LIVE! Doug Stanhope and Xiu Xiu

Two brief live reviews: when I say brief I mean 'I am trying to write them both during one play of 'Marquee Moon' (the song) by Television'.

DOUG STANHOPE + Henry Phillips
6th March 2012
Albert Halls, Bolton 
Doug Stanhope has been rightly resistant to playing too much in Britain. Britain treats comedy differently than the US. Britain intellectualises and demands more than mere clownishness and dick jokes. Her critics sting and barb and carp about stagecraft and insight and conceptual rigour, often without irony at their own situation. Comedy takes place as much in theatres and arenas with strict seating, where social rules about getting hammered kick in that bit harder.

Stanhope is fighting against that. He wants you sneak in your own booze: too late for this show, but if we take to Twitter we can aid his passage through the UK by generating some looser audiences. He also resists a narrative framework for his show, firing a shot across the bows of comedians who doggedly stick to a thematic concept, leaving them powerless when the news demands a comedic response and they're glued to their prepared act about being an imaginary ghost dog. Stanhope revels in playing the guttersnipe, bringing along an opening act that neatly fits the anti-concept concept.

Henry Phillips exudes an easy, erudite charm that neatly veneers a couple of decades of road-weariness. He's funny too: a musical comedian keen to the vagaries and ridiculousness of musical performers, finding joy in a hurricane of hubris. It's a craftsman's performance. The obvious 'jokes' hit home and the song structures are convincing as pastiches, but it's the subtler gestures, such as the facial expressions and altered voice to mock the mode of the 'sincere rock performer' that stay in the mind. He playfully mocks Britain to his friend, the headline act, watching in the wings.

Relatively sober and recently off the plane, Stanhope seems less animated than his years of fiery recordings would have him be. Quick to self-criticise though he is, Stanhope works almost as well when forced into roles he capably plays but never sells himself as: the raconteur, the veteran of clownish showmanship, the contrary armchair politician. Some audience members seem ruffled when Stanhope goes to bat for Republican/libertarian weirdo Ron Paul, but it's all part of the shtick: I am not your Bill Hicks, you cannot easily box me.

The show finale seemed to ruffle more (online, I checked, take my word for it) feathers than any specific political endorsement could. Easy to read as 'flag-waving for the USA' if you ignore the bit where he says 'ignore the whole government, bombs, flag-waving, foreign policy, crazy stuff' and focus on where he says 'AMERICA IS GREAT'. And he's right. Britain is still snooty about the USA. It's a great bit of comedic sleight-of-hand; he appeals to everybody's baser desire to be somewhere warmer, freer, easier, sexier in a way that skilfully insults how Britain culturally romanticises ugliness, stale morality, coldness, and visual austerity as some kind of act of ascetic brilliance. It works because in this bit, as he dreams about cocktails on Floridian sand at sun-up, he's mentally there and we've not taken that journey with him. We're in the stuffy British theatre and he's in the dunes and he is the one laughing at us.


XIU XIU + Trumpets of Death
13th March 2012
Ruby Lounge, Manchester
Running into a friend at the bar, he asks what I think of Trumpets of Death. 'A bit passive-aggressive', I say. This was an imperceptive, first-glance read. The Leeds trio variously recall Windy & Carl, The Telescopes, and late-period Talk Talk in their swooping, elegant set. At worst you could accuse them of lacking identity (and indeed shunning it altogether), but at best they're immersive and hypnotic, working up a cerebral lather with mechanical rhythm and trance-inducing saxophone runs.

There are two Xiu Xius. Alike in dignity, one follows in the mope-rock pantheon of The Smiths, Joy Division, and The Cure. The other owes more to a crossroads between Eastern modes and modern composition, and as such can be easily characterised as 'difficult music'. When Xiu Xiu begin with an abrasive number with bowed electric bass, nerve-jangling percussion, and abstract guitar scribbles, an audience braces itself and checks for the exits.

Three songs later, Jamie Stewart (singer, effectively he IS Xiu Xiu) is politely asking permission to perform a New Order cover that ushers in a full hour of the accessible side of Xiu Xiu to everybody's secret relief. New single 'Hi' is among highlights: an impressive 3-minute stab containing the coiled-up energy and pop nouse of younger bands and their initial efforts. Stewart still wants this.

A curious cove of a performer, Stewart calmly sips tea between songs to preserve his hesitant yelp of a voice, largely refuses audience engagement, and there is no encore. What really surprises to this newcomer to the Xiu Xiu live experience is that the band on record, with its array of ethnic instruments and songs led by autoharp, is reducible to the classic four-piece guitar-band line up without trading any of their signature fragility or tonal idiosyncrasy. This allows for a more direct and familiar experience, comparable to many an outsider band that have insisted upon faithful live recreation of their multi-instrumental experience in a way that induces deep tedium (naming no names).

Historically, for me at least, seeing a band live often marks the end of a spurt of a period of time spent listening to their work and sees the band steadily acclimatise into a kind of rota alongside previous likes and loves. The days since Xiu Xiu's performance have been the reverse: a binge across the nooks and crannies of their output, finding previously unheard collaborations and split albums of consistently high merit. A genuine treat.

UK SINGLES CHART 4/3/2012 from #100 to #91

or, WHY THE CHARTS ARE NOW COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY USELESS, EVEN MORE SO THAN THEY WERE WHEN PEOPLE ACTUALLY KNEW WHAT WAS AT #1.

Before I was even a teenager I had a school notebook in which I would write down the Top 40 Singles in the UK as counted down by Mark Goodier on BBC Radio 1 on Sunday evening. It is quite amazing to realise how many of these often transitory and seemingly inconsequential three minutes have stayed in the mind, but a cursory glance at this book in my late teens revealed that the more interesting names that would later be scattered around my record collection were usually found at the lower end of this chart.

We all know that the charts are somewhat meaningless as a gauge of quality but there's a coldness and logic about the format that automatically commands respect: it is undeniably the will of the people writ large. There was also a moment of genuine thrill in the early part of the 21st century when a local band named Moco scraped the lower echelons of the Top 100 on the back of some good reviews. For a moment the gap between the industry largesse and the dudes seen rolling around the local pub in front of 45 people was temporarily reduced. Even though Moco probably sold less than 1500 copies of their single at a time when the music industry was in one of its occasional pituitary funks. Here it is though, for posterity.

Since this occasion the rules on chart eligibility have changed to firstly include downloaded copies of the designated singles and then, before long, the ability to download any individual album track meant that any song on a downloadable album could end up at #1. This is why groups of campaigners for 'real, non-manufactured' music were able to upset the applecart by electing Rage Against The Machine to #1 over the simple pop thrills of Joe McElderry, and less wankerishly, why John Otway was able to get his 50th birthday wish of a second top ten single with 'Bunsen Burner'.

The situationist potential of the charts reduces with time as the charts retain less of a psychic grasp on the public consciousness. More simply put: the charts mean nothing and rigging the thing is a precious waste of time and energy, as amusing as it would be to have somebody like Anal Cunt forced into the nation's ears at Sunday tea-time. We could even have all of I Like It When You Die as the entire Top 40.

It's sad that this battle has been lost precisely because the opening up of chart eligibility theoretically was supposed to allow any old shit a go at the charts. Momentarily it worked: then-unsigned punk trio Koopa organised their fanbase sufficiently to become the first 'unsigned' band to reach the Top 40. However, these appeals and demands and cries to organise oneself shows the fundamental lack of unity, not existence of it, and how ultimately powerless it is for more than one week at a time when faced with the remorseless sense-battery of commercial radio.

The reduced appeal of the singles charts perhaps go some way to explaining why even the lower end of the charts resembles a major label advertorial. Where freaks once roamed on the selling out of their hastily deleted 7", ghosts of banal sentiments past loom at the window on the vicissitudes of commercial appearance: step forward 'Bring Me To Life' by Evanescence, 'Somewhere Only We Know' by Keane, and 'Bittersweet Symphony' by The Verve, appearing at #87, #86, and #59 respectively.

A quick count reveals at least 95 of the top 100 songs to be on major labels. The ones that I can identify as not being are Matt Redman at #12, a heavily campaigned-for Christian artist releasing a single for an anti-slavery charity. Arctic Monkeys are a strange anomaly at #22, being a guitar band with a new single in the charts, though they have major distribution and media on their side.

When an artist hits, they hit big, and often. Ed Sheeran has four singles in the chart. Emeli Sande is at least the featured artist on four, as is Rihanna. Adele has three. Rizzle Kicks have three. LMFAO have three. Nicki Minaj has three. David Guetta has three. Bruno Mars has three. Jessie J, Coldplay, LMFAO, Jennifer Lopez, and Pitbull all have more than one. It represents a real triumph for the grasp of commercial radio and television and the strength of the relationship that major labels maintain with them. Doubly so, considering that it is often considered that we're all supposed to be online with artists such as Harry Pussy and Whitehouse within just as close reach.

This piece isn't so much an argument for the violent overthrow of the ranking system or major label structure as it is a snapshot for anybody who was wondering what is still going on out there. The charts have always favoured those with commercial muscle because that is its function: to map that dispassionately. Besides, the independent community generally focuses upon the the longer format and live performance because it is still where prestige and the ability to make a living (just about) lies, reducing the single to a position of forced fetish product, given the relatively high costs of making such an eminently disposable format seem paradoxically worth owning forever on hard copy.

Funnily enough, when I began writing this piece, I did not begin with the intent of sniping about the charts or confirming what most of you suspected but had not bothered to check out out of the simple desire to not be depressed. Quite the opposite. My intent had been to look at the bottom end of the charts to see whether it was full of off-pop, pop that aims to match the structure and style of its more popular brethren but somehow fails, or to see whether it was full of unheard-of gems and bands like Moco that had risen beyond the position the industry could reasonably expect of them.

So, here is the countdown from #100 to #91 in the charts as compiled 4th March 2012 by the Official Chart Company.

100. Beautiful People, 'Turn Up The Music'

Not much information really exists on this song, other than to say that it is in fact a Chris Brown remix. Perhaps that's another sad-or-as-yet-unexplored consequence of open chart eligibility: remixes of songs forcing their way into the charts as a way of exposing the original to a wider audience. Imagine an anthemic synth version of 'Two Towers' by Lightning Bolt ft. Tinchy Stryder! It could work! Let's get this happening everyone!

99. Bruno Mars, 'Just The Way You Are (Amazing)'

A mere 76 weeks on the chart for Mars. Who is only just getting to this song? The kind of people who still lose their dial-up connection every time someone in the house wants to use the phone, I'll wager.

98. Bruno Mars, 'Marry You'

A mere 58 weeks on the chart for this one. Less memorable than its cousin one place below, though no less saccharine for it.

97. Beyonce, 'Halo'

A mere 97 weeks on the chart for this one. I can't bring myself to hate Beyonce but come on everybody, nearly two years? She has done stuff since!

96. LMFAO, 'Sorry For Party Rocking'

At first with LMFAO I was like 'ok, it's for kids, this is their music, let it go' but this is just BEYOND dismal. I think what annoys me the most is the way they look like they couldn't even be arsed styling themselves convincingly, as if they're saying 'oh, they'll buy any old shit as long as we work it like it's the shiz'. AND THEY WERE RIGHT!

95. Black Keys, 'Lonely Boy'

The kind of 'real rock' that pushes some ardent guitar wankers into pretending that they love 'artificial' pop music more than they really do, because to side with this is siding with white privilege and nostalgia for the unremembered in quite an overt and grotesque fashion. At first it seemed like an anomaly that this song would wind up charting at all in the UK, but it is formulaic and marketable alongside the White Stripes, so perhaps not all that surprising.

94. Monkees, 'I'm A Believer'

It would be churlish to complain about this in the wake of Davy Jones' death. Sometimes it takes a tragedy to make somebody aware of a body of work they may have been unaware of, and besides, 'I'm A Believer' is a fucking TUNE.

93. Skrillex ft. Sirah, 'Bangarang'

The saddest entry in all of the Top 100 is Skrillex and The Doors at #89. That whole 'is Skrillex dubstep' argument is hilarious. The answer was obvious when I got off the train at Wigan Wallgate and saw a 14 year old kid in nu-rock boots, a long leather jacket, and Skrillex t-shirt and realised without hearing a note that Skrillex is essentially 2012's Limp Bizkit and 'real' dubstep will always remain the preserve of people who know the names of the people who work in their local record shop back room, let alone the guy who actually owns the place. They are so far apart, it barely infringes trademark.

92.  Whitney Houston, 'I Will Always Love You'

See #94, only with less enthusiasm.

91. Ed Sheeran, 'You Need Me I Don't Need You'

A pathetic 77 weeks on the chart for this one. I saw Sheeran play this live before he became astronomically popular. It was an industry showcase and in a raft of horseshit rock music, he stood out as being a bit more breezy and self-sufficient, effortlessly singing/rapping/beatboxing/playing guitar. Had I known what I know now, seeing the psychic wreckage wrought upon the daily workplace, I would have rushed the stage.

A Bon Iver review.

- Where have you been?
- I've been learning how to write.  
- But you know how to write.
- Yes. I know that I can write. Sentences are often correct and in the right order but I've never been happy with the things that they say or the style in which they're said. Even this paragraph is disappointing me.
- Then why don't you just write the right thing?
- If only it were that easy.

(almost as if to prove what I am talking about, I have deleted a long confessional paragraph because the wording was making what seemed like a deeply-felt statement into a trite whinge)

Put simply, I have been feeling like there's a disconnect with what feels like a complex and fully-formed thought in my head and the way I put this into language. Not long after writing most things do they begin to gnaw at me. 

There's also the issue of over-analysis and over-thought. For nearly a decade I have been mentally composing what was meant to be an amazing piece of writing for an audience of one. More than a simple letter, it would sever mental defences erected with its clear-blue depthlessness. It turns out all I ever wanted to say was much simpler: I like you, I am sorry, you were right, I was wrong.

For all my arts writing and criticism and moaning, the most significant contribution was actually releasing a record. This has not stopped me lurking around music websites and attempting to create dissensus.

The last 12-18 months has been a very strange ride. The next three years promise to be stranger.

Bon Iver is shit.

Records of the year: Sharpie Crows: Mass Grave/Golf Course

Firstly: Mass Grave/Golf Course is a phenomenal name for an album; conceptually, syntactically, juxtapositionally, comedically; it just works. It somewhat spoils the party when you understand that Mass Grave and Golf Course are the names of two separate EPs, but if you download one from their Bandcamp page, you get the other bundled in. Hence: Mass Grave/Golf Course. Besides, the artwork all but confirms it.



Cursory listens to older material show the Crows have made a leap into leftfield, swimming forcefully out of the shallows of vaguely garage-y post-punk and into a deeper ocean pitched in the weirdnesses of the San Francisco scene of the early '80s, some Texas art-trash, and perhaps the spirit of countrymen such as The Dead C and The Clean (if not their actual sound). This might sound tenuous and idiotic, but let me try this on paper: the accent and vague 'experimental' tendencies make Liars the first point of comparison, but they do not sound like Liars. However (and this is the big leap of faith) - it sounds like something Liars might attempt in a parallel universe, were they suburban rather than cosmopolitan.

When the band 'rock' they sound more than fine: you imagine that live, they would be completely unhinged. However, it is their slower, more expansive material that satisfies more completely: 'Communist Girls' is the sound of stumbling home, the air hitting the drunken in a burst of badly-directed anger, frustration and bullshit ("do you know what I did today? / I fucked a head of state today.") before arriving home and sobering regretfully. Better still is 'Country Music': airlocked, disembodied, and full of disquiet. "How can we make country music / when there's no country anymore?" they ask, sounding as if they genuinely want to know.



What the album signifies, more than its own excellence (which it absolutely is: consistently across 11 tracks) is the triumph of the democratised unsigned act. Everything is self-generated: the art, the recording, the image and thus retains 100% of its intended characteristics; the band as true auteur.* They'll probably never tour outside of their own continent, but at least we can hear them as quickly, freshly, and in context as their local fans can. The album costs about £2.30/$3.80US. Whether 'the Radiohead model' works for smaller bands is yet-to-be-proven, but at least they can compete musically.

*I know, this has happened for years - but now on microscopic budgets it sounds as good as records you buy in the shops that cost five or six figures to make, ordinarily.

4.48 Psychosis: ADC Theatre, Cambridge

Art In Macro is back with a minor redesign (a template) and some new content. Some of the old content has been axed too. Yes, because it was rubbish. There will be more frequent updates that are shorter as well as an approximately quarterly piece that threatens to stretch beneath the southern boundary of you screen

Today’s review is of the performance of 4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane at the ADC Theatre in Cambridge. What immediately follows is a brief interpolation about why, in spite of minimal theatre-going experience, Art In Macro is reviewing plays. Skip the next bit text to get to the review.
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In sentient adult life I have been to fewer than a dozen plays. Why? I am exactly the sort of person who should go to the theatre. It plays to my respective enjoyment of acting, literature, immediacy, and art. So why is the sum total of my theatre-going experience as an undergraduate a performance of Waiting For Godot with Coronation Street’s Roy Cropper (David Neilson) as Lucky?

Primarily it is about expense. The days of subsidized troupes and theatres are disappearing. You have to be a particularly hardened and embattled soul if you are to regularly stump up £10+ to see something that you can’t own later, that might not be good, that could potentially offend and challenge your understanding of previously cherished text. At least the similarly-priced record and DVD have a repeatability clause built-in. And at least the large touring rock band allows the opportunity for the audience member to come alive, be semi-interactive, and to consume several flagons of draught.

There were never any regrets about those few times I did pay the requisite for a play. And whilst I don’t have the experience to fully separate what makes a production first-rate from one to hate, the weary cynicism of the post-modern/late-capitalist voracious culture-consumer with a mouthpiece (e.g. this blog) is a transposable mode. I am writing as a dilettante to speed my passage into understanding; trying to make sense of things I do not fully understand without recourse to textbooks, theoreticians, and naysayers. Anyway: on with the show.

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4.48 Psychosis – Cambridge ADC Theatre
23rd October 2010

Pitched somewhere between Beckett (formal abstraction, the decomposition of semantics, an almost percussive dialogue) and Plath (despair expressed through snakish – almost primal – monologuing, depression as anger) is 4.48 Psychosis. The director’s notes claim it is not ‘a play purely about depression’ but ‘a cry for love and human connection’. All very well and noble, but ultimately begging a question about why the protagonist (The Lover) hates everyone, including those who attempt to love her?

The Lover is depressed beyond tears, a tiger set loose to live with humans, occasionally benign and self-concerned but mostly filled with incomprehension and an inability to communicate terms which might assuage her. Nothing is ever good enough. The Partner tries anger, calmness, aping The Lover’s rhetorical devices, and just about everything he understands within his power but comes up short. The Doctor attempts to retain a professional impassivity, treating The Lover like a problem rather than a human. The Lover sees this as impersonal and dehumanizing, herself as vehicle for pharmaceutical neutralizing. The Doctor does care; when she takes off the professional mask to reveal herself, The Lover understands the necessity of the object/subject relationship, how social and professional boundaries cannot be transcended. It kills her.

The acting is good throughout. Hannah Wildsmith is perhaps too young, unravaged, and restrained to be The Lover, giving some of the angrier moments the same kind of forearm-to-forehead tendency of the period drama rather than the modernist nerve-jangler. Nonetheless, her smooth, clear-headed soliloquies highlight the patterns that repeat and fold in on themselves later, crushing her under her own rhetoric (appropriate, considering her fate). Archie Preston is similarly fine as The Partner, requiring the greatest range, attempting a light (“RSVP? ASAP?”) that contrasts jarringly with the near treacle-black of the denouement. Best of all, or at least the most convincing, is Nikki Moss as The Doctor. She is a blank page, phlegmatic in that way doctors have to be to preserve their own sanity (irony probably unintentional from Kane). Clipped and distant, yet her notes grant her omnipresence.

The direction is surefooted throughout, with minimal stage set-up to let the actors act and the words breathe. Sound and lights offer subtle tonal shifts; the overriding impression leaves you with no doubt that all concerned have extracted all they can from this play.

All said, it is the play itself that is the most problematic aspect of the production. Endless debate could be devoted to this topic, though to cut a long story short, it appears to valorize the plight of the depressed and somewhat elevate their status to nihilist-visionary. The Lover (difficult not to read as an allegory for Sarah Kane herself, in light of her suicide before this play reached the stage) laments pills and medication as curtailing the higher functions of her brain, when it is pretty clear to see that the higher functions of her brain are misfiring, her synapses prone to influencing angry, awkward bursts of dialogue that make living and supporting a person in that state totally fucking impossible to deal with. Of course, Kane attempts to pre-empt such readings, but these are the moments that feel the most forced.

TWO BITS OF SPOON

First the album, the only record thus far that I have reviewed by listening to it on Spotify. It's probably the future of record-sending; a resource to stream music. Add in some codes and some threats about recording and the industry probably save a ton on promos.

I've been a fan of the band since I saw them in 2005, and even though I am conscious of their status as an indie vanguard band du jour, I can't help but feel they're the one band whose imminent acceptance by FM radio would be a totally welcome and ideal thing.

First, their new LP...

Spoon, Transference

That's the problem with the kids these days: no consistency. The Strokes lost their magic formula as soon as they found it. The Libertines might have done it had they not irritated Her Majesty's finest so much. Oasis and Blur; familiar stories of fighting and drugs. Thank ye gods for Spoon, as dependable and upright as the utensil they're named for, provided Uri Geller is safely outside a 50 mile radius.



Transference, the Austin quartet's seventh, continues in the mutual quest to be the best band that nobody will ever hear. Initially appearing to be their signature mix of loping, sarcastic funk, songwriting that would shame the Brill Building's finest and dubby production tricks, Spoon have subterfuge on their agenda. They invert the symbols that made previous long-players such romps; the repetition seems threatening rather than a call to party. The flickers of echo sound like madness in the dark rather than intimate or loving. There's something of the night about the whole affair.

Closest to the Spoon of old are the singles; 'Written in Reverse' struts along unimpeded, 'Got Nuffin' stomps like Northern Soul and 'The Mystery Zone' manages to leave you demanding more from a one-note bassline. Even the stuff that is a progression or a deconstruction of the previous tropes are delivered with the same cocksure confidence as ever. Even Britt Daniel's pen is refusing to fail him (“I've seen it in your eyes / there's nothing there.”).

If you've ever sat around thinking 'why isn't there some kind of mid-point between the best of indie-rock, soul music and pop, preferably something timeless-sounding without any overplaying or grandstanding emotional outpourings' then you should probably check out Spoon. They're on a helluva run, they put on a great rock show and on form like this, they don't know how to make a bad record. Transference isn't the best starting point (2007's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is), but it's a great place to wash up.

...and then live on the tour to support it.

Spoon / White Rabbits @ Academy 3
15th February 2010

Five years ago, the Spoon live experience was all about economy. Stripped back, no effects, they pumped out hit after hit after hit without as much as a by-your-leave. They still do the latter, make no mistake. Except now, they're more ambitous; they stretch things out, add and take away, entirely confident that at the core of each number is a Fundamentally Good Thing. And they'd be right.



Seven albums in, they're armed to the teeth with savvy indie-pop-soul-rock nuggets. Their secret? Don't do too much. No one in Spoon ever overplays. A keyboard line could be one or two notes, but they make all the difference. The bassline to 'The Mystery Zone' is one single note, repeatedly jabbed, and it's absolutely fantastic.

It'd be unfair to pick highlights, so to arbitraily pick songtitles off the setlist: 'I Saw The Light' has two parts: great and greater. 'Rhythm and Soul' is the best pop song you didn't hear in the '00s. 'Written In Reverse' will probably be the best pop song you didn't hear this decade. 'The Ghost of You Lingers' recasts German titans Neu! minus their cerebral tendencies in a fairly heartstopping performance. There are no clunkers. It's home run after touchdown after goal after slam dunk all around.

Support act White Rabbits are something of a Spoon Jr; their recent LP was produced by head Spooner Britt Daniel, and they share some of the collar-popping sang froid of their mentors. Still, it's a head-turning performance, refreshingly quirk-free, taking the spirit of the headline act more than their actual tunes.

Say hello to somebody #1

We're back from a self-imposed hiatus. Work, computer breakdown - you know how it is. In February 2007, Mark Prindle returned my request for an email interview with lengthy, funny, insightful and personal responses. Who he, ask you? Me tell.

Just as sure as anyone can have a blog, any person can listen to records and write their opinions on them. Anyone can learn HTML. Anyone can post up reader reviews, comment, criticism, rants and other nonsense too. But over the course of 11 years, for free? That's something. Besides, he's written for real publications and appeared on the real television to talk it up too. Here he is on Fox in 2008.



On top of that, there's the style. Or as I should say, 'styles' - Prindle is as likely to embrace surreality, grossness, sentimentality, seriousness,the kind of gonzo arthouse journalism employed by the Bangs and Kents of this world - anything but an academic detachment. This man loves records, and wants them all to be good. Often, they are not, and usually that is when things get funny.

The records I've bought on this man's say-so - dozens. I thank him for showing me Scharpling and Wurster, Thinking Man's Union Local #282, Skip Spence, Sun City Girls, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Cows. Not that he doesn't review 'regular' rock and roll bands; far from it.



I was incredibly touched when I saw how much effort he'd put into this interview for it to be used on a fairly obscure blog. I feel it something of a duty to make it useful for two obscure blogs instead. His words in normal type, mine in are too, just indented.
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So, for everyone out there in internet-land who isn't aware of you (the cretins!), could you just introduce yourself?

My name is Mark Donavon Prindle. I am 33 years old and live in Manhattan with my wife Brenda and 6-year-old son Henry The Dog. I have become a semi-micro-mini-web-celebrity on the alleged strength of my dumbass web site www.markprindle.com. This site, an 11-years-and-counting labor of OCD, features trillions of profane, off-topic record reviews and interviews with top punk musicians of yesteryear and tomorrowday. Many of my reviews are just awful, but some are hilarious and a few are even insightful (I'm told). The site averages about 4,000 individual visitors and 35,000 click-throughs per day.

I also post a "Wacky Weekly Wphoto" of hilariousness, which everybody enjoys and is enjoyed by all. Although I am completely honest in my writing and opinionating, almost everything I write is 'taking the piss' so I urge readers not to take any of it very seriously. I also used to be a Homemade Guitar God, and have several unreleased CD-Rs to my name. I haven't played in years though. Too old and rickety.

OK. I'm going to tell you a little story. Once upon a time, I went to a music review workshop with a very well-known British writer. I submitted a review for open discussion and he claimed there were 'too many exclamation marks'. This struck me that music journalism was a place not of creativity & critical objectivity, but a place often as boring as being a musician itself. So, what would he make of your reviews? And what do you think of them? And, err, reviewing in general?

Music reviewing is a bullshit job for bullshit people. The job of a music journalist or historian requires significant research and understanding of past trends and influential moments in the history of the art. But music reviewing is just saying what an album sounds like to you. Even though the "quality" of different pieces of music is subjective (fully dependent on the preferences of the individual listener), a music reviewer should still be able to describe a record in such a way that, even if he hates it, fans of that type of music might still be interested in hearing it. Your well-known British writer was just expressing his personal opinion when he claimed that your review had 'too many exclamation marks.' If he were your editor, it would be important that you listen to his opinion. Since he is not, he can eat the dick. I'm sure you could nitpick his style too.

You haven't really told me enough about the writer for me to answer the question of whether or not he would like my style. Perhaps he would enjoy my sense of humor, perhaps not. And why do you find 'being a musician' boring? I've had some of my most fun and creative life moments while playing the old guitar - both with friends and alone. It's a lot of fun! It's not music's fault that many musicians are dull. People in all fields of life seem dull if you have nothing in common with them.

What do I think of my reviews? Here is a post I left on a message board recently, in response to a couple of people who were trashing my writing style:

"My writing definitely isn't 'for everybody.' In fact, a lot of it isn't even 'for me' at this point. But I can't go back and rewrite the whole damned site."

As for throwing in too much personal stuff and humor, that's kinda my 'schtick' as it were. It's the only (questionable) advantage I have over other reviewers, and it's also the only way to keep myself interested in what I'm doing. I mean, I do try to explain how the albums actually sound (much more now than in the past), but the reason people seem to keep coming back to my site is because they like my writing style.

And those who don't come back -- well, they DON'T LIKE IT AT ALL!

The worst part about it is that, in 11 years of writing, there are some TERRIBLE pages on my site. Yes, there was definitely a period when I used gross language and imagery just for the shock value (when I do it now, I try to write actual JOKES with it, rather than just throwing it in to shock). Yes, there was a time when my reviews said hardly anything at all about the records (90% of the time now, they say a HELL of a lot -- it's just that you have to read through all the other bullshit to find it). And yes, there was definitely a period when I simply couldn't write worth a shit and had no notable identity. But if I spent the time it would take to re-write everything that I no longer like, I wouldn't write a new review for the next three years!

Having said that, I DO honestly think that some of my reviews are funny -- but only to ME PERSONALLY. Over time, I tend to forget what I've written, so sometimes while adding reader comments, I'll happen across an old passage that I find absolutely hilarious. Not in a "God, I'm funny!" way, but "God, that's funny! I wrote that!?" way. And if nobody else finds it amusing, that just means that I have an idiosyncratic sense of humor. Sure, why not in life?

One thing I really do want you to understand though is that I'm not arrogant. Sometimes people accuse me of that, and I don't know how to respond. Maybe my 'writing style' is just so far removed from my 'actual identity' that it comes across as confidence. I don't have a hell of a lot of confidence."

As for reviewing in general, I just want reviews that tell me what an album sounds like. Pretty much the only ones I read are All-Music Guide, because they're pretty good about leaving out the bullshit (i.e. the kind of time-wasting crap I write) and just telling it like it are.

So is it true that you purchase all the records you review? If so, if an artist begins to suck you are tied into buying them all?

Oh God no. Why would you think that? I try to get free mp3 or CD-R discs of everything I can these days, particularly since there are pages on my site for people I can't stand (ex. Tori Amos and PJ Harvey). I do still have far too many albums and CDs though (15,000 maybe?)

One thing I've noticed is that you seem incredibly passionate about certain artists, but that passion and genuine evangelicising is passed over by a pedantic section of your fanbase. Ever get pissed off at the people who write in? Have you ever wanted to publically castigate their words? Also, does it ever annoy you when you are considered a bad writer when a) you majored in English from a fairly prestigious college and b) it's quite obvious that you aren't?

I got annoyed at Pedro Andino for sending in too many all-caps comments that had nothing at all to do with the reviews or albums I was discussing. But I just stopped posting them, so that took care of that. Otherwise, I sometimes get a twitch of anger at people who go off on me when they clearly don't understand what I'm trying to do. But that's just a natural human reaction. Once I post the comment and delete it from my email box, I never think about it again (thank God!). The one good thing about angry notes is that I can forward them to my friends, who quite enjoy them.

The few times that people have complained to me that I'm a bad writer, it is usually in response to a particularly bad piece of writing that has been on my site for 7 or 8 years. So I generally respond, "Hey, you're right! That IS a terrible page!" Unfortunately, sometimes you have to read a few pages before finally getting to something worth reading. And even then, you might not like my writing style. It's a bit hyper-active and obscene.

Since the site has started, what changes to your life are directly attributable to it?

I have more confidence in my un-worthlessness now, thanks to the many wonderful people who have supported me with readership and positive feedback over the years. I also feel like I'm achieving self-actualization, by constantly creating reviews that people can enjoy for the writing itself -- regardless of what I'm reviewing. In my 20's, I came to the realization that I would never be a rock star because (a) I lack the leadership skills to lead a band, (b) I don't have the discipline necessary to go through all that touring bullshit, and (c) nobody likes my music. But this web site thing has somehow garnered me lots of 'fans,' which is neat!

I also have more friends and more CD-Rs/MP3 discs than if I'd never started the site. And much less free time.

One thing that is noteable about your reviews is that often they are a forum for you to talk about whatever is on your mind that day: be it an anecdote about being drunk in a Mexican restaurant with your wife, a travel diary or a tirade against Bush. Why do you think you do this? A fringe benefit of having total editorial control, or because you simply can?

I do this because my reviews are the only personal writing I do. If I want to remember something funny that has happened to me, this is where I put it. Also, I don't like the thought of my main creative endeavor being a parasite wholly dependent on somebody else's work, which is what critique of any sort generally is. As such, I like to put in lots of my own personality so people can't just say, "When nobody remembers who Gwar is, your writing will be forgotten and worthless." Well, it probably still will, but at least there are some funny lines in there. So FUCK OFF.

Not you, the interviewer.

Which bands & artistes are grabbing you right now?

Nobody in particular. I just buy and buy and buy and listen and listen and etc. But I hardly spend any time with new CDs until it's time to review them, so sometimes I think I really like a band, then I'll study them more closely for review and realize they're terrible. This happened with GBH and, to a lesser extent, Gwar.

One CD I recently got that excited me quite a bit was "These Are Jokes" by comedian Demetri Martin. He's hilarious! I also finally completed my Bill Hicks collection. I've grown to really enjoy him. Even when he's not tossing out zingers left and right, he's just a lot of fun to listen to. But I think you're talking about music. So let me think about some music people I've been listening to lately.

I now own every single Johnny Cash studio album except "The Rambler," and like a surprising number of them. I recently listened to about half of my Grand Funk albums (I own all of them) and was pleased to learn that they're not all terrible. I really like Wishbone Ash's "Argus" album. I'm still a huge fan of 'outsider' artists and weird music, like Tangela Tricolli's "Jet Lady," Kenneth Higney's "Attic Demonstration," Shooby Taylor The Human Horn, Rodd Keith and all the other song-poem artists, corporate musicals, Arf!Arf!'s "Only In America" compilations, Recordio discs, and just novelty music in general. I'm also really into (for no clear reason) poorly-conceived tribute discs, like all these asinine bluegrass and string quartet tributes to Aerosmith, AC/DC and nonsense like that. I own ten of the "Rockabye Baby!" lullaby CDs and will definitely pick up a few more in my day. I own probably 40 Ramones tribute albums, including steel pan, new wave, blues-rock, karaoke, lullaby, surf, muzak and rockabilly interpretations of their work.

And I'm said that it's been so long since Yes put out a studio album. I still love Yes.

Away from the computer, on which you are a SUPERSTAR, what do you like to do in 'real life'?

Watch horror, exploitation and sexploitation movies. Why, just last night I 'enjoyed' a mid-70s German sexploitation film called "The Sinful Bed." See, it's about this talking bed, see, that tells you about all the different sorts of people that have had sex on it over the years. And - get this - the film actually SHOWS the softcore sex in flashback form! Wow!

I read a lot of non-fiction -- mostly about movies and occasionally music, if it's something interesting. I read some humor too. Good old humor, making people laugh.

I love eating at Uno's Bar & Grill (formerly Pizzeria Uno), and do so several times a week. I always start off with a bowl of peanuts from the bar, and glasses of water and Diet Pepsi. Then I order a flatbread Chef's Choice pizza with hamburger, pepperoni and sliced tomatoes, along with a ton of napkins so I can wipe all the grease off the food and blow my nose a billion times as is my wont. For dessert, I get a Deep Dish Sundae with extra ice cream, and ask them to make sure that the cookie is soft. I can't stand it when the cookie is hard. I feel the same way about penises.

For exercise, I take Tae Kwon Do classes with my wife three days a week. We've been taking them for four years, and are scheduled to go for our Black Belts in May of this year. Wish us duck!

Finally, I enjoy spending quality time with my wife and dog. What kind of asshole wouldn't?

I hate everything else.

Popology #2

Art In Macro gathers up some folk to take a look at the new Kings of Leon record.

'JOSHUA TREE DENIAL'
critical roundtable gears up

We know the drill by now. The template was put down by The Strokes and until we enter a new paradigm shall forever be so.

A young band of dubious provenance arrives on 'the scene'. Talk of their sound; simultaneously retrograde and yet the sound of the absolute now. 'Classic'. We are assured of their 'realness' despite the abstract/absurd nature of this concept.

The debut record (possibly after some impossibly hip limited EP or 7" is 'dropped') is released to vast critical aplomb - heck, even Robert Christgau likes it! It makes the top 100 albums ever despite having only been released four months prior in a traditionally lean spot in the year. A successful tour of the world's dumps and festivals and relax.

The second album dichotomy; more of the same or something different. History shows to err on the side of caution for sales and go for broke to be remembered fondly. It sells well and gets good reviews (critics don't like to think they were fooled, ever) but ultimately there's nothing to trumpet, especially when we have new feed coming in at the beginning of this cycle. Perhaps start to think about solo projects or a clothing line.

The third album tanks but you're still a live draw. Now you have the unenviable task of touring knowing you're pretty much creatively spent as a unit, playing these same chords every night despite the 'stripped-down' and 'mature' record you have inside. Even the groupies look kind of spent and redundant. Often, there is no fourth record, and if there is then it sells so poorly as to be the almost physical manifestation of one hand clapping.



This template works for so many bands; Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Music, The Stills, Interpol and Franz Ferdinand to name a few. Enduring the process over the next year or so will be CSS, Glasvegas and Klaxons. So why have Kings of Leon, forged through the same processes, endured to see a zenith of popularity in the run up to album #4?

Art In Macro have a suspicion that Kings of Leon endured because people simply forgot to listen to them first time around, so their third album was essentially their first to many.



This writer was at a karaoke party and the above song ('The Bucket') came on at random for me to sing: it was pleasant enough without developing (at all) and easy enough to perform despite never having heard a note before. Like good pop songs, it had an enduring and non-annoying quality to it. I mentioned this to a couple of 'music fan' friends. "Oh, they're pretty good, they've changed a lot. It's not just 'Molly's Chambers' going ba-ba-na-na-na-na-na all the time. You should have a listen."

And listen Art In Macro did. And the experience was neither pleasant enough to purchase anything, not terrible enough to incite rage. Kings of Leon had done it! They had run the gauntlet and were now primed to make 'a statement'.

---

MEET THE ROUNDTABLE
- ML is a singer in a rock and roll band and by day, he writes copy for his employers in the construction sector. He is 27.
- KD is a journalist on the local newspaper in her mid-20s.
- DG is a student and musician. He is 20.

ML: I found their stripped down hick rock they had on their earlier stuff really fucking patronising. That opening track, I think it was ‘Knocked Up’ - if you forgive the hamfisted lyrics, really shocked me. It’s like they’d found another couple of emotions. Or had stopped wearing sandals if you get my drift.

DG: The epic atmospheres that made Because Of The Times great have gone too far. The songs sound wet.

KD: I got a bit bored after about four songs to be honest, but then I do have musical ADHD.

ML: Where the delayed guitars on the last one sounded like a band branching out, they sound really fucking cynical on this. Take the single as a shining example. It’s like they wandered into a big room on their last album, metaphorically and literally, and have stayed there - wide eyed and complacent. Like The Joshua Tree never fucking happened. Joshua Tree denial.

DG: Caleb's voice tends to slide into power ballad mode from time to time, and each time he does this - while it fits with the song - it just contributes to the vast empty spaces, instead of filling them up. It's a shame sometimes because you can't help but feel his indie cred slowly draining out of him and ergo his band, into the realms of, well dare I mention other once rock and roll pioneers turned purveyors of radio friendly stadium capacity rock?

---

Art In Macro first heard the record whilst out purchasing DVDs in the local HMV, playing as it was at full volume over the speakers and delaying the thought process of purchasing, creating an internal digression of whether to stay or flee. On the bus home, I sent a message to a friend.

Just heard the new Kings of Leon record. It was like some bizarre medieval torture crossed with a terrible U2 record.

For the record, Metacritic have them as nearly a 7 out of 10. Other noteable reviews from Allmusic who give it 7, Observer Music Monthly give it full marks and finally Pitchfork, who give it a mid-three.

Please make up your own minds though. Perhaps let us know what you think.

Popology #1

When I hear the popular sounds of today my eyes want to eject themselves, my spleen does a dance of disgruntlement and my ears want to puke themselves to the sun.

This is not because, to use a widely-recognised example, Josh Groban's passionate performances of well-constructed popular motifs disgust me at a technical level. It is because the songs themselves attempt to belie the struggles of our forebears to maintain access to welfare and produce bread for the workers of the state.

In a study of popular song since the age of digital, the recording choice of the true egalitarian, we at Art In Macro have found repeated examples of work affirming our socialist nature, with the attendant corollary of the forces of neoconservatism smashing these subversive messages and incoporating them into the milleu of the bourgeoise.



Here we have 'Everything Counts', the 1983 hit from English pop group Depeche Mode. A subversive take on the nature of consumerism, the pitfalls of the monopolies and mergers commission and Hegelian dialectic. "A handshake/seals the contract/from the contract/there's no turning back." Martin Gore understands the dichotomous life of the professional, presenting a human face, a handshake and a smile, knowing that lurking beyond are shackles.

Even the visual plays these two contrasting ideologies against each other. Clearly Dave Gahan is portraying a man trapped in a hendonistic self-centred free market agenda, as if on drugs, whilst the other three represent a collective voice rising up on a new dawn. The musical agenda heightens this, with the abrasive synth tones contrasted against Gahan's sweet voice, in and of itself Gore's way of sugaring the one-word message: revolution!



Heightening this sense of burgeoning collectivism in both the physical and metaphysical was noted pop phenomenon Belinda Carlisle. Her hit '(We Want) The Same Thing' not only speaks to the proletariat in a literal way, but in a Jungian one as well. Carlisle believes in mass mind; when she tells us 'we dream the same dream' she is not simply referring to the hopes of the people but in the symbolic value of struggle unspoken for fear of repression.

These messages became increasingly part of the language of commerce. True innovators and iconoclasts such as Bronski Beat (the later line up of 'Hit That Perfect Beat', a march for modern youth resistance), The Communards and Frankie Goes To Hollywood woud wither away in confused interpretations of their struggles. All groups who heavily featured idiosyncratic visuals of men together at meetings of radical minds, it was perhaps ironic that such reliance on collectivism scuppered them. Countering these challenging and compelling arguments would be groups like Talk Talk ('it's my life', an individualist clarion which would prove decisive), Visage (pacifism) and Ultravox (themselves an inversion of Brechtian theses).



However, leftist themes were not completely ignored in the recent era. This song by Vanessa Amorosi is arguably the clearest call-to-arms since The Communist Manifesto. Let us examine the lyrics.

Everybody needs a hand to hold,
Someone to cling to...
I am just the same,
A player in the game

Amorosi understands that advantages cannot be made in an individualist mindset, that in the political act of being born she cannot escape the necessity of others. Here the hand is not merely the hand of a lover or a mother, but the hand of welfare and commune. She is part of the 'game', an obvious codeword for a sister of the revolution. However, her precious gift, which could not be simply co-opted, was smothered by the increasingly fascistic media value of popular music.

In these increasingly stressful times we turn to entertainment for guidance but find only Zach De La Rocha. We would therefore be amiss to forget the words of Vanessa Amorosi, surely a Rosa Luxembourg of our times.

Every boy and girl,
Every woman and child.
Every father and son.
I said now everyone