smile!




That’s right! It’s a new Boris album. And a proper one too, not just another collaboration. I mean the collabs are good and all, but you can’t beat a good old new Boris album just by them. The last one was, ooh, in late 2005. Americans think Pink was 2006, but they are fools. That said, there was dronevil -final-, but that was a re-jigged version of an earlier release anyway. So this is the first proper Boris album since 2005. It was released at the same time as a 12″ single, and here are assorted pics of the two. Exciting!






Not listened to it yet, soz. But I will.

Astral? Weak.

I was in the car on the way to work the other day when I heard an interview with Van Morrison on Radio 4’s Today programme. Not initially approving of the airtime dedicated to advertising the old man’s new album on what is ostensibly a ‘news’ programme, my mood soon turned even less charitable. I understand it’s really a magazine show, so sometimes the arts can be mentioned, and that’s fine because art is culture is everything (to paraphrase Raymond Williams). However, this segment was just a puff-piece designed to cater to the wallets of the middle-agers listening and the content was shocking in its hypocrisy.

Nothing against the work of Morrison – I’m sure he’s fine (the apostrophe representing ‘was’ rather more than ‘is’) – but this was pathetic. Playing up his hucksterish schtick of ‘I’m just a simple man in a complicated business’ (pretty much direct quotation), Morrison bemoaned the evil record company forcing him to release – and make a ton of money off – a greatest hits set before he could release his album of all-‘new’ material. And it is this that irked me greatly.

His rationale for hating on the greatest hits part of his job was based in what he deemed the unhealthy obsession the public has with nostalgia. I sort of agree, as there are only so many Wolfmothers/Kookses/Auditions I can stomach before suicide bombing the nearest music festival, but then again there is nothing wrong with a bit of personal nostalgia. The Nostalgia Industry is indeed a dangerous, malignant tumour, ever pulsating and growing at the heart of the entertainment world, but an introspective look at one’s own history and experience can be healthy indeed.

If I were to play, for example, the excellent In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country by Boards of Canada, I would no doubt be transported to the start of this century, two Sainsbury’s bags in each hand, as I walked through the gently misting rain of a springtime-grey Manchester’s Withington area, as I have vividly enduring memory of that particular play of the E.P. On a Minidisc player (a small detail that really heightens that sense of time for me). And that’s cool, because memories are a very personal resource both to be cherished and learned from.

But if I agree with Morrison’s stance on the homogenisation and sale of allegedly communal memories, on force-feeding the sharing of experience down our variously willing gullets, where is my beef with the man? That lies in his album, or at least both what he said about it and what I heard of it. In the very same segment that he was beeling about people fetishinng the past and hindering the present, he was also banging on about how on the new album he has gone back to basics, inspired by ‘the music my father used to listen to’.

You can’t have it both ways, jerkstore. If you are going to moan and whine about how living in the past is stifling more contemporary creative endeavours, don’t use the soapbox that stance provides to shill your warmed over re-branding of the past as something ‘new’, an act more disgusting and deleterious to the already sorry health of recorded music than the label branding a CD ‘greatest hits’. At least the latter is an honest act and not a charlatan sleight-of-hand pseudo-individualisation, as he tries to hide the truth under his sleeve while waving a shiny new disc at us. To make matters worse, not only would the greatest hits tracks likely be better than the new stuff, but they would just as likely sound no older, to boot. And they’d probably less compressed than an album mixed and mastered in the last couple of years.

So shame on Morrison, a man who would use the weight of his record label to leverage a slot on a news-magazine show, only to turn round and have a pop at said label, in the most hypocritical fashion possible. And shame also on the BBC for broadcasting such a ham-fisted not-even-veiled infomercial and having it share the stage with real tales of war, suffering and human achievement.

While I hate Nickelback and all their cod-grunge ilk, it would be remiss of me not to mention a song that has become something of a cultural sensation in the last few months. That song is obviously called ‘Rockstar’, and it is complete garbage. But then you didn’t need me to tell you that. Peter Robinson in the Guardian’s Guide summed it up pretty well:

…Simply imagine a Nickelback song, but worse. Its most terrifying feature is in its first millisecond, in that Chad’s vocals appear completely without warning. This sound of hell opening up offers the listener no safety zone in which to leap towards their radio’s off switch in a slow-mo “NOOOOOO!!!!!” fashion.

He then goes on to make the mistake of dissing ‘Love Shack’ by the mighty B-52s, but we’ll let that go. For now. He also wonders at length about the precise subject matter of the song, and it is oddly intriguing, I have to admit.

The general theories are that it is either a satire on rock stars or a treatise on how celebs have a certain facade they keep up that is a separate entity to their true selves. He concludes that ‘this song makes literally no sense and is the worst thing of all time’; well it is and it isn’t.

Before we go any further, if you haven’t yet heard the song, do so. Consider it a rite of passage. In terms of subject matter, the song initially inhabits Bruce Springsteen/Jon Bon Jovi terrain in terms of its ‘rich man singing from the perspective of a poor man’ motif (‘This life hasn’t turned out / Quite the way I want it to be’). So does that mean he’s kind of taking the piss out of the working class? Out of the people paying his wages? At least Brucie and Jon sang about wanting to get in cars and escape two-bit towns or pay the rent. Kroeger is banging on about living the lavish lifestyle he claims the average man wants to live but never can. Or is he?

Well I doubt he has the self-awareness to self-parodise, nor do I think he would risk alienating any of his fanbase by attempting such a thing. In fact it’s probably safer to blatantly take the piss, as his audience of drunk fratboys, drunk dock workers and other drunks will only really notice the catchy chorus. And it is catchy, isn’t it? This isn’t meant as a preface to admission that I love the song. More that it’s a bit like heroin: gets into your system disarmingly quickly and might kill you if you are exposed to a sufficient quantity. Besides, it’s no more catchy than something like ‘Cotton Eye Joe’, and the Rednex tune enjoys a definite advantage in the energy stakes.

A couple of things I just touched upon might help to explain why the song has been imbued with such popularity, not that Nickelback aren’t already popular. It seems the pace and tone of the song were calculated techniques with which to leave the confines of the rock market and cross over into other demos. See, the bragging about all the stuff he owns (and really if you do have a drug dealer on speed dial, Chad, it’s perhaps not the greatest idea to sing about it) and can do is not to rub the faces of his blue collar good ol’ boy rock fans in his success: it’s his calling card to the R&B and rap fans out there. They love hearing people banging on about wealth, Kroeger’s thinking goes, so why not market to them. After all, the band does seem to have cornered the post-Bush/Silverchair market quite nicely.

And while I deem the musical arrangement of the song appalling in its vacuity and lack of energy, it has to be said the chorus does have something of a swing about it. That fact only really hit me when I saw how comfortable Twista was in miming to it (although he’s used to rather more rapid lip synching). It’s really not a rock-hit rhythm, and I reckon the Canadian business genius has gone laid back (with his mind on his money and his money on his mind, no less). Could it be that for all the recent business about vaunted indie rock bands being too white nowadays, it is the most mundane of rock bands that has successfully assimilated elements of black music into its fabric, while remaining true to its original sound and maximising revenue?

Perish the thought.