Ahead of Tuesday's
announcement of the nominees for this year's Barclaycard Mercury Prize, we've
hijacked, I dunno, George Lamb's email account for this exclusive rundown of
the runners and riders.
From the Office of Simon Frith, Chair of
the Barclaycard Mercury Prize panel
Dear all,
Right, I'm sure Morley's suggestion that we fill the list with the Beatles
remasters is very droll, but the pissy blogs will crucify us. So here's what
we've got so far:
Laura Marling/I Speak Because I Can Plan B/The Defamation Of Strickland Banks *Fuck Buttons/Tarot Sport Example/Won't Go Quietly The xx/The xx **The Unthanks/Here's The Tender Coming Corinne Bailey Rae/The Sea ***Robyn/Body Talk Part 1 ****Arctic Monkeys/Humbug Dizzee Rascal/Tongue N'Cheek *****The Cribs/Ignore The Ignorant ******Some jazz shit
*Jude assures me this'll keep the Guardian off our sainted backs
**Well, you name another crap-selling folk album
***She's naturalised now, right? If Manuel Almunia
can play for England...
****Yes, I know it's bollocks, but they've promised
a funny video if they win
*****Look, I don't fucking know. Laverne swears
Elbow have released an album, but I've heard jack since Kingdom Of Rust.
Anyone got any ideas?
******Someone - Charles Hazlewood? - dredge some
muck up. Has that big-haired drummer fellow been on anything this year?
In 1989, Terence Trent D'Arby decided to follow the
million-selling, 18-month chart mainstay Introducing The Hardline... with the
crazy psychedelic soul brainstorm of Neither Fish Nor Flesh. The rest is...
pointing and laughing.
It was
clear from the start that TTD was all idiosyncrasy. Interviews reveal a man who
thought deeply about his craft, and expressed it in gnomic gobbledigook. His
act was James Brown, Prince, Smokey Robinson rolled into a bug-eyed erstwhile
soldier who knew he was God's gift and had the singles – If You Let Me Stay,
Wishing Well, Dance Little Sister – to prove it. The year was 1987 and appetite
for airbrushed soulful authenticity was keen; look at the established Simply
Red, the emerging Hue & Cry, the wannabes Wet Wet Wet. TTD's rasp, however,
hinted at an even realer deal. Following the top 10 singles, Introducing The
Hardline... charted high in summer 1987 and hung around, taking the occasional
boost from each single release, but it was the canny tease of Sign Your Name –
not a 45 until early 1988 – that finally pushed Introducing... to Number 1. And
there it hunkered down for two whole months.
Now that's the sort of success that happens once in a generation, and
commonsense suggests a number of options for a follow-up: dish out more of the
same, safe in the knowledge the horses won't be scared even if there's a mild
risk status will decline; grind out an album over half a decade, glossing it
with drugs, sweat and lazy grandiosity; or, alienate every man jack of your
fans with a jarring volte-face. Guess what appealed to our Terence?
The big comeback single, in autumn 1989, was This Side Of Love, its brutal Bo
Diddley swamp-groove as Top 10-friendly as a Gary Glitter comeback. Wheezing to
a Number 93 chart peak, the wheels were never even on. Neither Fish Nor Flesh
followed soon after, and its chart career was not simply the polar opposite of
Introducing...'s; it took a seat with the dark matter in the coldest corner of
the universe. Entering at an initially worrying (but, in the light of ensuing
events, absolutely golden) Number 12, it was gone altogether within a month,
never to return. The Trout was flat out on the bank, gasping.
Obviously something went awry with promotion, or can one thorny single piss
away all that goodwill? Reviews of the album weren't even that bad: Q magazine
treated it with bemused good grace, while Record Mirror stuck its neck out to
proclaim it the best soul album in five years. Mind you, in a decade where the
over-glossed R&B of Anita Baker and Freddie Jackson was the benchmark of
new soul quality, that might not have been the most ringing endorsement.
So what's wrong with Neither Fish Nor Flesh? On a purely commercial level, the
modern sheen of Introducing...is out, in its place roughed-up arrangements and
quirky instrumentation – witness the tablas and percussive itch of I Have Faith
In These Desolate Times, the unnerving cut-up funk of You Will Pay Tomorrow and
backwards beats of Roly Poly. These aren't easy sells, but they ooze toughed-up
authenticity, and only a closed mind would object. It would have been the work
of a moment to pastiche the salad days of 70s soul. TTD dug deep to bring it on
to the eclectic hedonism of the 80s/90s cusp.
He played the simple game on the almost-face-saving To Know Someone Deeply Is
To Know Someone Softly, splicing pop and jazz in voguish style to create a
minor, later hit, and even kept a potential chart-stormer in reserve with the
“love you, mate, but not like that, sorry” tale of Billy Don't Fall, but when
you're damned you're damned. The lucky few who bought and listened found a
tastily sequenced record that grew from the stately Eastern mysticism of It
Feels So Good To Love Someone Like You to the swaggering big band soul of I'll
Be Alright, coming to rest with dizzy a cappella on And I Need To Be With
Someone Tonight; the guffawing remainder missed out and still don't care.
Amazingly, he came back. As if nothing had happened, TTD reappeared in 1993,
racking up hits with the howling, thrilling funk of Do You Love Me Like You
Say? and Delicate's polite duet with Des'ree. But it couldn't last. Within a
couple of years he was making ordinary records with extraordinary blond hair,
then changing his name and taking leave of the radar. Back when he was a big
star he lost momentum. Perhaps he was ahead of the game, or just not playing it
at all. Either way, no one understood.
Dirty Projectors
have made an album with Björk, which is obviously very exciting. Will that do?
Um, here's the DPs' Dave Longstreth to flesh it out - and little teaser clips
of the project are scattered around the text box. Over to Dave:
In April 2009, Brandon Stosuy from Stereogum.com asked me if we wanted to play
a benefit concert at a bookstore in New
York. I said yes. He asked Björk the same thing, and
she said yes. Then he asked us if we wanted to collaborate, and we said yes.
Björk asked me what we should do, and I said, "I don't know, I guess I'd
really love to write a bunch of new songs for us to sing together?" And
she said Yes.
That same month, Amber from Dirty Projectors was walking along a ridge on MountWittenberg,
north of San Francisco.
She was looking out at the ocean and saw a little family of whales, as you
sometimes do in April on the Northern California coast. I wrote some songs about it and sent them to Björk, who agreed to sing
the part of the mom whale. The songs became Mount Wittenberg Orca. Amber and
Angel and Haley sang the part of the kid whales, and I sang the part of Amber.
We sang all week long and learned the music just in time to perform it at the
bookstore on May 8th.
Then our album Bitte Orca came out and we went on tour forever. We finally got
a chance to record Wittenberg last month, almost exactly a year after we first sang it. We went into the Rare
Book Room in Brooklyn and rehearsed it for
three days, then we recorded it as quickly and as live as possible. We only
overdubbed lead vocals and a guitar solo.
Now we're making a website for it, which will be the only place you can buy it.
It's going be up June 30th (we are playing in Utrecht that day!) The music is going to be
$7, because there are seven songs. You can preorder now if you click here.
We've decided to give away all the money that Wittenberg generates to the project of
creating international marine protected areas. Only 1% of the oceans are
protected in any way and this is a huge problem. We're working with the
National Geographic Society to create areas of sustainability, so the oceans
don't end up like a giant poisonous corpse hugging the continents. You can
learn more about this project here.
We're so psyched about how this recording came out and hope you are too. Don't
listen on those tinny computer speakers -- put in on the stereo and blast dat
shiiiiiiiiii!!
Continuing
our series where we study the efficacy of recommendations, we present part two:
ask your mates.
When friends recommend things, the danger is, if you don't like something
someone loves, things could get a little awkward. As you get older, you lose
the urge to have those "Dear NME, were you even at the same Fointy Pinger
gig as me? They were more better than even Jesus!"arguments
with them. You know what you like, whether that's exactly the same as the mixtape
you made your Dad play as he dropped you off for your first day at university,
or the latest earbleed oi-techno you heard on an internet radio station with
three subscribers last week. But on the other hand, friend recommendations can
be fantastic, reinforcing your bonds of shared taste, fresh thrills, new things
to go to, more fun to be had.
So I asked some friends ON THE INTERNET, but they're still real friends - I go
drinking with them too, NOT JUST IN MY PANTS IN THE FRONT ROOM. For the record.
Anyway, here are the first five things that popped up.
Ikonika/Contact, Want, Love, Hate Recommended by Penny Andrews Madonna-loving dubstep from West London, is what a brief scour of the internet
tells me about Ikonika. This is great. Immediate, involving pieces of hooky
driving sound. Not as off-puttingly oppressive or dark'n'distant as a lot of
dubstep. I don't have a strong enough frame of reference for this (is that an
awful thing for someone writing about music to say?) but subjectively, this is
working. This is where recommendations from friends work best - give me the
best stuff, or at least one thing, so
I don't feel like I have to spend my life iPlayering 1Xtra to have a vague idea
what's happening. (Although Mistajam does do the best resumé of what's what and
where in black music, for my money.)
Crookers /Tons Of Friends Recommended by Steve Mannion Crookers are two Italian lads who make the sort of no-boundaries party tunes
that Diplo/M.I.A. made into the hip party soundtrack of the last few years.
They provided the versioning of Kid Cudi's Day N Nite that made that an
unshakeable summer smash. Just like last year's Major Lazer LP, this is a
guest-appearance-riddled album-as-DJ set, irresistible from its bassline opener
No Security through Spank Rock doing the dirty they're so good at, to Tim
Burgess dropping in with a treated vocal almost as ridiculous as one of his
haircuts.
This is proper great stuff, but... this sort of thing makes me feel pretty
alienated. This is music for people who know how to get the proper wristband
for the 2am after party - or at least want to know where it is. It's lyrically post-moral, a kind of irony-free stoopid 2
Live Crew, but with smarter music. So, enjoyable and brilliantly made, but like
metal or hardcore hip hop, best listened to with a bit of distance.
Kelis/Flesh Tone Recommended by Emma Gulseven Oh fantastic. Kelis has come back from leaving pompous tool Nas to make a
disco-heartbreak classic. This isn't rap-singing over crunchy/party beats as
previous. It's an unbroken string of hi-NRG, huge as hell eurodance beats with
simple repeated lyrics about how she got hurt, how she's getting over and how
she's moved on. If Giorgio Moroder had made this with Candi Staton and Donna
Summer on back-ups, it wouldn't have been any better. Expect tearful
40-year-old women to be dancing to Acapella (the belting single) at other
people's weddings in 2030.
The cover is brilliantly ridiculous as well. For the record, yes, my girlfriend
recommended this, but I like it. I'm not just pretending so she will continue
to like me.
Steve Mason/Boys Outside Recommended by Jo Coleman I had avoided all the King Biscuit Time releases since the No Style EP, having
loved and been obsessed with The Beta Band from the very first time I heard She's
The One on the radio. The only thing I regret about my divorce is my ex getting
the original 12"s of The Three EPs. Mason's terrible depressive sadness
seemed to have been tempered by the rest of the BB's psychedelic silliness, and
the iciness of his minor-key melodies were leavened by their three-day-stubble
funkiness.
Mason has made this record after coming out the other side of a horrible fight
with what seems like the blackest of black dogs. Richard X has helped him put
this album together, and his robotic production goes with Mason's melancholy
perfectly. But again, it feels so mournful and dragged by the undertow, I can't
listen to this without feeling a little pulled down myself. It all comes good
at the end though, like in The Movies.
The Indelicates/Songs For Swinging
Lovers Recommended by Lizzy Muggeridge This one is a bit dangerous to review, as a number of my friends seem to love
these two. If I don't like it, it might lead to some terrible face-off, like
when you say you couldn't watch Doctor Who after they brought in that terrible
ginger woman, or when people won't watch The Wire because people like it too
much and recommend it so heartily (which is a bit like refusing to try ice
cream or oral sex, but there you go).
Oh dear. Not a good start. Very annoying sixth form girl indie singing. Sounds
like it's meant to be dramatic and daring. Sounds like Julia Sawalha shouting
at her mum on Ab Fab. Oh no. No, this isn't working. Tart observations in
middle class accents on top of Camden rehearsal room musicianship. This is Not
My Sort Of Thing. Ah well, at least I know. No offence, Lizzy!
Right, so Amazon thinks it knows what I want, does it? I'm the flea on
the long tail, am I? Eh? Let's PUT IT TO THE TEST. Amazon recommends the
following new releases for me. Right. 70 pages of them. That's impractical.
Let's take the first five.
Two Door Cinema Club/Tourist History Because I purchased: Yeasayer/Odd Blood
and more Good name. Cool cover. Maybe Amazon does know me. Let's listen to it. It's...
propulsive... but... but it's... no, no, this is boring. Am I deciding to
dislike it on the basis that I've been told I like it? Hmmm. No. No, it's the
singer’s nothingy Scandi-but-not-actually-Scandinavian voice. And the ordinary
songs. This is indie made with good equipment and bad ideas. There has been a
record like this being made at any given time in the last 20 years. I don't
like any of them. This is not in the same vein or league as Odd Blood. Verdict: AMAWRONG
The Besnard Lakes/The BesnardLakes Are The Roaring
Night Because I rated: Joanna Newsom/Have One
On Me Like the portentous album title. Like the portentous opening squall. This is
big and epic and deep and heavy stuff. Wide eyed stare music, but pretty
pumped-up too. I do like this. Boy/girl
shared vocals, saying not very much about anything. Lots of layers. Sounds like
Low playing with J Mascis. OK, Amazon, you got me this time. Verdict: AMAWRIGHT
Goldfrapp/Head First Because I rated: Hot Chip/One Life Stand
and more Well, Amazon thinks I like lightly intellectual electro pop. But, Amazon, do I like lightly intellectual electro
pop? It seems like... I do! "Oh oh oh, I got a rocket, dooobie doobie
do." It starts with the single, Rocket, which is currently setting fire to
the Radio 2 playlist. All the songs are a little bit the same though. I do like
this, but haven't lots of people made this record already? This is the problem
with recommendations built on a complex matrix of things you've already heard -
whatever it throws up, you've probably already heard that too, literally or
historically. This is like having a chocolate you ate as a kid. A chocolate
that tastes like Kylie. My analogy has broken down. On to the next. Verdict: AMAWKINDARIGHT
Beach House/Teen Dream Because I purchased: Yeasayer/Odd Blood and
more This, again, gets my hackles up, because it sounds like it should be right up
my avenue. It's a bit Grizzly Bear. It's pretty. It's well made. But it's
bloody boring. To do this sort of thing nowadays you have to be a bit more than
this - the bar's much higher. The sort of record you like when you're trying to
impress a girl who likes this sort of thing but don't when you're not. Lacks
whelm. Verdict: AMADONG
Field Music/Measure Because I rated: Joanna Newsom/Have One
On Me Ah Amazon, you crafty internet monolith you - I definitely like Field Music.
They sound like Paul McCartney if he'd been brought up on Pavement and Jim
O'Rourke, not Lonnie Donegan and The La's. They like to be a little bit baroque
as well. I'm getting to like baroque more and more as I get older. If it ain't
baroque, erm, fix it, that's what I say. Go for baroque, that's another thing I
say. Back to the point. Field Music. Yes. Amazon is right, I like these.
Although this is a slightly lacklustre record compared to previous LPs. Verdict: AMAWRIGHT
So what do we learn? Well, if you want to keep hearing the same sort of
record - and there's nothing wrong with it if you do - then Amazon Recommends
will help. But it's certainly not the best or only way, if you want to avoid
ever-decreasing circles of interest. You can use Metacritic of course, but then
consensus isn't always right. What about Spotify? Well, I tend to find Spotify
recommends me stuff I already know (I do like David Bowie, thanks Spotify).
You can always check in with Shabby Culture of course. Better yet, tell us where you find out about new stuff.
