It has occurred to me that I would like very much to be in a band called 'Posh Totty'.
Sunday, 28 February 2010
So anyway here's that Hot Club review I mentioned a while ago which after sending it to 3 publications was eventually accepted by FACT, but I can't find a link to it there, perhaps it's in the paper edition.
With Days Like This as Cheap as Chewing Gum, Why Would Anyone Want to Work?
“They shoot horses, don’t they?” So Horace McCoy asked us during the depression, and so Hot Club de Paris ask us in the present, on the fourth song from their new EP. And it’s a good reference point for Hot Club; the lyrics feel like they’ve been lifted from mid-20th Century American literature, with talk of dance marathons, cops looking for guns long since thrown into the river, and a car sinking in a lake with its inhabitants tapping out a (no doubt atypical) rhythm on the window pane. ‘Dog Tired..’ and ‘Extra Time Then Sudden Death’ are the best tracks here, both fizz with images and doodling guitar lines, working in harmony to produce the most bizarrely anthemic songs you’ll hear this year. It’s exactly what you’d want from a Hot Club EP (though it’s almost as long as their albums, with fewer tracks); unusual and lyrical music about the small things in life and how, when laid out one after the other in a song, they amount to something quite extraordinary. It’s quite like Joanna Newsom in that sense, and also in the sense that both are very good. Hot Club always feel like old friends and this EP fits like a glove from the first listen.
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Also Gavin, anti-Kantian that he (sometimes) is, used me as a means to an end, and without my consent sent my Hot Chip review to a site he writes for after it was rejected by my student paper in favour of a negative review, which felt like a girl you give a lovingly crafted valentines card to ripping it up and getting off with a guy who punched her in the face instead. I imagine. Anyway, thanks to Gavin, as it turned up on google news (which I think means it was widely read?)
The reason I link to it is cos they highlight the Amy Winehouse/Duffy diss. Cos this is a good comparison. Hot Chip are primarily a soul band as far as I'm concerned, and it's always been obvious to me that this is the best tag to give them. You could really hear the Destiny's Child influence in their early singles (take B-side 'The Girl in Me' as undeniable evidence for this). Crap journalists call them electro pop cos they have synths, which is like saying Black Sabbath are the same genre as Django Reinhardt as they both use guitars (there's also another link between the two which music nerds will see stand out like a sore thumb). Shit like this is what I hear in my head when I hear the term 'electro-pop', music that comes on in Topman and makes me feel alone. Hot Chip are a soul band. 'One Life Stand' is the 21st century version of Take Me to the River.
Lazy Hot Chip journalism was also responsible for a lot of papers saying that 'every song on the record feels like a single', which they're only saying cos Joe said he wanted to write such an album, and simply ISN'T true, given that 3 tracks are very long and without choruses (Alley Cats, Brothers, Slush) and Thieves in the Night could never be a single, for anybody. That's half the album gone, cockles.
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Very good b-side. Remember 'let's build a home' by the white stripes? And put my best friends in whhhhhhhhhOOOOOOOOPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP
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still on a hunt for one life stand remixes...
and despite appearances this blog is NOT becoming a Hot Chip fan site, if you're worrying.
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(Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi and Django Reinhardt both have disfigured fretting hands. Sore thumb, geddit?)
Friday, 11 July 2008
school's question time tonight which i didnt bother to apply for, but wish i did when i saw that the young panel member was a very right wing ukip member who at one point said, "i dont know anything about iran, but the whole thing needs to sort itself out" and subsequently made it painfully clear throughout that he hadnt read a newspaper and didnt know anything at all about politics. is this really an appropriate ambassador for my age group? also iain duncan smith got all the claps from the audience, further compounding my worry about how right wing everyone my age seems to be these days. for example, the reaction to david cameron's zero tolerance on knife possession was really positive from the audience, when i thought kids would be more understanding of people who'd been drawn into carrying knives, but i guess everyone's been sort of sucked into the whole 'yob' rubbish, even people who come into contact with them on a daily basis and know them personally...
i dunno, i think the whole 'united youth' thing died with nirvana (or perhaps rave) and there's never really been a general attitude of young people since then-we prefer these days to divide into intensely different groups that bitterly hate each other. but if there is a general consensus of my 'peers' (shudder) right now, it's certainly conservative which as i've said before doesnt make any sense to me.
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i've always found marvin gaye's 'sexual healing' an intensely creepy track-imagine someone seriously saying those words to you-but now i've heard hot chips version and it's suddenly made brilliant, as is the case with anything.
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i sometimes like to pair songs together than i think are connected in some way and listen to them next to each other. at present i've done this with 'this year' by the mountain goats and the classic 'destination unknown' by alex gaudino. i know it sounds weird but i think they're both very similar songs. both are about breaking away from the ordinary, which in the case of the mountain goats is a staple subject, and for gaudino it's all about not individual freedom, but instead moving away from present monotony in huge groups, an army even, even if they're not sure what they want, they're still gonna flee towards their utopian haven (the dancefloor)
first line of 'destination unknown': "i left my job my boss my car and my home"
first line of 'this year': "i broke free on a saturday morning, i put the pedal to the floor"
i generally like to listen to 'this year' first, as it sort of makes a story-a guy starts off by just driving away from his life but is gradually joined by thousands of others as the marching rhythm of destination unknown kicks in.
