. What You Can Do Is Recycle That Culture. Take Your Older Brother's Hand-Me-Down Jacket and Re-Style It, Re-Fashion It to the Point Where It Becomes Your Own. But Don't Just Regurgitate Creative History, or Hold Art and Music and Literature as Fixed, Untouchable and Kept Under Glass. The People Who Try to 'Guard' Any Particular Form of Music Are, Like the Copyists and Manufactured Bands, Doing It the Worst Disservice, Because the Only Thing That You Can Do to Music That Will Damage It Is Not Change It, Not Make It Your Own. Because Then It Dies, Then It's Over, Then It's Done, and the Boy Bands Have Won - Chumbawamba.
• Not technically a song, so it couldn't win, but at 865 characters it deserves an honorary mention. What's more, the album is pretty much everything that the Rednex song is not.
  
  Everything about it isn't terrible.
  
  
3. They Provide the Paint for the Picture Perfect Masterpiece That You Will Paint on the Inside of Your Eyelids - Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution.
• The best part of this song is listening to Thomas Kalnoky sing its title in about 3 seconds.
  
  
4. Mothers, Tell Your Daughters Our Music is All Awful Noise and We're Just a Bunch of No-Goods - All Shall Be Well (and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well).
• Some post-rock made the list. This band deserved a mention because of their humility and humour. They're lovely, check 'em out.
  
  
5. Late Due to Sweatpants Boner (Alarm Malfunction, Slow Motion Love Interest, Mean Principal, Etc.) by Ebu Gogo.
• When pushing Finlay on the subject of why this song ought to make the list he began to describe it as "happy math rock... sort of".
  
  That charming description was reason enough.

Top 5 songs to make love to.

1. Remix to ignition - R Kelly
2. Remix to ignition - R Kelly
3. Remix to ignition - R Kelly
4. Remix to ignition - R Kelly
5. Remix to ignition - R Kelly

My own personal top 5 musical moments of 2012.
I know this makes it 6 top 5s, but this last one's just for me. 

1. Discovering Titus Andronicus.
   I wrote pretty extensively about why I fell in love with Titus Andronicus in October's post The Enemy Is Everywhere. The band's existentialist indie punk has soundtracked the year of my life in which I came to realise that we've only got one life, and that it's far too short to be spent doing something we don't love.
   
   
2. My first encounter with vinyl.
   In an apartment just north of UT campus in Austin, Tx, the girl I had just begun dating (I was living in the States, it was "dating") introduced me to the ritual of dropping the needle and listening to music the way it was supposed to be enjoyed. 
   
   
   I couldn't have asked for a better Sunday morning.
   
   
3. SXSW 2012
   Early in 2011 I had to chose which University I wanted to study abroad at for a year. I had no idea. The University of Texas at Austin stood out. I knew a lot of bands from the city. I'd heard that it played host to a variety of music festivals.
   
   
   Snobs will tell you that SXSW isn't what it used to be. That could be the case, but I struggle to care. Admittedly, I didn't have a badge so couldn't attend any of the badge-only events, the state of which I suspect is what bugs a lot of SXSW veterans.
   
   SXSW 2012 was one of the greatest weeks of my life, but it made me reflect a little unhappily on Scotland and it's drinking culture. At virtually every event I attended in the festival I was handed free drink, free food, and asked to enjoy good films or good music.
   
   
   When I returned to Scotland over the summer I began working at an outdoor bar in the Edinburgh festival. Drink promotions are outlawed in Scotland because of our chronic binge-drinking culture. While this hacks me off, I can understand the rule. Even without people consuming inane amounts of unreasonably cheap booze, as a barman I saw some pretty shameful stuff, received abuse, and witnessed plenty of fights. While I loved SXSW, the contrast made me sad to realise that Scots can't be trusted with a drink.
   
   
4. Bonding.
   One of my favourite pastimes is spamming the Facebook walls of friends with links to bands that they might like. I enjoy getting spammed in return.
   
   
   While both my brother and I are middle class white boys from a well-to-do suburb in the south of Edinburgh, this year I discovered that we're both pretty passionate about hip-hop. As passionate about hip-hop as two middle class white boys from a well-to-do suburb in the south of Edinburgh can be. A beautiful spamming relationship ensued.
   
   
5. Starting this blog.
   I have no idea what I want to do with my life, but I think it's important that I try to find something that I love. I've started this blog. Over 1000 people from across the world have read it. I've also been lucky enough to do a bit of work for AnyDecentMusic?
   
   I owe a massive thank you to my friend mentioned in no.2 for encouraging me to grow some balls and start searching for a career I'll enjoy.

Scotland the (not so) Brave.

• Reflections on the connection between Scotland's music, history, and culture.

When I find time between blogging and complaining about university I write songs. Recently I was toying with some lyrics that raised a few eyebrows from a band mate:

Edinburgh is in my soul -
in poetry, pain, and worn stone. 

There's grit and rain in my bones.

To me this seemed largely self explanatory but apparently it is not. Here I'd like to talk a little about where I was going with these lyrics, and the influence that I think that Edinburgh and Scotland generally have over their resident artists.

Before we begin, I'd like to set a couple of things straight:

• This is a link to 500 Miles by The Proclaimers. Watch it. Purge it from your system. If we're going to have a serious discussion about Scotland and music, certain songs need to be very much out of consideration.
  
  
• I'm not a nationalist. Here I'm talking about cultural pride, not nationalist pride. Cultural pride is healthy, nationalist political pride is not. Being an advocate for a nation's art and culture is not the same as wanting a nation's independence because of a thinly veiled bruised ego. Sadly the distinction all too often becomes a little blurry.
  
  

I don't want to talk politics, so let's move on to art. In 2009 Pitchfork reviewed We Were Promised Jetpacks' These Four Walls. The most interesting line in the review suggested that "perhaps there is something about a thick Scottish accent that allows us to indulge in grandiose emotional sentiments... swaddled in glottal stops and guttural consonants, the dramatic changes in dynamic feel earned and the sensitive lyrics feel roguishly honest." 

So it would seem that Scots have an innate ability to convey sentimentality with a certain legitimacy. Indeed, Pitchfork has been far from forgiving when Americans wear their hearts on their sleeves: they demolished Seattle-based The Head and the Heart and Texan Josh T. Pearson for their over-earnest, pandering lyrics and delivery.

Where might Scotland derive this innate ability from? From a young age I have had a vague awareness of being part of a literary and artistic culture. My first exposure to adult literature was through the massive collection of Inspector Rebus novels owned by my mother and grandmother. Ian Rankin made Edinburgh itself a character in those novels: a dark and troubled one plagued by the constant sense of the weight of history. Indeed, Rankin has authored an entire book on the essential "Scottishness" of his characters. More classically, Scotland was the birthplace of Robert Louis Stevenson and Robert Burns. I studied Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde in high school and I think it would be fair to say that the polarised light and dark of the main character/s symbolises Edinburgh and the mysterious contrasts that Rankin brings out so well. Elsewhere in high school I studied Muriel Spark's ultra-bohemian, ultra-upper-crust-Edinburgh Miss Jean Brodie. What's more, Edinburgh boasts the tallest monument to a writer in the world and plays host to the world's largest arts festival.

The country's geography and architecture - and the way they often combine - add to this foundation of inspirational sentimentality. The view from the window of the room I write in looks a little like this. The photo collages on the Wikipedia pages for Glasgow and Edinburgh are perfect showcases for the sorts of scenes that I find inspire the songs I write. The literary history is the "poetry" I mention in the lyrics I opened with, the physical appearance of the country is the "worn stone". 

To move away from my own work, I find that the songs that I make the strongest connections with are those in which the lyricist drops in small details that make the events and settings in the songs real. It gives the impression of the song existing as a small part of something with much greater significance. This occurs regardless of whether the songs are about places, events, or people. A good non-cultural example is Ryan Adams. Adams is a master of picking out the most painful post-break details, honing in on the memory of "the way she loses her keys" or the striking absence of "the dresses, the shoes, and the clothes". To consider more nebulous concepts but to bring argument back to music channelling a wider culture, I found that living in America brought the music of bands like The Hold Steady to life, allowing me to truly appreciate the little tropes, characters and stereotypes that comprise Craig Finn's world.

The examples of Scottish artists using Scottish details to give their songs a sense of being part of an extensive history are many: Scott Hutchison references the Forth Road Bridge and Roddy Woomble describes the "rain in Albion Street". Look deeper than these explicit references to Scottish locations and we find Woomble describing "tartan blankets" (in Hour after Hour, a song so folk I can't find it on YouTube), a simple artefact that ought to fill anyone who has spent time in the Scottish Highlands with a nostalgic glow. Deeper still is the atmosphere created by King Kreosote and Jon Hopkins, depicting the sense of awesome lonely space that the Highlands can fill us with.

Once all explicit references to Scotland are removed - what remains? I like to think that Scots artists channel their history and surroundings to create ineffable connections to their home country whether they intend to or not. I think that with the lyrics I mentioned in the introduction to this piece I was trying to describe the sense of history that I find inescapably affects the way I think and write, but yet can't quite put my finger on. This would indeed offer some explanation as to why Pitchfork felt that there was a hard-to-pin-down reason that We Were Promised Jetpacks could be sincere without being clichéd or gimmicky when others perhaps could not.

Of course I know that this argument isn't without its flaws. I appreciate that I could be putting sentimental carts before logical horses. It could very well be the case that the centuries of history do not lend legitimacy to the art, but instead the Scottish accent forges a false connection to the past and fools the listener into thinking there is legitimacy where in fact none exists. Maybe the Scottish accent is like the kilt towel or the whisky flavoured condom: a gimmicky exploitation intended to do nothing more than encourage the gullible to depart with their cash.

I realise that by stating my argument is based on something ineffable I make it unchallengeable in the same way that religious types make the existence of God unchallengeable ("aha! But you can't prove God doesn't exist") but that, I suppose, is sort of the point. With this piece I have presented some evidence which may or may not point towards something that cannot be proven or dis-proven. I suppose I'm arguing that a degree of faith is required. Scots are a sentimental and emotional people after all... 

Critics, Genres, and One Way Streets.

• Reflections on why genre classifications and the opinions of music critics ought to viewed as existing as part of a "one way street", set up by way of me trying to defend a few bands that people might be too quick to dismiss as "emo".
  

Whenever I go drinking or driving with my brother (note: or) there reaches a point in the evening when he asks me a very important question: "Do you still have Ricky Martin's 1999 gem of Latin pop-perfection Livin' la Vida Loca on your iPod?" Each time I answer yes. Good god, yes.

My music collection operates under a strict no-deletion policy. My iTunes collection has outlived several computers, USB hard drives, and iPods. I enjoy rediscovering a song or album I haven't listened to for years. I also enjoy intentionally revisiting songs that I listened to growing up; songs from the likes of Alkaline Trio or Green Day.

I'm not saying that those who aren't willing to endure an entire Atreyu record because it was acceptable ten years ago aren't "real music fans". I'm not trying to force my opinion on anyone. As will become clear, the point in this post is to encourage reader's not to take the opinions of others seriously. To make this point I'd like to try and defend three bands that some might be too quick to dismiss as mere "emo". Having made a cliched "never judge a book by its cover" argument, I'll then move on to talk a little about my philosophy on why genre classification and the opinions of music critics exist on a one way street.

STARS.

I'll start with a band who, despite displaying a few emo traits, are easy to defend. Any release by Canadian Broken Social Scene affiliates Stars is typically met with critical acclaim. When presented as a list of facts, however, Stars sound... awful:

• The cover of Set Yourself on Fire features a semi-naked chick in a pink balaclava wielding some sort of bloodied knife and/or sex toy. 
• Oh yeah, it's called Set Yourself on Fire.
• The album Heart (yup, it's called Heart) opens with a track called What the Snowman Learned About Love which itself starts with each band member saying in turn "I'm ___, and this is my heart."
• In Do You Want to Die Together? Torquil Campbell asks "What's the point of life without my heart?" He is 40 years old.

On the basis of these facts alone I would forgive anyone for writing off Stars as a band of trembling train wrecks who haven't emotionally aged since high school. Given a chance, however, Stars simply make sense. There's something undeniably alluring about Campbell's obscure-actor background; a background that lends a certain legitimacy to the melodrama of his music. Moreover, musically, Stars never miss a beat. Even if a listener doesn't feel that Campbell's acting career can redeem his preteen lyricism, the millimetre-perfect pop that his band plays is irresistible.

The beat two push right before the second verse of Reunion has the power to wash away a multitude of sins.

BRAND NEW - The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me. 

Perhaps less immediately defensible are Brand New. The band unavoidably attracts comparison to the emo genre, being associated with the likes of Taking Back Sunday and Finch. I won't try to defend their discography as a whole. It would be fair to say that their first record is lost to the chasm that is the early-00's emo movement. Album number three, The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me is however an undeniable work of genius. Its title makes reference to bipolar disorder, and every second of the record seems to have been birthed from a place of complete madness. Obsession, extreme self-loathing, screaming insanity and grisly deaths of innocent children. They're all here. The atmosphere of this loose concept album is absolutely enveloping. When combined with expertly deployed dynamics, the results can be genuinely unsettling.

Were that not enough, Degausser and Sowing Season are built on guitar work that Mogwai or Godspeed You! Black Emperor would be proud to call their own. The drum production on tracks like Millstone and You Won't Know is beefier than a burger encased in other burgers instead of a bun. If you're sitll not convinced, listen to the noisy-as-hell minor-major modulation halfway through Limousine.

FOUR YEAR STRONG - Rise or Die Trying.

Now i'm backed furthest into my emo-defence corner. Four Year Strong's Rise or Die Trying utilises more staples of the emo genre than either of the above examples. It makes regular use of that sickly, blocky synth lead sound made popular by Enter Shikari. Women are referred to as "catastrophes". Hell, sometimes the album breaks into full on screamo beatdowns.

But Four Year Strong gets away with it. The band makes tongue in cheek pop punk music that knows exactly what it is and doesn't apologise for it. It's impossible not to enjoy song titles like "Men are from Mars, Women are from Hell" or "Beatdown in the Key of Happy" when it's understood that they're meant to be fun and uplifting. If the album artwork doesn't make you smile then you don't have a soul. The reason Four Year Strong can pull off their shenanigans is that behind them lies an extremely competent group of musicians. Palm muted guitar riffs and drum fills are gloriously executed at break-neck speeds. The lyrics, while not to be taken seriously, display a great aptitude for rhythm and rhyme. Their vocal harmonies don't need to be defended by anyone.

Rise or Die Trying definitely isn't Sunday morning music, but it's definitely great music. It doesn't go well with a glass of red wine on a pleasant evening, but I'd recommend it for the gym: the balance of anger and uplift works wonders.

And so to move on to the broader point I'd like to make. First, I'll concede that I haven't really defended emo here. I haven't tried to defend the likes of My Chemical Romance because some things are simply indefensible. What I have done here is point out that great music has been produced by bands that some might overlook because of unhealthy associations with that most stigmatised of genres. I hope it's apparent from the above that what these bands have in common - whether it's the pop-perfection of Stars, the atmosphere of Brand New, or the complexity of Four Year Strong - is that they have undeniable talent that transcends any petty, irrelevant genre classification. They've simply made good music that I enjoy listening to. Good music that I might have been inclined to ignore or turn away from if I was embarrassed by its links to emo.

In my post The 5% I wrote extensively on the dangers of our social musical prejudices. Genre bias I think is another example of the cancerous prejudice I talked about in that article. From a similar place as the genre and social prejudices also comes music critic influence prejudice. I find it easy to recognise this in others because I have to work hard to fight it in myself. Just as I find it vital to suppress thoughts like "am I too old to be listening to Four Year Strong?", I find it vitaI to suppress thoughts like "I really like everything by Bloc Party but maybe I shouldn't. Pitchfork only gave Four a 4.9." In my previous post, Critical Engagement, I talked about why it's important to remember that artists are only people. In the same vein, it's important to remember that music critics are only people who happen to get paid to voice their opinion.

This of course isn't exactly correct. In providing a lettered or numbered rating for an album a good critic will take "big picture" issues, external to his or her own opinion, into account. They will consider how far the artist in question has developed since their last record, or whether the record is pushing the genre with which the artist is associated to interesting new places or merely causing it to stagnate, in turn reflecting badly on that artist's peers. These factors are however irrelevant to the average listener's enjoyment of music. While they are important in a broad sense, they ought to be entirely divorced from any subjective and emotional connection a listener makes with a song or record. What's more, while these issues are important, what essentially lies at the centre of every review is nonethless merely an opinion. A professional critic's opinion is no more valid than the opinion of a banker or a shop clerk. On top of all this, owing to the subjective nature of opinions and musical taste it is arguably dangerous to associate them with any notion of "validity" in the first place.

If an album by a band you've never heard of has been critically lauded, check it out. If a band is said to be of the same or similar genre to your favourite band, check them out. A negative review of an album you like however is irrelevant. A great album being associated with emo is irrelevant. It must be borne in mind that genre classifications are essentially nothing more than a means of cataloguing art. It's mad that they've become decisive in shaping our tastes. Equally important to remember is that critical media exists solely to serve the public. It should never work the other way around. 

Genres and reviews therefore operate on a one way street. They allow us to pull good music towards ourselves, but they should never cause us to push it away.